J.G. FRAZER

The Golden Bough

A Study in Comparative Religion

Introduction by

Cairns Craig

Contents

Introduction

Preface

Chapter One: The King of the Wood

The Arician Grove

Primitive Man and the Supernatural

Incarnate Gods

Tree-Worship

Tree-Worship in Antiquity

Chapter Two: The Perils of the Soul

Royal and Priestly Taboos

The Nature of the Soul

Royal and Priestly Taboos

Chapter Three: Killing the God

Killing the Divine King

Killing the Tree-Spirit

Carrying out Death

Adonis

Attis

Osiris

Dionysus

Demeter and Proserpine

Lityerses

The Corn-Spirit as an Animal

Eating the God

Killing the Divine Animala

Transference of Evil

Expulsion of Evils

Scapegoats

Killing the God in Mexico

Chapter Four: The Golden Bough

Between Heaven and Earth

Balder

The External Soul in Folk-tales

The External Soul in Folk-custom

Conclusion

Note: Offerings of First-fruits

Appendix One: Totemism

Appendix Two: The Origin of Totemism

Appendix Three: The Scope of Social Anthropology

Appendix Four: from The Worship of Nature

Index

Introduction

IN the fifty years after its publication in 1890, no single book had a larger impact on the intellectual concerns of the Western world than J. G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough. It was, of course, a foundational text for the new discipline of social anthropology, shaping the issues around which the discipline would develop, but its impact was felt just as powerfully in philosophy, theology and psychology, in the social disciplines of sociology and politics and in literary and art criticism. The roll call of those who were influenced by or responded to The Golden Bough includes many of the most prominent and radical thinkers of the period, including Malinowski and Durkheim in social anthropology, Bergson and Ryle in philosophy, Freud in psychology and Spengler and Toynbee in philosophical history. The power that Frazer’s work held over the European mind is symbolised by the fact that Wittgenstein, who had written about it in 1930, was still writing about it as late as 1948. [1] Equally, the search for the ritual and archetypal significances of works of art, initiated in the 1890s by Jane Harrison and Gilbert Murray, who applied the methods of The Golden Bough to classical literature, was to culminate in the mid-century in some of the most important of modern approaches to the study of English literature in the work of critics such as Wilson Knight in Britain and Northrop Frye in North America. Like some volcanic irruption from deep underground, Frazer’s accounts of the magic and the legends of primitive peoples, his tracking of the strange origins of familiar Graeco–Roman myths, the explanations of the savage roots of religion and the relation of sacrificial kingship to seasonal rituals poured across the intellectual landscape, reshaping the ways in which the human mind and human history were conceived. And perhaps The Golden Bough’s most enduring legacy was its impact on creative artists, who found in Frazer’s work not only a new vocabulary of myth that could be applied to modern conditions but a new conception of the profound and irrational depths of the human mind, depths which could only be expressed through entirely new forms that combined the most adventurous aspects of modernity with the most powerful remnants of the primitive. [1]

When T. S. Eliot declared that for modern writers ‘the maxim, return to the sources, is a good one’ because they ‘should be aware of all the metamorphoses of poetry that illustrate the stratifications of history that cover savagery’, [2] he was acknowledging what had been learned from Frazer: that underlying the modern world, like a series of archaeological strata, were a variety of savage ones, and that modern civilisation was a thin layer through which it was easy to reach down into those savage origins. When Frazer envisaged the modern world as ‘cracked and seamed, sapped and mined with rents and fissures and yawning crevasses’, opening on to a primitive belief in magic which ‘is very much what it was thousands of years ago in Egypt and India’ and remains the environment of the ‘ignorant and superstitious classes of modern Europe’, [3] he implied the structure of works like Eliot’s The Waste Land, with its underlying framework of powerful myths haunting the facile surface of modern European civilisation. Eliot proclaimed that Joyce, with some help from Yeats, was the inventor of the ‘mythic method’ which could make sense of the ‘immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history‘, [1] in fact, all of them depended on Frazer, as Eliot himself made clear in his notes to The Waste Land: ‘To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have used especially the two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris’. [2] Throughout the development of modernist literature in the first half of the twentieth century Frazer’s writings played a crucial role, providing both some of its key narrative structures – such as the myth of the dying god who must be sacrificed for the return of fertility [3] – and the inspiration for some of its most daring formal innovations, such as the revelation of archetypal myths still operative within a modern environment. Both aspects can be found in the work of the major modernist writers of the period on both sides of the Atlantic – in Conrad, in Yeats, in Joyce, in Woolf, in Faulkner – and in the work of many of the most important writers of the Scottish Renaissance, from John Buchan and Lewis Grassic Gibbon to Neil Gunn, Edwin Muir and Naomi Mitchison. Even when Frazer’s work had lost much of its original surprise, and its treatment of the primitive had been superseded by later anthropologists, its literary influence continued to be felt in works such as Robert Graves’s The White Goddess, [4] in the poetry of Ted Hughes, in the work of Scottish writers such as Muriel Spark – who sets one of her late novels, Territorial Rites, on the banks of the Lake at Nemi where Frazer’s narrative opens – and in the writings of Allan Massie, whose depictions of modern European society are constantly juxtaposed with elements from Frazer’s narrative. Indeed, in Sins of the Father, a novel about the consequences of Fascism, one of the characters has on the wall in his apartment, an ‘aquatint reproduction of Turner’s The Golden Bough,’ [1] which becomes the symbolic locus for the terrors both of Europe in the Second World War and of Argentina in the 1960s. In its representation of a terrifying past which humanity had not progressed beyond, Frazer’s work provided an explanation for the horrific present which Europe lived through between 1890 and the 1960s, and if that explanation provided no palliative to the horrors of modern history, it at least provided artists with a means of making sense of it, and thereby making it amenable again to the powers of the imagination.

The profound effect of The Golden Bough was based not on the absolute novelty of Frazer’s work – much had been done before him by British anthropologists such as Tyler – nor on its long-term significance as an explanation of ‘the savage mind’ – no modern anthropologists would regard Frazer as the basis of the discipline as it now exists. Its shock effect came from the fact that it collapsed traditional conceptions of progressive history, revealing that the past that modern humanity thought it had left behind still shadowed its contemporary existence and was, indeed, more pervasive in modern consciousness than the discoveries of science made over the last four hundred years. Frazer’s presentation of the history of humanity negated both the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the nineteenth-century social Darwinist conceptions of continuous progressive improvement towards ever-higher levels of rationality: for Frazer, the history of humanity was a tale of repeated and terrible error out of which, with little certainty, had come the fragile conceptions of scientific truth on which modern civilisation was based, conceptions constantly threatened by the return of the mistaken forms of understanding – both magical and religious – on which primitive society was based. It is this negation of progressive history, this awareness of the fact that even the ‘light’ of modern science is rooted in the ‘dark’ truths of the primitive, that made Frazer the prophet of the modern consciousness. At the same time, Frazer presented this dark history of humanity in a prose as lucid and as ordered as any eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinker could have asked for. In Frazer, the Enlightenment search for truth is enacted in the clarity and regularity of his sonorous prose; but the post-Enlightenment awareness that truth may be no more than an illusion of our own making is the burden of the history that he has to recount. The balance between the two made The Golden Bough both the closing statement of one historical epoch and the opening statement of the next: a grand Victorian narrative of the rise of civilisation from savagery reveals, at the same time, that savagery is the stronger and more permanent condition, and that the beneficent truths of the Christian religion are themselves but the spiritual after-echo of all-too-physical savage rituals. Frazer’s ultimate achievement was the blending of a style which reflected Enlightenment optimism about the powers of reason with a content which undermined and challenged that optimism, producing a text which hovers constantly between sympathetic identification with the early stages of the journey towards civilisation and appalled horror at the irrational beliefs, and even more irrational actions, of primitive humanity. [1]

Frazer’s work established the context in which modernist – and indeed postmodernist – thought conceived of Western history not as the paradigm of humanity’s development towards perfection, but as the elaboration of a vast mistake about the nature of reality. When Heidegger or Derrida argue that Western culture is based on a philosophical mistake about the nature of language they follow in the footsteps of Frazer, who sees in magical and then in religious forms of human culture the misapplication of the logic of causation which modern science has only partially, and perhaps ineffectually, redeemed. For Frazer, the world we inhabit is powerfully and disturbingly illusory, and no more illusory than when we are sure we have escaped from previous illusions. As he puts at the opening of his Gifford Lectures on The Worship of Nature (included in this edition):

… every one of us is perpetually, every hour of the day, implicitly constructing a purely imaginary world behind the immediate sensations of light and colour, of touch, of sound, and of scent which are all that we truly apprehend; and oddly enough it is this visionary world, the creation of thought, which we dub the real world in contradistinction to the fleeting data of sense. Thus viewed, the mind of man may be likened to a wizard who, by the help of spirits or the waving of his magic wand, summons up scenes of enchantment which, deceived by the very perfection of his art, he mistakes for realities. [1]

Trapped in its own imaginings, the tale of humanity is a tale in which no absurdity, no grotesquerie, no horror, has not been believed as true somewhere in the world. As The Golden Bough expanded, from two volumes in the first edition in 1890 (reprinted here) to twelve volumes in the third edition of 1915, the enormous weight of evidence of the delusory powers of the imagination – and of humanity’s capacity to commit itself to them – expanded into a vast ocean of irrationalism upon which the ship of reason voyaged almost without compass. In Afterword, a final supplementary compilation, published in 1936, of yet more evidence about the pervasive power of the imagination to delude the human mind, Frazer declared that he was ‘led on, step by step, into surveying, as from some specular height, some Pisgah of the mind, a great part of the human race; I was beguiled, as by some subtle enchanter, into inditing what I cannot but regard as a dark, a tragic chronicle of human error and folly, of fruitless endeavour, wasted time, and blighted hopes.’ The effort rationally to annotate all the irrationalisms of human history was itself, one might say, a ‘tragic chronicle’ of ‘fruitless endeavour, wasted time’, however much Frazer himself might have hoped that his researches would ‘serve as a warning, as a sort of Ariadne’s thread, to help the forlorn wayfarer to shun some of the snares and pitfalls into which his fellows have fallen before him in the labyrinth of life’. [1] That the myth of the labyrinth becomes an explanation of the labyrinthine myths in which Frazer found himself enmeshed reveals the fundamental duality that made The Golden Bough so powerful: it sceptically unveiled the dubious foundations of myths, legends and rituals to discover that it was only by means of the myths themselves that their falsehood could be comprehended. The book that set out to reveal the delusions of myth ended up by providing Western culture with a new series of myths by which it could seek to comprehend the contradictions of its own cultural history. It was to be a vicious circle repeated regularly in Western philosophy from Husserl to Foucault, and as such represented one of the founding statements of the problems with which modern thought has struggled since the 1890s.

The twentieth-century implications of Frazer’s work in an international environment were, however, no more remarkable than its nineteenth-century origins in Scottish and British thought. Frazer’s work was built on the insights of three of the most remarkable figures of the latter part of the nineteenth century and on some of the most significant contributions of Scottish intellectuals to the modern world. The first was John Ferguson M’Lennan (1827–81), an Edinburgh advocate with an interest in ancient history and culture who, in contributions to the Chambers Ency clopaedia, made the radical suggestion that ancient civilisation was structured on matriarchal rather than on patriarchal foundations. The particular form of this matriarchy required the acquisition of the bride from an alien tribe, because marriage within the tribe was forbidden. Exogamous marriage (the term is M’Lennan’s invention) required that the bride had to be extracted from her own tribe or social group, if necessary by force, and installed at the centre of her new family structure. Descent, with all its legal implications, then passed through the matrilineal line, and polyandry (one wife, many husbands) was the likely accompaniment of these arrangements. Such a view, of course, was entirely at odds not only with the contemporary expectations of Victorian society, but with its assumptions about the nature of the development of civilisation, and M’Lennan’s challenge to both was to be the beginning of a long line of anthropological studies focused on the implications of the fact that in primitive societies children were assumed to be the offspring of the mother alone. In developing these theories, M’Lennan provided later anthropologists with one of the key terms – totemism – which Frazer himself would later develop in his articles for the Encyclopedia Britannica (included in this edition) and which would define much of the development of social anthropology in the period up to the First World War. The significance of M’Lennan’s speculations, first published in Chambers Encyclopaedia in 1868 and developed in The Fortnightly Review in 1869, [1] is attested by the fact that the terms came to be the title of one of Freud’s major publications, Totem und Tabu, published in 1913, though Freud himself was to take the terms not from M’Lennan but from Frazer.

M’Lennan’s theories were to reach the young J. G. Frazer through one of the most remarkable figures in the intellectual landscape of nineteenth-century Scotland, William Robertson Smith. A precocious linguist – he learned Hebrew from the age of five under the tutelage of his father, a Free Church minister in Aberdeenshire – Smith was, even in his twenties, a leading conduit between Scottish theology and developments in France, Germany and Holland. His introduction of a challenging new perspective in Scottish theology was marked by a series of lectures delivered in 1875 in which he argued against understanding the Bible primarily ‘from the supernatural point of view’, because

… the evolution of God’s dealings with man cannot be understood, except by looking at the human side of the process. The only idea of moral and spiritual evolution possible to us, is that of evolution in accordance with psychological laws. The nexus sought must always be psychological. The teleology of revelation is divine; but the pragmatism of the revealing history must be human.

The challenge which faced contemporary biblical scholars was, for Smith, the effort to ‘trace the process of the Old Testament religion completely from the side of psychology and human history’, so that,

the divine elements in the process will take their proper place of themselves, unless with arbitrary rationalism we forcibly thrust them aside. For it is the postulate of all moral religion, that God communicates himself to man in such a way that his revelation is interwoven with history, without violence or breach of psychological laws. [1]

This was too radical for the Free Church which sponsored his professorship, and Smith was forced to resign after one of the most famous confrontations in Scottish academic history. [2] That resignation, however, led to his becoming an editor of the ninth edition of The Encyclopedia Britannica (1871–88), one of the most outstanding products of Scottish publishing in the nineteenth century and the first encyclopedia to attempt an overview of the consequences of evolutionary theory for the totality of human knowledge. By the time of its completion, Smith had become a fellow of Christ’s College Cambridge where he would encounter the young J. G. Frazer, also recently promoted to a fellowship after a brilliant undergraduate career in Classics at both Glasgow and Cambridge. It is on Smith’s combination of textual, psychological and anthropological studies that the method of The Golden Bough was to be based, and it was Smith who spurred Frazer to the exploration of the primitive mind by inviting him to substantiate M’Lennan’s insights in the entry on ‘Totemism’ for the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The third major influence on Frazer’s development was another Cambridge contact, James Ward. Ward was a self- educated Englishman of Calvinist background who managed to take a degree at Cambridge when he was in his thirties. Another of Smith’s protegés, Ward’s contribution to the Britannica was an article on psychology so famous in its day that Ward received honorary degrees on the basis of it. It is still cited as the beginning of the modern discipline of psychology in Britain and Ward’s profound understanding of the history of epistemology provided Frazer with a context for conceptualising the workings of the human mind at the point when, historically, it was just beginning to emerge into the framework that we define as ‘culture’. Indeed, it was Ward – probably on a walking tour that they did together in Spain in 1883 – who first introduced Frazer to the study of the primitive mind by suggesting he read Ε. Β. Tylor’s Primitive Culture. [1]

Frazer’s lifelong study of the ways in which primitive cultures conceived the world can be seen as the effort to answer the questions that these three original thinkers had posed. M’Lennan, as Frazer himself phrased it in his introduction to his four-volume study of Totemism and Exogamy in 1910, ‘put the right questions’ [1] in attempting to understand the relation between exogamy and totemism; Robertson Smith – whom Frazer describes in the same preface as ‘his revered friend’ – provided a historical and comparative methodology in the study of the ancient sources of religion, and Ward provided a model of the development of the mind which could underpin Frazer’s historical assumptions about the nature of humanity’s social evolution. Ward attempted to combine the British tradition of associationist psychology stemming from Hume with the neo-Kantianism and Hegelianism that had been introduced into British thought in the nineteenth century largely by Scottish thinkers and philosophers from Carlyle and Hamilton to Caird and Hutchison Stirling. The conception of the mind offered by the associationists – in which all knowledge derives from the senses – was historicised to produce a conception of humanity as a whole as being like the individual mind as presented by the associationists. Thus, all knowledge originally derives from the senses and the associations that the mind forms from its original sensations; over time, however, these become acculturated and passed on from generation to generation in such as way that they are, for the modern individual, as unavoidable as Kantian categories, forming the conceptual framework within which we necessarily see the world. As Ward puts it in his article in the Encyclopedia Britannica,

What was experienced in the past has become instinct in the present. The descendant has not consciousness of his ancestors’ failures when performing by ‘an untaught ability’ what they slowly and painfully found out. But if we are to attempt to follow the genesis of mind from its earliest dawn it is the primary experience rather than the eventual instinct that we have first of all to keep in view. To this end, then, it is proposed to assume that we are dealing with one individual which continuously advanced from the beginning of psychical life, and not with a series of individuals of which all save the first have inherited certain capacities from its progenitors. The life-history of such an imaginary individual, that is to say, would correspond with … all that could be called evolution or development, in a certain typical series of individuals each of whom advanced a certain stage in mental differentiation. [1]

For Frazer, too, the study of the primitive mind was the study of those acquired categories by which, generation upon generation, the world comes to be understood. Underlying his analysis was the assumption, shared with his great predecessors of the Scottish Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, that human history passed through fixed stages, and that ‘all the civilised races of mankind have at some time passed through the stage of savagery’, [2] so that the Australian aborigines represent not a special group of people in a particular place but people who ‘at the end of the nineteenth century, still think the thoughts and retain the habits of primeval man’ and from whom we can acquire an understanding of the ‘seeds of most of the institutions on which we pride ourselves’. [3] The ‘conjectural history’ of the eighteenth century thus becomes the conjectural anthropology of the nineteenth; where Hume or Adam Smith sought to understand the processes of history, Frazer uses the same techniques to try to understand what preceded the beginnings of history as we know it.

In analysing the workings of the primitive mind, however, Frazer relied, as Ward suggested, on the basic elements of psychical experience, which both understood as the processes of association as defined by Hume. For Frazer, as for Hume, it is ‘regularity in the succession of phenomena’ alone which ‘breeds in our mind the conception of a cause’ and, ‘in the last analysis cause is simply invariable sequence’. [1] In the early stages of human experience, however, it is impossible to know what constitutes ‘invariable sequence’ and Frazer attributes all of the power of magic and all of the mythic structures that go with it to the misapplication of Hume’s principles of association: the associations based on ‘resemblance’ and ‘contiguity’ are taken, in the primitive mind, to be the same as those of causation, and thus there arises the belief in ‘homeopathic magic’ – in which things affect each other because they are similar – and in ‘contagious magic’ – in which things transfer qualities as a result of contact. The history of humanity, in other words, is the history of a vast and often terrifying organisation of mistaken conceptions about the nature of causation: in Psyche’s Task, published in 1910, Frazer tried to show how the mistaken causalities of savagery might have assisted ‘at certain stages of evolution’ the development of ‘some social institutions which we all, or most of us, believe to be beneficial’ despite the fact that they ‘have partially rested on a basis of superstition’. [2] Significantly, it is a very short book, only eighty-one pages, compared with the six thousand pages into which The Golden Bough had grown by its third edition, published between 1911 and 1915, or the four volumes of Totemism and Exogamy, published in 1910. However hard he might occasionally have tried to conceive of the material he was analysing as beneficial to humanity, he saw in it primarily ‘an unmitigated evil, false in itself and pernicious in its consequences’ which ‘has sacrificed countless lives, wasted untold treasures, embroiled nations, severed friends, parted husbands and wives, parents and children, putting swords, and worse than swords between them’. [3] As much as his great predecessor, Hume, on whose psychology he relied, Frazer was appalled by the superstition he spent his life charting, because, ‘not content with persecuting the living it has pursued the dead into the grave and beyond it, gloating over the horrors which its foul imagination has conjured up to appal and torture the survivors.’ [1]

Frazer’s ever-expanding task of both recounting and accounting for the structures of superstition in magic and religion, was undertaken with the purpose of exposing it to the strictures of reason – not for nothing has Alasdair MacIntyre described those associated with the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica as a ‘second Scottish enlightenment’. But just as in the first Scottish enlightenment, the effort to apply reason to the workings of the human mind revealed just how much of its workings were, in fact, irrational, so too in the second. Frazer found in primitive magic a mistaken application of the same logic that actually underlies modern science so that magic, like science, assumes ‘a certain established order of nature on which [man] can surely count, and which he can manipulate to his own ends’. [2] The failure of nature to conform to the magical account of it, however, leads not to the evolution of science but to its replacement with the even more deceptive structures of religion: ‘When he discovers his mistake, when he recognises sadly that both the order of nature which he had assumed and the control which he had believed himself to exercise over it were purely imaginary’, man ‘throws himself humbly on the mercy of certain great invisible beings behind the veil of nature, to whom he now ascribes all those far-reaching powers which he once arrogated to himself’. [3] Science is, as it were, the recovery of the power of magic but a recovery based on ‘real’ rather than imaginary causation; or, as Frazer sceptically predicts at the conclusion of the 1922 edition of The Golden Bough, science itself may be discovered to be simply another error, and an error which may be of benefit to us since the world that science offers us is a bleak and painful one compared to the riches of the magical world:

The dreams of magic may one day be the waking realities of science. But a dark shadow lies athwart the far end of this fair prospect. For however vast the increase in knowledge and of power which the future may have in store for man, he can scarcely hope to stay the sweep of those great forces which seem to be making silently but relentlessly for the destruction of all this starry universe in which our earth swims as a speck or mote … Yet the philosopher who trembles at the idea of such distant catastrophes may console himself by reflecting that these gloomy apprehensions, like the earth and sun themselves, are only parts of that unsubstantial world which thought has conjured up out of the void, and that the phantoms which the subtle enchantress has evoked today she may ban tomorrow. They too, like so much that to common eyes seems solid, may melt into air, into thin air. [1]

The vast design of The Golden Bough itself may be, for Frazer, no more than the phantom outcome of the power of that subtle enchantress, the imagination.

In this Frazer was, perhaps, accurately predicting the fate of his own work, for it is precisely for its imaginative rather than its scientific value that The Golden Bough has survived: Frazer’s theories of totemism, his conceptions of magic, his explanations of primitive ritual have largely been superseded – indeed, Frazer changed his mind about them several times between the original publication of The Gold en Bough in 1890 and the Afterword published in 1936. What remains is the powerful evocation of that ‘tragic chronicle of human error and folly’ [2] presented in a stately, elegant prose which holds at an ironic distance all the terrible material with which it has to engage. The opening of The Golden Bough – and many readers may not have progressed much past the opening – was constructed not as the prologue to an intellectual analysis of ancient myth but as a dramatic encounter between modern art and the ancient past:

Who does not know Turner’s picture of the Golden Bough? The scene, suffused with the golden glow of imagination in which the divine mind of Turner steeped and transfigured even the fairest natural landscape, is a dream-like vision of the little woodland lake of Nemi – ‘Diana’s Mirror’, as it was called by the ancients. [1]

This transfigured landscape, however, is, like civilisation itself in Frazer’s conception, haunted by an apparently inexplicable past:

In antiquity this sylvan landscape was the scene of a strange and recurring tragedy … In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. [2]

The dramatic opening of The Golden Bough reveals its real credentials – it is a worldwide murder mystery, an enormous investigation aimed at explaining this apparently inexplicable ritual and so revealing the fundamental order of humanity’s progress towards civilisation, in which will be unveiled the ‘essential similarity with which, under many superficial differences, the human mind has elaborated its first crude philosophy of life’. [3] At the heart of the mystery is the combination of political and spiritual leadership in primitive kingship, a combination that requires the king to be the conduit between the supernatural and the natural worlds. When his powers fail, however, either because he is being asked to achieve supernatural ends which are impossible, or because of the decline of his natural powers, such kings have to be ritually sacrificed in order that the connection between the natural and the supernatural can be re-established. That the central events of the Christian story represent a late and spiritualised repetition of these primitive ritual sacrifices was a topic on which Frazer remained delicately unassertive. His own family were members of the Free Church and a grand-uncle, Ninian Bannatyne, was among the most prominent of those who had left the established Kirk in 1843 for an uncertain but righteous future. It is part of the delicacy of Frazer’s irony that The Golden Bough could be taken by many as a justification of religion: my own copy of the 1922 edition is inscribed as ‘Presented to Mr Harold E. Berry by the Officers and Teachers of the Oaklands Congregational Sunday School as a small mark of appreciation of his services as a teacher.’ Though Robertson Smith had hoped to prove that religion was an essential and beneficial part of the evolution of humanity, for Frazer himself the fruit of that bough was the bitter awareness of the inevitable falsities upon which religion was based. While claiming that the process by which the multitudinous gods of animism were turned into the single God of the Judaeo–Christian religion is like the process of simplification by which science develops, Frazer’s irony underscores the extent to which, in religion, this represents a desperate attempt to sustain a role for the supernatural in an increasingly naturalistic universe: ‘But as time went on, and the uniformity of nature and the immutability of natural law were recognized and firmly established by every advance of science, it was found necessary, or advisable, to relieve the deity of his multifarious duties as the immediate agent of every event in the natural world, and to promote him, if I may say so, to a higher sphere in the supernatural world, as the architect or creator of the universe’. [1] The parentheses – ‘or advisable’, ‘if I may say so’ – turn the development of religion from a God-centred to a human-centred project, but without committing Frazer to publicly or specifically challenging its reality.

Nonetheless, for Frazer, the religion in which he was brought up remained in some sense the justification of his enterprise, even if the enterprise could not avoid reducing the justification of religion, and to the end he recorded how ‘the sound of Sabbath bells, even in a foreign land still touches a deep chord in my heart’; [2] and it is those bells which peal over the final paragraphs of The Golden Bough: ‘Nemi’s woods are still green, and as the sunset fades above them in the west, there comes to us, borne on the well of the wind, the sound of the church bells of Aricia ringing the Angelus. Ave Maria! Sweet and solemn they chime out from the distant town and die lingeringly away across the wide Campagnan marches. Le rot est mort, vive le roi! Ave Maria!’. [3] The dead kings of past religions and magical rites live on, lingeringly, in Frazer’s regal prose.

Frazer himself lived in Cambridge from 1874 till his death in 1941, but the project of The Golden Bough, like Frazer’s own imagination, was rooted in the Scotland whose religious controversies of the 1840s put belief in religion to tests both practical – in the establishment of the Free Church – and intellectual, in attempting to harmonise biblical Christianity with evolutionary conceptions of human history. The methods of Frazer’s analysis, the psychology which it assumed, and the conception of history which it developed, were all rooted in the previous hundred years of Scottish intellectual life. In particular it was rooted in the intellectual environment of Glasgow University in the 1860s and 70s, where that Scottish tradition was being defended by John Veitch (who believed that ‘we must have Psychology – that is the study of consciousness in its widest sphere – before we can have Metaphysics’) [1] and being transformed by Edward Caird, the leading Kantian among British philosophers. [2] Frazer’s combination of classical culture – he attributed his enthusiasm for the classics to George Gilbert Ramsay, Professor of Humanity at Glasgow – with sufficient philosophical and psychological learning to allow him to seek the most general explanations of the phenomena he was studying is another testimony to the powerful influence of the Scottish ‘generalist’ tradition in education in the nineteenth century.

In this edition of Frazer’s writings, I have included the first edition rather than the final edition of The Golden Bough. The latter, in its 1922 abridged edition, is widely available and, indeed, is available on the Internet in electronic form. The first edition, however, is the one which made Frazer famous and in its brimming enthusiasm for the new discoveries that Frazer believed himself to be making was the one which had a major impact on the generation of writers coming to maturity in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth. I doubt if many ploughed through the twelve-volume edition when it started to appear in 1911, though they may, like T. S. Eliot, have consulted particular sections. To set that startling first edition in context, however, I have included Frazer’s two extended essays in anthropological analysis which framed the writing of The Golden Bough itself, his essay on ‘Totemism’, published in 1887, and which was an extended version of his Encyclopedia Britannica contribution, and ‘The Origin of Totemism’, which appeared in the Fortnightly Review in 1899. (Both were included in the four-volume Totemism and Exogamy in 1910.) Also included is Frazer’s inaugural lecture at the University of Liverpool, ‘The Scope of Anthropology’, which gives an overview of his understanding of the development of social anthropology, and the first of the Gifford lectures which he delivered in the University of Edinburgh in 1924 and 1925, and which were published as The Worship of Nature in 1926. This introductory lecture provides Frazer’s most mature account of the theories that underlie his conceptions of magic and religion. Frazer’s career was one of enormous and dedicated effort to ascertain the truth of the human past. What he produced contributed significantly to the development of the discipline of social anthropology but it is perhaps the mark of his real achievement that his work, however outdated as anthropology, remains one of the great pieces of writing in nineteenth-century prose.

CAIRNS CRAIG
2004

1 . See John B. Vickery, The Literary Impact of The Golden Bough (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973) for the most extensive account of the influence of Frazer’s work; for Wittgenstein’s interest, see p. 101.

1 . Ibid. p. 74ff.

2 . Athenaeum, 17th October, 1919, 1036, ‘War Paint and Feathers’.

3 . The Golden Bough, 1922 one-volume edition (London: Macmillan, 1922), 55–56.

1 . T. S. Eliot, review of James Joyce’s Ulysses, ‘Ulysses Order and Myth’, The Dial (1922), 480–3.

2 . T. S. Eliot, ‘The Waste Land’, Collected Poems 1909–1962 (London: Faber, 1963), 80.

3 . See Vickery, The Literary Impact of The Golden Bough for a discussion of Yeats’s use of this particular aspect of Frazer’s account.

4 . Graves attacks Frazer for ‘Carefully and methodically sailing all round this dangerous subject’ because ‘what he was saying-not-saying was that Christian legend, dogma and ritual are the refinement of a great body of primitive and even barbarous beliefs’ (The White Goddess; London: Faber and Faber, 1961, 242); The White Goddess states what, in Graves’s view, Frazer had declined to state about the consequences of the materials he had discovered.

1 . Allan Massie, The Sins of the Father (London: Sceptre, 1991), 90.

1 . See Robert Fraser, ‘Hume, Sir James Frazer, Irony and Belief’, Edinburgh Review, 110, Scotland 1802–2002: figures, ideas, formations, 53–54, for an account of Frazer’s ironic presentation of the cruel outcomes of primitive beliefs.

1 . J. G. Frazer, The Worship of Nature (London: Macmillan and Co., 1926), 2.

1 . J. G. Frazer, Aftermath (London: Macmillan, 1936), vi.

1 . ‘Totem’, Chambers Encyclopaedia, 1st edn, Vol. 10 (Supplement), 753–54; ‘The Worship of animals and plants’, which appeared in three parts in The Fortnightly Review 6, October 407–27; November 562–82 and The Fortnightly Review 7, February 194–216.

1 . William Robertson Smith, ‘The Progress of Old Testament Studies’, British and Foreign Evangelical Review 25 (July), 486.

2 . See T. O. Beidelman, W. Robertson Smith and the Sociological Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 18ff; for an account of the original events, see James Innes, The Commission of Assembly; and Professor Smith’s reply to the Committee’s report (Edinburgh: John Mclaren, 1881).

1 . Ε. Β. Tylor, Primitive Culture (London, 1871).
1 . Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, Vol. 1 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1910), vii. See appendixes one and two of this edition. For an account of the development of M’Lennan’s ideas and their influence on Robertson Smith, see Peter Rivière, William Robertson Smith and John Ferguson McLennan: the Aberdeen Roots of British Social Anthropology’, in William Johnstone (ed.), William Robertson Smith: Essays in Reassessment (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995).

1 . James Ward, ‘Psychology’, Encyclopedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, Vol. XX (Edinburgh, 1886), 44–45.

2 . Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, ‘The Origin of Totemism’, 1899 (London: Macmillan, 191 o), 94.

3 . Ibid., 94–95.

1 . Frazer, The Worship of Nature, 2.

2 . Frazer, Psyche’s Task (London: Macmillan, 1910), 1.

3 . Ibid.

1 . Ibid.

2 . Frazer, The Golden Bough,1922 edition, 711.

3 . Ibid.

1 . Ibid. 713.

2 . Aftermath, vi.

1 . Golden Bough (London: Macmillan, 1890), 1.

2 . Ibid., 2.

3 . Ibid.

1 . Frazer, The Worship of Nature, 10.

2 . ‘Memories of my parents’, in Creation and Evolution in Primitive Cosmologies and Other Pieces (London: Macmillan, 1935).

3 . The Golden Bough, 1922 edition, 714.

1 . Quoted Robert Fraser, The Making of The Golden Bough: the Origins and Growth of an Argument (London: Macmillan, 1990), 14.

2 . See Henry Jones and J. H. Muirhead, The Life and Philosophy of Edward Caird LL.D., D.C.L. (Glasgow: Maclehose, Jackson, 1921) for the most detailed account of Caird’s influence.

Preface

FOR some time I have been preparing a general work on primitive superstition and religion. Among the problems which had attracted my attention was the hitherto unexplained rule of the Arician priesthood; and last spring it happened that in the course of my reading I came across some facts which, combined with others I had noted before, suggested an explanation of the rule in question. As the explanation, if correct, promised to throw light on some obscure features of primitive religion, I resolved to develop it fully, and, detaching it from my general work, to issue it as a separate study. This book is the result.

Now that the theory, which necessarily presented itself to me at first in outline, has been worked out in detail, I cannot but feel that in some places I may have pushed it too far. If this should prove to have been the case, I will readily acknowledge and retract my error as soon as it is brought home to me. Meantime my essay may serve its purpose as a first attempt to solve a difficult problem, and to bring a variety of scattered facts into some sort of order and system.

A justification is perhaps needed of the length at which I have dwelt upon the popular festivals observed by European peasants in spring, at midsummer, and at harvest. It can hardly be too often repeated, since it is not yet generally recognised, that in spite of their fragmentary character the popular superstitions and customs of the peasantry are by far the fullest and most trustworthy evidence we possess as to the primitive religion of the Aryans. Indeed the primitive Aryan, in all that regards his mental fibre and texture, is not extinct. He is amongst us to this day. The great intellectual and moral forces which have revolutionised the educated world have scarcely affected the peasant. In his inmost beliefs he is what his forefathers were in the days when forest trees still grew and squirrels played on the ground where Rome and London now stand.

Hence every inquiry into the primitive religion of the Aryans should either start from the superstitious beliefs and observances of the peasantry, or should at least be constantly checked and controlled by reference to them. Compared with the evidence afforded by living tradition, the testimony of ancient books on the subject of early religion is worth very little. For literature accelerates the advance of thought at a rate which leaves the slow progress of opinion by word of mouth at an immeasurable distance behind. Two or three generations of literature may do more to change thought than two or three thousand years of traditional life. But the mass of the people who do not read books remain unaffected by the mental revolution wrought by literature; and so it has come about that in Europe at the present day the superstitious beliefs and practices which have been handed down by word of mouth are generally of a far more archaic type than the religion depicted in the most ancient literature of the Aryan race.

It is on these grounds that, in discussing the meaning and origin of an ancient Italian priesthood, I have devoted so much attention to the popular customs and superstitions of modern Europe. In this part of my subject I have made great use of the works of the late W. Mannhardt, without which, indeed, my book could scarcely have been written. Fully recognising the truth of the principles which I have imperfectly stated, Mannhardt set himself systematically to collect, compare, and explain the living superstitions of the peasantry. Of this wide field the special department which he marked out for himself was the religion of the woodman and the farmer, in other words, the superstitious beliefs and rites connected with trees and cultivated plants. By oral inquiry, and by printed questions scattered broadcast over Europe, as well as by ransacking the literature of folklore, he collected a mass of evidence, part of which he published in a series of admirable works. But his health, always feeble, broke down before he could complete the comprehensive and really vast scheme which he had planned, and at his too early death much of his precious materials remained unpublished. His manuscripts are now deposited in the University Library at Berlin, and in the interest of the study to which he devoted his life it is greatly to be desired that they should be examined, and that such portions of them as he has not utilised in his books should be given to the world.

Of his published works the most important are, first two tracts, Roggenwolf und Roggenhund, Danzig, 1863 (second edition, Danzig, 1866, and Die Korndämonen. Berlin, 1868. These little works were put forward by him tentatively, in the hope of exciting interest in his inquiries and thereby securing the help of others in pursuing them. But, except from a few learned societies, they met with very little attention. Undeterred by the cold reception accorded to his efforts he worked steadily on, and in 1875 published his chief work, Der Baumkultus der Germanen und ihrer Nachbarstämme. This was followed in 1877 by Antike Wald-und Feldkulte. His Mythologische Forschungen, a posthumous work, appeared in 1884.[1]

Much as I owe to Mannhardt, I owe still more to my friend Professor W. Robertson Smith. My interest in the early history of society was first excited by the works of Dr Ε. B. Tylor, which opened up a mental vista undreamed of by me before. But it is a long step from a lively interest in a subject to a systematic study of it: and that I took this step is due to the influence of my friend W. Robertson Smith. The debt which I owe to the vast stores of his knowledge, the abundance and fertility of his ideas, and his unwearied kindness, can scarcely be overestimated. Those who know his writings may form some, though a very inadequate, conception of the extent to which I have been influenced by him. The views of sacrifice set forth in his article ‘Sacrifice’ in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and further developed in his recent work, The Religion of the Semites, mark a new departure in the historical study of religion, and ample traces of them will be found in this book. Indeed the central idea of my essay – the conception of the slain god – is derived directly, I believe, from my friend. But it is due to him to add that he is in no way responsible for the general explanation which I have offered of the custom of slaying the god. He has read the greater part of the proofs in circumstances which enhanced the kindness, and has made many valuable suggestions which I have usually adopted; but except where he is cited by name, or where the views expressed coincide with those of his published works, he is not to be regarded as necessarily assenting to any of the theories propounded in this book.

The works of Professor G. A. Wilken of Leyden have been of great service in directing me to the best original authorities on the Dutch East Indies, a very important field to the ethnologist. To the courtesy of the Rev Walter Gregor, MA, of Pitsligo, I am indebted for some interesting communications which will be found acknowledged in their proper places. Mr Francis Darwin has kindly allowed me to consult him on some botanical questions. The manuscript authorities to which I occasionally refer are answers to a list of ethnological questions which I am circulating. Most of them will, I hope, be published in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute.

J. G. FRAZER
TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,
8th March 1890

1. For the sake of brevity I have sometimes, in the notes, referred to Mannhardt’s works respectively as Roggenwolf (the references are to the pages of the first edition), Korndämonen, Β. Κ., Α. W. F., and Μ. F.

CHAPTER ONE

The King of the Wood

‘The still glassy lake that sleeps

Beneath Aricia’s trees –

Those trees in whose dim shadow

The ghastly priest doth reign,

The priest who slew the slayer,

And shall himself be slain.’

– MACAULAY

The Arician Grove

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

In antiquity this sylvan landscape was the scene of a strange and recurring tragedy. On the northern shore of the lake, right under the precipitous cliffs on which the modern village of Nemi is perched, stood the sacred grove and sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, or Diana of the Wood.[1] The lake and the grove were sometimes known as the lake and grove of Aricia. [1] But the town of Aricia (the modern La Riccia) was situated about three miles off, at the foot of the Alban Mount, and separated by a steep descent from the lake, which lies in a small crater-like hollow on the mountain side. In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day and probably far into the night a strange figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy.[2] He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him he held office till he was himself slain by a stronger or a craftier.

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

I begin by setting forth the few facts and legends which have come down to us on the subject. According to one story the worship of Diana at Nemi was instituted by Orestes, who, after killing Thoas, King of the Tauric Chersonese (the Crimea), fled with his sister to Italy, bringing with him the image of the Tauric Diana. The bloody ritual which legend ascribed to that goddess is familiar to classical readers; it is said that every stranger who landed on the shore was sacrificed on her altar. But transported to Italy, the rite assumed a milder form. Within the sanctuary at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no branch might be broken. Only a runaway slave was allowed to break off, if he could, one of its boughs. Success in the attempt entitled him to fight the priest in single combat, and if he slew him he reigned in his stead with the title of King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis). Tradition averred that the fateful branch was that Golden Bough which, at the Sibyl’s bidding, Aeneas plucked before he essayed the perilous journey to the world of the dead. The flight of the slave represented, it was said, the flight of Orestes; his combat with the priest was a reminiscence of the human sacrifices once offered to the Tauric Diana. This rule of succession by the sword was observed down to imperial times; for amongst his other freaks Caligula, thinking that the priest of Nemi had held office too long, hired a more stalwart ruffian to slay him. [1]

Of the worship of Diana at Nemi two leading features can still be made out. First, from the votive-offerings found in modern times on the site, it appears that she was especially worshipped by women desirous of children or of an easy delivery.[2] Second, fire seems to have played a foremost part in her ritual. For during her annual festival, celebrated at the hottest time of the year, her grove was lit up by a multitude of torches, whose ruddy glare was reflected by the waters of the lake; and throughout the length and breadth of Italy the day was kept with holy rites at every domestic hearth. [3] Moreover, women whose prayers had been heard by the goddess brought lighted torches to the grove in fulfilment of their vows.[4] Lastly, the title of Vesta borne by the Arician Diana[5] points almost certainly to the maintenance of a perpetual holy fire in her sanctuary.

At her annual festival all young people went through a purificatory ceremony in her honour; dogs were crowned; and the feast consisted of a young kid, wine, and cakes, served up piping hot on platters of leaves.[1]

But Diana did not reign alone in her grove at Nemi. Two lesser divinities shared her forest sanctuary. One was Egeria, the nymph of the clear water which, bubbling from the basaltic rocks, used to fall in graceful cascades into the lake at the place called Le Mole.[2] According to one story the grove was first consecrated to Diana by a Manius Egerius, who was the ancestor of a long and distinguished line. Hence the proverb ‘There are many Manii at Ariciae.’ Others explained the proverb very differently. They said it meant that there were a great many ugly and deformed people, and they referred to the word Mania which meant a bogey or bugbear to frighten children. [3]

The other of these minor deities was Virbius. Legend had it that Virbius was the youthful Greek hero Hippolytus, who had been killed by his horses on the sea shore of the Saronic Gulf. Him, to please Diana, the leech Aesculapius brought to life again by his simples. But Jupiter, indignant that a mortal man should return from the gates of death, thrust down the meddling leech himself to Hades; and Diana, for the love she bore Hippolytus, carried him away to Italy and hid him from the angry god in the dells of Nemi, where he reigned a forest king under the name of Virbius. Horses were excluded from the grove and sanctuary, because horses had killed Hippolytus. [4] Some thought that Virbius was the sun. It was unlawful to touch his image. [5] His worship was cared for by a special priest, the Flamen Virbialis. [6]

Such then are the facts and theories bequeathed to us by antiquity on the subject of the priesthood of Nemi. From materials so slight and scanty it is impossible to extract a solution of the problem. It remains to try whether the survey of a wider field may not yield us the clue we seek. The questions to be answered are two: first, why had the priest to slay his predecessor? and second, why, before he slew him, had he to pluck the Golden Bough? The rest of this book will be an attempt to answer these questions.

Primitive Man and the Supernatural

The first point on which we fasten is the priest’s title. Why was he called the King of the Wood? why was his office spoken of as a Kingdom? [1]

The union of a royal title with priestly duties was common in ancient Italy and Greece. At Rome and in other Italian cities there was a priest called the Sacrificial King or King of the Sacred Rites (Rex Sacrificulus or Rex Sacrorum), and his wife bore the title of Queen of the Sacred Rites.[2] In republican Athens the second magistrate of the state was called the King, and his wife the Queen; the functions of both were religious.[3] Many other Greek democracies had titular kings, whose duties, so far as they are known, seem to have been priestly.[4] At Rome the tradition was that the Sacrificial King had been appointed after the expulsion of the kings in order to offer the sacrifices which had been previously offered by the kings.[5] In Greece a similar view appears to have prevailed as to the origin of the priestly kings.[6] In itself the view is not improbable, and it is borne out by the example of Sparta, the only purely Greek state which retained the kingly form of government in historical times. For in Sparta all state sacrifices were offered by the kings as descendants of the god.[1] This combination of priestly functions with royal authority is familiar to every one. Asia Minor, for example, was the seat of various great religious capitals peopled by thousands of ‘sacred slaves,’ and ruled by pontiffs who wielded at once temporal and spiritual authority, like the popes of mediaeval Rome. Such priest-ridden cities were Zela and Pessinus. [2] Teutonic kings, again, in the old heathen days seem to have stood in the position, and exercised the powers of high priests. [3] The Emperors of China offer public sacrifices, the details of which are regulated by the ritual books. [4] It is needless, however, to multiply examples of what is the rule rather than the exception in the early history of the kingship.

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

This is one way in which the idea of a man-god is reached. But there is another. Side by side with the view of the world as pervaded by spiritual forces, primitive man has another conception in which we may detect a germ of the modern notion of natural law or the view of nature as a series of events occurring in an invariable order without the intervention of personal agency. The germ of which I speak is involved in that sympathetic magic, as it may be called, which plays a large part in most systems of superstition. One of the principles of sympathetic magic is that any effect may be produced by imitating it. To take a few instances. If it is wished to kill a person an image of him is made and then destroyed; and it is believed that through a certain physical sympathy between the person and his image, the man feels the injuries done to the image as if they were done to his own body, and that when it is destroyed he must simultaneously perish. Again, in Morocco a fowl or a pigeon may sometimes be seen with a little red bundle tied to its foot. The bundle contains a charm, and it is believed that as the charm is kept in constant motion by the bird a corresponding restlessness is kept up in the mind of him or her against whom the charm is directed.[1] In Nias when a wild pig has fallen into the pit prepared for it, it is taken out and its back is rubbed with nine fallen leaves, in the belief that this will make nine more wild pigs fall into the pit just as the nine leaves fell from the tree.[2] When a Cambodian hunter has set his nets and taken nothing, he strips himself naked, goes some way off, then strolls up to the net as if he did not see it, lets himself be caught in it and cries, ‘Hillo! what’s this? I’m afraid I’m caught.’ After that the net is sure to catch game.[1] In Thüringen the man who sows flax carries the seed in a long bag which reaches from his shoulders to his knees, and he walks with long strides, so that the bag sways to and fro on his back. It is believed that this will cause the flax crop to wave in the wind.[2] In the interior of Sumatra the rice is sown by women who, in sowing, let their hair hang loose down their back, in order that the rice may grow luxuriantly and have long stalks.[3] Again, magic sympathy is supposed to exist between a man and any severed portion of his person, as his hair or nails; so that whoever gets possession of hair or nails may work his will, at any distance, upon the person from whom they were cut. This superstition is worldwide. Further, the sympathy in question exists between friends and relations, especially at critical times. Hence, for example, the elaborate code of rules which regulates the conduct of persons left at home while a party of their friends is out fishing or hunting or on the war-path. It is thought that if the persons left at home broke these rules their absent friends would suffer an injury, corresponding in its nature to the breach of the rule. Thus when a Dyak is out head-hunting, his wife or, if he is unmarried, his sister, must wear a sword day and night in order that he may always be thinking of his weapons; and she may not sleep during the day nor go to bed before two in the morning, lest her husband or brother should thereby be surprised in his sleep by an enemy.[4] In Laos when an elephant hunter is setting out for the chase he warns his wife not to cut her hair or oil her body in his absence; for if she cut her hair the elephant would burst the toils, if she oiled herself it would slip through them.[1]

In all these cases (and similar instances might be multiplied indefinitely) an action is performed or avoided, because its performance is believed to entail good or bad consequences of a sort resembling the act itself. (Sometimes the magic sympathy takes effect not so much through an act as through a supposed resemblance of qualities. Thus some Bechuanas wear a ferret as a charm because, being very tenacious of life, it will make them difficult to kill.[2] Others wear a certain insect, mutilated but living, for a similar purpose.[3] Other Bechuana warriors wear the hair of an ox among their own hair and the skin of a frog on their mantle, because a frog is slippery and the ox from which the hair has been taken has no horns and is therefore hard to catch; so the warrior who is provided with these charms believes that he will be as hard to hold as the ox and the frog.[4]

Thus we see that in sympathetic magic one event is supposed to be followed necessarily and invariably by another, without the intervention of any spiritual or personal agency. This is, in fact, the modern conception of physical causation; the conception, indeed, is misapplied, but it is there none the less. Here, then, we have another mode in which primitive man seeks to bend nature to his wishes. There is, perhaps, hardly a savage who does not fancy himself possessed of this power of influencing the course of nature by sympathetic magic; a man-god, on this view, is only an individual who is believed to enjoy this common power in an unusually high degree. Thus, whereas a man-god of the former or inspired type derives his divinity from a deity who has taken up his abode in a tabernacle of flesh, a man-god of the latter type draws his supernatural power from a certain physical sympathy with nature. He is not merely the receptacle of a divine spirit. His whole being, body and soul, is so delicately attuned to the harmony of the world that a touch of his hand or a turn of his head may send a thrill vibrating through the universal framework of things; and conversely his divine organism is acutely sensitive to such slight changes of environment as would leave ordinary mortals wholly unaffected. But the line between these two types of man-god, however sharply we may draw it in theory, is seldom to be traced with precision in practice, and in what follows I shall not insist on it.

To readers long familiarised with the conception of natural law, the belief of primitive man that he can rule the elements must be so foreign that it may be well to illustrate it by examples. When we have seen that in early society men who make no pretence at all of being gods do nevertheless commonly believe themselves to be invested with supernatural powers, we shall have the less difficulty in comprehending the extraordinary range of powers ascribed to individuals who are actually regarded as divine.

Of all natural phenomena there are perhaps none which civilised man feels himself more powerless to influence than the rain, the sun, and the wind. Yet all these are commonly supposed by savages to be in some degree under their control.

To begin with rain-making. In a village near Dorpat in Russia, when rain was much wanted, three men used to climb up the fir-trees of an old sacred grove. One of them drummed with a hammer on a kettle or small cask to imitate thunder; the second knocked two fire-brands together and made the sparks fly, to imitate lightning; and the third, who was called ‘the rain-maker,’ had a bunch of twigs with which he sprinkled water from a vessel on all sides. [1] This is an example of sympathetic magic; the desired event is supposed to be produced by imitating it. Rain is often thus made by imitation. In Halmahera (Gilolo), a large island to the west of New Guinea, a wizard makes rain by dipping a branch of a particular kind of tree in water and sprinkling the ground with it.[1] In Ceram it is enough to dedicate the bark of a certain tree to the spirits and lay it in water.[2] In New Britain the rain-maker wraps some leaves of a red and green striped creeper in a banana-leaf, moistens the bundle with water and buries it in the ground; then he imitates with his mouth the plashing of rain.[3] Amongst the Omaha Indians of North America, when the corn is withering for want of rain, the members of the sacred Buffalo Society fill a large vessel with water and dance four times round it. One of them drinks some of the water and spirts it into the air, making a fine spray in imitation of a mist or drizzling rain. Then he upsets the vessel, spilling the water on the ground; whereupon the dancers fall down and drink up the water, getting mud all over their faces. Lastly they spirt the water into the air, making a fine mist. This saves the corn.[4] Amongst the Australian Wotjobaluk the rain-maker dipped a bunch of his own hair in water, sucked out the water and squirted it westward, or he twirled the ball round his head making a spray like rain.[5] Squirting water from the mouth is also a West African way of making rain.[6] Another mode is to dip a particular stone in water or sprinkle water on it. In a Samoan village a certain stone was carefully housed as the representative of the rain-making god; and in time of drought his priests carried the stone in procession, and dipped it in a stream.[7] In the Ta-ta-thi tribe of New South Wales the rain-maker breaks off a piece of quartz crystal and spits it towards the sky; the rest of the crystal he wraps in emu feathers, soaks both crystal and feathers in water, and carefully hides them.[1] In the Keramin tribe of New South Wales the wizard retires to the bed of a creek, drops water on a round flat stone, then covers up and conceals it.[2] The Fountain of Baranton, of romantic fame, in the forest of Brécilien, used to be resorted to by peasants when they needed rain; they caught some of the water in a tankard and threw it on a slab near the spring.[3] When some of the Apache Indians wish for rain, they take water from a certain spring and throw it on a particular point high up on a rock; the clouds then soon gather and rain begins to fall.[4] There is a lonely tarn on Snowdon called Dulyn or the Black Lake, lying ‘in a dismal dingle surrounded by high and dangerous rocks.’ A row of stepping stones runs out into the lake; and if any one steps on the stones and throws water so as to wet the farthest stone, which is called the Red Altar, ‘it is but a chance that you do not get rain before night, even when it is hot weather.’[5] In these cases it is probable that, as in Samoa, the stone is regarded as in some sort divine. This appears from the custom sometimes observed of dipping the cross in the Fountain of Baranton, to procure rain; for this is plainly a substitute for the older way of throwing the water on the stone.[6] In Mingrelia, to get rain they dip a holy image in water daily till it rains.[7] In Navarre the image of St Peter was taken to a river, where some prayed to him for rain, but others called out to duck him in the water.[8] Here the dipping in the water is used as a threat; but originally it was probably a sympathetic charm, as in the following instance. In New Caledonia the rain-makers blackened themselves all-over, dug up a dead body, took the bones to a cave, jointed them, and hung the skeleton over some taro leaves. Water was poured over the skeleton to run down on the leaves. ‘They supposed that the soul of the departed took up the water, made rain of it, and showered it down again.’[1] The same motive comes clearly out in a mode of making rain which is practised by various peoples of South Eastern Europe. In time of drought the Servians strip a girl, clothe her from head to foot in grass, herbs, and flowers, even her face being hidden with them. Thus disguised she is called the Dodola, and goes through the village with a troop of girls. They stop before every house; the Dodola dances, while the other girls form a ring round her singing one of the Dodola songs, and the housewife pours a pail of water over her.

One of the songs they sing runs thus –

‘We go through the village;

The clouds go in the sky;

We go faster,

Faster go the clouds;

They have overtaken us,

And wetted the corn and the vine.’

A similar custom is observed by the Greeks, Bulgarians, and Roumanians.[2] In such customs the leaf-dressed girl represents the spirit of vegetation, and drenching her with water is an imitation of rain. In Russia, in the Government of Kursk, when rain is much wanted, the women seize a passing stranger and throw him into the river, or souse him from head to foot.[3] Later on we shall see that a passing stranger is often, as here, taken for a god or spirit. Amongst the Minahassa of North Celebes the priest bathes as a rain-charm.[1] In the Caucasian Province of Georgia, when a drought has lasted long, marriageable girls are yoked in couples with an ox-yoke on their shoulders, a priest holds the reins, and thus harnessed they wade through rivers, puddles, and marshes, praying, screaming, weeping, and laughing.[2] In a district of Transylvania, when the ground is parched with drought, some girls strip themselves naked, and, led by an older woman, who is also naked, they steal a harrow and carry it across the field to a brook, where they set it afloat. Next they sit on the harrow and keep a tiny flame burning on each corner of it for an hour. Then they leave the harrow in the water and go home.[3] A similar rain-charm is resorted to in India; naked women drag a plough across the field by night.[4] It is not said that they plunge the plough into a stream or sprinkle it with water. But the charm would hardly be complete without it.

Sometimes the charm works through an animal. To procure rain the Peruvians used to set a black sheep in a field, poured chica over it, and gave it nothing to eat till rain fell.[5] In a district of Sumatra all the women of the village, scantily clad, go to the river, wade into it, and splash each other with the water. A black cat is thrown into the water and made to swim about for a while, then allowed to escape to the bank, pursued by the splashing of the women.[6] In these cases the colour of the animal is part of the charm; being black it will darken the sky with rain-clouds. So the Bechuanas burn the stomach of an ox at evening, because they say,’ the black smoke will gather the clouds, and cause the rain to come.’[1] The Timorese sacrifice a black pig for rain, a white or red one for sunshine.[2] The Garos offer a black goat on the top of a very high mountain in time of drought.[3]

Sometimes people try to coerce the rain-god into giving rain. In China a huge dragon made of paper or wood, representing the rain-god, is carried about in procession; but if no rain follows, it is cursed and torn in pieces.[4] In the like circumstances the Feloupes of Senegambia throw down their fetishes and drag them about the fields, cursing them till rain falls.[5] Some Indians of the Orinoco worshipped toads and kept them in vessels in order to obtain from them rain or sunshine as might be required; when their prayers were not answered they beat the toads.[6] Killing a frog is a European rain-charm.[7] When the spirits withhold rain or sunshine, the Comanches whip a slave; if the gods prove obstinate, the victim is almost flayed alive.[8] Here the human being may represent the god, like the leaf-clad Dodola. When the rice-crop is endangered by long drought, the governor of Battambang, a province of Siam, goes in great state to a certain pagoda and prays to Buddha for rain. Then accompanied by his suite and followed by an enormous crowd he adjourns to a plain behind the pagoda. Here a dummy figure has been made up, dressed in bright colours, and placed in the middle of the plain. A wild music begins to play; maddened by the din of drums and cymbals and crackers, and goaded on by their drivers, the elephants charge down on the dummy and trample it to pieces. After this, Buddha will soon give rain.[1]

Another way of constraining the rain-god is to disturb him in his haunts. This seems the reason why rain is supposed to be the consequence of troubling a sacred spring. The Dards believe that if a cowskin or anything impure is placed in certain springs, storms will follow.[2] Gervasius mentions a spring into which if a stone or a stick were thrown, rain would at once issue from it and drench the thrower.[3] There was a fountain in Munster such that if it were touched or even looked at by a human being, it would at once flood the whole province with rain.[4] Sometimes an appeal is made to the pity of the gods. When their corn is being burnt up by the sun, the Zulus look out for a ‘heaven-bird,’ kill it, and throw it into a pool. Then the heaven melts with tenderness for the death of the bird; ‘it wails for it by raining, wailing a funeral wail.’[5] In times of drought the Guanches of Teneriffe led their sheep to sacred ground, and there they separated the lambs from their dams, that their plaintive bleating might touch the heart of the god.[6] A peculiar mode of making rain was adopted by the heathen Arabs. They tied two sorts of bushes to the tails and hind-legs of their cattle, and setting fire to the bushes drove the cattle to the top of a mountain, praying for rain.[7] This may be, as Wellhausen suggests,[8] an imitation of lightning on the horizon. But it may also be a way of threatening the sky; as some West African rain-makers put a pot of inflammable materials on the fire and blow up the flames, threatening that if heaven does not soon give rain they will send up a flame which will set the sky on fire.[1] The Dieyerie of South Australia have a way of their own of making rain. A hole is dug about twelve feet long and eight or ten broad, and over this hole a hut of logs and branches is made. Two men, supposed to have received a special inspiration from Mooramoora (the Good Spirit), are bled by an old and influential man with a sharp flint inside the arm; the blood is made to flow on the other men of the tribe who sit huddled together. At the same time the two bleeding men throw handfuls of down, some of which adheres to the blood, while the rest floats in the air. The blood is thought to represent the rain, and the down the clouds. During the ceremony two large stones are placed in the middle of the hut; they stand for gathering clouds and presage rain. Then the men who were bled carry away the stones for about fifteen miles and place them as high as they can in the tallest tree. Meanwhile, the other men gather gypsum, pound it fine, and throw it into a water hole. This the Mooramoora is supposed to see, and at once he causes the clouds to appear in the sky. Lastly, the men surround the hut, butt at it with their heads, force their way in, and reappear on the other side, repeating this till the hut is wrecked. In doing this they are forbidden to use their hands or arms; but when the heavy logs alone remain, they are allowed to pull them out with their hands. ‘The piercing of the hut with their heads symbolises the piercing of the clouds; the fall of the hut, the fall of rain.’[2] Another Australian mode of rain-making is to burn human hair.[3]

Like other peoples the Greeks and Romans sought to procure rain by magic, when prayers and processions[4] had proved ineffectual. For example, in Arcadia, when the corn and trees were parched with drought, the priest of Zeus dipped an oak branch into a certain spring on Mount Lycaeus. Thus troubled, the water sent up a misty cloud, from which rain soon fell upon the land.[1] A similar mode of making rain is still practised, as we have seen, in Halmahera near New Guinea. The people of Crannon in Thessaly had a bronze chariot which they kept in a temple. When they desired a shower they shook the chariot and the shower fell.[2] Probably the rattling of the chariot was meant to imitate thunder; we have already seen that in Russia mock thunder and lightning form part of a grain-charm. The mythical Salmoneus of Thessaly made mock thunder by dragging bronze kettles behind his chariot or by driving over a bronze bridge, while he hurled blazing torches in imitation of lightning. It was his impious wish to mimic the thundering car of Zeus as it rolled across the vault of heaven.[3] Near a temple of Mars, outside the walls of Rome, there was kept a certain stone known as the lapis manalis. In time of drought the stone was dragged into Rome and this was supposed to bring down rain immediately.[4] There were Etruscan wizards who made rain or discovered springs of water, it is not certain which. They were thought to bring the rain or the water out of their bellies.[5] The legendary Telchines in Rhodes are described as magicians who could change their shape and bring clouds, rain, and snow.[6]

Again, primitive man fancies he can make the sun to shine, and can hasten or stay its going down. At an eclipse the Ojebways used to think that the sun was being extinguished. So they shot fire-tipped arrows in the air, hoping thus to rekindle his expiring light.[1] Conversely during an eclipse of the moon some Indian tribes of the Orinoco used to bury lighted brands in the ground; because, said they, if the moon were to be extinguished, all fire on earth would be extinguished with her, except such as was hidden from her sight.[2] In New Caledonia when a wizard desires to make sunshine, he takes some plants and corals to the burial-ground, and makes them into a bundle, adding two locks of hair cut from a living child (his own child if possible), also two teeth or an entire jawbone from the skeleton of an ancestor. He then climbs a high mountain whose top catches the first rays of the morning sun. Here he deposits three sorts of plants on a flat stone, places a branch of dry coral beside them, and hangs the bundle of charms over the stone. Next morning he returns to this rude altar, and at the moment when the sun rises from the sea he kindles a fire on the altar. As the smoke rises, he rubs the stone with the dry coral, invokes his ancestors and says: ‘Sun! I do this that you may be burning hot, and eat up all the clouds in the sky.’ The same ceremony is repeated at sunset.[3] When the sun rises behind clouds – a rare event in the bright sky of Southern Africa – the Sun clan of the Bechuanas say that he is grieving their heart. All work stands still, and all the food of the previous day is given to matrons or old women. They may eat it and may share it with the children they are nursing, but no one else may taste it. The people go down to the river and wash themselves all over. Each man throws into the river a stone taken from his domestic hearth, and replaces it with one picked up in the bed of the river. On their return to the village the chief kindles a fire in his hut, and all his subjects come and get a light from it. A general dance follows.[1] In these cases it seems that the lighting of the flame on earth is supposed to rekindle the solar fire. Such a belief comes naturally to people who, like the Sun clan of the Bechuanas, deem themselves the veritable kinsmen of the sun. The Melanesians make sunshine by means of a mock sun. A round stone is wound about with red braid and stuck with owl’s feathers to represent rays; it is then hung on a high tree. Or the stone is laid on the ground with white rods radiating from it to imitate sunbeams.[2] Sometimes the mode of making sunshine is the converse of that of making rain. Thus we have seen that a white or red pig is sacrificed for sunshine, as a black one is sacrificed for rain.[3] Some of the New Caledonians drench a skeleton to make rain, but burn it to make sunshine.[4]

In a pass of the Peruvian Andes stand two ruined towers on opposite hills. Iron hooks are clamped into their walls for the purpose of stretching a net from one tower to the other. The net is intended to catch the sun.[5]

On the top of a small hill in Fiji grew a patch of reeds, and travellers who feared to be belated used to tie the tops of a handful of reeds together to detain the sun from going down.[6] The intention perhaps was to entangle the sun in the reeds, just as the Peruvians try to catch him in the net. Stories of men who have caught the sun in a noose are widely spread.[7] Jerome of Prague, travelling among the heathen Lithuanians early in the fifteenth century, found a tribe who worshipped the sun and venerated a large iron hammer. The priests told him that once the sun had been invisible for several months, because a powerful king had shut it up in a strong tower; but the signs of the zodiac had broken open the tower with this very hammer and released the sun. Therefore they adored the hammer.[1] When an Australian blackfellow wishes to stay the sun from going down till he gets home, he places a sod in the fork of a tree, exactly facing the setting sun.[2] For the same purpose an Indian of Yucatan, journeying westward, places a stone in a tree or pulls out some of his eyelashes and blows them towards the sun.[3] South African natives, in travelling, will put a stone in a branch of a tree or place some grass on the path with a stone over it, believing that this will cause their friends to keep the meal waiting till their arrival.[4] In these, as in previous examples, the purpose apparently is to retard the sun. But why should the act of putting a stone or a sod in a tree be supposed to effect this? A partial explanation is suggested by another Australian custom. In their journeys the natives are accustomed to place stones in trees at different heights from the ground in order to indicate the height of the sun in the sky at the moment when they passed the particular tree. Those who follow are thus made aware of the time of day when their friends in advance passed the spot.[5] Possibly the natives, thus accustomed to mark the sun’s progress, may have slipped into the confusion of imagining that to mark the sun’s progress was to arrest it at the point marked. On the other hand, to make it go down faster, the Australians throw sand into the air and blow with their mouths towards the sun.[6]

Once more, the savage thinks he can make the wind to blow or to be still. When the day is hot and a Yakut has a long way to go, he takes a stone which he has chanced to find in an animal or fish, winds a horse-hair several times round it, and ties it to a stick. He then waves the stick about, uttering a spell. Soon a cool breeze begins to blow.[1] The Wind clan of the Omahas flap their blankets to start a breeze which will drive away the mosquitoes.[2] When a Haida Indian wishes to obtain a fair wind, he fasts, shoots a raven, singes it in the fire, and then going to the edge of the sea sweeps it over the surface of the water four times in the direction in which he wishes the wind to blow. He then throws the raven behind him, but afterwards picks it up and sets it in a sitting posture at the foot of a spruce-tree, facing towards the required wind. Propping its beak open with a stick, he requests a fair wind for a certain number of days; then going away he lies covered up in his mantle till another Indian asks him for how many days he has desired the wind, which question he answers.[3] When a sorcerer in New Britain wishes to make a wind blow in a certain direction, he throws burnt lime in the air, chanting a song all the time. Then he waves sprigs of ginger and other plants about, throws them up and catches them. Next he makes a small fire with these sprigs on the spot where the lime has fallen thickest, and walks round the fire chanting. Lastly, he takes the ashes and throws them on the water.[4] On the altar of Fladda’s chapel, in the island of Fladdahuan (one of the Hebrides), lay a round bluish stone which was always moist. Windbound fishermen walked sunwise round the chapel and then poured water on the stone, whereupon a favourable breeze was sure to spring up.[5] In Finland wizards used to sell wind to storm-staid mariners. The wind was enclosed in three knots; if they undid the first knot, a moderate wind sprang up; if the second, it blew half a gale; if the third, a hurricane.[1] The same thing is said to have been done by wizards and witches in Lappland, in the island of Lewis, and in the Isle of Man.[2] A Norwegian witch has boasted of sinking a ship by opening a bag in which she had shut up a wind.[3] Ulysses received the winds in a leather bag from Aeolus, King of the Winds.[4] So Perdoytus, the Lithuanian wind-god, keeps the winds enclosed in a leather bag; when they escape from it he pursues them, beats them, and shuts them up again.[5] The Motumotu in New Guinea think that storms are sent by an Oiabu sorcerer; for each wind he has a bamboo which he opens at pleasure.[6] But here we have passed from custom (with which alone we are at present concerned) into mythology. Shetland seamen still buy winds from old women who claim to rule the storms. There are now in Lerwick old women who live by selling wind.[7] When the Hottentots wish to make the wind drop, they take one of their fattest skins and hang it on the end of a pole, believing that by blowing the skin down the wind will lose all its force and must itself fall.[8] In some parts of Austria, during a heavy storm, it is customary to open the window and throw out a handful of meal, chaff, or feathers, saying to the wind, ‘There, that’s for you, stop!’[9] Once when north-westerly winds had kept the ice long on the coast, and food was getting scarce, the Eskimos of Alaska performed a ceremony to make a calm. A fire was kindled on the shore and the men gathered round it and chanted. An old man then stepped up to the fire and in a coaxing voice invited the demon of the wind to come under the fire and warm himself. When he was supposed to have arrived, a vessel of water, to which each man present had contributed, was thrown on the fire by an old man, and immediately a flight of arrows sped towards the spot where the fire had been. They thought that the demon would not stay where he had been so badly treated. To complete the effect, guns were discharged in various directions, and the captain of a European vessel was asked to fire on the wind with cannon.[1] When the wind blows down their huts, the Payaguas in South America snatch up fire-brands and run against the wind menacing it with the blazing brands, while others beat the air with their fists to frighten the storm.[2] When the Guaycurus are threatened by a severe storm the men go out armed, and the women and children scream their loudest to intimidate the demon.[3] During a tempest the inhabitants of a Batta village in Sumatra have been seen to rush from their houses armed with sword and lance. The Raja placed himself at their head, and with shouts and yells they hewed and hacked at the invisible foe. An old woman was observed to be especially active in defending her house, slashing the air right and left with a long sabre.[4]

In the light of these examples a story told by Herodotus, which his modern critics have treated as a fable, is perfectly credible. He says, without however vouching for the truth of the tale, that once in the land of the Psylli, the modern Tripoli, the wind blowing from the Sahara had dried up all the water-tanks. So the people took counsel and marched in a body to make war on the south wind. But when they entered the desert, the simoom swept down on them and buried them to a man.[1] The story may well have been told by one who watched them disappearing, in battle array, with drums and cymbals beating, into the red cloud of whirling sand. It is still said of the Bedouins of Eastern Africa that ‘no whirlwind ever sweeps across the path without being pursued by a dozen savages with drawn creeses, who stab into the centre of the dusty column in order to drive away the evil spirit that is believed to be riding on the blast.’[2] So in Australia the huge columns of red sand that move rapidly across a desert tract are thought by the blackfellows to be spirits passing along. Once an athletic young black ran after one of these moving columns to kill it with boomerangs. He was away two or three hours and came back very weary, saying he had killed Koochee (the demon), but that Koochee had growled at him and he must die.[3] Even where these dust columns are not attacked they are still regarded with awe. In some parts of India they are supposed to be bhuts going to bathe in the Ganges.[4] Californian Indians think that they are happy souls ascending to the heavenly land.[5]

When a gust lifts the hay in the meadow, the Breton peasant throws a knife or a fork at it to prevent the devil from carrying off the hay.[6] German peasants throw a knife or a hat at a whirlwind because there is a witch or a wizard in it.[7]

Incarnate Gods

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

The notion of a man-god or of a human being endowed with divine or supernatural powers, belongs essentially to that earlier period of religious history in which gods and men are still viewed as beings of much the same order, and before they are divided by the impassable gulf which, to later thought, opens out between them. Strange, therefore, as may seem to us the idea of a god incarnate in human form, it has nothing very startling for early man, who sees in a man-god or a god-man only a higher degree of the same supernatural powers which he arrogates in perfect good faith to himself. Such incarnate gods are common in rude society. The incarnation may be temporary or permanent. In the former case, the incarnation – commonly known as inspiration or possession – reveals itself in supernatural knowledge rather than in supernatural power. In other words, its usual manifestations are divination and prophecy rather than miracles. On the other hand, when the incarnation is not merely temporary, when the divine spirit has permanently taken up its abode in a human body, the god-man is usually expected to vindicate his character by working miracles. Only we have to remember that by men at this stage of thought miracles are not considered as breaches of natural law. Not conceiving the existence of natural law, primitive man cannot conceive a breach of it. A miracle is to him merely an unusually striking manifestation of a common power.

The belief in temporary incarnation or inspiration is worldwide. Certain persons are supposed to be possessed from time to time by a spirit or deity; while the possession lasts, their own personality lies in abeyance, the presence of the spirit is revealed by convulsive shiverings and shakings of the man’s whole body, by wild gestures and excited looks, all of which are referred, not to the man himself, but to the spirit which has entered into him; and in this abnormal state all his utterances are accepted as the voice of the god or spirit dwelling in him and speaking through him. In Mangaia the priests in whom the gods took up their abode from time to time were called ‘god-boxes’ or, for shortness, ‘gods.’ Before giving oracles as gods, they drank an intoxicating liquor, and in the frenzy thus produced their wild words were received as the voice of the god.[1] But examples of such temporary inspiration are so common in every part of the world and are now so familiar through books on ethnology, that it is needless to cite illustrations of the general principle.[2] It may be well, however, to refer to two particular modes of producing temporary inspiration, because they are perhaps less known than some others, and because we shall have occasion to refer to them later on. One of these modes of producing inspiration is by sucking the fresh blood of a sacrificed victim. In the temple of Apollo Diradiotes at Argos, a lamb was sacrificed by night once a month; a woman, who had to observe a rule of chastity, tasted the blood of the lamb, and thus being inspired by the god she prophesied or divined.[3] At Aegira in Achaea the priestess of Earth drank the fresh blood of a bull before she descended into the cave to prophesy.[1] In Southern India a devil-dancer ‘drinks the blood of the sacrifice, putting the throat of the decapitated goat to his mouth. Then, as if he had acquired new life, he begins to brandish his staff of bells, and to dance with a quick but wild unsteady step. Suddenly the afflatus descends. There is no mistaking that glare, or those frantic leaps. He snorts, he stares, he gyrates. The demon has now taken bodily possession of him; and, though he retains the power of utterance and of motion, both are under the demon’s control, and his separate consciousness is in abeyance … The devil-dancer is now worshipped as a present deity, and every bystander consults him respecting his disease, his wants, the welfare of his absent relatives, the offerings to be made for the accomplishment of his wishes, and, in short, respecting everything for which superhuman knowledge is supposed to be available.’[2] At a festival of the Minahassa in northern Celebes, after a pig has been killed, the priest rushes furiously at it, thrusts his head into the carcass and drinks of the blood. Then he is dragged away from it by force and set on a chair, whereupon he begins to prophesy how the rice crop will turn out that year. A second time he runs at the carcass and drinks of the blood; a second time he is forced into the chair and continues his predictions. It is thought there is a spirit in him which possesses the power of prophecy.[3] At Rhetra, a great religious capital of the Western Slavs, the priest tasted the blood of the sacrificed oxen and sheep in order the better to prophesy.[1] The true test of a Dainyal or diviner among some of the Hindoo Koosh tribes is to suck the blood from the neck of a decapitated goat.[2] The other mode of producing temporary inspiration, to which I shall here refer, is by means of a branch or leaves of a sacred tree. Thus in the Hindoo Koosh a fire is kindled with twigs of the sacred cedar; and the Dainyal or sibyl, with a cloth over her head, inhales the thick pungent smoke till she is seized with convulsions and falls senseless to the ground. Soon she rises and raises a shrill chant, which is caught up and loudly repeated by her audience.[3] So Apollo’s prophetess ate the sacred laurel before she prophesied.[4] It is worth observing that many peoples expect the victim as well as the priest or prophet to give signs of inspiration by convulsive movements of the body; and if the animal remains obstinately steady, they esteem it unfit for sacrifice. Thus when the Yakuts sacrifice to an evil spirit, the beast must bellow and roll about, which is considered a token that the evil spirit has entered into it.[5] Apollo’s prophetess could give no oracles unless the victim to be sacrificed trembled in every limb when the wine was poured on its head. But for ordinary Greek sacrifices it was enough that the victim should shake its head; to make it do so, water was poured on it.[6] Many other peoples (Tonquinese, Hindoos, Chuwash, etc.) have adopted the same test of a suitable victim; they pour water or wine on its head; if the animal shakes its head it is accepted for sacrifice; if it does not, it is rejected.[1]

The person temporarily inspired is believed to acquire, not merely divine knowledge, but also, at least occasionally, divine power. In Cambodia, when an epidemic breaks out, the inhabitants of several villages unite and go with a band of music at their head to look for the man whom the local god is believed to have chosen for his temporary incarnation. When found, the man is taken to the altar of the god, where the mystery of incarnation takes place. Then the man becomes an object of veneration to his fellows, who implore him to protect the village against the plague.[2] The image of Apollo at Hylæ in Phocis was believed to impart superhuman strength. Sacred men, inspired by it, leaped down precipices, tore up huge trees by the roots, and carried them on their backs along the narrowest defiles.[3] The feats performed by inspired dervishes belong to the same class.

Thus far we have seen that the savage, failing to discern the limits of his ability to control nature, ascribes to himself and to all men certain powers which we should now call supernatural. Further, we have seen that over and above this general supernaturalism, some persons are supposed to be inspired for short periods by a divine spirit, and thus temporarily to enjoy the knowledge and power of the indwelling deity. From beliefs like these it is an easy step to the conviction that certain men are permanently possessed by a deity, or in some other undefined way are endued with so high a degree of supernatural powers as to be ranked as gods and to receive the homage of prayer and sacrifice. Sometimes these human gods are restricted to purely supernatural or spiritual functions. Sometimes they exercise supreme political power in addition. In the latter case they are kings as well as gods, and the government is a theocracy. I shall give examples of both.

In the Marquesas Islands there was a class of men who were deified in their life-time. They were supposed to wield a supernatural power over the elements; they could give abundant harvests or smite the ground with barrenness; and they could inflict disease or death. Human sacrifices were offered to them to avert their wrath. There were not many of them, at the most one or two in each island. They lived in mystic seclusion. Their powers were sometimes, but not always, hereditary. A missionary has described one of these human gods from personal observation. The god was a very old man who lived in a large house within an enclosure. In the house was a kind of altar, and on the beams of the house and on the trees round it were hung human skeletons, head down. No one entered the enclosure, except the persons dedicated to the service of the god; only on days when human victims were sacrificed might ordinary people penetrate into the precinct. This human god received more sacrifices than all the other gods; often he would sit on a sort of scaffold in front of his house and call for two or three human victims at a time. They were always brought, for the terror he inspired was extreme. He was invoked all over the island, and offerings were sent to him from every side.[1] Again, of the South Sea Islands in general we are told that each island had a man who represented or personified the divinity. Such men were called gods, and their substance was confounded with that of the deity. The man-god was sometimes the king himself; oftener he was a priest or subordinate chief.[1] Tanatoa, King of Raiatea, was deified by a certain ceremony performed at the chief temple. ‘As one of the divinities of his subjects, therefore, the king was worshipped, consulted as an oracle and had sacrifices and prayers offered to him.’[2] This was not an exceptional case. The kings of the island regularly enjoyed divine honours, being deified at the time of their accession.[3] At his inauguration the king of Tahiti received a sacred girdle of red and yellow feathers, ‘which not only raised him to the highest earthly station, but identified him with their gods.’[4] The gods of Samoa generally appeared in animal form, but sometimes they were permanently incarnate in men, who gave oracles, received offerings (occasionally of human flesh), healed the sick, answered prayers, and so on.[5] In regard to the old religion of the Fijians, and especially of the inhabitants of Somosomo, it is said that ‘there appears to be no certain line of demarcation between departed spirits and gods, nor between gods and living men, for many of the priests and old chiefs are considered as sacred persons, and not a few of them will also claim to themselves the right of divinity. “I am a god,” Tuikilakila would say; and he believed it too.’[6] In the Pelew Islands it is believed that every god can take possession of a man and speak through him. The possession may be either temporary or permanent; in the latter case the chosen person is called a korong. The god is free in his choice, so the position of korong is not hereditary. After the death of a korong the god is for some time unrepresented, until he suddenly makes his appearance in a new Avatar. The person thus chosen gives signs of the divine presence by behaving in a strange way; he gapes, runs about, and performs a number of senseless acts. At first people laugh at him, but his sacred mission is in time recognised, and he is invited to assume his proper position in the state. Generally this position is a distinguished one and confers on him a powerful influence over the whole community. In some of the islands the god is political sovereign of the land; and hence his new incarnation, however humble his origin, is raised to the same high rank, and rules, as god and king, over all the other chiefs.[1] In time of public calamity, as during war or pestilence, some of the Molucca Islanders used to celebrate a festival of heaven. If no good result followed, they bought a slave, took him at the next festival to the place of sacrifice, and set him on a raised place under a certain bamboo-tree. This tree represented heaven and had been honoured as its image at previous festivals. The portion of the sacrifice which had previously been offered to heaven was now given to the slave, who ate and drank it in the name and stead of heaven. Henceforth the slave was well treated, kept for the festivals of heaven, and employed to represent heaven and receive the offerings in its name.[2] In Tonquin every village chooses its guardian spirit, often in the form of an animal, as a dog, tiger, cat, or serpent. Sometimes a living person is selected as patron-divinity. Thus a beggar persuaded the people of a village that he was their guardian spirit; so they loaded him with honours and entertained him with their best.[3] In India ‘every king is regarded as little short of a present god.’[4] The Indian law-book of Manu goes farther and says that ‘even an infant king must not be despised from an idea that he is a mere mortal; for he is a great deity in human form.’[5] There is said to be a sect in Orissa who worship the Queen of England as their chief divinity. And to this day in India all living persons remarkable for great strength or valour or for supposed miraculous powers run the risk of being worshipped as gods. Thus, a sect in the Punjaub worshipped a deity whom they called Nikkal Sen. This Nikkal Sen was no other than the redoubted General Nicholson, and nothing that the general could do or say damped the enthusiasm of his adorers. The more he punished them, the greater grew the religious awe with which they worshipped him.[1] Amongst the Todas, a pastoral people of the Neilgherry Hills of Southern India, the dairy is a sanctuary, and the milkman (pâlâl) who attends to it is a god. On being asked whether the Todas salute the sun, one of these divine milkmen replied, ‘Those poor fellows do so, but I,’ tapping his chest, ‘I, a god! why should I salute the sun?’ Every one, even his own father, prostrates himself before the milkman, and no one would dare to refuse him anything. No human being, except another milkman, may touch him; and he gives oracles to all who consult him, speaking with the voice of a god.[2]

The King of Iddah told the English officers of the Niger Expedition, ‘God made me after his own image; I am all the same as God; and He appointed me a king.’[3]

Sometimes, at the death of the human incarnation, the divine spirit transmigrates into another man. In the kingdom of Kaffa, in Eastern Africa, the heathen part of the people worship a spirit called Deòce, to whom they offer prayer and sacrifice, and whom they invoke on all important occasions. This spirit is incarnate in the grand magician or pope, a person of great wealth and influence, ranking almost with the king, and wielding the spiritual, as the king wields the temporal, power. It happened that, shortly before the arrival of a Christian missionary in the kingdom, this African pope died, and the priests, fearing that the missionary would assume the position vacated by the deceased pope, declared that the Deòce had passed into the king, who henceforth, uniting the spiritual with the temporal power, reigned as god and king.[1] Before beginning to work at the salt-pans in a Laosian village, the workmen offer sacrifice to a local divinity. This divinity is incarnate in a woman and transmigrates at her death into another woman.[2] In Bhotan the spiritual head of the government is a person called the Dhurma Raja, who is supposed to be a perpetual incarnation of the deity. At his death the new incarnate god shows himself in an infant by the refusal of his mother’s milk and a preference for that of a cow.[3] The Buddhist Tartars believe in a great number of living Buddhas, who officiate as Grand Lamas at the head of the most important monasteries. When one of these Grand Lamas dies his disciples do not sorrow, for they know that he will soon reappear, being born in the form of an infant. Their only anxiety is to discover the place of his birth. If at this time they see a rainbow they take it as a sign sent them by the departed Lama to guide them to his cradle. Sometimes the divine infant himself reveals his identity. ‘I am the Grand Lama,’ he says, ‘the living Buddha of such and such a temple. Take me to my old monastery. I am its immortal head.’ In whatever way the birthplace of the Buddha is revealed, whether by the Buddha’s own avowal or by the sign in the sky, tents are struck, and the joyful pilgrims, often headed by the king or one of the most illustrious of the royal family, set forth to find and bring home the infant god. Generally he is born in Tibet, the holy land, and to reach him the caravan has often to traverse the most frightful deserts. When at last they find the child they fall down and worship him. Before, however, he is acknowledged as the Grand Lama whom they seek he must satisfy them of his identity. He is asked the name of the monastery of which he claims to be the head, how far off it is, and how many monks live in it; he must also describe the habits of the deceased Grand Lama and the manner of his death. Then various articles, as prayer-books, tea-pots, and cups, are placed before him, and he has to point out those used by himself in his previous life. If he does so without a mistake his claims are admitted, and he is conducted in triumph to the monastery.[1] At the head of all the Lamas is the Dalai Lama of Lhasa, the Rome of Tibet. He is regarded as a living god and at death his divine and immortal spirit is born again in a child. According to some accounts the mode of discovering the Dalai Lama is similar to the method, already described, of discovering an ordinary Grand Lama. Other accounts speak of an election by lot. Wherever he is born, the trees and plants, it is said, put forth green leaves; at his bidding flowers bloom and springs of water rise; and his presence diffuses heavenly blessings. His palace stands on a commanding height; its gilded cupolas are seen sparkling in the sunlight for miles.[2]

Issuing from the sultry valleys upon the lofty plateau of the Colombian Andes, the Spanish conquerors were astonished to find, in contrast to the savage hordes they had left in the sweltering jungles below, a people enjoying a fair degree of civilisation, practising agriculture, and living under a government which Humboldt has compared to the theocracies of Tibet and Japan. These were the Chib-chas, Muyscas, or Mozcas, divided into two kingdoms, with capitals at Bogota and Tunja, but united apparently in spiritual allegiance to the high pontiff of Sogamozo or Iraca. By a long and ascetic novitiate, this ghostly ruler was reputed to have acquired such sanctity that the waters and the rain obeyed him, and the weather depended on his will.[1] Weather kings are common in Africa. Thus the Waganda of Central Africa believe in a god of Lake Nyanza, who sometimes takes up his abode in a man or woman. The incarnate god is much feared by all the people, including the king and the chiefs. He is consulted as an oracle; by his word he can inflict or heal sickness, withhold rain, and cause famine. Large presents are made him when his advice is sought.[2] Often the king himself is supposed to control the weather. The king of Loango is honoured by his people ‘as though he were a god; and he is called Sambee and Pango, which mean god. They believe that he can let them have rain when he likes; and once a year, in December, which is the time they want rain, the people come to beg of him to grant it to them.’ On this occasion the king, standing on his throne, shoots an arrow into the air, which is supposed to bring on rain.[3] Much the same is said of the king of Mombaza.[4] The king of Quiteva, in Eastern Africa, ranks with the deity; ‘indeed, the Caffres acknowledge no other gods than their monarch, and to him they address those prayers which other nations are wont to prefer to heaven … Hence these unfortunate beings, under the persuasion that their king is a deity, exhaust their utmost means and ruin themselves in gifts to obtain with more facility what they need. Thus, prostrate at his feet, they implore of him, when the weather long continues dry, to intercede with heaven that they may have rain; and when too much rain has fallen, that they may have fair weather; thus, also, in case of winds, storms, and everything, they would either deprecate or implore.’[1] Amongst the Barotse, a tribe on the upper Zambesi, ‘there is an old, but waning belief, that a chief is a demigod, and in heavy thunderstorms the Barotse flock to the chiefs yard for protection from the lightning. I have been greatly distressed at seeing them fall on their knees before the chief, entreating him to open the water-pots of heaven and send rain upon their gardens… The king’s servants declare themselves to be invincible, because they are the servants of God (meaning the king).’[2] The chief of Mowat, New Guinea, is believed to have the power of affecting the growth of crops for good or ill, and of coaxing the dugong and turtle to come from all parts and allow themselves to be taken.[3]

Amongst the Antaymours of Madagascar the king is responsible for the growth of the crops and for every misfortune that befalls the people.[4] In many places the king is punished if rain does not fall and the crops do not turn out well. Thus, in some parts of West Africa, when prayers and offerings presented to the king have failed to procure rain, his subjects bind him with ropes and take him by force to the grave of his forefathers, that he may obtain from them the needed rain.[5] It appears that the Scythians also, when food was scarce, put their king in bonds.[6] The Banjars in West Africa ascribe to their king the power of causing rain or fine weather. So long as the weather is fine they load him with presents of grain and cattle. But if long drought or rain threatens to spoil the crops, they insult and beat him till the weather changes.[1] When the harvest fails or the surf on the coast is too heavy to allow of fishing, the people of Loango accuse their king of a ‘bad heart’ and depose him.[2] On the Pepper Coast the high priest or Bodio is responsible for the health of the community, the fertility of the earth, and the abundance of fish in the sea and rivers; and if the country suffers in any of these respects the Bodio is deposed from his office.[3] So the Burgundians of old deposed their king if the crops failed.[4] Some peoples have gone further and killed their kings in times of scarcity. Thus, in the time of the Swedish king Domalde a mighty famine broke out, which lasted several years, and could be stayed by the blood neither of beasts nor of men. So, in a great popular assembly held at Upsala, the chiefs decided that king Domalde himself was the cause of the scarcity and must be sacrificed for good seasons. So they slew him and smeared with his blood the altars of the gods. Again, we are told that the Swedes always attributed good or bad crops to their kings as the cause. Now, in the reign of King Olaf, there came dear times and famine, and the people thought that the fault was the king’s, because he was sparing in his sacrifices. So, mustering an army, they marched against him, surrounded his dwelling, and burned him in it, ‘giving him to Odin as a sacrifice for good crops.’[5] In 1814, a pestilence having broken out among the reindeer of the Chukch, the Shamans declared that the beloved chief Koch must be sacrificed to the angry gods; so the chiefs own son stabbed him with a dagger.[1] On the coral island of Niuē, or Savage Island, in the South Pacific, there formerly reigned a line of kings. But as the kings were also high priests, and were supposed to make the food grow, the people became angry with them in times of scarcity and killed them; till at last, as one after another was killed, no one would be king, and the monarchy came to an end.[2] As in these cases the divine kings, so in ancient Egypt the divine beasts, were responsible for the course of nature. When pestilence and other calamities had fallen on the land, in consequence of a long and severe drought, the priests took the sacred animals secretly by night, and threatened them, but if the evil did not abate they slew the beasts.[3]

From this survey of the religious position occupied by the king in rude societies we may infer that the claim to divine and supernatural powers put forward by the monarchs of great historical empires like those of Egypt, Mexico, and Peru, was not the simple outcome of inflated vanity or the empty expression of a grovelling adulation; it was merely a survival and extension of the old savage apotheosis of living kings. Thus, for example, as children of the Sun the Incas of Peru were revered like gods; they could do no wrong, and no one dreamed of offending against the person, honour, or property of the monarch or of any of the royal race. Hence, too, the Incas did not, like most people, look on sickness as an evil. They considered it a messenger sent from their father the Sun to call his son to come and rest with him in heaven. Therefore the usual words in which an Inca announced his approaching end were these: ‘My father calls me to come and rest with him.’ They would not oppose their father’s will by offering sacrifice for recovery, but openly declared that he had called them to his rest.[1] The Mexican kings at their accession took an oath that they would make the sun to shine, the clouds to give rain, the rivers to flow, and the earth to bring forth fruits in abundance.[2] By Chinese custom the emperor is deemed responsible if the drought be at all severe, and many are the self-condemnatory edicts on this subject published in the pages of the Peking Gazette. However it is rather as a high priest than as a god that the Chinese emperor bears the blame; for in extreme cases he seeks to remedy the evil by personally offering prayers and sacrifices to heaven.[3] The Parthian monarchs of the Arsacid house styled themselves brothers of the sun and moon and were worshipped as deities. It was esteemed sacrilege to strike even a private member of the Arsacid family in a brawl.[4] The kings of Egypt were deified in their lifetime, and their worship was celebrated in special temples and by special priests. Indeed the worship of the kings sometimes cast that of the gods into the shade. Thus in the reign of Merenra a high official declared that he had built many holy places in order that the spirits of the king, the ever-living Merenra, might be invoked ‘more than all the gods.’[5] The King of Egypt seems to have shared with the sacred animals the blame of any failure of the crops.[6] He was addressed as ‘Lord of heaven, lord of earth, sun, life of the whole world, lord of time, measurer of the sun’s course, Turn for men, lord of well-being, creator of the harvest, maker and fashioner of mortals, bestower of breath upon all men, giver of life to all the host of gods, pillar of heaven, threshold of the earth, weigher of the equipoise of both worlds, lord of rich gifts, increaser of the corn’ etc.[1] Yet, as we should expect, the exalted powers thus ascribed to the king differed in degree rather than in kind from those which every Egyptian claimed for himself. Tiele observes that ‘as every good man at his death became Osiris, as every one in danger or need could by the use of magic sentences assume the form of a deity, it is quite comprehensible how the king, not only after death, but already during his life, was placed on a level with the deity.’[2]

Thus it appears that the same union of sacred functions with a royal title which meets us in the King of the Wood at Nemi, the Sacrificial King at Rome and the King Archon 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 in fact as well as in name, swaying the sceptre as well as the crosier. All this confirms the tradition of the origin of the titular and priestly kings in the republics of ancient Greece and Italy. At least by showing that the combination of spiritual and temporal power, of which Graeco-Italian tradition preserved the memory, has actually existed in many places, we have obviated any suspicion of improbability that might have attached to the tradition. Therefore we may now fairly ask, May not the King of the Wood have had an origin like that which a probable tradition assigns to the Sacrificial King of Rome and the King Archon 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, as we have seen, was three miles off from his forest sanctuary by the lake shore. If he reigned, it was not in the city, but in the greenwood. Again his title, King of the Wood, hardly allows us to suppose that he had ever been a king in the common sense of the word. More likely he was a king of nature, and of a special side of nature, namely, the woods from which he took his title. If we could find instances of what we may call departmental kings of nature, that is of persons supposed to rule over particular elements or aspects of nature, they would probably present a closer analogy to the King of the Wood than the divine kings we have been hitherto considering, whose control of nature is general rather than special. Instances of such departmental kings are not wanting.

On a hill at Bomma (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 rain to fall soon. 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 hand-bell.[1]

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 Kunáma, 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 Bareas, who is also consulted by the northern Kunáma, lives near Tembádere 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.’[2]

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. No European, so far as is known, has ever seen them; and their very existence might have passed for a fable, were it not that till a few years ago 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 plateaux 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.

The same report says that the Fire King, the more important of the two, and whose supernatural powers have never been questioned, officiates at marriages, festivals, and sacrifices in honour of the Yan. 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 but still fresh and green; a rattan, also very old and still not dry; lastly a sword containing a Yan or spirit, who guards it constantly and works miracles with it. 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.

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. Probably the candle was thought to contain the seed of fire, which the Cambodian monarch thus received once a year fresh from the Fire King himself. The 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.’[1]

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.

Tree-Worship

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 primeval 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.[1] 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 forest 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.[2] The excavation of pre-historic pile-villages in the valley of the Po has shown that long before the rise and probably the foundation of Rome the north of Italy was covered with dense forests of elms, chestnuts, and especially of oaks.[3] Archaeology is here confirmed by history; for classical writers contain many references to Italian forests which have now disappeared.[4] In Greece the woods of the present day are a mere fraction of those which clothed great tracts in antiquity, and which at a more remote epoch may have spanned the Greek peninsula from sea to sea.[5]

From an examination of the Teutonic words for ‘temple’ Grimm has made it probable that amongst the Germans the oldest sanctuaries were natural woods.[1] 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.[2] Sacred groves were common among the ancient Germans, and tree-worship is hardly extinct amongst their descendants at the present day.[3] At Upsala, the old religious capital of Sweden, there was a sacred grove in which every tree was regarded as divine.[4] Amongst the ancient Prussians (a Slavonian people) the central feature of religion was the reverence for the sacred oaks, of which the chief stood at Romove, tended by a hierarchy of priests who kept up a perpetual fire of oak-wood in the holy grove.[5] 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.[6] Proofs of the prevalence of tree-worship in ancient Greece and Italy are abundant.[7] 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.[1] 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 from all sides with buckets of water, as if (says Plutarch) they were hastening to put out a fire.[2]

But it is necessary to examine in some detail the notions on which tree-worship is based. To the savage the world in general is animate, and trees are no exception to the rule. He thinks that they have souls like his own and he treats them accordingly. Thus the Wanika in Eastern Africa fancy that every tree and especially every cocoa-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.’[3] 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.’[4] 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. Again, 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.’[5] People in Congo place calabashes of palm-wine at the foot of certain trees for the trees to drink when they are thirsty.[1] In India shrubs and trees are formally married to each other or to idols.[2] In the North West Provinces of India a marriage ceremony is performed in honour of a newly-planted orchard; a man holding the Salagram represents the bride-groom, and another holding the sacred Tulsí (Ocymum sanctum) represents the bride.[3] On Christmas Eve German peasants used to tie fruit-trees together with straw ropes to make them bear fruit, saying that the trees were married.[4]

In the Moluccas when the clove-trees are in blossom they are treated like pregnant women. No noise must be made near them; no light or fire must be carried past them at night; no one must approach them with his hat on, but must uncover his head. These precautions are observed lest the tree should be frightened 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.[5] So when the paddy (rice) is in bloom the Javanese say it is pregnant and make no noises (fire no guns, etc.) near the field, fearing that if they did so the crop would be all straw and no grain.[6] In Orissa, also, 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.’[7]

Conceived as animate, trees are necessarily supposed to feel injuries done to them. 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 lamentinge, E. Wyld, Esq., hath heard it severall times.’[1] 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.’[2] Old peasants in some parts of Austria still believe that forest-trees are animate, and will not allow an incision to be made in the bark without special cause; they have heard from their fathers that the tree feels the cut not less than a wounded man his hurt. In felling a tree they beg its pardon.[3] So in Jarkino the woodman craves pardon of the tree he cuts down.[4] Again, when a tree is cut it is 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.[5] In Samoa there was a grove of trees which no one dared cut. Once some strangers tried to do so, but blood flowed from the tree, and the sacrilegious strangers fell ill and died.[6] Till 1855 there was a sacred larch-tree at Nauders, in the Tyrol, which was thought to bleed whenever it was cut; moreover the steel was supposed to penetrate the woodman’s body to the same depth that it penetrated the tree, and the wound on the tree and on the man’s body healed together.[7]

Sometimes it is the souls of the dead which are believed to animate the trees. The Dieyerie tribe of South Australia regard as very sacred certain trees, which are supposed to be their fathers transformed; hence they will not cut the trees down, and protest against the settlers doing so.[8] Some of the Philippine Islanders believe that the souls of their forefathers are in certain trees, which they therefore spare. If obliged to fell one of these trees they excuse themselves to it by saying that it was the priest who made them fell it. [1] In an Annamite story 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.[2] The story of Polydorus will occur to readers of Virgil.

In 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 no doubt later view, the tree is not the body, but merely the abode of the tree-spirit, which can quit the injured tree as men quit a dilapidated house. Thus when the Pelew Islanders are felling a tree, they conjure the spirit of one tree to leave it and settle on another.[3] The Pádams of Assam think that when a child is lost it has been stolen by the spirits of the wood. So they retaliate on the spirits by cutting down 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.[4] Before the Katodis fell a forest-tree, they choose a tree of the same kind and worship it by presenting a cocoa-nut, burning incense, applying a red pigment, and begging it to bless the undertaking.[5] The intention, perhaps, is to induce the spirit of the former tree to shift its quarters to the latter. In clearing a wood, a Galeleze must not cut down the last tree till the spirit in it has been induced to go away.[6] 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.[7] 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 cutting down trees unnecessarily.[1]

In 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.[2] Here the purpose is unmistakable. 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. So in the island of Chedooba, on felling a large tree, one of the woodmen was always ready with a green sprig, which he ran and placed on the middle of the stump the instant the tree fell.[3] For the same purpose 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.[4]

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 conceived as the dwelling-place of the spirits rather than as their bodies. The old Prussians, it is said, believed that gods inhabited high trees, such as oaks, from which they gave audible answers to inquirers; hence these trees were not felled, but worshipped as the homes of divinities.[5] The great oak at Romove was the especial dwelling-place of the god; it was veiled with a cloth, which was, however, removed to allow worshippers to see the sacred tree.[1] The Battas of Sumatra have been known to refuse to cut down certain trees because they were the abode of mighty spirits which would resent the injury.[2] The Curka Coles of India believe that the tops of trees are inhabited by spirits which are disturbed by the cutting down of the trees and will take vengeance.[3] The Samogitians 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.[4]

Even where no mention is made of wood-spirits, we may generally assume that when a grove is sacred and inviolable, it is so because it is believed to be either inhabited or animated by sylvan deities. 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.[5] The Wotjaks have sacred groves. A Russian who ventured to hew a tree in one of them fell sick and died next day.[6] 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 cutting it down.[7] Before thinning a grove a Roman farmer had to sacrifice a pig to the god or goddess of the grove.[8] The priestly college of the Arval Brothers at Rome had to make expiation when a rotten bough fell to the ground in the sacred grove, or when an old tree was blown down by a storm or dragged down by a weight of snow on its branches.[1]

When a tree comes to be viewed, no longer as the body of the tree-spirit, but simply as its dwelling-place 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.[2] 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 prove in detail. I shall show, first, that trees considered as animate beings are credited with the power of making the rain to fall, the sun to shine, flocks and herds to multiply, and women to bring forth easily; and, second, that the very same powers are attributed to tree-gods conceived as anthropomorphic beings or as actually incarnate in living men.

First, then, trees or tree-spirits are believed to give rain and sunshine. When the missionary Jerome of Prague was persuading the heathen Lithuanians to fell their sacred groves, a multitude of women besought the Prince of Lithuania to stop him, saying that with the woods he was destroying the house of god from which they had been wont to get rain and sunshine.[1] The Mundaris in Assam think if a tree in the sacred grove is felled, the sylvan gods evince their displeasure by withholding rain.[2] 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.[3] To extort rain from the tree-spirit a branch is sometimes dipped in water, as we have seen above.[4] 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.[5] 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.[6]

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.’[7] 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 trees were felled, all the fruits of the earth would perish.[8] Swedish peasants stick a leafy branch in each furrow of their corn-fields, believing that this will ensure an abundant crop.[1] 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 cornfield and the last sheaf cut is fastened to its trunk.[2] The Harvest-May of Germany has its counterpart in the eiresione of ancient Greece.[3] 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.[4]

Customs like that of the Harvest-May appear to exist in India and Africa. At a harvest festival of the Lhoosai of SE 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.[1] 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.[2] Many tribes of SE 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.[3]

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 Raja’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.[4] Here the intention of fertilising the seed by means of the sacred cedar is unmistakable. 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.

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.’[1]

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 Europe the May-tree (May-pole) is supposed to possess similar powers over both women and cattle. In some parts of Germany on the 1st of May the peasants set up May-trees at the doors of stables and byres, one May-tree for each horse and cow; this is thought to make the cows yield much milk.[2] Camden says of the Irish, ‘They fancy a green bough of a tree, fastened on May Day against the house, will produce plenty of milk that summer.’[3]

On the 2nd 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.[4]

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.[1]

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, it 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 it 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.[2]

The common European custom of placing a green bush on May Day before the house of a beloved maiden probably originated in the belief of the fertilising power of the tree-spirit.[3] Amongst the Kara-Kirgiz barren women roll themselves on the ground under a solitary apple-tree, in order to obtain offspring.[4] Lastly, the power of granting to women an easy delivery at childbirth is ascribed to trees both in Sweden and Africa. In some districts of Sweden there was formerly a bȧrdträd 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.[1] 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.[2] The story that Leto clasped a palm-tree and an olive-tree or two laurel-trees when she was about to give birth to Apollo and Artemis perhaps points to a similar Greek belief in the efficacy of certain trees to facilitate delivery.[3]

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

Sir Henry Piers, in his Description of Westmeath, writing in 1682 says: ‘On May-eve, every family sets up before their door a green bush, strewed over with yellow flowers, which the meadows yield plentifully. In countries where timber is plentiful, they erect tall slender trees, which stand high, and they continue almost the whole year; so as a stranger would go nigh to imagine that they were all signs of ale-sellers, and that all houses were ale-houses.’[4] 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.[1] ‘An antient custom, still retained by the Cornish, is that of decking their doors and porches on the 1st of May with green boughs of sycamore and hawthorn, and of planting trees, or rather stumps of trees, before their houses.’[2] In the north of England it was formerly the custom for young people to rise very early on the morning of the 1st of May, and go out with music 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.[3] At Abingdon in Berkshire young people formerly went about in groups on May morning, singing a carol of which the following are some 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.’[4]

At the villages of Saffron Walden and Debden in Essex on the 1st 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.[5] At Seven Oaks on May Day the children carry boughs and garlands from house to house, begging for pence. The garlands consist of two hoops interlaced crosswise, and covered with blue and yellow flowers from the woods and hedges.[6] 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.[1] In Mayenne (France), boys who bore the name of Maillotins used to go about from farm to farm on the 1st of May singing carols, for which they received money or a drink; they planted a small tree or a branch of a tree.[2]

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.’[3] In this Russian custom the dressing of the birch in woman’s clothes shows how clearly the tree is conceived as personal; and the throwing it into a stream is most probably a rain-charm. In some village 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.[4]

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 carries a huge basket in which he collects eggs, bacon, etc.[1] 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 go from house to house singing May songs; the purport of which 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.[2]

But in Sweden midsummer is the season when these ceremonies are chiefly observed. On the Eve of St John (23rd 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 Stänger) six inches to twelve feet high, decorated with leaves, flowers, slips of coloured paper, gilt egg shells, strung on reeds, etc. 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 crosswise, are attached to it at intervals; whilst at others it is provided with bows, representing so to say, a man with his arms akimbo. From top to bottom not only the ‘Maj Stång’ (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.[1] 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. Then they pile brushwood, dry wood, and other combustible materials about the tree, and, when darkness has fallen, set the whole on fire. While the fire was burning the lads used to climb up the tree and fetch down the garlands and ribbons which the girls had fastened to it; but as this led to accidents, the custom has been forbidden. Sometimes the young people fling burning besoms into the air, or run shouting down hill with them. When the tree is consumed, the young men and their sweethearts stand on opposite sides of the fire, and look at each other through garlands and through the fire, to see whether they will be true lovers and will wed. Then they throw the garlands thrice across the smouldering fire to each other. When the blaze has died down, the couples join hands and leap thrice across the glowing embers. The singed garlands are taken home, and kept carefully in the house throughout the year. Whenever a thunder-storm bursts, part of the garlands are burned on the hearth; and when the cattle are sick or are calving, they get a portion of the garlands to eat. The charred embers of the bonfire are stuck in the cornfields and meadows and on the roof of the house, to keep house and field from bad weather and injury.[2]

It is hardly necessary to illustrate the custom of setting up a village May-tree or May-pole on May Day. One point only – the renewal of the village May-tree – requires to be noticed. In England the village May-pole seems as a rule, at least in later times, to have been permanent, not renewed from year to year.[3] Sometimes, however, it was renewed annually. Thus, Borlase says of the Cornish people: ‘From towns they make incursions, on May-eve, into the country, cut down a tall elm, bring it into the town with rejoicings, and having fitted a straight taper pole to the end of it, and painted it, erect it in the most public part, and upon holidays and festivals dress it with garlands of flowers or ensigns and streamers.’[1] An annual renewal seems also to be implied in the description by Stubbs, a Puritanical writer, of the custom of drawing home the May-pole by twenty or forty yoke of oxen.[2] In some parts of Germany and Austria the May-tree or Whitsuntide-tree is renewed annually, a fresh tree being felled and set up.[3]

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 merrymaking, 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.’[4] Thus the renewal of the May-tree is like the renewal of the Harvest-May; each is intended to secure a fresh portion of the fertilising spirit of vegetation, and to preserve it throughout the year. But whereas the efficacy of the Harvest-May is restricted to promoting the growth of the crops, that of the May-tree or May-branch extends also, as we have seen, to women and cattle. Lastly, it is worth noting that the old May-tree is sometimes burned at the end of the year. Thus in the district of Prague young people break pieces off 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.[1] In Würtemberg the bushes which are set up on the houses on Palm Sunday are sometimes left there for a year and then burnt.[2] The eiresione (the Harvest-May of Greece) was perhaps burned at the end of the year.[3]

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

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

‘We carry Death out of the village,

We bring Summer into the village.’[1]

Here, as we shall see later on, the ‘Summer’ is the spirit of vegetation returning or reviving in spring. In some places in this 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.[2] In these cases the tree and the puppet are obviously regarded as equivalent.

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

‘Little May Rose turn round three times,

Let us look at you round and round!

Rose of the May, come to the greenwood away,

We will be merry all.

So we go from the May to the roses.’

In the course of the song a wish is expressed that those who give nothing may lose their fowls by the marten, that their vine may bear no clusters, their tree no nuts, their field no corn; the produce of the year is supposed to depend on the gifts offered to these May singers.[3] Here and in the cases mentioned above, where children go about with green boughs 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 1st 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!’[1] 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.[2] In Bavaria, on the 2nd 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 solemn procession through the streets, which were adorned with sprigs of birch.[3] In Carinthia, on St George’s Day (24th 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.’[4]

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.

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.[1] 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 Bavaria, a rain-charm. Thus the priest, as if he were the tree goddess herself, goes from door to door dispensing rain and bestowing fruitful-ness on each house, but especially on the women.

Without citing more examples to the same effect, we may sum up the result of the preceding paragraphs 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, etc. may have no share in the blessings which it is in the power of the itinerant spirit to bestow. We may conclude that these begging processions with May-trees or May-boughs from door to door (‘bringing the May or the summer’) had everywhere originally a serious and, so to speak, sacramental significance; people really believed that the god of growth was present unseen in the bough; by the procession he was brought to each house to bestow his blessing. The names May, Father May, May Lady, Queen of the May, by which the anthropomorphic spirit of vegetation is often denoted, show that the conception of the spirit of vegetation is blent with a personification of the season at which his powers are most strikingly manifested.’[1]

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 show that the representation of him by a tree, bough, or flower is sometimes entirely dropped, while the representation of him by a living person remains. In this case the representative character of the person is generally marked by dressing him or her in leaves or flowers; sometimes too it is indicated by the name he or she bears.

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.[1] In the Département de l’Ain (France) on the 1st of May eight or ten boys unite, clothe one of their number in leaves, and go from house to house begging.[2] 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.’[3]

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 playmates to be the Little Leaf Man. They break branches from the trees and twine them about the child till only his shoes peep out from the leafy mantle. Holes are made in it for him to see through, and two of the children lead the Little Leaf Man that he may not stumble or fall. Singing and dancing they take him from house to house, asking for gifts of food (eggs, cream, sausage, cakes). Lastly they sprinkle the Leaf Man with water and feast on the food they have collected.[4] 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-shaped 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.[1] In some parts also of France a young fellow is encased in a wicker framework covered with leaves and is led about.[2] In Frickthal (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 beside 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 at their own well.[3] In the neighbourhood of Ertingen (Würtemberg) a 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 wicker-work, 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, etc. 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.[4]

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

Often the leaf-clad person who represents the spirit of vegetation is known as the king or the queen; thus, for example, he or she is called the May King, Whitsuntide King, Queen of May, and so on. These titles, as Mannhardt observes, imply that the spirit incorporate in vegetation is a ruler, whose creative power extends far and wide.[1]

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, etc.[2] 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 got 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.[3] 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.[1] At Grossvargula, near Langensalza, in last 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, etc., 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.[2] 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.[1] 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.[2] The pinching and beheading of the frog are doubtless, as Mannhardt observes,[3] a rain-charm. We have seen[4] that some Indians of the Orinoco beat frogs for the express purpose of producing rain, and that killing a frog is a German rain-charm.

Often the spirit of vegetation in spring is represented by a queen instead of a king. In the neighbourhood of Lib-chowic (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.[1] 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.[2] 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 merrymakings. If she married before next May Day her authority was at an end, but her successor was not elected till that day came round.[3] The May Queen is common in France[4] and familiar in England.

Again the spirit of vegetation is sometimes represented by a king and queen, a lord and lady, or a bridegroom and bride. Here again the parallelism holds between the anthropomorphic and the vegetable representation of the tree-spirit, for we have seen above that trees are sometimes married to each other.[5] In a village near Königgrätz (Bohemia) on Whit-Monday the children play the king’s game, at which a king and a 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 groom’s men and bridesmaids, and they go from house to house collecting gifts.[6] Near Grenoble, in France, a king and queen are chosen on the 1st of May and are set on a throne for all to see.[7] At Headington, near Oxford, children used to carry garlands from door to door on May Day. Each garland was carried 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 show you a garland,

Because it is May Day’

On receiving money the lord put his arm about his lady’s waist and kissed her.[1] In some Saxon villages at Whitsuntide a lad and a lass disguise themselves and hide in the bushes or high grass outside the village. Then the whole village goes out with music ‘to seek the bridal pair.’ When they find the couple they all gather round them, the music strikes up, and the bridal pair is led merrily to the village. In the evening they dance. In some places the bridal pair is called the prince and the princess.[2]

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.[1] 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 go 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.[2] In this custom the rôle of the sleeper was probably at one time sustained by a lad. In these French and Russian customs we have a forsaken bride-groom, 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.[3]

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 rôles 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. 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.

In the Highlands of Scotland the revival of vegetation in spring used to be graphically represented as follows. On Candlemas day (2nd February) 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 Brüd’s bed; and then the mistress and servants cry three times, Brüd is come, Brüd 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 Brüd’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.’[1] 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.’[2]

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.[3] 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.[1] 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.[2]

Tree-Worship in Antiquity

Such then are some of the ways in which the tree-spirit or the spirit of vegetation is represented in the customs of our European peasantry. From the remarkable persistence and similarity of such customs all over Europe we are justified in concluding that tree-worship was once an important element in the religion of the Aryan race in Europe, and that the rites and ceremonies of the worship were marked by great uniformity everywhere, and did not substantially differ from those which are still or were till lately observed by our peasants at their spring and midsummer festivals. For these rites bear internal marks of great antiquity, and this internal evidence is confirmed by the resemblance which the rites bear to those of rude peoples elsewhere.[3] Therefore it is hardly rash to infer, from this consensus of popular customs, that the Greeks and Romans, like the other Aryan peoples of Europe, once practised forms of tree-worship similar to those which are still kept up by our peasantry. In the palmy days of ancient civilisation, no doubt, the worship had sunk to the level of vulgar superstition and rustic merrymaking, as it has done among ourselves. We need not therefore be surprised that the traces of such popular rites are few and slight in ancient literature. They are not less so in the polite literature of modern Europe; and the negative argument cannot be allowed to go for more in the one case than in the other. Enough, however, of positive evidence remains to confirm the presumption drawn from analogy. Much of this evidence has been collected and analysed with his usual learning and judgment by W. Mannhardt.[1] Here I shall content myself with citing certain Greek festivals which seem to be the classical equivalents of an English May Day in the olden time.

Every few years the Boeotians 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. Here 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 settle 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. On this great occasion all the images that had accumulated from the celebrations of the Little Daedala were dragged on carts in solemn procession to the river Asopus, and then to the top of Mount Cithaeron. Here an altar had been constructed of square blocks of wood fitted together and surmounted by a heap of brushwood. Animals were sacrificed by being burned on the altar, and the altar itself, together with the images, were 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 it was said 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 caused a wooden image to be made, dressed and veiled 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 was now changed to laughter, and she became reconciled to her husband Zeus.[1]

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.[2] 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.[3] 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.[4] In Angoulême on St Peter’s Day, 29th June, a tall leafy poplar is set up in the market-place and burned.[5] In Cornwall ‘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.’[6] In Dublin on May-morning boys used to go out and cut a May-bush, bring it back to town, and then burn it.[7]

Probably the Boeotian festival belonged to the same class of rites. It represented the marriage of the powers of vegetation 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 represents 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 charms designed to produce the effect which they dramatically represent. If the revival of vegetation in spring is represented by the awakening of a sleeper, the representation is intended actually to quicken the growth of leaves and blossoms; if the marriage of the powers of vegetation is represented by a King and Queen of May, the idea is that the powers so represented will really be rendered more productive by the ceremony. In short, all these spring and midsummer festivals fall under the head of sympathetic magic. The event which it is desired to bring about is represented dramatically, and the very representation is believed to effect, or at least to contribute to, the production of the desired event. 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.[1] Now the institution of a festival is often explained by a mythical story of the occurrence upon a particular occasion of those very calamities 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 a dramatic representation of the marriage of the divinities most concerned with the production of vegetation.[2] Themarriage of Zeus and Hera was dramatically represented at annual festivals in various parts of Greece,[1] 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,[2] like Milton’s description of the dalliance of Zephyr and Aurora, ‘as he met her once a-Maying,’ was perhaps painted from the life.

Still more confidently may the same character be vindicated for the annual marriage at Athens of the Queen to Dionysus in the Flowery Month (Anthesterion) of spring.[3] For Dionysus, as we shall see later on, was essentially a god of vegetation, and the Queen at Athens was a purely religious or priestly functionary.[4] Therefore at their annual marriage in spring he can hardly have been anything but a King, and she a Queen, of May. The women who attended the Queen at the marriage ceremony would correspond to the bridesmaids who wait on the May-queen.[5] 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[1] that, considering the character of Dionysus as a god of vegetation, we can hardly help regarding it as the description of a spring ceremony corresponding to the French one. In point of fact the marriage of Dionysus and Ariadne is believed by Preller to have been acted every spring in Crete.[2] His evidence, indeed, is inconclusive, but the view itself is probable. If I am right in instituting the comparison, the chief difference between the French and the Greek ceremonies must have been that in the former the sleeper was the forsaken bridegroom, in the latter the forsaken bride; and the group of stars in the sky, in which fancy saw Ariadne’s wedding-crown,[3] could only have been a translation to heaven of the garland worn by the Greek girl who played the Queen of May.

On the whole, alike from the analogy of modern folk-custom and from the facts of ancient ritual and mythology, we are justified in concluding that the archaic forms of tree-worship disclosed by the spring and midsummer festivals of our peasants were practised by the Greeks and Romans in prehistoric times. Do then these forms of tree-worship help to explain the priesthood of Aricia, the subject of our inquiry? I believe they do. In the first place the attributes of Diana, the goddess of the Arician grove, are those of a tree-spirit or sylvan deity. Her sanctuaries were in groves, indeed every grove was her sanctuary,[4] and she is often associated with the wood-god Silvanus in inscriptions.[5] like a tree-spirit, she helped women in travail, and in this respect her reputation appears to have stood high at the Arician grove, if we may judge from the votive offerings found on the spot.[1] Again, she was the patroness of wild animals;[2] just as in Finland the wood-god Tapio was believed to care for the wild creatures that roamed the wood, they being considered his cattle.[3] So, too, the Samogitians deemed the birds and beasts of the woods sacred, doubtless because they were under the protection of the god of the wood.[4] Again, there are indications that domestic cattle were protected by Diana,[5] as they certainly were supposed to be by Silvanus.[6] But we have seen that special influence over cattle is ascribed to wood-spirits; in Finland the herds enjoyed the protection of the wood-gods both while they were in their stalls and while they strayed in the forest.[7] Lastly, in the sacred spring which bubbled, and the perpetual fire which seems to have burned in the Arician grove,[8] we may perhaps detect traces of other attributes of forest gods, the power, namely, to make the rain to fall and the sun to shine.[9] This last attribute perhaps explains why Virbius, the companion deity of Diana at Nemi, was by some believed to be the sun.[10]

Thus the cult of the Arician grove was essentially that of a tree-spirit or wood deity. But our examination of European folk-custom demonstrated that a tree-spirit is frequently represented by a living person, who is regarded as an embodiment of the tree-spirit and possessed of its fertilising powers; and our previous survey of primitive belief proved that this conception of a god incarnate in a living man is common among rude races. Further we have seen that the living person who is believed to embody in himself the tree-spirit is often called a king, in which respect, again, he strictly represents the tree-spirit. For the sacred cedar of the Gilgit tribes is called, as we have seen, ‘the Dreadful King’;[1] and the chief forest god of the Finns, by name Tapio, represented as an old man with a brown beard, a high hat of fir-cones and a coat of tree-moss, was styled the Wood King, Lord of the Woodland, Golden King of the Wood.[2] May not then the King of the Wood in the Arician grove have been, like the King of May, the Grass King, and the like, an incarnation of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation? His title, his sacred office, and his residence in the grove all point to this conclusion, which is confirmed by his relation to the Golden Bough. For since the King of the Wood could only be assailed by him who had plucked the Golden Bough, his life was safe from assault so long as the bough or the tree on which it grew remained uninjured. In a sense, therefore, his life was bound up with that of the tree; and thus to some extent he stood to the tree in the same relation in which the incorporate or immanent tree-spirit stands to it. The representation of the tree-spirit both by the King of the Wood and by the Golden Bough (for it will hardly be disputed that the Golden Bough was looked upon as a very special manifestation of the divine life of the grove) need not surprise us, since we have found that the tree-spirit is not unfrequently thus represented in double, first by a tree or a bough, and second by a living person.

On the whole then, if we consider his double character as king and priest, his relation to the Golden Bough, and the strictly woodland character of the divinity of the grove, we may provisionally assume that the King of the Wood, like the May King and his congeners of Northern Europe, was deemed a living incarnation of the tree-spirit. As such he would be credited with those miraculous powers of sending rain and sunshine, making the crops to grow, women to bring forth, and flocks and herds to multiply, which are popularly ascribed to the tree-spirit itself. The reputed possessor of powers so exalted must have been a very important personage, and in point of fact his influence appears to have extended far and wide. For[1] in the days when the champaign country around was still parcelled out among the petty tribes who composed the Latin League, the sacred grove on the Alban Mountain 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 steps 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.

1. The site was excavated in 1885 by Sir John Savile Lumley, English ambassador at Rome. For a general description of the site and excavations, see the Athenaeum, 10th October 1885. For details of the finds see Bulletino dell’ Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica, 1885, pp. 149 sqq., 225 sqq.

1. Ovid, Fasti, vi. 756; Cato quoted by Priscian, see Peter’s Historic. Roman. Fragmenta, p. 52 (lat. ed.); Statius, Sylv. iii. 1, 56.

2. ξιφήρης οὖν ἐστιν ἀεί, περισκοπν τὰς ἐπιθέσεις, ἔτοιμος ἀμύνεσθαι, is Strabo’s description (v. 3,1 2), who may have seen him ‘pacing there alone.’

1. Virgil, Aen. vi. 136 sqq.; Servius, ad l.; Strabo, v. 3, 12; Pausanias, ii. 27; Solinus, ii. 11; Suetonius, Caligula, 35. For the title ‘King of the Wood,’ see Suetonius, l.c.; and compare Statius, Sylv. iii. 1,55 sq.–‘Jamque dies aderat, profugis cum regibus aptum Fumat Aricinum Triviae nemus;’ Ovid, Fasti, iii. 271, ‘Regna tenent fortesque manu, pedibusque fugaces;’ id. Ars am. i. 259 sq.– ‘Ecce suburbanae templum nemorale Dianae,  Partaque per gladios regna nocente manu.’

2. Bulletino dell’ Instituto, 1885, p. 153 sq.; Athenaeum, 10th October 1885; Preller, Römische Mythologie,3 i. 317. Of these votive offerings some represent women with children in their arms; one represents a delivery, etc.

3. Statius, Sylv. iii. 1, 52 sqq. From Martial, xii. 67, it has been inferred that the Arician festival fell on the 13th of August. The inference, however, does not seem conclusive. Statius’s expression is –

‘Tempus erat, caeli cum ardentissimus axis
Incumbit terris, ictusque Hyperione multo
Acer anhelantes incendit Sirius agros.’

4. Ovid, Fasti, iii. 269; Propertius, iii. 24 (30), 9 sq. ed. Paley.

5. Inscript. Lat. ed. Orelli, No. 1455.

1. Statius, l.c.; Gratius Faliscus, v. 483 sqq.

2. Athenaeum, 10th October 1885. The water was diverted a few years ago to supply Albano. For Egeria, compare Strabo, v. 3, 12; Ovid, Fasti, iii. 273 sqq.; id. Met. xv. 487 sqq.

3. Festus, p. 145, ed. Müller; Schol. on Persius, vi. 56 ap. Jahn on Macrobius, i. 7, 35.

4. Virgil, Aen. vii. 761 sqq.; Servius, ad l.; Ovid, Fasti, iii. 265 sq.; id. Met. xv. 497 sqq.; Pausanias, ii. 27.

5. Servius on Virgil, Aen. vii. 776.

6. Inscript. Lat. ed. Orelli, Nos. 2212, 4022. The inscription No. 1457 (Orelli) is said to be spurious.

1. See above, p. 4, note 1.

2. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii.2 321 sqq.

3. G. Gilbert, Handbuch der griechischen Staatsalterthümer, i. 241 sq.

4. Gilbert, op. cit. ii. 323 sq.

5. Livy, ii. 2, 1; Dionysius Halic. iv. 74, 4.

6. Demosthenes, contra Neaer. § 74, p. 1370. Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 63.

1. Xenophon, Repub. Lac. c. 15, cp. id. 13; Aristotle, Pol. iii. 14, 3.

2. Strabo, xii. 3, 37. 5, 3; cp. xi. 4, 7, xii. 2, 3. 2, 6.3, 31 sq. 3, 34. 8, 9, 8, 14. But see Encyc. Brit., art. ‘Priest,’ xix. 729.

3. Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, p. 243.

4. See the Ll-Kt (Legge’s translation), passim.

1. A. Leared, Morocco and the Moors, p. 272.

2. J. W. Thomas, ‘De jacht op het eiland Nias,’ in Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-Land-en Volkenkunde, xxvi. 277.

1. E. Aymonier, ‘Notes sur les coutumes et croyances superstitieuses des Cambodgiens,’ in Cochinchine Française, Excursions et Reconnaissances, No. 16, p. 157.

2. Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, p. 218, No. 36.

3. Van Hasselt, Volksbeschrijving van Midden-Sumatra, p. 323.

4. J. C. E. Tromp, ‘De Rambai en Sebroeang Dajaks,’ Tijdschriftvoor Indische Taal-Land-en Volkenkunde, xxv. 118.

1. E. Aymonier, Notes sur le Laos, p. 25 sq.

2. J. Campbell, Travels in South Africa (second journey), ii. 206; Barnabas Shaw, Memorials of South Africa, p. 66.

3. Casalis, The Basutos, p. 271 sq.

4. Casalis, The Basutos, p. 272.

1. W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald-und Feldkulte, p. 342, note.

1. C. F. H. Campen ‘De Gods-dienstbegrippen der Halmaherasche Alfoeren,’ in Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-Land-en Volkenkunde, xxvii. 447.

2. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 114.

3. R. Parkinson, Im Bismarck Archipel, p. 143.

4. J. Owen Dorsey, ‘Omaha Sociology,’ in Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington), p. 347. Cp. Charlevoix, Voyage dans l’Amérique septentrionale, ii, 187.

5. Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xvi. 35. Cp. Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 98.

6. Labat, Relation histonque de l’Ethiopie occidentale, ii. 180.

7. Turner, Samoa, p. 145.

1. Journ, Anthrop. Inst. xiv. 362.

2. Journ. Anthrop. Inst. l.c. Cp. Curr, The Australian Race, ii. 377.

3. Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, p. 184; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie4 i. 494. Cp. San-Marte, Die Arthur Sage, pp. 105 sq.,153 sqq.

4. The American Antiquarian, viii. 339.

5. Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, p. 185 sq.

6. Ib. p. 187. So at the fountain of Sainte Anne, near Gevezé, in Brittany. Sébillot, Traditions et Superstitions de la Haute Bretagne, i. 72.

7. Lamberti, ‘Relation de la Colchide ou Mingrélie,’ Voyages au Nord, vii. 174 (Amsterdam, 1725).

8. Le Brun, Histoire critique des pratiques superstitieuses (Amsterdam, 1733), i. 245 sq.

1. Turner, Samoa, p. 345 sq.

2. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 329. seq.; Grimm, D. M.4 i. 493 sq.; W. Schmidt, Das Jahr und seine Tage in Meinung und Brauch der Romänen Siebenbürgens, p. 17; E. Gerard, The Land beyond the Forest, ii. 13.

3. Mannhardt, Β. Κ., p. 331.

1. J. G. F. Riedel, ‘De Minahasa in 1825,’ Tijdschrift v. Indische Taal-Land-en Volkenkunde, xviii. 524.

2. J. Reinegg, Beschreibung des Kaukasus, ii. 114.

3. Mannhardt, Β. Κ., p. 553; Gerard, The Land beyond the Forest, ii. 40.

4. Panjab Notes and Queries, iii. Nos. 173, 513.

5. Acosta, History of the Indies, bk. v. ch. 28.

6. A. L. van Hasselt, Volksbeschrijving van Midden-Sumatra, p. 320 sq.

1. South African Folklore Journal, 1, 34.

2. J. S. G. Gramberg, ‘Eene maand in de binnenlanden van Timor,’ in Verhandelingen van het Bataviansch Genoetschap van Kunslen en Wetenschappen, xxxvi, 209.

3. Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 88.

4. Hac, L’empire chinois, i. 241.

5. Bérenger-Féraud, Les peuplades de la Sénégambie, p. 291.

6. Colombia, being a geographical etc. account of that country, i. 642 sq.; Α. Bastian, Die Culturländer des alten Amerika, ii. 216.

7. Α. Kuhn, Sagen, Gebräuche und Mährchen aus Westfalen, ii. p. 80; Gerard, The Land beyond the Forest, ii. 13.

8. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 520.

1. Brien, ‘Aperçu sur la province de Battambang,’ in Cochinchine française, Excursions et Reconnaissances, No. 25, p. 6 sq.

2. Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, p. 95.

3. Gervasius von Tilburg, ed. Liebrecht, p. 41 sq.

4. Giraldus Cambrensis, Topography of Ireland, ch. 7. Cp. Mannhardt, A. W. F. p. 341 note.

5. Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, p. 407 sq.

6. Reclus, Nouvelle Géographie Universelle, xii. 100.

7. Rasmussen, Additamenta ad historiam Arabum ante Islamismum, p. 67 sq.

8. Reste arabischen Heidentumes, p. 157.

1. Labat, Relation historique de l’Ethiopie accidentale, ii. 180.

2. S. Gason, ‘The Dieyerie tribe,’ in Native Tribes of S. Australia, p. 276 sqq.

3. W. Stanbridge, ‘On the Aborigines of Victoria,’ in Trans. Ethnol. Soc. of London, i. 300.

4. Marcus Antoninus, v. 7; Petronius, 44; Tertullian, Apolog. 40; cp. id. 22 and 23.

1. Pausanias, viii. 38, 4.

2. Autigonus, Histor. Mirab. 15 (Script. mirab. Graeci, ed. Westermann, p. 65).

3. Apollodorus, Bibl. i. 9, 7; Virgil, Aen, vi. 585 sqq.; Servius on Virgil, l.c.

4. Festus, svv. aquaelicium and manalem lapidem, pp. 2, 128, ed. Müller; Nonius Marcellus, sv. trullum, p. 637, ed. Quicherat; Servius on Virgil, Aen, iii. 175; Fulgentius, Expos, serm. antiq., sv. manales lapides, Mythogr. Lat. ed. Staveren, p. 769 sq.

5. Nonius Marcellus, sv. aquilex, p. 69, ed. Quicherat. In favour of taking aquilex as rain-maker is the use of aquaelicium in the sense of rain-making. Cp. K. O. Müller, Die Etrusker, ed. W. Deecke, ii. 318 sq.

6. Diodorus, v. 55.

1. Peter Jones, History of the Ojebway Indians, p. 84.

2. Gumilla, Histoire de l’Orénoque, iii. 243 sq.

3. Glaumont, ‘Usages, mœurs et coutumes des Néo-Calédoniens,’ in Revue d’Ethnographie, vi. 116.

1. Arbousset et Daumas, Voyage d’exploration au Nord-est de la Colonie du Cap de Bonne-Espérance, p. 350 sq. For the kinship with the sacred object (tchem) from which the clan takes its name, see ib. pp. 350, 422, 424. Other people have claimed kindred with the sun, as the Natchez of North America (Voyages au Nord, v. 24) and the Incas of Peru.

2. Codrington, in Journ. Anthrop. Instit, x. 278.

3. Above, p. 16.

4. Turner, Samoa, p. 346. See above, p. 14.

5. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, iv. 174. The name of the place is Andahuayllas.

6. Th. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, i. 250.

7. Schoolcraft, The American Indians, p. 97 sqq.; Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific, p. 61 sq.; Turner, Samoa, p. 200 sq.

1. Aeneas Sylvius, Opera (Bâle, 1571), p. 418 [wrongly numbered 420].

2. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, ii. 334; Curr, The Australian Race, i. 50.

3. Faucourt, History of Yucatan, p. 118.

4. South African Folklore Journal, i. 34.

5. E. J. Eyre, Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia, ii. 365.

6. Curr, The Australian Race, iii. 145.

1. Gmelin, Reise durch Sibirien, ii. 510.

2. Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington), p. 241.

3. G. M. Dawson, ‘On the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands,’ Geological Survey of Canada, Report of progress for 1878–1879, p. 124 B.

4. W. Powell, Wanderings in a Wild Country, p. 169.

5. Miss C. F. Gordon Cumming, In the Hebrides, p. 166 sq.; Martin, ‘Description of the Western Islands of Scotland,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, iii. 627.

1. Olaus Magnus, Gentium Septentr. Hist. iii. 15.

2. Scheffer, Lapponia, p. 144; Gordon Cumming, In the Hebrides, p. 254 sq.; Train, Account of the Isle of Man, ii. 166.

3. C. Leemius, De Lapponibus Finmarchiae etc. commentatio, P· 454·

4. Odyssey, x. 19 sqq.

5. Ε. Veckenstedt, Die Mythen, Sagen, und Legenden der Zamaiten (Litauer), i. 153.

6. J. Chalmers, Pioneering in New Guinea, p. 177.

7. Rogers, Social Life in Scotland, iii. 220; Sir W. Scott, Pirate, note to ch. vii.; Shaks. Macbeth, Act i. Sc. 3, 1.11.

8. Dapper, Description de l’Afrique (Amsterdam, 1686), p. 389.

9. A. Peter, Volksthümliches aus Oesterreichisch Schlesien, ii. 259.

1. Arctic Papers for the Expedition of 1875 (R· Geogr. Soc.), p. 274.

2. Azara, Voyages dans l’Amérique Méridionale, ii. 137.

3. Charlevoix, Histoire du Paraguay, i. 74.

4. W. A. Henry, ‘Bijdrage tot de Kennis der Bataklanden,’ in Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-Land-en Volkenkunde, xvii. 23 sq.

1. Herodotus, iv. 173; Aulus Gellius, xvi. 11.

2. Harris, Highlands of Ethiopia, i. 352.

3. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 457 sq.; cp. id. ii. 270; Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xiii.p. 194 note.

4. Denzil C. J. Ibbetson, Settlement Report of the Panipat Tahsil and Karnal Parganah of the Karnal District, p. 154.

5. Stephen Powers, Tribes of California, p. 328.

6. Sébillot, Coutumes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne, p. 302 sq.

7. Mannhardt, A. W. F. p. 85.

1. Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific, p. 35.

2. See for examples E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture,2 ii. 131 sqq.

3. Pausanias, ii. 24, Ι. κάτοχος ἐκ τοῠ  θεοû γίνεται is the expression.

1. Pliny, Nat. Hist, xxviii. 147. Pausanias (vii. 25, 13) mentions the draught of bull’s blood as an ordeal to test the chastity of the priestess. Doubtless it was thought to serve both purposes.

2. Caldwell, ‘On demonolatry in Southern India,’ Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay, i. 101 sq.

3. J. G. F. Riedel, ‘De Minahasa in 1825,’ Tijdschrift v. Indische Taal-Land-en Volkenkunde, xviii. 517 sq. Cp. N. Graafland, De Minahassa, i. 122; Dumont D’Urville, Voyage autour du Monde et a la recherche de La Perouse, v. 443.

1. F. J. Mone, Geschichte des Heidenthums im nördlichen Europa, i. 188.

2. Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, p. 96. For other instances of priests or representatives of the deity drinking the warm blood of the victim, cp. Tijdschrift v. Nederlandsch Indië, 1849, p. 395; Oldfield, Sketches from Nipal, ii. 296 sq.; Asiatic Researches, iv. 40, 41, 50, 52 (8vo. ed.); Paul Soleillet, L’Afrique Occidentale, p. 123 sq. To snuff up the savour of the sacrifice was similarly supposed to produce inspiration. Tertullian, Apologet. 23.

3. Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, p. 97.

4. Lucian, Bis accus., 1; Tzetzes, Schol ad Lycophr., 6.

5. Vambery, Das Türkenvolk, p. 158.

6. Plutarch, De defect, oracul. 46, 49.

1. D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, ii. 37; Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, xvi. 230 sq.; Panjab Notes and Queries, iii. No. 721; Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay, i. 103; S. Mateer, The Land of Charity, 216; id., Native Life in Travancore, p. 94; A. C. Lyall, Asiatic Studies, p. 14; Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, p. 131; Pallas, Reisen in verschiedenen Provinzen des russischen Reiches, i. 91; Vambery, Das Türkenvolk, p. 485; Erman, Archiv für wissenschaftliche Kunde von Russland, i. 377. When the Rao of Kachh sacrifices a buffalo, water is sprinkled between its horns; if it shakes its head, it is unsuitable; if it nods its head, it is sacrificed. Panjab Notes and Queries, i. No. 911. This is probably a modern misinterpretation of the old custom.

2. Moura, Le Royaume du Cambodge, i. 177 sq.

3. Pausanias, x. 32, 6.

1. Vincendon-Dumoulin et Desgraz, Iles Marquises, pp. 226, 240 sq.

1. Moerenhout, Voyages aux lies du Grand Océan, i. 479; Ellis, Polynesian Researches, iii. 94.

2. Tyerman and Bennet, Journal of Voyages and Travels in the South Sea Islands, China, India, etc., i. 524; cp. p. 529 sq.

3. Tyerman and Bennet, op. cit. i. 529 sq.

4. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, iii. 108.

5. Turner, Samoa, pp. 37, 48, 57, 58, 59, 73.

6. Hazlewood in Erskine’s Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific, p. 246 sq. Cp. Wilkes’s Narrative of the U.S. Exploring Expedition, iii. 87.

1. Kubary, ‘Die Religion der Pelauer,’ in Bastian’s Allerlei aus Volks-und Menschenkunde, i. 30 sqq.

2. F. Valentyn, Oud en nieuw Oost-Indiën, iii. 7 sq.

3. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, iv. 383.

4. Monier Williams, Religious Life and Thought in India, p. 259.

5. The Laws of Manu, vii. 8, trans, by G. Bühler.

1. Monier Williams, op. cit., p. 259 sq.

2. Marshall, Travels among the Todas, pp. 136, 137; cp. pp. 141, 142; Metz, Tribes of the Neilgherry Hills, p. 19 sqq.

3. Allen and Thomson, Narrative of the Expedition to the River Niger in 1841, i. 288.

1. G. Massaja, I miei trentacinque anni di missione neW alia Etiopia (Rome and Milan, 1888), v. 53 sq.

2. E. Aymonier, Notes sur le Laos, p. 141 sq.

3. Robinson, Descriptive Account of Assam, p. 342 sq.; Asiatic Researches, xv. 146.

1. Hue, Souvenirs d’un Voyage dans la Tartarie et le Thibet, i. 279 sqq. ed. 12mo.

2. Hue, op. cit. ii. 279, 347 sq.; Meiners, Geschichte der Religionen, i. 335 sq.; Georgi, Beschreibung aller Nationen des Russischen Reichs, p. 415; A. Erman, Travels in Siberia, ii. 303 sqq.; Journal of the Roy. Geogr. Soc., xxxviii, (1868), 168, 169; Proceedings of the Roy. Geogr. Soc. N.S. vii. (1885) 67. In the Journal Roy. Geogr. Soc., l.c., the Lama in question is called the Lama Gûrû; but the context shows that he is the great Lama of Lhasa.

1. Alex, von. Humboldt, Researches concerning the Institutions and Monuments of the Ancient Inhabitants of America, ii. 106 sqq.; Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iv., 352 sqq.; J. G. Müller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 430 sq.; Martius, Zur Ethnographie Amerikas, p. 455; Bastian, Die Culturländer des alten Amerika, ii. 204 sq.

2. R. W. Felkin, ‘Notes on the Waganda Tribe of Central Africa,’ in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, xiii. 762; C. T. Wilson and R. W. Felkin, Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan, i. 206.

3. ‘The Strange Adventures of Andrew Battel,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, xvi. 330; Proyart, ‘History of Loango, Kakongo, and other Kingdoms in Africa,’ in Pinkerton, xvi. 577; Dapper, Description de l’Afrique, p. 335.

4. Ogilby, Africa, p. 615; Dapper, op. cit. p. 400.

1. Dos Santos, ‘History of Eastern Ethiopia,’ in Pinkerton, Voyages and Travels, xvi. 682, 687 sq.

2. F. S. Arnot, Garengauze; or, Seven Years’ Pioneer Mission Work in Central Africa, London, N.D. (preface dated March 1889), p. 78·

3. MS. notes by E. Beardmore.

4. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, ii. 439.

5. Labat, Relation historique de l’Ethiopie Occidentale, ii. 172– 176.

6. Schol. on Apollonius Rhod. ii. 1248. καὶ ‘Hρόδωρος ξένως περὶ τν δεσμν το Προμηθέως ταῦτα. Εἶναι γὰρ αύτòν Σκυθων βασιλέα φησί· καὶ μὴ δυνάμενον παρέχειν τοîς ύπηκόοις τὰ ἐπιτήδεια, διὰ τòν καλούμενον ’Αετòν ποταμòν έπικλύζειν τὰ πεδία, δεθήναι ύπò τν Σκυθν.

1. H. Hecquard, Reise an der Küste und in das Innere von West Afrika, p. 78.

2. Bastian, Die Deutsche Expedition an der Loango Küste, i. 354, ii. 230.

3. J. Leighton Wilson, West Afrika, p. 93 (German translation).

4. Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii. 5, 14.

5. Snorro Starleson, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway (trans, by S. Laing), saga i. chs. 18, 47. Cp. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p.7; Scheffer, Upsalia, p. 137.

1. C. Russwurm, ‘Aberglaube in Russland,’ in Zeitschrift für Deutsche Mythologie und Sittenkunde, iv. 162; Liebrecht, op. cit., p. 15.

2. Turner, Samoa, p. 304 sq.

3. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 73.

1. Garcilasso de la Vega, First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, bk. ii. chs. 8 and 15 (vol. i, pp. 131, 155, Markham’s Trans.)·

2. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 146.

3. Dennys, Folklore of China, p. 125.

4. Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii, 6, § 5 and 6.

5. C. P. Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion, p. 103 sq. On the worship of the kings see also E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, i. § 52; A. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, p. 91 sqq.; V. von Strauss und Carnen, Die altägyptischen Götter und Göttersagen, p. 467 sqq.

6. Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii. 5, 14; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 73.

1. V. von Strauss und Carnen, op. cit. p. 470.

2. Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion, p. 105. The Babylonian and Assyrian kings seem also to have been regarded as gods; at least the oldest names of the kings on the monuments are preceded by a star, the mark for ‘god.’ But there is no trace in Babylon and Assyria of temples and priests for the worship of the kings. See Tiele, Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte, p. 492 sq.

1. Bastian, Die Deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, ii, 230.

1. ‘Excursion de Μ. Brun-Rollet dans la région supérieure du Nil,’ Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, Paris, 1852, pl. ii, p. 421 sqq.

2. W. Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 474 (Schaffhausen, 1864).

1. J. Moura, Le Royaume du Cambodge, i. 432–436; Aymonier, ‘Notes sur les coutumes et croyances superstitieuses des Cambodgiens,’ in Cochinchine Française, Excursions et Reconnaissances, No. 16, p. 172 sq.; id., Notes sur le Laos, p. 60.

1. Caesar, Bell. Gall. vi. 25.

2. Elton, Origins of English History, pp. 3, 106 sq., 224.

3. W. Helbig, Die Italiker in der Poebene, p. 25 sq.

4. H. Nissen, Italische Landeskunde, p. 431 sqq.

5. Neumann und Partsch, Physikalische Geographie von Griechenland, p. 357 sqq.

1. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 i. 53 sqq.

2. The locus classicus is Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvi. § 249 sqq.

3. Grimm, D. M. i. 56 sqq.

4. Adam of Bremen, Descriptio Insul. Aquil.p. 27.

5. ‘Prisca antiquorum Prutenorum religio,’ in Respublica sive Status Regni Poloniae, Lituaniae, Prussiae, Livoniae, etc. (Elzevir, 1627), p. 321 sq.; Dusburg, Chronicon Prussiae, ed. Hartknoch, p. 79; Hartknoch, Alt-und Neues Preussen, p. 116 sqq.

6. Mathias Michov, ‘De Sarmatia Asiana atque Europe,’ in Novus Orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum (Paris, 1532), pp. 455 sq. 456 [wrongly numbered 445, 446]; Martin Cromer, De origine et rebus gestis Polonorum (Basel, 1568), p. 241.

7. See Bötticher, Der Baumkultus der Hellenen.

1. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xv. § 77; Tacitus, Ann, xiii. 58.

2. Plutarch, Romulus, 20.

3. J. L. Krapf, Travels, Researches, and Missionary Labours during an Eighteen Years’ Residence in Eastern Africa, p. 198.

4. Loubere, Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam, p. 126.

5. Hupe, ‘Over de godsdienst, zeden, enz. der Dajakker’s’ in Tijdschrift voor Neêrland’s Indië, 1846, dl. iii. 158.

1. Merolla, ‘Voyage to Congo’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, xvi. 236.

2. Monier Williams, Religious Life and Thought in India, p. 334 sq.

3. Sir Henry M. Elliot and J. Beames, Memoirs on the History etc. of the Races of the North Western Provinces of India, i. 233.

4. Die gestriegelte Rockenphilosophie (Chemnitz, 1759), p. 239 sq.; U. Jahn, Die deutsche Opfergebräuche bei Ackerbau und Viehzucht, p. 214 sqq.

5. Van Schmid, ‘Aanteekeningen, nopens de zeden, gewoonten en gebruiken, etc., der bevolking van de eilanden Saparoea, etc.’ in Tijdschrift v. Neêrland’s Indië, 1843, dl. ii. 605; Bastian, Indonesien, i. 156.

6. Van Hoëvell, Ambon en meer bepaaldelijk de Oeliasers, p. 62.

7. The Indian Antiquary, i. 170.

1. J. Aubrey, Remaines of Gentilisme, p. 247.

2. Peter Jones’s History of the Ojebway Indians, p. 104.

3. A. Peter, Volksthümliches aus Österreichisch-Schlesien, ii. 30.

4. Bastian, Indonesien, i. 154; cp. id., Die Völker des östlichen Asien, ii. 457 sq., iii. 251 sq., iv. 42 sq.

5. Loubere, Siam, p. 126.

6. Turner, Samoa, p. 63.

7. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 35 sq.

8. Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 280.

1. Blumentritt, ‘Der Ahnencultus und die religiösen Anschauungen der Malaien des Philippinen-Archipels,’ in Mittheilungen der Wiener Geogr, Gesellschaft, 1882, p. 165 sq.

2. Landes, ‘Contes et légendes annamites,’ No. 9, in Cochinchine Française, Excursions et Reconnaissances, No. 20, p. 310.

3. Kubary in Bastian’s Allerlei aus Mensch-und Volkenkunde, i. 52.

4. Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 25; Bastain, Völkerstämme am Brahmaputra, p. 37.

5. Journal R. Asiatic Society, vi. (1843) 2 9·

6. Bastian, Indonesien, i. 17.

7. Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, pp. 186, 188; cp. Bastian, Völkerstämme am Brahmaputra, p. 9.

1. Dalton, op. cit. p. 33; Bastian, op. cit. p. 516. Cp.
W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, i, 125.

2. Van Hasselt, Volksbeschrijving van Midden-Sumatra, p. 156.

3. Handbook of Folklore, p. 19 (proof).

4. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 83.

5. Erasmus Stella, ‘De Borussiae antiquitatibus,’ in Novus Orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum, p. 510; Lasiczki (Lasicius), ‘De diis Samagitarum caeterorumque Sarmatarum,’ in Respublica sive Status Regni Poloniae, Lituaniae, Prussiae, Livoniae, etc. (Elzevir, 1627), p. 299 sq. There is a good and cheap reprint of Lasiczki’s work by W. Mannhardt in Magazin herausgegeben von der Lettisch-Literärischen Gesellschaft, xiv, 82 sqq. (Mitau, 1868).

1. Simon Grünau, Preussische Chronik, ed. Perlbach (Leipzig, 1876), p. 89; ‘Prisca antiquorum Prutenorum religio,’ in Respublica sive Status Regni Poloniae etc., p. 321.

2. B. Hagen, ‘Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Battareligion,’ in Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-Land-en Volkenkunde, xxviii. 530 note.

3. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, i. 134.

4. Matthias Michov, in Novus Orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum, p. 457.

5. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 i. 497; cp. ii. 540, 541.

6. Max Buch, Die Wotjäken, p. 124.

7. Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, p. 116.

8. Cato, De agri cultura, 139.

1. Henzen, Acta fratrum arvalium (Berlin, 1874), Ρ. 138.

2. On the representations of Silvanus, the Roman wood-god, see Jordan in Preller’s Römische Mythologie,3 i. 393 note; 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.

1. Aeneas Sylvius, Opera (Bâle, 1571), p. 418 [wrongly numbered 420]; cp. Erasmus Stella, ‘De Borussiae antiquitatibus,’ in Novus Orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum, p. 510.

2. Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 186.

3. Aymonier in Excursions et Reconnaissances, No. 16. p. 175 sq.

4. See above, pp. 11, 19.

5. Above, p. 14.

6. Mannhardt, Β. Κ. pp. 158, 159, 170, 197, 214, 351, 514.

7. Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 188.

8. Labat, Voyage du Chevalier des Marchais en Guinée, Isles voisines, et à Cayenne (Paris, 1730), i. 338.

1. L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden, p. 266.

2. Mannhardt, B. K. p. 190 sqq.

3. Mannhardt, A. W. F. p. 212 sqq.

4. Η. Low, Sarawak, p. 274.

1. T. H. Lewin, Wild Races of South-eastern India, p. 270.

2. J. Mackenzie, Ten years north of the Orange River, p. 385.

3. Rev J. Macdonald, MS. notes.

4. Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, p. 103 sq.

1. Biddulph, op. cit., p. 106 sq.

2. Mannhardt, B. K. p. 161; E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben, p. 397; A. Peter, Volksthümliches aus Österreichisch-Schlesien, ii, 286; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen, p. 210.

3. Quoted by Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 227, Bohn’s ed.

4. Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 174.

1. Holzmayer, ‘Osiliana,’ Verhandlungen der Estnischen Gesell, zu Dorpat, vii. 10 sq.; Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 407 sq.

2. Potocki, Voyage dans les steps d’ Astrakhan et du Caucase (Paris, 1829), i. 309.

3. Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 163 sqq. To his authorities add, for Sardinia, R. Tennant, Sardinia and its Resources (Rome and London, 1885), p. 185 sq.

4. Radloff, Proben der Volkslitteratur der nördlichen Tiirkischen Stämme, v. 2.

1. Mannhardt, B. K. p. 51 sq.

2. Merolla, ‘Voyage to Congo,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, xvi. 236 sq.

3. Bötticher, Der Baumkultus der Hellenen, p. 30 sq.

4. Quoted by Brand, Popular Antiquities, i, 246 (ed. Bohn).

1. Dyer, British Popular Customs, p. 254.

2. Borlase, cited by Brand, op. cit., i. 222.

3. Brand, op. cit. i. 212 sq.

4. Dyer, Popular British Customs, p. 233.

5. Chambers, Book of Days, i. 578; Dyer, op. cit. p. 237 sq.

6. Dyer, op. cit. p. 243.

1. E. Cortet, Fêtes religieuses, p. 167 sqq.

2. Revue des Traditions populaires, ii. 200.

3. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 234 sq.

4. A. Kuhn, Märkische Sagen und Märchen, p. 315.

1. Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 162.

2. L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden, p. 235.

1. L. Lloyd, op. cit. p. 257 sqq.

2. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen, p. 308 sq.

3. Hone, Every-day Book, i. 547 sqq.; Chambers, Book of Days, i. 571.

1. Quoted by Brand, op. cit. i. 237.

2. Id., op. cit. i. 235.

3. Mannhardt, Β. K. p. 169 sq. note.

4. Hone, Every-day Book, ii, 597 sq.

1. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen, p. 217; Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 566.

2. Birlinger, Völksthümliches aus Schwaben, ii, 74 sq.; Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 566.

3. Aristophanes, Plutus, 1054; Mannhardt, A. W. F. p. 222 sq.

1. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen, p. 86 sqq.; Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 156.

2. Chambers, Book of Days, i. 573.

3. Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 312.

1. Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 313.

2. Ib. p. 314.

3. Bavaria, Landes-und Volkskunde des Königreichs Bayern, iii. 357: Mannhardt, Β. K. p. 312 sq.

4. Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 313 sq.

1. Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 261.

1. Mannhardt, B. K p. 315 sq.

1. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 234.

2. Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 318.

3. Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 318; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 657.

4. Mannhardt, B. K. p. 320; Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, p. 211.

1. Mannhardt, B. K. p. 322; Hone, Every-day Book, i. 583 sqq.; Dyer, British Popular Customs, p. 230 sq.

2. Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 323.

3. Ib.

4. Birlinger, Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, ii. 114 sq.; Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 325.

1. Mannhardt, B. K. p. 341 sq.

2. Kuhn und Schwartz, Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche, p. 380.

3. Kuhn und Schwartz, op. cit. p. 384; Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 342.

1. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen, p. 260 sq.; Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 342 sq.

2. Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 347 sq.; Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, p. 203.

1. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen, p. 253 sqq.

2. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen, p. 262; Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 353 sq.

3. Β. Κ. p. 355.

4. Above, p. 16.

1. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen, p. 93; Mannhardt, Β. K. p. 344.

2. Mannhardt, B. K. p. 343 sq.

3. Dyer, British Popular Customs, p. 270 sq.

4. Mannhardt, Β. K. p. 344 sq.; Cortet, Fêtes religieuses, p. 160 sqq.; Monnier, Traditions populaires comparées, p. 282 sqq.; Bérenger-Féraud, Reminiscences populaires de la Provence, p. 1 sqq

5. Above, p. 52.

6. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen, p. 265 sq.; Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 422.

7. Monnier, Traditions populaires comparées, p. 304; Mannhardt, Β. K. p. 423.

1. Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 233 sq. Bohn’s ed.; Mannhardt, Β. K. p. 424.

2. E. Sommer, Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Sachsen und Thüringen, p. 151 sq.; Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 431 sq.

1. This custom was told to Mannhardt by a French prisoner in the war of 1870–71, Β. Κ. p. 434.

2. Mannhardt, B. K. p. 434 sq.

3. Ib. p. 435.

1. Martin, ‘Description of the Western Islands of Scotland,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, iii, 613; Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 436.

2. Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, from the MSS. of John Ramsay of Ochtertyre. Edited by Alex. Allardyce (Edinburgh, 1888), ii. 447.

3. Kuhn, Märkische Sagen und Märchen, p. 318 sqq.; Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 437.

1. Mannhardt, B. K. p. 438.

2. Monnier, Traditions populaires comparées, p. 283 sq.; Cortet, Fêtes religieuses, p. 162 sq.; Mannhardt, B. K. p. 439 sq.

3. Above, pp. 60 sqq., 73.

1. See especially his Antike Wald-und Feldkulte.

1. Pausanias, ix. 3; Plutarch, ap. Eusebius, Praepar. Evang: iii. 1 sq.

2. Above, p. 66 sq.

3. Above, p. 68.

4. Β. K. p. 177.

5. Β. Κ. p. 177 sq.

6. Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 318, Bohn’s ed.; Β. Κ. p. 178.

7. Hone, Every-day Book, ii. 595 sq.; Β. Κ. p. 178.

1. Pausanias, viii. 42.

2. Once upon a time the Wotjaks of Russia, being distressed by a series of bad harvests, ascribed the calamity to the wrath of one of their gods, Keremet, at being unmarried. So they went in procession to the sacred grove, riding on gaily-decked waggons, as they do when they are fetching home a bride. At the sacred grove they feasted all night, and next morning they cut in the grove a square piece of turf which they took home with them. ‘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 mukylc’ in, the earth-wife, in order that she might influence him for good.’ – Max Buch, Die Wotjäken, eine ethnologische Studie (Stuttgart, 1882), p. 137.

1. At Cnossus in Crete, Diodorus, v. 72; at Samos, Lactantius, Instit.i. 17; at Athens, Photius, sv. ἱερòν γάμοv; Etymolog. Magn. sv. ἱερομνήμονες, p. 468.52.

2. Iliad, xiv. 347 sqq.

3. Demosthenes, Neaer. § 73 sqq.p. 1369 sq.; Hesychius, svv. Διονύσου γάμος and γεραραί; Etymol. Magn, sv. γεραἱραι; Pollux, viii. 108; Aug. Mommsen, Heortologie, p. 357 sqq.; Hermann, Gottesdienstliche Alterthümer, 2 § 32.15, § 58.11 sqq.

4. Above, p. 6.

5. Above, p. 80.

1. Above, p. 81 sq.

2. Preller, Griech. Mythol.3 i. 559.

3. Hyginus, Astronomica, i. 5.

4. Servius on Virgil, Georg, iii. 332, nam, ut diximus, et omnis quercus Jovi est consecrate et omnis lucus Dianae.

5. Roscher’s Lexikon d. Griech n. Röm, Mythologie, c. 1005.

1. See above, p. 4. For Diana in this character, see Roscher, op. cit. c. 1007.

2. Roscher, c. 1006 sq.

3. Castren, Finnische Mythologie, p. 97.

4. Mathias Michov, ‘De Sarmatia Asiana atque Europen,’ in Novus Orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum, p. 457·

5. Livy, i. 45; Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 4.

6. Virgil, Aen. viii. 600 sq., with Servius’s note.

7. Castren, op. cit. p. 97 sq.

8. Above, p. 4 sq.

9. Above, p. 57 sq.

10. Above, p. 5.

1. Above, p. 61.

2. Castren, Finnische Mythologie, pp. 92, 95.

1. Historic. Roman. Fragm. ed. Peter, p. 52 (first ed.).

CHAPTER TWO

The Perils of the Soul

‘O liebe flüchtige Seeleern

Dir ist so bang und weh!’

– HEINE

Royal and Priestly Taboos

IN the preceding chapter we saw that in early society the king or priest is often thought to be endowed with supernatural powers or to be an incarnation of a deity; in consequence of which the course of nature is supposed to be more or less under his control, and he is held responsible for bad weather, failure of the crops, and similar calamities. Thus far it appears to be assumed that the king’s power over nature, like that over his subjects and slaves, is exerted through definite acts of will; and therefore if drought, famine, pestilence, or storms arise, the people attribute the misfortune to the negligence or guilt of their king, and punish him accordingly with stripes and bonds, or, if he remains obdurate, with deposition and death. Sometimes, however, the course of nature, while regarded as dependent on the king, is supposed to be partly independent of his will. His person is considered, if we may express it so, as the dynamical centre of the universe, from which lines of force radiate to all quarters of the heaven; so that any motion of his – the turning of his head, the lifting of his hand – instantaneously affects and may seriously disturb some part of nature. He is the point of support on which hangs the balance of the world; and the slightest irregularity on his part may overthrow the delicate equipoise. The greatest care must, therefore, be taken both by and of him; and his whole life, down to its minutest details, must be so regulated that no act of his, voluntary or involuntary, may disarrange or upset the established order of nature. Of this class of monarchs the Mikado or Dairi, the spiritual emperor of Japan, is a typical example. He is an incarnation of the sun goddess, the deity who rules the universe, gods and men included; once a year all the gods wait upon him and spend a month at his court. During that month, the name of which means ‘without gods,’ no one frequents the temples, for they are believed to be deserted.[1]

The following description of the Mikado’s mode of life was written about two hundred years ago[2]–

‘Even to this day the princes descended of this family, more particularly those who sit on the throne, are looked upon as persons most holy in themselves, and as Popes by birth. And, in order to preserve these advantageous notions in the minds of their subjects, they are obliged to take an uncommon care of their sacred persons, and to do such things, which, examined according to the customs of other nations, would be thought ridiculous and impertinent. It will not be improper to give a few instances of it. He thinks that it would be very prejudicial to his dignity and holiness to touch the ground with his feet; for this reason, when he intends to go anywhere, he must be carried thither on men’s shoulders. Much less will they suffer that he should expose his sacred person to the open air, and the sun is not thought worthy to shine on his head. There is such a holiness ascribed to all the parts of his body, that he dares to cut off neither his hair, nor his beard, nor his nails. However, lest he should grow too dirty, they may clean him in the night when he is asleep; because, they say, that which is taken from his body at that time hath been stolen from him, and that such a theft doth not prejudice his holiness or dignity. In ancient times, he was obliged to sit on the throne for some hours every morning, with the imperial crown on his head, but to sit altogether like a statue, without stirring either hands or feet, head or eyes, nor indeed any part of his body, because, by this means, it was thought that he could preserve peace and tranquillity in his empire; for if, unfortunately, he turned himself on one side or the other, or if he looked a good while towards any part of his dominions, it was apprehended that war, famine, fire, or some great misfortune was near at hand to desolate the country. But it having been afterwards discovered that the imperial crown was the palladium which by its mobility could preserve peace in the empire, it was thought expedient to deliver his imperial person, consecrated only to idleness and pleasures, from this burthensome duty, and therefore the crown is at present placed on the throne for some hours every morning. His victuals must be dressed every time in new pots, and served at table in new dishes: both are very clean and neat, but made only of common clay; that without any considerable expense they may be laid aside, or broken, after they have served once. They are generally broken, for fear they should come into the hands of laymen, for they believe religiously that if any layman should presume to eat his food out of these sacred dishes, it would swell and inflame his mouth and throat. The like ill effect is dreaded from the Dairi’s sacred habits; for they believe that if a layman should wear them, without the Emperor’s express leave or command, they would occasion swellings and pains in all parts of his body.’ To the same effect an earlier account of the Mikado says: ‘It was considered as a shameful degradation for him even to touch the ground with his foot. The sun and moon were not even permitted to shine upon his head. None of the superfluities of the body were ever taken from him, neither his hair, his beard, nor his nails were cut. Whatever he eat was dressed in new vessels.’[1]

Similar priestly or rather divine kings are found, at a lower level of barbarism, on the west coast of Africa. At Shark Point near Cape Padron, in Lower Guinea, lives the priestly king Kukulu, alone in a wood. He may not touch a woman nor leave his house; indeed he may not even quit his chair, in which he is obliged to sleep sitting, for if he lay down no wind would arise and navigation would be stopped. He regulates storms, and in general maintains a wholesome and equable state of the atmosphere.[1] In the kingdom of Congo (West Africa) there was a supreme pontiff called Chitomé or Chitombé, whom the negroes regarded as a god on earth and all powerful in heaven. Hence before they would taste the new crops they offered him the first-fruits, fearing that manifold misfortunes would befall them if they broke this rule. When he left his residence to visit other places within his jurisdiction, all married people had to observe strict continence the whole time he was out; for it was supposed that any act of incontinence would prove fatal to him. And if he were to die a natural death, they thought that the world would perish, and the earth, which he alone sustained by his power and merit, would immediately be annihilated.[2] Amongst the semi-barbarous nations of the New World, at the date of the Spanish conquest, there were found hierarchies or theocracies like those of Japan. Some of these we have already noticed.[3] But the high pontiff of the Zapotecs in Southern Mexico appears to have presented a still closer parallel to the Mikado. A powerful rival to the king himself, this spiritual lord governed Yopaa, one of the chief cities of the kingdom, with absolute dominion. It is impossible, we are told, to overrate the reverence in which he was held. He was looked on as a god whom the earth was not worthy to hold nor the sun to shine upon. He profaned his sanctity if he even touched the ground with his foot. The officers who bore his palanquin on their shoulders were members of the highest families; he hardly deigned to look on anything thing around him; and all who met him fell with their faces to the earth, fearing that death would overtake them if they saw even his shadow. A rule of continence was regularly imposed on the Zapotec priests, especially upon the high pontiff; but ‘on certain days in each year, which were generally celebrated with feasts and dances, it was customary for the high priest to become drunk. While in this state, seeming to belong neither to heaven nor to earth, one of the most beautiful of the virgins consecrated to the service of the gods was brought to him.’ If the child she bore him was a son, he was brought up as a prince of the blood, and the eldest son succeeded his father on the pontifical throne.[1] The supernatural powers attributed to this pontiff are not specified, but probably they resembled those of the Mikado and Chitomé.

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

Of the supernaturally endowed kings of Loango it is said that the more powerful a king is, the more taboos is he bound to observe; they regulate all his actions, his walking and his standing, his eating and drinking, his sleeping and waking.[1] To these restraints the heir to the throne is subject from infancy; but as he advances in life the number of abstinences and ceremonies which he must observe increases, ‘until at the moment that he ascends the throne he is lost in the ocean of rites and taboos.’[1] The kings of Egypt, as we have seen,[2] were worshipped as gods, and the routine of their daily life was regulated in every detail by precise and unvarying rules. ‘The life of the kings of Egypt,’ says Diodorus,[3] ‘was not like that of other monarchs who are irresponsible and may do just what they choose; on the contrary, everything was fixed for them by law, not only their official duties, but even the details of their daily life … The hours both of day and night were arranged at which the king had to do, not what he pleased, but what was prescribed for him … For not only were the times appointed at which he should transact public business or sit in judgment; but the very hours for his walking and bathing and sleeping with his wife, and, in short, performing every act of life, were all settled. Custom enjoined a simple diet; the only flesh he might eat was veal and goose, and he might only drink a prescribed quantity of wine.’ Of the taboos imposed on priests, the rules of life observed by the Flamen Dialis at Rome furnish a striking example. As the worship of Virbius at Nemi was conducted, as we have seen,[4] by a Flamen, who may possibly have been the King of the Wood himself, and whose mode of life may have resembled that of the Roman Flamen, these rules have a special interest for us. They were such as the following: The Flamen Dialis might not ride or even touch a horse, nor see an army under arms, nor wear a ring which was not broken, nor have a knot on any part of his garments; no fire except a sacred fire might be taken out of his house; he might not touch wheaten flour or leavened bread; he might not touch or even name a goat, a dog, raw meat, beans, and ivy; he might not walk under a vine; the feet of his bed had to be daubed with mud; his hair could be cut only by a free man and with a bronze knife, and his hair and nails when cut had to be buried under a lucky tree; he might not touch a dead body nor enter a place where one was burned; he might not see work being done on holy days; he might not be uncovered in the open air; if a man in bonds were taken into his house, he had to be unbound and the cords had to be drawn up through a hole in the roof and so let down into the street. His wife, the Flaminica, had to observe nearly the same rules, and others of her own besides. She might not ascend more than three steps of the kind of staircase called Greek; at a certain festival she might not comb her hair; the leather of her shoes might not be made from a beast that had died a natural death, but only from one that had been slain or sacrificed; if she heard thunder she was tabooed till she had offered an expiatory sacrifice.[1]

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

To take examples. We saw[2] that in Cambodia it is often necessary to force the kingships of Fire and Water upon the reluctant successors, and that in Savage Island the monarchy actually came to an end because at last no one could be induced to accept the dangerous distinction.[3] In some parts of West Africa, when the king dies, a family council is secretly held to determine his successor. He on whom the choice falls is suddenly seized, bound, and thrown into the fetish-house, where he is kept in durance till he consents to accept the crown. Sometimes the heir finds means of evading the honour which it is sought to thrust upon him; a ferocious chief has been known to go about constantly armed, resolute to resist by force any attempt to set him on the throne.[1] The Mikados of Japan seem early to have resorted to the expedient of transferring the honours and burdens of supreme power to their infant children; and the rise of the Tycoons, long the temporal sovereigns of the country, is traced to the abdication of a certain Mikado in favour of his three-year-old son. The sovereignty having been wrested by a usurper from the infant prince, the cause of the Mikado was championed by Yoritomo, a man of spirit and conduct, who overthrew the usurper and restored to the Mikado the shadow, while he retained for himself the substance, of power. He bequeathed to his descendants the dignity he had won, and thus became the founder of the line of Tycoons. Down to the latter half of the sixteenth century the Tycoons were active and efficient rulers; but the same fate overtook them which had befallen the Mikados; entangled in the same inextricable web of custom and law, they degenerated into mere puppets, hardly stirring from their palaces and occupied in a perpetual round of empty ceremonies, while the real business of government was managed by the council of state.[2] In Tonquin the monarchy ran a similar course. Living like his predecessors in effeminacy and sloth, the king was driven from the throne by an ambitious adventurer named Mack, who from a fisherman had risen to be Grand Mandarin. But the king’s brother Tring put down the usurper and restored the king, retaining, however, for himself and his descendants the dignity of general of all the forces. Thenceforward the kings or dovas, though vested with the title and pomp of sovereignty, ceased to govern. While they lived secluded in their palaces, all real political power was wielded by the hereditary generals or chovas.[1] The custom regularly observed by the Tahitian kings of abdicating on the birth of a son, who was immediately proclaimed sovereign and received his father’s homage, may perhaps have originated, like the similar custom occasionally practised by the Mikados, in a wish to shift to other shoulders the irksome burden of royalty; for in Tahiti as elsewhere the sovereign was subjected to a system of vexatious restrictions.[2] In Mangaia, another Polynesian island, religious and civil authority were lodged in separate hands, spiritual functions being discharged by a line of hereditary kings, while the temporal government was entrusted from time to time to a victorious war-chief, whose investiture, however, had to be completed by the king. To the latter were assigned the best lands, and he received daily offerings of the choicest food.[3] American examples of the partition of authority between an emperor and a pope have already been cited from the early history of Mexico and Colombia.[4]

The Nature of the Soul

But if the object of the taboos observed by a divine king or priest is to preserve his life, the question arises. How is their observance supposed to effect this end? To understand this we must know the nature of the danger which threatens the king’s life, and which it is the intention of the taboos to guard against. We must, therefore, ask: What does early man understand by death? To what causes does he attribute it? And how does he think it may be guarded against?

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

Addressing some Australian blacks, a European missionary said, ‘I am not one, as you think, but two.’ Upon this they laughed. ‘You may laugh as much as you like,’ continued the missionary, ‘I tell you that I am two in one; this great body that you see is one; within that there is another little one which is not visible. The great body dies, and is buried, but the little body flies away when the great one dies.’ To this some of the blacks replied, ‘Yes, yes. We also are two, we also have a little body within the breast.’ On being asked where the little body went after death, some said it went behind the bush, others said it went into the sea, and some said they did not know.[1] The Hurons thought that the soul had a head and body, arms and legs; in short, that it was a complete little model of the man himself.[2] The Eskimos believe that ‘the soul exhibits the same shape as the body it belongs to, but is of a more subtle and ethereal nature.’[3] So exact is the resemblance of the mannikin to the man, in other words, of the soul to the body, that, as there are fat bodies and thin bodies, so there are fat souls and thin souls;[1] as there are heavy bodies and light bodies, long bodies and short bodies, so there are heavy souls and light souls, long souls and short souls. The people of Nias (an island to the west of Sumatra) think that every man, before he is born, is asked how long or how heavy a soul he would like, and a soul of the desired weight or length is measured out to him. The heaviest soul ever given out weighs about ten grammes. The length of a man’s life is proportioned to the length of his soul; children who die young had short souls.[2] Sometimes, however, as we shall see, the human soul is conceived not in human but in animal form.

The soul is commonly supposed to escape by the natural openings of the body, especially the mouth and nostrils. Hence in Celebes they sometimes fasten fishhooks to a sick man’s nose, navel, and feet, so that if his soul should try to escape it may be hooked and held fast.[3] One of the ‘properties’ of a Haida medicine-man is a hollow bone, in which he bottles up departing souls, and so restores them to their owners.[4] The Marquesans used to hold the mouth and nose of a dying man, in order to keep him in life, by preventing his soul from escaping.[5] When any one yawns in their presence the Hindus always snap their thumbs, believing that this will hinder the soul from issuing through the open mouth.[6] The Itonamas in South America seal up the eyes, nose, and mouth of a dying person, in case his ghost should get out and carry off other people.[7] In Southern Celebes, to prevent the escape of a woman’s soul at childbirth, the nurse ties a band as tightly as possible round the body of the expectant mother.[1] And lest the soul of the babe should escape and be lost as soon as it is born, the Alfoers of Celebes, when a birth is about to take place, are careful to close every opening in the house, even the keyhole; and they stop up every chink and cranny in the walls. Also they tie up the mouths of all animals inside and outside the house, for fear one of them might swallow the child’s soul. For a similar reason all persons present in the house, even the mother herself, are obliged to keep their mouths shut the whole time the birth is taking place. When the question was put, Why they did not hold their noses also, lest the child’s soul should get into one of them? the answer was that breath being exhaled as well as inhaled through the nostrils, the soul would be expelled before it could have time to settle down.[2]

Often the soul is conceived as a bird ready to take flight. This conception has probably left traces in most languages,[3] and it lingers as a metaphor in poetry. But what is metaphor to a modern European poet was sober earnest to his savage ancestor, and is still so to many people. The Malays carry out the conception in question to its practical conclusion. If the soul is a bird on the wing, it may be attracted by rice, and so prevented from taking its perilous flight. Thus in Java when a child is placed on the ground for the first time (a moment which uncultured people seem to regard as especially dangerous), it is put in a hencoop and the mother makes a clucking sound, as if she were calling hens.[4] Amongst the Battas of Sumatra, when a man returns from a dangerous enterprise, grains of rice are placed on his head, and these grains are called padiruma tondi, that is, ‘means to make the soul (tondi) stay at home.’ In Java also rice is placed on the head of persons who have escaped a great danger or have returned home unexpectedly after it had been supposed that they were lost.[1] In Celebes they think that a bridegroom’s soul is apt to fly away at marriage, so coloured rice is scattered over him to induce it to stay. And, in general, at festivals in South Celebes rice is strewed on the head of the person in whose honour the festival is held, with the object of detaining his soul, which at such times is in especial danger of being lured away by envious demons.[2]

The soul of a sleeper is supposed to wander away from his body and actually to visit the very places of which he dreams. But this absence of the soul has its dangers, for if from any cause it should be permanently detained away from the body, the person, deprived of his soul, must die.[3] Many causes may detain the sleeper’s soul. Thus, his soul may meet the soul of another sleeper and the two souls may fight; if a Guinea negro wakens with sore bones in the morning, he thinks that his soul has been thrashed by another soul in sleep.[4] Or it may meet the soul of a person just deceased and be carried off by it; hence in the Aru Islands the inmates of a house will not sleep the night after a death has taken place in it, because the soul of the deceased is supposed to be still in the house and they fear to meet it in a dream.[5] Again, the soul may be prevented by physical force from returning. The Santals tell how a man fell asleep, and growing very thirsty, his soul, in the form of a lizard, left his body and entered a pitcher of water to drink. Just then the owner of the pitcher happened to cover it; so the soul could not return to the body and the man died. While his friends were preparing to burn the body some one uncovered the pitcher to get water. The lizard thus escaped and returned to the body, which immediately revived; so the man rose up and asked his friends why they were weeping. They told him they thought he was dead and were about to burn his body. He said he had been down a well to get water but had found it hard to get out and had just returned. So they saw it all.[1] A similar story is reported from Transylvania as follows. In the account of a witch’s trial at Mühlbach last century it is said that a woman had engaged two men to work in her vineyard. After noon they all lay down to rest as usual. An hour later the men got up and tried to waken the woman, but could not. She lay motionless with her mouth wide open. They came back at sunset and still she lay like a corpse. Just at that moment a big fly came buzzing past, which one of the men caught and shut up in his leathern pouch. Then they tried again to waken the woman but could not. Afterwards they let out the fly; it flew straight into the woman’s mouth and she awoke. On seeing this the men had no further doubt that she was a witch.[2]

It is a common rule with primitive people not to waken a sleeper, because his soul is away and might not have time to get back; so if the man wakened without his soul, he would fall sick. If it is absolutely necessary to waken a sleeper, it must be done very gradually, to allow the soul time to return.[1] In Bombay it is thought equivalent to murder to change the appearance of a sleeper, as by painting his face in fantastic colours or giving moustaches to a sleeping woman. For when the soul returns, it will not be able to recognise its body and the person will die.[2]The Servians believe that the soul of a sleeping witch often leaves her body in the form of a butterfly. If during its absence her body be turned round, so that her feet are placed where her head was before, the butterfly soul will not find its way back into her body through the mouth, and the witch will die.[3]

But in order that a man’s soul should quit his body, it is not necessary that he should be asleep. It may quit him in his waking hours, and then sickness or (if the absence is prolonged) death will be the result. Thus the Mongols sometimes explain sickness by supposing that the patient’s soul is absent, and either does not care to return to its body or cannot find the way back. To secure the return of the soul it is therefore necessary on the one hand to make its body as attractive as possible, and on the other hand to show it the way home. To make the body attractive all the sick man’s best clothes and most valued possessions are placed beside him; he is washed, incensed, and made as comfortable as possible; and all his friends march thrice round the hut calling out the sick man’s name and coaxing his soul to return. To help the soul to find its way back a coloured cord is stretched from the patient’s head to the door of the hut. The priest in his robes reads a list of the horrors of hell and the dangers incurred by souls which wilfully absent themselves from their bodies. Then turning to the assembled friends and the patient he asks, ‘Is it come?’ All answer Yes, and bowing to the returning soul throw seed over the sick man. The cord which guided the soul back is then rolled up and placed round the patient’s neck, who must wear it for seven days without taking it off. No one may frighten or hurt him, lest his soul, not yet familiar with its body, should again take flight.[1] In an Indian story a king conveys his soul into the dead body of a Brahman, and a hunchback conveys his soul into the deserted body of the king. The hunchback is now king and the king is a Brahman. However, the hunchback is induced to show his skill by transferring his soul to the dead body of a parrot, and the king seizes the opportunity to regain possession of his own body.[2] In another Indian story a Brahman reanimates the dead body of a king by conveying his own soul into it. Meantime the Brahman’s body has been burnt, and his soul is obliged to remain in the body of the king.[3]

The departure of the soul is not always voluntary. It may be extracted from the body against its will by ghosts, demons, or sorcerers. Hence, when a funeral is passing the house, the Karens of Burma tie their children with a special kind of string to a particular part of the house, in case the souls of the children should leave their bodies and go into the corpse which is passing. The children are kept tied in this way until the corpse is out of sight.[4] And after the corpse has been laid in the grave, but before the earth has been filled in, the mourners and friends range themselves round the grave, each with a bamboo split lengthwise in one hand and a little stick in the other; each man thrusts his bamboo into the grave, and drawing the stick along the groove of the bamboo points out to his soul that in this way it may easily climb up out of the grave. While the earth is being filled in, the bamboos are kept out of the way, lest the souls should be in them, and so should be inadvertently buried with the earth as it is being thrown into the grave; and when the people leave the spot they carry away the bamboos, begging their souls to come with them.[1] Further, on returning from the grave each Karen provides himself with three little hooks made of branches of trees, and calling his spirit to follow him, at short intervals, as he returns, he makes a motion as if hooking it, and then thrusts the hook into the ground. This is done to prevent the soul of the living from staying behind with the soul of the dead.[2] When a mother dies leaving a young baby, the Burmese think that the ‘butterfly’ or soul of the baby follows that of the mother, and that if it is not recovered the child must die. So a wise woman is called in to get back the baby’s soul. She places a mirror near the corpse, and on the mirror a piece of feathery cotton down. Holding a cloth in her open hands at the foot of the mirror, she with wild words entreats the mother not to take with her the ‘butterfly’ or soul of her child, but to send it back. As the gossamer down slips from the face of the mirror she catches it in the cloth and tenderly places it on the baby’s breast. The same ceremony is sometimes observed when one of two children that have played together dies, and is thought to be luring away the soul of its playmate to the spirit-land. It is sometimes performed also for a bereaved husband or wife.[3] In the Island of Keisar (East Indies) it is thought imprudent to go near a grave at night, lest the ghosts should catch and keep the soul of the passer-by.[4] The Key Islanders believe that the souls of their forefathers, angry at not receiving food, make people sick by detaining their souls. So they lay offerings of food on the grave and beg their ancestors to allow the soul of the sick to return or to drive it home speedily if it should be lingering by the way.[1]

In Bolang Mongondo, a district in the west of Celebes, all sickness is ascribed to the ancestral spirits who have carried off the patient’s soul. The object therefore is to bring back the patient’s soul and restore it to the sufferer. An eye-witness has thus described the attempted cure of a sick boy. The priestesses, who acted as physicians, made a doll of cloth and fastened it to the point of a spear, which an old woman held upright. Round this doll the priestesses danced, uttering charms, and chirruping as when one calls a dog. Then the old woman lowered the point of the spear a little, so that the priestesses could reach the doll. By this time the soul of the sick boy was supposed to be in the doll, having been brought into it by the incantations. So the priestesses approached it cautiously on tiptoe and caught the soul in the many-coloured cloths which they had been waving in the air. Then they laid the soul on the boy’s head, that is, they wrapped his head in the cloth in which the soul was supposed to be, and stood still for some moments with great gravity, holding their hands on the patient’s head. Suddenly there was a jerk, the priestesses whispered and shook their heads, and the cloth was taken off – the soul had escaped. The priestesses gave chase to it, running round and round the house, clucking and gesticulating as if they were driving hens into a poultry-yard. At last they recaptured the soul at the foot of the stair and restored it to its owner as before.[2] Much in the same way an Australian medicine-man will sometimes bring the lost soul of a sick man into a puppet and restore it to the patient by pressing the puppet to his breast.[3] In Uea, one of the Loyalty Islands, the souls of the dead seem to have been credited with the power of stealing the souls of the living. For when a man was sick the soul-doctor would go with a large troop of men and women to the graveyard. Here the men played on flutes and the women whistled softly to lure the soul home. After this had gone on for some time they formed in procession and moved homewards, the flutes playing and the women whistling all the way, leading back the wandering soul and driving it gently along with open palms. On entering the patient’s dwelling they commanded the soul in a loud voice to enter his body.[1] In Madagascar, when a sick man had lost his soul, his friends went to the family tomb, and making a hole in it, begged the soul of the patient’s father to give them a soul for his son, who had none. So saying they clapped a bonnet on the hole, and folding up the soul in the bonnet, brought it to the patient, who put the bonnet on his head, and thus received a new soul or got back his old one.[2]

Often the abduction of a man’s soul is set down to demons. The Annamites believe that when a man meets a demon and speaks to him, the demon inhales the man’s breath and soul.[3] When a Dyak is about to leave a forest through which he has been walking alone, he never forgets to ask the demons to give him back his soul, for it may be that some forest-devil has carried it off. For the abduction of a soul may take place without its owner being aware of his loss, and it may happen either while he is awake or asleep.[4] In the Moluccas when a man is unwell it is thought that some devil has carried away his soul to the tree, mountain, or hill where he (the devil) dwells. A sorcerer having pointed out the devil’s abode, the friends of the patient carry thither cooked rice, fruit, fish, raw eggs, a hen, a chicken, a silken robe, gold, armlets, etc. Having set out the food in order they pray, saying; ‘We come to offer to you, Ο devil, this offering of food, clothes, gold, etc.; take it and release the soul of the patient for whom we pray. Let it return to his body and he who now is sick shall be made whole.’ Then they eat a little and let the hen loose as a ransom for the soul of the patient; also they put down the raw eggs; but the silken robe, the gold, and the armlets they take home with them. As soon as they are come to the house they place a flat bowl containing the offerings which have been brought back at the sick man’s head, and say to him: ‘Now is your soul released, and you shall fare well and live to gray hairs on the earth.’[1] A more modern account from the same region describes how the friend of the patient, after depositing his offerings on the spot where the missing soul is supposed to be, calls out thrice the name of the sick person, adding, ‘Come with me, come with me.’ Then he returns, making a motion with a cloth as if he had caught the soul in it. He must not look to right or left or speak a word to any one he meets, but must go straight to the patient’s house. At the door he stands, and calling out the sick person’s name, asks whether he is returned. Being answered from within that he is returned, he enters and lays the cloth in which he has caught the soul on the patient’s throat, saying, ‘Now you are returned to the house.’ Sometimes a substitute is provided; a doll, dressed up in gay clothing and tinsel, is offered to the demon in exchange for the patient’s soul with these words. ‘Give us back the ugly one which you have taken away and receive this pretty one instead.’[2] Similarly the Mongols make up a horse of birch-bark and a doll, and invite the demon to take the doll instead of the patient and to ride away on the horse.[3]

Demons are especially feared by persons who have just entered on a new house. Hence at a house-warming among the Alfoers of Celebes the priest performs a ceremony for the purpose of restoring their souls to the inmates. He hangs up a bag at the place of sacrifice and then goes through a list of the gods. There are so many of them that this takes him the whole night through without stopping. In the morning he offers the gods an egg and some rice. By this time the souls of the household are supposed to be gathered in the bag. So the priest takes the bag, and holding it on the head of the master of the house says, ‘Here you have your soul – go (soul) tomorrow away again.’ He then does the same, saying the same words, to the housewife and all the other members of the family.[1] Amongst the same Alfoers one way of recovering a sick man’s soul is to let down a bowl by a belt out of a window and fish for the soul till it is caught in the bowl and hauled up.[2] Among the same people, when a priest is bringing back a sick man’s soul which he has caught in a cloth, he is preceded by a girl holding the large leaf of a certain palm over his head as an umbrella to keep him and the soul from getting wet, in case it should rain; and he is followed by a man brandishing a sword to deter other souls from any attempt at rescuing the captured soul.[3]

The Samoans tell how two young wizards, passing a house where a chief lay very sick, saw a company of gods from the mountain sitting in the doorway. They were handing from one to another the soul of the dying chief. It was wrapped in a leaf, and had been passed from the gods inside the house to those sitting in the doorway. One of the gods handed the soul to one of the wizards, taking him for a god in the dark, for it was night. Then all the gods rose up and went away; but the wizard kept the chief’s soul. In the morning some women went with a present of fine mats to fetch a famous physician. The wizards were sitting on the shore as the women passed, and they said to the women, ‘Give us the mats and we will heal him.’ So they went to the chief’s house. He was very ill, his jaw hung down, and his end seemed near. But the wizards undid the leaf and let the soul into him again, and forthwith he brightened up and lived.[1]

The Battas of Sumatra believe that the soul of a living man may transmigrate into the body of an animal. Hence, for example, the doctor is sometimes desired to extract the patient’s soul from the body of a fowl, in which it has been hidden away by an evil spirit.[2]

Sometimes the lost soul is brought back in a visible shape. In Melanesia a woman knowing that a neighbour was at the point of death heard a rustling in her house, as of a moth fluttering, just at the moment when a noise of weeping and lamentation told her that the soul was flown. She caught the fluttering thing between her hands and ran with it, crying out that she had caught the soul. But though she opened her hands above the mouth of the corpse, it did not revive.[3] The Salish or Flathead Indians of Oregon believe that a man’s soul may be separated for a time from his body without causing death and without the man being aware of his loss. It is necessary, however, that the lost soul should be soon found and restored to the man or he will die. The name of the man who has lost his soul is revealed in a dream to the medicine-man, who hastens to inform the sufferer of his loss. Generally a number of men have sustained a like loss at the same time; all their names are revealed to the medicine-man, and all employ him to recover their souls. The whole night long these soulless men go about the village from lodge to lodge, dancing and singing. Towards daybreak they go into a separate lodge, which is closed up so as to be totally dark. A small hole is then made in the roof, through which the medicine-man, with a bunch of feathers, brushes in the souls, in the shape of bits of bone and the like, which he receives on a piece of matting. A fire is next kindled, by the light of which the medicine-man sorts out the souls. First he puts aside the souls of dead people, of which there are usually several; for if he were to give the soul of a dead person to a living man, the man would die instantly. Next he picks out the souls of all the persons present, and making them all to sit down before him, he takes the soul of each, in the shape of a splinter of bone, wood, or shell, and placing it on the owner’s head, pats it with many prayers and contortions till it descends into the heart and so resumes its proper place.[1] In Amboina the sorcerer, to recover a soul detained by demons, plucks a branch from a tree, and waving it to and fro as if to catch something, calls out the sick man’s name. Returning he strikes the patient over the head and body with the branch, into which the lost soul is supposed to have passed, and from which it returns to the patient.[2] In the Babar Islands offerings for evil spirits are laid at the root of a great tree (wokiorai), from which a leaf is plucked and pressed on the patient’s forehead and breast; the lost soul, which is in the leaf, is thus restored to its owner.[3] In some other islands of the same seas, when a man returns ill and speechless from the forest, it is inferred that the evil spirits which dwell in the great trees have caught and kept his soul. Offerings of food are therefore left under a tree and the soul is brought home in a piece of wax.[4] Amongst the Dyaks of Sarawak the priest conjures the lost soul into a cup, where it is seen by the uninitiated as a lock of hair, but by the initiated as a miniature human being. This is supposed to be thrust by the priest into a hole in the top of the patient’s head.[1] In Nias the sick man’s soul is restored to him in the shape of a firefly, visible only to the sorcerer, who catches it in a cloth and places it on the forehead of the patient.[2]

Again, souls may be extracted from their bodies or detained on their wanderings not only by ghosts and demons but also by men, especially by sorcerers. In Fiji if a criminal refused to confess, the chief sent for a scarf with which ‘to catch away the soul of the rogue.’ At the sight, or even at the mention of the scarf the culprit generally made a clean breast. For if he did not, the scarf would be waved over his head till his soul was caught in it, when it would be carefully folded up and nailed to the end of a chief’s canoe; and for want of his soul the criminal would pine and die.[3] The sorcerers of Danger Island used to set snares for souls. The snares were made of stout cinet, about fifteen to thirty feet long, with loops on either side of different sizes, to suit the different sizes of souls; for fat souls there were large loops, for thin souls there were small ones. When a man was sick against whom the sorcerers had a grudge, they set up these soul-snares near his house and watched for the flight of his soul. If in the shape of a bird or an insect it was caught in the snare the man would infallibly die.[4] Among the Sereres of Senegambia, when a man wishes to revenge himself on his enemy he goes to the Filaure (chief and priest in one), and prevails on him by presents to conjure the soul of his enemy into a large jar of red earthenware, which is then deposited under a consecrated tree. The man whose soul is shut up in the jar soon dies.[1] Some of the Congo negroes think that enchanters can get possession of human souls, and enclosing them in tusks of ivory, sell them to the white man, who makes them work for him in his country under the sea. It is believed that very many of the coast labourers are men thus obtained; so when these people go to trade they often look anxiously about for their dead relations. The man whose soul is thus sold into slavery will die ‘in due course, if not at the time.’[2]

In Hawaii there were sorcerers who caught souls of living people, shut them up in calabashes, and gave them to people to eat. By squeezing a captured soul in their hands they discovered the place where people had been secretly buried.[3] Amongst the Canadian Indians, when a wizard wished to kill a man, he sent out his familiar spirits, who brought him the victim’s soul in the shape of a stone or the like. The wizard struck the soul with a sword or an axe till it bled profusely, and as it bled the man to whom it belonged languished and died.[4] In Amboina if a doctor is convinced that a patient’s soul has been carried away by a demon beyond recovery, he seeks to supply its place with a soul abstracted from another man. For this purpose he goes by night to a house and asks, ‘Who’s there?’ If an inmate is incautious enough to answer, the doctor takes up from before the door a clod of earth, into which the soul of the person who replied is believed to have passed. This clod the doctor lays under the sick man’s pillow, and performs certain ceremonies by which the stolen soul is conveyed into the patient’s body. Then as he goes home the doctor fires two shots to frighten the soul from returning to its proper owner.[1] A Karen wizard will catch the wandering soul of a sleeper and transfer it to the body of a dead man. The latter, therefore, comes to life as the former dies. But the friends of the sleeper in turn engage a wizard to steal the soul of another sleeper, who dies as the first sleeper comes to life. In this way an indefinite succession of deaths and resurrections is supposed to take place.[2]

The Indians of the Nass River, British Columbia, think that a doctor may swallow his patient’s soul by mistake. A doctor who is believed to have done so is made by the other doctors to stand over the patient, while one of them thrusts his fingers down the doctor’s throat, another kneads him in the stomach with his knuckles, and a third slaps him on the back. If the soul is not in him after all, and if the same process has been repeated upon all the doctors without success, it is concluded that the soul must be in the head-doctor’s box. A party of doctors, therefore, waits upon him at his house and requests him to produce his box. When he has done so and arranged its contents on a new mat, they take him and hold him up by the heels with his head in a hole in the floor. In this position they wash his head, and ‘any water remaining from the ablution is taken and poured upon the sick man’s head.’[3]

Other examples of the recall and recovery of souls will be found referred to beneath.[1]

But the spiritual dangers I have enumerated are not the only ones which beset the savage. Often he regards his shadow or reflection as his soul, or at all events as a vital part of himself, and as such it is necessarily a source of danger to him. For if it is trampled upon, struck, or stabbed, he will feel the injury as if it were done to his person; and if it is detached from him entirely (as he believes that it may be) he will die. In the island of Wetar there are magicians who can make a man ill by stabbing his shadow with a pike or hacking it with a sword.[2] After Sankara had destroyed the Buddhists in India, it is said that he journeyed to Nepaul, where he had some difference of opinion with the Grand Lama. To prove his supernatural powers, he soared into the air. But as he mounted up, the Grand Lama, perceiving his shadow swaying and wavering on the ground, struck his knife into it and down fell Sankara and broke his neck.[1] In the Babar Islands the demons get power over a man’s soul by holding fast his shadow, or by striking and wounding it.[2] There are stones in Melanesia on which, if a man’s shadow falls, the demon of the stone can draw out his soul.[3] In Amboina and Uliase, two islands near the equator, and where, therefore, there is little or no shadow cast at noon, it is a rule not to go out of the house at midday, because it is supposed that by doing so a man may lose the shadow of his soul.[4] The Mangaians tell of a mighty warrior, Tukaitawa, whose strength waxed and waned with the length of his shadow. In the morning, when his shadow fell longest, his strength was greatest; but as the shadow shortened towards noon his strength ebbed with it, till exactly at noon it reached its lowest point; then, as the shadow stretched out in the afternoon, his strength returned. A certain hero discovered the secret of Tukaitawa’s strength and slew him at noon.[5] It is possible that even in lands outside the tropics the fact of the diminished shadow at noon may have contributed, even if it did not give rise, to the superstitious dread with which that hour has been viewed by various peoples, as by the Greeks, ancient and modern, and by the Roumanians of Transylvania.[6] In this fact, too, we may perhaps detect the reason why noon was chosen by the Greeks as the hour for sacrificing to the shadowless dead.[1] The ancients believed that in Arabia if a hyaena trod on a man’s shadow it deprived him of the power of speech and motion; and that if a dog, standing on a roof in the moonlight, cast a shadow on the ground and a hyaena trod on it, the dog would fall down as if dragged with a rope.[2] Clearly in these cases the shadow, if not equivalent to the soul, is at least regarded as a living part of the man or the animal, so that injury done to the shadow is felt by the person or animal as if it were done to his body. Whoever entered the sanctuary of Zeus on Mount Lycaeus in Arcadia was believed to lose his shadow and to die within the year.[3] Nowhere, perhaps, does the equivalence of the shadow to the life or soul come out more clearly than in some customs practised to this day in South-Eastern Europe. In modern Greece, when the foundation of a new building is being laid, it is the custom to kill a cock, a ram, or a lamb, and to let its blood flow on the foundation stone, under which the animal is afterwards buried. The object of the sacrifice is to give strength and stability to the building. But sometimes, instead of killing an animal, the builder entices a man to the foundation stone, secretly measures his body, or a part of it, or his shadow, and buries the measure under the foundation stone; or he lays the foundation stone upon the man’s shadow. It is believed that the man will die within the year.[4] The Bulgarians still observe a similar custom. If they cannot get a human shadow they measure the shadow of the first animal that comes that way.[1] The Roumanians of Transylvania think that he whose shadow is thus immured will die within forty days; so persons passing by a building which is in course of erection may hear a warning cry, ‘Beware lest they take thy shadow!’ Not long ago there were still shadow-traders whose business it was to provide architects with the shadows necessary for securing their walls.[2] In these cases the measure of the shadow is looked on as equivalent to the shadow itself, and to bury it is to bury the life or soul of the man, who, deprived of it, must die. Thus the custom is a substitute for the old custom of immuring a living person in the walls, or crushing him under the foundation stone of a new building, in order to give strength and durability to the structure.

As some peoples believe a man’s soul to be in his shadow, so other (or the same) peoples believe it to be in his reflection in water or a mirror. Thus ‘the Andamanese do not regard their shadows but their reflections (in any mirror) as their souls.’[3] Some of the Fijians thought that man has two souls, a light one and a dark one; the dark one goes to Hades, the light one is his reflection in water or a mirror.[4] When the Motumotu of New Guinea first saw their likenesses in a looking-glass they thought that their reflections were their souls.[5] The reflection-soul, being external to the man, is exposed to much the same dangers as the shadow-soul. As the shadow may be stabbed, so may the reflection. Hence an Aztec mode of keeping sorcerers from the house was to leave a vessel of water with a knife in it behind the door. When a sorcerer entered he was so much alarmed at seeing his reflection in the water transfixed by a knife that he turned and fled.[1] The Zulus will not look into a dark pool because they think there is a beast in it which will take away their reflections, so that they die.[2] The Basutos say that crocodiles have the power of thus killing a man by dragging his reflection under water.[3] In Saddle Island (Melanesia) there is a pool ‘into which if any one looks he dies; the malignant spirit takes hold upon his life by means of his reflection on the water.’[4]

We can now understand why it was a maxim both in ancient India and ancient Greece not to look at one’s reflection in water, and why the Greeks regarded it as an omen of death if a man dreamed of seeing himself so reflected.[5] They feared that the water-spirits would drag the person’s reflection (soul) under water, leaving him soulless to die. This was probably the origin of the classical story of the beautiful Narcissus, who pined and died in consequence of seeing his reflection in the water. The explanation that he died for love of his own fair image was probably devised later, after the old meaning of the story was forgotten. The same ancient belief lingers, in a faded form, in the English superstition that whoever sees a water-fairy must pine and die –

‘Alas, the moon should ever beam

To show what man should never see! –

I saw a maiden on a stream,

And fair was she!

‘I staid to watch, a little space,

Her parted lips if she would sing;

The waters closed above her face

With many a ring.

‘I know my life will fade away,

I know that I must vainly pine,

For I am made of mortal clay,

But she’s divine!’

Further, we can now explain the widespread custom of covering up mirrors or turning them to the wall after a death has taken place in the house. It is feared that the soul, projected out of the person in the shape of his reflection in the mirror, may be carried off by the ghost of the departed, which is commonly supposed to linger about the house till the burial. The custom is thus exactly parallel to the Aru custom of not sleeping in a house after a death for fear that the soul, projected out of the body in a dream, may meet the ghost and be carried off by it.[1] In Oldenburg it is thought that if a person sees his image in a mirror after a death he will die himself. So all the mirrors in the house are covered up with white cloth.[2] In some parts of Germany after a death not only the mirrors but everything that shines or glitters (windows, clocks, etc.) is covered up,[3] doubtless because they might reflect a person’s image. The same custom of covering up mirrors or turning them to the wall after a death prevails in England, Scotland, and Madagascar.[4] The Suni Mohammedans of Bombay cover with a cloth the mirror in the room of a dying man and do not remove it until the corpse is carried out for burial. They also cover the looking-glasses in their bedrooms before retiring to rest at night.[5] The reason why sick people should not see themselves in a mirror, and why the mirror in a sick-room is therefore covered up,[1] is also plain; in time of sickness, when the soul might take flight so easily, it is particularly dangerous to project the soul out of the body by means of the reflection in a mirror. The rule is therefore precisely parallel to the rule observed by some peoples of not allowing sick people to sleep;[2] for in sleep the soul is projected out of the body, and there is always a risk that it may not return. ‘In the opinion of the Raskolniks a mirror is an accursed thing, invented by the devil,’[3]perhaps on account of the mirror’s supposed power of drawing out the soul in the reflection and so facilitating its capture.

As with shadows and reflections, so with portraits; they are often believed to contain the soul of the person portrayed. People who hold this belief are naturally loth to have their likenesses taken; for if the portrait is the soul, or at least a vital part of the person portrayed, whoever possesses the portrait will be able to exercise a fatal influence over the original of it. Thus the Canelos Indians of South America think that their soul is carried away in their picture. Two of them having been photographed were so alarmed that they came back next day on purpose to ask if it were really true that their souls had been taken away.[4] When Mr Joseph Thomson tried to photograph some of the Wa-teita in Eastern Africa, they imagined that he was a magician trying to get possession of their souls, and that if he got their likenesses they themselves would be entirely at his mercy.[5] An Indian, whose portrait the Prince of Wied wished to get, refused to let himself be drawn, because he believed it would cause his death.[1] The Mandans also thought that they would soon die if their portrait was in the hands of another; they wished at least to have the artist’s picture as a kind of antidote or guarantee.[2] The same belief still lingers in various parts of Europe. Some old women in the Greek island of Carpathus were very angry a few years ago at having their likenesses drawn, thinking that in consequence they would pine and die.[3] Some people in Russia object to having their silhouettes taken, fearing that if this is done they will die before the year is out.[4] There are persons in the West of Scotland ‘who refuse to have their likeness taken lest it prove unlucky; and give as instances the cases of several of their friends who never had a day’s health after being photographed.’[5]

Royal and Priestly Taboos

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

As the object of the royal taboos is to isolate the king from all sources of danger, their general effect is to compel him to live in a state of seclusion, more or less complete, according to the number and stringency of the taboos he observes. Now of all sources of danger none are more dreaded by the savage than magic and witchcraft, and he suspects all strangers of practising these black arts. To guard against the baneful influence exerted voluntarily or involuntarily by strangers is therefore an elementary dictate of savage prudence. Hence before strangers are allowed to enter a district, or at least before they are permitted to mingle freely with the people of the district, certain ceremonies are often performed by the natives of the country for the purpose of disarming the strangers of their magical powers, of counteracting the baneful influence which is believed to emanate from them, or of disinfecting, so to speak, the tainted atmosphere by which they are supposed to be surrounded. Thus in the island of Nanumea (South Pacific) strangers from ships or from other islands were not allowed to communicate with the people until they all, or a few as representatives of the rest, had been taken to each of the four temples in the island, and prayers offered that the god would avert any disease or treachery which these strangers might have brought with them. Meat offerings were also laid upon the altars, accompanied by songs and dances in honour of the god. While these ceremonies were going on, all the people except the priests and their attendants kept out of sight.[1] On returning from an attempted ascent of the great African mountain Kilimanjaro, which is believed by the neighbouring tribes to be tenanted by dangerous demons, Mr New and his party, as soon as they reached the border of the inhabited country, were disenchanted by the inhabitants, being sprinkled with ‘a professionally prepared liquor, supposed to possess the potency of neutralising evil influences, and removing the spell of wicked spirits.’[2] In the interior of Yoruba (West Africa) the sentinels at the gates of towns often oblige European travellers to wait till nightfall before they admit them, the fear being that if the strangers were admitted by day the devils would enter behind them.[3] Amongst the Ot Danoms of Borneo it is the custom that strangers entering the territory should pay to the natives a certain sum, which is spent in the sacrifice of animals (buffaloes or pigs) to the spirits of the land and water, in order to reconcile them to the presence of the strangers, and to induce them not to withdraw their favour from the people of the land, but to bless the rice-harvest, etc.[4] The men of a certain district in Borneo, fearing to look upon a European traveller lest he should make them ill, warned their wives and children not to go near him. These who could not restrain their curiosity killed fowls to appease the evil spirits and smeared themselves with the blood.[5] In Laos before a stranger can be accorded hospitality the master of the house must offer sacrifice to the ancestral spirits; otherwise the spirits would be offended and would send disease on the inmates.[1] In the Mentawej Islands when a stranger enters a house where there are children, the father or other member of the family takes the ornament which the children wear in their hair and hands it to the stranger, who holds it in his hands for a while and then gives it back to him. This is thought to protect the children from the evil effect which the sight of a stranger might have upon them.[2] At Shepherd’s Isle Captain Moresby had to be disenchanted before he was allowed to land his boat’s crew. When he leaped ashore a devil-man seized his right hand and waved a bunch of palm leaves over the captain’s head. Then ‘he placed the leaves in my left hand, putting a small green twig into his mouth, still holding me fast, and then, as if with great effort, drew the twig from his mouth – this was extracting the evil spirit – after which he blew violently, as if to speed it away. I now held a twig between my teeth, and he went through the same process.’ Then the two raced round a couple of sticks fixed in the ground and bent to an angle at the top, which had leaves tied to it. After some more ceremonies the devil-man concluded by leaping to the level of Captain Moresby’s shoulders (his hands resting on the captain’s shoulders) several times, ‘as if to show that he had conquered the devil, and was now trampling him into the earth.’[3] North American Indians ‘have an idea that strangers, particularly white strangers, are ofttimes accompanied by evil spirits. Of these they have great dread, as creating and delighting in mischief. One of the duties of the medicine chief is to exorcise these spirits. I have sometimes ridden into or through a camp where I was unknown or unexpected, to be confronted by a tall, half-naked savage, standing in the middle of the circle of lodges, and yelling in a sing-song, nasal tone, a string of unintelligible words.[4] When Crevaux was travelling in South America he entered a village of the Apalai Indians. A few moments after his arrival some of the Indians brought him a number of large black ants, of a species whose bite is painful, fastened on palm leaves. Then all the people of the village, without distinction of age or sex, presented themselves to him, and he had to sting them all with the ants on their faces, thighs, etc. Sometimes when he applied the ants too tenderly they called out ‘More! more!’ and were not satisfied till their skin was thickly studded with tiny swellings like what might have been produced by whipping them with nettles.[1] The object of this ceremony is made plain by the custom observed in Ambonina and Uliase of sprinkling sick people with pungent spices, such as ginger and cloves, chewed fine, in order by the prickling sensation to drive away the demon of disease which may be clinging to their persons.[2] With a similar intention some of the natives of Borneo and Celebes sprinkle rice upon the head or body of a person supposed to be infested by dangerous spirits; a fowl is then brought, which, by picking up the rice from the person’s head or body, removes along with it the spirit or ghost which is clinging like a burr to his skin. This is done, for example, to persons who have attended a funeral, and who may therefore be supposed to be infested by the ghost of the deceased.[3] Similarly Basutos, who have carried a corpse to the grave, have their hands scratched with a knife from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the forefinger, and magic stuff is rubbed into the wound,[4] for the purpose, no doubt, of removing the ghost which may be adhering to their skin. The people of Nias carefully scrub and scour the weapons and clothes which they buy, in order to efface all connection between the things and the persons from whom they bought them.[1] It is probable that the same dread of strangers, rather than any desire to do them honour, is the motive of certain ceremonies which are sometimes observed at their reception, but of which the intention is not directly stated. In Afghanistan and in some parts of Persia the traveller, before he enters a village, is frequently received with a sacrifice of animal life or food, or of fire and incense. The recent Afghan Boundary Mission, in passing by villages in Afghanistan, was often met with fire and incense.[2] Sometimes a tray of lighted embers is thrown under the hoofs of the traveller’s horse, with the words, ‘You are welcome.’[3] On entering a village in Central Africa Emin Pasha was received with the sacrifice of two goats; their blood was sprinkled on the path and the chief stepped over the blood to greet Emin.[4] Amongst the Eskimos of Cumberland Inlet, when a stranger arrives at an encampment, the sorcerer goes out to meet him. The stranger folds his arms and inclines his head to one side, so as to expose his cheek, upon which the sorcerer deals a terrible blow, sometimes felling him to the ground. Next the sorcerer in his turn presents his cheek and receives a buffet from the stranger. Then they kiss each other, the ceremony is over, and the stranger is hospitably received by all.[5] Sometimes the dread of strangers and their magic is too great to allow of their reception on any terms. Thus when Speke arrived at a certain village the natives shut their doors against him, ‘because they had never before seen a white man nor the tin boxes that the men were carrying: “Who knows,” they said, “but that these very boxes are the plundering Watuta transformed and come to kill us? You cannot be admitted.” No persuasion could avail with them, and the party had to proceed to the next village.’[1]

The fear thus entertained of alien visiters is often mutual. Entering a strange land, the savage feels that he is treading enchanted ground, and he takes steps to guard against the demons that haunt it and the magical arts of its inhabitants. Thus on going to a strange land the Maoris performed certain ceremonies to make it noa (common), lest it might have been previously tapu (sacred).[2] When Baron Miklu-cho-Maclay was approaching a village on the Maclay Coast of New Guinea, one of the natives who accompanied him broke a branch from a tree and going aside whispered to it for a while; then going up to each member of the party, one after another, he spat something upon his back and gave him some blows with the branch. Lastly, he went into the forest and buried the branch under withered leaves in the thickest part of the jungle. This ceremony was believed to protect the party against all treachery and danger in the village they were approaching.[3] The idea probably was that the malignant influences were drawn off from the persons into the branch and buried with it in the depths of the forest. In Australia, when a strange tribe has been invited into a district and is approaching the encampment of the tribe which owns the land, ‘the strangers carry lighted bark or burning sticks in their hands, for the purpose, they say, of clearing and purifying the air.’[4] So when two Greek armies were advancing to the onset, sacred men used to march in front of each, bearing lighted torches, which they flung into the space between the hosts and then retired unmolested.[5]

Again, it is thought that a man who has been on a journey may have contracted some magic evil from the strangers with whom he has been brought into contact. Hence on returning home, before he is readmitted to the society of his tribe and friends, he has to undergo certain purificatory ceremonies. Thus the Bechuanas ‘cleanse or purify themselves after journeys by shaving their heads, etc., lest they should have contracted from strangers some evil by witchcraft or sorcery.’[1] In some parts of Western Africa when a man returns home after a long absence, before he is allowed to visit his wife, he must wash his person with a particular fluid, and receive from the sorcerer a certain mark on his forehead, in order to counteract any magic spell which a stranger woman may have cast on him in his absence, and which might be communicated through him to the women of his village.[2] Two Hindoo ambassadors, who had been sent to England by a native prince and had returned to India, were considered to have so polluted themselves by contact with strangers that nothing but being born again could restore them to purity. ‘For the purpose of regeneration it is directed to make an image of pure gold of the female power of nature, in the shape either of a woman or of a cow. In this statue the person to be regenerated is enclosed, and dragged through the usual channel. As a statue of pure gold and of proper dimensions would be too expensive, it is sufficient to make an image of the sacred Yoni, through which the person to be regenerated is to pass.’ Such an image of pure gold was made at the prince’s command, and his ambassadors were born again by being dragged through it.[3] When Damaras return home after a long absence, they are given a small portion of the fat of particular animals which is supposed to possess certain virtues.[4] In some of the Moluccas, when a brother or young blood-relation returns from a long journey, a young girl awaits him at the door with a caladi leaf in her hand and water in the leaf. She throws the water over his face and bids him welcome.[1] The natives of Savage Island (South Pacific) invariably killed, not only all strangers in distress who were drifted to their shores, but also any of their own people who had gone away in a ship and returned home. This was done out of dread of disease. Long after they began to venture out to ships they would not immediately use the things they obtained from them, but hung them up in quarantine for weeks in the bush.[2]

When precautions like these are taken on behalf of the people in general against the malignant influence supposed to be exercised by strangers, we shall not be surprised to find that special measures are adopted to protect the king from the same insidious danger. In the middle ages the envoys who visited a Tartar Khan were obliged to pass between two fires before they were admitted to his presence, and the gifts they brought were also carried between the fires. The reason assigned for the custom was that the fire purged away any magic influence which the strangers might mean to exercise over the Khan.[3] When subject chiefs come with their retinues to visit Kalamba (the most powerful chief of the Bashilange in the Congo Basin) for the first time or after being rebellious, they have to bathe, men and women together, in two brooks on two successive days, passing the nights in the open air in the market-place. After the second bath they proceed, entirely naked, to the house of Kalamba, who makes a long white mark on the breast and forehead of each of them. Then they return to the market-place and dress, after which they undergo the pepper ordeal. Pepper is dropped into the eyes of each of them, and while this is being done the sufferer has to make a confession of all his sins, to answer all questions that may be put to him, and to take certain vows. This ends the ceremony, and the strangers are now free to take up their quarters in the town for as long as they choose to remain.[1] At Kilema, in Eastern Africa, when a stranger arrives, a medicine is made out of a certain plant or a tree fetched from a distance, mixed with the blood of a sheep or goat. With this mixture the stranger is besmeared or besprinkled before he is admitted to the presence of the king.[2] The King of Monomotapa (South-East Africa) might not wear any foreign stuffs for fear of their being poisoned.[3] The King of Kakongo (West Africa) might not possess or even touch European goods, except metals, arms, and articles made of wood and ivory. Persons wearing foreign stuffs were very careful to keep at a distance from his person, lest they should touch him.[4] The King of Loango might not look upon the house of a white man.[5]

In the opinion of savages the acts of eating and drinking are attended with special danger; for at these times the soul may escape from the mouth, or be extracted by the magic arts of an enemy present. Precautions are therefore taken to guard against these dangers. Thus of the Battas of Sumatra it is said that ‘since the soul can leave the body, they always take care to prevent their soul from straying on occasions when they have most need of it. But it is only possible to prevent the soul from straying when one is in the house. At feasts one may find the whole house shut up, in order that the soul (tondi) may stay and enjoy the good things set before it.’[1] In Fiji persons who suspected others of plotting against them avoided eating in their presence, or were careful to leave no fragment of food behind.[2] The Zafimanelo in Madagascar lock their doors when they eat, and hardly any one ever sees them eating.[3] The Warua will not allow any one to see them eating and drinking, being doubly particular that no person of the opposite sex shall see them doing so. ‘I had to pay a man to let me see him drink; I could not make a man let a woman see him drink.’ When offered a drink of pombe they often ask that a cloth may be held up to hide them whilst drinking. Further, each man and woman must cook for themselves; each person must have his own fire.[4] If these are the ordinary precautions taken by common people, the precautions taken by kings are extraordinary. The King of Loango may not be seen eating or drinking by man or beast under pain of death. A favourite dog having broken into the room where the king was dining, the king ordered it to be killed on the spot. Once the king’s own son, a boy of twelve years old, inadvertently saw the king drink. Immediately the king ordered him to be finely apparelled and feasted, after which he commanded him to be cut in quarters, and carried about the city with a proclamation that he had seen the king drink. ‘When the king has a mind to drink, he has a cup of wine brought; he that brings it has a bell in his hand, and as soon as he has delivered the cup to the king he turns his face from him and rings the bell, on which all present fall down with their faces to the ground, and continue so till the king has drunk … His eating is much in the same style, for which he has a house on purpose, where his victuals are set upon a bensa or table: which he goes to and shuts the door; when he has done, he knocks and comes out. So that none ever see the king eat or drink. For it is believed that if any one should, the king shall immediately die.’[1] The rules observed by the neighbouring King of Kakongo were similar; it was thought that the king would die if any of his subjects were to see him drink.[2] It is a capital offence to see the King of Dahomey at his meals. When he drinks in public, as he does on extraordinary occasions, he hides himself behind a curtain, or handkerchiefs are held up round his head, and all the people throw themselves with their faces to the earth.[3] Any one who saw the Muato Jamwo (a great potentate in the Congo Basin) eating or drinking would certainly be put to death.[4] When the King of Tonga ate all the people turned their backs to him.[5] In the palace of the Persian kings there were two dining-rooms opposite each other; in one of them the king dined, in the other his guests. He could see them through a curtain on the door, but they could not see him. Generally the king took his meals alone; but sometimes his wife or some of his sons dined with him.[6]

In these cases, however, the intention may perhaps be to hinder evil influences from entering the body rather than to prevent the escape of the soul. To the former rather than to the latter motive is to be ascribed the custom observed by some African sultans of veiling their faces. The Sultan of Darfur wraps up his face with a piece of white muslin, which goes round his head several times, covering his mouth and nose first, and then his forehead, so that only his eyes are visible. The same custom of veiling the face as a mark of sovereignty is said to be observed in other parts of Central Africa.[1] The Sultan of Wadai always speaks from behind a curtain; no one sees his face except his intimates and a few favoured persons.[2] Amongst the Touaregs of the Sahara all the men (but not the women) keep the lower part of their face, especially the mouth, veiled constantly; the veil is never put off, not even in eating or sleeping.[3] In Samoa a man whose family god was the turtle might not eat a turtle, and if he helped a neighbour to cut up and cook one he had to wear a bandage tied over his mouth, lest an embryo turtle should slip down his throat, grow up, and be his death.[4] In West Timor a speaker holds his right hand before his mouth in speaking lest a demon should enter his body, and lest the person with whom he converses should harm the speaker’s soul by magic.[5] In New South Wales for some time after his initiation into the tribal mysteries, a young blackfellow (whose soul at this time is in a critical state) must always cover his mouth with a rug when a woman is present.[6] Popular expressions in the language of civilised peoples, such as to have one’s heart in one’s mouth, show how natural is the idea that the life or soul may escape by the mouth or nostrils.[1]

By an extension of the like precaution kings are sometimes forbidden ever to leave their palaces; or, if they are allowed to do so, their subjects are forbidden to see them abroad. We have seen that the priestly king at Shark Point, West Africa, may never quit his house or even his chair, in which he is obliged to sleep sitting.[2] After his coronation the King of Loango is confined to his palace, which he may not leave.[3] The King of Ibo (West Africa) ‘does not step out of his house into the town unless a human sacrifice is made to propitiate the gods: on this account he never goes out beyond the precincts of his premises.’[4] The kings of Aethiopia were worshipped as gods, but were mostly kept shut up in their palaces.[5] The kings of Sabaea (Sheba), the spice country of Arabia, were not allowed to go out of their palaces; if they did so, the mob stoned them to death.[6] But at the top of the palace there was a window with a chain attached to it. If any man deemed he had suffered wrong, he pulled the chain, and the king perceived him and called him in and gave judgment.[7] So to this day the kings of Corea, whose persons are sacred and receive ‘honours almost divine,’ are shut up in their palace from the age of twelve or fifteen; and if a suitor wishes to obtain justice of the king he sometimes lights a great bonfire on a mountain facing the palace; the king sees the fire and informs himself of the case.[1] The King of Tonquin was permitted to appear abroad twice or thrice a year for the performance of certain religious ceremonies; but the people were not allowed to look at him. The day before he came forth notice was given to all the inhabitants of the city and country to keep from the way the king was to go; the women were obliged to remain in their houses and durst not show themselves under pain of death, a penalty which was carried out on the spot if any one disobeyed the order, even through ignorance. Thus the king was invisible to all but his troops and the officers of his suite.[2] In Mandalay a stout lattice-paling, six feet high and carefully kept in repair, lined every street in the walled city and all those in the suburbs through which the king was likely at any time to pass. Behind this paling, which stood two feet or so from the houses, all the people had to stay when the king or any of the queens went out. Any one who was caught outside it by the beadles after the procession had started was severely handled, and might think himself lucky if he got off with a beating. No one was supposed to look through the holes in the lattice-work, which were besides partly stopped up with flowering shrubs.[3]

Again, magic mischief may be wrought upon a man through the remains of the food he has partaken of, or the dishes out of which he has eaten. Thus the Narrinyeri in South Australia think that if a man eats of the sacred animal (totem) of his tribe, and an enemy gets hold of a portion of the flesh, the latter can make it grow in the inside of the eater, and so cause his death. Therefore when a man eats of his totem he is careful to cat it all or else to conceal or destroy the remains.[1] In Tana, one of the New Hebrides, people bury or throw into the sea the leavings of their food, lest these should fall into the hands of the disease-makers. For if a disease-maker finds the remnants of a meal, say the skin of a banana, he picks it up and burns it slowly in the fire. As it burns the person who ate the banana falls ill and sends to the disease-maker, offering him presents if he will stop burning the banana skin.[2] Hence no one may touch the food which the King of Loango leaves upon his plate; it is buried in a hole in the ground. And no one may drink out of the king’s vessel.[3] Similarly no man may drink out of the same cup or glass with the King of Fida (in Guinea); ‘he hath always one kept particularly for himself; and that which hath but once touched another’s lips he never uses more, though it be made of metal that may be cleansed by fire.’[4] Amongst the Alfoers of Celebes there is a priest called the Leleen, whose duty appears to be to make the rice grow. His functions begin about a month before the rice is sown, and end after the crop is housed. During this time he has to observe certain taboos; amongst others he may not eat or drink with any one else, and he may drink out of no vessel but his own.[5]

We have seen that the Mikado’s food was cooked every day in new pots and served up in new dishes; both pots and dishes were of common clay, in order that they might be broken or laid aside after they had been once used. They were generally broken, for it was believed that if any one else ate his food out of these sacred dishes his mouth and throat would become swollen and inflamed. The same ill effect was thought to be experienced by any one who should wear the Mikado’s clothes without his leave; he would have swellings and pains all over his body.[1] In the evil effects thus supposed to follow upon the use of the Mikado’s vessels or clothes we see that other side of the divine king’s or god-man’s character to which attention has been already called. The divine person is a source of danger as well as of blessing; he must not only be guarded, he must also be guarded against. His sacred organism, so delicate that a touch may disorder it, is also electrically charged with a powerful spiritual force which may discharge itself with fatal effect on whatever comes in contact with it. Hence the isolation of the man-god is quite as necessary for the safety of others as for his own. His divinity is a fire, which, under proper restraints, confers endless blessings, but, if rashly touched or allowed to break bounds, burns and destroys what it touches. Hence the disastrous effects supposed to attend a breach of taboo; the offender has thrust his hand into the divine fire, which shrivels up and consumes him on the spot. To take an example from the taboo we are considering. It happened that a New Zealand chief of high rank and great sanctity had left the remains of his dinner by the wayside. A slave, a stout, hungry fellow, coming up after the chief had gone, saw the unfinished dinner, and ate it up without asking questions. Hardly had he finished when he was informed by a horror-stricken spectator that the food of which he had eaten was the chief’s. ‘I knew the unfortunate delinquent well. He was remarkable for courage, and had signalised himself in the wars of the tribe … No sooner did he hear the fatal news than he was seized by the most extraordinary convulsions and cramp in the stomach, which never ceased till he died, about sundown the same day. He was a strong man, in the prime of life, and if any pakeha [European] freethinker should have said he was not killed by the tapu [taboo] of the chief, which had been communicated to the food by contact, he would have been listened to with feelings of contempt for his ignorance and inability to understand plain and direct evidence.’[1] This is not a solitary case. A Maori woman having eaten of some fruit, and being afterwards told that the fruit had been taken from a tabooed place, exclaimed that the spirit of the chief whose sanctity had been thus profaned would kill her. This was in the afternoon, and next day by twelve o’clock she was dead.[2] An observer who knows the Maoris well, says, ‘Tapu [taboo] is an awful weapon. I have seen a strong young man die the same day he was tapued; the victims die under it as though their strength ran out as water.’[3] A Maori chief’s tinder-box was once the means of killing several persons; for having been lost by him, and found by some men who used it to light their pipes, they died of fright on learning to whom it had belonged. So too the garments of a high New Zealand chief will kill any one else who wears them. A chief was observed by a missionary to throw down a precipice a blanket which he found too heavy to carry. Being asked by the missionary why he did not leave it on a tree for the use of a future traveller, the chief replied that ‘it was the fear of its being taken by another which caused him to throw it where he did, for if it were worn, his tapu’ (i.e. his spiritual power communicated by contact to the blanket and through the blanket to the man) ‘would kill the person.’[4]

No wonder therefore that the savage should rank these human divinities amongst what he regards as the dangerous classes, and should impose exactly the same restraints upon the one as upon the other. For instance, those who have defiled themselves by touching a dead body are regarded by the Maoris as in a very dangerous state, and are sedulously shunned and isolated. But the taboos observed by and towards these defiled persons (e.g. they may not touch food with their hands, and the vessels used by them may not be used by other people) are identical with those observed by and towards sacred chiefs.[1] And, in general, the prohibition to use the dress, vessels, etc., of certain persons and the effects supposed to follow an infraction of the rule are exactly the same whether the persons to whom the things belong are sacred or what we might call unclean and polluted. As the garments which have been touched by a sacred chief kill those who handle them, so do the things which have been touched by a menstruous woman. An Australian blackfellow, who discovered that his wife had lain on his blanket at her menstrual period, killed her and died of terror himself within a fortnight.[2] Hence Australian women at these times are forbidden under pain of death to touch anything that men use. They are also secluded at childbirth, and all vessels used by them during their seclusion are burned.[3] Amongst some of the Indians of North America also women at menstruation are forbidden to touch men’s utensils, which would be so defiled by their touch that their subsequent use would be attended by certain mischief or misfortune.[4] Amongst the Eskimo of Alaska no one will willingly drink out of the same cup or eat out of the same dish that has been used by a woman at her confinement until it has been purified by certain incantations.[5] Amongst some of the Tinneh Indians of North America the dishes out of which girls eat during their seclusion at puberty ‘are used by no other person, and wholly devoted to their own use.’[1] Again amongst some Indian tribes of North America men who have slain enemies are considered to be in a state of uncleanness, and will not eat or drink out of any dish or smoke out of any pipe but their own for a considerable time after the slaughter, and no one will willingly use their dishes or pipes. They live in a kind of seclusion during this time, at the end of which all the dishes and pipes used by them during their seclusion are burned.[2] Amongst the Kafirs, boys at circumcision live secluded in a special hut, and when they are healed all the vessels which they had used during their seclusion and the boyish mantles which they had hitherto worn are burned together with the hut.[3] When a young Indian brave is out on the war-path for the first time the vessels he eats and drinks out of must be touched by no one else.[4]

Thus the rules of ceremonial purity observed by divine kings, chiefs, and priests, by homicides, women at childbirth, and so on, are in some respects alike. To us these different classes of persons appear to differ totally in character and condition; some of them we should call holy, others we might pronounce unclean and polluted. But the savage makes no such moral distinction between them; the conceptions of holiness and pollution are not yet differentiated in his mind. To him the common feature of all these persons is that they are dangerous and in danger, and the danger in which they stand and to which they expose others is what we should call spiritual or supernatural, that is, imaginary. The danger, however, is not less real because it is imaginary; imagination acts upon man as really as does gravitation, and may kill him as certainly as a dose of prussic acid. To seclude these persons from the rest of the world so that the dreaded spiritual danger shall neither reach them, nor spread from them, is the object of the taboos which they have to observe. These taboos act, so to say, as electrical insulators to preserve the spiritual force with which these persons are charged from suffering or inflicting harm by contact with the outer world.[1]

No one was allowed to touch the body of the King or Queen of Tahiti;[2] and no one may touch the King of Cambodia, for any purpose whatever, without his express command. In July 1874 the king was thrown from his carriage and lay insensible on the ground, but not one of his suite dared to touch him; a European coming to the spot carried the injured monarch to his palace.[3] No one may touch the King of Corea; and if he deigns to touch a subject, the spot touched becomes sacred, and the person thus honoured must wear a visible mark (generally a cord of red silk) for the rest of his life. Above all, no iron may touch the king’s body. In 1800 King Tieng-tsong-tai-oang died of a tumour in the back, no one dreaming of employing the lancet, which would probably have saved his life. It is said that one king suffered terribly from an abscess in the lip, till his physician called in a jester, whose antics made the king laugh heartily, and so the abscess burst.[4] Roman and Sabine priests might not be shaved with iron but only with bronze razors or shears;[5] and whenever an iron graving-tool was brought into the sacred grove of the Arval Brothers at Rome for the purpose of cutting an inscription in stone, an expiatory sacrifice of a lamb and a pig was offered, which was repeated when the graving-tool was removed from the grove.[6] In Crete sacrifices were offered to Menedemus without the use of iron, because, it was said, Menedemus had been killed by an iron weapon in the Trojan war.[1] The Archon of Plataeae might not touch iron; but once a year, at the annual commemoration of the men who fell at the battle of Plataeae, he was allowed to carry a sword wherewith to sacrifice a bull.[2] To this day a Hottentot priest never uses an iron knife, but always a sharp splint of quartz in sacrificing an animal or circumcising a lad.[3] Amongst the Moquis of Arizona stone knives, hatchets, etc., have passed out of common use, but are retained in religious ceremonies.[4] Negroes of the Gold Coast remove all iron or steel from their person when they consult their fetish.[5] The men who made the need-fire in Scotland had to divest themselves of all metal.[6] In making the clavie (a kind of Yule-tide fire-wheel) at Burghead, no hammer may be used; the hammering must be done with a stone.[7] Amongst the Jews no iron tool was used in building the temple at Jerusalem or in making an altar.[8] The old wooden bridge (Pons Sublicius) at Rome, which was considered sacred, was made and had to be kept in repair without the use of iron or bronze.[9] It was expressly provided by law that the temple of Jupiter Liber at Furfo might be repaired with iron tools.[10] The council chamber at Cyzicus was constructed of wood without any iron nails, the beams being so arranged that they could be taken out and replaced.[1] The late Raja Vijyana-gram, a member of the Viceroy’s Council, and described as one of the most enlightened and estimable of Hindu princes, would not allow iron to be used in the construction of buildings within his territory, believing that its use would inevitably be followed by small-pox and other epidemics.[2]

This superstitious objection to iron perhaps dates from that early time in the history of society when iron was still a novelty, and as such was viewed by many with suspicion and dislike. For everything new is apt to excite the awe and dread of the savage. ‘It is a curious supersition,’ says a recent pioneer in Borneo, ‘this of the Dusuns, to attribute anything – whether good or bad, lucky or unlucky – that happens to them to something novel which has arrived in their country. For instance, my living in Kindram has caused the intensely hot weather we have experienced of late.’[3] The first introduction of iron ploughshares into Poland having been followed by a succession of bad harvests, the farmers attributed the badness of the crops to the iron ploughshares, and discarded them for the old wooden ones.[4] The general dislike of innovation, which always makes itself strongly felt in the sphere of religion, is sufficient by itself to account for the superstitious aversion to iron entertained by kings and priests and attributed by them to the gods; possibly this aversion may have been intensified in places by some such accidental cause as the series of bad seasons which cast discredit on iron ploughshares in Poland. But the disfavour in which iron is held by the gods and their ministers has another side. The very fact that iron is deemed obnoxious to spirits furnishes men with a weapon which may be turned against the spirits when occasion serves. As their dislike of iron is supposed to be so great that they will not approach persons and things protected by the obnoxious metal, iron may obviously be employed as a charm for banning ghosts and other dangerous spirits. And it often is so used. Thus when Scotch fishermen were at sea, and one of them happened to take the name of God in vain, the first man who heard him called out ‘Cauld airn,’ at which every man of the crew grasped the nearest bit of iron and held it between his hands for a while.[1] In Morocco iron is considered a great protection against demons; hence it is usual to place a knife or dagger under a sick man’s pillow.[2] In India ‘the mourner who performs the ceremony of putting fire into the dead person’s mouth carries with him a piece of iron: it may be a key or a knife, or a simple piece of iron, and during the whole time of his separation (for he is unclean for a certain time, and no one will either touch him or eat or drink with him, neither can he change his clothes[3]) he carries the piece of iron about with him to keep off the evil spirit. In Calcutta the Bengali clerks in the Government Offices used to wear a small key on one of their fingers when they had been chief mourners.’[4] In the north-east of Scotland immediately after a death had taken place, a piece of iron, such as a nail or a knitting-wire, used to be stuck into all the meal, butter, cheese, flesh, and whisky in the house, ‘to prevent death from entering them.’ The neglect of this precaution is said to have been closely followed by the corruption of the food and drink; the whisky has been known to become as white as milk.[5] When iron is used as a protective charm after a death, as in these Hindu and Scotch customs, the spirit against which it is directed is the ghost of the deceased.[1]

There is a priestly king to the north of Zengwih in Burma, revered by the Sotih as the highest spiritual and temporal authority, into whose house no weapon or cutting instrument may be brought.[2] This rule may perhaps be explained by a custom observed by various peoples after a death; they refrain from the use of sharp instruments so long as the ghost of the deceased is supposed to be near, lest they should wound it. Thus after a death the Roumanians of Transylvania are careful not to leave a knife lying with the sharp edge uppermost as long as the corpse remains in the house, ‘or else the soul will be forced to ride on the blade.’[3] For seven days after a death, the corpse being still in the house, the Chinese abstain from the use of knives and needles, and even of chopsticks, eating their food with their fingers.[4] Amongst the Innuit (Eskimos) of Alaska for four days after a death the women in the village do no sewing, and for five days the men do not cut wood with an axe.[5] On the third, sixth, ninth, and fortieth days after the funeral the old Prussians and Lithuanians used to prepare a meal, to which, standing at the door, they invited the soul of the deceased. At these meals they sat silent round the table and used no knives, and the women who served up the food were also without knives. If any morsels fell from the table they were left lying there for the lonely souls that had no living relations or friends to feed them. When the meal was over the priest took a broom and swept the souls out of the house, saying, ‘Dear souls, ye have eaten and drunk. Go forth, go forth.’[1] In cutting the nails and combing the hair of a dead prince in South Celebes only the back of the knife and of the comb may be used.[2] The Germans say that a knife should not be left edge upwards, because God and the spirits dwell there, or because it will cut the face of God and the angels.[3] We can now understand why no cutting instrument may be taken into the house of the Burmese pontiff. Like so many priestly kings, he is probably regarded as divine, and it is therefore right that his sacred spirit should not be exposed to the risk of being cut or wounded whenever it quits his body to hover invisible in the air or to fly on some distant mission.

We have seen that the Flamen Dialis was forbidden to touch or even name raw flesh.[4] In the Pelew Islands when a raid has been made on a village and a head carried off, the relations of the slain man are tabooed and have to submit to certain observances in order to escape the wrath of his ghost. They are shut up in the house, touch no raw flesh, and chew beetel over which an incantation has been uttered by the exorcist. After this the ghost of the slaughtered man goes away to the enemy’s country in pursuit of his murderer.[5] The taboo is probably based on the common belief that the soul or spirit of the animal is in the blood. As tabooed persons are believed to be in a perilous state – for example, the relations of the slain man are liable to the attacks of his indignant ghost – it is especially necessary to isolate them from contact with spirits; hence the prohibition to touch raw meat. But as usual the taboo is only the special enforcement in particular circumstances of a general rule; in other words, its observance is particularly enjoined in circumstances which are supposed especially to call for its application, but apart from such special circumstances the prohibition is also observed, though less strictly, as an ordinary rule of life. Thus some of the Esthonians will not taste blood because they believe that it contains the animal’s soul, which would enter the body of the person who tasted the blood.[1] Some Indian tribes of North America, ‘through a strong principle of religion, abstain in the strictest manner from eating the blood of any animal, as it contains the life and spirit of the beast.’ These Indians ‘commonly pull their new-killed venison (before they dress it) several times through the smoke and flame of the fire, both by the way of a sacrifice and to consume the blood, life, or animal spirits of the beast, which with them would be a most horrid abomination to eat.’[2] Many of the Slave, Hare, and Dogrib Indians scruple to taste the blood of game; hunters of the former tribes collect the blood in the animal’s paunch and bury it in the snow.[3] Jewish hunters poured out the blood of the game they had killed and covered it up with dust. They would not taste the blood, believing that the soul or life of the animal was in the blood, or actually was the blood.[4] The same belief was held by the Romans,[5] and is shared by the Arabs,[6] and by some of the Papuan tribes of New Guinea.[7]

It is a common rule that royal blood must not be shed upon the ground. Hence when a king or one of his family is to be put to death a mode of execution is devised by which the royal blood shall not be spilt upon the earth. About the year 1688 the generalissimo of the army rebelled against the King of Siam and put him to death ‘after the manner of royal criminals, or as princes of the blood are treated when convicted of capital crimes, which is by putting them into a large iron caldron, and pounding them to pieces with wooden pestles, because none of their royal blood must be spilt on the ground, it being, by their religion, thought great impiety to contaminate the divine blood by mixing it with earth.’[1] Other Siamese modes of executing a royal person are starvation, suffocation, stretching him on a scarlet cloth and thrusting a billet of odoriferous ‘saunders wood’ into his stomach,[2] or lastly, sewing him up in a leather sack with a large stone and throwing him into the river; sometimes the sufferer’s neck is broken with sandal-wood clubs before he is thrown into the water.[3] When Kublai Khan defeated and took his uncle Nayan, who had rebelled against him, he caused Nayan to be put to death by being wrapt in a carpet and tossed to and fro till he died, ‘because he would not have the blood of his line Imperial spilt upon the ground or exposed in the eye of Heaven and before the Sun.’[4] ‘Friar Ricold mentions the Tartar maxim: “One Khan will put another to death to get possession of the throne, but he takes great care that the blood be not spilt. For they say that it is highly improper that the blood of the Great Khan should be spilt upon the ground; so they cause the victim to be smothered somehow or other.” The like feeling prevails at the court of Burma, where a peculiar mode of execution without bloodshed is reserved for princes of the blood.’[1] In Tonquin the ordinary mode of execution is beheading, but persons of the blood royal are strangled.[2] In Ashantee the blood of none of the royal family may be shed; if one of them is guilty of a great crime he is drowned in the river Dah.[3] In Madagascar the blood of nobles might not be shed; hence when four Christians of that class were to be executed they were burned alive.[4] When a young king of Uganda comes of age all his brothers are burnt except two or three, who are preserved to keep up the succession.[5] The reluctance to shed royal blood seems to be only a particular case of a general reluctance to shed blood or at least to allow it to fall on the ground. Marco Polo tells us that in his day persons found on the streets of Cambaluc (Pekin) at unseasonable hours were arrested, and if found guilty of a misdemeanour were beaten with a stick. ‘Under this punishment people sometimes die, but they adopt it in order to eschew bloodshed, for their Bacsis say that it is an evil thing to shed man’s blood.’[6] When Captain Christian was shot by the Manx Government at the Restoration in 1660, the spot on which he stood was covered with white blankets, that his blood might not fall on the ground.[7] Amongst some primitive peoples, when the blood of a tribesman has to be shed it is not suffered to fall upon the ground, but is received upon the bodies of his fellow tribesmen. Thus in some Australian tribes boys who are being circumcised are laid on a platform, formed by the living bodies of the tribesmen;[8] and when a boy’s tooth is knocked out as an initiatory ceremony, he is seated on the shoulders of a man, on whose breast the blood flows and may not be wiped away.[1] When Australian blacks bleed each other as a cure for headache, and so on, they are very careful not to spill any of the blood on the ground, but sprinkle it on each other.[2] We have already seen that in the Australian ceremony for making rain the blood which is supposed to imitate the rain is received upon the bodies of the tribesmen.[3] In South Celebes at childbirth a female slave stands under the house (the houses being raised on posts above the ground) and receives in a basin on her head the blood which trickles through the bamboo floor.[4] The unwillingness to shed blood is extended by some peoples to the blood of animals. When the Wanika in Eastern Africa kill their cattle for food, ‘they either stone or beat the animal to death, so as not to shed the blood.’[5] Amongst the Damaras cattle killed for food are suffocated, but when sacrificed they are speared to death.[6] But like most pastoral tribes in Africa, both the Wanika and Damaras very seldom kill their cattle, which are indeed commonly invested with a kind of sanctity.[7] In killing an animal for food the Easter Islanders do not shed its blood, but stun it or suffocate it in smoke.[8] The explanation of the reluctance to shed blood on the ground is probably to be found in the belief that the soul is in the blood, and that therefore any ground on which it may fall necessarily becomes taboo or sacred. In New Zealand anything upon which even a drop of a high chief’s blood chances to fall becomes taboo or sacred to him. For instance, a party of natives having come to visit a chief in a fine new canoe, the chief got into it, but in doing so a splinter entered his foot, and the blood trickled on the canoe, which at once became sacred to him. The owner jumped out, dragged the canoe ashore opposite the chief’s house, and left it there. Again, a chief in entering a missionary’s house knocked his head against a beam, and the blood flowed. The natives said that in former times the house would have belonged to the chief.[1] As usually happens with taboos of universal application, the prohibition to spill the blood of a tribesman on the ground applies with peculiar stringency to chiefs and kings, and is observed in their case long after it has ceased to be observed in the case of others.

We have seen that the Flamen Dialis was not allowed to walk under a trellised vine.[2] The reason for this prohibition was perhaps as follows. It has been shown that plants are considered as animate beings which bleed when cut, the red juice which exudes from some plants being regarded as the blood of the plant.[3] The juice of the grape is therefore naturally conceived as the blood of the vine.[4] And since, as we have just seen, the soul is often believed to be in the blood, the juice of the grape is regarded as the soul, or as containing the soul, of the vine. This belief is strengthened by the intoxicating effects of wine. For, according to primitive notions, all abnormal mental states, such as intoxication or madness, are caused by the entrance of a spirit into the person; such mental states, in other words, are regarded as forms of possession or inspiration. Wine, therefore, is considered on two distinct grounds as a spirit or containing a spirit; first because, as a red juice, it is identified with the blood of the plant, and second because it intoxicates or inspires. Therefore if the Flamen Dialis had walked under a trellised vine, the spirit of the vine, embodied in the clusters of grapes, would have been immediately over his head and might have touched it, which for a person like him in a state of permanent taboo[1] would have been highly dangerous. This interpretation of the prohibition will be made probable if we can show, first, that wine has been actually viewed by some peoples as blood and intoxication as inspiration produced by drinking the blood; and, second, that it is often considered dangerous, especially for tabooed persons, to have either blood or a living person over their heads.

With regard to the first point, we are informed by Plutarch that of old the Egyptian kings neither drank wine nor offered it in libations to the gods, because they held it to be the blood of beings who had once fought against the gods, the vine having sprung from their rotting bodies; and the frenzy of intoxication was explained by the supposition that the drunken man was filled with the blood of the enemies of the gods.[2] The Aztecs regarded pulque or the wine of the country as bad, on account of the wild deeds which men did under its influence. But these wild deeds were believed to be the acts, not of the drunken man, but of the wine-god by whom he was possessed and inspired; and so seriously was this theory of inspiration held that if any one spoke ill of or insulted a tipsy man, he was liable to be punished for disrespect to the wine-god incarnate in his votary. Hence, says Sahagun, it was believed, not without ground, that the Indians intoxicated themselves on purpose to commit with impunity crimes for which they would certainly have been punished if they had committed them sober.[1] Thus it appears that on the primitive view intoxication or the inspiration produced by wine is exactly parallel to the inspiration produced by drinking the blood of animals.[2] The soul or life is in the blood, and wine is the blood of the vine. Hence whoever drinks the blood of an animal is inspired with the soul of the animal or of the god, who, as we have seen,[3] is often supposed to enter into the animal before it is slain; and whoever drinks wine drinks the blood, and so receives into himself the soul or spirit, of the god of the vine.

With regard to the second point, the fear of passing under blood or under a living person, we are told that some of the Australian blacks have a dread of passing under a leaning tree or even under the rails of a fence. The reason they give is that a woman may have been upon the tree or fence, and some blood from her may have fallen on it and might fall from it on them.[4] In Ugi, one of the Solomon Islands, a man will never, if he can help it, pass under a tree which has fallen across the path, for the reason that a woman may have stepped over it before him.[5] Amongst the Karens of Burma ‘going under a house, especially if there are females within, is avoided; as is also the passing under trees of which the branches extend downwards in a particular direction, and the but-end of fallen trees, etc.’[6] The Siamese think it unlucky to pass under a rope on which women’s clothes are hung, and to avert evil consequences the person who has done so must build a chapel to the earth-spirit.[7]

Probably in all such cases the rule is based on a fear of being brought into contact with blood, especially the blood of women. From a like fear a Maori will never lean his back against the wall of a native house.[1] For the blood of women is believed to have disastrous effects upon males. In the Encounter Bay tribe of South Australia boys are warned that if they see the blood of women they will early become gray-headed and their strength will fail prematurely.[2] Men of the Booandik tribe think that if they see the blood of their women they will not be able to fight against their enemies and will be killed; if the sun dazzles their eyes at a fight, the first woman they afterwards meet is sure to get a blow from their club.[3] In the island of Wetar it is thought that if a man or a lad comes upon a woman’s blood he will be unfortunate in war and other undertakings, and that any precautions he may take to avoid the misfortune will be vain.[4] The people of Ceram also believe that men who see women’s blood will be wounded in battle.[5] Similarly the Ovahereró (Damaras) of South Africa think that if they see a lying-in woman shortly after childbirth they will become weaklings and will be shot when they go to war.[6] It is an Esthonian belief that men who see women’s blood will suffer from an eruption on the skin.[7]

Again, the reason for not passing under dangerous objects, like a vine or women’s blood, is a fear that they may come in contact with the head; for among primitive people the head is peculiarly sacred. The special sanctity attributed to it is sometimes explained by a belief that it is the seat of a spirit which is very sensitive to injury or disrespect. Thus the Karens suppose that a being called the tso resides in the upper part of the head, and while it retains its seat no harm can befall the person from the efforts of the seven Kelahs, or personified passions. ‘But if the tso becomes heedless or weak certain evil to the person is the result. Hence the head is carefully attended to, and all possible pains are taken to provide such dress and attire as will be pleasing to the tso.’[1] The Siamese think that a spirit called Khuan, or Chom Kuan, dwells in the human head, of which it is the guardian spirit. The spirit must be carefully protected from injury of every kind; hence the act of shaving or cutting the hair is accompanied with many ceremonies. The Khuan is very sensitive on points of honour, and would feel mortally insulted if the head in which he resides were touched by the hand of a stranger. When Dr Bastian, in conversation with a brother of the king of Siam, raised his hand to touch the prince’s skull in order to illustrate some medical remarks he was making, a sullen and threatening murmur bursting from the lips of the crouching courtiers warned him of the breach of etiquette he had committed, for in Siam there is no greater insult to a man of rank than to touch his head. If a Siamese touch the head of another with his foot, both of them must build chapels to the earth-spirit to avert the omen. Nor does the guardian spirit of the head like to have the hair washed too often; it might injure or incommode him. It was a grand solemnity when the king of Burmah’s head was washed with water taken from the middle of the river. Whenever the native professor, from whom Dr Bastian took lessons in Burmese at Mandalay, had his head washed, which took place as a rule once a month, he was generally absent for three days together, that time being consumed in preparing for, and recovering from, the operation of head-washing. Dr Bastian’s custom of washing his head daily gave rise to much remark.[2]

Again, the Burmese think it an indignity to have any one, especially a woman, over their heads, and for this reason Burmese houses have never more than one story. The houses are raised on posts above the ground, and whenever anything fell through the floor Dr Bastian had always difficulty in persuading a servant to fetch it from under the house. In Rangoon a priest, summoned to the bedside of a sick man, climbed up a ladder and got in at the window rather than ascend the staircase, to reach which he must have passed under a gallery. A pious Burman of Rangoon, finding some images of Buddha in a ship’s cabin, offered a high price for them, that they might not be degraded by sailors walking over them on the deck.[1] Similarily the Cambodians esteem it a grave offence to touch a man’s head; some of them will not enter a place where anything whatever is suspended over their heads; and the meanest Cambodian would never consent to live under an inhabited room. Hence the houses are built of one story only; and even the Government respects the prejudice by never placing a prisoner in the stocks under the floor of a house, though the houses are raised high above the ground.[2] The same superstition exists amongst the Malays; for an early traveller reports that in Java people ‘wear nothing on their heads, and say that nothing must be on their heads … and if any person were to put his hand upon their head they would kill him; and they do not build houses with storeys, in order that they may not walk over each other’s heads.’[3] It is also found in full force throughout Polynesia. Thus of Gattanewa, a Marquesan chief, it is said that ‘to touch the top of his head, or any thing which had been on his head was sacrilege. To pass over his head was an indignity never to be forgotten. Gattanewa, nay, all his family, scorned to pass a gateway which is ever closed, or a house with a door; all must be as open and free as their unrestrained manners. He would pass under nothing that had been raised by the hand of man, if there was a possibility of getting round or over it. Often have I seen him walk the whole length of our barrier, in preference to passing between our water-casks; and at the risk of his life scramble over the loose stones of a wall, rather than go through the gateway.’[1] Marquesan women have been known to refuse to go on the decks of ships for fear of passing over the heads of chiefs who might be below.[2] But it was not the Marquesan chiefs only whose heads were sacred; the head of every Marquesan was taboo, and might neither be touched nor stepped over by another; even a father might not step over the head of his sleeping child.[3] No one was allowed to be over the head of the king of Tonga.[4] In Hawaii (the Sandwich Islands) if a man climbed upon a chief’s house or upon the wall of his yard, he was put to death; if his shadow fell on a chief, he was put to death; if he walked in the shadow of a chief’s house with his head painted white or decked with a garland or wetted with water, he was put to death.[5] In Tahiti any one who stood over the king or queen, or passed his hand over their heads, might be put to death.[6] Until certain rites were performed over it, a Tahitian infant was especially taboo; whatever touched the child’s head, while it was in this state, became sacred and was deposited in a consecrated place railed in for the purpose at the child’s house. If a branch of a tree touched the child’s head, the tree was cut down; and if in its fall it injured another tree so as to penetrate the bark, that tree also was cut down as unclean and unfit for use. After the rites were performed, these special taboos ceased; but the head of a Tahitian was always sacred, he never carried anything on it, and to touch it was an offence.[1] The head of a Maori chief was so sacred that ‘if he only touched it with his fingers, he was obliged immediately to apply them to his nose, and snuff up the sanctity which they had acquired by the touch, and thus restore it to the part from whence it was taken.’[2] In some circumstances the tabooed person is forbidden to touch his head at all. Thus in North America, Tinneh girls at puberty, Creek lads during the year of their initiation into manhood, and young braves on their first war-path, are forbidden to scratch their heads with their fingers, and are provided with a stick for the purpose.[3] But to return to the Maoris. On account of the sacredness of his head ‘a chief could not blow the fire with his mouth, for the breath being sacred, communicated his sanctity to it, and a brand might be taken by a slave, or a man of another tribe, or the fire might be used for other purposes, such as cooking, and so cause his death.’[4] It is a crime for a sacred person in New Zealand to leave his comb, or anything else which has touched his head, in a place where food has been cooked, or to suffer another person to drink out of any vessel which has touched his lips. Hence when a chief wishes to drink he never puts his lips to the vessel, but holds his hands close to his mouth so as to form a hollow, into which water is poured by another person, and thence is allowed to flow into his mouth. If a light is needed for his pipe, the burning ember taken from the fire must be thrown away as soon as it is used; for the pipe becomes sacred because it has touched his mouth; the coal becomes sacred because it has touched the pipe; and if a particle of the sacred cinder were replaced on the common fire, the fire would also become sacred and could no longer be used for cooking.[1] Some Maori chiefs, like other Polynesians, object to go down into a ship’s cabin from fear of people passing over their heads.[2] Dire misfortune was thought by the Maoris to await those who entered a house where any article of animal food was suspended over their heads. ‘A dead pigeon, or a piece of pork hung from the roof was a better protection from molestation than a sentinel.’[3] If I am right, the reason for the special objection to having animal food over the head is the fear of bringing the sacred head into contact with the spirit of the animal; just as the reason why the Flamen Dialis might not walk under a vine was the fear of bringing his sacred head into contact with the spirit of the vine.

When the head was considered so sacred that it might not even be touched without grave offence, it is obvious that the cutting of the hair must have been a delicate and difficult operation. The difficulties and dangers which, on the primitive view, beset the operation are of two kinds. There is first the danger of disturbing the spirit of the head, which may be injured in the process and may revenge itself upon the person who molests him. Secondly, there is the difficulty of disposing of the shorn locks. For the savage believes that the sympathetic connection which exists between himself and every part of his body continues to exist even after the physical connection has been severed, and that therefore he will suffer from any harm that may befall the severed parts of his body, such as the clippings of his hair or the parings of his nails. Accordingly he takes care that these severed portions of himself shall not be left in places where they might either be exposed to accidental injury or fall into the hands of malicious persons who might work magic on them to his detriment or death. Such dangers are common to all, but sacred persons have more to fear from them than ordinary people, so the precautions taken by them are proportionately stringent. The simplest way of evading the danger is of course not to cut the hair at all; and this is the expedient adopted where the danger is thought to be more than usually great. The Frankish kings were not allowed to cut their hair.[1] A Haida medicine-man may neither cut nor comb his hair, so it is always long and tangled.[2] Amongst the Alfoers of Celebes the Leleen or priest who looks after the rice-fields may not cut his hair during the time that he exercises his special functions, that is, from a month before the rice is sown until it is housed.[3] In Ceram men do not cut their hair: if married men did so, they would lose their wives; if young men did so, they would grow weak and enervated.[4] In Timorlaut, married men may not cut their hair for the same reason as in Ceram, but widowers and men on a journey may do so after offering a fowl or a pig in sacrifice.[5] Here men on a journey are specially permitted to cut their hair; but elsewhere men travelling abroad have been in the habit of leaving their hair uncut until their return. The reason for the latter custom is probably the danger to which, as we have seen, a traveller is believed to be exposed from the magic arts of the strangers amongst whom he sojourns; if they got possession of his shorn hair, they might work his destruction through it. The Egyptians on a journey kept their hair uncut till they returned home.[1] ‘At Tâif when a man returned from a journey his first duty was to visit the Rabba and poll his hair.’[2] The custom of keeping the hair unshorn during a dangerous expedition seems to have been observed, at least occasionally, by the Romans.[3] Achilles kept unshorn his yellow hair, because his father had vowed to offer it to the river Sperchius if ever his son came home from the wars beyond the sea.[4] Again, men who have taken a vow of vengeance sometimes keep their hair unshorn till they have fulfilled their vow. Thus of the Marquesans we are told that ‘occasionally they have their head entirely shaved, except one lock on the crown, which is worn loose or put up in a knot. But the latter mode of wearing the hair is only adopted by them when they have a solemn vow, as to revenge the death of some near relation, etc. In such case the lock is never cut off until they have fulfilled their promise.’[5] Six thousand Saxons once swore that they would not cut their hair nor shave their beards until they had taken vengeance on their enemies.[6] On one occasion a Hawaiian taboo is said to have lasted thirty years ‘during which the men were not allowed to trim their beards, etc.’[7] While his vow lasted, a Nazarite might not have his hair cut: ‘All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no razor come upon his head.’[1] Possibly in this case there was a special objection to touching the tabooed man’s head with iron. The Roman priests, as we have seen, were shorn with bronze knives. The same feeling probably gave rise to the European rule that a child’s nails should not be cut during the first year, but that if it is absolutely necessary to shorten them they should be bitten off by the mother or nurse.[2] For in all parts of the world a young child is believed to be especially exposed to supernatural dangers, and particular precautions are taken to guard it against them; in other words, the child is under a number of taboos, of which the rule just mentioned is one. ‘Among Hindus the usual custom seems to be that the nails of a first-born child are cut at the age of six months. With other children a year or two is allowed to elapse.’[3] The Slave, Hare, and Dogrib Indians of North America do not cut the nails of female children till they are four years of age.[4] In some parts of Germany it is thought that if a child’s hair is combed in its first year the child will be unlucky;[5] or that if a boy’s hair is cut before his seventh year he will have no courage.[1]

But when it is necessary to cut the hair, precautions are taken to lessen the dangers which are supposed to attend the operation. Amongst the Maoris many spells were uttered at hair-cutting; one, for example, was spoken to consecrate the obsidian knife with which the hair was cut; another was pronounced to avert the thunder and lightning which hair-cutting was believed to cause.[2] ‘He who has had his hair cut is in the immediate charge of the Atua (spirit); he is removed from the contact and society of his family and his tribe; he dare not touch his food himself; it is put into his mouth by another person; nor can he for some days resume his accustomed occupations or associate with his fellow men.’[3] The person who cuts the hair is also tabooed; his hands having been in contact with a sacred head, he may not touch food with them or engage in any other employment; he is fed by another person with food cooked over a sacred fire. He cannot be released from the taboo before the following day, when he rubs his hands with potato or fern root which has been cooked on a sacred fire; and this food having been taken to the head of the family in the female line and eaten by her, his hands are freed from the taboo. In some parts of New Zealand the most sacred day of the year was that appointed for hair-cutting; the people assembled in large numbers on that day from all the neighbourhood.[4] It is an affair of state when the king of Cambodia’s hair is cut. The priests place on the barber’s fingers certain old rings set with large stones, which are supposed to contain spirits favourable to the kings, and during the operation the Brahmans keep up a noisy music to drive away the evil spirits.[1] The hair and nails of the Mikado could only be cut while he was asleep,[2] perhaps because his soul being then absent from his body, there was less chance of injuring it with the shears.

But even when the hair and nails have been safely cut, there remains the difficulty of disposing of them, for their owner believes himself liable to suffer from any harm that may befall them. Thus, an Australian girl, sick of a fever, attributed her illness to the fact that some months before a young man had come behind her and cut off a lock of her hair; she was sure he had buried it and that it was rotting. ‘Her hair,’ she said, ‘was rotting somewhere, and her Marm-bu-la (kidney fat) was wasting away, and when her hair had completely rotted, she would die.’[3] A Marquesan chief told Lieutenant Gamble that he was extremely ill, the Happah tribe having stolen a lock of his hair and buried it in a plantain leaf for the purpose of taking his life. Lieut. Gamble argued with him, but in vain; die he must unless the hair and the plantain leaf were brought back to him; and to obtain them he had offered the Happahs the greater part of his property. He complained of excessive pain in the head, breast and sides.[4] When an Australian blackfellow wishes to get rid of his wife, he cuts off a lock of her hair in her sleep, ties it to his spear-thrower, and goes with it to a neighbouring tribe, where he gives it to a friend. His friend sticks the spear-thrower up every night before the camp fire, and when it falls down it is a sign that his wife is dead.[5] The way in which the charm operates was explained to Mr Howitt by a Mirajuri man. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘when a blackfellow doctor gets hold of something belonging to a man and roasts it with things, and sings over it, the fire catches hold of the smell of the man, and that settles the poor fellow.’[1] In Germany it is a common notion that if birds find a person’s cut hair, and build their nests with it, the person will suffer from headache;[2] sometimes it is thought that he will have an eruption on the head.[3] Again it is thought that cut or combed out hair may disturb the weather by producing rain and hail, thunder and lightning. We have seen that in New Zealand a spell was uttered at hair-cutting to avert thunder and lightning. In the Tirol, witches are supposed to use cut or combed out hair to make hail-stones or thunder-storms with.[4] Thlin-ket Indians have been known to attribute stormy weather to the fact that a girl had combed her hair outside of the house.[5] The Romans seem to have held similar views, for it was a maxim with them that no one on shipboard should cut his hair or nails except in a storm,[6] that is, when the mischief was already done. In West Africa, when the Mani of Chitombe or Jumba died, the people used to run in crowds to the corpse and tear out his hair, teeth, and nails, which they kept as a rain-charm, believing that otherwise no rain would fall. The Makoko of Anzikos begged the missionaries to give him half their beards as a rain-charm.[1] In some Victorian tribes the sorcerer used to burn human hair in time of drought; it was never burned at other times for fear of causing a deluge of rain. Also when the river was low, the sorcerer would place human hair in the stream to increase the supply of water.[2]

To preserve the cut hair and nails from injury and from the dangerous uses to which they may be put by sorcerers, it is necessary to deposit them in some safe place. Hence the natives of the Maldives carefully keep the cuttings of their hair and nails and bury them, with a little water, in the cemeteries; ‘for they would not for the world tread upon them nor cast them in the fire, for they say that they are part of their body and demand burial as it does; and, indeed, they fold them neatly in cotton; and most of them like to be shaved at the gates of temples and mosques.’[3] In New Zealand the severed hair was deposited on some sacred spot of ground ‘to protect it from being touched accidentally or designedly by any one.’[4] The shorn locks of a chief were gathered with much care and placed in an adjoining cemetery.[5] The Tahitians buried the cuttings of their hair at the temples.[6] The cut hair and nails of the Flamen Dialis were buried under a lucky tree.[7] The hair of the Vestal virgins was hung upon an ancient lotus-tree.[8] In Germany the clippings of hair used often to be buried under an elder-bush.[9] In Oldenburg cut hair and nails are wrapt in a cloth which is deposited in a hole in an elder-tree three days before the new moon; the hole is then plugged up.[1] In the West of Northumberland it is thought that if the first parings of a child’s nails are buried under an ash-tree, the child will turn out a fine singer.[2] In Amboina before a child may taste sago-pap for the first time, the father cuts off a lock of the child’s hair which he buries under a sago palm.[3] In the Aru Islands, when a child is able to run alone, a female relation cuts off a lock of its hair and deposits it on a banana-tree.[4] In the island of Roti it is thought that the first hair which a child gets is not his own and that, if it is not cut off, it will make him weak and ill. Hence, when the child is about a month old, his hair is cut off with much ceremony. As each of the friends who are invited to the ceremony enters the house he goes up to the child, cuts off a little of its hair and drops it into a cocoa-nut shell full of water. Afterwards the father or another relation takes the hair and packs it into a little bag made of leaves, which he fastens to the top of a palm-tree. Then he gives the leaves of the palm a good shaking, climbs down, and goes home without speaking to any one.[5] Indians of the Yukon territory, Alaska, do not throw away their cut hair and nails, but tie them up in little bundles and place them in the crotches of trees or anywhere where they will not be disturbed by animals. For ‘they have a superstition that disease will follow the disturbance of such remains by animals.’[6] The clipped hair and nails are often buried in any secret place, not necessarily in a temple or cemetery or under a tree, as in the cases already mentioned. In Swabia it is said that cut hair should be buried in a place where neither sun nor moon shines, therefore in the ground, under a stone, etc.[1] In Danzig it is buried in a bag under the threshold.[2] In Ugi, one of the Solomon Islands, men bury their hair lest it should fall into the hands of an enemy who would make magic with it and so bring sickness or calamity on them.[3] The Zend Avesta directs that the clippings of hair and the parings of nails shall be placed in separate holes, and that three, six, or nine furrows shall be drawn round each hole with a metal knife.[4] In the Grihya-Sûtras it is provided that the hair cut from a child’s head at the end of the first, third, fifth, or seventh year shall be buried in the earth at a place covered with grass or in the neighbourhood of water.[5] The Madi or Moru tribe of Central Africa bury the parings of their nails in the ground.[6] The Kafirs carry still further this dread of allowing any portion of themselves to fall into the hands of an enemy; for not only do they bury their cut hair and nails in a sacred place, but when one of them cleans the head of another he preserves the insects which he finds, ‘carefully delivering them to the person to whom they originally appertained, supposing, according to their theory, that as they derived their support from the blood of the man from whom they were taken, should they be killed by another the blood of his neighbour would be in his possession, thus placing in his hands the power of some superhuman influence.’[7] Amongst the Wa-nyoro of Central Africa all cuttings of the hair and nails are carefully stored under the bed and afterwards strewed about among the tall grass.[8] In North Guinea they are carefully hidden (it is not said where) ‘in order that they may not be used as a fetish for the destruction of him to whom they belong.’[1] In Bolang Mongondo (Celebes) the first hair cut from a child’s head is kept in a young cocoa-nut, which is commonly hung on the front of the house, under the roof.[2]

Sometimes the severed hair and nails are preserved, not to prevent them from falling into the hands of a magician, but that the owner may have them at the resurrection of the body, to which some races look forward. Thus the Incas of Peru ‘took extreme care to preserve the nail-parings and the hairs that were shorn off or torn out with a comb; placing them in holes or niches in the walls, and if they fell out, any other Indian that saw them picked them up and put them in their places again. I very often asked different Indians, at various times, why they did this, in order to see what they would say, and they all replied in the same words, saying, “Know that all persons who are born must return to life” (they have no word to express resuscitation), “and the souls must rise out of their tombs with all that belonged to their bodies. We, therefore, in order that we may not have to search for our hair and nails at a time when there will be much hurry and confusion, place them in one place, that they may be brought together more conveniently, and, whenever it is possible, we are also careful to spit in one place.”’[3] In Chile this custom of stuffing the shorn hair into holes in the wall is still observed, it being thought the height of imprudence to throw the hair away.[4] Similarly the Turks never throw away the parings of their nails, but carefully keep them in cracks of the walls or of the boards, in the belief that they will be needed at the resurrection.[5] Some of the Esthonians keep the parings of their finger and toe nails in their bosom, in order to have them at hand when they are asked for them at the day of judgment.[1] The Fors of Central Africa object to cut any one else’s nails, for should the part cut off be lost and not delivered into its owner’s hands, it will have to be made up to him somehow or other after death. The parings are buried in the ground.[2] To spit upon the hair before throwing it away is thought in some parts of Europe sufficient to prevent its being used by witches.[3] Spitting as a protective charm is well known.

Some people burn their loose hair to save it from falling into the power of sorcerers. This is done by the Patagonians and some of the Victorian tribes.[4] The Makololo of South Africa either burn it or bury it secretly,[5] and the same alternative is sometimes adopted by the Tirolese.[6] Cut and combed out hair is burned in Pomerania and sometimes at Liége.[7] In Norway the parings of nails are either burned or buried, lest the elves or the Finns should find them and make them into bullets wherewith to shoot the cattle.[8] This destruction of the hair or nails plainly involves an inconsistency of thought. The object of the destruction is avowedly to prevent these severed portions of the body from being used by sorcerers. But the possibility of their being so used depends upon the supposed sympathetic connection between them and the man from whom they were severed. And if this sympathetic connection still exists, clearly these severed portions cannot be destroyed without injury to the man.

Before leaving this subject, on which I have perhaps dwelt too long, it may be well to call attention to the motive assigned for cutting a young child’s hair in Roti.[1] In that island the first hair is regarded as a danger to the child, and its removal is intended to avert the danger. The reason of this may be that as a young child is almost universally supposed to be in a tabooed or dangerous state, it is necessary, in removing the taboo, to destroy the separable parts of the child’s body on the ground that they are infected, so to say, by the virus of the taboo and as such are dangerous. The cutting of the child’s hair would thus be exactly parallel to the destruction of the vessels which have been used by a tabooed person.[2] This view is borne out by a practice, observed by some Australians, of burning off part of a woman’s hair after childbirth as well as burning every vessel which has been used by her during her seclusion.[3] Here the burning of the woman’s hair seems plainly intended to serve the same purpose as the burning of the vessels used by her; and as the vessels are burned because they are believed to be tainted with a dangerous infection, so, we must suppose, is also the hair. We can, therefore, understand the importance attached by many peoples to the first cutting of a child’s hair and the elaborate ceremonies by which the operation is accompanied.[4] Again, we can understand why a man should poll his head after a journey.[5] For we have seen that a traveller is often believed to contract a dangerous infection from strangers and that, therefore, on his return home he is obliged to submit to various purificatory ceremonies before he is allowed to mingle freely with his own people.[1] On my hypothesis the polling of the hair is simply one of these purificatory or disinfectant ceremonies. The cutting of the hair after a vow may have the same meaning. It is a way of ridding the man of what has been infected by the dangerous state of taboo, sanctity, or uncleanness (for all these are only different expressions for the same primitive conception) under which he laboured during the continuance of the vow. Similarly at some Hindu places of pilgrimage on the banks of rivers men who have committed great crimes or are troubled by uneasy consciences have every hair shaved off by professional barbers before they plunge into the sacred stream, from which ‘they emerge new creatures, with all the accumulated guilt of a long life effaced.’[2]

As might have been expected, the superstitions of the savage cluster thick about the subject of food; and he abstains from eating many animals and plants, wholesome enough in themselves, but which for one reason or another he considers would prove dangerous or fatal to the eater. Examples of such abstinence are too familiar and far too numerous to quote. But if the ordinary man is thus deterred by superstitious fear from partaking of various foods, the restraints of this kind which are laid upon sacred or tabooed persons, such as kings and priests, are still more numerous and stringent. We have already seen that the Flamen Dialis was forbidden to eat or even name several plants and animals, and that the flesh diet of the Egyptian kings was restricted to veal and goose.[3] The Gangas or fetish priests of the Loango Coast are forbidden to eat or even see a variety of animals and fish, in consequence of which their flesh diet is extremely limited; often they live only on herbs and roots, though they may drink fresh blood.[4] The heir to the throne of Loango is forbidden from infancy to eat pork; from early childhood he is interdicted the use of the cola fruit in company; at puberty he is taught by a priest not to partake of fowls except such as he has himself killed and cooked; and so the number of taboos goes on increasing with his years.[1] In Fernando Po the king after installation is forbidden to eat cocco (arum acaule), deer, and porcupine, which are the ordinary foods of the people.[2] Amongst the Murrams of Manipur (a district of Eastern India, on the border of Burma), ‘there are many prohibitions in regard to the food, both animal and vegetable, which the chief should eat, and the Murrams say the chief’s post must be a very uncomfortable one.’[3] To explain the ultimate reason why any particular food is prohibited to a whole tribe or to certain of its members would commonly require a far more intimate knowledge of the history and beliefs of the tribe than we possess. The general motive of such prohibitions is doubtless the same which underlies the whole taboo system, namely, the conservation of the tribe and the individual.

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

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

1. Manners and Customs of the Japanese in the Nineteenth Century. From recent Dutch Visitors to Japan, and the German of Dr. Ph. Fr. von Siebold (London, 1841), p. 141 sqq.

2. Kaempfer, ‘History of Japan,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, vii. 716 sq.

1. Caron, ‘Account of Japan,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, vii, 613. Compare Varenius, Descriptio regni Japoniae, p. 11, Nunquam attingebant (quemadmodum et hodie id observat) pedes ipsius terram: radiis Solis caput nunquam illustrabatur: in apertum aërem non procedebat, etc.

1. A. Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, i. 287 sq.; cp. id., p. 353 sq.

2. Labat, Relation historique de l’Ethiopie Occidentale, i. 254 sqq.

3. Above, pp. 38, 42–3.

1. Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. des nations civilisées du Mexique et de l’Amérique-centrale, iii. 29 sq.; Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 142 sq.

1. Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, i. 355.

1. Dapper, Description de l’Afrique, p. 336.

2. p. 43 sq.

3. Bibl. Hist. i. 70.

4. p. 5.

1. Aulus Gellius, x, 15; Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 109–112; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxviii. 146; Servius on Virgil, Aen. i. vv. 179,448, iv. 518; Macrobius, Saturn, i. 16, 8 sq.; Festus, p. 161 A, ed. Müller. For more details see Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii.2 326 sqq.

2. p. 46.

3. p. 42.

1. Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, i. 354 sq.; ii. 9, 11.

2. Manners and Customs of the Japanese, pp. 199 sqq. 355 sqq.

1. Richard, ‘History of Tonquin,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, ix. 744 sqq.

2. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, iii. 99 sqq. ed. 1836.

3. Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific, p. 293 sqq.

4. Pp. 38, 96–7.

1. Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vii. 282.

2. Relations des Jesuites, 1634, p. 17; id., 1636, p. 104; id., 1639, p. 43 (Canadian reprint).

3. H. Rink, Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 36.

1. Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific, p. 171.

2. H. Sundermann, ‘Die Insel Nias und die Mission daselbst,’ in Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift, bd. xi. October 1884, P· 453·

3. B. F. Matthes, Over de Bissoes of heidensche priesters en priesteressen der Boeginezen, p. 24.

4. G. M. Dawson, ‘On the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands,’ in Geological Survey of Canada, Report of Progress for 1878–1879, pp. 123 B, 139 B.

5. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, vi. 397 sq.

6. Panjab Notes and Queries, ii. No. 665.

7. D’Orbigny, L’Homme Américain, ii. 241; Transact. Ethnol. Soc. of London, iii. 322 sq.; Bastian, Culturländer des alten Amerika, i. 476.

1. B. F. Matthes, Bijdragen tot de Ethnologic van Zuid-Celebes, P. 54.

2. Zimmermann, Die Inseln des Indischen und Stillen Meeres, ii, 386 sq.

3. Cp. the Greek ποτάομαι, άναπτερόω, etc.

4. G. A. Wilken, ‘Het animisme bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel,’ in De Indische Gids, June 1884, p. 944.

1. Wilken, l.c.

2. B. F. Matthes, Bijdragen tot de Ethnologie van Zuid-Celebes, p. 33; id., Over de Bissoes of heidensche priesters en priesteressen der Boeginezen, p. 9 sq.; id., Makassaarsch-Hollandsch Woordenboek, svv. Kôerróe and soemāñgá. pp. 41,569. Of these two words, the former means the sound made in calling fowls, and the latter means the soul. The expression for the ceremonies described in the text is ápakôerróe soemāñgá.

3. Shway Yoe, The Burman, his Life and Notions, ii. 100.

4. J. L. Wilson, West Afrika, p. 162 sq. (German translation).

5. J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 267. For detention of sleeper’s soul by spirits and consequent illness, see also Mason, quoted in Bastian’s Die Völker des östlichen Asien, ii. 387 note.

1. Indian Antiquary, 1878, vii. 273; Bastian, Völkerstämme am Brahmaputra, p. 127. Similar story (lizard form of soul not mentioned) told by Hindus, Panjab Notes and Queries, iii. No. 679.

2. E. Gerard, The Land beyond the Forest, ii. 27 sq. A similar story is told in Holland, J. W. Wolf, Nederlandsche Sagen, No. 251, p. 344 sq. The stories of Hermotimus and King Gunthram belong to the same class. In the latter the king’s soul comes out of his mouth as a small reptile. The soul of Aristeas issued from his mouth in the form of a raven. Pliny, Nat. Hist, vii. § 174; Lucian, Muse. Encom. 7; Paulus, Hist. Langobardorum, iii. 34. In an East Indian story of the same type the sleeper’s soul issues from his nose in the form of a cricket. Wilken in De Indische Gids, June 1884, p. 940. In a Swabian story a girl’s soul creeps out of her mouth in the form of a white mouse. Birlinger, Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, i. 303.

1. Shway Yoe, The Burman, ii. 103; Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, ii. 389; Blumentritt, ‘Der Ahnencultus und die religiösen Anschauungen der Malaien des Philippinen-Archipels,’ in Mittheilungen d. Wiener Geogr. Gesellschaft, 1882, p. 209; Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 440; id., ‘Die Landschaft Dawan oder West-Timor,’ in Deutsche Geographische Blätter, x. 280.

2. Panjab Notes and Queries, iii. No. 530.

3. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 117 sq.

1. Bastian, Die Seele und ihre Erscheinungwesen in der Ethnographie, p. 36.

2. Pantschatanira, Benfey, p. 124 sqq.

3. Katha Sarit Ságara, trans. Tawney, i, 21 sq.

4. E. B. Cross, ‘On the Karens,’ in Journal of the American Oriental Society, iv. 311.

1. A. R. M’Mahon, The Karens of the Golden Chersonese, p. 318.

2. F. Mason, ‘Physical Character of the Karens,’ in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1866, pt. ii. p. 28 sq.

3. C. J. S. F. Forbes, British Burma, p. 99 sq.; Shway Yoe, The Burman, ii. 102; Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, ii. 389.

4. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 414.

1. Riedel, op. cit. p. 221 sq.

2. N. Ph. Wilken en J. A. Schwarz, ‘Het heidendom en de Islam in Bolaang Mongondou,’ in Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, 1867, xi. 263 sq.

3. James Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 57 sq.

1. W. W. Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific, p. 171 sq.

2. G. A. Wilken, ‘Het animisme,’ in De Indische Gids, June 1884, p. 937.

3. Landes, ‘Contes et légendes annamites,’ No. 76 in Cochinchine Française, Excursions et Reconnaissances, No. 23, p. 80.

4. Perelaer, Ethnographische Beschrijving der Dajaks, p. 26 sq.

1. Fr. Valentyn, Oud en nieuw Oost-Indiën, iii. 13 sq.

2. Van Schmidt, ‘Aanteekeningen, nopens de zeden, gewoonten en gebruiken, benevens de vooroordeelen en bijgelovigheden der bevolking van de eilanden Saparoea, Haroekoe, Noessa Laut, en van een gedeelte van de zuidkust van Ceram,’ in Tijdschrift voor Neêrland Indië, 1843, dl. ii. 511 sqq.

3. Bastian, Die Seele, p. 36 sq.; J. G. Gmelin, Reise durch Sibirien, ii. 359 sq.

1. P. N. Wilken, ‘Bijdragen tot de kennis van de zeden en gewoonten der Alfoeren in de Minahassa,’ in Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, 1863, vii. 146 sq. Why the priest, after restoring the soul, tells it to go away again, is not clear.

2. Riedel, ‘De Minahasa in 1825,’ in Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-Land-en Volkenkunde, xviii, 523.

3. N. Graafland, De Minahassa, i. 327 sq.

1. G. Turner, Samoa, p. 142 sq.

2. J. B. Neumann, ‘Het Pane en Bila – stroomgebied op het eiland Sumatra,’ in Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, ii. de Serie, dl. iii., Afdeeling: meer uitgebreide artikelen, No. 2 (1886), p. 302.

3. Codrington, ‘Religious Beliefs and Practices in Melanesia,’ in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, x. 281.

1. Horatio Hale, U.S. Exploring Expedition, Ethnography and Philology, p. 208 sq. Cp. Wilkes, Narrative of the U.S. Exploring Expedition (London, 1845), iv. 448 sq.

2. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 77 sq.

3. Ib. p. 356 sq.

4. Riedel, op. cit. p. 376.

1. Spenser St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, i. 189. Sometimes the souls resemble cotton seeds (ib.). Cp. id. i. 183.

2. Nieuwenhuisen en Rosenberg, ‘Verslag omtrent het Eiland Nias,’ in Verhandel, van het Batav. Genootsch. van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, xxx. 116; Rosenberg, Der Malayische Archipel, p. 174.

3. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, i. 250.

4. Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific, p. 171; id., Life in the Southern Isles, p. 181 sqq.

1. L. J. B. Bérenger-Féraud, Les Peuplades de la Sénégambie (Paris, 1879), p. 277.

2. W. H. Bentley, Life on the Congo (London, 1887), p. 71.

3. Bastian, Allerlei aus Volks-und Menschenkunde (Berlin, 1888), i. 119.

4. Relations des Jésuites, 1637, p. 50.

1. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 78 sq.

2. Ε. Β. Cross, ‘On the Karens,’ in Journal of the American Oriental Society, iv. 307.

3. J. B. McCullagh in The Church Missionary Gleaner, xiv. No. 164 (August 1887), p. 91. The same account is copied from the ‘North Star’ (Sitka, Alaska, December 1888), in Journal of American Folk-lore, ii. 74 sq. Mr McCullagh’s account (which is closely followed in the text) of the latter part of the custom is not quite clear. It would seem that failing to find the soul in the head-doctor’s box it occurs to them that he may have swallowed it, as the other doctors were at first supposed to have done. With a view of testing this hypothesis they hold him up by the heels to empty out the soul; and as the water with which his head is washed may possibly contain the missing soul, it is poured on the patient’s head to restore the soul to him. We have already seen that the recovered soul is often conveyed into the sick person’s head.

1. Riedel, De Topantunuasu of oorspronkelijke volksstammen van Central Selebes (overgedrukt uit de Bijdragen tot de Taal-Land-en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 5e volgr. i.), p. 17; Neumann, ‘Het Pane en Bila-stroomgebied,’ in Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, ii. de Serie, dl. iii., Afdeeling: meer uitgebreide artikelen, No. 2 (1886), p. 300 sq.: Priklonski, ‘Die Jakuten,’ in Bastian’s Allerlei aus Volks-und Menschenkunde, ii. 218 sq.; Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, ii. 388, iii. 236; id., Völkerstämme am Brahmaputra, p. 23; id., ‘Hügelstämme Assam’s,’ in Verhandlungèn d. Berlin. Gesell, f. Anthropol. Ethnol. und Urgeschichte, 1881, p. 156; Shway Yoe, The Burman, i. 283 sq., ii. 101 sq.; Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, p. 214; Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, p. 110 sq. (ed. Paxton Hood); T. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, i. 242; Ε. Β. Cross, ‘On the Karens,’ in Journal of the American Oriental Society, iv. 309 sq.; A. W. Howitt, ‘On some Australian Beliefs,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Instit. xiii. 187 sq.; id., ‘On Australian Medicine Men,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xvi. 41; E. P. Houghton, ‘On the Land Dayaks of Upper Sarawak,’ in Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of London, iii. 196 sq.; L. Dahle, ‘Sikidy and Vintana,’ in Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar Annual, xi. (1887) p. 320 sq.; C. Leemius, De Lapponibus Finmarchiae eorumque lingua, vita et religione pristina commentatio (Copenhagen, 1767), p. 416 sq. Some time ago my friend Professor W. Robertson Smith suggested to me that the practice of hunting souls, which is denounced in Ezekiel xiii. 17 sqq. must have been akin to those described in the text.

2. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 440.

1. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, v. 455.

2. Riedel, op. cit. p. 340.

3. Codrington, ‘Religious Beliefs and Practices in Melanesia,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Instit. x. 281.

4. Riedel, op. cit. p. 61.

5. Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific, p. 284 sqq.

6. Bernard Schmidt, Das Volksleben der Neugriechen, pp. 94 sqq., 119 sq.; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 972; Rochholz, Deutscher Glaube und Brauch, i. 62 sqq.; Ε Gerard, The Land beyond the Forest, i. 331.

1. Schol. on Aristophanes, Ran. 293.

2. [Aristotle] Mirab. Auscult. 145 (157); Geoponica, xv. I. In the latter passage, for κατάγει έαυτήν we must read κ. αὐτόν, an emendation necessitated by the context, and confirmed by the passage of Damīrī quoted and translated by Bochart, Hierozoicon, i. e. 833, ‘cum ad lunam calcat umbram canis, qui supra tectura est, canis ad eam [scil, hyaenam] decidit, et ea illum devorat,’ Cp. W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, i. 122.

3. Pausanias, viii. 38, 6; Polybius, xvi. 12, 7; Plutarch, Quaest. Graec. 39.

4. B. Schmidt, Das Volksleben der Neugriechen, p. 196 sq.

1. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 127.

2. W. Schmidt, Das Jahr und seine Tage in Meinung und Brauch der Romänen Siebenbürgens, p. 27; E. Gerard, The Land beyond the Forest, ii. 17 sq.

3. Ε. Η. Mann, Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, P. 94·

4. Williams, Fiji, i. 241.

5. James Chalmers, Pioneering in New Guinea (London, 1887), p. 170.

1. Sahagun, Histoire générale des choses de la Nouvelle-Espagne (Paris, 1880), p. 314. The Chinese hang brass mirrors over the idols in their houses, because it is thought that evil spirits entering the house and seeing themselves in the mirrors will be scared away (China Review, ii. 164).

2. Callaway, Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus, p. 342.

3. Arbousset et Daumas, Voyage d’exploration au Nord-est de la Colonie du Cap de Bonne-Espérance, p. 12.

4. Codrington, ‘Religious Beliefs and Practices in Melanesia,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Instit. x. 313.

5. Fragmenta Philosoph. Graec. ed. Mullach, i. 510; Artemidorus, Oniroer ii. 7; Laws of Manu, iv. 38.

1. See above, p. 106 sq.

2. Wattke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube,2 § 726.

3. Ib.

4. Folklore Journal, iii. 281; Dyer, English Folklore, p. 109; J. Napier, Folklore, or Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland, p. 60; Ellis, History of Madagascar, i. 238; Revue d’Ethnographie, v. 215.

5. Panjab Notes and Queries, ii. 906.

1. Folklore Journal, vi. 145 sq.; Panjab Notes and Queries, ii., No. 378.

2. Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xv. 82 sqq.

3. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 117. The objection, however, may be merely Puritanical. Professor W. Robertson Smith informs me that the peculiarities of the Raskolniks are largely due to exaggerated Puritanism.

4. A. Simson, ‘Notes on the Jívaros and Canelos Indians,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. ix. 392.

5. J. Thomson, Through Masai Land, p. 86.

1. Maximilian Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das Innere Nord-Amerika, i. 417.

2. Ib. ii. 166.

3. ‘A far-off Greek Island,’ Blackwood’s Magazine, February 1886, p. 235.

4. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 117.

5. James Napier, Folklore, or Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland, p. 142. For more examples of the same sort, see R. Andree, Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleiche, Neue Folge (Leipzig, 1889), p. 18 sqq.

1. Turner, Samoa, p. 291 sq.

2. Charles New, Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa, p. 432, Cp. ib. pp. 400, 402. For the demons on Mt Kilimanjaro, see also Krapf, Travels, Researches etc. in Eastern Africa, p. 192.

3. Pierre Bouche, La Côte des Esclaves et le Dahomey, p. 133.

4. C. A. L. M. Schwaner, Borneo, ii. 77.

5. Ib. ii. 167.

1. E. Aymonier, Notes sur le Laos, p. 196.

2. Rosenberg, Der Malayische Archipel, p. 198.

3. Capt. John Moresby, Discoveries and Surveys in New Guinea, p. 102 sq.

4. R. I. Dodge, Our Wild Indians (Hartford, Conn.; 1886), p. 119.

1. J. Crevaux, Voyages dans l’Amérique du Sud, p. 300.

2. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 78.

3. Perelaer, Ethnographische Beschrijving der Dajaks, pp. 44, 54, 252; Matthes, Bijdragen tot de Ethnologie van Zuid-Celebes, P. 49·

4. H. Grützner, ‘Ueber die Gebräuche der Basutho,’ in Verhandl. d. Berlin. Gesell. f. Anthropologie, etc. 1877, p. 84 sq.

1. Nieuwenhusien en Rosenberg, ‘Verslag omtrent het eiland Nias,’ in Verhandel. v. h. Batav. Genootsch. v. Kunsten en Wetenschappen, xxx. 26.

2. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay, i. 35.

3. E. O’Donovan, The Merv Oasis (London, 1882), ii. 58.

4. Emin Pasha in Central Africa, being a Collection of his Letters and Journals (London, 1888), p. 107.

5. Narrative of the Second Arctic Expedition made by Charles F. Hall. Edited by Prof. J. G. Nourse, U.S.N. (Washington, 1879), p. 269 note.

1. J. A. Grant, A Walk across Africa, p. 104 sq.

2. E. Shortland, Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders, p. 103.

3. N. von Miklucho-Maclay, ‘Ethnologische Bemerkungen über die Papuas der Maclay-Küste in New-Guinea,’ in Natuurkundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indië, xxxvi. 317 sq.

4. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 134.

5. Scholiast on Euripides, Phoeniss. 1377. These men were sacred to the war-god (Ares), and were always spared in battle.

1. John Campbell, Travels in South Africa, being a Narrative of a Second Journey in the Interior of that Country, ii. 205.

2. Ladislaus Magyar, Reisen in Süd-Afrika, p. 203.

3. Asiatick Researches, vi. 535 sq. ed. 4to (p. 537 sq. ed. 8vo).

4. C. J. Andersson, Lake Ngami, p. 223.

1. François Valentyn, Oud en nieuw Oost-Indiën, iii. 16.

2. Turner, Samoa, p. 305 sq.

3. De Piano Carpini, Historia Mongolorum quos nos Tartaros appellamus, ed. D’Avezac (Paris, 1838), cap. iii. § iii. p. 627, cap. ult. § i. x. p. 744, and Appendix, p. 775; ‘Travels of William de Rubriquis into Tartary and China,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, vii. 8a sq.

1. Paul Pogge, ‘Bericht über die Station Mukenge,’ in Mittheilungen der Afrikanischen Gesellschaft in Deutschland, iv. (1883–1885) 182 sq.

2. J. L. Krapf, Travels, Researches, and Missionary Labours during an Eighteen Years’ Residence in Eastern Africa, p. 252 sq.

3. Dapper, Description de l’Afrique, p. 391.

4. Proyart, ‘History of Loango, Kakongo,’ etc., in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, xvi. 583; Dapper, op. cit. p. 340; J. Ogilby, Africa (London, 1670), p. 521. Cp. Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, i. 288.

5. Bastian, op. cit. i. 268 sq.

1. J. B. Neumann, ‘Het Pane-en Bila-Stroomgebied op het eiland Sumatra,’ in Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, ii. de Serie, dl. iii., Afdeeling: meer uitgebreide artikelen, No. 2, p. 300.

2. Th. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, i. 249.

3. J. Richardson, ‘Tanala Customs, Superstitions and Beliefs,’ in The Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar Magazine, No. ii. p. 219.

4. Lieut. Cameron, Across Africa, ii. 71 (ed. 1877); id., in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. vi. 173.

1. ‘Adventures of Andrew Battel,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, xvi. 330; Dapper, Description de l’Afrique, p. 330; Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, i. 262 sq.; R. F. Burton, Abeokuta and the Cameroons Mountains, i. 147.

2. Proyart’s ‘History of Loango, Kakongo,’ etc., in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, xvi. 584.

3. J. L. Wilson, West Afrika, p. 148 (German trans.); John Duncan, Travels in Western Africa, i. 222. Cp. W. W. Reade, Savage Africa, p. 543.

4. Paul Pogge, Im Reiche des Muato Jamwo (Berlin, 1880), p. 231.

5. Capt. James Cook, Voyages, v. 374 (ed. 1809).

6. Heraclides Cumanus in Athenaeus, iv. 145 B-D.

1. Mohammed Ibn-Omar el Tounsy, Voyage an Darfour (Paris, 1845), p. 203; Travels of an Arab Merchant [Mohammed Ibn-Omar el Tounsy] in Soudan, abridged from the French (of Perron) by Bayle St John, p. 91 sq.

2. Mohammed Ibn-Omar el Tounsy, Voyage au Ouadây (Paris, 1851), p. 375.

3. H. Duveyrier, Exploration du Sahara. Les Touareg du Nord, p. 391 sq.; Reclus, Nouvelle Géographie Universelle, xi. 838 sq.; James Richardson, Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, ii. 208. Amongst the Arabs men sometimes veiled their faces. Wellhausen, Reste Arabischen Heidentumes, p. 146.

4. Turner, Samoa, p. 67 sq.

5. Riedel, ‘Die Landschaft Dawan oder West-Timor,’ in Deutsche Geographische Blätter, x. 230.

6. A. W. Howitt, ‘On some Australian Ceremonies of Initiation,’ in journ. Anthrop. Inst. xiii. 456.

1. Compare μόνον οὐκ ἐπὶ τοîς χείλεστ τὰς ψυχάς ἔχοντας Dio Chrysostomus, Orat. xxxii. i. 417, ed. Dindorf; mihi anima in naso esse, stabam tanquam mortuus, Petronius, Sat. 62; in primis labris animam habere, Seneca, Natur Quaest, iii. praef. 16.

2. See above, p. 96.

3. Bastian, Die Loango-Küste, i. 263. However, a case is recorded in which he marched out to war (ib. i. 268 sq.).

4. S. Crowther and J. C. Taylor, The Gospel on the Banks of the Niger, p. 433. On p. 379 mention is made of the king’s ‘annual appearance to the public,’ but this may have taken place within ‘the precincts of his premises.’

5. Strabo, xvii. 2, 2, σέβονται δ’ ώς θεοὺς τοὺς βασιλέας, κατακλείστους ὄντας καὶ οἰκουροὐς τò πλέον.

6. Strabo, xvi. 4, 19; Diodorus Siculus, iii. 47.

7. Heraclides Cumanus in Athenaeus, 517 BC

1. Ch. Dallet, Histoire de l’Eglise de Corée (Paris, 1874), i. xxiv– xxvi. The king sometimes, though rarely, leaves his palace. When he does so, notice is given beforehand to the people. All doors must be shut and each householder must kneel before his threshold with a broom and a dust-pan in his hand. All windows, especially the upper ones, must be sealed with slips of paper, lest some one should look down upon the king. W. E. Griffis, Corea, the Hermit Nation, p. 222.

2. Richard, ‘History of Tonquin,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, ix. 746.

3. Shway Yoe, The Burman, i. 308 sq.

1. Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 63; Taplin, ‘Notes on the mixed races of Australia,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. iv. 53.

2. Turner, Samoa, p. 320 sq.

3. Dapper, Description de l’Afrique, p. 330.

4. Bosman’s ‘Guinea,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, xvi. 487·

5. P. N. Wilken, ‘Bijdragen tot de kennis van de zeden en gewoonten der Alfoeren in de Minahassa,’ in Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xi. (1863), 126.

1. Kaempfer’s ‘History of Japan,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, vii. 717.

1. Old New Zealand, by a Pakeha Maori (London, 1884), p. 96 sq.

2. W. Brown, New Zealand and its Aborigines (London, 1845), p. 76. For more examples of the same kind see ib. p. 77 sq.

3. E. Tregear, ‘The Maoris of New Zealand,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xix. 100.

4. R. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui: or, New Zealand and its Inhabitants,2 p. 164.

1. A. S. Thomson, The Story of New Zealand, i. 101 sqq.; Old New Zealand, by a Pakeha Maori, pp. 94, 104 sqq.

2. Journ. Anthrop. Inst. ix. 458.

3. W. Ridley, ‘Report on Australian Languages and Traditions,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. ii. 268.

4. Alexander Mackenzie, Voyages from Montreal through the Continent of North America, cxxiii.

5. Report of the International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska (Washington, 1885), p. 46.

1. ‘Customs of the New Caledonian Women,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. vii. 206.

2. S. Hearne, A Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort in Hudson’s Bay to the Northern Ocean, p. 204 sqq.

3. L. Alberti, De Kaffers (Amsterdam, 1810), p. 76 sq.; H. Lichtenstein, Reisen im südlichen Afrika, i. 427.

4. Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner (London, 1830), p. 122.

1. On the nature of taboo, see especially W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, i. 142 sqq. 427 sqq.

2. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, iii. 102.

3. J. Moura, Le Royaume du Cambodge, i. 226.

4. Ch. Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, i. xxiv. sq.; Griffis, Corea, the Hermit Nation, p. 219.

5. Macrobius, Sat. v. 19, 13; Servius on Virgil, Aen. i. 448; Joannes Lydus, De mens, i. 31.

6. Acta Fratrum Arvalium, ed. IIenzen, pp. 128–135; Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii. 2(Das Sacralvesen), p. 459 sq.

1. Callimachus, referred to by the Old Scholiast on Ovid, Ibis. See Callimachus, ed. Blomfield, p. 216; Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 686.

2. Plutarch, Aristides, 21. This passage I owe to Mr W. Wyse.

3. Theophilus Hahn, Tsuni-Goam,. the Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi, p. 22.

4. J. G. Bourke, The Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, p. 178 sq.

5. C. F. Gordon Cumming, In the Hebrides (ed. 1883), p. 195.

6. James Logan, The Scottish Gael (ed. Alex. Stewart), ii. 68 sq.

7. C. F. Gordon Cumming, In the Hebrides, p. 226; E. J. Guthrie, Old Scottish Customs, p. 223.

8. I Kings vi. 7; Exodus xx. 25.

9. Dionysius Halicarn. Antiquit. Roman. iii. 45, v. 24; Plutarch, Nunta, 9; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxvi. § 100.

10. Acta Fratrum Arvalium, ed. Henzen, p. 132; Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, i. No. 603.

1. Pliny, l.c.

2. Indian Antiquary, x. (1881) 364.

3. Frank Hatton, North Borneo (1886), p. 233.

4. Alexand. Guagninus, ‘De ducatu Samogitiae,’ in Respublica sive Status Regni Poloniae, Lituaniae, Prussiae, Livoniae etc. (Elzevir, 1627), p. 276; Johan. Lasicius, ‘De diis Samogitarum caeterorumque Sarmatum,’ in Respublica, etc. (ut supra), p. 294 (p. 84 ed. Mannhardt, in Magazin herausgeg, von der Lettisch. Literür, Gesellsch. bd. xiv.).

1. E. J. Guthrie, Old Scottish Customs, p. 149; Ch. Rogers, Social Life in Scotland (London, 1886), iii. 218.

2. A. Leared, Morocco and the Moors, p. 273.

3. The reader may observe how closely the taboos laid upon mourners resemble those laid upon kings. From what has gone before the reason of the resemblance is obvious.

4. Panjab Notes and Queries, iii. No. 282.

5. Walter Gregor, The Folklore of the North-East of Scotland, p. 206.

1. This is expressly said in Panjab Notes and Queries, iii. No. 846. On iron as a protective charm see also Liebrecht, Gervasius von Tilbury, p. 99 sqq.; id., Zur Volkskunde, p. 311; L. Strackerjan, Aberglaube und Sagen aus dem Herzogthum Oldenburg, § 233; Wattke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube^2, § 414 sq.; Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 140; Mannhardt, Der Baumkultus, 132 note.

2. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, i. 136.

3. E. Gerard, The Land beyond the Forest, i. 312; W. Schmidt, Das Jahr und seine Tage in Meinung und Brauch der Romänen Siebenbürgens, p. 40.

4. J. H. Gray, China, i. 288.

5. W. H. Dall, Alaska and its Resources, p. 146; id. in American Naturalist, xii. 7.

1. Jo. Meletius, ‘De religione et sacrificiis veterum Borussorum,’ in De Russorum Muscovitarum et Tartarorum religione, sacrificiis, nuptiarum, funerum ritu (Spires, 1582), p. 263; Hartknoch, Alt und neues Preussen (Frankfort and Leipzig, 1684), p. 187 sq.

2. B. F. Matthes, Bijdragen tot de Ethnologie van Zuid-Celebes, p. 136.

3. Tettau und Temme, Die Volkssagen Ostpreussens, Litthauens und Westpreussens, p. 285; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 iii. 454; op. id. pp. 441, 469; Grohmann, Aberglauben und Gebräuche aus Böhmen und Mähren, p. 198.

4. Plutarch, Quaest, Rom, 110; Aulus Gellius, x. 15, 12.

5. J. Kubary, Die socialen Einrichtungen der Pelauer (Berlin, 1885), p. 126 sq.

1. F. J. Wiedemann, Aus dem inneren und äussern Leben der Ehsten (St Petersburg, 1876), pp. 448, 478.

2. James Adair, History of the American Indians, pp. 134, 117.

3. E. Petitot, Monographie des Dènè-Dindjié, p. 76.

4. Leviticus xvii. 10–14. The Hebrew word translated ‘life’ in the English version of verse II means also ‘soul’ (marginal note in the Revised Version), Cp. Deuteronomy xii. 23–25.

5. Servius on Virgil, Aen. v. 79; cp. id. on Aen. iii. 67.

6. J. Wellhausen, Reste Arabischen Heidentumes, p. 217.

7. A. Goudswaard, De Papoewa’s van de Geelvinksbaai (Schiedam, 1863), p. 77.

1. Hamilton’s ‘Account of the East Indies,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, viii. 469. Cp. W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, i. 349, note 2.

2. De la Loubere, A New Historical Account of the Kingdom of Siam (London, 1693), p. 104 sq.

3. Pallegoix, Description du Royaume Thai ou Siam, i. 271, 365 sq.

4. Marco Polo, trans, by Col. H. Yule (2nd ed. 1875), i. 335.

1. Col. H. Yule on Marco Polo, l.c.

2. Baron’s ‘Description of the Kingdom of Tonqueen,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, ix. 691.

3. T. E. Bowdich, Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (London, 1873), p. 207.

4. Sibree, Madagascar and its People, p. 430.

5. C. T. Wilson and R. W. Felkin, Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan, i. 200.

6. Marco Polo, i. 399, Yule’s translation, 2nd ed.

7. Sir Walter Scott, note 2 to Peveril of the Peak, ch.v.

8. Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 230; E. J. Eyre, Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia, ii. 335; Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 75 note.

1. Collins, Account of the English Colony of New South Wales (London, 1798), p. 580.

2. Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 224 sq.; Angas, Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand, i. 110 sq.

3. Above, p. 18.

4. B. F. Matthes, Bijdragen tot de Ethnologie van Zuid-Celebes, p. 53.

5. Lieut. Emery, in Journal of the R. Geogr. Soc. iii. 282.

6. Ch Andersson, Lake Νgami, p. 224.

7. Ch. New, Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa, p. 124; Francis Galton, ‘Domestication of Animals,’ in Transactions of the Ethnolog. Soc. of London, iii. 135. On the original sanctity of domestic animals, see above all
W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, i. 263 sqq., 277 sqq.

8. L. Linton Palmer, ‘A Visit to Easter Island,’ in Journ. R. Geogr. Soc. xl. (1870) 171.

1. R. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui; or, New Zealand and its Inhabitants,2 p. 164 sq.

2. Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 112; Aulus Gellius, x. 15, 13.

3. Above, p. 53 sq.

4. Cp. W. Robertson Smith, op. cit. p. 213 sq.

1. Dialis cotidie feriatus est, Aulus Gellius, x. 15, 16.

2. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, c. 6. A myth apparently akin to this has been preserved in some native Egyptian writings. See Ad. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, p. 364.

1. Bernardino de Sahagun, Histoire générale des choses de la Nouvelle-Espagne, traduite par Jourdanet et Siméon (Paris, 1880), p. 46 sq.

2. See above, p. 29 sq.

3. p. 30.

4. Ε. Μ. Curr, The Australian Race (Melbourne and London, 1887), iii. 179.

5. Η. Β. Guppy, The Solomon Islands and their Natives (London, 1887), p. 41.

6. Ε. Β. Cross, ‘On the Karens,’ in Journal of the American Oriental Society, iv. (1854) 312.

7. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, iii. 230.

1. For the reason see Shortland, Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders, pp. 112 sq., 292.

2. Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 186.

3. Mrs James Smith, The Booandik Tribe, p. 5.

4. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 450.

5. Riedel, op. cit. p. 139; cp. id. p. 209.

6. E. Dannert, ‘Customs of the Ovaherero at the Birth of a Child,’ in (South African) Folklore Journal, ii. 63.

7. F. J. Wiedemann, Aus dem innern und äussern Leben der Ehsten, p. 475.

1. Ε. Β. Cross, ‘On the Karens,’ in Journal of the American Oriental Society, iv. 311 sq.

2. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, ii. 256, iii. 71, 230, 235 sq.

1. Bastian, op. cit. ii. 150; Sangermano, Description of the Burmese Empire (Rangoon, 1885), p. 131; C. F. S. Forbes, British Burma, p. 334; Shway Yoe, The Burman, i. 91.

2. J. Moura, Le Royaume du Cambodge, i. 178, 388.

3. Duarte Barbosa, Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar in the beginning of the Sixteenth Century (Hakluyt Society, 1866), p. 197.

1. David Porter, Journal of a Cruise made to the Pacific Ocean in the U.S. Frigate Essex (New York, 1822), ii. 65.

2. Vincendon-Dumoulin et Desgraz, Iles Marquises, p. 262.

3. Langsdorff, Reise um die Welt, i. 115 sq.

4. Capt. James Cook, Voyages, v. 427 (ed. 1809).

5. Jules Remy, Ka Mooolelo Hawaii, Histoire de l’Archipel Havaiien (Paris and Leipzig, 1862), p. 159.

6. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, iii. 102.

1. James Wilson, A Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean (London, 1799), p. 354 sq.

2. R. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui: or, New Zealand and its Inhabitants, p. 165.

3. Customs of the New Caledonìan Women, ‘in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. vii. 206; B. Hawkins,’ Sketch of the Creek Country,’ in Collections of the Georgia Historical Society, iii. pt.i. (Savannah, 1848), p. 78; A. S. Gatschet, Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, i. 185; Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner (London, 1830), p. 122; Kohl, Kitschi-Gami, ii. 168.

4. R. Taylor, l.c.

1. E. Shortland, The Southern Districts of New Zealand, p. 293; id., Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders, p. 107, sq.

2. J. Dumont D’Urville, Voyage autour du Monde et à la recherche de La Pérouse, exécuté sous son commandement sur la corvette Astrolabe. Histoire du Voyage, ii. 534.

3. R. A. Cruise, Journal of a Ten Months’ Residence in New Zealand (London, 1823), p. 187; Dumont D’Urville, op. cit. ii. 533; E. Shortland, The Southern Districts of New Zealand (London, 1851), p. 30.

1. Agathias i. 3; Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, p. 239 sqq.

2. G. Μ. Dawson ‘On the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands,’ in Geological Survey of Canada, Report of Progress for 1878–79, p. 123 B.

3. P. N. Wilken, ‘Bijdragen tot de kennis van de zeden en gewoonten der Alfoeren in de Minahassa,’ in Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenoolschap, vii. (1863) p. 126.

4. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 137.

5. Riedel, op. cit. p. 292 sq.

1. Diodorus Siculus, i. 18.

2. W. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, p. 152 sq.

3. Valerius Flaccus, Argonaut. i. 378 sq – ‘Tectus et Eurytion servato colla capillo, Quem pater Aonias reducem tondebit ad aras.’

4. Homer, Iliad, xxiii. 141 sqq.

5. D. Porter, Journal of a Cruise made to the Pacific Ocean, ii. 120.

6. Paulus Diaconus, Hist. Langobard. iii. 7.

7. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, iv. 387.

1. Numbers vi. 5.

2. J. A. E. Köhler, Volksbrauch, etc. im Voigtlande, p. 424; W. Henderson, Folk-lore of the Northern Counties, p. 16 sq.; F. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, i. 258; Zingerle, Sitten, Bräuche und Meinungen des Tiroler Volkes,2 Nos. 46, 72; J. W. Wolf, Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie, i. 208 (No. 45), 209 (No. 53); Knoop, Volkssagen, Erzählungen, etc. aus dem östlichen Hinterpommern, p. 157 (No. 23); Ε. Veckenstedt, Wendische Sagen, Märchen und abergläubische Gebräuche, p. 445; J. Haltrich, Zur Volkskunde der Siebenbürger Sachsen, p. 313; E. Krause, ‘Abergläubische Kuren u. sonstiger Aberglaube in Berlin,’ Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xv. 84.

3. Panjab Notes and Queries, ii. No. 1092.

4. G. Gibbs, ‘Notes on the Tinneh or Chepewyan Indians of British and Russian America,’ in Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1866, p. 305; W. Dall, Alaska and its Resources, p. 202. The reason alleged by the Indians (that if the girls’ nails were cut sooner the girls would be lazy and unable to embroider in porcupine quill-work) is probably a late invention, like the reasons assigned in Europe for the similar custom (the commonest being that the child would become a thief).

5. Knoop, l.c.

1. Wolf, Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie, i. 209 (No. 57).

2. R. Taylor, New Zealand and its Inhabitants, p. 206 sqq.

3. Richard A. Cruise, Journal of a Ten Months’ Residence in New Zealand, p. 283 sq. Cp. Dumont D’Urville, Voyage autour du Monde et à la recherche de La Pérouse. Histoire du Voyage (Paris, 1832), ii. 533.

4. E. Shortland, Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders, p. 108 sqq.; Taylor, l.c.

1. J. Moura, Le Royaume du Cambodge, i. 226 sq.

2. See above, p. 94.

3. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 468 sq.

4. D. Porter, Journal of a Cruise made to the Pacific Ocean, ii. 188.

5. J. Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 36.

1. A. W. Howitt, ‘On Australian Medicine-men,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xvi. 27. Cp. E. Palmer, ‘Notes on some Australian Tribes,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xiii. 293; James Bonwick, Daily Life of the Tasmanians, p. 178; James Chalmers, Pioneering in New Guinea, p. 187; J. S. Polack, Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders, i. 282; Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, iii. 270; Langsdorff, Reise um die Welt, i. 134 sq. A. S. Thomson, The Story of New Zealand, i. 79, 116 sq.; Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 364; Zingerle, Sitten, Bräuche und Meinungen des Tiroler Volkes,2 No. 178.

2. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben, p. 509; Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, i. 258; J. A. E. Köhler, Volksbrauch etc. im Voigtlande, p. 425; A. Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, p. 282; Zingerle, op. cit. No. 180; Wolf, Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie, i. 224 (No. 273).

3. Zingerle, op. cit. No. 181.

4. Zingerle, op. cit. Nos. 176, 179.

5. A. Krause, Die Tlinkit-Indianer (Jena, 1885), p. 300.

6. Petronius, Sat. 104.

1. Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, i. 231 sq.; id., Ein Besuch in San Salvador, p. 117.

2. W. Stanbridge, ‘On the Aborigines of Victoria,’ in Transact. Ethnolog. Soc. of London, i. 300.

3. François Pyrard, Voyages to the East Indies, the Maldives, the Moluccas, and Brazil. Translated by Albert Gray (Hakluyt Society, 1887), i. 110 sq.

4. Shortland, Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders, p. 110.

5. Polack, Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders, i. 38 sq.

6. James Wilson, A Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean, p. 355.

7. Aulus Gellius, x. 15, 15.

8. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvi. 235; Festus, s.v. capillatam vel capillarem arborem.

9. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube,2 § 464.

1. W. Mannhardt, Germanische Mythen, p. 630.

2. W. Henderson, Folklore of the Northern Counties, p. 17.

3. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 74.

4. Riedel, op. cit. p. 265.

5. G. Heijmering ‘Zeden en gewoonten op het eiland Rottie,’ in Tijdschrift voor Neêrland’s Indië (1843), dl. ii. 634–637.

6. W. Dall, Alaska and its Resources, p. 54; F. Whymper, ‘The Natives of the Youkon River,’ in Transact, Ethnolog. Soc. of London, vii. 174.

1. Ε. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben, p. 509.

2. W. Mannhardt, Germanische Mythen, p. 630.

3. H. B. Guppy, The Solomon Islands and their Natives, p. 54.

4. Fargaard, xvii.

5. Grihya-Sûtras, translated by H. Oldenberg (Oxford, 1886), vol. i. p. 57.

6. R. W. Felkin, ‘Notes on the Madi or Moru tribe of Central Africa,’ in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, xii. (1882–84) p. 332.

7. A. Steedman, Wanderings and Adventures in the Interior of Southern Africa (London, 1835), i. 266.

8. Emin Pasha in Central Africa, being a Collection of his Letters and Journals (London, 1888), p. 74.

1. J. L. Wilson, West Afrika, p. 159 (German trans.).

2. N. P. Wilken en J. A. Schwarz, ‘Allerlei over het land en volk van Bolaang Mongondou,’ in Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xi. (1867) p. 322.

3. Garcilasso de la Vega, First part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, bk. ii. ch. 7 (vol. i. p. 127, Markham’s translation).

4. Mélusine, 1878, c. 583 sq.

5. The People of Turkey, by a Consul’s daughter and wife, ii. 250.

1. Boecler-Kreutzwald, Der Ehsten abergläubische Gebräuche, Weisen und Gewohnheiten, p. 139; F. J. Wiedemann, Aus dem innern und äussern Leben der Ehsten, p. 491.

2. R. W. Felkin, ‘Notes on the For tribe of Central Africa,’ in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, xiii. (1884–86) p. 230.

3. Zingerle, Sitten, Bräuche und Meinungen des Tiroler Volkes,2 Nos. 176,580; Mélusine, 1878, c. 79.

4. Musters, ‘On the Races of Patagonia,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. i. 197; J. Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 36.

5. David Livingstone, Narrative of Expedition to the Zambesi, p. 46 sq.

6. Zingerle, op. cit. Nos. 177, 179, 180.

7. M. Jahn, Hexenwesen und Zauberei in Pommern, p. 15; Mélusine, 1878, c. 79.

8. E. H. Meyer, Indogermanische Mythen, ii. Achilleis (Berlin, 1887), p. 523.

1. Above, p. 173.

2. Above, pp. 143 sqq.

3. W. Ridley, ‘Report on Australian Languages and Traditions,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. ii. 268.

4. See G. A. Wilken, Ueber das Haaropfer und einige andere Trauergebräuche bei den Völkern Indonesiens, p. 94 sqq.; H. Ploss, Das Kind in Brauch und Sitte der Völker,2 i. 289 sqq.

5. Above, p. 166.

1. Above, p. 134 sq.

2. Monier Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India, p. 375.

3. Above, p. 99.

4. Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, ii. 170. The blood may be drunk by them as a medium of inspiration. See above, p. 29 sq.

1. Dapper, Description de l’Afrique, p. 336.

2. T. J. Hutchinson, Impressions of Western Africa (London, 1858), p. 198.

3. G. Watt (quoting Col. W. J. M’Culloch), ‘The Aboriginal Tribes of Manipur,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xvi. 360.

CHAPTER THREE

Killing the God

‘Sed adhuc supersunt aliae superstitiones, quarum secreta pandenda sunt… ut et in istis profanis religionibus sciatis mortes esse hominum consecratas.’

– FIRMICUS MATERNUS, De errore profanarum religionum, c. 6

Killing the Divine King

LACKING the idea of eternal duration primitive man naturally supposes the gods to be mortal like himself. The Greenlanders believed that a wind could kill their most powerful god, and that he would certainly die if he touched a dog. When they heard of the Christian God, they kept asking if he never died, and being informed that he did not, they were much surprised and said that he must be a very great god indeed.[1] In answer to the inquiries of Colonel Dodge, a North American Indian stated that the world was made by the Great Spirit. Being asked which Great Spirit he meant, the good one or the bad one, ‘Oh, neither of them,’ replied he, ‘the Great Spirit that made the world is dead long ago. He could not possibly have lived as long as this.’[2] A tribe in the Philippine Islands told the Spanish conquerors that the grave of the Creator was upon the top of Mount Cabunian.[3] Heitsi-eibib, a god or divine hero of the Hottentots, died several times and came to life again. His graves are generally to be met with in narrow passes between mountains.[1] The grave of Zeus, the great god of Greece, was shown to visiters in Crete as late as about the beginning of our era.[2] The body of Dionysus was buried at Delphi beside the golden statue of Apollo, and his tomb bore the inscription, ‘Here lies Dionysus dead, the son of Semele.’[3] According to one account, Apollo himself was buried at Delphi; for Pythagoras is said to have carved an inscription on his tomb, setting forth how the god had been killed by the python and buried under the tripod.[4] Cronus was buried in Sicily,[5] and the graves of Hermes, Aphrodite, and Ares were shown in Hermopolis, Cyprus, and Thrace.[6]

If the great invisible gods are thus supposed to die, it is not to be expected that a god who dwells in the flesh and blood of a man should escape the same fate. Now primitive peoples, as we have seen, sometimes believe that their safety and even that of the world is bound up with the life of one of these god-men or human incarnations of the divinity. Naturally, therefore, they take the utmost care of his life, out of a regard for their own. But no amount of care and precaution will prevent the man-god from growing old and feeble and at last dying. His worshippers have to lay their account with this sad necessity and to meet it as best they can. The danger is a formidable one; for if the course of nature is dependent on the man-god’s life, what catastrophes may not be expected from the gradual enfeeblement of his powers and their final extinction in death? There is only one way of averting these dangers. The man-god must be killed as soon as he shows symptoms that his powers are beginning to fail, and his soul must be transferred to a vigorous successor before it has been seriously impaired by the threatened decay. The advantages of thus putting the man-god to death instead of allowing him to die of old age and disease are, to the savage, obvious enough. For if the man-god dies what we call a natural death, it means, according to the savage, that his soul has either voluntarily departed from his body and refuses to return, or more commonly that it has been extracted or at least detained in its wanderings by a demon or sorcerer.[1] In any of these cases the soul of the man-god is lost to his worshippers; and with it their prosperity is gone and their very existence endangered. Even if they could arrange to catch the soul of the dying god as it left his lips or his nostrils and so transfer it to a successor, this would not effect their purpose; for, thus dying of disease, his soul would necessarily leave his body in the last stage of weakness and exhaustion, and as such it would continue to drag out a feeble existence in the body to which it might be transferred. Whereas by killing him his worshippers could, in the first place, make sure of catching his soul as it escaped and transferring it to a suitable successor; and, in the second place, by killing him before his natural force was abated, they would secure that the world should not fall into decay with the decay of the man-god. Every purpose, therefore, was answered, and all dangers averted by thus killing the man-god and transferring his soul, while yet at its prime, to a vigorous successor.

Some of the reasons for preferring a violent death to the slow death of old age or disease are obviously as applicable to common men as to the man-god. Thus the Mangaians think that ‘the spirits of those who die a natural death are excessively feeble and weak, as their bodies were at dissolution; whereas the spirits of those who are slain in battle are strong and vigorous, their bodies not having been reduced by disease.’[2] Hence, men sometimes prefer to kill themselves or to be killed before they grow feeble, in order that in the future life their souls may start fresh and vigorous as they left their bodies, instead of decrepit and worn out with age and disease. Thus in Fiji, ‘self-immolation is by no means rare, and they believe that as they leave this life, so they will remain ever after. This forms a powerful motive to escape from decrepitude, or from a crippled condition, by a voluntary death.’[1] Or, as another observer of the Fijians puts it more fully,’ the custom of voluntary suicide on the part of the old men, which is among their most extraordinary usages, is also connected with their superstitions respecting a future life. They believe that persons enter upon the delights of their elysium with the same faculties, mental and physical, that they possess at the hour of death, in short, that the spiritual life commences where the corporeal existence terminates. With these views, it is natural that they should desire to pass through this change before their mental and bodily powers are so enfeebled by age as to deprive them of their capacity for enjoyment. To this motive must be added the contempt which attaches to physical weakness among a nation of warriors, and the wrongs and insults which await those who are no longer able to protect themselves. When therefore a man finds his strength declining with the advance of age, and feels that he will soon be unequal to discharge the duties of this life, and to partake in the pleasures of that which is to come, he calls together his relations, and tells them that he is now worn out and useless, that he sees they are all ashamed of him, and that he has determined to be buried.’ So on a day appointed they meet and bury him alive.[2] In Vaté (New Hebrides) the aged were buried alive at their own request. It was considered a disgrace to the family of an old chief if he was not buried alive.[3] Of the Kamants, a Jewish tribe in Abyssinia, it is reported that ‘they never let a person die a natural death, but if any of their relatives is nearly expiring, the priest of the village is called to cut his throat; if this be omitted, they believe that the departed soul has not entered the mansions of the blessed.’[1]

But it is with the death of the god-man – the divine king or priest – that we are here especially concerned. The people of Congo believed, as we have seen, that if their pontiff the Chitomé were to die a natural death, the world would perish, and the earth, which he alone sustained by his power and merit, would immediately be annihilated. Accordingly when he fell ill and seemed likely to die, the man who was destined to be his successor entered the pontiff’s house with a rope or a club and strangled or clubbed him to death.[2] The Ethiopian kings of Meroe were worshipped as gods; but whenever the priests chose, they sent a messenger to the king, ordering him to die, and alleging, an oracle of the gods as their authority for the command. This command the kings always obeyed down to the reign of Ergamenes, a contemporary of Ptolemy II, King of Egypt. Having received a Greek education which emancipated him from the superstitions of his countrymen, Ergamenes ventured to disregard the command of the priests, and, entering the Golden Temple with a body of soldiers, put the priests to the sword.[3] In the kingdom of Unyoro in Central Africa, custom still requires that as soon as the king falls seriously ill or begins to break up from age, he shall be killed by his own wives; for, according to an old prophecy, the throne will pass away from the dynasty in the event of the king dying a natural death.[4] When the king of Kibanga, on the Upper Congo, seems near his end, the sorcerers put a rope round his neck, which they draw gradually tighter till he dies.[5] It seems to have been a Zulu custom to put the king to death as soon as he began to have wrinkles or gray hairs. At least this seems implied in the following passage, written by one who resided for some time at the court of the notorious Zulu tyrant Chaka, in the early part of this century: ‘The extraordinary violence of the king’s rage with me was mainly occasioned by that absurd nostrum, the hair oil, with the notion of which Mr Farewell had impressed him as being a specific for removing all indications of age. From the first moment of his having heard that such a preparation was attainable, he evinced a solicitude to procure it, and on every occasion never forgot to remind us of his anxiety respecting it; more especially on our departure on the mission his injunctions were particularly directed to this object. It will be seen that it is one of the barbarous customs of the Zoolus in their choice or election of their kings that he must neither have wrinkles nor gray hairs, as they are both distinguishing marks of disqualification for becoming a monarch of a warlike people. It is also equally indispensable that their king should never exhibit those proofs of having become unfit and incompetent to reign; it is therefore important that they should conceal these indications so long as they possibly can. Chaka had become greatly apprehensive of the approach of gray hairs; which would at once be the signal for him to prepare to make his exit from this sublunary world, it being always followed by the death of the monarch.’[1]

The custom of putting kings to death as soon as they suffered from any personal defect prevailed two centuries ago in the Kafir kingdoms of Sofala, to the north of the present Zululand. These kings of Sofala, as we have seen,[2] were regarded as gods by their people, being entreated to give rain or sunshine, according as each might be wanted. Nevertheless a slight bodily blemish, such as the loss of a tooth, was considered a sufficient cause for putting one of these god-men to death, as we learn from the following passage of an old historian. ‘Contiguous to the domains of the Quiteva [the king of the country bordering on the river Sofala], are those of another prince called Sedanda. This prince becoming afflicted with leprosy, resolved on following implicitly the laws of the country, and poisoning himself, conceiving his malady to be incurable, or at least that it would render him so loathsome in the eyes of his people that they would with difficulty recognise him. In consequence he nominated his successor, holding as his opinion that sovereigns who should serve in all things as an example to their people ought to have no defect whatever, even in their persons; that when any defects may chance to befall them they cease to be worthy of life and of governing their dominions; and preferring death in compliance with this law to life, with the reproach of having been its violator. But this law was not observed with equal scrupulosity by one of the Quitevas, who, having lost a tooth and feeling no disposition to follow the practice of his predecessors, published to the people that he had lost a front tooth, in order that when they might behold, they yet might be able to recognise him; declaring at the same time that he was resolved on living and reigning as long as he could, esteeming his existence requisite for the welfare of his subjects. He at the same time loudly condemned the practice of his predecessors, whom he taxed with imprudence, nay, even with madness, for having condemned themselves to death for casual accidents to their persons, confessing plainly that it would be with much regret, even when the course of nature should bring him to his end, that he should submit to die. He observed, moreover, that no reasonable being, much less a monarch, ought to anticipate the scythe of time; and, abrogating this mortal law, he ordained that all his successors, if sane, should follow the precedent he gave, and the new law established by him.’[1]

This King of Sofala was, therefore, a bold reformer like Ergamenes, King of Ethiopia. We may conjecture that the ground for putting the Ethiopian kings to death was, as in the case of the Zulu and Sofala kings, the appearance on their person of any bodily defect or sign of decay; and that the oracle which the priests alleged as the authority for the royal execution was to the effect that great calamities would result from the reign of a king who had any blemish on his body; just as an oracle warned Sparta against a ‘lame reign,’ that is, the reign of a lame king.[1] This conjecture is confirmed by the fact that the kings of Ethiopia were chosen for their size, strength, and beauty long before the custom of killing them was abolished.[2] To this day the Sultan of Wadâi must have no obvious bodily defect, and a king of Angoy cannot be crowned if he has a single blemish, such as a broken or filed tooth or the scar of an old wound.[3] It is only natural, therefore, to suppose, especially with the other African examples before us, that any bodily defect or symptom of old age appearing on the person of the Ethiopian monarch was the signal for his execution. At a later time it is recorded that if the King of Ethiopia became maimed in any part of his body all his courtiers had to suffer the same mutilation.[4] But this rule may perhaps have been instituted at the time when the custom of killing the king for any personal defect was abolished; instead of compelling the king to die because, e.g., he had lost a tooth, all his subjects would be obliged to lose a tooth, and thus the invidious superiority of the subjects over the king would be cancelled. A rule of this sort is still observed in the same region at the court of the Sultans of Darfur. When the Sultan coughs, every one makes the sound ts ts by striking the tongue against the root of the upper teeth; when he sneezes, the whole assembly utters a sound like the cry of the jeko; when he falls off his horse, all his followers must fall off likewise; if any one of them remains in the saddle, no matter how high his rank, he is laid on the ground and beaten.[1] At the court of the King of Uganda in Central Africa, when the king laughs, every one laughs; when he sneezes, every one sneezes; when he has a cold, every one pretends to have a cold; when he has his hair cut, so has every one.[2] At the court of Boni in Celebes it is a rule that whatever the king does all the courtiers must do. If he stands, they stand; if he sits, they sit; if he falls off his horse, they fall off their horses; if he bathes, they bathe, and passers-by must go into the water in the dress, good or bad, which they happen to have on.[3] But to return to the death of the divine man. The old Prussians acknowledged as their supreme lord a ruler who governed them in the name of the gods, and was known as God’s Mouth (Kirwaido). When he felt himself weak and ill, if he wished to leave a good name behind him, he had a great heap made of thorn-bushes and straw, on which he mounted and delivered a long sermon to the people, exhorting them to serve the gods and promising to go to the gods and speak for the people. Then he took some of the perpetual fire which burned in front of the holy oak-tree, and lighting the pile with it burned himself to death.[4]

In the cases hitherto described, the divine king or priest is suffered by his people to retain office until some outward defect, some visible symptom of failing health or advancing age warns them that he is no longer equal to the discharge of his divine duties; but not until such symptoms have made their appearance is he put to death. Some peoples, however, appear to have thought it unsafe to wait for even the slightest symptom of decay and have preferred to kill the king while he was still in the full vigour of life. Accordingly, they have fixed a term beyond which he might not reign, and at the close of which he must die, the term fixed upon being short enough to exclude the probability of his degenerating physically in the interval. In some parts of Southern India the period fixed was twelve years. Thus, according to an old traveller, in the province of Quilacare ‘There is a Gentile house of prayer, in which there is an idol which they hold in great account, and every twelve years they celebrate a great feast to it, whither all the Gentiles go as to a jubilee. This temple possesses many lands and much revenue; it is a very great affair. This province has a king over it; who has not more than twelve years to reign from jubilee to jubilee. His manner of living is in this wise, that is to say, when the twelve years are completed, on the day of this feast there assemble together innumerable people, and much money is spent in giving food to Brahmans. The king has a wooden scaffolding made, spread over with silken hangings; and on that day he goes to bathe at a tank with great ceremonies and sound of music, after that he comes to the idol and prays to it, and mounts on to the scaffolding, and there before all the people he takes some very sharp knives and begins to cut off his nose, and then his ears and his lips and all his members and as much flesh of himself as he can; and he throws it away very hurriedly until so much of his blood is spilled that he begins to faint, and then he cuts his throat himself. And he performs this sacrifice to the idol; and whoever desires to reign other twelve years, and undertake this martyrdom for love of the idol, has to be present looking on at this; and from that place they raise him up as king.’[1]

Formerly the Samorin or King of Calicut, on the Malabar coast, had also to cut his throat in public at the end of a twelve years’ reign. But towards the end of the seventeenth century the rule had been modified as follows: ‘A new custom is followed by the modern Samorins, that jubilee is proclaimed throughout his dominions, at the end of twelve years, and a tent is pitched for him in a spacious plain, and a great feast is celebrated for ten or twelve days, with mirth and jollity, guns firing night and day, so at the end of the feast any four of the guests that have a mind to gain a crown by a desperate action, in fighting their way through 30 or 40,000 of his guards, and kill the Samorin in his tent, he that kills him succeeds him in his empire. In anno 1695, one of those jubilees happened, and the tent pitched near Pennany, a sea-port of his, about fifteen leagues to the southward of Calicut. There were but three men that would venture on that desperate action, who fell in, with sword and target among the guard, and, after they had killed and wounded many were themselves killed. One of the desperados had a nephew of fifteen or sixteen years of age, that kept close by his uncle in the attack on the guards, and, when he saw him fall, the youth got through the guards into the tent, and made a stroke at his Majesty’s head, and had certainly despatched him, if a large brass lamp which was burning over his head, had not marred the blow; but, before he could make another he was killed by the guards; and, I believe, the same Samorin reigns yet. I chanced to come that time along the coast and heard the guns for two or three days and nights successively.’[1]

In some places it appears that the people could not trust the king to remain in full bodily and mental vigour for more than a year; hence at the end of a year’s reign he was put to death, and a new king appointed to reign in his turn a year, and suffer death at the end of it. At least this is the conclusion to which the following evidence points. According to the historian Berosus, who as a Babylonian priest spoke with ample knowledge, there was annually celebrated in Babylon a festival called the Sacaea. It began on the 16th day of the month Lous, and lasted for five days. During these five days masters and servants changed places, the servants giving orders and the masters obeying them. A prisoner condemned to death was dressed in the king’s robes, seated on the king’s throne, allowed to issue whatever commands he pleased, to eat, drink, and enjoy himself, and to lie with the king’s concubines. But at the end of the five days he was stripped of his royal robes, scourged, and crucified.[1] This custom might perhaps have been explained as merely a grim jest perpetrated in a season of jollity at the expense of an unhappy criminal. But one circumstance – the leave given to the mock king to enjoy the king’s concubines – is decisive against this interpretation. Considering the jealous seclusion of an oriental despot’s harem we may be quite certain that permission to invade it would never have been granted by the despot, least of all to a condemned criminal, except for the very gravest cause. This cause could hardly be other than that the condemned man was about to die in the king’s stead, and that to make the substitution perfect it was necessary he should enjoy the full rights of royalty during his brief reign. There is nothing surprising in this substitution. The rule that the king must be put to death either on the appearance of any symptom of bodily decay or at the end of a fixed period is certainly one which, sooner or later, the kings would seek to abolish or modify. We have seen that in Ethiopia and Sofala the rule was boldly set aside by enlightened monarchs; and that in Calicut the old custom of killing the king at the end of twelve years was changed into a permission granted to any one at the end of the twelve years’ period to attack the king, and, in the event of killing him, to reign in his stead; though, as the king took care at these times to be surrounded by his guards, the permission was little more than a form. Another way of modifying the stern old rule is seen in the Babylonian custom just described. When the time drew near for the king to be put to death (in Babylon this appears to have been at the end of a single year’s reign) he abdicated for a few days, during which a temporary king reigned and suffered in his stead. At first the temporary king may have been an innocent person, possibly a member of the king’s own family; but with the growth of civilisation the sacrifice of an innocent person would be revolting to the public sentiment, and accordingly a condemned criminal would be invested with the brief and fatal sovereignty. In the sequel we shall find other examples of a dying criminal representing a dying god. For we must not forget that the king is slain in his character of a god, his death and resurrection, as the only means of perpetuating the divine life unimpaired, being deemed necessary for the salvation of his people and the world.

In some places this modified form of the old custom has been further softened down. The king still abdicates annually for a short time and his place is filled by a more or less nominal sovereign; but at the close of his short reign the latter is no longer killed, though sometimes a mock execution still survives as a memorial of the time when hewas actually put to death. To take examples. In the month of Méac (February) the King of Cambodia annually abdicated for three days. During this time he performed no act of authority, he did not touch the seals, he did not even receive the revenues which fell due. In his stead there reigned a temporary king called Sdach Méac, that is, King February. The office of temporary king was hereditary in a family distantly connected with the royal house, the sons succeeding the fathers and the younger brothers the elder brothers, just as in the succession to the real sovereignty. On a favourable day fixed by the astrologers the temporary king was conducted by the mandarins in triumphal procession. He rode one of the royal elephants, seated in the royal palanquin, and escorted by soldiers who, dressed in appropriate costumes, represented the neighbouring peoples of Siam, Annam, Laos, and so on. Instead of the golden crown he wore a peaked white cap, and his regalia, instead of being of gold encrusted with diamonds, were of rough wood. After paying homage to the real king, from whom he received the sovereignty for three days, together with all the revenues accruing during that time (though this last custom has been omitted for some time), he moved in procession round the palace and through the streets of the capital. On the third day, after the usual procession, the temporary king gave orders that the elephants should trample under foot the ‘mountain of rice,’ which was a scaffold of bamboo surrounded by sheaves of rice. The people gathered up the rice, each man taking home a little with him to secure a good harvest. Some of it was also taken to the king, who had it cooked and presented to the monks.[1]

In Siam on the sixth day of the moon in the sixth month (the end of April) a temporary king is appointed, who for three days enjoys the royal prerogatives, the real king remaining shut up in his palace. This temporary king sends his numerous satellites in all directions to seize and confiscate whatever they can find in the bazaar and open shops; even the ships and junks which arrive in harbour during the three days are confiscated to him and must be redeemed. He goes to a field in the middle of the city, whither is brought a gilded plough drawn by gaily-decked oxen. After the plough has been anointed and the oxen rubbed with incense, the mock king traces nine furrows with the plough, followed by aged dames of the palace scattering the first seed of the season. As soon as the nine furrows are drawn, the crowd of spectators rushes in and scrambles for the seed which has just been sown, believing that, mixed with the seed-rice, it will ensure a plentiful crop. Then the oxen are unyoked, and rice, maize, sesame, sago, bananas, sugar-cane, melons, etc. are set before them; whatever they eat first will, it is thought, be dear in the year following, though some people interpret the omen in the opposite sense. During this time the temporary king stands leaning against a tree with his right foot resting on his left knee. From standing thus on one foot he is popularly known as King Hop; but his official title is Phaya Phollathep, ‘Lord of the Heavenly Hosts.’[1] He is a sort of Minister of Agriculture; all disputes about fields, rice, and so on, are referred to him. There is moreover another ceremony in which he personates the king. It takes place in the second month (which falls in the cold season) and lasts three days. He is conducted in procession to an open place opposite the Temple of the Brahmans, where there are a number of poles dressed like May-poles, upon which the Brahmans swing. All the while that they swing and dance, the Lord of the Heavenly Hosts has to stand on one foot upon a seat which is made of bricks plastered over, covered with a white cloth, and hung with tapestry. He is supported by a wooden frame with a gilt canopy, and two Brahmans stand one on each side of him. The dancing Brahmans carry buffalo horns with which they draw water from a large copper caldron and sprinkle it on the people; this is supposed to bring good luck, causing the people to dwell in peace and quiet, health and prosperity. The time during which the Lord of the Heavenly Hosts has to stand on one foot is about three hours. This is thought ‘to prove the dispositions of the Devattas and spirits.’ If he lets his foot down ‘he is liable to forfeit his property and have his family enslaved by the king; as it is believed to be a bad omen, portending destruction to the state, and instability to the throne. But if he stand firm he is believed to have gained a victory over evil spirits, and he has moreover the privilege, ostensibly at least, of seizing any ship which may enter the harbour during these three days, and taking its contents, and also of entering any open shop in the town and carrying away what he chooses.’[1]

In Upper Egypt on the first day of the solar year by Coptic reckoning, that is on 10th September, when the Nile has generally reached its highest point, the regular government is suspended for three days and every town chooses its own ruler. This temporary lord wears a sort of tall fool’s cap and a long flaxen beard, and is enveloped in a strange mantle. With a wand of office in his hand and attended by men disguised as scribes, executioners, etc., he proceeds to the Governor’s house. The latter allows himself to be deposed; and the mock king, mounting the throne, holds a tribunal, to the decisions of which even the governor and his officials must bow. After three days the mock king is condemned to death; the envelope or shell in which he was encased is committed to the flames, and from its ashes the Fellah creeps forth. [2]

Sometimes the temporary king occupies the throne, not annually, but once for all at the beginning of each reign. Thus in the kingdom of Jambi (in Sumatra) it is the custom that at the beginning of a new reign a man of the people should occupy the throne and exercise the royal prerogatives for a single day. The origin of the custom is explained by a tradition that there were once five royal brothers, the four elder of whom all declined the crown on the ground of various bodily defects, leaving it to their youngest brother. But the eldest occupied the throne for one day, and reserved for his descendants a similar privilege at the beginning of every reign. Thus the office of temporary king is hereditary in a family akin to the royal house.[1] In Bilaspur it seems to be the custom, after the death of a Rajah, for a Brahman to eat rice out of the dead Rajah’s hand, and then to occupy the throne for a year. At the end of the year the Brahman receives presents and is dismissed from the territory, being forbidden apparently to return. ‘The idea seems to be that the spirit of the Rájá enters into the Bráhman who eats the khír (rice and milk) out of his hand when he is dead, as the Bráhman is apparently carefully watched during the whole year, and not allowed to go away.’ The same or a similar custom is believed to obtain among the hill states about Kángrá.[2] At the installation of a prince of Carinthia a peasant, in whose family the office was hereditary, ascended a marble stone which stood surrounded by meadows in a spacious valley; on his right stood a black mother-cow, on his left an ugly mare. A rustic crowd gathered about him. Then the future prince, dressed as a peasant and carrying a shepherd’s staff, drew near, attended by courtiers and magistrates. On perceiving him the peasant called out, ‘Who is this whom I see coming so proudly along?’ The people answered, ‘The prince of the land.’ The peasant was then prevailed on to surrender the marble seat to the prince on condition of receiving sixty pence, the cow and mare, and exemption from taxes. But before yielding his place he gave the prince a light blow on the cheek.[3]

Some points about these temporary kings deserve to be specially noticed before we pass to the next branch of the evidence. In the first place, the Cambodian and Siamese examples bring clearly out the fact that it is especially the divine or supernatural functions of the king which are transferred to his temporary substitute. This appears from the belief that by keeping up his foot the temporary king of Siam gained a victory over the evil spirits; whereas by letting it down he imperilled the existence of the state. Again, the Cambodian ceremony of trampling down the ‘mountain of rice,’ and the Siamese ceremony of opening the ploughing and sowing, are charms to produce a plentiful harvest, as appears from the belief that those who carry home some of the trampled rice or of the seed sown will thereby secure a good crop. But the task of making the crops grow, thus deputed to the temporary kings, is one of the supernatural functions regularly supposed to be discharged by kings in primitive society. The rule that the mock king must stand on one foot upon a raised seat in the rice-field was perhaps originally meant as a charm to make the crop grow high; at least this was the object of a similar ceremony observed by the old Prussians. The tallest girl, standing on one foot upon a seat, with her lap full of cakes, a cup of brandy in her right hand and a piece of elm-bark or linden-bark in her left, prayed to the god Waizganthos that the flax might grow as high as she was standing. Then, after draining the cup, she had it refilled, and poured the brandy on the ground as an offering to Waizganthos, and threw down the cakes for his attendant sprites. If she remained steady on one foot throughout the ceremony, it was an omen that the flax crop would be good; but if she let her foot down, it was feared that the crop might fail.[1] The gilded plough with which the Siamese mock king opens the ploughing may be compared with the bronze ploughs which the Etruscans employed at the ceremony of founding cities;[1] in both cases the use of iron was probably forbidden on superstitious grounds.[2]

Another point to notice about these temporary kings is that in two places (Cambodia and Jambi) they come of a stock which is believed to be akin to the royal family. If the view here taken of the origin of these temporary kingships is correct, the fact that the temporary king is sometimes of the same race as the real king admits of a ready explanation. When the king first succeeded in getting the life of another accepted as a sacrifice in lieu of his own, he would have to show that the death of that other would serve the purpose quite as well as his own would have done. Now it was as a god that the king had to die; therefore the substitute who died for him had to be invested, at least for the occasion, with the divine attributes of the king. This, as we have just seen, was certainly the case with the temporary kings of Siam and Cambodia; they were invested with the supernatural functions, which in an earlier stage of society were the special attributes of the king. But no one could so well represent the king in his divine character as his son, who might be supposed to share the divine afflatus of his father. No one, therefore, could so appropriately die for the king and, through him, for the whole people, as the king’s son. There is evidence that amongst the Semites of Western Asia (the very region where the redemption of the king’s life by the sacrifice of another comes out so unmistakably in the Sacaean festival) the king, in a time of national danger, sometimes gave his own son to die as a sacrifice for the people. Thus Philo of Byblus, in his work on the Jews, says: ‘It was an ancient custom in a crisis of great danger that the ruler of a city or nation should give his beloved son to die for the whole people, as a ransom offered to the avenging demons; and the children thus offered were slain with mystic rites. So Cronus, whom the Phoenicians call Israel, being king of the land and having an only-begotten son called Jeoud (for in the Phoenician tongue Jeoud signifies “only-begotten”), dressed him in royal robes and sacrificed him upon an altar in a time of war, when the country was in great danger from the enemy.’[1] When the King of Moab was besieged by the Israelites and hard beset, he took his eldest son, who should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering on the wall.[2] But amongst the Semites the practice of sacrificing their children was not confined to kings. In times of great calamity, such as pestilence, drought, or defeat in war, the Phoenicians used to sacrifice one of their dearest to Baal. ‘Phoenician history,’ says an ancient writer, ‘is full of such sacrifices.’[3] When the Carthaginians were defeated and besieged by Agathocles, they ascribed their disasters to the wrath of Baal; for whereas in former times they had been wont to sacrifice to him their own children, they had latterly fallen into the habit of buying children and rearing them to be victims. So, to appease the angry god, two hundred children of the noblest families were picked out for sacrifice, and the tale of victims was swelled by not less than three hundred more who volunteered to die for the fatherland. They were sacrificed by being placed, one by one, on the sloping hands of the brazen image, from which they rolled into a pit of fire.[4] If an aristocracy thus adopted the practice of sacrificing other people’s children instead of their own, kings may very well have followed or set the example. A final mitigation of the custom would be the substitution of condemned criminals for innocent victims. Such a substitution is known to have taken place in the human sacrifices annually offered in Rhodes to Baal.[5]

The custom of sacrificing children, especially the first born, is not peculiarly Semitic. In some tribes of New South Wales the first-born child of every woman was eaten by the tribe as part of a religious ceremony.[6] The Indians of Florida sacrificed their first-born male children.[1] Amongst the people of Senjero in Eastern Africa we are told that many families ‘must offer up their first-born sons as sacrifices, because once upon a time, when summer and winter were jumbled together in a bad season, and the fruits of the earth would not ripen, the sooth-sayers enjoined it. At that time a great pillar of iron is said to have stood at the entrance of the capital, which by the advice of the sooth-sayers was broken down by order of the king, upon which the seasons became regular again. To avert the recurrence of such a confusion of the seasons, the soothsayers are reported to have enjoined the king to pour human blood once a year on the base of the broken shaft of the pillar, and also upon the throne. Since then certain families are obliged to deliver up their first-born sons, who are sacrificed at an appointed time.’[2] The heathen Russians often sacrificed their first-born to the god Perun.[3]

The condemnation and pretended death by fire of the mock king in Egypt is probably a reminiscence of a real custom of burning him. Evidence of a practice of burning divine personages will be forthcoming later on. In Bilaspur the expulsion of the Brahman who had occupied the king’s throne for a year is perhaps a substitute for putting him to death.

The explanation here given of the custom of killing divine persons assumes, or at least is readily combined with, the idea that the soul of the slain divinity is transmitted to his successor. Of this transmission I have no direct proof; and so far a link in the chain of evidence is wanting. But if I cannot prove by actual examples this succession to the soul of the slain god, it can at least be made probable that such a succession was supposed to take place. For it has been already shown that the soul of the incarnate deity is often supposed to transmigrate at death into another incarnation;[1] and if this takes place when the death is a natural one, there seems no reason why it should not take place when the death is a violent one. Certainly the idea that the soul of a dying person may be transmitted to his successor is perfectly familiar to primitive peoples. In Nias the eldest son usually succeeds his father in the chieftainship. But if from any bodily or mental defect the eldest son is incapacitated from ruling, the father determines in his life-time which of his sons shall succeed him. In order, however, to establish his right of succession it is necessary that the son upon whom his father’s choice falls shall catch in his mouth or in a bag the last breath, and with it the soul, of the dying chief. For whoever catches his last breath is chief equally with the appointed successor. Hence the other brothers, and sometimes also strangers, crowd round the dying man to catch his soul as it passes. The houses in Nias are raised above the ground on posts, and it has happened that when the dying man lay with his face on the floor, one of the candidates has bored a hole in the floor and sucked in the chiefs last breath through a bamboo tube. When the chief has no son, his soul is caught in a bag, which is fastened to an image made to represent the deceased; the soul is then believed to pass into the image.[2] Amongst the Takilis or Carrier Indians of North-West America, when a corpse is burned the priest pretends to catch the soul of the deceased in his hands, which he closes with many gesticulations. He then communicates the captured soul to the dead man’s successor by throwing his hands towards and blowing upon him. The person to whom the soul is thus communicated takes the name and rank of the deceased. On the death of a chief the priest thus fills a responsible and influential position, for he may transmit the soul to whom he will, though, doubtless, he generally follows the regular line of succession.[1] Algonkin women who wished to become mothers flocked to the side of a dying person in the hope of receiving and being impregnated by the passing soul. Amongst the Seminoles of Florida when a woman died in childbed the infant was held over her face to receive her parting spirit.[2] The Romans caught the breath of dying friends in their mouths, and so received into themselves the soul of the departed.[3] The same custom is said to be still practised in Lancashire.[4] We may therefore fairly suppose that when the divine king or priest is put to death his spirit is believed to pass into his successor.

Killing the Tree-Spirit

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

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

In Lower Bavaria the Whitsuntide representative of the tree-spirit – the Pfingstl as he was called – was clad from top to toe in leaves and flowers. On his head he wore a high pointed cap, the ends of which rested on his shoulders, only two holes being left in it for his eyes. The cap was covered with water flowers and surmounted with a nosegay of peonies. The sleeves of his coat were also made of water-plants, and the rest of his body was enveloped in alder and hazel leaves. On each side of him marched a boy holding up one of the Pfingstl’s arms. These two boys carried drawn swords, and so did most of the others who formed the procession. They stopped at every house where they hoped to receive a present; and the people, in hiding, soused the leaf-clad boy with water. All rejoiced when he was well drenched. Finally he waded into the brook up to his middle; whereupon one of the boys, standing on the bridge, pretended to cut off his head.[1] At Wurmlingen in Swabia a score of young fellows dress themselves on Whit-Monday in white shirts and white trousers, with red scarves round their waists and swords hanging from the scarves. They ride on horse-back into the wood, led by two trumpeters blowing their trumpets. In the wood they cut down leafy oak branches, in which they envelop from head to foot him who was the last of their number to ride out of the village. His legs, however, are encased separately, so that he may be able to mount his horse again. Further, they give him a long artificial neck, with an artificial head and a false face on the top of it. Then a May-tree is cut, generally an aspen or beech about ten feet high; and being decked with coloured handkerchiefs and ribbons it is entrusted to a special ‘May-bearer.’ The cavalcade then returns with music and song to the village. Amongst the personages who figure in the procession are a Moorish king with a sooty face and a crown on his head, a Dr Iron-Beard, a corporal, and an executioner. They halt on the village green, and each of the characters makes a speech in rhyme. The executioner announces that the leaf-clad man has been condemned to death and cuts off his false head. Then the riders race to the May-tree, which has been set up a little way off. The first man who succeeds in wrenching it from the ground as he gallops past keeps it with all its decorations. The ceremony is observed every second or third year.[1]

In Saxony and Thüringen there is a Whitsuntide ceremony called ‘chasing the Wild Man out of the bush,’ or ‘fetching the Wild Man out of the wood.’ A young fellow is enveloped in leaves or moss and called the Wild Man. He hides in the wood and the other lads of the village go out to seek him. They find him, lead him captive out of the wood, and fire at him with blank muskets. He falls like dead to the ground, but a lad dressed as a doctor bleeds him, and he comes to life again. At this they rejoice and binding him fast on a waggon take him to the village, where they tell all the people how they have caught the Wild Man. At every house they receive a gift.[2] In the Erzgebirge the following custom was annually observed at Shrovetide about the beginning of the seventeenth century. Two men disguised as Wild Men, the one in brushwood and moss, the other in straw, were led about the streets, and at last taken to the market-place, where they were chased up and down, shot and stabbed. Before falling they reeled about with strange gestures and spirted blood on the people from bladders which they carried. When they were down, the huntsmen placed them on boards and carried them to the alehouse, the miners marching beside them and winding blasts on their mining tools as if they had taken a noble head of game.[1] A very similar Shrovetide custom is still observed in the neighbourhood of Schluckenau (Bohemia). A man dressed up as a Wild Man is chased through several streets till he comes to a narrow lane across which a cord is stretched. He stumbles over the cord and, falling to the ground, is overtaken and caught by his pursuers. The executioner runs up and stabs with his sword a bladder filled with blood which the Wild Man wears round his body; so the Wild Man dies, while a stream of blood reddens the ground. Next day a straw-man, made up to look like the Wild Man, is placed on a litter, and, accompanied by a great crowd, is taken to a pool into which it is thrown by the executioner. The ceremony is called ‘burying the Carnival.’[2]

In Semic (Bohemia) the custom of beheading the King is observed on Whit-Monday. A troop of young people disguise themselves; each is girt with a girdle of bark and carries a wooden sword and a trumpet of willow-bark. The King wears a robe of tree-bark adorned with flowers, on his head is a crown of bark decked with flowers and branches, his feet are wound about with ferns, a mask hides his face, and for a sceptre he has a hawthorn switch in his hand. A lad leads him through the village by a rope fastened to his foot, while the rest dance about, blow their trumpets, and whistle. In every farmhouse the King is chased round the room, and one of the troop, amid much noise and outcry, strikes with his sword a blow on the King’s robe of bark till it rings again. Then a gratuity is demanded.[3] The ceremony of decapitation, which is here somewhat slurred over, is carried out with a greater semblance of reality in other parts of Bohemia. Thus in some villages of the Königgrätz district on Whit-Monday the girls assemble under one lime-tree and the young men under another, all dressed in their best and tricked out with ribbons. The young men twine a garland for the Queen and the girls for the King. When they have chosen the King and Queen they all go in procession, two and two, to the alehouse, from the balcony of which the crier proclaims the names of the King and Queen. Both are then invested with the insignia of their dignity and are crowned with the garlands, while the music plays up. Then some one gets on a bench and accuses the King of various offences, such as ill-treating the cattle. The King appeals to witnesses and a trial ensues, at the close of which the judge, who carries a white wand as his badge of office, pronounces a verdict of ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty.’ If the verdict is ‘guilty’ the judge breaks his wand, the King kneels on a white cloth, all heads are bared, and a soldier sets three or four hats, one above the other, on the King’s head. The judge then pronounces the word ‘guilty’ thrice in a loud voice, and orders the crier to behead the King. The crier obeys by striking off the King’s hats with his wooden sword.[1]

But perhaps, for our purpose, the most instructive of these mimic executions is the following Bohemian one, which has been in part described already.[2] In some places of the Pilsen district (Bohemia) on Whit-Monday the King is dressed in bark, ornamented with flowers and ribbons; he wears a crown of gilt paper and rides a horse, which is also decked with flowers. Attended by a judge, an executioner and other characters, and followed by a train of soldiers, all mounted, he rides to the village square, where a hut or arbour of green boughs has been erected under the May-trees, which are firs, freshly cut, peeled to the top, and dressed with flowers and ribbons. After the dames and maidens of the village have been criticised and a frog beheaded, in the way already described, the cavalcade rides to a place previously determined upon, in a straight, broad street. Here they draw up in two lines and the King takes to flight. He is given a short start and rides off at full speed, pursued by the whole troop. If they fail to catch him he remains King for another year, and his companions must pay his score at the alehouse in the evening. But if they overtake and catch him he is scourged with hazel rods or beaten with the wooden swords and compelled to dismount. Then the executioner asks, ‘Shall I behead this King?’ The answer is given, ‘Behead him;’ the executioner brandishes his axe, and with the words, ‘One, two, three, let the King headless be!’ he strikes off the King’s crown. Amid the loud cries of the bystanders the King sinks to the ground; then he is laid on a bier and carried to the nearest farmhouse.[1]

In the personages who are thus slain in mimicry it is impossible not to recognise representatives of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation, as he is supposed to manifest himself in spring. The bark, leaves, and flowers in which the actors are dressed, and the season of the year at which they appear, show that they belong to the same class as the Grass King, King of the May, Jack-in-the-Green, and other representatives of the vernal spirit of vegetation which we examined in the first chapter. As if to remove any possible doubt on this head, we find that in two cases[2] these slain men are brought into direct connection with May-trees, which are (as we have seen) the impersonal, as the May King, Grass King, etc., are the personal representatives of the tree-spirit. The drenching of the Pfingstl with water and his wading up to the middle into the brook are, therefore, no doubt rain-charms like those which have been already described.[3]

But if these personages represent, as they certainly do, the spirit of vegetation in spring, the question arises, Why kill them? What is the object of slaying the spirit of vegetation at any time and above all in spring, when his services are most wanted? The only answer to this question seems to be given in the explanation already proposed of the custom of killing the divine king or priest. The divine life, incarnate in a material and mortal body, is liable to be tainted and corrupted by the weakness of the frail medium in which it is for a time enshrined; and if it is to be saved from the increasing enfeeblement which it must necessarily share with its human incarnation as he advances in years, it must be detached from him before, or at least as soon as, he exhibits signs of decay, in order to be transferred to a vigorous successor. This is done by killing the old representative of the god and conveying the divine spirit from him to a new incarnation. The killing of the god, that is, of his human incarnation, is, therefore, only a necessary step to his revival or resurrection in a better form. Far from being an extinction of the divine spirit, it is only the beginning of a purer and stronger manifestation of it. If this explanation holds good of the custom of killing divine kings and priests in general, it is still more obviously applicable to the custom of annually killing the representative of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation in spring. For the decay of vegetation in winter is readily interpreted by primitive man as an enfeeblement of the spirit of vegetation; the spirit has (he thinks) grown old and weak and must therefore be renovated by being slain and brought to life in a younger and fresher form. Thus the killing of the representative of the tree-spirit in spring is regarded as a means to promote and quicken the growth of vegetation. For the killing of the tree-spirit is associated always (we must suppose) implicitly, and sometimes explicitly also, with a revival or resurrection of him in a more youthful and vigorous form. Thus in the Saxon and Thüringen custom, after the Wild Man has been shot he is brought to life again by a doctor;[1] and in the Wurmlingen ceremony there figures a Dr Iron-Beard, who probably once played a similar part; certainly in another spring ceremony (to be described presently) Dr Iron-Beard pretends to restore a dead man to life. But of this revival or resurrection of the god we shall have more to say anon.

The points of similarity between these North European personages and the subject of our inquiry – the King of the Wood or priest of Nemi – are sufficiently striking. In these northern maskers we see kings, whose dress of bark and leaves, along with the hut of green boughs and the fir-trees under which they hold their court, proclaim them unmistakably as, like their Italian counterpart, Kings of the Wood. like him they die a violent death; but like him they may escape from it for a time by their bodily strength and agility; for in several of these northern customs the flight and pursuit of the king is a prominent part of the ceremony, and in one case at least if the king can outrun his pursuers he retains his life and his office for another year. In this last case, in fact, the king holds office on condition of running for his life once a year, just as the King of Calicut in later times held office on condition of defending his life against all comers once every twelve years, and just as the priest of Nemi held office on condition of defending himself against any assault at any time. In all these cases the life of the god-man is prolonged on condition of showing, in a severe physical contest of fight or flight, that his bodily strength is not decayed, and that, therefore, the violent death, which sooner or later is inevitable, may for the present be postponed. With regard to flight it is noticeable that flight figured conspicuously both in the legend and the practice of the King of the Wood. He had to be a runaway slave (fugitivus) in memory of the flight of Orestes, the traditional founder of the worship; hence the Kings of the Wood are described by an ancient writer as ‘both strong of hand and fleet of foot.’[1] Perhaps if we knew the ritual of the Arician grove fully we might find that the king was allowed a chance for his life by flight, like his Bohemian brother. We may conjecture that the annual flight of the priestly king at Rome (regifugium)[2] was at first a flight of the same kind; in other words, that he was originally one of those divine kings who are either put to death after a fixed period or allowed to prove by the strong hand or the fleet foot that their divinity is vigorous and unimpaired. One more point of resemblance may be noted between the Italian King of the Wood and his northern counterparts. In Saxony and Thüringen the representative of the tree-spirit, after being killed, is brought to life again by a doctor. This is exactly what legend affirmed to have happened to the first King of the Wood at Nemi, Hippolytus or Virbius, who after he had been killed by his horses was restored to life by the physician Aesculapius.[1] Such a legend tallies well with the theory that the slaying of the King of the Wood was only a step to his revival or resurrection in his successor.

It has been assumed that the mock killing of the Wild Man and of the King in North European folk-custom is a modern substitute for an ancient custom of killing them in earnest. Those who best know the tenacity of life possessed by folk-custom and its tendency, with the growth of civilisation, to dwindle from solemn ritual into mere pageant and pastime, will be least likely to question the truth of this assumption. That human sacrifices were commonly offered by the ancestors of the civilised races of North Europe (Celts, Teutons, and Slavs) is certain.[2] It is not, therefore, surprising that the modern peasant should do in mimicry what his forefathers did in reality. We know as a matter of fact that in other parts of the world mock human sacrifices have been substituted for real ones. Thus Captain Bourke was informed by an old chief that the Indians of Arizona used to offer human sacrifices at the Feast of Fire when the days are shortest. The victim had his throat cut, his breast opened, and his heart taken out by one of the priests. This custom was abolished by the Mexicans, but for a long time afterwards a modified form of it was secretly observed as follows. The victim, generally a young man, had his throat cut, and blood was allowed to flow freely; but the medicinemen sprinkled ‘medicine’ on the gash, which soon healed up, and the man recovered.[1] So in the ritual of Artemis at Halae in Attica, a man’s throat was cut and the blood allowed to gush out, but he was not killed.[2] At the funeral of a chief in Nias slaves are sacrificed; a little of their hair is cut off, and then they are beheaded. The victims are generally purchased for the purpose, and their number is proportioned to the wealth and power of the deceased. But if the number required is excessively great or cannot be procured, some of the chief’s own slaves undergo a sham sacrifice. They are told, and believe, that they are about to be decapitated; their heads are placed on a log and their necks struck with the back of a sword. The fright drives some of them crazy.[3] When a Hindoo has killed or ill-treated an ape, a bird of prey of a certain kind, or a cobra capella, in the presence of the worshippers of Vishnu, he must expiate his offence by the pretended sacrifice and resurrection of a human being. An incision is made in the victim’s arm, the blood flows, he grows faint, falls, and feigns to die. Afterwards he is brought to life by being sprinkled with blood drawn from the thigh of a worshipper of Vishnu. The crowd of spectators is fully convinced of the reality of this simulated death and resurrection.[4] Sometimes the mock sacrifice is carried out, not on a living person but on an image. Thus an Indian law-book, the Calica Puran, prescribes that when the sacrifice of lions, tigers, or human beings is required, an image of a lion, tiger, or man shall be made with butter, paste, or barley meal, and sacrificed instead.[5] Some of the Gonds of India formerly offered human sacrifices; they now sacrifice strawmen instead.[1] Colonel Dalton was told that in some of their villages the Bhagats (Hindooised Oraons) ‘annually make an image of a man in wood, put clothes and ornaments on it, and present it before the altar of a Mahádeo. The person who officiates as priest on the occasion says: “O, Mahádeo, we sacrifice this man to you according to ancient customs. Give us rain in due season, and a plentiful harvest.” Then with one stroke of the axe the head of the image is struck off, and the body is removed and buried.’[2]

Carrying out Death

Thus far I have offered an explanation of the rule which required that the priest of Nemi should be slain by his successor. The explanation claims to be no more than probable; our scanty knowledge of the custom and of its history forbids it to be more. But its probability will be augmented in proportion to the extent to which the motives and modes of thought which it assumes can be proved to have operated in primitive society. Hitherto the god with whose death and resurrection we have been chiefly concerned has been the tree-god. Tree-worship may perhaps be regarded (though this is a conjecture) as occupying an intermediate place in the history of religion, between the religion of the hunter and shepherd on the one side, whose gods are mostly animals, and the religion of the husbandman on the other hand, in whose worship the cultivated plants play a leading part. If then I can show that the custom of killing the god and the belief in his resurrection originated, or at least existed, in the hunting and pastoral stage of society, when the slain god was an animal, and survived into the agricultural stage, when the slain god was the corn or a human being representing the corn, the probability of my explanation will have been considerably increased. This I shall attempt to do in the remainder of this chapter, in the course of which I hope to clear up some obscurities which still remain, and to answer some objections which may have suggested themselves to the reader.

We start from the point at which we left off – the spring customs of European peasantry. Besides the ceremonies already described there are two kindred sets of observances in which the simulated death of a divine or supernatural being is a leading feature. These observances are commonly known as ‘Burying the Carnival,’ and ‘Driving or carrying out Death.’ Both customs are chiefly practised, or at least best known, on German and Slavonic ground. The former custom is observed on the last day of the Carnival, namely, Shrove Tuesday (Fastnacht), or on the first day of Lent, namely, Ash Wednesday. The latter custom is commonly observed on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, which hence gets the name of Dead Sunday (Todtensonntag); but in some places it is observed a week earlier; in others again, as amongst the Czechs of Bohemia, a week later. Originally the date of the celebration of the ‘Carrying out Death’ appears not to have been fixed, but to have depended on the appearance of the first swallow or of some other natural phenomenon.[1] A Bohemian form of the custom of ‘Burying the Carnival’ has been already described.[2] The following Swabian form is obviously similar. In the neighbourhood of Tübingen on Shrove Tuesday a straw-man, called the Shrovetide Bear, is made up; he is dressed in a pair of old trousers, and a fresh black-pudding or two squirts filled with blood are inserted in his neck. After a formal condemnation he is beheaded, laid in a coffin, and on Ash Wednesday is buried in the churchyard. This is called ‘Burying the Carnival’ (‘die Fastnacht vergraben’).[3] Amongst some of the Saxons of Transylvania the Carnival is hung. Thus at Braller on Ash Wednesday or Shrove Tuesday two white and two chestnut horses draw a sledge on which is placed a straw-man swathed in a white cloth; beside him is a cart-wheel which is kept turning round. Two lads disguised as old men follow the sledge lamenting. The rest of the village lads, mounted on horse-back and decked with ribbons, accompany the procession, which is headed by two girls crowned with evergreen and drawn in a waggon or sledge. A trial is held under a tree, at which lads disguised as soldiers pronounce sentence of death. The two old men try to rescue the straw-man and to fly with him, but to no purpose; he is caught by the two girls and handed over to the executioner, who hangs him on a tree. In vain the old men try to climb up the tree and take him down; they always tumble down, and at last in despair they throw themselves on the ground and weep and howl for the hanged man. An official then makes a speech in which he declares that the Carnival was condemned to death because he had done them harm, by wearing out their shoes and making them tired and sleepy.[1] At the ‘Burial of Carnival’ in Lechrain, a man dressed as a woman in black clothes is carried on a litter or bier by four men; he is lamented over by men disguised as women in black clothes, then thrown down before the village dung-heap, drenched with water, buried in the dung-heap, and covered with straw.[2] Similarly in Schörzingen, near Schömberg, the ‘Carnival (Shrovetide) Fool’ was carried all about the village on a bier, preceded by a man dressed in white, and followed by a devil who was dressed in black and carried chains, which he clanked. One of the train collected gifts. After the procession the Fool was buried under straw and dung.[3] In Rottweil the ‘Carnival Fool’ is made drunk on Ash Wednesday and buried under straw amid loud lamentation.[1] In Wurmlingen the Fool is represented by a young fellow enveloped in straw, who is led about the village by a rope as a ‘Bear’ on Shrove Tuesday and the preceding day. He dances to the flute. Then on Ash Wednesday a straw-man is made, placed on a trough, carried out of the village to the sound of drums and mournful music, and buried in a field.[2] In Altdorf and Weingarten on Ash Wednesday the Fool, represented by a straw-man, is carried about and then thrown into the water to the accompaniment of melancholy music. In other villages of Swabia the part of fool is played by a live person, who is thrown into the water after being carried about in procession.[3] At Balwe, in Westphalia, a straw-man is made on Shrove Tuesday and thrown into the river amid rejoicings. This is called, as usual, ‘Burying the Carnival.’[4] On the evening of Shrove Tuesday, the Esthonians make a straw figure called metsik or ‘wood-spirit;’ one year it is dressed with a man’s coat and hat, next year with a hood and a petticoat. This figure is stuck on a long pole, carried across the boundary of the village with loud cries of joy, and fastened to the top of a tree in the wood. The ceremony is believed to be a protection against all kinds of misfortune.[5] Sometimes the resurrection of the pretended dead person is enacted. Thus, in some parts of Swabia, on Shrove Tuesday Dr Iron-Beard professes to bleed a sick man, who thereupon falls as dead to the ground; but the doctor at last restores him to life by blowing air into him through a tube.[6] In the Harz mountains, when Carnival is over, a man is laid on a baking-trough and carried with dirges to a grave; but in the grave, instead of the man, a glass of brandy is placed. A speech is delivered and then the people return to the village-green or meeting-place, where they smoke the long clay pipes which are distributed at funerals. On the morning of Shrove Tuesday in the following year the brandy is dug up and the festival begins by every one tasting the brandy which, as the phrase goes, has come to life again.[1]

The ceremony of ‘Carrying out Death’ presents much the same features as ‘Burying the Carnival;’ except that the figure of Death is oftener drowned or burned than buried, and that the carrying out of Death is generally followed by a ceremony, or at least accompanied by a profession, of bringing in Summer, Spring, or Life. Thus, in some villages of Thüringen on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, the children used to carry a puppet of birchen twigs through the village, and then threw it into a pool, while they sang, ‘We carry the old Death out behind the herdsman’s old house; we have got Summer, and Kroden’s (?) power is destroyed.’[2] In one village of Thüringen (Dobschwitz near Gera), the ceremony of ‘Driving out Death’ is still annually observed on the 1st of March. The young people make up a figure of straw or the like materials, dress it in old clothes which they have begged from the houses in the village, and carry it out and throw it into the river. On returning to the village they announce the fact to the people, and receive eggs and other victuals as a reward. In other villages of Thüringen, in which the population was originally Slavonic, the carrying out of the puppet is accompanied with the singing of a song, which begins, ‘Now we carry Death out of the village and Spring into the village.’[3] In Bohemia the children go out with a straw-man, representing Death, to the end of the village, where they burn it, singing –

‘Now carry we Death out of the village.

The new Summer into the village,

Welcome dear Summer,

Green little corn!’[4]

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

‘Death swims on the water,

Summer will soon be here,

We carried Death away for you,

We brought the Summer.

And do thou, Ο holy Marketa,

Give us a good year

For wheat and for rye.’[1]

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

‘We carry Death out of the village,

And the New Year into the village,

Dear Spring, we bid you welcome,

Green grass, we bid you welcome.’

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

‘We have carried away Death,

And brought life back.

He has taken up his quarters in the village,

Therefore sing joyous songs.’[2]

At Nürnberg, girls of seven to eighteen years of age, dressed in their best, carry through the streets a little open coffin in which is a doll, hidden under a shroud. Others carry a beech branch, with an apple fastened to it for a head, in an open box. They sing, ‘We carry Death into the water, it is well,’ or, ‘We carry Death into the water, carry him in and out again.’[3]

The effigy of Death is often regarded with fear and treated with marks of hatred and contempt. In Lusatia the figure is sometimes made to look in at the window of a house, and it is believed that some one in the house will die within the year unless his life is redeemed by the payment of money.[1] Again, after throwing the effigy away, the bearers sometimes run home lest Death should follow them; and if one of them falls in running, it is believed that he will die within the year.[2] At Chrudim, in Bohemia, the figure of Death is made out of a cross, with a head and mask stuck at the top, and a shirt stretched out on it. On the Fifth Sunday in Lent the boys take this effigy to the nearest brook or pool, and standing in a line throw it into the water. Then they all plunge in after it; but as soon as it is caught no one more may enter the water. The boy who did not enter the water or entered it last will die within the year, and he is obliged to carry the Death back to the village. The effigy is then burned.[3] On the other hand it is believed that no one will die within the year in the house out of which the figure of Death has been carried;[4] and the village out of which Death has been driven is sometimes supposed to be protected against sickness and plague.[5] In some villages of Austrian Silesia on the Saturday before Dead Sunday an effigy is made of old clothes, hay, and straw, for the purpose of driving Death out of the village. On Sunday the people, armed with sticks and straps, assemble before the house where the figure is lodged. Four lads then draw the effigy by cords through the village amid exultant shouts, while all the others beat it with their sticks and straps. On reaching a field which belongs to a neighbouring village they lay down the figure, cudgel it soundly, and scatter the fragments over the field. The people believe that the village from which Death has been thus carried out will be safe from any infectious disease for the whole year.[1] In Slavonia the figure of Death is cudgelled and then rent in two.[2] In Poland the effigy, made of hemp and straw, is flung into a pool or swamp with the words, ‘The devil take thee.’[3]

The custom of ‘sawing the Old Woman,’ which is or used to be observed in Italy and Spain on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, is doubtless, as Grimm supposes, merely another form of the custom of ‘carrying out Death.’ A great hideous figure representing the oldest woman of the village was dragged out and sawn in two, amid a prodigious noise made with cow-bells, pots and pans, etc.[4] In Palermo the ceremony used to be still more realistic. At Mid-Lent an old woman was drawn through the streets on a cart, attended by two men dressed in the costume of the Compagnia de’ Bianchi, a society or religious order whose function it was to attend and console prisoners condemned to death. A scaffold was erected in a public square; the old woman mounted it, and two mock executioners proceeded, amid a storm of huzzas and hand-clapping, to saw through her neck or rather through a bladder of blood which had been previously fitted to her neck. The blood gushed out and the old woman pretended to swoon and die. The last of these mock executions took place in 1737.[5] At Florence, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Old Woman was represented by a figure stuffed with walnuts and dried figs and fastened to the top of a ladder. At Mid-Lent this effigy was sawn through the middle under the Loggie of the Mercato Nuovo, and as the dried fruits tumbled out they were scrambled for by the crowd. A trace of the custom is still to be seen in the practice, observed by urchins, of secretly pinning paper ladders to the shoulders of women of the lower classes who happen to show them-selves in the streets on the morning of Mid-Lent.[1] A similar custom is observed by urchins in Rome; and at Naples on the 1st of April boys cut strips of cloth into the shape of saws, smear them with gypsum, and strike passers-by with their ‘saws’ on the back, thus imprinting the figure of a saw upon their clothes.[2] At Montalto in Calabria boys go about at Mid-Lent with little saws made of cane and jeer at old people, who therefore generally stay indoors on that day. The Calabrian women meet together at this time and feast on figs, chestnuts, honey, etc.; this they call ‘sawing the Old Woman’ – a reminiscence probably of a custom like the old Florentine one.[3]

In Barcelona on the day in question boys run about the streets, some with saws, others with billets of wood, others again with cloths in which they collect gratuities. They sing a song in which it is said that they are looking for the oldest woman of the city for the purpose of sawing her in two in honour of Mid-Lent; at last, pretending to have found her, they saw something in two and burn it. A like custom is found amongst the South Slavs. In Lent the Croats tell their children that at noon an old woman is being sawn in two outside the gates; and in Carniola also the saying is current that at Mid-Lent an old woman is taken out of the village and sawn in two. The North Slavonian expression for keeping Mid-Lent is bábu rezati, that is, ‘sawing the Old Wife.’[4]

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

‘We carried Death out of the village,

We are carrying Summer into the village.’[1]

In many Silesian villages the figure of Death, after being treated with respect, is stripped of its clothes and flung with curses into the water, or torn in pieces in a field. Then a fir-tree adorned with ribbons, coloured egg shells, and motley bits of cloth, is carried through the streets by boys who collect pennies and sing –

‘We have carried Death out,

We are bringing the dear Summer back,

The Summer and the May

And all the flowers gay.’[2]

At Eisenach on the Fourth Sunday in Lent young people used to fasten a straw-man, representing Death, to a wheel, which they trundled to the top of a hill. Then setting fire to the figure they allowed it and the wheel to roll downhill. Next they cut a tall fir-tree, tricked it out with ribbons, and set it up in the plain. The men then climbed the tree to fetch down the ribbons.[3] In Upper Lusatia the figure of Death, made of straw and rags, is dressed in a veil furnished by the last bride and a shirt furnished by the house in which the last death occurred. Thus arrayed the figure is stuck on the end of a long pole and carried at full speed by the tallest and strongest girl, while the rest pelt the effigy with sticks and stones. Whoever hits it will be sure to live through the year. In this way Death is carried out of the village and thrown into the water or over the boundary of the next village. On their way home each one breaks a green branch and carries it gaily with him till he reaches the village, when he throws it away. Sometimes the young people of the next village, upon whose land the figure has been thrown, run after them and hurl it back, not wishing to have Death among them. Hence the two parties occasionally come to blows.[1]

In these cases Death is represented by the puppet which is thrown away, Summer or life by the branches or trees which are brought back. But sometimes a new potency of life seems to be attributed to the image of Death itself, and by a kind of resurrection it becomes the instrument of the general revival. Thus in some parts of Lusatia women alone are concerned in carrying out Death, and suffer no male to meddle with it. Attired in mourning, which they wear the whole day, they make a puppet of straw, clothe it in a white shirt, and give it a broom in one hand and a scythe in the other. Singing songs and pursued by urchins throwing stones, they carry the puppet to the village boundary, where they tear it in pieces. Then they cut down a fine tree, hang the shirt on it, and carry it home singing.[2] On the Feast of Ascension the Saxons of a village near Hermanstadt (Transylvania) observe the ceremony of ‘carrying out Death’ in the following manner. After forenoon church all the school-girls repair to the house of one of their number, and there dress up the Death. This is done by tying a threshed-out corn-sheaf into the rough semblance of a head and body, while the arms are simulated by a broomstick stuck horizontally. The figure is dressed in the Sunday clothes of a village matron. It is then displayed at the window that all people may see it on their way to afternoon church. As soon as vespers are over the girls seize the effigy and, singing a hymn, carry it in procession round the village. Boys are excluded from the procession. After the procession has traversed the village from end to end, the figure is taken to another house and stripped of its attire; the naked straw bundle is then thrown out of the window to the boys, who carry it off and fling it into the nearest stream. This is the first act of the drama. In the second, one of the girls is solemnly invested with the clothes and ornaments previously worn by the figure of Death, and, like it, is led in procession round the village to the singing of the same hymns as before. The ceremony ends with a feast at the house of the girl who acted the chief part; as before, the boys are excluded. ‘According to popular belief, it is allowed to eat fruit only after this day, as now the “Death,” that is, the unwholesomeness – has been expelled from them. Also the river in which the Death has been drowned may now be considered fit for public bathing. If this ceremony be neglected in the village where it is customary, such neglect is supposed to entail death to one of the young people, or loss of virtue to a girl.’[1]

In the first of these two ceremonies the tree which is brought home after the destruction of the figure of Death is plainly equivalent to the trees or branches which, in the preceding customs, were brought back as representatives of Summer of life, after Death had been thrown away or destroyed. But the transference of the shirt worn by the effigy of Death to the tree clearly indicates that the tree is a kind of revivification, in a new form, of the destroyed effigy.[2] This comes out also in the Transylvanian custom; the dressing of a girl in the clothes worn by the Death, and the leading her about the village to the same songs which had been sung when the Death was being carried about, show that she is intended to be a kind of resuscitation of the being whose effigy has just been destroyed. These examples therefore suggest that the Death whose demolition is represented in these ceremonies cannot be regarded as the purely destructive agent which we understand by Death. If the tree which is brought back as an embodiment of the reviving vegetation of spring is clothed in the shirt worn by the Death which has been just destroyed, the object certainly cannot be to check and counteract the revival of vegetation; it can only be to foster and promote it. Therefore the being which has just been destroyed – the so-called Death – must be supposed to be endowed with a vivifying and quickening influence, which it can communicate to the vegetable and even the animal world. This ascription of a life-giving virtue to the figure of Death is put beyond a doubt by the custom, observed in some places, of taking pieces of the straw effigy of Death and placing them in the fields to make the crops grow, or in the manger to make the cattle thrive. Thus in Spachendorf (Austrian Silesia) the figure of Death made of straw, brushwood, and rags, is carried out with wild songs to an open place outside the village and there burned, and while it is burning a general struggle takes place for the pieces, which are pulled out of the flames with bare hands. Each one who secures a fragment of the effigy ties it to a branch of the largest tree in his garden, or buries it in his field, in the belief that this causes the crops to grow better.[1] In the Troppau district (Austrian Silesia) the straw figure which the boys make on the Fourth Sunday in Lent is dressed by the girls in woman’s clothes and hung with ribbons, necklace, and garlands. Attached to a long pole it is carried out of the village, followed by a troop of young people of both sexes, who alternately frolic, lament, and sing songs. Arrived at its destination – a field outside the village – the figure is stripped of its clothes and ornaments; then the crowd rushes on it and tears it to bits, scuffling for the fragments. Every one tries to get a wisp of the straw of which the effigy was made, because such a wisp, placed in the manger, is believed to make the cattle thrive.[2] Or the straw is put in the hens’ nest, it being supposed that this prevents the hens from carrying away their eggs, and makes them brood much better.[3] The same attribution of a fertilising power to the figure of Death appears in the belief that if the bearers of the figure, after throwing it away, meet cattle and strike them with their sticks, this will render the cattle prolific.[1] Perhaps the sticks had been previously used to beat the Death,[2] and so had acquired the fertilising power ascribed to the effigy. In Leipzig at Mid-Lent men and women of the lowest class used to carry through all the streets a straw effigy of Death, which they exhibited to young wives, and finally threw into the river, alleging that this made young wives fruitful, cleansed the city, and averted the plague and other sickness from the inhabitants for that year.[3]

It seems hardly possible to separate from the May-trees the trees or branches which are brought into the village after the destruction of the Death. The bearers who bring them in profess to be bringing in the Summer;[4] therefore the trees obviously represent the Summer; and the doll which is sometimes attached to the Summer-tree is a duplicate representative of the Summer, just as the May is sometimes represented at the same time by a May-tree and a May Lady.[5] Further, the Summer-trees are adorned like May-trees with ribbons, etc.; like May-trees, when large, they are planted in the ground and climbed up; and like May-trees, when small, they are carried from door to door by boys or girls singing songs and collecting money.[6] And as if to demonstrate the identity of the two sets of customs the bearers of the Summer-tree sometimes announce that they are bringing in the Summer and the May.[7] The customs, therefore, of bringing in the May and bringing in the Summer are essentially the same; and the Summer-tree is merely another form of the May-tree, the only distinction (besides that of name) being in the time at which they are respectively brought in; for while the May-tree is usually fetched in on the 1st of May or at Whitsuntide, the Summer-tree is fetched in on the Fourth Sunday in Lent. Therefore, if the explanation here adopted of the May-tree (namely, that it is an embodiment of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation) is correct, the Summer-tree must likewise be an embodiment of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. But we have seen that the Summer-tree is in some cases a revivification of the effigy of Death. It follows, therefore, that in these cases the effigy called Death must be an embodiment of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. This inference is confirmed, first, by the vivifying and fertilising influence which the fragments of the effigy of Death are believed to exercise both on vegetable and on animal life;[1] for this influence, as we saw in the first chapter, is supposed to be a special attribute of the tree-spirit. It is confirmed, secondly, by observing that the effigy of Death is sometimes composed of birchen twigs, of the branch of a beech-tree, of a threshed-out corn-sheaf, or of hemp;[2] and that sometimes it is hung on a little tree and so carried about by girls collecting money,[3] just as is done with the May-tree and the May Lady, and with the Summer-tree and the doll attached to it. In short we are driven to regard the expulsion of Death and the bringing in of Summer as, in some cases at least, merely another form of that death and resuscitation of the spirit of vegetation in spring which we saw enacted in the killing and resurrection of the Wild Man.[4] The burial and resurrection of the Carnival is probably another way of expressing the same idea. The burying of the representative of the Carnival under a dung-heap is natural, if he is supposed to possess a quickening and fertilising influence like that ascribed to the effigy of Death. By the Esthonians, indeed, the straw figure which is carried out of the village in the usual way on Shrove Tuesday is not called the Carnival, but the Wood-spirit (Metsik), and the identity of it with the wood-spirit is further shown by fixing it to the top of a tree in the wood, where it remains for a year, and is besought almost daily with prayers and offerings to protect the herds; for like a true wood-spirit the Metsik is a patron of cattle. Sometimes the Metsik is made of sheaves of corn.[1] Therefore, we may fairly conjecture that the names Carnival, Death, and Summer, are comparatively late and inadequate expressions for the beings personified or embodied in the customs described. The very abstractness of the names bespeaks a modern origin; the personification of times and seasons like the Carnival and Summer, or of an abstract notion like death, is hardly primitive. But the ceremonies themselves bear the stamp of a dateless antiquity; therefore we can hardly help supposing that in their origin the ideas which they embodied were of a more simple and concrete order. The conception of a tree, perhaps of a particular kind of tree (for some savages have no word for tree in general), or even of an individual tree, is sufficiently concrete to supply a basis from which by a gradual process of generalisation the wider conception of a spirit of vegetation might be reached. But this general conception of vegetation would readily be confounded with the season in which it manifests itself; hence the substitution of Spring, Summer, or May for the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation would be easy and natural. Again the concrete notion of the dying tree or dying vegetation would by a similar process of generalisation glide into a notion of death in general; so that instead of the carrying out of the dying or dead vegetation in spring (as a preliminary to its revival) we should in time get a carrying out of Death itself. The view that in these spring ceremonies Death meant originally the dying or dead vegetation of winter has the high support of W. Mannhardt; and he confirms it by the analogy of the name Death as applied to the spirit of the ripe corn. Commonly the spirit of the ripe corn is conceived, not as dead, but as old, and hence it goes by the name of the Old Man or the Old Woman. But in some places the last sheaf cut at harvest, which is generally believed to be the seat of the corn spirit, is called ‘the Dead One;’ children are warned against entering the corn-fields because Death sits in the corn; and, in a game played by Saxon children in Transylvania at the maize harvest, Death is represented by a child completely covered with maize leaves.[1]

The supposition that behind the conceptions of Death, Carnival, Summer, etc., as embodied in these spring ceremonies, there lurk older and more concrete notions is to a certain extent countenanced by the fact that in Russia funeral ceremonies like those of ‘Burying the Carnival’ and ‘Carrying out Death’ are celebrated under the names, not of Death or the Carnival, but of certain mythic figures, Kostrubonko, Kostroma, Kupalo, Lada, and Yarilo, These Russian ceremonies are observed both in spring and at midsummer. Thus ‘in little Russia it used to be the custom at Eastertide to celebrate the funeral of a being called Kostrubonko, the deity of the spring. A circle was formed of singers who moved slowly around a girl who lay on the ground as if dead, and as they went they sang –

“Dead, dead is our Kostrubonko!

Dead, dead is our dear one!”

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

“Come to life, come to life has our Kostrubonko!

Come to life, come to life has our dear one!”’[2]

On the Eve of St John (Midsummer Eve) a figure of Kupalo is made of straw and ‘is dressed in woman’s clothes, with a necklace and a floral crown. Then a tree is felled, and, after being decked with ribbons, is set up on some chosen spot. Near this tree, to which they give the name of Marena [Winter or Death], the straw figure is placed, together with a table, on which stand spirits and viands. Afterwards a bonfire is lit, and the young men and maidens jump over it in couples, carrying the figure with them. On the next day they strip the tree and the figure of their ornaments, and throw them both into a stream.’[1] On St Peter’s Day (29th June) or on the following Sunday, ‘the Funeral of Kostroma’ or of Lada or of Yarilo is celebrated in Russia. In the Governments of Penza and Simbirsk the ‘funeral’ used to be represented as follows. A bonfire was kindled on the 28th of June, and on the next day the maidens chose one of their number to play the part of Kostroma. Her companions saluted her with deep obeisances, placed her on a board, and carried her to the bank of a stream. There they bathed her in the water, while the oldest girl made a basket of lime-tree bark and beat it like a drum. Then they returned to the village and ended the day with processions, games, and dances.[2] In the Murom district, Kostroma was represented by a straw figure dressed in woman’s clothes and flowers. This was laid in a trough and carried with songs to the bank of a lake or river. Here the crowd divided into two sides, of which the one attacked and the other defended the figure. At last the assailants gained the day, stripped the figure of its dress and ornaments, tore it in pieces, trod the straw of which it was made under foot, and flung it into the stream; while the defenders of the figure hid their faces in their hands and pretended to bewail the death of Kostroma.[3] In the district of Kostroma the burial of Yarilo was celebrated on the 29th or 30th of June. The people chose an old man and gave him a small coffin containing a Priapus-like figure representing Yarilo. This he carried out of the town, followed by women chanting dirges and expressing by their gestures grief and despair. In the open fields a grave was dug, and into it the figure was lowered amid weeping and wailing, after which games and dances were begun, ‘calling to mind the funeral games celebrated in old times by the pagan Slavonians.’[1] In Little Russia the figure of Yarilo was laid in a coffin and carried through the streets after sunset surrounded by drunken women, who kept repeating mournfully, ‘He is dead! he is dead!’ The men lifted and shook the figure as if they were trying to recall the dead man to life. Then they said to the women, ‘Women, weep not. I know what is sweeter than honey.’ But the women continued to lament and chant, as they do at funerals. ‘Of what was he guilty? He was so good. He will arise no more. Ο how shall we part from thee? What is life without thee? Arise, if only for a brief hour. But he rises not, he rises not.’ At last the Yarilo was buried in a grave.[2]

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

‘To the darksome hollows

Where the frosts of winter lie.’

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

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

Before we quit these European customs to go farther afield, it will be well to notice that occasionally the expulsion of Death or of a mythic being is conducted without any visible representative of the personage expelled. Thus at Königshain, near Görlitz (Silesia), all the villagers, young and old, used to go out with straw torches to the top of a neighbouring hill, called Todtenstein (Death-stone), where they lit their torches, and so returned home singing, ‘We have driven out Death, we are bringing back Summer.’[1] In Albania young people light torches of resinous wood on Easter Eve, and march in procession through the village brandishing them. At last they throw the torches into the river, saying, ‘Ha, Kore, we fling you into the river, like these torches, that you may return no more.’ Some say that the intention of the ceremony is to drive out winter; but Kore is conceived as a malignant being who devours children.[1]

In the Kânagrâ district, India, there is a custom observed by young girls in spring which closely resembles some of the European spring ceremonies just described. It is called the Ralî Ka melâ, or fair of Rali, the Ralî being a small painted earthen image of Siva or Pârvatî. It lasts through most of Chet (March-April) up to the Sankrânt of Baisâkh (April), and is in vogue all over the Kânagrâ district. Its celebration is entirely confined to young girls. On a morning in March all the young girls of the village take small baskets of dûb grass and flowers to a certain fixed spot, where they throw them in a heap. Round this heap they stand in a circle and sing. This goes on every day for ten days, till the heap of grass and flowers has reached a fair height. Then they cut in the jungle two branches having three prongs at one end, and place them, prongs downwards, over the heap of flowers, so as to make two tripods or pyramids. On the single uppermost points of these branches they get an image-maker to construct two clay images, one to represent Siva, and the other Pârvatî. The girls then divide themselves into two parties, one for Siva and one for Pârvatî, and marry the images in the usual way, leaving out no part of the ceremony. After the marriage they have a feast, the cost of which is defrayed by contributions solicited from their parents. Then at the next Sankrânt (Baisâkh) they all go together to the riverside, throw the images into a deep pool, and weep over the place, as though they were performing funeral obsequies. The boys of the neighbourhood often annoy them by diving after the images, bringing them up, and waving them about while the girls are crying over them. The object of the fair is said to be to secure a good husband.[2]

That in this Indian ceremony the deities Siva and Pârvatî are conceived as spirits of vegetation seems to be proved by the fact that their images are placed on branches over a heap of grass and flowers. Here, as often in European folk-custom, the divinities of vegetation are represented in duplicate, by plants and by puppets. The marriage of these Indian deities in spring corresponds to the European ceremonies in which the marriage of the vernal spirits of vegetation is represented by the King and Queen of May, the May Bride, Bridegroom of the May, etc.[1] The throwing of the images into the water, and the mourning for them, are the equivalents of the European customs of throwing the dead spirit of vegetation (under the name of Death, Yarilo, Kostroma, etc.) into the water and lamenting over it. Again, in India, as often in Europe, the rite is performed exclusively by females. The notion that the ceremony was effective for procuring husbands to the girls can be explained by the quickening and fertilising influence which the spirit of vegetation is believed to exert upon human and animal, as well as upon vegetable life.[2]

Adonis

But it is in Egypt and Western Asia that the death and resurrection of vegetation appear to have been most widely celebrated with ceremonies like those of modern Europe. Under the names of Osiris, Adonis, Thammuz, Attis, and Dionysus, the Egyptians, Syrians, Babylonians, Phrygians, and Greeks represented the decay and revival of vegetation with rites which, as the ancients themselves recognised, were substantially the same, and which find their parallels in the spring and midsummer customs of our European peasantry. The nature and worship of these deities have been discussed at length by many learned writers; all that I propose to do is to sketch those salient features in their ritual and legends which seem to establish the view here taken of their nature. We begin with Adonis or Thammuz.

The worship of Adonis was practised by the Semitic peoples of Syria, from whom it was borrowed by the Greeks as early at least as the fifth century before Christ. The name Adonis is the Phoenician Adon, ‘lord.’[1] He was said to have been a fair youth, beloved by Aphrodite (the Semitic Astarte), but slain by a boar in his youthful prime. His death was annually lamented with a bitter wailing, chiefly by women; images of him, dressed to resemble corpses, were carried out as to burial and then thrown into the sea or into springs;[2] and in some places his revival was celebrated on the following day.[3] But the ceremonies varied somewhat both in the manner and the season of their celebration in different places. At Alexandria images of Adonis and Aphrodite were displayed on two couches; beside them were set ripe fruits of all kinds, cakes, plants growing in flower pots, and green bowers twined with anise. The marriage of the lovers was celebrated one day, and on the next the image of Adonis was borne by women attired as mourners, with streaming hair and bared breasts, to the sea-shore and committed to the waves.[4] The date at which this Alexandrian ceremony was observed is not expressly stated; but from the mention of the ripe fruits it has been inferred that it took place in late summer.[5] At Byblus the death of Adonis was annually mourned with weeping, wailing, and beating of the breast; but next day he was believed to come to life again and ascend up to heaven in the presence of his worshippers.[6] This celebration appears to have taken place in spring; for its date was determined by the discoloration of the river Adonis, and this has been observed by modern travellers to occur in spring. At that season the red earth washed down from the mountains by the rain tinges the water of the river and even the sea for a great way with a blood-red hue, and the crimson stain was believed to be the blood of Adonis, annually wounded to death by the boar on Mount Lebanon.[1] Again, the red anemone[2] was said to have sprung from the blood of Adonis; and as the anemone blooms in Syria about Easter, this is a fresh proof that the festival of Adonis, or at least one of his festivals, was celebrated in spring. The name of the flower is probably derived from Naaman (‘darling’), which seems to have been an epithet of Adonis. The Arabs still call the anemone ‘wounds of the Naaman.’[3]

The resemblance of these ceremonies to the Indian and European ceremonies previously described is obvious. In particular, apart from the somewhat doubtful date of its celebration, the Alexandrian ceremony is almost identical with the Indian. In both of them the marriage of two divinities, whose connection with vegetation seems indicated by the fresh plants with which they are surrounded, is celebrated in effigy, and the effigies are afterwards mourned over and thrown into the water.[4] From the similarity of these customs to each other and to the spring and mid-summer customs of modern Europe we should naturally expect that they all admit of a common explanation. Hence, if the explanation here adopted of the latter is correct, the ceremony of the death and resurrection of Adonis must also have been a representation of the decay and revival of vegetation. The inference thus based on the similarity of the customs is confirmed by the following features in the legend and ritual of Adonis. His connection with vegetation comes out at once in the common story of his birth. He was said to have been born from a myrrh-tree, the bark of which bursting, after a ten months’ gestation, allowed the lovely infant to come forth. According to some, a boar rent the bark with his tusk and so opened a passage for the babe. A faint rationalistic colour was given to the legend by saying that his mother was a woman named Myrrh, who had been turned into a myrrh-tree soon after she had conceived the child.[1] Again the story that Adonis spent half, or according to others a third, of the year in the lower world and the rest of it in the upper world,[2] is explained most simply and naturally by supposing that he represented vegetation, especially the corn, which lies buried in the earth half the year and reappears above ground the other half. Certainly of the annual phenomena of nature there is none which suggests so obviously the idea of a yearly death and resurrection as the disappearance and reappearance of vegetation in autumn and spring. Adonis has been taken for the sun; but there is nothing in the sun’s annual course within the temperate and tropical zones to suggest that he is dead for half or a third of the year and alive for the other half or a two-thirds. He might, indeed, be conceived as weakened in winter,[1] but dead he could not be thought to be; his daily reappearance contradicts the supposition. Within the arctic circle, where the sun annually disappears for a continuous period of from twenty-four hours to six months, according to the latitude, his annual death and resurrection would certainly be an obvious idea; but no one has suggested that the Adonis worship came from those regions. On the other hand the annual death and revival of vegetation is a conception which readily presents itself to men in every stage of savagery and civilisation; and the vastness of the scale on which this yearly decay and regeneration takes place, together with man’s intimate dependence on it for subsistence, combine to render it the most striking annual phenomenon in nature, at least within the temperate zones. It is no wonder that a phenomenon so important, so striking, and so universal should, by suggesting similar ideas, have given rise to similar rites in many lands. We may, therefore, accept as probable an explanation of the Adonis worship which accords so well with the facts of nature and with the analogy of similar rites in other lands, and which besides is countenanced by a considerable body of opinion amongst the ancients themselves.[2]

The character of Thammuz or Adonis as a cornspirit comes out plainly in an account of his festival given by an Arabic writer of the tenth century. In describing the rites and sacrifices observed at the different seasons of the year by the heathen Syrians of Harran, he says: ‘Thammuz (July). In the middle of this month is the festival of el-Bûgât, that is, of the weeping women, and this is the Tâ-uz festival, which is celebrated in honour of the god Tâ-uz. The women bewail him, because his lord slew him so cruelly, ground his bones in a mill, and then scattered them to the wind. The women (during this festival) eat nothing which has been ground in a mill, but limit their diet to steeped wheat, sweet vetches, dates, raisins, and the like.’[1]Thammuz (of which Tâ-uz is only another form of pronunciation) is here like Burns’s John Barleycorn –

‘They wasted, o’er a scorching flame,

The marrow of his bones;

But a miller us’d him worst of all,

For he crush’d him between two stones.’[2]

But perhaps the best proof that Adonis was a deity of vegetation is furnished by the gardens of Adonis, as they were called. These were baskets or pots filled with earth, in which wheat, barley, lettuces, fennel, and various kinds of flowers were sown and tended for eight days, chiefly or exclusively by women. Fostered by the sun’s heat, the plants shot up rapidly, but having no root withered as rapidly away, and at the end of eight days were carried out with the images of the dead Adonis, and flung with them into the sea or into springs.[1] At Athens these ceremonies were observed at midsummer. For we know that the fleet which Athens fitted out against Syracuse, and by the destruction of which her power was permanently crippled, sailed at midsummer, and by an ominous coincidence the sombre rites of Adonis were being celebrated at the very time. As the troops marched down to the harbour to embark, the streets through which they passed were lined with coffins and corpse-like effigies, and the air was rent with the noise of women wailing for the dead Adonis. The circumstance cast a gloom over the sailing of the most splendid armament that Athens ever sent to sea.[2]

These gardens of Adonis are most naturally interpreted as representatives of Adonis or manifestations of his power; they represented him, true to his original nature, in vegetable form, while the images of him, with which they were carried out and cast into the water, represented him in his later anthropomorphic form. All these Adonis ceremonies, if I am right, were originally intended as charms to promote the growth and revival of vegetation; and the principle by which they were supposed to produce this effect was sympathetic magic. As was explained in the first chapter, primitive people suppose that by representing or mimicking the effect which they desire to produce they actually help to produce it; thus by sprinkling water they make rain, by lighting a fire they make sunshine, and so on. Similarly by mimicking the growth of crops, they hope to insure a good harvest. The rapid growth of the wheat and barley in the gardens of Adonis was intended to make the corn shoot up; and the throwing of the gardens and of the images into the water was a charm to secure a due supply of fertilising rain.[1] The same, I take it, was the object of throwing the effigies of Death and the Carnival into water in the corresponding ceremonies of modern Europe. We have seen that the custom of drenching a leaf-clad person (who undoubtedly personifies vegetation) with water is still resorted to in Europe for the express purpose of producing rain.[2] Similarly the custom of throwing water on the last corn cut at harvest, or on the person who brings it home (a custom observed in Germany and France, and till quite lately in England and Scotland), is in some places practised with the avowed intent to procure rain for the next year’s crops. Thus in Wallachia and amongst the Roumanians of Transylvania, when a girl is bringing home a crown made of the last ears of corn cut at harvest, all who meet her hasten to throw water on her, and two farm-servants are placed at the door for the purpose; for they believe that if this were not done, the crops next year would perish from drought.[3] So amongst the Saxons of Transylvania, the person who wears the wreath made of the last corn cut (sometimes the reaper who cut the last corn also wears the wreath) is drenched with water to the skin; for the wetter he is the better will be next year’s harvest, and the more grain there will be threshed out.[4] At the spring ploughing in Prussia, when the ploughmen and sowers returned in the evening from their work in the fields, the farmer’s wife and the servants used to splash water over them. The ploughmen and sowers retorted by seizing every one, throwing them into the pond, and ducking them under the water. The farmer’s wife might claim exemption on payment of a forfeit; but every one else had to be ducked. By observing this custom they hoped to ensure a due supply of rain for the seed.[1] Also after harvest in Prussia, the person who wore a wreath made of the last corn cut was drenched with water, while a prayer was uttered that ‘as the corn had sprung up and multiplied through the water, so it might spring up and multiply in the barn and granary.’[2] In a Babylonian legend, the goddess Istar (Astarte, Aphrodite) descends to Hades to fetch the water of life with which to restore to life the dead Thammuz, and it appears that the water was thrown over him at a great mourning ceremony, at which men and women stood round the funeral pyre of Thammuz lamenting.[3] This legend, as Mannhardt points out, is probably a mythical explanation of a Babylonian festival resembling the Syrian festival of Adonis. At this festival, which doubtless took place in the month Thammuz (June–July)[4] and therefore about midsummer, the dead Thammuz was probably represented in effigy, water was poured over him, and he came to life again. This Babylonian legend is, therefore, of importance, since it confirms the view that the purpose for which the images and gardens of Adonis were thrown into the water was to effect the resurrection of the god, that is, to secure the revival of vegetation. The connection of Thammuz with vegetation is proved by a fragment of a Babylonian hymn, in which Thammuz is described as dwelling in the midst of a great tree at the centre of the earth.[1]

The opinion that the gardens of Adonis are essentially charms to promote the growth of vegetation, especially of the crops, and that they belong to the same class of customs as those spring and midsummer folk-customs of modern Europe which have been described, does not rest for its evidence merely on the intrinsic probability of the case. Fortunately, we are able to show that gardens of Adonis (if we may use the expression in a general sense) are still planted, first, by a primitive race at their sowing season, and, second, by European peasants at midsummer. Amongst the Oraons and Mundas of Bengal, when the time comes for planting out the rice which has been grown in seed-beds, a party of young people of both sexes go to the forest and cut a young Karma tree, or the branch of one. Bearing it in triumph they return dancing, singing, and beating drums, and plant it in the middle of the village dancing-ground. A sacrifice is offered to the tree; and next morning the youth of both sexes, linked arm-in-arm, dance in a great circle round the Karma tree, which is decked with strips of coloured cloth and sham bracelets and necklets of plaited straw. As a preparation for the festival, the daughters of the head man of the village cultivate blades of barley in a peculiar way. The seed is sown in moist, sandy soil, mixed with turmeric, and the blades sprout and unfold of a pale yellow or primrose colour. On the day of the festival the girls take up these blades and carry them in baskets to the dancing-ground, where, prostrating themselves reverentially, they place some of the plants before the Karma tree. Finally, the Karma tree is taken away and thrown into a stream or tank.[2] The meaning of planting these barley blades and then presenting them to the Karma tree is hardly open to question. We have seen that trees are supposed to exercise a quickening influence upon the growth of crops, and that amongst the very people in question – the Mundas or Mundaris – ‘the grove deities are held responsible for the crops.’[1] Therefore, when at the season for planting out the rice the Mundas bring in a tree and treat it with so much respect, their object can only be to foster thereby the growth of the rice which is about to be planted out; and the custom of causing barley blades to sprout rapidly and then presenting them to the tree must be intended to subserve the same purpose, perhaps by reminding the tree-spirit of his duty towards the crops, and stimulating his activity by this visible example of rapid vegetable growth. The throwing of the Karma tree into the water is to be interpreted as a rain-charm. Whether the barley blades are also thrown into the water is not said; but, if my interpretation of the custom is right, probably they are so. A distinction between this Bengal custom and the Greek rites of Adonis is that in the former the tree-spirit appears in his original form as a tree; whereas in the Adonis worship he appears in anthropomorphic form, represented as a dead man, though his vegetable nature is indicated by the gardens of Adonis, which are, so to say, a secondary manifestation of his original power as a tree-spirit.

In Sardinia the gardens of Adonis are still planted in connection with the great midsummer festival which bears the name of St John. At the end of March or on the 1st of April a young man of the village presents himself to a girl and asks her to be his comare (gossip or sweetheart), offering to be her compare. The invitation is considered as an honour by the girl’s family, and is gladly accepted. At the end of May the girl makes a pot of the bark of the corktree, fills it with earth, and sows a handful of wheat and barley in it. The pot being placed in the sun and often watered, the corn sprouts rapidly and has a good head by Midsummer Eve (St John’s Eve, 23rd June). The pot is then called Erme or Nenneri, On St John’s Day the young man and the girl, dressed in their best, accompanied by a long retinue and preceded by children gambolling and frolicking, move in procession to a church outside the village. Here they break the pot by throwing it against the door of the church. Then they sit down in a ring on the grass and eat eggs and herbs to the music of flutes. Wine is mixed in a cup and passed round, each one drinking as it passes. Then they join hands and sing ‘Sweethearts of St John’ (Compare e comare di San Giovanni) over and over again, the flutes playing the while. When they tire of singing, they stand up and dance gaily in a ring till evening. This is the general Sardinian custom. As practised at Ozieri it has some special features. In May the pots are made of corkbark and planted with corn, as already described. Then on the Eve of St John the window-sills are draped with rich cloths, on which the pots are placed, adorned with crimson and blue silk and ribbons of various colours. On each of the pots they used formerly to place a statuette or cloth doll dressed as a woman, or a Priapus-like figure made of paste; but this custom, rigorously forbidden by the Church, has fallen into disuse. The village swains go about in a troop to look at the pots and their decorations and to wait for the girls, who assemble on the public square to celebrate the festival. Here a great bonfire is kindled, round which they dance and make merry. Those who wish to be ‘Sweethearts of St John’ act as follows. The young man stands on one side of the bonfire and the girl on the other, and they, in a manner, join hands by each grasping one end of a long stick, which they pass three times backwards and forwards across the fire, thus thrusting their hands thrice rapidly into the flames. This seals their relationship to each other. Dancing and music go on till late at night.[1] The correspondence of these Sardinian pots of grain to the gardens of Adonis seems complete, and the images formerly placed in them answer to the images of Adonis which accompanied his gardens.

This Sardinian custom is one of those midsummer customs, once celebrated in many parts of Europe, a chief feature of which is the great bonfire round which people dance and over which they leap. Examples of these customs have already been cited from Sweden and Bohemia.[1] These examples sufficiently prove the connection of the midsummer bonfire with vegetation; for both in Sweden and Bohemia an essential part of the festival is the raising of a May-pole or Midsummer-tree, which in Bohemia is burned in the bonfire. Again, in the Russian midsummer ceremony cited above,[2] the straw figure of Kupalo, the representative of vegetation, is placed beside a May-pole or Midsummer-tree and then carried to and fro across a bonfire. Kupalo is here represented in duplicate, in tree-form by the Midsummer-tree, and in anthropomorphic form by the straw effigy, just as Adonis was represented both by an image and a garden of Adonis; and the duplicate representatives of Kupalo, like those of Adonis, are finally cast into water. In the Sardinian custom the Gossips or Sweethearts of St John probably correspond to the Lord and Lady or King and Queen of May. In the province of Blekinge (Sweden), part of the midsummer festival is the election of a Midsummer Bride, who chooses her bridegroom; a collection is made for the pair, who for the time being are looked upon as man and wife.[3] Such Midsummer pairs are probably, like the May pairs, representatives of the spirit of vegetation in its reproductive capacity; they represent in flesh and blood what the images of Siva and Pârvati in the Indian ceremony, and the images of Adonis and Aphrodite in the Alexandrian ceremony, represented in effigy. The reason why ceremonies whose aim is to foster the growth of vegetation should thus be associated with bonfires; why in particular the representative of vegetation should be burned in tree-form or passed across the fire in effigy or in the form of a living couple, will be explained later on. Here it is enough to have proved the fact of such association and therefore to have obviated the objection which might have been raised to my interpretation of the Sardinian custom, on the ground that the bonfires have nothing to do with vegetation. One more piece of evidence may here be given to prove the contrary. In some parts of Germany young men and girls leap over midsummer bonfires for the express purpose of making the hemp or flax grow tall.[1] We may, therefore, assume that in the Sardinian custom the blades of wheat and barley which are forced on in pots for the midsummer festival, and which correspond so closely to the gardens of Adonis, form one of those widely-spread midsummer ceremonies, the original object of which was to promote the growth of vegetation, and especially of the crops. But as, by an easy extension of ideas, the spirit of vegetation was believed to exercise a beneficent influence over human as well as animal life, the gardens of Adonis would be supposed, like the May-trees or May- boughs, to bring good luck to the family or to the individual who planted them; and even after the idea had been abandoned that they operated actively to bring good luck, omens might still be drawn from them as to the good or bad fortune of families or individuals. It is thus that magic dwindles into divination. Accordingly we find modes of divination practised at midsummer which resemble more or less closely the gardens of Adonis. Thus an anonymous Italian writer of the sixteenth century has recorded that it was customary to sow barley and wheat a few days before the festival of St John (Midsummer Day) and also before that of St Vitus; and it was believed that the person for whom they were sown would be fortunate and get a good husband or a good wife, if the grain sprouted well; but if they sprouted ill, he or she would be unlucky.[2] In various parts of Italy and all over Sicily it is still customary to put plants in water or in earth on the Eve of St John, and from the manner in which they are found to be blooming or fading on St John’s Day omens are drawn, especially as to fortune in love. Amongst the plants used for this purpose are Ciuri di S, Giuvanni (St John’s wort?) and nettles.[1] In Prussia two hundred years ago the farmers used to send out their servants, especially their maids, to gather St John’s wort on Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Day (St John’s Day). When they had fetched it, the farmer took as many plants as there were persons and stuck them in the wall or between the beams; and it was thought that the person whose plant did not bloom would soon fall sick or die. The rest of the plants were tied in a bundle, fastened to the end of a pole, and set up at the gate or wherever the corn would be brought in at the next harvest. This bundle was called Kupole; the ceremony was known as Kupole’s festival; and at it the farmer prayed for a good crop of hay, etc.[2] This Prussian custom is particularly notable, inasmuch as it strongly confirms the opinion expressed above that Kupalo (doubtless identical with Kupole) was originally a deity of vegetation.[3] For here Kupalo is represented by a bundle of plants specially associated with midsummer in folk-custom; and her influence over vegetation is plainly signified by placing her plant-formed representative over the place where the harvest is brought in, as well as by the prayers for a good crop which are uttered on the occasion. A fresh argument is thus supplied in support of the conclusion that the Death, whose analogy to Kupalo, Yarilo, etc., has been shown, was originally a personification of vegetation, more especially of vegetation as dying or dead in winter. Further, my interpretation of the gardens of Adonis is confirmed by finding that in this Prussian custom the very same kind of plants are used to form the gardens of Adonis (as we may call them) and the image of the deity. Nothing could set in a stronger light the truth of the view that the gardens of Adonis are merely another manifestation of the god himself.

The last example of the gardens of Adonis which I shall cite is the following. At the approach of Easter, Sicilian women sow wheat, lentils, and canary-seed in plates, which are kept in the dark and watered every two days. The plants soon shoot up; the stalks are tied together with red ribbons, and the plates containing them are placed on the sepulchres which, with effigies of the dead Christ, are made up in Roman Catholic and Greek churches on Good Friday,[1] just as the gardens of Adonis were placed on the grave of the dead Adonis.[2] The whole custom – sepulchres as well as plates of sprouting grain – is probably nothing but a continuation, under a different name, of the Adonis worship.

Attis

The next of those gods, whose supposed death and resurrection struck such deep roots into the religious faith and ritual of Western Asia, is Attis. He was to Phrygia what Adonis was to Syria. like Adonis, he appears to have been a god of vegetation, and his death and resurrection were annually mourned and rejoiced over at a festival in spring. The legends and rites of the two gods were so much alike that the ancients themselves sometimes identified them.[3] Attis was said to have been a fair youth who was beloved by the great Phrygian goddess Cybele. Two different accounts of his death were current. According to the one, he was killed by a boar, like Adonis. According to the other, he mutilated himself under a pine-tree, and died from the effusion of blood. The latter is said to have been the local story told by the people of Pessinus, a great centre of Cybele worship, and the whole legend of which it forms a part is stamped with a character of rudeness and savagery that speaks strongly for its antiquity.[1] But the genuineness of the other story seems also vouched for by the fact that his worshippers, especially the people of Pessinus, abstained from eating swine.[2] After his death Attis is said to have been changed into a pine-tree.[3] The ceremonies observed at his festival are not very fully known, but their general order appears to have been as follows.[4] At the spring equinox (22nd March) a pine-tree was cut in the woods and brought into the sanctuary of Cybele, where it was treated as a divinity. It was adorned with woollen bands and wreaths of violets, for violets were said to have sprung from the blood of Attis, as anemones from the blood of Adonis; and the effigy of a young man was attached to the middle of the tree.[5] On the second day (23rd March) the chief ceremony seems to have been a blowing of trumpets.[1] The third day (24th March) was known as the Day of Blood: the high priest drew blood from his arms and presented it as an offering.[2] It was perhaps on this day or night that the mourning for Attis took place over an effigy, which was afterwards solemnly buried.[3] The fourth day (25th March) was the Festival of Joy (Hilaria), at which the resurrection of Attis was probably celebrated – at least the celebration of his resurrection seems to have followed closely upon that of his death.[4] The Roman festival closed on 27th March with a procession to the brook Almo, in which the bullock-cart of the goddess, her image, and other sacred objects were bathed. But this bath of the goddess is known to have also formed part of her festival in her Asiatic home. On returning from the water the cart and oxen were strewn with fresh spring flowers.[5]

The original character of Attis as a tree-spirit is brought out plainly by the part which the pine-tree plays in his legend and ritual. The story that he was a human being transformed into a pine-tree is only one of those transparent attempts at rationalising the old beliefs which meet us so frequently in mythology. His tree origin is further attested by the story that he was born of a virgin, who conceived by putting in her bosom a ripe almond or pomegranate’.[1] The bringing in of the pine-tree from the wood, decked with violets and woollen bands, corresponds to bringing in the May-tree or Summer-tree in modern folk-custom; and the effigy which was attached to the pine-tree was only a duplicate representative of the tree-spirit or Attis. At what point of the ceremonies the violets and the effigy were attached to the tree is not said, but we should assume this to be done after the mimic death and burial of Attis. The fastening of his effigy to the tree would then be a representation of his coming to life again in tree-form, just as the placing of the shirt of the effigy of Death upon a tree represents the revival of the spirit of vegetation in a new form.[2] After being attached to the tree, the effigy was kept for a year and then burned.[3] We have seen that this was apparently sometimes done with the May-pole;[4] and we shall see presently that the effigy of the corn-spirit, made at harvest, is often preserved till it is replaced by a new effigy at next year’s harvest. The original intention of thus preserving the effigy for a year and then replacing it by a new one was doubtless to maintain the spirit of vegetation in fresh and vigorous life. The bathing of the image of Cybele was probably a rain-charm, like the throwing of the effigies of Death and of Adonis into the water. Like tree-spirits in general, Attis appears to have been conceived as exercising power over the growth of corn, or even to have been identified with the corn. One of his epithers was ‘very fruitful’;[1] he was addressed as the ‘reaped green (or yellow) ear of corn,’ and the story of his sufferings, death, and resurrection was interpreted as the ripe grain wounded by the reaper, buried in the granary, and coming to life again when sown in the ground.[2] His worshippers abstained from eating seeds and the roots of vegetables,[3] just as at the Adonis ceremonies women abstained from eating corn ground in a mill Such acts would probably have been esteemed a sacrilegious partaking of the life or of the bruised and broken body of the god.

From inscriptions it appears that both at Pessinus and Rome the high priest of Cybele was regularly called Attis.[4] It is therefore a reasonable conjecture that the high priest played the part of the legendary Attis at the annual festival.[5] We have seen that on the Day of Blood he drew blood from his arms, and this may have been an imitation of the self-inflicted death of Attis under the pine-tree. It is not inconsistent with this supposition that Attis was also re-presented at these ceremonise by an effigy; for we have already had cases in which the divine being is first repre-sented by a living person and afterwards by an effigy, which is then burned or otherwise destroted.[6] Perhaps we may go a step farther and conjecture that this mimic killing of the priest (if it was such), accompanied by a real effusion of his blood, was in Phrygia, as it has been elsewhere, a substitute for a human sacrifice which in earlier times was actually offered. Professor W. M. Ramsay, whose authority on all questions relating to Phrygia no one will dispute, is of opinion that at these Phrygian ceremonies ‘the representative of the god was probably slain each year by a cruel death, just as the god himself died.’[1] We know from Strabo[2] that the priests of Pessinus were at one time potentates as well as priests; they may, therefore, have belonged to that class of divine kings or popes whose duty it was to die each year for their people and the world. As a god of vegetation, annually slain, the representative of Attis would be parallel to the Wild Man, the King, etc., of north European folk-custom, and to the Italian priest of Nemi.

Osiris

There seem to be some grounds for believing that Osiris, the great god of ancient Egypt, was one of those personifications of vegetation, whose annual death and resurrection have been celebrated in so many lands. But as the chief of the gods he appears to have absorbed the attributes of other deities, so that his character and rites present a complex of heterogeneous elements which, with the scanty evidence at our disposal, it is hardly possible to sort out. It may be worth while, however, to put together some of the facts which lend support to the view that Osiris or at least one of the deities out of whom he was compounded was a god of vegetation, analogous to Adonis and Attis.

The outline of his myth is as follows.[3] Osiris was the son of the earth-god Qeb (or Seb, as the name is sometimes transliterated).[1] Reigning as a king on earth, he reclaimed the Egyptians from savagery, gave them laws, and taught them to worship the gods. Before his time the Egyptians had been cannibals. But Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris, discovered wheat and barley growing wild, and Osiris introduced the cultivation of these grains amongst his people, who forthwith abandoned cannibalism and took kindly to a corn diet.[2] Afterwards Osiris travelled over the world diffusing the blessings of civilisation wherever he went. But on his return his brother Set (whom the Greeks called Typhon), with seventy-two others, plotted against him, and having inveigled him into a beautifully decorated coffer, they nailed it down on him, soldered it fast with molten lead, and flung it into the Nile. It floated down to the sea. This happened on the 17th day of the month Athyr. Isis put on mourning, and wandered disconsolately up and down seeking the body, till at last she found it at Byblus, on the Syrian coast, whither it had drifted with the waves. An erica tree had shot up and enfolded the coffer within its stem, and the King of Byblus, admiring the fine growth of the tree, had caused it to be cut down and converted into a pillar of his palace. From his Isis obtained leave to open the trunk of the tree, and having taken out the coffer, she carried it away with her. But she left it to visit her son Horus at Butus in the Delta, and Typhon found the coffer as he was hunting a boar by the light of a full moon.[3] He recognised the body of Osiris, rent it into fourteen pieces, and scattered them abroad. Isis sailed up and down the marshes in a papyrus boat seeking the fragments, and as she found each she buried it. Hence many graves of Osiris were shown in Egypt. Others said that Isis left an effigy of Osiris in every city, pretending it was his body, in order that Osiris might be worshipped in many places, and to prevent Typhon from discovering the real corpse. Afterwards her son Horus fought against Typhon, conquered him, and bound him fast. But Isis, to whom he had been delivered, loosed his bonds and let him go. This angered Horus, and he pulled the crown from his mother’s head; but Hermes replaced it with a helmet made in the shape of a cow’s head. Typhon was subsequently defeated in two other battles. The rest of the myth included the dismemberment of Horus and the beheading of Isis.

So much for the myth of Osiris. Of the annual rites with which his death and burial were celebrated we unfortunately know very little. The mourning lasted five days,[1] from the 8th to the 12th of the month Athyr.[2] The ceremonies began with the ‘earth-ploughing,’ that is, with the opening of the field labours, when the waters of the Nile are sinking. The other rites included the search for the mangled body of Osiris, the rejoicings at its discovery, and its solemn burial. The burial took place on the 11th of November, and was accompanied by the recitation of lamentations from the liturgical books. These lamentations, of which several copies have been discovered in modern times, were put in the mouth of Isis and Nephthys, sisters of Osiris. ‘In form and substance,’ says Brugsch, ‘they vividly recall the dirges chanted at the Adonis’ rites over the dead god.’[3] Next day was the joyous festival of Sokari, that being the name under which the hawk headed Osiris of Memphis was invoked. The solemn processions of priests which on this day wound round the temples with all the pomp of banners, images, and sacred emblems, were amongst the most stately pageants that ancient Egypt could show. The whole festival ended on the 16th of November with a special rite called the erection of the Talu, Tat, or Ded pillar.[1] This pillar appears from the monuments to have been a column with cross bars at the top, like the yards of a mast, or more exactly like the superposed capitals of a pillar.[2] On a Theban tomb the king himself, assisted by his relations and a priest, is represented hauling at the ropes by which the pillar is being raised. The pillar was interpreted, at least in later Egyptian theology, as the backbone of Osiris. It might very well be a conventional representation of a tree stripped of its leaves; and if Osiris was a tree-spirit, the bare trunk and branches of a tree might naturally be described as his backbone. The erection of the column would then be, as Erman interprets it, a representation of the resurrection of Osiris, which, as we learn from Plutarch, appears to have been celebrated at his mysteries.[3] Perhaps the ceremony which Plutarch describes as taking place on the third day of the festival (the 19th day of the month Athyr) may also have referred to the resurrection. He says that on that day the priests carried the sacred ark down to the sea. Within the ark was a golden casket, into which drinking-water was poured. A shout then went up that Osiris was found. Then some mould was mixed with water, and out of the paste thus formed a crescent-shaped image was fashioned, which was then dressed in robes and adorned.[4]

The general similarity of the myth and ritual of Osiris to those of Adonis and Attis is obvious. In all three cases we see a god whose untimely and violent death is mourned by a loving goddess and annually celebrated by their worshippers. The character of Osiris as a deity of vegetation is brought out by the legend that he was the first to teach men the use of corn, and by the fact that his annual festival began with ploughing the earth. He is said also to have introduced the cultivation of the vine.[1] In one of the chambers dedicated to Osiris in the great temple of Isis at Philae the dead body of Osiris is represented with stalks of corn springing from it, and a priest is watering the stalks from a pitcher which he holds in his hand. The accompanying inscription sets forth that ‘This is the form of him whom one may not name, Osiris of the mysteries, who springs from the returning waters.’[2] It would seem impossible to devise a more graphic way of representing Osiris as a personification of the corn; while the inscription proves that this personification was the kernel of the mysteries of the god, the innermost secret that was only revealed to the initiated. In estimating the mythical character of Osiris very great weight must be given to this monument. The legend that his mangled remains were scattered up and down the land maybe a mythical way of expressing either the sowing or the winnowing of the grain. The latter interpretation is supported by the story that Isis placed the severed limbs of Osiris on a corn-sieve.[3] Or the legend may be a reminiscence of the custom of slaying a human victim (probably considered as a representative of the corn-spirit) and distributing his flesh or scattering his ashes over the fields to fertilise them. We have already seen that in modern Europe the figure of ‘Death’ is sometimes torn in pieces, and that the fragments are then buried in the fields to make the crops grow well.[4] Later on we shall meet with examples of human victims being treated in the same way. With regard to the ancient Egyptians, we have it on the authority of Manetho that they used to burn red-haired men and scatter their ashes with winnowing fans.[1] That this custom was not, as might perhaps have been supposed, a mere way of wreaking their spite on foreigners, amongst whom rather than amongst the native Egyptians red-haired people would generally be found, appears from the fact that the oxen which were sacrificed had also to be red; a single black or white hair found on a beast would have disqualified it for the sacrifice.[2] The red hair of the human victims was thus probably essential; the fact that they were generally foreigners was only accidental. If as I conjecture, these human sacrifices were intended to promote the growth of the crops – and the winnowing of their ashes seems to support this view – red-haired victims were perhaps selected as best fitted to represent the spirit of the golden grain. For when a god is represented by a living person, it is natural that the human representative should be thosen on the ground of his supposed resemblance to the god. Hence the ancient Mexicans, conceiving the maize as a personal being who went through the whole course of life between seed-time and harvest, sacrificed newborn babes when the maize was sown, older children when it had sprouted, and so on till it was fully ripe, when they sacrificed old men.[3] A name for Osiris was the ‘crop’ or ‘harvest’;[4] and the ancients sometimes explained him as a personification of the corn.[5]

But Osiris was not only a corn-spirit; he was also a tree-spirit, and this was probably his original character; for, as we have already observed, the corn-spirit seems to be only an extension of the older tree-spirit. His character as a tree-spirit was represented very graphically in a ceremony described by Firmicus Maternus.[1] A pine-tree was cut down, the centre was hollowed out, and with the wood thus excavated an image of Osiris was made, which was then ‘buried’ in the hollow of the tree. Here, again, it is hard to imagine how the conception of a tree as tenanted by a personal being could be more plainly expressed. The image of Osiris thus made was kept for a year and then burned, exactly as was done with the image of Attis which was attached to the pine-tree. The ceremony of cutting the tree, as described by Firmicus Maternus, appears to be alluded to by Plutarch.[2] It was probably the ritual counterpart of the mythical discovery of the body of Osiris enclosed in the erica tree. We may conjecture that the erection of the Tatu pillar at the close of the annual festival of Osiris[3] was identical with the ceremony described by Firmicus; it is to be noted that in the myth the erica tree formed a pillar in the King’s house. Like the similar custom of cutting a pine-tree and fastening an image to it in the rites of Attis, the ceremony perhaps belonged to that class of customs of which the bringing in the May-pole is among the most familiar. As to the pine-tree in particular, at Denderah the tree of Osiris is a conifer, and the coffer containing the body of Osiris is here represented as enclosed within the tree.[4] A pine-cone is often represented on the monuments as offered to Osiris, and a MS of the Louvre speaks of the cedar as sprung from Osiris.[5] The sycamore and the tamarisk are also his trees. In inscriptions he is spoken of as residing in them;[1] and his mother Nut is frequently represented in a sycamore.[2] In a sepulchre at How (Diospolis Parva) a tamarisk is represented overshadowing the coffer of Osiris; and in the series of sculptures which represent the mystic history of Osiris in the great temple of Isis at Philae, a tamarisk is depicted with two men pouring water on it. The inscription on this last monument leaves no doubt, says Brugsch, that the verdure of the earth is believed to be connected with the verdure of the tree, and that the sculpture refers to the grave of Osiris at Philae, of which Plutarch says that it was overshadowed by a methide plant, taller than any olive-tree. This sculpture, it may be observed, occurs in the same chamber in which Osiris is represented as a corpse with ears of corn sprouting from him.[3] In inscriptions Osiris is referred to as ‘the one in the tree,’ ‘the solitary one in the acacia,’ etc.[4] On the monuments he sometimes appears as a mummy covered with a tree or with plants.[5] It accords with the character of Osiris as a tree-spirit that his worshippers were forbidden to injure fruit-trees, and with his character as a god of vegetation in general that they were not allowed to stop up wells of water, which are so important for purposes of irrigation in hot southern lands.[6]

The original meaning of the goddess Isis is still more difficult to determine than that of her brother and husband Osiris. Her attributes and epithets were so numerous that in the hieroglyphics she is called ‘the many-named,’ ‘the thousand-named,’ and in Greek inscriptions ‘the myriad- named.’[1] Tiele confesses candidly that ‘it is now impossible to tell precisely to what natural phenomena the character of Isis at first referred.’[2] Mr Renouf states that Isis was the Dawn,[3] but without assigning any reason whatever for the identification. There are at least some grounds for seeing in her a goddess of corn. According to Diodorus, whose authority appears to have been the Egyptian historian Manetho, the discovery of wheat and barley was attributed to Isis, and at her festivals stalks of these grains were carried in procession to commemorate the boon she had conferred on men. Further, at harvest-time, when the Egyptian reapers had cut the first stalks, they laid them down and beat their breasts, lamenting and calling upon Isis.[4] Amongst the epithets by which she is designated on the inscriptions are ‘creatress of the green crop,’ ‘the green one, whose greenness is like the greenness of the earth,’ and ‘mistress of bread.’[5] According to Brugsch she is ‘not only the creatress of the fresh verdure of vegetation which covers the earth, but is actually the green corn-field itself, which is personified as a goddess.’[6] This is confirmed by her epithet Sochit or Sochet, meaning ‘a corn-field,’ a sense which the word still retains in Coptic.[7] It is in this character of a corn- goddess that the Greeks conceived Isis, for they identified her with Demeter.[1] In a Greek epigram she is described as ‘she who has given birth to the fruits of the earth,’ and ‘the mother of the ears of corn,’[2] and in a hymn composed in her honour she speaks of herself as ‘queen of the wheat- field,’ and is described as ‘charged with the care of the fruitful furrow’s wheat-rich path.’[3]

Osiris has been sometimes interpreted as the sun-god; and this view has been held by so many distinguished writers in modern times that a few words of reply seem called for. If we inquire on what evidence Osiris has been identified with the sun or the sun-god, it will be found on examination that the evidence is minute in quantity and dubious, where it is not absolutely worthless, in quality. The diligent Jablonski, the first modern scholar to collect and examine the testimony of classical writers on Egyptian religion, says that it can be shown in many ways that Osiris is the sun, and that he could produce a cloud of witnesses to prove it, but that it is needless to do so, since no learned man is ignorant of the fact.[4] Of the writers whom he condescends to quote, the only two who expressly identify Osiris with the sun are Diodorus and Macrobius. The passage in Diodorus runs thus:[5] ‘It is said that the aboriginal inhabitants of Egypt, looking up to the sky, and smitten with awe and wonder at the nature of the universe, supposed that there were two gods, eternal and primeval, the sun and the moon, of whom they named the sun Osiris and the moon Isis.’ Even if Diodorus’s authority for this statement is Manetho, as there is some ground for believing,[6] little or no weight can be attached to it. For it is plainly a philosophical, and therefore a late, explanation of the first beginnings of Egyptian religion, reminding us of Kant’s familiar saying about the starry heavens and the moral law rather than of the rude traditions of a primitive people. Jablonski’s second authority, Macrobius, is no better but rather worse. For Macrobius was the father of that large family of mythologists who resolve all or most gods into the sun. According to him Mercury was the sun, Mars was the sun, Janus was the sun, Saturn was the sun, so was Jupiter, also Nemesis, likewise Pan, etc.[1] It was, therefore, nearly a matter of course that he should identify Osiris with the sun.[2] But apart from the general principle, so frankly enunciated by Professor Maspero, mat all the gods are the sun (‘Comme tons les dieux, Osiris est le soleil’),[3] Macrobius has not much cause to show for identifying Osiris in particular with the sun. He argues that Osiris must be the sun because an eye was one of his symbols. The premise is correct,[4] but what exactly it has to do with the conclusion is not clear. The opinion that Osiris was the sun is also mentioned, but not accepted, by Plutarch,[5] and it is referred to by Firmicus Maternus.[6]

Amongst modern Egyptologists, Lepsius, in identifying Osiris with the sun, appears to rely mainly on the passage of Diodorus already quoted. But the monuments, he adds, also show ‘that down to a late time Osiris was sometimes conceived as Ra. In this quality he is named Osiris-Ra even in the “Book of the Dead”, and Isis is often called “the royal consort of Ra.”’[7] That Ra was both the physical sun and the sun-god is of course undisputed; but with every deference for the authority of so great a scholar as Lepsius, it may be doubted whether such identification can be taken as evidence of the original character of Osiris. For the religion of ancient Egypt[1] may be described as a confederacy of local cults which, while maintaining against each other a certain measure of jealous and even hostile independence, were yet constantly subjected to the fusing and amalgamating action of political centralisation and philosophical reflection. The history of the religion appears to have largely consisted of a struggle between these opposite forces or tendencies. On the one side there was the conservative tendency to preserve the local cults with all their distinctive features, fresh, sharp, and crisp, as they had been handed down from an immemorial past. On the other side there was the progressive tendency, favoured by the gradual fusion of the people under a powerful central government, first to dull the edge of these provincial distinctions, and finally to break them down completely and merge them in a single national religion. The conservative party probably mustered in its ranks the great bulk of the people, their prejudices and affections being warmly enlisted in favour of the local deity, with whose temple and rites they had been familiar from childhood; and the popular aversion to change, based on the endearing effect of old association, must have been strongly reinforced by the less disinterested opposition of the local clergy, whose material interests would necessarily suffer with any decay of their shrines. On the other hand the kings, whose power and glory rose with the political and ecclesiastical consolidation of the nation, were the natural champions of religious unity; and their efforts would be seconded by the cultured and reflecting minority, who could hardly fail to be shocked by the many barbarous and revolting elements in the local rites. As usual in such cases, the process of religious unification appears to have been largely effected by discovering points of similarity, real or imaginary, between various local gods, which were thereupon declared to be only different names or manifestations of the same god.

Of the deities who thus acted as centres of attraction, absorbing in themselves a multitude of minor divinities, by far the most important was the sun-god Ra. There appear to have been few gods in Egypt who were not at one time or other identified with him. Ammon of Thebes, Horus of the East, Horus of Edfu, Chnum of Elephantine, Atum of Heliopolis, all were regarded as one god, the sun. Even the water-god Sobk, in spite of his crocodile shape, did not escape the same fate, Indeed one king, Amenhôtep IV, undertook to sweep away all the old gods at a stroke and replace them by a single god, the ‘great living disc of the sun.’[1] In the hymns composed in his honour, this deity is referred to as ‘the living disc of the sun, besides whom there is none other.’ He is said to have made ‘the far heaven’ and ‘men, beasts, and birds; he strengtheneth the eyes with his beams, and when he showeth himself, all flowers live and grow, the meadows flourish at his upgoing and are drunken at his sight, all cattle skip on their feet, and the birds that are in the marsh flutter for joy.’ It is he ‘who bringeth the years, createth the months, maketh the days, calculateth the hours, the lord of time, by whom men reckon.’ In his zeal for the unity of god, the king commanded to erase the names of all other gods from the monuments, and to destroy their images. His rage was particularly directed against the god Ammon, whose name and likeness were effaced wherever they were found; even the sanctity of the tomb was violated in order to destroy the memorials of the hated god. In some of the halls of the great temples at Carnac, Luxor, and other places, all the names of the gods, with a few chance exceptions, were scratched out. In no inscription cut in this king’s reign was any god mentioned save the sun. He even changed his own name, Amenhôtep, because it was compounded of Ammon, and took instead the name of Chuen-’eten, ‘gleam of the sun’s disc.’ His death was followed by a violent reaction. The old gods were reinstated in their rank and privileges; their names and images were restored; and new temples were built. But all the shrines and palaces reared by the late king were thrown down; even the sculptures that referred to him and to his god in rock-tombs and on the sides of hills were erased or filled up with stucco; his name appears on no later monument, and was carefully omitted from all official lists.

This attempt of King Amenhôtep IV is only an extreme example of a tendency which appears to have been at work on the religion of Egypt as far back as we can trace it. Therefore, to come back to our point, in attempting to discover the original character of any Egyptian god, no weight can be given to the identification of him with other gods, least of all with the sun-god Ra. Far from helping to follow up the trail, these identifications only cross and confuse it. The best evidence for the original character of the Egyptian gods is to be found in their ritual and myths, so far as these are known (which unfortunately is little enough), and in the figured representations of them on the monuments. It is on evidence drawn from these sources that I rely mainly for the interpretation of Osiris as a deity of vegetation.

Amongst a younger generation of scholars, Tiele is of opinion that Osiris is the sun, because ‘in the hymns, his accession to the throne of his father is compared to the rising of the sun, and it is even said of him in so many words: “He glitters on the horizon, he sends out rays of light from his double feather and inundates the world with it, as the sun from out the highest heaven.”’[1] By the same token Marie Antoinette must have been a goddess of the morning star, because Burke saw her at Versailles ‘just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in – glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy.’ If such comparisons prove anything, they prove that Osiris was not the sun. There are always two terms to a comparison; a thing cannot be compared to itself. But Tiele also appeals to the monuments. What is his evidence? Osiris is sometimes represented by a figure surmounted by ‘the so-called Tat pillar, entirely made up of a kind of superimposed capitals, one of which has a rude face scratched upon it.’ Tiele is of opinion that this rude face is ‘intended, no doubt, to represent the shining sun.’[1] If every ‘rude face scratched’ is to be taken as a symbol of the shining sun, sun-worship will be discovered in some unexpected places. But, on the whole, Tiele, like Jablonski, prudently keeps to the high ground of vague generalities, and the result of his occasional descents to the level of facts is not such as to encourage him to prolong his stay. ‘Were we to come down to details,’ he says, ‘and to attend to slight variations, we should be lost in an ocean of symbolism and mysticism.’[2] This is like De Quincey’s attitude towards murder. ‘General principles I will suggest. But as to any particular case, once for all I will have nothing to do with it.’ There is no having a man who takes such lofty ground.

Mr Le Page Renouf also considers that Osiris is the sun,[3] and his position is still stronger than Tiele’s. For whereas Tiele produces bad arguments for his view, Mr Renouf produces none at all, and therefore cannot possibly be confuted.

The ground upon which some recent writers seem chiefly to rely for the identification of Osiris with the sun is that the story of his death fits better with the solar phenomena than with any other in nature. It may readily be admitted that the daily appearance and disappearance of the sun might very naturally be expressed by a myth of his death and resurrection; and writers who regard Osiris as the sun are careful to emphasise the fact that it is the diurnal, and not the annual, course of the sun to which they understand the myth to apply. Mr Renouf expressly admits that the Egyptian sun cannot with any show of reason be described as dead in winter.[4] But if his daily death was the theme of the legend, why was it celebrated by an annual ceremony? This fact alone seems fatal to the interpretation of the myth as descriptive of sunset and sunrise. Again, though the sun may be said to die daily, in what sense can he be said to be torn in pieces?[1]

In the course of our inquiry, it has, I trust, been made clear that there is another natural phenomenon to which the conception of death and resurrection is as applicable as to sunset and sunrise, and which, as a matter of fact has been so conceived and represented in folk-custom. This phenomenon is the annual growth and decay of vegetation. A strong reason for interpreting the death of Osiris as the decay of vegetation rather than as the sunset is to be found in the general (though not unanimous) voice of antiquity, which classed together the worship and myths of Osiris, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, and Demeter, as religions of essentially the same type.[1] The consensus of ancient opinion on this subject seems too great to be rejected as a mere fancy. So closely did the rites of Osiris resemble those of Adonis at Byblus that some of the people of Byblus themselves maintained that it was Osiris and not Adonis whose death was mourned by them.[2] Such a view could certainly not have been held if the rituals of the two gods had not been so alike as to be almost indistinguishable. Again, Herodotus found the similarity between the rites of Osiris and Dionysus so great, that he thought it impossible the latter could have arisen independently; they must, he thought, have been recently borrowed, with slight alterations, by the Greeks from the Egyptians.[1] Again, Plutarch, a very intelligent student of comparative religion, insists upon the detailed resemblance of the rites of Osiris to those of Dionysus.[2] We cannot reject the evidence of such intelligent and trustworthy witnesses on plain matters of fact which fell under their own cognisance. Their explanations of the worships it is indeed possible to reject, for the meaning of religious cults is often open to question; but resemblances of ritual are matters of observation. Therefore, those who explain Osiris as the sun are driven to the alternative of either dismissing as mistaken the testimony of antiquity to the similarity of the rites of Osiris, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, and Demeter, or of interpreting all these rites as sun-worship. No modern scholar has fairly faced and accepted either side of this alternative. To accept the former would be to affirm that we know the rites of these deities better than the men who practised, or at least who witnessed them. To accept the latter would involve a wrenching, clipping, mangling, and distorting of myth and ritual from which even Macrobius shrank.[3] On the other hand, the view that the essence of all these rites was the mimic death and revival of vegetation, explains them separately and collectively in an easy and natural way, and harmonises with the general testimony borne by antiquity to their substantial similarity. The evidence for thus explaining Adonis, Attis, and Osiris has now been presented to the reader; it remains to do the same for Dionysus and Demeter.

Dionysus

The Greek god Dionysus or Bacchus[1] is best known as the god of the vine, but he was also a god of trees in general. Thus we are told that almost all the Greeks sacrificed to ‘Dionysus of the tree.’[2] In Boeotia one of his titles was ‘Dionysus in the tree.’[3] His image was often merely an upright post, without arms, but draped in a mantle, with a bearded mask to represent the head, and with leafy boughs projecting from the head or body to show the nature of the deity.[4] On a vase his rude effigy is depicted appearing out of a low tree or bush.[5] He was the patron of cultivated trees;[6] prayers were offered to him that he would make the trees grow;[7] and he was especially honoured by husbandmen, chiefly fruit-growers, who set up an image of him, in the shape of a natural tree-stump, in their orchards.[8] He was said to have discovered all tree-fruits, amongst which apples and figs are particularly mentioned;[9] and he was himself spoken of as doing a husbandman’s work.[10] He was referred to as ‘well-fruited,’ ‘he of the green fruit,’ and ‘making the fruit to grow.’[11] One of his titles was ‘teeming’ or ‘bursting’ (as of sap or blossoms);[1] and there was a Flowery Dionysus in Attica and at Patrae in Achaea.[2] Amongst the trees particularly sacred to him, in addition to the vine, was the pine-tree.[3] The Delphic oracle commanded the Corinthians to worship a particular pine-tree ‘equally with the god,’ so they made two images of Dionysus out of it, with red faces and gilt bodies.[4] In art a wand, tipped with a pine-cone, is commonly carried by the god or his worshippers.[5] Again, the ivy and the fig-tree were especially associated with him. In the Attic township of Acharnae there was a Dionysus Ivy;[6] at Lacedaemon there was a Fig Dionysus; and in Naxos, where figs were called meilicha, there was a Dionysus Meilichios, the face of whose image was made of figwood.[7]

Like the other gods of vegetation whom we have been considering, Dionysus was believed to have died a violent death, but to have been brought to life again; and his sufferings, death, and resurrection were enacted in his sacred rites. The Cretan myth, as related by Firmicus, ran thus. He was said to have been the bastard son of Jupiter (Zeus), a Cretan king. Going abroad, Jupiter transferred the throne and sceptre to the child Dionysus, but, knowing that his wife Juno (Hera) cherished a jealous dislike of the child, he entrusted Dionysus to the care of guards upon whose fidelity he believed he could rely. Juno, however, bribed the guards, and amusing the child with toys and a cunningly-wrought looking-glass lured him into an ambush, where her satellites, the Titans, rushed upon him, cut him limb from limb, boiled his body with various herbs and ate it. But his sister Minerva, who had shared in the deed, kept his heart and gave it to Jupiter on his return, revealing to him the whole history of the crime. In his rage, Jupiter put the Titans to death by torture, and, to soothe his grief for the loss of his son, made an image in which he enclosed the child’s heart, and then built a temple in his honour.[1] In this version a Euhemeristic turn has been given to the myth by representing Jupiter and Juno (Zeus and Hera) as a king and queen of Crete. The guards referred to are the mythical Curetes who danced a war-dance round the infant Dionysus as they are said to have done round the infant Zeus.[2] Pomegranates were supposed to have sprung from the blood of Dionysus,[3] as anemones from the blood of Adonis and violets from the blood of Attis. According to some, the severed limbs of Dionysus were pieced together, at the command of Zeus, by Apollo, who buried them on Parnassus.[4] The grave of Dionysus was shown in the Delphic temple beside a golden statue of Apollo.[5] Thus far the resurrection of the slain god is not mentioned, but in other versions of the myth it is variously related. One version, which represented Dionysus as a son of Demeter, averred that his mother pieced together his mangled limbs and made him young again.[6] In others it is simply said that shortly after his burial he rose from the dead and ascended up to heaven;[1] or that Zeus raised him up as he lay mortally wounded;[2] or that Zeus swallowed the heart of Dionysus and then begat him afresh by Semele,[3] who in the common legend figures as mother of Dionysus. Or, again, the heart was pounded up and given in a potion to Semele, who thereby conceived him.[4]

Turning from the myth to the ritual, we find that the Cretans celebrated a biennial[5] festival at which the sufferings and death of Dionysus were represented in every detail.[6] Where the resurrection formed part of the myth, it also was enacted at the rites,[7] and it even appears that a general doctrine of resurrection, or at least of immortality, was inculcated on the worshippers; for Plutarch, writing to console his wife on the death of their infant daughter, comforts her with the thought of the immortality of the soul as taught by tradition and revealed in the mysteries of Dionysus.[8] A different form of the myth of the death and resurrection of Dionysus is that he descended into Hades to bring up his mother Semele from the dead.[1] The local Argive tradition was that he descended through the Alcyonian lake; and his return from the lower world, in other words his resurrection, was annually celebrated on the spot by the Argives, who summoned him from the water by trumpet blasts, while they threw a lamb into the lake as an offering to the warder of the dead.[2] Whether this was a spring festival does not appear, but the Lydians certainly celebrated the advent of Dionysus in spring; the god was supposed to bring the season with him.[3] Deities of vegetation, who are supposed to pass a certain portion of each year underground, naturally come to be regarded as gods of the lower world or of the dead. Both Dionysus and Osiris were so conceived.[4]

A feature in the mythical character of Dionysus, which at first sight appears inconsistent with his nature as a deity of vegetation, is that he was often conceived and represented in animal shape, especially in the form, or at least with the horns, of a bull. Thus he is spoken of as ‘cow-born,’ ‘bull,’ ‘bull-shaped,’ ‘bull-faced,’ ‘bull-browed,’ ‘bull-horned,’ ‘horn-bearing,’ ‘two-horned,’ ‘horned.’[5] He was believed to appear, at least occasionally, as a bull.[6] His images were often, as at Cyzicus, made in bull shape,[7] or with bull horns;[8] and he was painted with horns.[9] Types of the horned Dionysus are found amongst the surviving monuments of antiquity.[1] On one statuette he appears clad in a bull’s hide, the head, horns, and hoofs hanging down behind.[2] At his festivals Dionysus was believed to appear in bull form. The women of Elis hailed him as a bull, and prayed him to come with his bull’s-foot. They sang, ‘Come here, Dionysus, to thy holy temple by the sea; come with the Graces to thy temple, rushing with thy bull’s-foot, Ο goodly bull, Ο goodly bull!’[3] According to the myth, it was in the shape of a bull that he was torn to pieces by the Titans;[4] and the Cretans, in representing the sufferings and death of Dionysus, tore a live bull to pieces with their teeth.[5] Indeed, the rending and devouring of live bulls and calves appear to have been a regular feature of the Diony- siac rites.[6] The practice of representing the god in bull form or with some of the features of a bull, the belief that he appeared in bull form to his worshippers at the sacred rites, and the legend that it was in bull form that he had been torn in pieces – all these facts taken together leave no room to doubt that in rending and devouring a live bull at his festival his worshippers believed that they were killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood.

Another animal whose form Dionysus assumed was the goat. One of his names was ‘Kid.’[7] To save him from the wrath of Hera, his father Zeus changed him into a kid;[8] and when the gods fled to Egypt to escape the fury of Typhon, Dionysus was turned into a goat.[1] Hence when his worshippers rent in pieces a live goat and devoured it raw,[2] they must have believed that they were eating the body and blood of the god.

This custom of killing a god in animal form, which we shall examine more fully presently, belongs to a very early stage in human culture, and is apt in later times to be misunderstood. The advance of thought tends to strip the old animal and plant gods of their bestial and vegetable husk, and to leave their human attributes (which are always the kernel of the conception) as the final and sole residuum. In other words, animal and plant gods tend to become purely anthropomorphic. When they have become wholly or nearly so, the animals and plants which were at first the deities themselves, still retain a vague and ill-understood connection with the anthropomorphic gods which have been developed out of them. The origin of the relationship between the deity and the animal or plant having been forgotten, various stories are invented to explain it. These explanations may follow one of two lines according as they are based on the habitual or on the exceptional treatment of the sacred animal or plant. The sacred animal was habitually spared, and only exceptionally slain; and accordingly the myth might be devised to explain either why it was spared or why it was killed. Devised for the former purpose, the myth would tell of some service rendered to the deity by the animal; devised for the latter purpose, the myth would tell of some injury inflicted by the animal on the god. The reason given for sacrificing goats to Dionysus is an example of a myth of the latter sort. They were sacrificed to him, it was said, because they injured the vine.[1] Now the goat, as we have seen, was originally an embodiment of the god himself. But when the god had divested himself of his animal character and had become essentially anthropomorphic, the killing of the goat in his worship came to be regarded no longer as a slaying of the god himself, but as a sacrifice to him; and since some reason had to be assigned why the goat in particular should be sacrificed, it was alleged that this was a punishment inflicted on the goat for injuring the vine, the object of the god’s especial care. Thus we have the strange spectacle of a god sacrificed to himself on the ground that he is his own enemy. And as the god is supposed to partake of the victim offered to him, it follows that, when the victim is the god’s old self, the god eats of his own flesh. Hence the goat-god Dionysus is represented as eating raw goat’s blood;[2] and the bull-god Dionysus is called ‘eater of bulls.’[3] On the analogy of these instances we may conjecture that wherever a god is described as the eater of a particular animal, the animal in question was originally nothing but the god himself.[4]

All this, however, does not explain why a deity of vegetation should appear in animal form. But the consideration of this point had better be deferred till we have discussed the character and attributes of Demeter. Meantime it remains to point out that in some places, instead of an animal, a human being was torn in pieces at the rites of Dionysus. This was the custom in Chios and Tenedos;[1] and at Potniae in Boeotia the tradition ran that it had been formerly the custom to sacrifice to the goat-smiting Dionysus a child, for whom a goat was afterwards substituted.[2] At Orchomenus the human victim was taken from the women of a certain family, called the Oleiae. At the annual festival the priest of Dionysus pursued these women with a drawn sword, and if he overtook one of them he had a right to slay her. This right was exercised as late as Plutarch’s time.[3] As the slain bull or goat represented the slain god, so, we may suppose, the human victim also represented him. It is possible, however, that a tradition of human sacrifice may sometimes have been a mere misinterpretation of a sacrificial ritual in which an animal victim was treated as a human being. For example, at Tenedos the new-born calf sacrificed to Dionysus was shod in buskins, and the mother cow was tended like a woman in child-bed.[4]

Demeter and Proserpine

The Greek myth of Demeter and Proserpine is substantially identical with the Syrian myth of Aphrodite (Astarte) and Adonis, the Phrygian myth of Cybele and Attis, and the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris. In the Greek myth, as in its Asiatic and Egyptian counterparts, a goddess – Demeter – mourns the loss of a loved one – Proserpine – who personifies the vegetation, more especially the corn, which dies in summer[1] to revive in spring. But in the Greek myth the loved and lost one is the daughter instead of the husband or lover of the goddess; and the mother as well as the daughter is a goddess of the corn.[2] Thus, as modern scholars have recognised,[3] Demeter and Proserpine are merely a mythical reduplication of the same natural phenomenon. Proserpine, so ran the Greek myth,[4] was gathering flowers when the earth gaped, and Pluto, lord of the Dead, issuing from the abyss, carried her off on his golden car to be his bride in the gloomy subterranean world. Her sorrowing mother Demeter sought her over land and sea, and learning from the Sun her daughter’s fate, she suffered not the seed to grow, but kept it hidden in the ground, so that the whole race of men would have died of hunger if Zeus had not sent and fetched Proserpine from the nether world. Finally it was agreed that Proserpine should spend a third, or according to others a half,[5] of each year with Pluto underground, but should come forth in spring to dwell with her mother and the gods in the upper world. Her annual death and resurrection, that is, her annual descent into the under world and her ascension from it, appear to have been represented in her rites.[1]

With regard to the name Demeter, it has been plausibly argued by Mannhardt[2] that the first part of the word is derived from dēai, a Cretan word for ‘barley’;[3] and that thus Demeter means the Barley-mother or the Corn-mother; for the root of the word appears to have been applied to different kinds of grain by different branches of the Aryans, and even of the Greeks themselves.[4] As Crete appears to have been one of the most ancient seats of the worship of Demeter,[5] it is not surprising that her name should be of Cretan origin. This explanation of the name Demeter is supported by a host of analogies which the diligence of Mannhardt has collected from modern European folklore, and of which the following are specimens. In Germany the corn is very commonly personified under the name of the Corn-mother. Thus in spring, when the wind sets the corn in wave-like motion, the peasants say, ‘There comes the Corn-mother,’ or ‘The Corn-mother is running over the field,’ or ‘The Corn-mother is going through the corn.’[6] When children wish to go into the fields to pull the blue corn-flowers or the red poppies, they are told not to do so, because the Corn-mother is sitting in the corn and will catch them.[7] Or again she is called, according to the crop, the Rye-mother or the Pea-mother, and children are warned against straying in the rye or among the peas by threats of the Rye-mother or the Pea-mother. In Norway also the Pea-mother is said to sit among the peas.[1] Similar expressions are current among the Slavs. The Poles and Czechs warn children against the Corn-mother who sits in the corn. Or they call her the Old Corn-woman, and say that she sits in the corn and strangles the children who tread it down.[2] The Lithuanians say, ‘The Old Rye-woman sits in the corn.’[3] Again the Corn-mother is believed to make the crop grow. Thus in the neighbourhood of Magdeburg it is sometimes said, ‘It will be a good year for flax; the Flax-mother has been seen.’ At Dinkelsbühl (Bavaria) down to fifteen or twenty years ago, people believed that when the crops on a particular farm compared unfavourably with those of the neighbourhood, the reason was that the Corn-mother had punished the farmer for his sins.[4] In a village of Styria it is said that the Corn-mother, in the shape of a female puppet made out of the last sheaf of corn and dressed in white, may be seen at midnight in the corn-fields, which she fertilises by passing through them; but if she is angry with a farmer, she withers up all his corn.[5]

Further, the Corn-mother plays an important part in harvest customs. She is believed to be present in the handful of corn which is left standing last on the field; and with the cutting of this last handful she is caught, or driven away, or killed. In the first of these cases, the last sheaf is carried joyfully home and honoured as a divine being. It is placed in the barn, and at threshing the corn-spirit appears again.[6] In the district of Hadeln (Hanover) the reapers stand round the last sheaf and beat it with sticks in order to drive the Corn-mother out of it. They call to each other, ‘There she is! hit her! Take care she doesn’t catch you! ‘The beating goes on till the grain is completely threshed out; then the Corn-mother is believed to be driven away.[1] In the neighbourhood of Danzig the person who cuts the last ears of corn makes them into a doll, which is called the Corn-mother or the Old Woman, and is brought home on the last waggon.[2] In some parts of Holstein the last sheaf is dressed in woman’s clothes and called the Corn-mother. It is carried home on the last waggon, and then thoroughly drenched with water. The drenching with water is doubtless a rain-charm.[3] In the district of Bruck in Styria the last sheaf, called the Corn-mother, is made up into the shape of a woman by the oldest married woman in the village, of an age from fifty to fifty-five years. The finest ears are plucked out of it and made into a wreath, which, twined with flowers, is carried on her head by the prettiest girl of the village to the farmer or squire, while the Corn-mother is laid down in the barn to keep off the mice.[4] In other villages of the same district the Corn-mother, at the close of harvest, is carried by two lads at the top of a pole. They march behind the girl who wears the wreath to the squire’s house, and while he receives the wreath and hangs it up in the hall, the Corn-mother is placed on the top of a pile of wood, where she is the centre of the harvest supper and dance. Afterwards she is hung up in the barn and remains there till the threshing is over. The man who gives the last stroke at threshing is called the son of the Corn-mother; he is tied up in the Corn-mother, beaten, and carried through the village. The wreath is dedicated in church on the following Sunday; and on Easter Eve the grain is rubbed out of it by a seven years’ old girl and scattered amongst the young corn. At Christmas the straw of the wreath is placed in the manger to make the cattle thrive.[5] Here the fertilising power of the Corn-mother is plainly brought out by scattering the seed taken from her body (for the wreath is made out of the Corn-mother) among the new corn; and her influence over animal life is indicated by placing the straw in the manger. At Wester-hüsen in Saxony the last corn cut is made in the shape of a woman decked with ribbons and cloth. It is fastened on a pole and brought home on the last waggon. One of the people on the waggon keeps waving the pole, so that the figure moves as if alive. It is placed on the threshing-floor, and stays there till the threshing is done.[1] Amongst the Slavs also the last sheaf is known as the Rye-mother, the Wheat-mother, the Oats-mother, the Barley-mother, etc., according to the crop. In the district of Tarnow, Galicia, the wreath made out of the last stalks is called the Wheat-mother, Rye-mother, or Pea-mother. It is placed on a girl’s head and kept till spring, when some of the grain is mixed with the seed-corn.[2] Here again the fertilising power of the Corn-mother is indicated. In France, also, in the neighbourhood of Auxerre, the last sheaf goes by the name of the Mother of the Wheat, Mother of the Barley, Mother of the Rye, or Mother of the Oats. It is left standing in the field till the last waggon is about to wend homewards. Then a puppet is made out of it, dressed with clothes belonging to the farmer, and adorned with a crown and a blue or white scarf. A branch of a tree is stuck in the breast of the puppet, which is now called the Ceres. At the dance in the evening the Ceres is placed in the middle of the floor, and the reaper who reaped fastest dances round it with the prettiest girl for his partner. After the dance a pyre is made. All the girls, each wearing a wreath, strip the puppet, pull it to pieces, and place it on the pyre, along with the flowers with which it was adorned. Then the girl who was the first to finish reaping sets fire to the pile, and all pray that Ceres may give a fruitful year. Here, as Mannhardt observes, the old custom has remained intact, though the name Ceres is a bit of schoolmaster’s learning.[3] In Upper Brittany the last sheaf is always made into human shape; but if the farmer is a married man, it is made double and consists of a little corn-puppet placed inside of a large one. This is called the Mother-sheaf. It is delivered to the farmer’s wife, who unites it and gives drink-money in return.[1]

Sometimes the last sheaf is called, not the Corn-mother, but the Harvest-mother or the Great Mother. In the province of Osnabrück (Hanover) it is called the Harvest-mother; it is made up in female form, and then the reapers dance about with it. In some parts of Westphalia the last sheaf at the rye harvest is made especially heavy by fastening stones in it. It is brought home on the last waggon and is called the Great Mother, though no special shape is given it. In the district of Erfurt a very heavy sheaf (not necessarily the last) is called the Great Mother, and is carried on the last waggon to the barn, where it is lifted down by all hands amid a fire of jokes.[2]

Sometimes again the last sheaf is called the Grandmother, and is adorned with flowers, ribbons, and a woman’s apron. In East Prussia, at the rye or wheat harvest, the reapers call out to the woman who binds the last sheaf, ‘You are getting the Old Grandmother.’ In the neighbourhood of Magdeburg the men and women servants strive who shall get the last sheaf, called the Grandmother. Whoever gets it will be married in the next year, but his or her spouse will be old; if a girl gets it, she will marry a widower; if a man gets it, he will marry an old crone. In Silesia the Grandmother – a huge bundle made up of three or four sheaves by the person who tied the last sheaf – was formerly fashioned into a rude likeness of the human form.[3] In the neighbourhood of Belfast the last sheaf is sometimes called Granny. It is not cut in the usual way, but all the reapers throw their sickles at it and try to bring it down. It is plaited and kept till the (next?) autumn. Whoever gets it will marry in the course of the year.[4]

Oftener the last sheaf is called the Old Woman or the Old Man. In Germany it is often shaped and dressed as a woman, and the person who cuts it or binds it is said to ‘get the Old Woman.’[1] At Altisheim in Swabia when all the corn of a farm has been cut except a single strip, all the reapers stand in a row before the strip; each cuts his share rapidly, and he who gives the last cut ‘has the Old Woman.’[2] When the sheaves are being set up in heaps, the person who gets hold of the Old Woman, which is the largest and thickest of all the sheaves, is jeered at by the rest, who sing out to him, ‘He has the Old Woman and must keep her.’[3] The woman who binds the last sheaf is sometimes herself called the Old Woman, and it is said that she will be married in the next year.[4] In Neusaass, West Prussia, both the last sheaf – which is dressed up in jacket, hat and ribbons – and the woman who binds it are called the Old Woman. Together they are brought home on the last waggon and are drenched with water.[5] At Hornkampe, near Tiegenhof (West Prussia), when a man or woman lags behind the rest in binding the corn, the other reapers dress up the last sheaf in the form of a man or woman, and this figure goes by the laggard’s name, as ‘the old Michael,’ ‘the idle Trine.’ It is brought home on the last waggon, and, as it nears the house, the bystanders call out to the laggard, ‘You have got the Old Woman and must keep her.’[6]

In these customs, as Mannhardt has remarked, the person who is called by the same name as the last sheaf and sits beside it on the last waggon is obviously identified with it; he or she represents the corn-spirit which has been caught in the last sheaf; in other words, the corn-spirit is represented in duplicate, by a human being and by a sheaf.[7] The identification of the person with the sheaf is made still clearer by the custom of wrapping up in the last sheaf the person who cuts or binds it. Thus at Hermsdorf in Silesia it used to be the regular custom to tie up in the last sheaf the woman who had bound it.[1] At Weiden in Bavaria it is the cutter, not the binder, of the last sheaf who is tied up in it.[2] Here the person wrapt up in the corn represents the corn-spirit, exactly as a person wrapt in branches or leaves represents the tree-spirit.[3]

The last sheaf, designated as the Old Woman, is often distinguished from the other sheaves by its size and weight. Thus in some villages of West Prussia the Old Woman is made twice as long and thick as a common sheaf, and a stone is fastened in the middle of it. Sometimes it is made so heavy that a man can barely lift it.[4] Sometimes eight or nine sheaves are tied together to make the Old Woman, and the man who sets it up complains of its weight.[5] At Itzgrund, in Saxe-Coburg, the last sheaf, called the Old Woman is made large with the express intention of thereby securing a good crop next year.[6] Thus the custom of making the last sheaf unusually large or heavy is a charm, working by sympathetic magic, to secure a large and heavy crop in the following year.

In Denmark also the last sheaf is made larger than the others, and is called the Old Rye-woman or the Old Barley-woman. No one likes to bind it, because whoever does so will, it is believed, marry an old man or an old woman. Sometimes the last wheat-sheaf, called the Old Wheat-woman, is made up in human shape, with head, arms, and legs, is dressed in clothes and carried home on the last waggon, the harvesters sitting beside it, drinking and huzzaing.[7] Of the person who binds the last sheaf it is said, ‘She (or he) is the Old Rye-woman.’[8]

In Scotland, when the last corn was cut after Hallowmas, the female figure made out of it was sometimes called the Carlin or Carline, i.e. the Old Woman. But if cut before Hallowmas, it was called the Maiden; if cut after sunset, it was called the Witch, being supposed to bring bad luck.[1] We shall return to the Maiden presently. In County Antrim, down to a few years ago, when the sickle was finally expelled by the reaping machine, the few stalks of corn left standing last on the field were plaited together; then the reapers, blindfolded, threw their sickles at the plaited corn, and whoever happened to cut it through took it home with him and put it over his door. This bunch of corn was called the Carley[2] – probably the same word as Carlin.

Similar customs are observed by Slavonic peoples. Thus in Poland the last sheaf is commonly called the Baba, that is, the Old Woman. ‘In the last sheaf,’ it is said, ‘sits the Baba.’ The sheaf itself is also called the Baba, and is sometimes composed of twelve smaller sheaves lashed together.[3] In some parts of Bohemia the Baba, made out of the last sheaf, has the figure of a woman with a great straw hat. It is carried home on the last harvest-waggon and delivered, along with a garland, to the farmer by two girls. In binding the sheaves the women strive not to be last, for she who binds the last sheaf will have a child next year.[4] The last sheaf is tied up with others into a large bundle, and a green branch is stuck on the top of it.[5] Sometimes the harvesters call out to the woman who binds the last sheaf, ‘She has the Baba,’ or ‘She is the Baba.’ She has then to make a puppet, sometimes in female, sometimes in male form, out of the corn; the puppet is occasionally dressed with clothes, often with flowers and ribbons only. The cutter of the last stalks, as well as the binder of the last sheaf, was also called baba; and a doll, called the Harvest woman, was made out of the last sheaf and adorned with ribbons. The oldest reaper had to dance, first with this doll, and then with the farmer’s wife.[1] In the district of Cracow, when a man binds the last sheaf, they say, ‘The Grandfather is sitting in it;’ when a woman binds it, they say, ‘The Baba is sitting in it,’ and the woman herself is wrapt up in the sheaf, so that only her head projects out of it. Thus encased in the sheaf, she is carried on the last harvest-waggon to the house, where she is drenched with water by the whole family. She remains in the sheaf till the dance is over, and for a year she retains the name of Baba.[2]

In Lithuania the name for the last sheaf is Boba (Old Woman), answering to the Polish name Baba. The Boba is said to sit in the corn which is left standing last.[3] The person who binds the last sheaf or digs the last potato is the subject of much banter, and receives and long retains the name of the Old Rye-woman or the Old Potato-woman.[4] The last sheaf – the Boba – is made into the form of a woman, carried solemnly through the village on the last harvest-waggon, and drenched with water at the farmer’s house; then every one dances with it.[5]

In Russia also the last sheaf is often shaped and dressed as a woman, and carried with dance and song to the farmhouse. Out of the last sheaf the Bulgarians make a doll which they call the Corn-queen or Corn-mother; it is dressed in a woman’s shirt, carried round the village, and then thrown into the river in order to secure plenty of rain and dew for the next year’s crop. Or it is burned and the ashes strewn on the fields, doubtless to fertilise them.[6] The name Queen, as applied to the last sheaf, has its analogies in Northern Europe. Thus Brand quotes from Hutchinson’s History of Northumberland the following: ‘I have seen, in some places, an image apparelled in great finery, crowned with flowers, a sheaf of corn placed under her arm, and a scythe in her hand, carried out of the village in the morning of the conclusive reaping day, with music and much clamour of the reapers, into the field, where it stands fixed on a pole all day, and when the reaping is done, is brought home in like manner. This they call the Harvest Queen, and it represents the Roman Ceres.’[1] From Cambridge also Dr E. D. Clarke reported that ‘at the Hawkie [harvest-home], as it is called, I have seen a clown dressed in woman’s clothes, having his face painted, his head decorated with ears of corn, and bearing about him other symbols of Ceres, carried in a waggon, with great pomp and loud shouts, through the streets, the horses being covered with white sheets; and when I inquired the meaning of the ceremony, was answered by the people, that they were drawing the Harvest Queen.’[2]

Often the customs we have been examining are practised, not on the harvest field, but on the threshing-floor. The spirit of the corn, fleeing before the reapers as they cut down the corn, quits the cut corn and takes refuge in the barn, where it appears in the last sheaf threshed, either to perish under the blows of the flail or to flee thence to the still unthreshed corn of a neighbouring farm.[3] Thus the last corn to be threshed is called the Mother-corn or the Old Woman. Sometimes the person who gives the last stroke with the flail is called the Old Woman, and is wrapt in the straw of the last sheaf, or has a bundle of straw fastened on his back. Whether wrapt in the straw or carrying it on his back, he is carted through the village amid general laughter. In some districts of Bavaria, Thüringen, etc., the man who threshes the last sheaf is said to have the Old Woman or the Old Corn-woman; he is tied up in straw, carried or carted about the village, and set down at last on the dunghill, or taken to the threshing-floor of a neighbouring farmer who has not finished his threshing.[4] In Poland the man who gives the last stroke at threshing is called Baba (Old Woman); he is wrapt in corn and wheeled through the village.[1] Sometimes in Lithuania the last sheaf is not threshed, but is fashioned into female shape and carried to the barn of a neighbour who has not finished his threshing.[2] In some parts of Sweden, when a stranger woman appears on the threshing-floor, a flail is put round her body, stalks of corn are wound round her neck, a crown of ears is placed on her head, and the threshers call out, ‘Behold the Corn-woman.’ Here the stranger woman, thus suddenly appearing, is taken to be the corn-spirit who has just been expelled by the flails from the corn-stalks.[3] In other cases the farmer’s wife represents the corn-spirit. Thus in the Commune of Saligné, Canton de Poiret (Vendée), the farmer’s wife, along with the last sheaf, is tied up in a sheet, placed on a litter, and carried to the threshing machine, under which she is shoved. Then the woman is drawn out and the sheaf is threshed by itself, but the woman is tossed in the sheet (in imitation of winnowing).[4] It would be impossible to express more clearly the identification of the woman with the corn than by this graphic imitation of threshing and winnowing her.

In these customs the spirit of the ripe corn is regarded as old, or at least as of mature age. Hence the names of Mother, Grandmother, Old Woman, etc. But in other cases the corn-spirit is conceived as young, sometimes as a child who is separated from its mother by the stroke of the sickle. This last view appears in the Polish custom of calling out to the man who cuts the last handful of corn, ‘You have cut the navel-string.’[5] In some districts of West Prussia the figure made out of the last sheaf is called the Bastard, and a boy is wrapt up in it. The woman who binds the last sheaf and represents the Corn-mother, is told that she is about to be brought to bed; she cries like a woman in travail, and an old woman in the character of grandmother acts as midwife. At last a cry is raised that the child is born; whereupon the boy who is tied up in the sheaf whimpers and squalls like an infant. The grandmother wraps a sack, in imitation of swaddling bands, round the pretended baby, and it is carried joyfully to the barn, lest it catch cold in the open air.[1] In other parts of North Germany, the last sheaf, or the puppet made out of it, is called the Child, the Harvest Child, etc. In the North of England the last handful of corn was cut by the prettiest girl and dressed up as the Corn Baby or Kern Baby; it was brought home to music, set up in a conspicuous place at the harvest supper, and generally kept in the parlour for the rest of the year. The girl who cut it was the Harvest Queen.[2] In Kent the Ivy Girl is (or was) ‘a figure composed of some of the best corn the field produces, and made as well as they can into a human shape; this is afterwards curiously dressed by the women, and adorned with paper trimmings, cut to resemble a cap, ruffles, handkerchief, etc., of the finest lace. It is brought home with the last load of corn from the field upon the waggon, and they suppose entitles them to a supper at the expense of the employer.’[3] In the neighbourhood of Balquhidder, Perthshire, the last handful of corn is cut by the youngest girl on the field, and is made into the rude form of a female doll, clad in a paper dress, and decked with ribbons. It is called the Maiden, and is kept in the farmhouse, generally above the chimney, for a good while, sometimes till the Maiden of the next year is brought in. The writer of this book witnessed the ceremony of cutting the Maiden at Balquhidder in September 1888.[4] On some farms on the Gareloch, Dumbartonshire, about sixty years ago the last handful of standing corn was called the Maiden. It was divided in two, plaited, and then cut with the sickle by a girl, who, it was thought, would be lucky and would soon be married. When it was cut the reapers gathered together and threw their sickles in the air. The Maiden was dressed with ribbons and hung in the kitchen near the roof, where it was kept for several years with the date attached. Sometimes five or six Maidens might be seen hanging at once on hooks. The harvest supper was called the Kirn.[1] In other farms on the Gareloch the last handful of corn was called the Maidenhead or the Head; it was neatly plaited, sometimes decked with ribbons, and hung in the kitchen for a year, when the grain was given to the poultry.[2] In the North of Scotland, the Maiden is kept till Christmas morning, and then divided among the cattle ‘to make them thrive all the year round.’[3] In Aberdeenshire also the last sheaf (called the clyack sheaf) was formerly cut, as it is still cut at Balquhidder, by the youngest girl on the field; then it was dressed in woman’s clothes, carried home in triumph, and kept till Christmas or New Year’s morning, when it was given to a mare in foal, or, failing such, to the oldest cow.[4] Lastly, a somewhat maturer, but still youthful age is assigned to the corn-spirit by the appellations of Bride, Oats-bride, and Wheat-bride, which in Germany and Scotland are sometimes bestowed both on the last sheaf and on the woman who binds it.[5] Sometimes the idea implied in these names is worked out more fully by representing the productive powers of vegetation as bride and bridegroom, Thus in some parts of Germany a man and woman dressed in straw and called the Oats-wife and the Oats-man, or the Oats-bride and the Oats-bridegroom dance at the harvest festival; then the corn-stalks are plucked from their bodies till they stand as bare as a stubble field. In Silesia, the woman who binds the last sheaf is called the Wheat-bride or the Oats-bride. With the harvest crown on her head, a bridegroom by her side, and attended by bridesmaids, she is brought to the farmhouse with all the solemnity of a wedding procession. [1]

The harvest customs just described are strikingly analogous to the spring customs which we reviewed in the first chapter, (1) As in the spring customs the tree-spirit is represented both by a tree and by a person,[2] so in the harvest customs the corn-spirit is represented both by the last sheaf and by the person who cuts or binds or threshes it. The equivalence of the person to the sheaf is shown by giving him or her the same name as the sheaf, or vice versa; by wrapping him or her in the sheaf; and by the rule observed in some places, that when the sheaf is called the Mother, it must be cut by the oldest married woman; but when it is called the Maiden, it must be cut by the youngest girl.[3] Here the age of the personal representative of the corn-spirit corresponds with that of the supposed age of the corn-spirit, just as the human victims offered by the Mexicans to promote the growth of the maize varied with the age of the maize.[4] For in the Mexican, as in the European, custom the human beings were probably representatives of the corn-spirit rather than victims offered to him. (2) Again, the same fertilising influence which the tree-spirit is supposed to exert over vegetation, cattle, and even women[5] is ascribed to the corn-spirit. Thus, its supposed influence on vegetation is shown by the practice of taking some of the grain of the last sheaf (in which the corn-spirit is regularly supposed to be present), and scattering it among the young corn in spring.[6] Its influence on cattle is shown by giving the straw of the last sheaf to the cattle at Christmas with the express intention of making them thrive.[1] Lastly, its influence on women is indicated by the custom of delivering the Mother-sheaf, made into the likeness of a pregnant woman, to the farmer’s wife;[2] by the belief that the woman who binds the last sheaf will have a child next year;[3] perhaps, too, by the idea that the person who gets it will marry next year.[4]

Plainly, therefore, these spring and harvest customs are based on the same ancient modes of thought, and form parts of the same primitive heathendom, which was doubtless practised by our forefathers long before the dawn of history, as it is practised to this day by many of their descendants. Amongst the marks of a primitive religion, we may note the following:

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

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

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

(4) The rites are magical rather than propitiatory. In other words, the desired objects are attained, not by propitiating the favour of divine beings through sacrifice, prayer, and praise, but by ceremonies which, as has been explained,[1] are believed to influence the course of nature directly through a physical sympathy or resemblance between the rite and the effect which it is the intention of the rite to produce.

Judged by these tests, the spring and harvest customs of our European peasantry deserve to rank as primitive. For no special class of persons and no special places are set exclusively apart for their performance; they may be performed by any one, master or man, mistress or maid, boy or girl; they are practised, not in temples or churches, but in the woods and meadows, beside brooks, in barns, on harvest fields and cottage floors. The supernatural beings whose existence is taken for granted in them are spirits rather than deities; their functions are limited to certain well-defined departments of nature; their names are general, like the Barley-mother, the Old Woman, the Maiden, not proper names like Ceres, Proserpine, Bacchus. Their generic attributes are known, but their individual histories and characters are not the subject of myths. For they exist in classes rather than as individuals, and the members of each class are indistinguishable. For example, every farm has its Corn-mother, or its Old Woman, or its Maiden; but every Corn-mother is much like every other Corn-mother, and so with the Old Woman and Maidens. Lastly, in these harvest, as in the spring, customs, the ritual is magical rather than propitiatory. This is shown by throwing the Corn-mother into the river in order to secure rain and dew for the crops;[1] by making the Old Woman heavy in order to get a heavy crop next year;[2] by strewing grain from the last sheaf amongst the young crops in spring;[3] and giving the last sheaf to the cattle to make them thrive.[4]

Further, the custom of keeping the puppet – the representative of the corn-spirit – till next harvest, is a charm to maintain the corn-spirit in life and activity throughout the year.[5] This is proved by a similar custom observed by the ancient Peruvians, and thus described by the historian Acosta. ‘They take a certain portion of the most fruitefull of the Mays [i.e. maize] that growes in their farmes, the which they put in a certaine granary which they doe call Pirua, with certaine ceremonies, watching three nightes; they put this Mays in the richest garments they have, and beeing thus wrapped and dressed, they worship this Pirua, and hold it in great veneration, saying it is the mother of the mays of their inheritances, and that by this means the mays augments and is preserved. In this moneth [the sixth month, answering to May] they make a particular sacrifice, and the witches demaund of this Pirua, if it hath strength sufficient to continue untill the next yeare; and if it answers no, then they carry this Mays to the farme to burne, whence they brought it, according to every man’s power; then they make another Pirua, with the same ceremonies, saying that they renue it, to the end the seede of Mays may not perish, and if it answers that it hath force sufficient to last longer, they leave it untill the next yeare. This foolish vanity continueth to this day, and it is very common amongest the Indians to have these Piruas.’[1] There seems to be some error in this description of the custom. Probably it was the dressed-up bunch of maize, not the granary (Pirua), which was worshipped by the Peruvians and regarded as the Mother of the Maize. This is confirmed by what we know of the Peruvian custom from another source. The Peruvians, we are told, believed all useful plants to be animated by a divine being who causes their growth. According to the particular plant, these divine beings were called the Maize-mother (Zara-mama), the Quinoa-mother (Quinoa-mama), the Cocoa-mother (Coca-mama), and the Potato-mother (Axo-mama). Figures of these divine mothers were made respectively of ears of maize and leaves of the quinoa and cocoa plants; they were dressed in women’s clothes and worshipped. Thus the Maize-mother was represented by a puppet made of stalks of maize, dressed in full female attire; and the Indians believed that ‘as mother, it had the power of producing and giving birth to much maize.’[2] Probably, therefore, Acosta misunderstood his informant, and the Mother of the Maize which he describes was not the granary (Pirua) but the bunch of maize dressed in rich vestments. The Peruvian Mother of the Maize, like the harvest Maiden at Balquhidder, was kept for a year in order that by her means the corn might grow and multiply. But lest her strength might not suffice to last out the year, she was asked in the course of the year how she felt, and if she answered that she felt weak, she was burned and a fresh Mother of the Maize made, ‘to the end the seede of Mays may not perish.’ Here, it may be observed, we have a strong confirmation of the explanation already given of the custom of killing the god, both periodically and occasionally. The Mother of the Maize was allowed, as a rule, to live through a year, that being the period during which her strength might reasonably be supposed to last unimpaired; but on any symptom of her strength failing she was put to death and a fresh and vigorous Mother of the Maize took her place, lest the maize which depended on her for its existence should languish and decay.

Hardly less clearly does the same train of thought come out in the harvest customs formerly observed by the Za-potecs of Mexico. At harvest the priests, attended by the nobles and people, went in procession to the maize fields, where they picked out the largest and finest sheaf. This they took with great ceremony to the town or village, and placed it in the temple upon an altar adorned with wild flowers. After sacrificing to the harvest god, the priests carefully wrapt up the sheaf in fine linen and kept it till seed-time. Then the priests and nobles met again at the temple, one of them bringing the skin of a wild beast, elaborately ornamented, in which the linen cloth containing the sheaf was enveloped. The sheaf was then carried once more in procession to the field from which it had been taken. Here a small cavity or subterranean chamber had been prepared, in which the precious sheaf was deposited, wrapt in its various envelopes. After sacrifice had been offered to the gods of the fields for an abundant crop, the chamber was closed and covered over with earth. Immediately thereafter the sowing began. Finally, when the time of harvest drew near, the buried sheaf was solemnly disinterred by the priests, who distributed the grain to all who asked for it. The packets of grain so distributed were carefully preserved as talismans till the harvest.[1] In these ceremonies, which continued to be annually celebrated long after the Spanish conquest, the intention of keeping the finest sheaf buried in the maize field from seedtime to harvest was undoubtedly to quicken the growth of the maize.

In the Punjaub, to the east of the Jumna, when the cotton boles begin to burst, it is usual ‘to select the largest plant in the field, and having sprinkled it with butter-milk and rice-water, it is bound all over with pieces of cotton, taken from the other plants of the field. This selected plant is called Sirdar, or Bhogaldaí, i.e. mother-cotton, from bhogla, a name sometimes given to a large cotton-pod, and daí (for daiya) a mother, and after salutations are made to it, prayers are offered that the other plants may resemble it in the richness of their produce.’[1]

If the reader still feels any doubts as to the original meaning of the harvest customs practised by our peasantry, these doubts may be dispelled by comparing the harvest customs of the Dyaks of Borneo. At harvest the Dyaks of Northern Borneo have a special feast, the object of which is ‘to secure the soul of the rice, which if not so detained, the produce of their farms would speedily rot and decay.’ The mode of securing the soul of the rice varies in different tribes. Sometimes the priest catches it, in the form of a few grains of rice, in a white cloth. Sometimes a large shed is erected outside the village, and near it is reared a high and spacious altar. The corner-posts of the altar are lofty bamboos with leafy tops, from one of which there hangs a long narrow streamer of white cloth. Here gaily-dressed men and women dance with slow and solemn steps. Suddenly the elders and priests rush at the white streamer, seize the end of it, and begin dancing and swaying to and fro, amid a burst of wild music and the yells of the spectators. An elder leaps on the altar and shakes the bamboos violently, whereupon small stones, bunches of hair and grains of rice fall at the feet of the dancers and are carefully picked up by attendants. These grains of rice are the soul of the rice. At sowing-time some of this soul of the rice is planted with the other seeds, ‘and is thus propagated and communicated.’[2] The same need of securing the soul of the rice, if the crop is to thrive, is keenly felt by the Karens of Burma. When a rice-field does not flourish, they suppose that the soul (kelah) of the rice is in some way detained from the rice. If the soul cannot be called back, the crop will fail. The following formula is used in recalling the kelah (soul) of the rice: ‘O come, rice-kelah, come! Come to the field. Come to the rice. With seed of each gender, come. Come from the river Kho, come from the river Kaw; from the place where they meet, come. Come from the West, come from the East. From the throat of the bird, from the maw of the ape, from the throat of the elephant. Come from the sources of rivers and their mouths. Come from the country of the Shan and Burman. From the distant kingdoms come. From all granaries come. Ο rice-kelah, come to the rice.’[1] Again, the European custom of representing the corn-spirit in the double form of bride and bridegroom[2] is paralleled by a custom observed at the rice-harvest in Java. Before the reapers begin to cut the rice, the priest or sorcerer picks out a number of ears of rice, which are tied together, smeared with ointment, and adorned with flowers. Thus decked out, the ears are called the padi-pÄ•ngantèn, that is, the Rice-bride and the Rice-bridegroom; their wedding feast is celebrated, and the cutting of the rice begins immediately afterwards. Later on, when the rice is being got in, a bridal chamber is partitioned off in the barn, and furnished with a new mat, a lamp, and all kinds of toilet articles. Sheaves of rice, to represent the wedding guests, are placed beside the Rice-bride and the Rice-bridegroom. Not till this has been done may the whole harvest be housed in the barn. And for the first forty days after the rice has been housed, no one may enter the barn, for fear of disturbing the newly-wedded pair.[3]

Compared with the Corn-mother of Germany and the harvest Maiden of Balquhidder, the Demeter and Proserpine of Greece are late products of religious growth. But, as Aryans, the Greeks must at one time or another have observed harvest customs like those which are still practised by Celts, Teutons, and Slavs, and which, far beyond the limits of the Aryan world, have been practised by the Incas of Peru, the Dyaks of Borneo, and the Malays of Java – a sufficient proof that the ideas on which these customs rest are not confined to any one race, but naturally suggest themselves to all untutored peoples engaged in agriculture. It is probable, therefore, that Demeter and Proserpine, those stately and beautiful figures of Greek mythology, grew out of the same simple beliefs and practices which still prevail among our modern peasantry, and that they were represented by rude dolls made out of the yellow sheaves on many a harvest-field long before their breathing images were wrought in bronze and marble by the master hands of Phidias and Praxiteles. A reminiscence of that olden time – a scent, so to say, of the harvest-field – lingered to the last in the title of the Maiden (Kore) by which Proserpine was commonly known. Thus if the prototype of Demeter is the Corn-mother of Germany, the prototype of Proserpine is the harvest Maiden, which, autumn after autumn, is still made from the last sheaf on the Braes of Balquhidder. Indeed if we knew more about the peasant-farmers of ancient Greece we should probably find that even in classical times they continued annually to fashion their Corn-mothers (Demeters) and Maidens (Proserpines) out of the ripe corn on the harvest fields. But unfortunately the Demeter and Proserpine whom we know are the denizens of towns, the majestic inhabitants of lordly temples; it was for such divinities alone that the refined writers of antiquity had eyes; the rude rites performed by rustics amongst the corn were beneath their notice. Even if they noticed them, they probably never dreamed of any connection between the puppet of corn-stalks on the sunny stubble-field and the marble divinity in the shady coolness of the temple. Still the writings even of these town-bred and cultured persons afford us an occasional glimpse of a Demeter as rude as the rudest that a remote German village can show. Thus the story that Iasion begat a child Plutus (‘wealth,’ ‘abundance’) by Demeter on a thrice-ploughed field,[1] may be compared with the West Prussian custom of the mock birth of a child on the harvest field.[1] In this Prussian custom the pretended mother represents the Corn-mother (Ẑytniamatka); the pretended child represents the Corn-baby, and the whole ceremony is a charm to ensure a crop next year.[2] There are other folk-customs, observed both in spring and at harvest, with which the legend of the begetting of the child Plutus is probably still more intimately connected. Their general purport is to impart fertility to the fields by performing, or at least mimicking, upon them the process of procreation.[3] Another glimpse of the savage under the civilised Demeter will be afforded farther on, when we come to deal with another aspect of these agricultural divinities.

The reader may have observed that in modern folk-customs the corn-spirit is generally represented either by a Corn-mother (Old Woman, etc.) or by a Maiden (Corn-baby, etc.), not both by a Corn-mother and by a Maiden. Why then did the Greeks represent the corn both as a mother and a daughter? In the Breton custom the mother-sheaf – a large figure made out of the last sheaf with a small corn-doll inside of it – clearly represents both the Corn-mother and the Corn-daughter, the latter still unborn.[1] Again, in the Prussian custom just described, the woman who plays the part of Corn-mother represents the ripe corn; the child appears to represent next year’s corn, which may be regarded, naturally enough, as the child of this year’s corn, since it is from the seed of this year’s harvest that next year’s corn will spring. Demeter would thus be the ripe corn of this year; Proserpine the seed-corn taken from it and sown in autumn, to reappear in spring. The descent of Proserpine into the lower world[2] would thus be a mythical expression for the sowing of the seed; her reappearance in spring[3] would express the sprouting of the young corn. Thus the Proserpine of this year becomes the Demeter of the next, and this may very well have been the original form of the myth. But when with the advance of religious thought the corn came to be personified, no longer as a being that went through the whole cycle of birth, growth, reproduction, and death within a year, but as an immortal goddess, consistency requires that one of the two personifications, the mother or the daughter, should be sacrificed. But the double conception of the corn as mother and daughter was too old and too deeply rooted in the popular mind to be eradicated by logic, and so room had to be found in the reformed myth both for mother and daughter. This was done by assigning to Proserpine the role of the corn sown in autumn and sprouting in spring, while Demeter was left to play the somewhat vague and ill-defined part of mother of the corn, who laments its annual disappearance underground, and rejoices over its reappearance in spring. Thus instead of a regular succession of divine beings, each living a year and then giving birth to her successor, the reformed myth exhibits the conception of two divine and immortal beings, one of whom annually disappears into and reappears from the ground, while the other has little to do but to weep and rejoice at the appropriate times.

This explanation of the double personification of the corn in Greek myth assumes that both personifications (Demeter and Proserpine) are original. But if we assume that the Greek myth started with a single personification, the after-growth of a second personification may perhaps be explained as follows. On looking over the peasant harvest customs which have been passed under review, it may be noticed that they involve two distinct conceptions of the corn-spirit. For whereas in some of the customs the corn-spirit is treated as immanent in the corn, in others it is regarded as external to it. Thus when a particular sheaf is called by the name of the corn-spirit, and is dressed in clothes and treated with reverence,[1] the corn-spirit is clearly regarded as immanent in the corn. But when the corn-spirit is said to make the corn grow by passing through it, or to blight the corn of those against whom she has a grudge,[2] she is clearly conceived as quite separate from, though exercising power over, the corn. Conceived in the latter way the corn-spirit is in a fair way to become a deity of the corn, if she has not become so already. Of these two conceptions, that of the corn-spirit as immanent in the corn is doubtless the older, since the view of nature as animated by indwelling spirits appears to have generally preceded the view of it as controlled by deities external to it; to put it shortly, animism precedes deism. In the harvest customs of our European peasantry the conception of the corn-spirit as immanent appears to be the prevalent one; the conception of it as external occurs rather as an exception. In Greek mythology, on the other hand, Demeter is distinctly conceived in the latter way; she is the deity of the corn rather than the spirit immanent in it.[1] The process of thought which seems to be chiefly instrumental in producing the transition from the one mode of conception to the other is anthropomorphism, or the gradual investment of the immanent spirits with more and more of the attributes of humanity. As men emerge from savagery the tendency to anthropomorphise or humanise their divinities gains strength; and the more anthropomorphic these become, the wider is the breach which severs them from those natural objects of which they were at first merely the animating spirits or souls. But in the progress upwards from savagery, men of the same generation do not march abreast; and though the anthropomorphic gods may satisfy the religious wants of more advanced individuals, the more backward members of the community will cling by preference to the older animistic notions. Now when the spirit of any natural object (as the corn) has been invested with human qualities, detached from the object, and converted into a deity controlling it, the object itself is, by the withdrawal of its spirit, left inanimate, it becomes, so to say, a spiritual vacuum. But the popular fancy, intolerant of such a vacuum, in other words, unable to conceive anything as inanimate, immediately creates a fresh mythical being, with which it peoples the vacant object. Thus the same natural object is now represented in mythology by two separate beings; first, by the old spirit now separated from it and raised to the rank of a deity; second, by the new spirit, freshly created by the popular fancy to supply the place vacated by the old spirit on its elevation to a higher sphere. The problem for mythology now is, having got two separate personifications of the same object, what to do with them? How are their relations to each other to be adjusted, and room found for both in the mythological system? When the old spirit or new deity is conceived as creating or producing the object in question, the problem is easily solved. Since the object is believed to be produced by the old spirit, and animated by the new one, the latter, as the soul of the object, must also owe its existence to the former; thus the old spirit will stand to the new one as producer to produced, that is (in mythology), as parent to child, and if both spirits are conceived as female, their relation will be that of mother and daughter. In this way, starting from a single personification of the corn as female, mythology might in time reach a double personification of it as mother and daughter. It would be very rash to affirm that this was the way in which the myth of Demeter and Proserpine actually took shape; but it seems a legitimate conjecture that the reduplication of deities, of which Demeter and Proserpine furnish an example, may sometimes have arisen in the way indicated. For example, among the pairs of deities whom we have been considering, it has been shown that there are grounds for regarding both Isis and her companion god Osiris as personifications of the corn.[1] On the hypothesis just suggested, Isis would be the old corn-spirit, and Osiris would be the newer one, whose relationship to the old spirit was variously explained as that of brother, husband, and son;[2] for of course mythology would always be free to account for the coexistence of the two divinities in more ways than one. Further, this hypothesis offers at least a possible explanation of the relation of Virbius to the Arician Diana. The latter, as we have seen,[3] was a tree-goddess; and if, as I have conjectured, the Flamen Virbialis was no other than the priest of Nemi himself, that is, the King of the Wood, Virbius must also have been a tree-spirit. On the present hypothesis he was the newer tree-spirit, whose relation to the old tree-spirit (Diana) was explained by representing him as her favourite or lover. It must not, however, be forgotten that this proposed explanation of such pairs of deities as Demeter and Proserpine, Isis and Osiris, Diana and Virbius, is purely conjectural, and is only given for what it is worth.

Lityerses

In the preceding pages an attempt has been made to show that in the Corn-mother and harvest Maiden of Northern Europe we have the prototypes of Demeter and Proserpine. But an essential feature is still wanting to complete the resemblance. A leading incident in the Greek myth is the death and resurrection of Proserpine; it is this incident which, coupled with the nature of the goddess as a deity of vegetation, links the myth with the cults of Adonis, Attis, Osiris, and Dionysus; and it is in virtue of this incident that the myth is considered in this chapter. It remains, therefore, to see whether the conception of the annual death and resurrection of a god, which figures so prominently in these great Greek and Oriental worships, has not also its origin in the rustic rites observed by reapers and vine-dressers amongst the corn-shocks and the vines.

Our general ignorance of the popular superstitions and customs of the ancients has already been confessed. But the obscurity which thus hangs over the first beginnings of ancient religion is fortunately dissipated to some extent in the present case. The worships of Osiris, Adonis, and Attis had their respective seats, as we have seen, in Egypt, Syria, and Phrygia; and in each of these countries certain harvest and vintage customs are known to have been observed, the resemblance of which to each other and to the national rites struck the ancients themselves, and, compared with the harvest customs of modern peasants and barbarians, seem to throw some light on the origin of the rites in question.

It has been already mentioned, on the authority of Diodorus, that in ancient Egypt the reapers were wont to lament over the first sheaf cut, invoking Isis as the goddess to whom they owed the discovery of corn.[1] To the plaintive song or cry sung or uttered by Egyptian reapers the Greeks gave the name of Maneros, and explained the name by a story that Maneros, the only son of the first Egyptian king, invented agriculture, and, dying an untimely death, was thus lamented by the people.[1] It appears, however, that the name Maneros is due to a misunderstanding of the formula mââ-ne-hra, ‘come thou back,’ which has been discovered in various Egyptian writings, for example in the dirge of Isis in the Book of the Dead.[2] Hence we may suppose that the cry mââ-ne-hra was chanted by the reapers over the cut corn as a dirge for the death of the corn-spirit (Isis or Osiris) and a prayer for its return. As the cry was raised over the first ears reaped, it would seem that the corn-spirit was believed by the Egyptians to be present in the first corn cut and to die under the sickle. We have seen that in Java the first ears of rice are taken to represent the Corn-bride and the Corn-bridegroom.[3] In parts of Russia the first sheaf is treated much in the same way that the last sheaf is treated elsewhere. It is reaped by the mistress herself, taken home and set in the place of honour near the holy pictures; afterwards it is threshed separately, and some of its grain is mixed with the next year’s seed-corn.[4]

In Phoenicia and Western Asia a plaintive song, like that chanted by the Egyptian corn-reapers, was sung at the vintage and probably (to judge by analogy) also at harvest. This Phoenician song was called by the Greeks Linus or Ailinus and explained, like Maneros, as a lament for the death of a youth named Linus.[5] According to one story Linus was brought up by a shepherd, but torn to pieces by his dogs.[6] But, like Maneros, the name Linus or Ailinus appears to have originated in a verbal misunderstanding, and to be nothing more than the cry ai lanu, that is ‘woe to us,’ which the Phoenicians probably uttered in mourning for Adonis;[1] at least Sappho seems to have regarded Adonis and Linus as equivalent.[2]

In Bithynia a like mournful ditty, called Bormus or Borimus, was chanted by Mariandynian reapers. Bormus was said to have been a handsome youth, the son of King Upias or of a wealthy and distinguished man. One summer day, watching the reapers at work in his fields, he went to fetch them a drink of water and was never heard of more. So the reapers sought for him, calling him in plaintive strains, which they continued to use ever afterwards.[3]

In Phrygia the corresponding song, sung by harvesters both at reaping and at threshing, was called Lityerses. According to one story, Lityerses was a bastard son of Midas, King of Phrygia. He used to reap the corn, and had an enormous appetite. When a stranger happened to enter the corn-field or to pass by it, Lityerses gave him plenty to eat and drink, then took him to the corn-fields on the banks of the Maeander and compelled him to reap along with him. Lastly, he used to wrap the stranger in a sheaf, cut off his head with a sickle, and carry away his body, wrapt in the corn stalks. But at last he was himself slain by Hercules, who threw his body into the river.[4] As Hercules was probably reported to have slain Lityerses in the same way that Lityerses slew others (as Theseus treated Sinis and Sciron), we may infer that Lityerses used to throw the bodies of his victims into the river. According to another version of the story, Lityerses, a son of Midas, used to challenge people to a reaping match with him, and if he vanquished them he used to thrash them; but one day he met with a stronger reaper, who slew him.[1]

There are some grounds for supposing that in these stories of Lityerses we have the description of a Phrygian harvest custom in accordance with which certain persons, especially strangers passing the harvest field, were regularly regarded as embodiments of the corn-spirit and as such were seized by the reapers, wrapt in sheaves, and beheaded, their bodies, bound up in the corn-stalks, being afterwards thrown into water as a rain-charm. The grounds for this supposition are, first, the resemblance of the Lityerses story to the harvest customs of European peasantry, and, second, the fact that human beings have been commonly killed by savage races to promote the fertility of the fields. We will examine these grounds successively, beginning with the former.

In comparing the story with the harvest customs of Europe,[2] three points deserve special attention, namely: I the reaping match and the binding of persons in the sheaves; II the killing of the corn-spirit or his representatives; III the treatment of visitors to the harvest-field or of strangers passing it.

I In regard to the first head, we have seen that in modern Europe the person who cuts or binds or threshes the last sheaf is often exposed to rough treatment at the hands of his fellow-labourers. For example, he is bound up in the last sheaf, and, thus encased, is carried or carted about, beaten, drenched with water, thrown on a dunghill, etc. Or, if he is spared this horseplay, he is at least the subject of ridicule or is believed destined to suffer some misfortune in the course of the year. Hence the harvesters are naturally reluctant to give the last cut at reaping or the last stroke at threshing or to bind the last sheaf, and towards the close of the work this reluctance produces an emulation among the labourers, each striving to finish his task as fast as possible, in order that he may escape the invidious distinction of being last.[1] For example, in the neighbourhood of Danzig, when the winter corn is cut and mostly bound up in sheaves, the portion which still remains to be bound is divided amongst the women binders, each of whom receives a swath of equal length to bind. A crowd of reapers, children, and idlers gathers round to witness the contest, and at the word, ‘Seize the Old Man,’ the women fall to work, all binding their allotted swaths as hard as they can. The spectators watch them narrowly, and the woman who cannot keep pace with the rest and consequently binds the last sheaf has to carry the Old Man (that is, the last sheaf made up in the form of a man) to the farmhouse and deliver it to the farmer with the words, ‘Here I bring you the Old Man.’ At the supper which follows, the Old Man is placed at the table and receives an abundant portion of food which, as he cannot eat it, falls to the share of the woman who carried him. Afterwards the Old Man is placed in the yard and all the people dance round him. Or the woman who bound the last sheaf dances for a good while with the Old Man, while the rest form a ring round them; afterwards they all, one after the other, dance a single round with him. Further, the woman who bound the last sheaf goes herself by the name of the Old Man till the next harvest, and is often mocked with the cry, ‘Here comes the Old Man.’[2] At Aschbach, Bavaria, when the reaping is nearly finished, the reapers say, ‘Now we will drive out the Old Man.’ Each of them sets himself to reap a patch of corn and reaps as fast as he can; he who cuts the last handful or the last stalk is greeted by the rest with an exulting cry, ‘You have the Old Man.’ Sometimes a black mask is fastened on the reaper’s face and he is dressed in woman’s clothes; or if the reaper is a woman, she is dressed in man’s clothes; a dance follows. At the supper the Old Man gets twice as large a portion of food as the others. At threshing, the proceedings are the same; the person who gives the last stroke is said to have the Old Man.[1]

These examples illustrate the contests in reaping, threshing, and binding which take place amongst the harvesters, on account of their unwillingness to suffer the ridicule and personal inconvenience attaching to the individual who happens to finish his work last. It will be remembered that the person who is last at reaping, binding, or threshing, is regarded as the representative of the corn-spirit,[2] and this idea is more fully expressed by binding him or her in corn-stalks. The latter custom has been already illustrated, but a few more instances may be added. At Kloxin, near Stettin, the harvesters call out to the woman who binds the last sheaf, ‘You have the Old Man, and must keep him.’ The Old Man is a great bundle of corn decked with flowers and ribbons, and fashioned into a rude semblance of the human form. It is fastened on a rake or strapped on a horse, and brought with music to the village. In delivering the Old Man to the farmer, the woman says –

‘Here, dear Sir, is the Old Man,

He can stay no longer on the field,

He can hide himself no longer,

He must come into the village.

Ladies and gentlemen, pray be so kind

As to give the Old Man a present.’

Forty or fifty years ago the custom was to tie up the woman herself in pease-straw, and bring her with music to the farmhouse, where the harvesters danced with her till the pease-straw fell off.[3] In other villages round Stettin, when the last harvest-waggon is being loaded, there is a regular race amongst the women, each striving not to be last. For she who places the last sheaf on the waggon is called the Old Man, and is completely swatched in corn-stalks; she is also decked with flowers, and flowers and a helmet of straw are placed on her head. In solemn procession she carries the harvest-crown to the squire, over whose head she holds it while she utters a string of good wishes. At the dance which follows, the Old Man has the right to choose his (or rather her) partner; it is an honour to dance with him.[1] At Blankenfelde, in the district of Potsdam, the woman who binds the last sheaf at the rye-harvest is saluted with the cry, ‘You have the Old Man.’ A woman is then tied up in the last sheaf in such a way that only her head is left free; her hair also is covered with a cap made of rye-stalks, adorned with ribbons and flowers. She is called the Harvest-man, and must keep dancing in front of the last harvest-waggon till it reaches the squire’s house, where she receives a present, and is released from her envelope of corn.[2] At Gommern, near Magdeburg, the reaper who cuts the last ears of corn is often wrapt up in corn-stalks so completely that it is hard to see whether there is a man in the bundle or not. Thus wrapt up he is taken by another stalwart reaper on his back, and carried round the field amid the joyous cries of the harvesters.[3] At Neuhausen, near Merseburg, the person who binds the last sheaf is wrapt in ears of oats and saluted as the Oats-man, whereupon the others dance round him.[4] At Brie, Isle de France, the farmer himself is tied up in the first sheaf.[5] At the harvest-home at Udvarhely, Transylvania, a person is encased in corn-stalks, and wears on his head a crown made out of the last ears cut. On reaching the village he is soused with water over and over.[6] At Dingelstedt, in the district of Erfurt, about fifty years ago it was the custom to tie up a man in the last sheaf. He was called the Old Man, and was brought home on the last waggon, amid huzzas and music. On reaching the farmyard he was rolled round the barn and drenched with water.[1] At Nördlingen, Bavaria, the man who gives the last stroke at threshing is wrapt in straw and rolled on the threshing-floor.[2] In some parts of Oberpfalz, Bavaria, he is said to ‘get the Old Man,’ is wrapt in straw, and carried to a neighbour who has not yet finished his threshing.[3] In Thüringen a sausage is stuck in the last sheaf at threshing, and thrown, with the sheaf, on the threshing-floor. It is called the Barrenwurst or Banzenwurst, and is eaten by all the threshers. After they have eaten it a man is encased in pease-straw, and thus attired is led through the village.[4]

‘In all these cases the idea is that the spirit of the corn – the Old Man of vegetation – is driven out of the corn last cut or last threshed, and lives in the barn during the winter. At sowing-time he goes out again to the fields to resume his activity as animating force among the sprouting corn.’[5]

Much the same ideas are attached to the last corn in India; for we are told that in the Central Provinces, ‘when the reaping is nearly done, about a bisvá, say a rood of land, of corn is left standing in the cultivator’s last field, and the reapers rest a little. Then they rush at this bisvá, tear it up, and cast it into the air, shouting victory to Omkár Maháráj or Jhámáji, or Rámjí Dás, etc., according to their respective possessions. A sheaf is made up of this corn, tied to a bamboo, and stuck up in the last harvest cart, and carried home in triumph. It is fastened up in the threshing-floor to a tree, or to the cattle-shed, where its services are essential in averting the evil-eye.’[6]

II Passing to the second point of comparison between the Lityerses story and European harvest customs, we have now to see that in the latter the corn-spirit is often believed to be killed at reaping or threshing. In the Romsdal and other parts of Norway, when the haymaking is over, the people say that ‘the Old Hay-man has been killed.’ In some parts of Bavaria the man who gives the last stroke at threshing is said to have killed the Corn-man, the Oats-man, or the Wheat-man, according to the crop.[1] In the Canton of Tillot, in Lothringen, at threshing the last corn the men keep time with their flails, calling out as they thresh, ‘We are killing the Old Woman! We are killing the Old Woman!’ If there is an old woman in the house she is warned to save herself, or she will be struck dead.[2] In Lithuania, near Ragnit, the last handful of corn is left standing by itself, with the words, ‘The Old Woman (Boba) is sitting in there.’ Then a young reaper whets his scythe, and, with a strong sweep, cuts down the handful. It is now said of him that ‘He has cut off the Boba’s head;’ and he receives a gratuity from the farmer and a jugful of water over his head from the farmer’s wife.[3] According to another account, every Lithuanian reaper makes haste to finish his task; for the Old Rye-woman lives in the last stalks, and whoever cuts the last stalks kills the Old Rye-woman, and by killing her he brings trouble on himself.[4] In Wilkischken (district of Tilsit) the man who cuts the last corn goes by the name of ‘The killer of the Rye-woman.’[5] In Lithuania, again, the corn-spirit is believed to be killed at threshing as well as at reaping. When only a single pile of corn remains to be threshed, all the threshers suddenly step back a few paces, as if at the word of command. Then they fall to work plying their flails with the utmost rapidity and vehemence, till they come to the last bundle. Upon this they fling themselves with almost frantic fury, straining every nerve, and raining blows on it till the word ‘Halt!’ rings out sharply from the leader. The man whose flail is the last to fall after the command to stop has been given is immediately surrounded by all the rest, crying out that ‘He has struck the Old Ryewoman dead.’ He has to expiate the deed by treating them to brandy; and, like the man who cuts the last corn, he is known as ‘The killer of the Old Rye-woman.’[1] Sometimes in Lithuania the slain corn-spirit was represented by a puppet. Thus a female figure was made out of corn-stalks, dressed in clothes, and placed on the threshing-floor, under the heap of corn which was to be threshed last. Whoever thereafter gave the last stroke at threshing ‘struck the Old Woman dead.’[2] We have already had examples of burning the figure which represents the corn-spirit.[3] Sometimes, again, the corn-spirit is represented by a man, who lies down under the last corn; it is threshed upon his body, and the people say that ‘the Old Man is being beaten to death.’[4] We have already seen that sometimes the farmer’s wife is thrust, together with the last sheaf, under the threshing-machine, as if to thresh her, and that afterwards a pretence is made of winnowing her.[5] At Volders, in the Tyrol, husks of corn are stuck behind the neck of the man who gives the last stroke at threshing, and he is throttled with a straw garland. Ifhe is tall, it is believed that the corn will be tall next year. Then he is tied on a bundle and flung into the river.[6] In Carinthia, the thresher who gave the last stroke, and the person who untied the last sheaf on the threshing-floor, are bound hand and foot with straw bands, and crowns of straw are placed on their heads. Then they are tied, face to face, on a sledge, dragged through the village, and flung into a brook.[7] The custom of throwing the representative of the corn-spirit into a stream, like that of drenching him with water, is, as usual, a rain-charm.[8]

III Thus far the representatives of the corn-spirit have

generally been the man or woman who cuts, binds, or threshes the last corn. We now come to the cases in which the corn-spirit is represented either by a stranger passing the harvest-field (as in the Lityerses tale), or by a visitor entering it for the first time. All over Germany it is customary for the reapers or threshers to lay hold of passing strangers and bind them with a rope made of corn-stalks, till they pay a forfeit; and when the farmer himself or one of his guests enters the field or the threshing-floor for the first time, he is treated in the same way. Sometimes the rope is only tied round his arm or his feet or his neck.[1] But sometimes he is regularly swathed in corn. Thus at Solör in Norway, whoever enters the field, be he the master or a stranger, is tied up in a sheaf and must pay a ransom. In the neighbourhood of Soest, when the farmer visits the flax- pullers for the first time, he is completely enveloped in flax. Passers-by are also surrounded by the women, tied up in flax, and compelled to stand brandy.[2] At Nördlingen strangers are caught with straw ropes and tied up in a sheaf till they pay a forfeit. At Brie, Isle de France, when any one who does not belong to the farm passes by the harvest-field, the reapers give chase. If they catch him, they bind him in a sheaf and bite him, one after the other, in the forehead, crying ‘You shall carry the key of the field.’[3] ‘To have the key’ is an expression used by harvesters elsewhere in the sense of to cut or bind or thresh the last sheaf;[4] hence, it is equivalent to the phrases ‘You have the Old Man,’ ‘You are the Old Man,’ which are addressed to the cutter, binder, or thresher of the last sheaf. Therefore, when a stranger, as at Brie, is tied up in a sheaf and told that he will ‘carry the key of the field,’ it is as much as to say that he is the Old Man, that is, an embodiment of the corn-spirit.

Thus, like Lityerses, modern reapers lay hold of a passing stranger and tie him up in a sheaf. It is not to be expected that they should complete the parallel by cutting off his head; but if they do not take such a strong step, their language and gestures are at least indicative of a desire to do so. For instance, in Mecklenburg on the first day of reaping, if the master or mistress or a stranger enters the field, or merely passes by it, all the mowers face towards him and sharpen their scythes, clashing their whet-stones against them in unison, as if they were making ready to mow. Then the woman who leads the mowers steps up to him and ties a band round his left arm. He must ransom himself by payment of a forfeit.[1] Near Ratzeburg when the master or other person of mark enters the field or passes by it, all the harvesters stop work and march towards him in a body, the men with their scythes in front. On meeting him they form up in line, men and women. The men stick the poles of their scythes in the ground, as they do in whetting them; then they take off their caps and hang them on the scythes, while their leader stands forward and makes a speech. When he has done, they all whet their scythes in measured time very loudly, after which they put on their caps. Two of the women binders then come forward; one of them ties the master or stranger (as the case may be) with corn-ears or with a silken band; the other delivers a rhyming address. The following are specimens of the speeches made by the reaper on these occasions. In some parts of Pomerania every passer-by is stopped, his way being barred with a corn-rope. The reapers form a circle round him and sharpen their scythes, while their leader says –

‘The men are ready,

The scythes are bent,

The corn is great and small,

The gentleman must be mowed.’

Then the process of whetting the scythes is repeated.[1] At Ramin, in the district of Stettin, the stranger, standing encircled by the reapers, is thus addressed –

‘We’ll stroke the gentleman

With our naked sword,

Wherewith we shear meadows and fields.

We shear princes and lords.

Labourers are often athirst;

If the gentleman will stand beer and brandy

The joke will soon be over.

But, if our prayer he does not like,

The sword has a right to strike.’[2]

That in these customs the whetting of the scythes is really meant as a preliminary to mowing appears from the following variation of the preceding customs. In the district of Lüneburg when any one enters the harvest-field, he is asked whether he will engage a good fellow. If he says yes, the harvesters mow some swaths, yelling and screaming, and then ask him for drink-money.[3]

On the threshing-floor strangers are also regarded as embodiments of the corn-spirit, and are treated accordingly. At Wiedingharde in Schleswig when a stranger comes to the threshing-floor he is asked ‘Shall I teach you the flail-dance?’ If he says yes, they put the arms of the threshing-flail round his neck (as if he were a sheaf of corn), and press them together so tightly that he is nearly choked.[1] In some parishes of Wermland (Sweden) when a stranger enters the threshing-floor where the threshers are at work, they say that ‘they will teach him the threshing- song.’ Then they put a flail round his neck and a straw rope about his body. Also, as we have seen, if a stranger woman enters the threshing-floor, the threshers put a flail round her body and a wreath of corn-stalks round her neck, and call out, ‘See the Corn-woman! See! that is how the Corn- maiden looks!’[2]

In these customs, observed both on the harvest-field and on the threshing-floor, a passing stranger is regarded as a personification of the corn, in other words, as the corn-spirit; and a show is made of treating him like the corn by mowing, binding, and threshing him. If the reader still doubts whether European peasants can really regard a passing stranger in this light, the following custom should set their doubts at rest. During the madder-harvest in the Dutch province of Zealand a stranger passing by a field where the people are digging the madder-roots will sometimes call out to them Koortspillers (a term of reproach). Upon this, two of the fleetest runners make after him, and, if they catch him, they bring him back to the madder-field and bury him in the earth up to his middle at least, jeering at him the while; then they ease nature before his face.[3] This last act is to be explained as follows. The spirit of the corn and of other cultivated plants is sometimes conceived, not as immanent in the plant, but as its owner; hence the cutting of the corn at harvest, the digging of the roots, and the gathering of fruit from the fruit-trees are each and all of them acts of spoliation, which strip him of his property and reduce him to poverty. Hence he is often known as ‘the Poor Man’ or ‘the Poor Woman.’ Thus in the neighbourhood of Eisenach a small sheaf is sometimes left standing on the field for ‘the Poor Old Woman.’[1] At Marksuhl, near Eisenach, the puppet formed out of the last sheaf is itself called ‘the Poor Woman.’ At Alt Lest in Silesia the man who binds the last sheaf is called the Beggar-man.[1] In a village near Roeskilde, in Zealand (Denmark), old-fashioned peasants sometimes make up the last sheaf into a rude puppet, which is called the Rye-beggar.[2] In Southern Schonen the sheaf which is bound last is called the Beggar; it is made bigger than the rest and is sometimes dressed in clothes. In the district of Olmütz the last sheaf is called the Beggar; it is given to an old woman, who must carry it home, limping on one foot.[3] Thus when the corn-spirit is conceived as a being who is robbed of his store and impoverished by the harvesters, it is natural that his representative – the passing stranger – should upbraid them; and it is equally natural that they should seek to disable him from pursuing them and recapturing the stolen property. Now, it is an old superstition that by easing nature on the spot where a robbery is committed, the robbers secure themselves, for a certain time, against interruption.[4] The fact, therefore, that the madder-diggers resort to this proceeding in presence of the stranger proves that they consider themselves robbers and him as the person robbed. Regarded as such, he must be the natural owner of the madder-roots; that is, their spirit or demon; and this conception is carried out by burying him, like the madder-roots, in the ground.[5] The Greeks it may be observed, were quite familiar with the idea that a passing stranger may be a god. Homer says that the gods in the likeness of foreigners roam up and down cities.[6]

Thus in these harvest-customs of modern Europe the person who cuts, binds, or threshes the last corn is treated as an embodiment of the corn-spirit by being wrapt up in sheaves, killed in mimicry by agricultural implements, and thrown into the water.[1] These coincidences with the Lityerses story seem to prove that the latter is a genuine description of an old Phrygian harvest-custom. But since in the modern parallels the killing of the personal representative of the corn-spirit is necessarily omitted or at most enacted only in mimicry, it is necessary to show that in rude society human beings have been commonly killed as an agricultural ceremony to promote the fertility of the fields. The following examples will make this plain.

The Indians of Guayaquil (Ecuador) used to sacrifice human blood and the hearts of men when they sowed their fields.[2] At a Mexican harvest-festival, when the first fruits of the season were offered to the sun, a criminal was placed between two immense stones, balanced opposite each other, and was crushed by them as they fell together. His remains were buried, and a feast and dance followed. This sacrifice was known as ‘the meeting of the stones.’[3] Another series of human sacrifices offered in Mexico to make the maize thrive has been already referred to.[4] The Pawnees annually sacrificed a human victim in spring when they sowed their fields. The sacrifice was believed to have been enjoined on them by the Morning Star, or by a certain bird which the Morning Star had sent to them as its messenger. The bird was stuffed and preserved as a powerful ‘medicine.’ They thought that an omission of this sacrifice would be followed by the total failure of the crops of maize, beans, and pumpkins. The victim was a captive of either sex. He was clad in the gayest and most costly attire, was fattened on the choicest food, and carefully kept in ignorance of his doom. When he was fat enough, they bound him to a cross in the presence of the multitude, danced a solemn dance, then cleft his head with a toma-hawk and shot him with arrows. According to one trader, the squaws then cut pieces of flesh from the victim’s body, with which they greased their hoes; but this was denied by another trader who had been present at the ceremony. Immediately after the sacrifice the people proceeded to plant their fields. A particular account has been preserved of the sacrifice of a Sioux girl by the Pawnees in April 1837 or 1838. The girl had been kept for six months and well treated. Two days before the sacrifice she was led from wigwam to wigwam, accompanied by the whole council of chiefs and warriors. At each lodge she received a small billet of wood and a little paint, which she handed to the warrior next to her. In this way she called at every wigwam, receiving at each the same present of wood and paint. On the 22d of April she was taken out to be sacrificed, attended by the warriors, each of whom carried two pieces of wood which he had received from her hands. She was burned for some time over a slow fire, and then shot to death with arrows. The chief sacrificer next tore out her heart and devoured it. While her flesh was still warm it was cut in small pieces from the bones, put in little baskets, and taken to a neighbouring cornfield. Here the head chief took a piece of the flesh from a basket and squeezed a drop of blood upon the newly-deposited grains of corn. His example was followed by the rest, till all the seed had been sprinkled with the blood; it was then covered up with earth.[1]

A West African queen used to sacrifice a man and woman in the month of March. They were killed with spades and hoes, and their bodies buried in the middle of a field which had just been tilled.[2] At Lagos in Guinea it was the custom annually to impale a young girl alive soon after the spring equinox in order to secure good crops. Along with her were sacrificed sheep and goats, which, with yams, heads of maize, and plantains, were hung on stakes on each side of her. The victims were bred up for the purpose in the king’s seraglio, and their minds had been so powerfully wrought upon by the fetish men that they went cheerfully to their fate.[1] A similar sacrifice is still annually offered at Benin, Guinea.[2] The Marimos, a Bechuana tribe, sacrifice a human being for the crops. The victim chosen is generally a short, stout man. He is seized by violence or intoxicated and taken to the fields, where he is killed amongst the wheat to serve as ‘seed’ (so they phrase it). After his blood has coagulated in the sun it is burned along with the frontal bone, the flesh attached to it, and the brain; the ashes are then scattered over the ground to fertilise it. The rest of the body is eaten.[3]

The Gonds of India, a Dravidian race, kidnapped Brahman boys, and kept them as victims to be sacrificed on various occasions. At sowing and reaping, after a triumphal procession, one of the lads was slain by being punctured with a poisoned arrow. His blood was then sprinkled over the ploughed field or the ripe crop, and his flesh was devoured.[4]

But the best known case of human sacrifices, systematically offered to ensure good crops, is supplied by the Khonds or Kandhs, another Dravidian race in Bengal. Our knowledge of them is derived from the accounts written by British officers who, forty or fifty years ago, were engaged in putting them down.[5] The sacrifices were offered to the Earth Goddess, Tari Pennu or Bera Pennu, and were believed to ensure good crops and immunity from all disease and accidents. In particular, they were considered necessary in the cultivation of turmeric, the Khonds arguing that the turmeric could not have a deep red colour without the shedding of blood.[1] The victim or Meriah was acceptable to the goddess only if he had been purchased, or had been born a victim – that is, the son of a victim father – or had been devoted as a child by his father or guardian. Khonds in distress often sold their children for victims, ‘considering the beatification of their souls certain, and their death, for the benefit of mankind, the most honourable possible.’ A man of the Panua tribe was once seen to load a Khond with curses, and finally to spit in his face, because the Khond had sold for a victim his own child, whom the Panua had wished to marry. A party of Khonds, who saw this, immediately pressed forward to comfort the seller of his child, saying, ‘Your child has died that all the world may live, and the Earth Goddess herself will wipe that spittle from your face.’[2] The victims were often kept for years before they were sacrificed. Being regarded as consecrated beings, they were treated with extreme affection, mingled with deference, and were welcomed wherever they went. A Meriah youth, on attaining naturity, was generally given a wife, who was herself usually a Meriah or victim; and with her he received a portion of land and farm-stock. Their offspring were also victims. Human sacrifices were offered to the Earth Goddess by tribes, branches of tribes, or villages, both at periodical festivals and on extra-ordinary occasions. The periodical sacrifices were generally so arranged by tribes and divisions of tribes that each head of a family was enabled, at least once a year, to procure a shred of flesh for his fields, generally about the time when his chief crop was laid down.[3]

The mode of performing these tribal sacrifices was as follows. Ten or twelve days before the sacrifice, the victim was devoted by cutting off his hair, which, until then, was kept unshorn. Crowds of men and women assembled to witness the sacrifice; none might be excluded, since the sacrifice was declared to be ‘for all mankind.’ It was preceded by several days of wild revelry and gross debauchery.[1] On the day before the sacrifice the victim, dressed in a new garment, was led forth from the village in solemn procession; with music and dancing, to the Meriah grove, which was a clump of high forest trees standing a little way from the village and untouched by the axe. In this grove the victim was tied to a post, which was sometimes placed between two plants of the sankissar shrub. He was then anointed with oil, ghee, and turmeric, and adorned with flowers; and ‘a species of reverence, which it is not easy to distinguish from adoration,’ was paid to him throughout the day.[2] A great struggle now arose to obtain the smallest relic from his person; a particle of the turmeric paste with which he was smeared, or a drop of his spittle, was esteemed of sovereign virtue, especially by the women. The crowd danced round the post to music, and, addressing the earth, said, ‘O God, we offer this sacrifice to you; give us good crops, seasons, and health.’[3]

On the last morning the orgies, which had been scarcely interrupted during the night, were resumed, and continued till noon, when they ceased, and the assembly proceeded to consummate the sacrifice. The victim was again anointed with oil, and each person touched the anointed part, and wiped the oil on his own head. In some places the victim was then taken in procession round the village, from door to door, where some plucked hair from his head, and others begged for a drop of his spittle, with which they anointed their heads.[4] As the victim might not be bound nor make any show of resistance, the bones of his arms and, if necessary, his legs were broken; but often this precaution was rendered unnecessary by stupefying him with opium.[5] The mode of putting him to death varied in different places. One of the commonest modes seems to have been strangulation, or squeezing to death. The branch of a green tree was cleft several feet down the middle; the victim’s neck (in other places, his chest) was inserted in the cleft, which the priest, aided by his assistants, strove with all his force to close.[1] Then he wounded the victim slightly with his axe, whereupon the crowd rushed at the victim and cut the flesh from the bones, leaving the head and bowels untouched. Sometimes he was cut up alive.[2] In Chinna Kimedy he was dragged along the fields, surrounded by the crowd, who, avoiding his head and intestines, hacked the flesh from his body with their knives till he died.[3] Another very common mode of sacrifice in the same district was to fasten the victim to the proboscis of a wooden elephant, which revolved on a stout post, and, as it whirled round, the crowd cut the flesh from the victim while life remained. In some villages Major Campbell found as many as fourteen of these wooden elephants, which had been used at sacrifices.[4] In one district the victim was put to death slowly by fire. A low stage was formed, sloping on either side like a roof; upon it the victim was placed, his limbs wound round with cords to confine his struggles. Fires were then lighted and hot brands applied, to make him roll up and down the slopes of the stage as long as possible; for the more tears he shed the more abundant would be the supply of rain. Next day the body was cut to pieces.[5]

The flesh cut from the victim was instantly taken home by the persons who had been deputed by each village to bring it. To secure its rapid arrival it was sometimes forwarded by relays of men, and conveyed with postal fleetness fifty or sixty miles.[1] In each village all who stayed at home fasted rigidly until the flesh arrived. The bearer deposited it in the place of public assembly, where it was received by the priest and the heads of families. The priest divided it into two portions, one of which he offered to the Earth Goddess by burying it in a hole in the ground with his back turned, and without looking. Then each man added a little earth to bury it, and the priest poured water on the spot from a hill gourd. The other portion of flesh he divided into as many shares as there were heads of houses present. Each head of a house rolled his shred of flesh in leaves, and buried it in his favourite field, placing it in the earth behind his back without looking.[2] In some places each man carried his portion of flesh to the stream which watered his fields, and there hung it on a pole.[3] For three days thereafter no house was swept; and, in one district, strict silence was observed, no fire might be given out, no wood cut, and no strangers received. The remains of the human victim (namely, the head, bowels, and bones) were watched by strong parties the night after the sacrifice; and next morning they were burned, along with a whole sheep, on a funeral pile. The ashes were scattered over the fields, laid as paste over the houses and granaries, or mixed with the new corn to preserve it from insects.[4] Sometimes, however, the head and bones were buried, not burnt.[5] After the suppression of the human sacrifices, inferior victims were substituted in some places; for instance, in the capital of Chinna Kimedy a goat took the place of a human victim.[6]

In these Khond sacrifices the Meriahs are represented by our authorities as victims offered to propitiate the Earth Goddess. But from the treatment of the victims both before and after death it appears that the custom cannot be explained as merely a propitiatory sacrifice. A part of the flesh certainly was offered to the Earth Goddess, but the rest of the flesh was buried by each householder in his fields, and the ashes of the other parts of the body were scattered over the fields, laid as paste on the granaries, or mixed with the new corn. These latter customs imply that to the body of the Meriah there was ascribed a direct or intrinsic power of making the crops to grow, quite independent of the indirect efficacy which it might have as an offering to secure the good-will of the deity. In other words, the flesh and ashes of the victim were believed to be endowed with a magical or physical power of fertilising the land. The same intrinsic power was ascribed to the blood and tears of the Meriah, his blood causing the redness of the turmeric and his tears producing rain; for it can hardly be doubted that originally at least, the tears were supposed to produce rain, not merely to prognosticate it. Similarly the custom of pouring water on the buried flesh of the Meriah was no doubt a rain-charm. Again, intrisic supernatural power as an attribute of the Meriah appears in the sovereign virtue believed to reside in anything that came from his person, as his hair or spittle. The ascription of such power to the Meriah indicates that he was much more than a mere man sacrificed to propitiate a deity. Once more, the extreme reverence paid him points to the same conclusion. Major Campbell speaks of the Meriah as ‘being regarded as something more than mortal,’[1] and Major Macpherson says, ‘A species of reverence, which it is not easy to distinguish from adoration, is paid to him.’[2] In short, the Meriah appears to have been regarded as divine. As such, he may originally have represented the Earth deity or perhaps a deity of vegetation; though in later times he came to be regarded rather as a victim offered to a deity than as himself an incarnate deity. This later view of the Meriah as a victim rather than a god may perhaps have received undue emphasis from the European writers who have described the Khond religion. Habituated to the later idea of sacrifice as an offering made to a god for the purpose of conciliating his favour, European observers are apt to interpret all religious slaughter in this sense, and to suppose that wherever such slaughter takes place, there must necessarily be a deity to whom the slaughter is believed by the slayers to be acceptable. Thus their preconceived ideas unconsciously colour and warp their descriptions of savage rites.

The same custom of killing the representative of a god, of which strong traces appear in the Khond sacrifices, may perhaps be detected in some of the other human sacrifices described above. Thus the ashes of the slaughtered Marimo were scattered over the fields; the blood of the Brahman lad was put on the crop and field; and the blood of the Sioux girl was allowed to trickle on the seed.[1] Again, the identification of the victim with the corn, in other words, the view that he is an embodiment or spirit of the corn, is brought out in the pains which seem to be taken to secure a physical correspondence between him and the natural object which he embodies or represents. Thus the Mexicans killed young victims for the young corn and old ones for the ripe corn; the Marimos sacrifice, as ‘seed’, a short, fat man, the shortness of his stature corresponding to that of the young corn, his fatness to the condition which it is desired that the crops may attain; and the Pawnees fattened their victims probably with the same view. Again, the identification of the victim with the corn comes out in the African custom of killing him with spades and hoes, and the Mexican custom of grinding him, like corn, between two stones.

One more point in these savage customs deserves to be noted. The Pawnee chief devoured the heart of the Sioux girl, and the Marimos and Gonds ate the victim’s flesh. If, as we suppose, the victim was regarded as divine, it follows that in eating his flesh his worshippers were partaking of the body of their god. To this point we shall return later on.

The savage rites just described offer analogies to the harvest customs of Europe. Thus the fertilising virtue ascribed to the corn-spirit is shown equally in the savage custom of mixing the victim’s blood or ashes with the seed-corn and the European custom of mixing the grain from the last sheaf with the young corn in spring.[1] Again, the identification of the person with the corn appears alike in the savage custom of adapting the age and stature of the victim to the age and stature (actual or expected) of the crop; in the Scotch and Styrian rules that when the corn-spirit is conceived as the Maiden the last corn shall be cut by a young maiden, but when it is conceived as the Corn-mother it shall be cut by an old woman;[2] in the Lothringian warning given to old women to save themselves when the Old Woman is being killed, that is, when the last corn is being threshed;[3] and in the Tyrolese expectation that if the man who gives the last stroke at threshing is tall, the next year’s corn will be tall also.[4] Further, the same identification is implied in the savage custom of killing the representative of the corn-spirit with hoes or spades or by grinding him between stones, and in the European custom of pretending to kill him with the scythe or the flail. Once more the Khond custom of pouring water on the buried flesh of the victim is parallel to the European customs of pouring water on the personal representative of the corn-spirit or plunging him into a stream.[5] Both the Khond and the European customs are rain-charms.

To return now to the Lityerses story. It has been shown that in rude society human beings have been commonly killed to promote the growth of the crops. There is therefore no improbability in the supposition that they may once have been killed for a like purpose in Phrygia and Europe; and when Phrygian legend and European folk-custom, closely agreeing with each other, point to the conclusion that men were so slain, we are bound, provisionally at least, to accept the conclusion. Further, both the Lityerses story and European harvest customs agree in indicating that the person slain was slain as a representative of the corn-spirit, and this indication is in harmony with the view which savages appear to take of the victim slain to make the crops flourish. On the whole, then, we may fairly suppose that both in Phrygia and in Europe the representative of the corn-spirit was annually killed upon the harvest-field. Grounds have been already shown for believing that similarly in Europe the representative of the tree-spirit was annually slain. The proofs of these two remarkable and closely analogous customs are entirely independent of each other. Their coincidence seems to furnish fresh presumption in favour of both.

To the question, how was the representative of the corn-spirit chosen? one answer has been already given. Both the Lityerses story and European folk-custom show that passing strangers were regarded as manifestations of the corn-spirit escaping from the cut or threshed corn, and as such were seized and slain. But this is not the only answer which the evidence suggests. According to one version of the Phrygian legend the victims of Lityerses were not passing strangers but persons whom he had vanquished in a reaping contest; and though it is not said that he killed, but only that he thrashed them, we can hardly avoid supposing that in one version of the story the vanquished reapers, like the strangers in the other version, were said to have been wrapt up by Lityerses in corn-sheaves and so beheaded. The supposition is countenanced by European harvest customs. We have seen that in Europe there is sometimes a contest amongst the reapers to avoid being last, and that the person who is vanquished in this competition, that is, who cuts the last corn, is often roughly handled. It is true we have not found that a pretence is made of killing him; but on the other hand we have found that a pretence is made of killing the man who gives the last stroke at threshing, that is, who is vanquished in the threshing contest.[1] Now, since it is in the character of representative of the corn-spirit that the thresher of the last corn is slain in mimicry, and since the same representative character attaches (as we have seen) to the cutter and binder as well as to the thresher of the last corn, and since the same repugnance is evinced by harvesters to be last in any one of these labours, we may conjecture that a pretence has been commonly made of killing the reaper and binder as well as the thresher of the last corn, and that in ancient times this killing was actually carried out. This conjecture is corroborated by the common superstition that whoever cuts the last corn must die soon.[1] Sometimes it is thought that the person who binds the last sheaf on the field will die in the course of next year.[2] The reason for fixing on the reaper, binder, or thresher of the last corn as the representative of the corn-spirit may be this. The corn-spirit is supposed to lurk as long as he can in the corn, retreating before the reapers, the binders, and the threshers at their work. But when he is forcibly expelled from his ultimate refuge in the last corn cut or the last sheaf bound or the last grain threshed, he necessarily assumes some other form than that of the corn-stalks which had hitherto been his garments or body. And what form can the expelled corn-spirit assume more naturally than that of the person who stands nearest to the corn from which he (the corn-spirit) has just been expelled? But the person in question is necessarily the reaper, binder, or thresher of the last corn. He or she, therefore, is seized and treated as the corn-spirit himself.

Thus the person who was killed on the harvest-field as the representative of the corn-spirit may have been either a passing stranger or the harvester who was last at reaping, binding, or threshing. But there is a third possibility, to which ancient legend and modern folk-custom alike point. Lityerses not only put strangers to death; he was himself slain, and probably in the same way as he had slain others, namely, by being wrapt in a corn-sheaf, beheaded, and cast into the river; and it is implied that this happened to Lityerses on his own land. Similarly in modern harvest-customs the pretence of killing appears to be carried out quite as often on the person of the master (farmer or squire) as on that of strangers.[1] Now when we remember that Lityerses was said to have been the son of the King of Phrygia, and combine with this the tradition that he was put to death, apparently as a representative of the corn-spirit, we are led to conjecture that we have here another trace of the custom of annually slaying one of those divine or priestly kings who are known to have held ghostly sway in many parts of Western Asia and particularly in Phrygia. The custom appears, as we have seen,[2] to have been so far modified in places that the king’s son was slain in the king’s stead. Of the custom thus modified the story of Lityerses would therefore be a reminiscence.

Turning now to the relation of the Phrygian Lityerses to the Phrygian Attis, it may be remembered that at Pessinus – the seat of a priestly kingship – the high-priest appears to have been annually slain in the character of Attis, a god of vegetation, and that Attis was described by an ancient authority as ‘a reaped ear of corn.’[3] Thus Attis, as an embodiment of the corn-spirit, annually slain in the person of his representative, might be thought to be ultimately identical with Lityerses, the latter being simply the rustic prototype out of which the state religion of Attis was developed. It may have been so; but, on the other hand, the analogy of European folk-custom warns us that amongst the same people two distinct deities of vegetation may have their separate personal representatives, both of whom are slain in the character of gods at different times of the year. For in Europe, as we have seen, it appears that one man was commonly slain in the character of the tree-spirit in spring and another in the character of the corn-spirit in autumn. It may have been so in Phrygia also. Attis was especially a tree-god, and his connection with corn may have been only such an extension of the power of a tree-spirit as is indicated in customs like the Harvest-May.[4] Again, the representative of Attis appears to have been slain in spring; whereas Lityerses must have been slain in summer or autumn, according to the time of the harvest in Phyrgia.[1] On the whole, then, while we are not justified in regarding Lityerses as the prototype of Attis, the two may be regarded as parallel products of the same religious idea, and may have stood to each other as in Europe the Old Man of harvest stands to the Wild Man, the Leaf Man, etc., of spring. Both were spirits or deities of vegetation, and the personal representatives of both were annually slain. But whereas the Attis worship became elevated into the dignity of a state religion and spread to Italy, the rites of Lityerses seem never to have passed the limits of their native Phrygia, and always retained their character of rustic ceremonies performed by peasants on the harvest-field. At most a few villages may have clubbed together, as amongst the Khonds, to procure a human victim to be slain as representative of the corn-spirit for their common benefit. Such victims may have been drawn from the families of priestly kings or kinglets, which would account for the legendary character of Lityerses as the son of a Phrygian king. When villages did not so club together, each village or farm may have procured its own representative of the corn-spirit by dooming to death either a passing stranger or the harvester who cut, bound, or threshed the last sheaf. It is hardly necessary to add that in Phrygia, as in Europe, the old barbarous custom of killing a man on the harvest-field or the threshing-floor had doubtless passed into a mere pretence long before the classical era, and was probably regarded by the reapers and threshers themselves as no more than a rough jest which the licence of a harvest-home permitted them to play off on a passing stranger, a comrade, or even on their master himself.

I have dwelt on the Lityerses song at length because it affords so many points of comparison with European and savage folk-custom. The other harvest songs of Western Asia and Egypt, to which attention has been called above,[1] may now be dismissed much more briefly. The similarity of the Bithynian Bormus[2] to the Phrygian Lityerses helps to bear out the interpretation which has been given of the latter. Bormus, whose death or rather disappearance was annually mourned by the reapers in a plaintive song, was, like Lityerses, a king’s son or at least the son of a wealthy and distinguished man. The reapers whom he watched were at work on his own fields, and he disappeared in going to fetch water for them; according to one version of the story he was carried off by the (water) nymphs.[3] Viewed in the light of the Lityerses story and of European folk-custom, this disappearance of Bormus is probably a reminiscence of the custom of binding the farmer himself in a corn-sheaf and throwing him into the water. The mournful strain which the reapers sang was probably a lamentation over the death of the corn-spirit, slain either in the cut corn or in the person of a human representative; and the call which they addressed to him may have been a prayer that the corn-spirit might return in fresh vigour next year.

The Phoenician Linus song was sung at the vintage, at least in the west of Asia Minor, as we learn from Homer; and this, combined with the legend of Syleus, suggests that in ancient times passing strangers were handled by vintagers and vine-diggers in much the same way as they are said to have been handled by the reaper Lityerses. The Lydian Syleus, so ran the legend, compelled passers-by to dig for him in his vineyard, till Hercules came and killed him and dug up his vines by the roots.[4] This seems to be the outline of a legend like that of Lityerses; but neither ancient writers nor modern folk-custom enable us to fill in the details.[5] But, further, the Linus song was probably sung also by Phoenician reapers, for Herodotus compares it to the Maneros song, which, as we have seen, was a lament raised by Egyptian reapers over the cut corn. Further, Linus was identified with Adonis, and Adonis has some claims to be regarded as especially a corn-deity.[1] Thus the Linus lament, as sung at harvest, would be identical with the Adonis lament; each would be the lamentation raised by reapers over the dead corn-spirit. But whereas Adonis, like Attis, grew into a stately figure of mythology, adored and mourned in splendid cities far beyond the limits of his Phoenician home, Linus appears to have remained a simple ditty sung by reapers and vintagers among the corn-sheaves and the vines. The analogy of Lityerses and of folk-custom, both European and savage, suggests that in Phoenicia the slain corn-spirit – the dead Adonis – may formerly have been represented by a human victim; and this suggestion is possibly supported by the Harrân legend that Thammuz (Adonis) was slain by his cruel lord, who ground his bones in a mill and scattered them to the wind.[2] For in Mexico, as we have seen, the human victim at harvest was crushed between two stones; and both in India and Africa the ashes of the victim were scattered over the fields.[3] But the Harrân legend may be only a mythical way of expressing the grinding of corn in the mill and the scattering of the seed. It seems worth suggesting that the mock king who was annually killed at the Babylonian festival of the Sacaea on the 16th of the month Lous may have represented Thammuz himself. For the historian Berosus, who records the festival and its date, probably used the Macedonian calendar, since he dedicated his history to Antiochus Soter; and in his day the Macedonian month Lous appears to have corresponded to the Babylonian month Thammuz.[4] If this conjecture is right, the view that the mock king at the Sacaea was slain in the character of a god would be established.

There is a good deal more evidence that in Egypt the slain corn-spirit – the dead Osiris – was represented by a human victim, whom the reapers slew on the harvest-field, mourning his death in a dirge, to which the Greeks, through a verbal misunderstanding, gave the name of Maneros.[1] For the legend of Busiris seems to preserve a reminiscence of human sacrifices once offered by the Egyptians in connection with the worship of Osiris. Busiris was said to have been an Egyptian king who sacrificed all strangers on the altar of Zeus. The origin of the custom was traced to a barrenness which afflicted the land of Egypt for nine years. A Cyprian seer informed Busiris that the barrenness would cease if a man were annually sacrificed to Zeus. So Busiris instituted the sacrifice. But when Hercules came to Egypt, and was being dragged to the altar to be sacrificed, he burst his bonds and slew Busiris and his son.[2] Here then is a legend that in Egypt a human victim was annually sacrificed to prevent the failure of the crops, and a belief is implied that an omission of the sacrifice would have entailed a recurrence of that infertility which it was the object of the sacrifice to prevent. So the Pawnees, as we have seen, believed that an omission of the human sacrifice at planting would have been followed by a total failure of their crops. The name Busiris was in reality the name of a city, pe-Asar, ‘the house of Osiris’.[1] the city being so called because it contained the grave of Osiris. The human sacrifices were said to have been offered at his grave, and the victims were red-haired men, whose ashes were scattered abroad by means of winnowing-fans.[2] In the light of the foregoing discussion, this Egyptian tradition admits of a consistent and fairly probable explanation. Osiris, the corn-spirit, was annually represented at harvest by a stranger, whose red hair made him a suitable representative of the ripe corn. This man, in his representative character, was slain on the harvest-field, and mourned by the reapers, who prayed at the same time that the corn-spirit might revive and return (mââ-ne-rha, Maneros) with renewed vigour in the following year. Finally, the victim, or some part of him, was burned, and the ashes scattered by winnowing-fans over the fields to fertilise them. Here the choice of the representative on the ground of his resemblance to the corn which he was to represent agrees with the Mexican and African customs already described.[3] Similarly the Romans sacrificed red-haired puppies in spring, in the belief that the crops would thus grow ripe and ruddy;[4] and to this day in sowing wheat a Bavarian sower will sometimes wear a golden ring, that the corn may grow yellow.[5] Again, the scattering of the Egyptian victim’s ashes is identical with the Marimo and Khond custom.[6] His identification with the corn comes out again in the fact that his ashes were winnowed; just as in Vendée a pretence is made of threshing and winnowing the farmer’s wife, regarded as an embodiment of the corn-spirit; or as in Mexico the victim was ground between stones; or as in Africa he was slain with spades and hoes.[1] The story that the fragments of Osiris’s body were scattered up and down the land, and buried by Isis on the spots where they lay,[2] may very well be a reminiscence of a custom, like that observed by the Khonds, of dividing the human victim in pieces and burying the pieces, often at intervals of many miles from each other, in the fields. However, it is possible that the story of the dismemberment of Osiris, like the similar story told of Thammuz, may have been simply a mythical expression for the scattering of the seed. Once more, the story that the body of Osiris enclosed in a coffer was thrown by Typhon into the Nile perhaps points to a custom of throwing the body of the victim, or at least a portion of it, into the Nile as a rain-charm, or rather to make the Nile rise. For a similar purpose Phrygian reapers seem to have thrown the headless bodies of their victims, wrapt in corn-sheaves, into a river, and the Khonds poured water on the buried flesh of the human victim. Probably when Osiris ceased to be represented by a human victim, an effigy of him was annually thrown into the Nile, just as the effigy of his Syrian counterpart, Adonis, used to be thrown into the sea at Alexandria. Or water may have been simply poured over it, as on the monument already mentioned a priest is seen pouring water over the body of Osiris, from which corn stalks are sprouting. The accompanying inscription, ‘This is Osiris of the mysteries, who springs from the returning waters,’ bears out the view that at the mysteries of Osiris a water-charm or irrigation-charm was regularly performed by pouring water on his effigy, or by throwing it into the Nile.

It may be objected that the red-haired victims were slain as representatives not of Osiris, but of his enemy Typhon; for the victims were called Typhonian, and red was the colour of Typhon, black the colour of Osiris.[1] The answer to this objection must be reserved for the present. Meantime it may be pointed out that if Osiris is often represented on the monuments as black, he is still more commonly depicted as green,[2] appropriately enough for a corn-god, who may be conceived as black while the seed is under ground, but as green after it has sprouted. So the Greeks recognised both a green and a black Demeter,[3] and sacrificed to the green Demeter in spring with mirth and gladness.[4]

Thus, if I am right, the key to the mysteries of Osiris is furnished by the melancholy cry of the Egyptian reapers, which down to Roman times could be heard year after year sounding across the fields, announcing the death of the corn-spirit, the rustic prototype of Osiris. Similar cries, as we have seen, were also heard on all the harvest-fields of Western Asia. By the ancients they are spoken of as songs; but to judge from the analysis of the names Linus and Maneros, they probably consisted only of a few words uttered in a prolonged musical note which could be heard for a great distance. Such sonorous and long-drawn cries, raised by a number of strong voices in concert, must have had a striking effect, and could hardly fail to arrest the attention of any traveller who happened to be within hearing. The sounds, repeated again and again, could probably be distinguished with tolerable ease even at a distance; but to a Greek traveller in Asia or Egypt the foreign words would commonly convey no meaning, and he might take them, not unnaturally, for the name of some one (Maneros, Linos, Lityerses, Bormus), upon whom the reapers were calling. And if his journey led him through more countries than one, as Bithynia and Phrygia, or Phoenicia and Egypt, while the corn was being reaped, he would have an opportunity of comparing the various harvest cries of the different peoples. Thus we can readily account for the fact that these harvest cries were so often noted and compared with each other by the Greeks. Whereas, if they had been regular songs, they could not have been heard at such distances, and therefore could not have attracted the attention of so many travellers; and, moreover, even if the traveller were within hearing of them, he could not so easily have picked out the words. To this day Devonshire reapers utter cries of the same sort, and perform on the field a ceremony exactly analogous to that in which, if I am not mistaken, the rites of Osiris originated. The cry and the ceremony are thus described by an observer who wrote in the first half of this century: ‘After the wheat is all cut, on most farms in the north of Devon, the harvest people have a custom of “crying the neck.” I believe that this practice is seldom omitted on any large farm in that part of the country. It is done in this way. An old man, or some one else well acquainted with the ceremonies used on the occasion (when the labourers are reaping the last field of wheat), goes round to the shocks and sheaves, and picks out a little bundle of all the best ears he can find; this bundle he ties up very neat and trim, and plats and arranges the straws very tastefully. This is called “the neck” of wheat, or wheaten-ears. After the field is cut out, and the pitcher once more circulated, the reapers, binders, and the women, stand round in a circle. The person with “the neck” stands in the centre, grasping it with both his hands. He first stoops and holds it near the ground, and all the men forming the ring take off their hats, stooping and holding them with both hands towards the ground. They then all begin at once in a very prolonged and harmonious tone to cry “the neck!” at the same time slowly raising themselves upright, and elevating their arms and hats above their heads; the person with “the neck” also raising it on high. This is done three times. They then change their cry to “wee yen!” – “way yen!” – which they sound in the same prolonged and slow manner as before, with singular harmony and effect three times. This last cry is accompanied by the same movements of the body and arms as in crying “the neck” … After having thus repeated “the neck” three times, and “wee yen,” or “way yen,” as often, they all burst out into a kind of loud and joyous laugh flinging up their hats and caps into the air, capering about and perhaps kissing the girls. One of them then gets “the neck” and runs as hard as he can down to the farmhouse, where the dairymaid or one of the young female domestics stands at the door prepared with a pail of water. If he who holds “the neck” can manage to get into the house, in any way unseen, or openly, by any other way than the door at which the girl stands with the pail of water, then he may lawfully kiss her; but, if otherwise, he is regularly soused with the contents of the bucket. On a fine still autumn evening, the “crying of the neck” has a wonderful effect at a distance, far finer than that of the Turkish muezzin, which Lord Byron eulogises so much, and which he says is preferable to all the bells in Christendom. I have once or twice heard upwards of twenty men cry it, and sometimes joined by an equal number of female voices. About three years back, on some high grounds, where our people were harvesting, I heard six or seven “necks” cried in one night, although I know that some of them were four miles off. They are heard through the quiet evening air, at a considerable distance sometimes.’[1] Again, Mrs Bray tells how, travelling in Devonshire, ‘she saw a party of reapers standing in a circle on a rising ground, holding their sickles aloft. One in the middle held up some ears of corn tied together with flowers, and the party shouted three times (what she writes as) “Arnack, arnack, arnack, we haven, we haven, we haven.” They went home, accompanied by women and children carrying boughs of flowers, shouting and singing. The man-servant who attended Mrs Bray, said, “it was only the people making their games, as they always did, to the spirit of harvest.”’[2] Here, as Miss Burne remarks, ‘“arnack, we haven!” is obviously in the Devon dialect, “a neck (or nack)! we have un!”’ ‘The neck’ is generally hung up in the farmhouse, where it sometimes remains for two or three years.[1] A similar custom is still observed in some parts of Cornwall, as I am informed by my friend Professor J. H. Middleton. ‘The last sheaf is decked with ribbons. Two strong-voiced men are chosen and placed (one with the sheaf) on opposite sides of a valley. One shouts, “I’ve gotten it.” The other shouts, “What hast gotten?” The first answers, “I’se gotten the neck.”’

In these Devonshire and Cornish customs a particular bunch of ears, generally the last left standing,[2] is conceived as the neck of the corn-spirit, who is consequently beheaded when the bunch is cut down. Similarly in Shropshire the name ‘neck,’ or ‘the gander’s neck,’ used to be commonly given to the last handful of ears left standing in the middle of the field, when all the rest of the corn was cut. It was plaited together, and the reapers, standing ten or twenty paces off, threw their sickles at it. Whoever cut it through was said to have cut off the gander’s neck. The ‘neck’ was taken to the farmer’s wife, who was supposed to keep it in the house ‘for good luck’ till the next harvest came round.[3] Near Trèves, the man who reaps the last standing corn ‘cuts the goat’s neck off.’[4] At Faslane, on the Gareloch (Dumbartonshire), the last handful of standing corn was sometimes called the ‘head.’[5] At Aurich, in East Friesland, the man who reaps the last corn ‘cuts the hare’s tail off.’[6] In mowing down the last corner of a field French reapers sometimes call out, ‘We have the cat by the tail.’[7] In Bresse (Bourgogne) the last sheaf represented the fox. Beside it a score of ears were left standing to form the tail, and each reaper, going back some paces, threw his sickle at it. He who succeeded in severing it ‘cut off the fox’s tail,’ and a cry of ‘You cou cou!’ was raised in his honour.[1] These examples leave no room to doubt the meaning of the Devonshire and Cornish expression ‘the neck,’ as applied to the last sheaf. The corn-spirit is conceived in human or animal form, and the last standing corn is part of its body – its neck, its head, or its tail. Sometimes, as we have seen, it is regarded as the navel-string.[2] Lastly, the Devonshire custom of drenching with water the person who brings in ‘the neck’ is a rain-charm, such as we have had many examples of. Its parallel in the mysteries of Osiris was the custom of pouring water on the image of Osiris or on the person who represented him.

In Germany cries of Waul! or Wol! or Wôld! are sometimes raised by the reapers at cutting the last corn. Thus in some places the last patch of standing corn was called the Waul-rye; a stick decked with flowers was inserted in it, and the ears were fastened to the stick. Then all the reapers took off their hats and cried thrice, Waul! Waul! Waul! Sometimes they accompany the cry by clashing with their whetstones on their scythes.[3]

The Corn-Spirit as an Animal

In some of the examples cited above to establish the meaning of the term ‘neck’ as applied to the last sheaf, the corn-spirit appears in animal form as a gander, a goat, a hare, a cat, and a fox. This introduces us to a new aspect of the corn-spirit, which we must now examine. By doing so we shall not only have fresh examples of killing the god, but may hope also to clear up some points which remain obscure in the myths and worship of Attis, Adonis, Osiris, Dionysus, Demeter, and Virbius.

Amongst the many animals whose forms the corn-spirit is supposed to take are the wolf, dog, hare, cock, goose, cat, goat, cow (ox, bull), pig, and horse. In one or other of these forms the corn-spirit is believed to be present in the corn, and to be caught or killed in the last sheaf. As the corn is being cut the animal flees before the reapers, and if a reaper is taken ill on the field, he is supposed to have stumbled unwittingly on the corn-spirit, who has thus punished the profane intruder. It is said ‘The Rye-wolf has got hold of him,’ ‘the Harvest- goat has given him a push.’ The person who cuts the last corn or binds the last sheaf gets the name of the animal, as the Rye-Wolf, the Rye-sow, the Oats-goat, etc., and retains the name sometimes for a year. Also the animal is frequently represented by a puppet made out of the last sheaf or of wood, flowers, etc., which is carried home amid rejoicings on the last harvest waggon. Even where the last sheaf is not made up in animal shape, it is often called the Rye-wolf, the Hare, Goat, and so on. Generally each kind of crop is supposed to have its special animal, which is caught in the last sheaf, and called the Rye-wolf, the Barley-wolf, the Oats-wolf, the Pea- wolf, or the Potato-wolf, according to the crop; but sometimes the figure of the animal is only made up once for all at getting in the last crop of the whole harvest. Sometimes the animal is believed to be killed by the last stroke of the sickle or scythe. But oftener it is thought to live so long as there is corn still unthreshed, and to be caught in the last sheaf threshed. Hence the man who gives the last stroke with the flail is told that he has got the Corn-sow, the Threshing-dog, etc. When the threshing is finished, a puppet is made in the form of the animal, and this is carried by the thresher of the last sheaf to a neighbouring farm, where the threshing is still going on. This again shows that the corn-spirit is believed to live wherever the corn is still being threshed. Sometimes the thresher of the last sheaf himself represents the animal; and if the people of the next farm, who are still threshing, catch him, they treat him like the animal he represents, by shutting him up in the pig-sty, calling him with the cries commonly addressed to pigs, and so forth.[1]

These general statements will now be illustrated by examples. We begin with the corn-spirit conceived as a wolf or a dog. This conception is common in France, Germany, and Slavonic countries. Thus, when the wind sets the corn in wave-like motion, the peasants often say, ‘The Wolf is going over, or through, the corn,’ ‘the Rye-wolf is rushing over the field,’ ‘the Wolf is in the corn,’ ‘the mad Dog is in the corn,’ ‘the big Dog is there.’[1] When children wish to go into the corn-fields to pluck ears or gather the blue corn-flowers, they are warned not to do so, for ‘the big Dog sits in the corn,’ or ‘the Wolf sits in the corn, and will tear you in pieces,’ ‘the Wolf will eat you.’ The wolf against whom the children are warned is not a common wolf, for he is often spoken of as the Corn-wolf, Rye-wolf, etc.; thus they say, ‘The Rye-wolf will come and eat you up, children,’ ‘the Rye-wolf will carry you off,’ and so forth.[2] Still he has all the outward appearance of a wolf. For in the neighbourhood of Feilenhof (East Prussia), when a wolf was seen running through a field, the peasants used to watch whether he carried his tail in the air or dragged it on the ground. If he dragged it on the ground, they went after him, and thanked him for bringing them a blessing, and even set tit-bits before him. But if he carried his tail high, they cursed him and tried to kill him. Here the wolf is the corn-spirit, whose fertilising power is in his tail.[3]

Both dog and wolf appear as embodiments of the corn-spirit in harvest-customs. Thus in some parts of Silesia the person who binds the last sheaf is called the Wheat-dog or the Peas-pug.[4] But it is in the harvest-customs of the north-east of France that the idea of the Corn-dog comes out most clearly. Thus when a harvester, through sickness, weariness, or laziness, cannot or will not keep up with the reaper in front of him, they say, ‘The White Dog passed near him,’ ‘he has the White Bitch,’ or ‘the White Bitch has bitten him.’[1] In the Vosges the Harvest-May is called the ‘Dog of the harvest.’[2] About Lons-le-Saulnier, in the Jura, the last sheaf is called the Bitch. In the neighbourhood of Verdun the regular expression for finishing the reaping is, ‘They are going to kill the Dog;’ and at Epinal they say, according to the crop, ‘We will kill the Wheat-dog, or the Rye-dog, or the Potato-dog.’[3] In Lorraine it is said of the man who cuts the last corn, ‘He is killing the Dog of the harvest.’[4] At Dux, in the Tyrol, the man who gives the last stroke at threshing is said to ‘strike down the Dog;’[5] and at Ahnebergen, near Stade, he is called, according to the crop, Corn-pug, Rye-pug, Wheat-pug.[6]

So with the wolf. In Germany it is said that ‘The Wolf sits in the last sheaf.’[7] In some places they call out to the reaper, ‘Beware of the Wolf;’ or they say, ‘He is chasing the Wolf out of the corn.’[8] The last bunch of standing corn is called the Wolf, and the man who cuts it ‘has the Wolf.’ The last sheaf is also called the Wolf; and of the woman who binds it they say, ‘The Wolf is biting her,’ ‘she has the Wplf,’ ‘she must fetch the Wolf (out of the corn).[9] Moreover, she is herself called Wolf and has to bear the name for a whole year; sometimes, according to the crop, she is called the Rye-wolf or the Potato-wolf. [10] In the island of Rügen they call out to the woman who binds the last sheaf, ‘You’re Wolf;’ and when she comes home she bites the lady of the house and the stewardess, for which she receives a large piece of meat. The same woman may be Rye-wolf, Wheat- wolf, and Oats-wolf, if she happens to bind the last sheaf of rye, wheat, and oats.[1] At Buir, in the district of Cologne, it was formerly the custom to give to the last sheaf the shape of a wolf. It was kept in the barn till all the corn was threshed. Then it was brought to the farmer, and he had to sprinkle it with beer or brandy.[2] In many places the sheaf called the Wolf is made up in human form and dressed in clothes. This indicates a confusion between the conceptions of the corn-spirit as theriomorphic (in animal form) and as anthropomorphic (in human form).[3] Generally the Wolf is brought home on the last waggon, with joyful cries.[4]

Again, the Wolf is supposed to hide himself amongst the cut corn in the granary, until he is driven out of the last bundle by the strokes of the flail. Hence at Wanzleben, near Magdeburg, after the threshing the peasants go in procession, leading by a chain a man, who is enveloped in the threshed out straw and is called the Wolf.[5] He represents the corn-spirit who has been caught escaping from the threshed corn. In Trier it is believed that the Corn-wolf is killed at threshing. The men thresh the last sheaf till it is reduced to chopped straw. In this way they think that the Corn-wolf who was lurking in the last sheaf, has been certainly killed.[6]

In France also the Corn-wolf appears at harvest. Thus they call out to the reaper of the last corn, ‘You will catch the Wolf.’ Near Chambéry they form a ring round the last standing corn, and cry, ‘The Wolf is in there.’ In Finisterre, when the reaping draws near an end, the harvesters cry, ‘There is the Wolf; we will catch him.’ Each takes a swath to reap, and he who finishes first calls out, ‘I’ve caught the Wolf.’[7] In Guyenne, when the last corn has been reaped, they lead a wether all round the field. It is called ‘the Wolf of the field.’ Its horns are decked with a wreath of flowers and corn-ears, and its neck and body are also encircled with garlands and ribbons. All the reapers march, singing, behind it. Then it is killed on the field. In this part of France the last sheaf is called the coujoulage, which, in the patois, means a whether. Hence the killing of the wether represents the death of the corn-spirit, considered as present in the last sheaf; but two different conceptions of the corn-spirit – as a wolf and as a wether – are mixed up together.[1]

Sometimes it appears to be thought that the Wolf, caught in the last corn, lives during the winter in the farmhouse, ready to renew his activity as corn-spirit in the spring. Hence at midwinter, when the lengthening days begin to herald the approach of spring, the Wolf makes his appearance once more. In Poland a man, with a wolf’s skin thrown over his head, is led about at Christmas; or a stuffed wolf is carried about by persons who collect money.[2] There are facts which point to an old custom of leading about a man enveloped in leaves and called the Wolf, while his conductors collected money.[3]

Another form which the corn-spirit often assumes is that of a cock. In Austria children are warned against straying in the corn-fields, because the Corn-cock sits there, and will peck their eyes out.[4] In North Germany they say that ‘the Cock sits in the last sheaf;’ and at cutting the last corn the reapers cry, ‘Now we will chase out the Cock.’ When it is cut they say, ‘We have caught the Cock.’ Then a cock is made of flowers, fastened on a pole, and carried home by the reapers, singing as they go.[5] At Braller, in Transylvania, when the reapers come to the last patch of corn, they cry, ‘Here we shall catch the Cock.’[6] At Fürstenwalde, when the last sheaf is about to be bound, the master lets loose a cock, which he has brought in a basket, and lets it run over the field. All the harvesters chase it till they catch it. Elsewhere the harvesters all try to seize the last corn cut; he who succeeds in grasping it must crow, and is called Cock.[1] The last sheaf is called Cock, Cock-sheaf, Harvest-cock, Harvest-hen, Autumn-hen. A distinction is made between a Wheat-cock, Bean-cock, etc., according to the crop.[2] At Wünschensuhl, in Thüringen, the last sheaf is made into the shape of a cock, and called Harvest-cock.[3] A figure of a cock, made of wood, pasteboard, or ears of corn, is borne in front of the harvest-waggon, especially in Westphalia, where the cock carries in his beak fruits of the earth of all kinds. Sometimes the image of the cock is fastened to the top of a May-tree on the last harvest-waggon. Elsewhere a live cock, or a figure of one, is attached to a harvest-crown and carried on a pole. In Galicia and elsewhere this live cock is fastened to the garland of corn-ears or flowers, which the leader of the women- reapers carries on her head as she marches in front of the harvest procession.[4] In Silesia a live cock is presented to the master on a plate. The harvest supper is called Harvest-cock, Stubble-cock, etc., and a chief dish at it, at least in some places, is a cock.[5] If a waggoner upsets a harvest-waggon, it is said that ‘he has spilt the Harvest-cock,’ and he loses the cock – that is, the harvest supper.[6] The harvest-waggon, with the figure of the cock on it, is driven round the farmhouse before it is taken to the barn. Then the cock is nailed over, or at the side of the house door, or on the gable, and remains there till next harvest.[1] In East Friesland the person who gives the last stroke at threshing is called the Clucking-hen, and grain is strewed before him as if he were a hen.[2]

Again, the corn-spirit is killed in the form of a cock. In parts of Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Picardy, the reapers place a live cock in the corn which is to be cut last, and chase it over the field, or bury it up to the neck in the ground; afterwards they strike off its head with a sickle or scythe.[3] In many parts of Westphalia, when the harvesters bring the wooden cock to the farmer, he gives them a live cock, which they kill with whips or sticks, or behead with an old sword, or throw it into the barn to the girls, or give it to the mistress to cook. If the Harvest-cock has not been split – that is, if no waggon has been upset – the harvesters have the right of killing the farmyard cock by throwing stones at it or beheading it. Where this custom has fallen into disuse, it is still common for the farmer’s wife to make cockie-leekie for the harvesters, and to show them the head of the cock which has been killed for the soup.[4] In the neighbourhood of Klausenburg, Transylvania, a cock is buried on the harvest-field in the earth, so that only its head appears. A young man then takes a scythe and cuts off the cock’s head at a single stroke. If he fails to do this, he is called the Red Cock for a whole year, and people fear that next year’s crop will be bad.[5] In the neighbourhood of Udvarhely, Transylvania, a live cock is bound up in the last sheaf and killed with a spit. It is then skinned. The flesh is thrown away, but the skin and feathers are kept till next year; and in spring the grain from the last sheaf is mixed with the feathers of the cock and scattered on the field which is to be tilled.[6] Nothing could set in a clearer light the identification of the cock with the spirit of the corn. By being tied up in the last sheaf and killed, the cock is identified with the corn, and its death with the cutting of the corn. By keeping its feathers till spring, then mixing them with the seed-corn taken from the very sheaf in which the bird had been bound, and scattering the feathers together with the seed over the field, the identity of the bird with the corn is again emphasised, and its quickening and fertilising power, as the corn-spirit, is intimated in the plainest manner. Thus the corn-spirit, in the form of a cock, is killed at harvest, but rises to fresh life and activity in spring. Again, the equivalence of the cock to the corn is expressed, hardly less plainly, in the custom of burying the bird in the ground, and cutting off its head (like the ears of corn) with the scythe.

Another common embodiment of the corn-spirit is the hare.[1] In some parts of Ayrshire the cutting of the last corn is called ‘cutting the Hare;’[2] and in Germany a name for the last sheaf is the Hare.[3] In East Prussia they say that the Hare sits in the last patch of standing corn, and must be chased out by the last reaper. The reapers hurry with their work, each being anxious not to have ‘to chase out the Hare;’ for the man who does so, that is, who cuts the last corn, is much laughed at.[4] At Birk in Transylvania, when the reapers come to the last patch, they cry out, ‘We have the Hare.’[5] At Aurich, as we have seen,[6] an expression for cutting the last corn is ‘to cut off the Hare’s tail.’ ‘He is killing the Hare’ is commonly said of the man who cuts the last corn in Germany, Sweden, Holland, France, and Italy.[7] In Norway the man who is thus said to ‘kill the Hare’ must give ‘hare’s blood,’ in the form of brandy, to his fellows to drink.[8]

Again, the corn-spirit sometimes takes the form of a cat.[1] Near Kiel children are warned not to go into the corn-fields because ‘the Cat sits there.’ In the Eisenach Oberland they are told ‘the Corn-cat will come and fetch you,’ ‘the Corn-cat goes in the corn.’ In some parts of Silesia at mowing the last corn they say, ‘the Cat is caught;’ and at threshing, the man who gives the last stroke is called the Cat. In the neighbourhood of Lyons the last sheaf and the harvest supper are both called the Cat. About Vesoul when they cut the last corn they say, ‘We have the Cat by the tail.’ At Briançon, in Dauphiné, at the beginning of reaping, a cat is decked out with ribbons, flowers, and ears of corn. It is called the Cat of the ball-skin (le chat de peau de balle). If a reaper is wounded at his work, they make the cat lick the wound. At the close of the reaping the cat is again decked out with ribbons and ears of corn; then there is dancing and merriment. When the dance is over, the cat is solemnly stripped of its ornaments by the girls. At Grüneberg in Silesia the reaper who cuts the last corn is called the Tomcat. He is enveloped in rye-stalks and green withes, and is furnished with a long plaited tail. Sometimes as a companion he has a man similarly dressed, who is called the (female) Cat. Their duty is to run after people whom they see and beat them with a long stick. Near Amiens the expression for finishing the harvest is, ‘They are going to kill the Cat;’ and when the last corn is cut a cat is killed in the farmyard. At threshing, in some parts of France, a live cat is placed under the last bundle of corn to be threshed, and is struck dead with the flails. Then on Sunday it is roasted and eaten as a holiday dish.

Further, the corn-spirit often appears in the form of a goat. In the province of Prussia, when the corn bends before the wind, they say, ‘The Goats are chasing each other,’ ‘the wind is driving the Goats through the corn,’ ‘the Goats are browsing there,’ and they expect a very good harvest. Again they say, ‘the Oats-goat is sitting in the oats- field,’ ‘the Corn-goat is sitting in the rye-field.’[2] Children are warned not to go into the corn-fields to pluck the blue corn-flowers, or amongst the beans to pluck pods, because the Rye-goat, the Corn-goat, the Oats-goat, or the Bean-goat is sitting or lying there, and will carry them away or kill them.[1] When a harvester is taken sick or lags behind his fellows at their work, they call out, ‘The Harvest goat has pushed him,’ ‘he has been pushed by the Corn-goat.’[2] In the neighbourhood of Braunsberg (East Prussia) at binding the oats every harvester makes haste ‘lest the Corn-goat push him.’ At Oefoten in Norway each harvester has his allotted patch to reap. When a harvester in the middle has not finished reaping his piece after his neighbours have finished theirs, they say of him, ‘He remains on the island.’ And if the laggard is a man, they imitate the cry with which they call a he-goat; if a woman, the cry with which they call a she-goat.[3] Near Straubing in Lower Bavaria, it is said of the man who cuts the last corn that ‘he has the Corn-goat or the Wheat-goat, or the Oats-goat,’ according to the crop. Moreover, two horns are set up on the last heap of corn, and it is called ‘the horned Goat.’ At Kreutzburg, East Prussia, they call out to the woman who is binding the last sheaf, ‘The Goat is sitting in the sheaf.’[4] At Gablingen in Swabia, when the last field of oats upon a farm is being reaped, the reapers carve a goat out of wood. Ears of oats are inserted in its nostrils and mouth, and it is adorned with garlands of flowers. It is set upon the field and called the Oats-goat. When the reaping approaches an end, each reaper hastens to finish his piece first; he who is the last to finish gets the Oats-goat.[5] Again, the last sheaf is itself called the Goat. Thus, in the valley of the Wiesent, Bavaria, the last sheaf bound on the field is called the Goat, and they have a proverb, ‘The field must bear a goat.’[6] At Spach-brücken in Hesse, the last handful of corn which is cut is called the Goat, and the man who cuts it is much ridiculed.[1] Sometimes the last sheaf is made up in the form of a goat,[2] and they say, ‘The Goat is sitting in it.’ Again, the person who cuts or binds the last sheaf is called the Goat. Thus, in parts of Mecklenburg they call out to the woman who binds the last sheaf, ‘You are the Harvest-goat.’ In the neighbourhood of Uelzen in Hanover, the harvest festival begins with ‘the bringing of the Harvest-goat;’ that is, the woman who bound the last sheaf is wrapt in straw, crowned with a harvest-wreath, and brought in a wheelbarrow to the village, where a round dance takes place. About Lüneburg, also, the woman who binds the last corn is decked with a crown of corn-ears and is called the Corn-goat.[3] In the Canton St Gall, Switzerland, the person who cuts the last handful of corn on the field, or drives the last harvest-waggon to the barn, is called the Corn-goat or the Rye-goat, or simply the Goat.[4] In the Canton Thurgau he is called Corn-goat; like a goat he has a bell hung round his neck, is led in triumph, and drenched with liquor. In parts of Styria, also, the man who cuts the last corn is called Corn-goat, Oats-goat, etc. As a rule, the man who thus gets the name of Corn-goat has to bear it a whole year till the next harvest.[5]

According to one view, the corn-spirit, who has been caught in the form of a goat or otherwise, lives in the farmhouse or barn over winter. Thus, each farm has its own embodiment of the corn-spirit. But, according to another view, the corn-spirit is the genius or deity, not of the corn of one farm only, but of all the corn. Hence when the corn on one farm is all cut, he flees to another where there is still corn left standing. This idea is brought out in a harvest-custom which was formerly observed in Skye. The farmer who first finished reaping sent a man or woman with a sheaf to a neighbouring farmer who had not finished; the latter in his turn, when he had finished, sent on the sheaf to his neighbour who was still reaping; and so the sheaf made the round of the farms till all the corn was cut. The sheaf was called the goabbir bhacagh, that is, the Cripple Goat.[1] The corn-spirit was probably thus represented as lame because he had been crippled by the cutting of the corn. We have seen that sometimes the old woman who brings home the last sheaf must limp on one foot.[2] In the Böhmer Wald mountains, between Bohemia and Bavaria, when two peasants are driving home their corn together, they race against each other to see who shall get home first. The village boys mark the loser in the race, and at night they come and erect on the roof of his house the Oats-goat, which is a colossal figure of a goat made of straw.[3]

But sometimes the corn-spirit, in the form of a goat, is believed to be slain on the harvest-field by the sickle or scythe. Thus, in the neighbourhood of Bernkastel, on the Moselle, the reapers determine by lot the order in which they shall follow each other. The first is called the fore-reaper, the last the tail-bearer. If a reaper overtakes the man in front he reaps past him, bending round so as to leave the slower reaper in a patch by himself. This patch is called the Goat; and the man for whom ‘the Goat is cut’ in this way, is laughed and jeered at by his fellows for the rest of the day. When the tail-bearer cuts the last ears of corn, it is said ‘He is cutting the Goat’s neck off.’[4] In the neighbourhood of Grenoble, before the end of the reaping, a live goat is adorned with flowers and ribbons and allowed to run about the field. The reapers chase it and try to catch it. When it is caught, the farmer’s wife holds it fast while the farmer cuts off its head. The goat’s flesh serves to furnish the harvest supper. A piece of the flesh is pickled and kept till the next harvest, when another goat is killed. Then all the harvesters eat of the flesh. On the same day the skin of the goat is made into a cloak, which the farmer, who works with his men, must always wear at harvest-time if rain or bad weather sets in. But if a reaper gets pains in his back, the farmer gives him the goat-skin to wear.[1] The reason for this seems to be that the pains in the back, being inflicted by the corn-spirit, can also be healed by it. Similarly we saw that elsewhere, when a reaper is wounded at reaping, a cat, as the representative of the corn-spirit, is made to lick the wound.[2] Esthonian reapers in the island of Mon think that the man who cuts the first ears of corn at harvest will get pains in his back[3] – probably because the corn-spirit is believed to resent especially the first wound; and, in order to escape pains in the back, Saxon reapers in Transylvania gird their loins with the first handful of ears which they cut.[4] Here, again, the corn-spirit is applied to for healing or protection, but in his original vegetable form, not in the form of a goat or a cat.

Further, the corn-spirit under the form of a goat is sometimes conceived as lurking among the cut corn in the barn, till he is driven from it by the threshing-flail. For example, in the neighbourhood of Marktl in Upper Bavaria the sheaves are called Straw-goats or simply Goats. They are laid in a great heap on the open field and threshed by two rows of men standing opposite each other, who, as they ply their flails, sing a song in which they say that they see the Straw-goat amongst the corn-stalks. The last Goat, that is, the last sheaf, is adorned with a wreath of violets and other flowers and with cakes strung together. It is placed right in the middle of the heap. Some of the threshers rush at it and tear the best of it out; others lay on with their flails so recklessly that heads are sometimes broken. In threshing this last sheaf, each man casts up to the man opposite him the misdeeds of which he has been guilty throughout the year.[1] At Oberinntal in Tyrol the last thresher is called Goat.[2] At Tettnang in Würtemberg the thresher who gives the last stroke to the last bundle of corn before it is turned goes by the name of the He-goat, and it is said ‘he has driven the He-goat away.’ The person who, after the bundle has been turned, gives the last stroke of all, is called the She-goat.[3] In this custom it is implied that the corn is inhabited by a pair of corn-spirits, male and female. Further, the corn-spirit, captured in the form of a goat at threshing, is passed on to a neighbour whose threshing is not yet finished. In Franche Comté, as soon as the threshing is over, the young people set up a straw figure of a goat on the farmyard of a neighbour who is still threshing. He must give them wine or money in return. At Ellwangen in Würtemberg the effigy of a goat is made out of the last bundle of corn at threshing; four sticks form its legs, and two its horns. The man who gives the last stroke with the flail must carry the Goat to the barn of a neighbour who is still threshing and throw it down on the floor; if he is caught in the act, they tie the Goat on his back.[4] A similar custom is observed at Indersdorf in Upper Bavaria; the man who throws the straw Goat into the neighbour’s barn imitates the bleating of a goat; if they catch him they blacken his face and tie the Goat on his back.[5] At Zabern in Elsass, when a farmer is a week or more behind his neighbours with his threshing, they set a real stuffed goat (or fox) before his door.[6] Sometimes the spirit of the corn in goat form is believed to be killed at threshing. In the district of Traunstein, Upper Bavaria, it is thought that the Oats-goat is in the last sheaf of oats. He is represented by an old rake set up on end, with an old pot for a head. The children are then told to kill the Oats-goat.[1] A stranger passing a harvest-field is sometimes taken for the Corn-goat escaping in human shape from the cut or threshed grain. Thus, when a stranger passes a harvest-field, all the labourers stop and shout as with one voice. ‘He-goat! He-goat!’ At rape-seed threshing in Schleswig, which generally takes place on the field, the same cry is raised if the stranger does not take off his hat.[2]

At sowing their winter corn the Prussian Slavs used to kill a goat, consume its flesh with many superstitious ceremonies, and hang the skin on a high pole near an oak and a large stone. Here it remained till harvest. Then, after a prayer had been offered by a peasant who acted as priest (Weidulut), the young folk joined hands and danced round the oak and the pole. Afterwards they scrambled for the bunch of corn, and the priest distributed the herbs with a sparing hand. Then he placed the goat-skin on the large stone, sat down on it and preached to the people about the history of their forefathers and their old heathen customs and beliefs.[3] The goat-skin thus suspended on the field from sowing time to harvest represents the corn-spirit superintending the growth of the corn.

Another form which the corn-spirit often assumes is that of a bull, cow, or ox. When the wind sweeps over the corn they say at Conitz in West Prussia, ‘The Steer is running in the corn;’[4] when the corn is thick and strong in one spot, they say in some parts of East Prussia, ‘The Bull is lying in the corn.’ When a harvester has overstrained and lamed himself, they say in the Graudenz district (West Prussia), ‘The Bull pushed him;’ in Lothringen they say, ‘He has the Bull.’ The meaning of both expressions is that he has unwittingly lighted upon the divine corn-spirit, who has punished the profane intruder with lameness.[5] So near Chambéry when a reaper wounds himself with his sickle, it is said that he has ‘the wound of the Ox.’[1] In the district of Bunzlau the last sheaf is sometimes made into the shape of a horned ox, stuffed with tow and wrapt in corn-ears. This figure is called the Old Man (der Alte). In some parts of Bohemia the last sheaf is made up in human form and called the Buffalo-bull.[2] These cases show a confusion between the anthropomorphic and the theriomorphic conception of the corn-spirit. The confusion is parallel to that of killing a wether under the name of a wolf.[3] In the Canton of Thurgau, Switzerland, the last sheaf, if it is a large one, is called the Cow.[4] All over Swabia the last bundle of corn on the field is called the Cow; the man who cuts the last ears ‘has the Cow,’ and is himself called Cow or Barley-cow or Oats-cow, according to the crop; at the harvest supper he gets a nosegay of flowers and corn-ears and a more liberal allowance of drink than the rest. But he is teased and laughed at; so no one likes to be the Cow.[5] The Cow was sometimes represented by the figure of a woman made out of ears of corn and corn-flowers. It was carried to the farmhouse by the man who had cut the last handful of corn. The children ran after him and the neighbours turned out to laugh at him, till the farmer took the Cow from him.[6] Here again the confusion between the human and the animal form of the corn-spirit is apparent. In various parts of Switzerland the reaper who cuts the last ears of corn is called Wheat-cow, Corn-cow, Oats-cow, or Corn-steer, and is the butt of many a joke.[7] In some parts of East Prussia, when a few ears of corn have been left standing by inadvertence on the last swath, the foremost reaper seizes them and cries, ‘Bull! Bull!’[1] On the other hand, in the district of Rosenheim, in Upper Bavaria, when a farmer is later in getting in his harvest than his neighbours, they set up on his land a Straw-bull, as it is called. This is a gigantic figure of a bull made of stubble on a framework of wood and adorned with flowers and leaves. A label is attached to it containing doggerel verses in ridicule of the man on whose land the Straw-bull is placed.[2]

Again, the corn-spirit in the form of a bull or ox is killed on the harvest-field at the close of the reaping. At Pouilly near Dijon, when the last ears of corn are about to be cut, an ox adorned with ribbons, flowers, and ears of corn is led all round the field, followed by the whole troop of reapers dancing. Then a man disguised as the Devil cuts the last ears of corn and immediately kills the ox. Part of the flesh of the animal is eaten at the harvest supper; part is pickled and kept till the first day of sowing in spring. At Pont a Mousson and elsewhere on the evening of the last day of reaping a calf adorned with flowers and ears of corn is led three times round the farmyard, being allured by a bait or driven by men with sticks, or conducted by the farmer’s wife with a rope. The calf selected for this ceremony is the calf which was born first on the farm in the spring of the year. It is followed by all the reapers with their implements. Then it is allowed to run free; the reapers chase it, and whoever catches it is called King of the Calf. Lastly, it is solemnly killed; at Lunéville the man who acts as butcher is the Jewish merchant of the village.[3]

Sometimes again the corn-spirit hides himself amongst the cut corn in the barn to reappear in bull or cow form at threshing. Thus at Wurmlingen in Thüringen the man who gives the last stroke at threshing is called the Cow, or rather the Barley-cow, Oats-cow, Peas-cow, etc., according to the crop. He is entirely enveloped in straw; his head is surmounted by sticks in imitation of horns, and two lads lead him by ropes to the well to drink. On the way thither he must low like a cow, and for a long time afterwards he goes by the name of the Cow.[1] At Obermedlingen in Swabia, when the threshing draws near an end, each man is careful to avoid giving the last stroke. He who does give it ‘gets the Cow,’ which is a straw figure dressed in an old ragged petticoat, hood, and stockings. It is tied on his back with a straw-rope; his face is blackened, he is tied with straw-ropes to a wheelbarrow, and wheeled round the village.[2] Here, again, we are met with that confusion between the anthropomorphic and theriomorphic conception of the corn-spirit, which has been already signalised. In Canton Schaffhausen the man who threshes the last corn is called the Cow; in Canton Thurgau, the Corn-bull; in Canton Zürich, the Thresher-cow. In the last-mentioned district he is wrapt in straw and bound to one of the trees in the orchard.[3] At Arad in Hungary the man who gives the last stroke at threshing is enveloped in straw and a cow’s hide with the horns attached to it.[4] At Pessnitz, in the district of Dresden, the man who gives the last stroke with the flail is called Bull. He must make a straw-man and set it up before a neighbour’s window.[5] Here, apparently, as in so many cases, the corn-spirit is passed on to a neighbour who has not finished threshing. So at Herbrechtingen in Thüringen the effigy of a ragged old woman is flung into the barn of the farmer who is last with his threshing. The man who throws it in cries, ‘There is the Cow for you.’ If the threshers catch him they detain him over night and punish him by keeping him from the harvest supper.[6] In these latter customs the confusion between the anthropomorphic and theriomorphic conception of the corn-spirit meets us again. Further, the corn-spirit in bull form is sometimes believed to be killed at threshing. At Auxerre in threshing the last bundle of corn they call out twelve times, ‘We are killing the Bull.’ In the neighbourhood of Bordeaux, where a butcher kills an ox on the field immediately after the close of the reaping, it is said of the man who gives the last stroke at threshing that ‘he has killed the Bull.’[1] At Chambéry the last sheaf is called the sheaf of the Young Ox and a race takes place to it, in which all the reapers join. When the last stroke is given at threshing they say that ‘the Ox is killed;’ and immediately thereupon a real ox is slaughtered by the reaper who cut the last corn. The flesh of the ox is eaten by the threshers at supper.[2]

We have seen that sometimes the young corn-spirit, whose task it is to quicken the corn of the coming year, is believed to be born as a Corn-baby on the harvest-field.[3] Similarly in Berry the young corn-spirit is sometimes believed to be born on the field in calf form. For when a binder has not rope enough to bind all the corn in sheaves, he puts aside the wheat that remains over and imitates the lowing of a cow. The meaning is that ‘the sheaf has given birth to a calf.’[4] In Puy-de-Dôme when a binder cannot keep up with the reaper whom he or she follows, they say ‘He or she is giving birth to the Calf.’[5] In some parts of Prussia, in similar circumstances, they call out to the woman, ‘The Bull is coming,’ and imitate the bellowing of a bull.[6] In these cases the woman is conceived as the Corn-cow or old corn-spirit, while the supposed calf is the Corn-calf or young corn-spirit. In some parts of Austria a mythical calf (Muhkälbchen) is believed to be seen amongst the sprouting corn in spring and to push the children; when the corn waves in the wind they say, ‘The Calf is going about.’ Clearly, as Mannhardt observes, this calf of the spring-time is the same animal which is afterwards believed to be killed at reaping.[7]

Sometimes the corn-spirit appears in the shape of a horse or mare. Between Kalw and Stuttgart, when the corn bends before the wind, they say, ‘There runs the Horse.’[1] In Hertfordshire, at the end of the reaping, there is or was a ceremony called ‘crying the Mare.’ The last blades of corn left standing on the field are tied together and called the Mare. The reapers stand at a distance and throw their sickles at it; he who cuts it through ‘has the prize, with acclamations and good cheer.’ After it is cut the reapers cry thrice with a loud voice, ‘I have her!’ Others answer thrice, ‘What have you?’ – ‘A Mare! a Mare! a Mare!’ – ‘Whose is she?’ is next asked thrice. ‘A. B. ‘s,’ naming the owner thrice. ‘Whither will you send her?’ – ‘To C. D.,’ naming some neighbour who has not all his corn reaped.[2] In this custom the corn-spirit in the form of a mare is passed on from a farm where the corn is all cut to another farm where it is still standing, and where therefore the corn-spirit may be supposed naturally to take refuge. In Shropshire the custom is similar. ‘Crying, calling, or shouting the mare’ is a ceremony performed by the men of that farm which is the first in any parish or district to finish the harvest. The object of it is to make known their own prowess, and to taunt the laggards by a pretended offer of the ‘owd mar’ [old mare] to help out their ‘chem’ [team]. All the men assemble (the wooden harvest-bottle being of course one of the company) in the stackyard, or, better, on the highest ground on the farm, and there shout the following dialogue, preceding it by a grand ‘Hip, hip, hip, hurrah!’

‘“I ’ave ‘er, I ’ave ’er, I ’ave ’er!”

‘“Whad ’ast thee, whad ‘ast thee, whad ’ast thee?”

“‘A mar’! a mar’! a mar’!”

‘“Whose is ’er, whose is ’er, whose is ‘er?”

‘“Maister A.’s, Maister A.’s, Maister A.’s!” (naming the farmer whose harvest is finished).

‘“W’eer sha’t the’ send ‘er? w’eer sha’t the’ send ‘er? w’eer sha’t the’ send ’er?”

‘“To Maister B.’ s, to Maister B.’s, to Maister B.’s” (naming one whose harvest is not finished).’

The farmer who finishes his harvest last, and who therefore cannot send the Mare to any one else, is said ‘to keep her all winter.’ The mocking offer of the Mare was sometimes responded to by a mocking acceptance of her help. Thus an old man told an inquirer, ‘While we wun at supper, a mon cumm’d wi’ a autar [halter] to fatch her away.’ But at one place (Longnor, near Leebotwood), down to about 1850, the Mare used really to be sent. ‘The head man of the farmer who had finished harvest first was mounted on the best horse of the team – the leader – both horse and man being adorned with ribbons, streamers, etc. Thus arrayed, a boy on foot led the pair in triumph to the neighbouring farmhouses. Sometimes the man who took the “mare” received, as well as plenty of harvest-ale, some rather rough, though good-humoured, treatment, coming back minus his decorations, and so on.’[1] In the neighbourhood of Lille the idea of the corn-spirit in horse form is clearly preserved. When a harvester grows weary at his work, it is said, ‘He has the fatigue of the Horse.’ The first sheaf, called the ‘Cross of the Horse,’ is placed on a cross of boxwood in the barn, and the youngest horse on the farm must tread on it. The reapers dance round the last blades of corn, crying, ‘See the remains of the Horse.’ The sheaf made out of these last blades is given to the youngest horse of the parish (commune) to eat. This youngest horse of the parish clearly represents, as Mannhardt says, the corn-spirit of the following year, the Corn-foal, which absorbs the spirit of the old Corn-horse by eating the last corn cut; for, as usual, the old corn-spirit takes his final refuge in the last sheaf. The thresher of the last sheaf is said to ‘beat the Horse.’[2] Again, a trace of the horse-shaped corn-spirit is reported from Berry. The harvesters there are accustomed to take a noon-day sleep in the field. This is called ‘seeing the Horse.’ The leader or ‘King’ of the harvesters gives the signal for going to sleep. If he delays giving the signal, one of the harvesters will begin to neigh like a horse, the rest imitate him, and then they all go ‘to see the Horse.’[1]

The last animal embodiment of the corn-spirit which we shall notice is the pig (boar or sow). In Thüringen, when the wind sets the young corn in motion, they sometimes say, ‘The Boar is rushing through the corn.’[2] Amongst the Esthonians of the island of Oesel the last sheaf is called the Rye-boar, and the man who gets it is saluted with a cry of, ‘You have the Rye-boar on your back!’ In reply he strikes up a song, in which he prays for plenty.[3] At Kohlerwinkel, near Augsburg, at the close of the harvest, the last bunch of standing corn is cut down, stalk by stalk, by all the reapers in turn. He who cuts the last stalk ‘gets the Sow,’ and is laughed at.[4] In other Swabian villages also the man who cuts the last corn ‘has the Sow,’ or ‘has the Rye-sow.’[5] In the Traunstein district, Upper Bavaria, the man who cuts the last handful of rye or wheat ‘has the Sow,’ and is called Sow-driver.[6] At Friedingen, in Swabia, the thresher who gives the last stroke is called Sow – Barley-sow, Corn-sow, etc., according to the crop. At Onstmettingen the man who gives the last stroke at threshing ‘has the Sow;’ he is often bound up in a sheaf and dragged by a rope along the ground.[7] And, generally, in Swabia the man who gives the last stroke with the flail is called Sow. He may, however, rid himself of this invidious distinction by passing on to a neighbour the straw-rope, which is the badge of his position as Sow. So he goes to a house and throws the straw-rope into it, crying, ‘There, I bring you the Sow.’ All the inmates give chase; and if they catch him they beat him, shut him up for several hours in the pig-sty, and oblige him to take the ‘Sow’ away again.[1] In various parts of Upper Bavaria the man who gives the last stroke at threshing must ‘carry the Pig’ – that is, either a straw effigy of a pig or merely a bundle of straw-ropes. This he carries to a neighbouring farm where the threshing is not finished, and throws it into the barn. If the threshers catch him they handle him roughly, beating him, blackening or dirtying his face, throwing him into filth, binding the Sow on his back, etc.; if the bearer of the Sow is a woman they cut off her hair. At the harvest supper or dinner the man who ‘carried the Pig’ gets one or more dumplings made in the form of pigs; sometimes he gets a large dumpling and a number of small ones, all in pig form, the large one being called the sow and the small ones the sucking-pigs. Sometimes he has the right to be the first to put his hand into the dish and take out as many small dumplings (‘sucking-pigs’) as he can, while the other threshers strike at his hand with spoons or sticks. When the dumplings are served up by the maidservant, all the people at table cry, ‘Süz, süz, süz!’ being the cry used in calling pigs. Sometimes after dinner the man who ‘carried the Pig’ has his face blackened, and is set on a cart and drawn round the village by his fellows, followed by a crowd crying, ‘Süz, süz, süz!’ as if they were calling swine. Sometimes, after being wheeled round the village, he is flung on the dunghill.[2]

Again, the corn-spirit in the form of a pig plays his part at sowing-time as well as at harvest. At Neuautz, in Courland, when barley is sown for the first time in the year, the farmer’s wife boils the chine of a pig along with the tail, and brings it to the sower on the field. He eats of it, but cuts off the tail and sticks it in the field; it is believed that the ears of corn will then grow as long as the tail.[3] Here the pig is the corn-spirit, whose fertilising power is sometimes supposed to lie especially in his tail.[1] As a pig he is put in the ground at sowing-time, and as a pig he reappears amongst the ripe corn at harvest. For amongst the neighbouring Esthonians, as we have seen,[2] the last sheaf is called the Rye-boar. Somewhat similar customs are observed in Germany. In the Salza district, near Meiningen, a certain bone in the pig is called ‘the Jew on the winnowing-fan’ (der Jud’ auf der Wanne). The flesh of this bone is boiled on Shrove Tuesday, but the bone is put amongst the ashes, which the neighbours exchange as presents on St Peter’s Day (22nd February), and then mix with the seed-corn.[3] In the whole of Hessen, Meiningen, etc., people eat pea-soup with dried pig-ribs on Ash Wednesday or Candlemas. The ribs are then collected and hung in the room till sowing-time, when they are inserted in the sown field or in the seed-bag amongst the flax seed. This is thought to be an infallible specific against earth-fleas and moles, and to cause the flax to grow well and tall.[4] In many parts ofWhite Russia people eat a roast lamb or sucking-pig at Easter, and then throw the bones backwards upon the fields, to preserve the corn from hail.[5]

But the conception of the corn-spirit as embodied in pig form is nowhere more clearly expressed than in the Scandinavian custom of the Yule Boar. In Sweden and Denmark at Yule (Christmas) it is the custom to bake a loaf in the form of a boar-pig. This is called the Yule Boar. The corn of the last sheaf is often used to make it. All through Yule the Yule Boar stands on the table. Often it is kept till the sowing-time in spring, when part of it is mixed with the seed-corn and part given to the ploughmen and plough-horses or plough-oxen to eat, in the expectation of a good harvest.[6] In this custom the corn-spirit, immanent in the last sheaf, appears at midwinter in the form of a boar made from the corn of the last sheaf; and his quickening influence on the corn is shown by mixing part of the Yule Boar with the seed-corn, and giving part of it to the ploughman and his cattle to eat. Similarly we saw that the Corn-wolf makes his appearance at midwinter, the time when the year begins to verge towards spring.[1] We may conjecture that the Yule straw, of which Swedish peasants make various superstitious uses, comes, in part at least, from the sheaf out of which the Yule Boar is made. The Yule straw is long rye-straw, a portion of which is always set apart for this season. It is strewn over the floor at Christmas, and the peasants attribute many virtues to it. For example, they think that some of it scattered on the ground will make a barren field productive. Again, the peasant at Christmas seats himself on a log; his eldest son or daughter, or the mother herself, if the children are not old enough, places a wisp of the Yule straw on his knee. From this he draws out single straws, and throws them, one by one, up to the ceiling; and as many as lodge in the rafters, so many will be the sheaves of rye he will have to thresh at harvest.[2] Again, it is only the Yule straw which may be used in binding the fruit-trees as a charm to fertilise them.[3] These uses of the Yule straw show that it is believed to possess fertilising virtues analogous to those ascribed to the Yule Boar; the conjecture is therefore legitimate that the Yule straw is made from the same sheaf as the Yule Boar. Formerly a real boar was sacrificed at Christmas,[4] and apparently also a man in the character of the Yule Boar. This, at least, may perhaps be inferred from a Christmas custom still observed in Sweden. A man is wrapt up in a skin, and carries a wisp of straw in his mouth, so that the projecting straws look like the bristles of a boar. A knife is brought, and an old woman, with her face blackened, pretends to sacrifice the man.[1]

So much for the animal embodiments of the corn-spirit as they are presented to us in the folk-customs of Northern Europe. These customs bring out clearly the sacramental character of the harvest supper. The corn-spirit is conceived as embodied in an animal; this divine animal is slain, and its flesh and blood are partaken of by the harvesters. Thus, the cock, the goose, the hare, the cat, the goat, and the ox are eaten sacramentally by the harvesters, and the pig is eaten sacramentally by ploughmen in spring.[2] Again, as a substitute for the real flesh of the divine being, bread or dumplings are made in his image and eaten sacramentally; thus, pig-shaped dumplings are eaten by the harvesters, and loaves made in boar-shape (the Yule Boar) are eaten in spring by the ploughman and his cattle.

The reader has probably remarked the complete parallelism between the anthropomorphic and the theriomorphic conceptions of the corn-spirit. The parallel may be here briefly resumed. When the corn waves in the wind it is said either that the Corn-mother or that the Corn-wolf, etc. is passing through the corn. Children are warned against straying in corn-fields either because the Corn-mother or because the Corn-wolf, etc. is there. In the last corn cut or the last sheaf threshed either the Corn-mother or the Corn-wolf, etc. is supposed to be present. The last sheaf is itself called either the Corn-mother or the Corn-wolf, etc., and is made up in the shape either of a woman or of a wolf, etc. The person who cuts, binds, or threshes the last sheaf is called either the Old Woman or the Wolf, etc., according to the name bestowed on the sheaf itself. As in some places a sheaf made in human form and called the Maiden, the Mother of the Maize, etc. is kept from one harvest to the next in order to secure a continuance of the corn-spirit’s blessing; so in some places the Harvest-cock and in others the flesh of the goat is kept for a similar purpose from one harvest to the next. As in some places the grain taken from the Corn-mother is mixed with the seed-corn in spring to make the crop abundant; so in some places the feathers of the cock, and in Sweden the Yule Boar is kept till spring and mixed with the seed-corn for a like purpose. As part of the Corn-mother or Maiden is given to the cattle to eat in order that they may thrive, so part of the Yule Boar is given to the ploughing horses or oxen in spring. Lastly, the death of the corn-spirit is represented by killing (in reality or pretence) either his human or his animal representative; and the worshippers partake sacramentally either of the actual body and blood of the representative (human or animal) of the divinity, or of bread made in his likeness.

Other animal forms assumed by the corn-spirit are the stag, roe, sheep, bear, ass, fox, mouse, stork, swan, and kite.[1] If it is asked why the corn-spirit should be thought to appear in the form of an animal and of so many different animals, we may reply that to primitive man the simple appearance of an animal or bird among the corn is probably sufficient of itself to suggest a mysterious connection between the animal or bird and the corn; and when we remember that in the old days, before fields were fenced in, all kinds of animals must have been free to roam over them, we need not wonder that the corn-spirit should have been identified even with large animals like the horse and cow, which nowadays could not, except by a rare accident, be found straying among the corn. This explanation applies with peculiar force to the very common case in which the animal embodiment of the corn-spirit is believed to lurk in the last standing corn. For at harvest a number of wild animals – hares, rabbits, partridges, etc. – are commonly driven by the progress of the reaping into the last patch of standing corn, and make their escape from it as it is being cut down. So regularly does this happen that reapers and others often stand round the last patch of corn armed with sticks or guns, with which they kill the animals as they dart out of their last refuge among the corn. Now, primitive man, to whom magical changes of shape seem perfectly credible, finds it most natural that the spirit of the corn, driven from his home amongst the corn, should make his escape in the form of the animal which is seen to rush out of the last patch of corn as it falls under the scythe of the reaper. Thus the identification of the corn-spirit with an animal is analogous to the identification of him with a passing stranger. As the sudden appearance of a stranger near the harvest-field or threshing-floor is, to the primitive mind, sufficient to identify him as the spirit of the corn escaping from the cut or threshed corn, so the sudden appearance of an animal issuing from the cut corn is enough to identify it with the corn-spirit escaping from his ruined home. The two identifications are so analogous that they can hardly be dissociated in any attempt to explain them. Those who look to some other principle than the one here suggested for the explanation of the latter identification are bound to show that their explanation covers the former identification also.

But however we may explain it, the fact remains that in peasant folklore the corn-spirit is very commonly conceived and represented in animal form. May not this fact explain the relation in which certain animals stood to the ancient deities of vegetation, Dionysus, Demeter, Adonis, Attis, and Osiris?

To begin with Dionysus. We have seen that he was represented sometimes as a goat and sometimes as a bull. As a goat he can hardly be separated from the minor divinities, the Pans, Satyrs, and Silenuses, all of whom are closely associated with him and are represented more or less completely in the form of goats. Thus, Pan was regularly represented in sculpture and painting with the face and legs of a goat.[1] The Satyrs were depicted with pointed goat-ears, and sometimes with sprouting horns and short tails.[2] They were sometimes spoken of simply as goats;[1] and in the drama their parts were played by men dressed in goat-skins.[2] Silenus is represented in art clad in a goat-skin.[3] Further, the Fauns, the Italian counterpart of the Greek Pans and Satyrs, are described as being half goats, with goat-feet and goat-horns.[4] Again, all these minor goat-formed divinities partake more or less clearly of the character of woodland deities. Thus, Pan was called by the Arcadians the Lord of the Wood.[5] The Silenuses associated with the tree-nymphs.[6] The Fauns are expressly designated as woodland deities;[7] and their character as such is still further brought out by their association, or even identification, with Silvanus and the Silvanuses, who, as their name of itself indicates, are spirits of the woods.[8] Lastly, the association of the Satyrs with the Silenuses, Fauns, and Silvanuses,[9] proves that the Satyrs also were woodland deities. These goat-formed spirits of the woods have their counterparts in the folklore of Northern Europe. Thus, the Russian wood-spirits, called Ljeschie (from ljes, ‘wood,’) are believed to appear partly in human shape, but with the horns, ears, and legs of goats. The Ljeschi can alter his stature at pleasure; when he walks in the wood he is as tall as the trees; when he walks in the meadows he is no higher than the grass. Some of the Ljeschie are spirits of the corn as well as of the wood; before harvest they are as tall as the corn-stalks, but after it they shrink to the height of the stubble. [10] This brings out – what we have remarked before – the close connection between tree-spirits and corn-spirits, and shows how easily the former may melt into the latter. Similarly the Fauns, though wood-spirits, were believed to foster the growth of the crops.[1] We have already seen how often the corn-spirit is represented in folk-custom as a goat.[2] On the whole, then, as Mannhardt argues,[3] the Pans, Satyrs, and Fauns appear to belong to a widely diffused class of wood-spirits conceived in goat-form. The fondness of goats for straying in woods and nibbling the bark of trees – to which it is well known that they are most destructive – is an obvious and perhaps sufficient reason why wood-spirits should so often be supposed to take the form of goats. The inconsistency of a god of vegetation subsisting upon the vegetation which he personifies is not one to strike the primitive mind. Such inconsistencies arise when the deity, ceasing to be immanent in the vegetation, comes to be regarded as its owner or lord; for the idea of owning the vegetation naturally leads to that of subsisting on it. We have already seen that the corn-spirit, originally conceived as immanent in the corn, afterwards comes to be regarded as its owner, who lives on it and is reduced to poverty and want by being deprived of it.[4]

Thus the representation of wood-spirits in goat-form appears to be both widespread and, to the primitive mind, natural. Therefore when we find, as we have done, that Dionysus – a tree-god – is sometimes represented in goat form,[5] we can hardly avoid concluding that this representation is simply a part of his proper character as a tree-god and is not to be explained by the fusion of two distinct and independent cults, in one of which he originally appeared as a tree-god and in the other as a goat. If such a fusion took place in the case of Dionysus, it must equally have taken place in the case of the Pans and Satyrs of Greece, the Fauns of Italy, and the Ljeschie of Russia. That such a fusion of two wholly disconnected cults should have occurred once is possible; that it should have occurred twice independently is improbable; that it should have occurred thrice independently is so unlikely as to be practically incredible.

Dionysus was also represented, as we have seen,[1] in the form of a bull. After what has gone before we are naturally led to expect that his bull form must have been only another expression for his character as a deity of vegetation, especially as the bull is a common embodiment of the corn-spirit in Northern Europe;[2] and the close association of Dionysus with Demeter and Proserpine in the mysteries of Eleusis shows that he had at least strong agricultural affinities. The other possible explanation of the bull-shaped Dionysus would be that the conception of him as a bull was originally entirely distinct from the conception of him as a deity of vegetation, and that the fusion of the two conceptions was due to some such circumstance as the union of two tribes, one of which had previously worshipped a bull-god and the other a tree-god. This appears to be the view taken by Mr Andrew Lang, who suggests that the bull-formed Dionysus ‘had either been developed out of, or had succeeded to the worship of a bull-totem.’[3] Of course this is possible. But it is not yet certain that the Aryans ever had totemism. On the other hand, it is quite certain that many Aryan peoples have conceived deities of vegetation as embodied in animal forms. Therefore when we find amongst an Aryan people like the Greeks a deity of vegetation represented as an animal, the presumption must be in favour of explaining this by a principle which is certainly known to have influenced the Aryan race rather than by one which is not certainly known to have done so. In the present state of our knowledge, therefore, it is safer to regard the bull form of Dionysus as being, like his goat form, an expression of his proper character as a deity of vegetation.

The probability of this view will be somewhat increased if it can be shown that in other rites than those of Dionysus the ancients slew an ox as a representative of the spirit of vegetation. This they appear to have done in the Athenian sacrifice known as ‘the murder of the ox’ (bouphonia). It took place about the end of June or beginning of July, that is, about the time when the threshing is nearly over in Attica. According to tradition the sacrifice was instituted to procure a cessation of drought and barrenness which had afflicted the land. The ritual was as follows. Barley mixed with wheat, or cakes made of them, were laid upon the bronze altar of Zeus Polieus on the Acropolis. Oxen were driven round the altar, and the ox which went up to the altar and ate the offering on it was sacrificed. The axe and knife with which the beast was slain had been previously wetted with water brought by maidens called ‘water-carriers.’ The weapons were then sharpened and handed to the butchers, one of whom felled the ox with the axe and another cut its throat with the knife. As soon as he had felled the ox, the former threw the axe from him and fled; and the man who cut the beast’s throat apparently imitated his example. Meantime the ox was skinned and all present partook of its flesh. Then the hide was stuffed with straw and sewed up; next the stuffed animal was set on its feet and yoked to a plough as if it were ploughing. A trial then took place in an ancient law-court presided over by the King (as he was called) to determine who had murdered the ox. The maidens who had brought the water accused the men who had sharpened the axe and knife; the men who had sharpened the axe and knife blamed the men who had handed these implements to the butchers; the men who had handed the implements to the butchers blamed the butchers; and the butchers laid the blame on the axe and knife, which were accordingly found guilty, condemned, and cast into the sea.[1]

The name of this sacrifice – ‘the murder of the ox’[1] – the pains taken by each person who had a hand in the slaughter to lay the blame on some one else, together with the formal trial and punishment of the axe or knife or both, prove that the ox was here regarded not merely as a victim offered to a god, but as itself a sacred creature, the slaughter of which was sacrilege or murder. This is borne out by a statement of Varro that to kill an ox was formerly a capital crime in Attica.[2] The mode of selecting the victim suggests that the ox which tasted the corn was viewed as the corn-deity taking possession of his own. This interpretation is supported by the following custom. In Beauce, in the district of Orleans, on the 24th or 25th of April they make a straw-man called ‘the great mondard.’ For they say that the old mondard is now dead and it is necessary to make a new one. The straw-man is carried in solemn procession up and down the village and at last is placed upon the oldest apple-tree. There he remains till the apples are gathered, when he is taken down and thrown into the water, or he is burned and his ashes cast into water. But the person who plucks the first fruit from the tree succeeds to the title of ‘the great mondard.’[1] Here the straw figure, called ‘the great mondard’ and placed on the apple-tree in spring, represents the spirit of the tree, who, dead in winter, revives when the apple-blossoms appear in spring. The fact, therefore, that the person who plucks the first fruit from the apple-tree receives the name of ‘the great mondard’ proves that he is regarded as a representative of the tree-spirit. Primitive peoples are, as a rule, reluctant to taste the annual first-fruits of any crop, until some ceremony has been performed which makes it safe and pious for them to do so. The reason of this reluctance appears to be that the first-fruits either are the property of, or actually contain, a divinity. Therefore when a man or animal is seen boldly to appropriate the sacred first-fruits, he or it is naturally regarded as the divinity himself in human or animal form taking possession of his own. The time of the Athenian sacrifice – about the close of the threshing – suggests that the wheat and barley laid upon the altar were a harvest offering; and the sacramental character of the subsequent repast – all partaking of the flesh of the divine animal – would make it parallel to the harvest suppers of modern Europe, in which, as we have seen, the flesh of the animal who represents the corn-spirit is eaten by the harvesters. Again, the tradition that the sacrifice was instituted in order to put an end to drought and famine is in favour of taking it as a harvest festival. The resurrection of the corn-spirit, represented by setting up the stuffed ox and yoking it to the plough, may be compared with the resurrection of the tree-spirit in the person of his representative, the Wild Man.[2]

The ox appears as a representative of the corn-spirit in other parts of the world. At Great Bassam, in Guinea, two oxen are slain annually to procure a good harvest. If the sacrifice is to be effectual, it is necessary that the oxen should weep. So all the women of the village sit in front of the beasts, chanting, ‘The ox will weep; yes, he will weep!’ From time to time one of the women walks round the beasts, throwing manioc meal or palm wine upon them, especially into their eyes. When tears roll down from the eyes of the oxen, the people dance, singing, ‘The ox weeps! the ox weeps!’ Then two men seize the tails of the beasts and cut them off at one blow. It is believed that a great misfortune will happen in the course of the year if the tails are not severed at one blow. The oxen are afterwards killed, and their flesh is eaten by the chiefs.[1] Here the tears of the oxen, like those of the human victims amongst the Khonds, are probably a rain-charm. We have already seen that the virtue of the corn-spirit, embodied in animal form, is sometimes supposed to reside in the tail, and that the last handful of corn is sometimes conceived as the tail of the corn-spirit.[2] Still more clearly does the ox appear as a personification of the corn-spirit in a ceremony which is observed in all the provinces and districts of China to welcome the approach of spring. On the first day of spring the governor or prefect of the city goes in procession to the east gate of the city, and sacrifices to the Divine Husbandman, who is represented with a bull’s head on the body of a man. A large effigy of an ox, cow, or buffalo has been prepared for the occasion, and stands outside of the east gate, with agricultural implements beside it. It is made of differently-coloured pieces of paper pasted on a framework either by a blind man or according to the directions of a necromancer. The colours of the paper indicate the character of the coming year; if red prevails, there will be many fires; if white, there will be floods and rain, etc. The mandarins walk slowly round the ox, bearing it severely at each step with rods of various colours. It is filled with five kinds of grain, which pour forth when the ox is broken by the blows of the rods. The paper fragments are then set on fire, and a scramble takes place for the burning fragments, as the people believe that whoever gets one of them is sure to be fortunate throughout the year. A live buffalo is then killed, and its flesh is divided among the mandarins. According to one account, the effigy of the ox is made of clay, and, after being beaten by the governor, is stoned by the people till they break it in pieces, ‘from which they expect an abundant year.’[1] Here the corn-spirit appears to be plainly represented by the corn-filled ox, whose fragments may therefore be supposed to bring fertility with them. We may compare the Silesian spring custom of burning the effigy of Death, scrambling for the burning fragments, and burying them in the fields to secure a good crop, and the Florentine custom of sawing the Old Woman and scrambling for the dried fruits with which she was filled.[2]

On the whole, then, we may perhaps conclude that both as a goat and as a bull Dionysus was essentially a god of vegetation. The Chinese and European customs just referred to may perhaps shed light on the custom of rending a live bull or goat at the rites of Dionysus. The animal was torn in fragments, as the Khond victim was cut in pieces, in order that the worshippers might each secure a portion of the life-giving and fertilising influence of the god. The flesh was eaten raw as a sacrament, and we may conjecture that some of it was taken home to be buried in the fields, or otherwise employed so as to convey to the fruits of the earth the quickening influence of the god of vegetation. The resurrection of Dionysus, related in his myth, may have been represented in his rites by stuffing and setting up the slain ox, as was done at the Athenian bouphonia.

Passing next to the corn-goddess Demeter, and remembering that in European folklore the pig is a common embodiment of the corn-spirit,[3] we may now ask, may not the pig, which was so closely associated with Demeter, be nothing but the goddess herself in animal form? The pig was sacred to her;[4] in art she was represented carrying or accompanied by a pig;[1] and the pig was regularly sacrificed in her mysteries, the reason assigned being that the pig injures the corn and is therefore an enemy of the goddess.[2] But after an animal has been conceived as a god or a god as an animal, it sometimes happens, as we have seen, that the god sloughs off his animal form and becomes purely anthropomorphic; and that then the animal, which at first had been slain in the character of the god, comes to be regarded as a victim offered to the god on the ground of its hostility to the deity; in short, that the god is sacrificed to himself on the ground that he is his own enemy. This happened to Dionysus, and it may have happened to Demeter also. And in fact the rites of one of her festivals, the Thesmophoria, bear out the view that originally the pig was an embodiment of the corn-goddess herself, either Demeter or her daughter and double Proserpine. The Thesmophoria was an autumn festival, celebrated by women alone in October,[3] and appears to have represented with mourning rites the descent of Proserpine (or Demeter)[4] into the lower world, and with joy her return from the dead.[5] Hence the name Descent or Ascent variously applied to the first, and the name Kalligeneia (fair-born) applied to the third day of the festival. Now from a scholion on Lucian, first edited in 1870,[1] we learn some details about the mode of celebrating the Thesmophoria, which shed important light on the part of the festival called the Descent or the Ascent. The scholiast tells us that it was customary at the Thesmophoria to throw pigs, cakes of dough, and branches of pine-trees into ‘the chasms of Demeter and Proserpine,’ which appear to have been sacred caverns or vaults.[2] In these caverns or vaults there were said to be serpents, which guarded the caverns and consumed most of the flesh of the pigs and dough-cakes which were thrown in. Afterwards – apparently at the next annual festival[3] – the decayed remains of the pigs, the cakes, and the pine-branches were fetched by women called ‘drawers,’ who, after observing rules of ceremonial purity for three days, descended into the caverns, and, frightening away the serpents by clapping their hands, brought up the remains and placed them on the altar. Whoever got a piece of the decayed flesh and cakes, and sowed it with the seed-corn in his field, was believed to be sure of a good crop.

To explain this rude and ancient rite the following legend was told. At the moment that Pluto carried off Proserpine, a swineherd called Eubuleus was herding his swine on the spot, and his herd was engulfed in the chasm down which Pluto vanished with Proserpine. Accordingly at the Thesmophoria pigs were annually thrown into caverns in order to commemorate the disappearance of the swine of Eubuleus. It follows from this that the casting of the pigs into the vaults at the Thesmophoria formed part of the dramatic representation of Proserpine’s descent into the lower world; and as no image of Proserpine appears to have been thrown in, it follows that the descent of the pigs must have been, not an accompaniment of her descent, but the descent itself; in short, the pigs were Proserpine. Afterwards when Proserpine or Demeter (for the two are equivalent) became anthropomorphic, a reason had to be found for the custom of throwing pigs into caverns at her festival; and this was done by saying that when Proserpine was carried off, there happened to be some swine browsing near, which were swallowed up along with her. The story is obviously a forced and awkward attempt to bridge over the gulf between the old conception of the corn-spirit as a pig and the new conception of her as an anthropomorphic goddess. A trace of the older conception survived in the legend that when Demeter was looking for the lost Proserpine, the footprints of the latter were obliterated by the footprints of a pig;[1] originally, no doubt, the footprints of the pig were the footprints of Proserpine and of Demeter herself. A consciousness of the intimate connection of the pig with the corn lurks in the tradition that the swineherd Eubuleus was a brother of Triptolemus, to whom Demeter first imparted the secret of the corn. Indeed, according to one version of the story, Eubuleus himself received, jointly with his brother Triptolemus, the gift of the corn from Demeter as a reward for revealing to her the fate of Proserpine.[1] Further, it is to be noted that at the Thesmophoria the women appear to have eaten swine’s flesh.[2] The meal, if I am right, must have been a solemn sacrament or communion, the worshippers partaking of the body of the god.

As thus explained, the Thesmophoria has its analogies in the folk-customs of Northern Europe which have been already described. As at the Thesmophoria – an autumn festival in honour of the corn-goddess – swine’s flesh was partly eaten, partly kept in caverns till the following year, when it was taken up to be sown with the seed-corn in the fields for the purpose of securing a good crop; so in the neighbourhood of Grenoble the goat killed on the harvest-field is partly eaten at the harvest supper, partly pickled and kept till the next harvest;[3] so at Pouilly the ox killed on the harvest-field is partly eaten by the harvesters, partly pickled and kept till the first day of sowing in spring[4] – probably to be then mixed with the seed, or eaten by the ploughmen, or both; so at Udvarhely the feathers of the cock which is killed in the last sheaf at harvest are kept till spring, and then sown with the seed on the field;[5] so in Hessen and Meiningen the flesh of pigs is eaten on Ash Wednesday or Candlemas, and the bones are kept till sowing-time, when they are put into the field sown or mixed with the seed in the bag;[6] so, lastly, the corn from the last sheaf is kept till Christmas, made into the Yule Boar, and afterwards broken and mixed with the seed-corn at sowing in spring.[7]Thus, to put it generally, the corn-spirit is killed in animal form in autumn; part of his flesh is eaten as a sacrament by his worshippers; and part of it is kept till next sowing-time or harvest as a pledge and security for the continuance or renewal of the corn-spirit’s energies. Whether in the interval between autumn and spring he is conceived as dead, or whether, like the ox in the bouphonia, he is supposed to come to life again immediately after being killed, is not clear. At the Thesmophoria, according to Clement and Pausanias, as emended by Lobeck,[1] the pigs were thrown in alive, and were supposed to reappear at the festival of the following year. Here, therefore, if we accept Lobeck’s emendations, the corn-spirit is conceived as alive throughout the year; he lives and works under ground, but is brought up each autumn to be renewed and then replaced in his subterranean abode.[2]

If it is objected that the Greeks never could have conceived Demeter and Proserpine to be embodied in the form of pigs, it may be answered that in the cave of Phigalia in Arcadia the Black Demeter was represented with the head and mane of a horse on the body of a woman.[3] Between the representation of a goddess as a pig, and the representation of her as a woman with a horse’s head, there is little to choose in respect of barbarism. The legend told of the Phigalian Demeter indicates that the horse was one of the animal forms assumed in ancient Greece, as in modern Europe,[4] by the corn-spirit. It was said that in her search for her daughter, Demeter assumed the form of a mare to escape the addresses of Poseidon, and that, offended at his importunity, she withdrew to the cave of Phigalia. There, robed in black, she stayed so long that the fruits of the earth were perishing, and mankind would have died of famine if Pan had not soothed the angry goddess and persuaded her to quit the cave. In memory of this event, the Phigalians set up an image of the Black Demeter in the cave; it represented a woman dressed in a long robe, with the head and mane of a horse.[1] The Black Demeter, in whose absence the fruits of the earth perish, is plainly a mythical expression for the state of vegetation in winter.

Passing now to Attis and Adonis, we may note a few facts which seem to show that these deities of vegetation had also, like other deities of vegetation, their animal embodiments. The worshippers of Attis abstained from eating the flesh of swine.[2] This fact is certainly in favour of supposing that the pig was regarded as an embodiment of Attis. And the legend that Attis was killed by a boar[3] points in the same direction. For after the examples of the goat Dionysus and the pig Demeter it may almost be laid down as a rule that an animal which is said to have injured a god was originally the god himself. Perhaps the cry of ‘Hyes Attes! Hyes Attes!’[4] which was raised by the worshippers of Attis, may be neither more nor less than ‘Pig Attis! Pig Attis!’ – hyes being possibly a Phrygian form of the Greek hӯs, ‘a pig.’

In regard to Adonis, his connection with the boar was not always explained by the story that he was killed by a boar. According to another story, a boar rent with his tusk the bark of the tree in which the infant Adonis was born.[5] According to another story, he was killed by Hephaestus on Mount Lebanon while he was hunting wild boars.[6] These variations in the legend serve to show that, while the connection of the boar with Adonis was certain, the reason of the connection was not understood, and that consequently different stories were devised to explain it. Certainly the pig was one of the sacred animals of the Syrians. At the great religious metropolis of Hierapolis pigs were neither sacrificed nor eaten, and if a man touched a pig he was unclean for the rest of the day. Some people said this was because the pigs were unclean; others said it was because the pigs were sacred.[1] This difference of opinion points to a state of religious thought and feeling in which the ideas of sanctity and uncleanness are not yet differentiated, and which is best indicated by the word taboo. It is quite consistent with this that the pig should have been held to be an embodiment of the divine Adonis, and the analogies of Dionysus and Demeter make it probable that the story of the hostility of the animal to the god was only a modern misunderstanding of the old view of the god as embodied in a pig. The rule that pigs were not sacrificed or eaten by worshippers of Attis and presumably of Adonis, does not exclude the possibility that in these cults the pig was slain on solemn occasions as a representative of the god and consumed sacramentally by the worshippers. Indeed, the sacramental killing and eating of an animal, that is the killing and eating it as a god, implies that the animal is sacred, and is, as a general rule, not killed.[2]

The attitude of the Jews to the pig was as ambiguous as that of the heathen Syrians towards the same animal. The Greeks could not decide whether the Jews worshipped swine or abominated them. On the one hand they might not eat swine; but on the other hand they might not kill them.[3] And if the former rule speaks for the uncleanness, the latter speaks still more strongly for the sanctity of the animal. For whereas both rules may, and one rule must, be explained on the supposition that the pig was sacred; neither rule must, and one rule cannot, be explained on the supposition that the pig was unclean. If, therefore, we prefer the former supposition, we must conclude that, originally at least, the pig was held to be sacred rather than unclean by the Israelites. This is confirmed by the fact that down to the time of Isaiah some of the Jews used to meet secretly in gardens to eat the flesh of swine and mice as a religious rite.[1] Doubtless this was a very ancient rite, dating from a time when both the pig and the mouse were venerated as divine, and when their flesh was partaken of sacramentally on rare and solemn occasions as the body and blood of gods. And in general it may be said that all so-called unclean animals were originally sacred; the reason why they were not eaten was that they were divine.

In ancient Egypt, within historical times, the pig occupied the same dubious position as in Syria and Palestine, though at first sight its uncleanness is more prominent than its sanctity. The Egyptians are generally said by Greek writers to have abhorred the pig as a foul and loathsome animal.[2] If a man so much as touched a pig in passing, he stepped into the river with all his clothes on, to wash off the taint.[3] To drink pig’s milk was believed to cause leprosy to the drinker.[4] Swineherds, though natives of Egypt, were forbidden to enter any temple, and they were the only men who were thus excluded. No one would give his daughter in marriage to a swineherd, or marry a swineherd’s daughter; the swineherds married among themselves.[5] Yet once a year the Egyptians sacrificed pigs to the moon and to Osiris, and not only sacrificed them, but ate of their flesh, though on any other day of the year they would neither sacrifice them nor taste of their flesh. Those who were too poor to offer a pig on this day baked cakes of dough, and offered them instead.[6] This can hardly be explained except by the supposition that the pig was a sacred animal which was eaten sacramentally by his worshippers once a year. The view that in Egypt the pig was a sacred animal is borne out by the very facts which, to moderns, might seem to prove the contrary. Thus the Egyptians thought, as we have seen, that to drink pig’s milk produced leprosy. But exactly analogous views are held by savages about the animals and plants which they deem most sacred. Thus in the island of Wetar (between New Guinea and Celebes) people believe themselves to be variously descended from wild pigs, serpents, crocodiles, turtles, dogs, and eels; a man may not eat an animal of the kind from which he is descended; if he does so, he will become a leper, and go mad.[1] Amongst the Omaha Indians of North America men whose totem (sacred animal or plant) is the elk, believe that if they ate the flesh of the male elk they would break out in boils and white spots in different parts of their bodies.[2] In the same tribe men whose totem is the red maize, think that if they ate red maize they would have running sores all round their mouths.[3] The Bush negroes of Surinam, who have totemism, believe that if they ate the capiaï (an animal like a pig) it would give them leprosy;[4] probably the capiaï is one of their totems. In Samoa each man had generally his god in the shape of some species of animal; and if he ate one of these divine animals, it was supposed that the god avenged himself by taking up his abode in the eater’s body, and there generating an animal of the kind he had eaten till it caused his death. For example, if a man whose god was the prickly sea-urchin, ate one of these creatures, a prickly sea-urchin grew in his stomach and killed him. If his god was an eel, and he ate an eel, he became very ill, and before he died the voice of the god was heard from his stomach saying, ‘I am killing this man; he ate my incarnation.’[5] These examples prove that the eating of a sacred animal is often believed to produce skin-disease or even death; so far, therefore, they support the view that the pig must have been sacred in Egypt, since the effect of drinking its milk was believed to be leprosy.

Again, the rule that, after touching a pig, a man had to wash himself and his clothes, also favours the view of the sanctity of the pig. For it is a common belief that the effect of contact with a sacred object must be removed, by washing or otherwise, before a man is free to mingle with his fellows. Thus the Jews wash their hands after reading the sacred scriptures. Before coming forth from the tabernacle after the sin-offering, the high priest had to wash himself, and put off the garments which he had worn in the holy place.[1] It was a rule of Greek ritual that, in offering an expiatory sacrifice, the sacrificer should not touch the sacrifice, and that, after the offering was made, he must wash his body and his clothes in a river or spring before he could enter a city or his own house.[2] The Polynesians felt strongly the need of ridding themselves of the sacred contagion, if it may be so called, which they caught by touching sacred objects. Various ceremonies were performed for the purpose of removing this sacred contagion. For example, in Tonga a man who happened to touch a sacred chief, or anything personally belonging to him, as his clothes or his mat, was obliged to go through the ceremony of touching the soles of the chiefs (or of any chief’s) feet with his hands, first applying the palm and then the back of each hand; next he had to rinse his hands in water, or, if there was no water near, the sap of the plantain or banana-tree might be used as a substitute. If he were to feed himself with his hands before he performed this ceremony, it was believed that he would swell up and die, or at least be afflicted with scrofula or some other disease.[3] We have already seen what fatal effects are supposed to follow, and do actually follow, from contact with a sacred object in New Zealand.[1] In short, primitive man believes that what is sacred is dangerous; it is pervaded by a sort of electrical sanctity which communicates a shock to, even if it does not kill, whatever comes in contact with it. Hence the savage is unwilling to touch or even to see that which he deems peculiarly holy. Thus Bechuanas, of the Crocodile clan, think it ‘hateful and unlucky’ to meet or see a crocodile; the sight is thought to cause inflammation of the eyes. Yet the crocodile is their most sacred object; they call it their father, swear by it, and celebrate it in their festivals.[2] The goat is the sacred animal of the Madenassana Bushmen; yet ‘to look upon it would be to render the man for the time impure, as well as to cause him undefined uneasiness.’[3] The Elk clan, among the Omaha Indians, believe that even to touch the male elk would be followed by an eruption of boils and white spots on the body.[4] Members of the Reptile clan in the same tribe think that if one of them touches or smells a snake, it will make his hair white.[5] In Samoa people whose god was a butterfly believed that if they caught a butterfly it would strike them dead.[6] Again, in Samoa the reddish-seared leaves of the banana-tree were commonly used as plates for handing food; but if any member of the Wild Pigeon clan had used banana leaves for this purpose, it was believed that he would have suffered from rheumatic swellings or an eruption all over the body like chicken-pox.[7]

In the light of these parallels the beliefs and customs of the Egyptians touching the pig are probably to be explained as based upon an opinion of the extreme sanctity rather than of the extreme uncleanness of the animal; or rather, to put it more correctly, they imply that the animal was looked on, not simply as a filthy and disgusting creature, but as a being endowed with high supernatural powers, and that as such it was regarded with that primitive sentiment of religious awe and fear in which the feelings of reverence and abhorrence are almost equally blended. The ancients themselves seem to have been aware that there was another side to the horror with which swine seemed to inspire the Egyptians. For the Greek astronomer and mathematician Eudoxus, who resided fourteen months in Egypt and conversed with the priests,[1] was of opinion that the Egyptians spared the pig, not out of abhorrence, but from a regard to its utility in agriculture; for, according to him, when the Nile had subsided, herds of swine were turned loose over the fields to tread the seed down into the moist earth.[2] But when a being is thus the object of mixed and implicitly contradictory feelings, he may be said to occupy a position of unstable equilibrium. In course of time one of the contradictory feelings is likely to prevail over the other, and according as the feeling which finally predominates is that of reverence or abhorrence, the being who is the object of it will rise into a god or sink into a devil. The latter, on the whole, was the fate of the pig in Egypt. For in historical times the fear and horror of the pig seem certainly to have outweighed the reverence and worship of which he must once have been the object, and of which, even in his fallen state, he never quite lost trace. He came to be looked on as an embodiment of Set or Typhon, the Egyptian devil and enemy of Osiris. For it was in the shape of a boar that Typhon menaced the eye of the god Horus, who burned him and instituted the sacrifice of the pig, the sun-god Ra having declared the pig abominable.[3] Again, the story that Typhon was hunting a boar when he discovered and mangled the body of Osiris, and that this was the reason why the pig was sacrificed once a year,[4] is a transparent modernisation of an older story that Osiris, like Adonis and Attis, was slain or mangled by a boar, or by Typhon in the form of a boar. Thus, the annual sacrifice of a pig to Osiris might naturally be interpreted as vengeance inflicted on the hostile animal that had slain or mangled the god. But, in the first place, when an animal is thus killed as a solemn sacrifice once and once only in the year, it generally or always means that the animal is divine – that he is spared and respected the rest of the year as a god and slain, when he is slain, also in the character of a god.[1] In the second place, the examples of Dionysus and Demeter, if not of Attis and Adonis, have taught us that the animal which is sacrificed to a god on the ground that he is the god’s enemy may have been, and probably was, originally the god himself. Therefore, the fact that the pig was sacrificed once a year to Osiris, and the fact that he appears to have been sacrificed on the ground that he was the god’s enemy, go to show, first, that originally the pig was a god, and, second, that he was Osiris. At a later age the pig was distinguished from Osiris when the latter became anthropomorphic and his original relation to the pig was forgotten; later still, the pig was opposed as an enemy to Osiris by mythologists who could think of no reason for killing an animal in connection with the worship of a god except that the animal was the god’s enemy; or, as Plutarch puts it, not that which is dear to the gods, but that which is the contrary, is fit to be sacrificed.[2] At this later stage the havoc which a wild boar notoriously makes amongst the corn would supply a plausible reason for regarding him as an enemy of the corn-spirit, though originally, if I am right, the very fact that the boar was found ranging at will through the corn was the reason for identifying him with the corn-spirit, to whom he was afterwards opposed as an enemy. The view which identifies the pig with Osiris derives not a little support from the fact that the day on which the pigs were sacrificed to him was the day on which, according to tradition, Osiris was killed;[1] for thus the killing of the pig was the annual representation of the killing of Osiris, just as the throwing of the pigs into the caverns at the Thesmophoria was an annual representation of the descent of Proserpine into the lower world; and both customs are parallel to the European practice of killing a goat, cock, etc., at harvest as a representative of the corn-spirit.

Again, the view that the pig, originally Osiris himself, afterwards came to be regarded as an embodiment of his enemy Typhon, is supported by the similar relation of red-haired men and red oxen to Typhon. For in regard to the red-haired men who were burned and whose ashes were scattered with winnowing-fans, we have seen fair grounds for believing that originally, like the red-haired puppies killed at Rome in spring, they were representatives of the corn-spirit himself, that is, of Osiris, and were slain for the express purpose of making the corn turn red or golden. Yet at a later time these men were explained to be representatives, not of Osiris, but of his enemy Typhon,[2] and the killing of them was regarded as an act of vengeance inflicted on the enemy of the god. Similarly, the red oxen sacrificed by the Egyptians were said to be sacrificed on the ground of their resemblance to Typhon;[3] though it is more likely that originally they were slain on the ground of their resemblance to the corn-spirit Osiris. We have seen that the ox is a common representative of the corn-spirit and is slain as such on the harvest-field.

Osiris was regularly identified with the bull Apis of Memphis and the bull Mnevis of Heliopolis.[4] But it is hard to say whether these bulls were embodiments of him as the corn-spirit, as the red oxen appear to have been, or whether they were not rather entirely distinct deities which got fused with Osiris by syncretism. The fact that these two bulls were worshipped by all the Egyptians,[1] seems to put them on a different footing from the ordinary sacred animals whose cults were purely local. Hence, if the latter were evolved from totems, as they probably were, some other origin would have to be found for the worship of Apis and Mnevis. If these bulls were not originally embodiments of the corn-god Osiris, they may possibly be descendants of the sacred cattle worshipped by a pastoral people.[2] If this were so, ancient Egypt would exhibit a stratification of the three great types of religion corresponding to the three great stages of society. Totemism or (roughly speaking) the worship of wild animals – the religion of society in the hunting stage – would be represented by the worship of the local sacred animals; the worship of cattle – the religion of society in the pastoral stage – would be represented by the cults of Apis and Mnevis; and the worship of cultivated plants, especially of corn – the religion of society in the agricultural stage – would be represented by the worship of Osiris and Isis. The Egyptian reverence for cows, which were never killed,[3] might belong either to the second or third of these stages. The fact that cows were regarded as sacred to, that is, as embodiments of Isis, who was represented with cow’s horns, would indicate that they, like the red oxen, were embodiments of the corn-spirit. However, this identification of Isis with the cow, like that of Osiris with the bulls Apis and Mnevis, may be only an effect of
syncretism. But whatever the original relation of Apis to Osiris may have been, there is one fact about the former which ought not to be passed over in a chapter dealing with the custom of killing the god. Although the bull Apis was worshipped as a god with much pomp and profound reverence, he was not suffered to live beyond a certain length of time which was prescribed by the sacred books, and on the expiry of which he was drowned in a holy spring.[1] The limit, according to Plutarch, was twenty-five years;[2] but it cannot always have been enforced, for the tombs of the Apis bulls have been discovered in the present century, and from the inscriptions on them it appears that in the twenty-second dynasty two bulls lived more than twenty-six years.[3]

We are now in a position to hazard a conjecture – for it can be little more – as to the meaning of the tradition that Virbius, the first of the divine Kings of the Wood at Aricia, was killed by horses. Having found, first, that spirits of vegetation are not infrequently represented in the form of horses;[4] and, second, that the animal which in later legends is said to have injured the god was sometimes originally the god himself, we may conjecture that the horses by which Virbius was said to have been slain were really embodiments of him as a deity of vegetation. The myth that Virbius had been killed by horses was probably invented to explain certain features in his cult, amongst others the custom of excluding horses from his sacred grove. For myth changes while custom remains constant; men continue to do what their fathers did before them, though the reasons on which their fathers acted have been long forgotten. The history of religion is a long attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason; to find a sound theory for an absurd practice. In the case before us we may be sure that the myth is more modern than the custom and by no means represents the original reason for excluding horses from the grove. From the fact that horses were so excluded it might be inferred that they could not be the sacred animals or embodiments of the god of the grove. But the inference would be rash. The goat was at one time a sacred animal or embodiment of Athene, as may be inferred from the practice of representing her clad in a goat-skin (aegis). Yet the goat was neither sacrificed to her as a rule, nor allowed to enter her great sanctuary, the Acropolis at Athens. The reason alleged for this was that the goat injured the olive, the sacred tree of Athene.[1] So far, therefore, the relation of the goat to Athene is parallel to the relation of the horse to Virbius, both animals being excluded from the sanctuary on the ground of injury done by them to the god. But from Varro we learn that there was an exception to the rule which excluded the goat from the Acropolis. Once a year, he says, the goat was driven on to the Acropolis for a necessary sacrifice.[2] Now, as has been remarked before, when an animal is sacrificed once and once only in the year, it is probably slain, not as a victim offered to the god, but as a representative of the god himself. Therefore we may infer that if a goat was sacrificed on the Acropolis once a year, it was sacrificed in the character of Athene herself; and it may be conjectured that the skin of the sacrificed animal was placed on the statue of the goddess and formed the aegis, which would thus be renewed annually. Similarly at Thebes in Egypt rams were sacred and were not sacrificed. But on one day in the year a ram was killed, and its skin was placed on the statue of the god Ammon.[3] Now, if we knew the ritual of the Arician grove better, we might find the rule of excluding horses from it, like the rule of excluding goats from the Acropolis at Athens, was subject to an annual exception, a horse being once a year taken into the grove and sacrificed as an embodiment of the god Virbius. By the usual misunderstanding the horse thus killed would come in time to be regarded as an enemy offered up in sacrifice to the god whom he had injured, like the pig which was sacrificed to Demeter and Osiris or the goat which was sacrificed to Athene and Dionysus. It is so easy for a writer to record a rule without noticing an exception that we need not wonder at finding the rule of the Arician grove recorded without any mention of an exception such as I suppose. If we had had only the statements of Athenaeus and Pliny, we should have known only the rule which forbade the sacrifice of goats to Athene and excluded them from the Acropolis, without being aware of the important exception which the fortunate preservation of Varro’s work has revealed to us.

The conjecture that once a year a horse may have been sacrificed in the Arician grove as a representative of the deity of the grove derives some support from the fact that a horse sacrifice of a similar character took place once a year at Rome. On the 15th of October in each year a chariot-race took place on the Field of Mars. The right-hand horse of the victorious team was sacrificed to Mars by being stabbed with a spear. The object of the sacrifice was to ensure good crops. The animal’s head was cut off and adorned with a string of loaves. The inhabitants of two wards – the Sacred Way and the Subura – then contended with each other who should get the head. If the people of the Sacred Way got it, they fastened it to a wall of the king’s house; if the people of the Subura got it, they fastened it to the Mamilian tower. The horse’s tail was cut off and carried to the king’s house with such speed that the blood dripped on the hearth of the house.[1] Further, it appears that the blood of the horse was caught and preserved till the 21st of April, when it was mixed by the Vestal virgins with the blood of the unborn calves which had been sacrificed six days before. The mixture was then distributed to shepherds, and used by them for fumigating their flocks.[1]

In this ceremony the decoration of the horse’s head with a string of loaves, and the alleged object of the sacrifice, namely, to procure a good harvest, clearly indicate that the horse was killed as one of those animal representatives of the corn-spirit of which we have seen so many examples. The custom of cutting off the horse’s tail is like the African custom of cutting off the tails of the oxen and sacrificing them to obtain a good crop.[2] In both the Roman and the African custom the animal represents the corn-spirit, and its fructifying power is supposed to reside especially in its tail. The latter idea occurs, as we have seen, in European folklore.[3] Again, the custom of fumigating the cattle in spring with the blood of the horse may be compared with the custom of giving the Maiden as fodder to the cattle at Christmas, and giving the Yule Boar to the ploughing oxen or horses to eat in spring.[4] All these customs aim at ensuring the blessing of the corn-spirit on the homestead and its inmates and storing it up for another year.

The Roman sacrifice of the October horse, as it was called, carries us back to the early days when the Subura, afterwards a low and crowded quarter of the great metropolis, was still a separate village, whose inhabitants engaged in a friendly contest on the harvest-field with their neighbours of Rome, then a little rural town. The Field of Mars on which the ceremony took place lay beside the Tiber, and formed part of the king’s domain down to the abolition of the monarchy. For tradition ran that at the time when the last of the kings was driven from Rome, the corn stood ripe for the sickle on the crown lands beside the river; but no one would eat the accursed grain and it was flung into the river in such heaps that, the water being low with the summer heat, it formed the nucleus of an island.[5] The horse sacrifice was thus an old autumn custom observed upon the king’s corn-fields at the end of the harvest. The tail and blood of the horse, as the chief parts of the corn-spirit’s representative, were taken to the king’s house and kept there; just as in Germany the harvest-cock is nailed on the gable or over the door of the farmhouse; and as the last sheaf, in the form of the Maiden, is carried home and kept over the fireplace in the Highlands of Scotland. Thus the blessing of the corn-spirit was brought to the king’s house and hearth and, through them, to the community of which he was the head. Similarly in the spring and autumn customs of Northern Europe the Maypole is sometimes set up in front of the house of the mayor or burgomaster, and the last sheaf at harvest is brought to him as the head of the village. But while the tail and blood fell to the king, the neighbouring village of the Subura, which no doubt once had a similar ceremony of its own, was gratified by being allowed to compete for the prize of the horse’s head. The Mamilian tower to which the Suburans nailed the horse’s head when they succeeded in carrying it off, appears to have been a peel-tower or keep of the old Mamilian family, the magnates of the village.[1] The ceremony thus performed on the king’s fields and at his house on behalf of the whole town and of the neighbouring village presupposes a time when each commune performed a similar ceremony on its own fields. In the rural districts of Latium the villages may have continued to observe the custom, each on its own land, long after the Roman hamlets had merged their separate harvest-homes in the common celebration on the king’s lands.[2] There is no intrinsic improbability in the supposition that the sacred grove of Aricia, like the Field of Mars at Rome, may have been the scene of a common harvest celebration, at which a horse was sacrificed with the same rude rites on behalf of the neighbouring villages. The horse would represent the fructifying spirit both of the tree and of the corn, for the two ideas melt into each other, as we see in customs like the Harvest-May.

Eating the God

We have now seen that the corn-spirit is represented sometimes in human, sometimes in animal form, and that in both cases he is killed in the person of his representative and eaten sacramentally. To find examples of actually killing the human representative of the corn-spirit we had of course to go to savage races; but the harvest suppers of our European peasants have furnished unmistakable examples of the sacramental eating of animals as representatives of the corn-spirit. But further, as might have been anticipated, the new corn is itself eaten sacramentally, that is, as the body of the corn-spirit. In Wermland, Sweden, the farmer’s wife uses the grain of the last sheaf to bake a loaf in the shape of a little girl; this loaf is divided amongst the whole household and eaten by them.[1] Here the loaf represents the corn-spirit conceived as a maiden; just as in Scotland the corn-spirit is similarly conceived and represented by the last sheaf made up in the form of a woman and bearing the name of the Maiden. As usual, the corn-spirit is believed to reside in the last sheaf; and to eat a loaf made from the last sheaf is, therefore, to eat the corn-spirit itself. Similarly at La Palisse in France a man made of dough is hung upon the fir-tree which is carried on the last harvest-waggon. The tree and the dough-man are taken to the mayor’s house and kept there till the vintage is over. Then the close of the harvest is celebrated by a feast at which the mayor breaks the dough-man in pieces and gives the pieces to the people to eat.[2]

In these examples the corn-spirit is represented and eaten in human shape. In other cases, though the new corn is not baked in loaves of human shape, still the solemn ceremonies with which it is eaten suffice to indicate that it is partaken of sacramentally, that is, as the body of the corn-spirit. For example, the following ceremonies used to be observed by Lithuanian peasants at eating the new corn. When the harvest and the sowing of the new corn were over, each farmer held a festival called Sabarios, that is, ‘the mixing or throwing together.’ He took a handful of each kind of grain – wheat, barley, oats, flax, beans, lentils, etc.; and each handful he divided into three parts. The twenty-seven portions of each grain were then thrown on a heap and all mixed up together. The grain used had to be the grain which was first threshed and winnowed and which had been set aside and kept for this purpose. A part of the grain thus mixed was used to bake little loaves, one for each of the household; the rest was mixed with more barley or oats and made into beer. The first beer brewed from this mixture was for the drinking of the farmer, his wife, and children; the second brew was for the servants. The beer being ready, the farmer chose an evening when no stranger was expected. Then he knelt down before the barrel of beer, drew a jugful of the liquor and poured it on the bung of the barrel, saying, ‘O fruitful earth, make rye and barley and all kinds of corn to flourish.’ Next he took the jug to the parlour, where his wife and children awaited him. On the floor of the parlour lay bound a black or white or speckled (not a red) cock and a hen of the same colour and of the same brood, which must have been hatched within the year. Then the farmer knelt down, with the jug in his hand, and thanked God for the harvest and prayed for a good crop next year. Then all lifted up their hands and said, ‘O God, and thou, Ο earth, we give you this cock and hen as a free-will offering.’ With that the farmer killed the fowls with the blows of a wooden spoon, for he might not cut their heads off. After the first prayer and after killing each of the birds he poured out a third of the beer. Then his wife boiled the fowls in a new pot which had never been used before. A bushel was then set, bottom upwards, on the floor, and on it were placed the little loaves mentioned above and the boiled fowls. Next the new beer was fetched, together with a ladle and three mugs, none of which was used except on this occasion. When the farmer had ladled the beer into the mugs, the family knelt down round the bushel. The father then uttered a prayer and drank off the three mugs of beer. The rest followed his example. Then the loaves and the flesh of the fowls were eaten, after which the beer went round again, till every one had emptied each of the three mugs nine times. None of the food should remain over; but if anything did happen to be left, it was consumed next morning with the same ceremonies. The bones were then given to the dog to eat; if he did not eat them all up, the remains were buried under the dung in the cattle-stall. This ceremony was observed at the beginning of December. On the day on which it occurred no bad word might be spoken.[1]

Such was the custom about two hundred years ago. At the present day in Lithuania, when new potatoes or loaves made from the new corn are being eaten, all the people at table pull each other’s hair.[2] The meaning of the latter custom is obscure, but a similar custom was certainly observed by the heathen Lithuanians at their solemn sacrifices.[3] Many of the Esthonians of the island of Oesel will not eat bread baked of the new corn till they have first taken a bite at a piece of iron.[4] The iron is here plainly a charm, intended to render harmless the spirit that is in the corn.[5] In Sutherlandshire at the present day, when the new potatoes are dug all the family must taste them, otherwise ‘the spirits in them [the potatoes] take offence, and the potatoes would not keep.’[6] In one part of Yorkshire it is still the custom for the clergyman to cut the first corn; and my informant believes that the corn so cut is used to make the communion bread.[7] If the latter part of the custom is correctly reported (and analogy is all in its favour), it shows how the Christian communion has absorbed within itself a sacrament which is doubtless far older than Christianity.

At the close of the rice harvest in Boeroe, East Indies, each clan (fenna) meets at a common sacramental meal, to which every member of the clan is bound to contribute a little of the new rice. This meal is called ‘eating the soul of the rice,’ a name which clearly indicates the sacramental character of the repast. Some of the rice is also set apart and offered to the spirits.[1] Amongst the Alfoers of Celebes the priest sows the first rice-seed and plucks the first ripe rice in each field. This rice he roasts and grinds into meal, and gives some of it to each of the household.[2] Shortly before the rice harvest in Bolang Mongondo, Celebes, an offering is made of a small pig or a fowl. Then the priest plucks a little rice, first on his own field and then on those of his neighbours. All the rice thus plucked by him he dries along with his own, and then gives it back to the respective owners, who have it ground and boiled. When it is boiled the women take it back, with an egg, to the priest, who offers the egg in sacrifice and returns the rice to the women. Of this rice every member of the family, down to the youngest child, must partake. After this ceremony every one is free to get in his rice.[3]Amongst the Burghers, a tribe of the Neilgherry Hills in Southern India, the first handful of seed is sown and the first sheaf reaped by a Curumbar – a man of a different tribe, whom the Burghers regard as sorcerers. The grain contained in the first sheaf ‘is that day reduced to meal, made into cakes, and, being offered as a first-fruit oblation, is, together with the remainder of the sacrificed animal, partaken of by the Burgher and the whole of his family as the meat of a federal offering and sacrifice.’[1]

Amongst the Coorgs of Southern India the man who is to cut the first sheaf of rice at harvest is chosen by an astrologer. At sunset the whole household takes a hot bath and then goes to the rice-field, where the chosen reaper cuts an armful of rice with a new sickle, and distributes two or more stalks to all present. Then all return to the threshing-floor. A bundle of leaves is adorned with a stalk of rice and fastened to the post in the centre of the threshing-floor. Enough of the new rice is now threshed, cleaned, and ground to provide flour for the dough cakes which each member of the household is to eat. Then they go to the door of the house, where the mistress washes the feet of the sheaf-cutter, and presents to him, and after him to all the rest, a brass vessel full of milk, honey, and sugar, from which each person takes a draught. Then the man who cut the sheaf kneads a cake of rice meal, plantains, milk, honey, seven new rice corns, seven pieces of cocoa-nut, etc. Every one receives a little of this cake on an Ashvatha leaf, and eats it. The ceremony is then over and the sheaf-cutter mixes with the company. When he was engaged in cutting the rice no one might touch him.[2] Among the Hindoos of Southern India the eating of the new rice is the occasion of a family festival called Pongol. The new rice is boiled in a new pot on a fire which is kindled at noon on the day when, according to Hindoo astrologers, the sun enters the tropic of Capricorn. The boiling of the pot is watched with great anxiety by the whole family, for as the milk boils, so will the coming year be. If the milk boils rapidly, the year will be prosperous; but it will be the reverse if the milk boils slowly. Some of the new boiled rice is offered to the image of Ganesa; then every one partakes of it.[1] At Gilgit, in the Hindoo Koosh, before wheat-harvest begins, a member of every household gathers a handful of ears of corn secretly at dusk. A few of the ears are hung up over the door of the house, and the rest are roasted next morning, and eaten steeped in milk. The day is spent in rejoicings, and next morning the harvest begins.[2]

The ceremony of eating the new yams at Onitsha, on the Quorra River, Guinea, is thus described: ‘Each headman brought out six yams, and cut down young branches of palm-leaves and placed them before his gate, roasted three of the yams, and got some kola-nuts and fish. After the yam is roasted, the Libia, or country doctor, takes the yam, scrapes it with a sort of meal, and divides it into halves; he then takes one piece, and places it on the lips of the person who is going to eat the new yam. The eater then blows up the steam from the hot yam, and afterwards pokes the whole into his mouth, and says, “I thank God for being permitted to eat the new yam;” he then begins to chew it heartily, with fish likewise.’[3] Amongst the Kafirs of Natal and Zululand, no one may eat of the new fruits till after a festival which marks the beginning of the Kafir year. All the people assemble at the king’s kraal, where they feast and dance. Before they separate the ‘dedication of the people’ takes place. Various fruits of the earth, as corn, mealies, and pumpkins, mixed with the flesh of a sacrificed animal and with ‘medicine,’ are boiled in great pots, and a little of this food is placed in each man’s mouth by the king himself. After thus partaking of the sanctified fruits, a man is himself sanctified for the whole year, and may immediately get in his crops.[4]

Amongst the Creek Indians of North America, the busk or festival of first-fruits was the chief ceremony of the year.[1] It was held in July or August, when the corn was ripe, and marked the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one. Before it took place none of the Indians would eat or even handle any part of the new harvest. Sometimes each town had its own busk; sometimes several towns united to hold one in common. Before celebrating the busk, the people provided themselves with new clothes and new household utensils and furniture; they collected their old clothes and rubbish, together with all the remaining grain and other old provisions, cast them together in one common heap, and consumed them with fire.[1] As a preparation for the ceremony, all the fires in the village were extinguished, and the ashes swept clean away. In particular, the hearth or altar of the temple was dug up and the ashes carried out. Then the chief priest put some roots of the button-snake plant, with some green tobacco leaves and a little of the new fruits, at the bottom of the fireplace, which he afterwards ordered to be covered up with white clay, and wetted over with clean water. A thick arbour of green branches of young trees was then made over the altar.[2] Meanwhile the women at home were cleaning out their houses, renewing the old hearths, and scouring all the cooking vessels that they might be ready to receive the new fire and the new fruits.[3] The public or sacred square was carefully swept of even the smallest crumbs of previous feasts, ‘for fear of polluting the first-fruit offerings.’ Also every vessel that had contained or had been used about any food during the expiring year was removed from the temple before sunset. Then all the men who were not known to have violated the law of the first-fruit offering and that of marriage during the year were summoned by a crier to enter the holy square and observe a solemn fast. But the women (except six old ones), the children, and all who had not attained the rank of warriors were forbidden to enter the square. Sentinels were also posted at the corners of the square to keep out all persons deemed impure and all animals. A strict fast was then observed for two nights and a day, the devotees drinking a bitter decoction of button-snake root ‘in order to vomit and purge their sinful bodies.’ That the people outside the square might also be purified, one of the old men laid down a quantity of green tobacco at a corner of the square; this was carried off by an old woman and distributed to the people without, who chewed and swallowed it ‘in order to afflict their souls.5 During this general fast, the women, children, and men of weak constitution were allowed to eat after mid-day, but not before. On the morning when the fast ended, the women brought a quantity of the old year’s food to the outside of the sacred square. These provisions were then brought in and set before the famished multitude, but all traces of them had to be removed before noon. When the sun was declining from the meridian, all the people were commanded by the voice of a crier to stay within doors, to do no bad act, and to be sure to extinguish and throw away every spark of the old fire. Universal silence now reigned. Then the high priest made the new fire by the friction of two pieces of wood, and placed it on the altar under the green arbour. This new fire was believed to atone for all past crimes except murder. Then a basket of new fruits was brought; the high priest took out a little of each sort of fruit, rubbed it with bear’s oil, and offered it, together with some flesh,’ to the bountiful holy spirit of fire, as a first-fruit offering, and an annual oblation for sin.’ He also consecrated the sacred emetics (the button-snake root and the cassina or black-drink) by pouring a little of them into the fire. The persons who had remained outside now approached, without entering, the sacred square; and the chief priest thereupon made a speech, exhorting the people to observe their old rites and customs, announcing that the new divine fire had purged away the sins of the past year, and earnestly warning the women that, if any of them had not extinguished the old fire, or had contracted any impurity, they must forthwith depart, ‘lest the divine fire should spoil both them and the people.’ Some of the new fire was then laid down outside the holy square; the women carried it home joyfully, and laid it on their unpolluted hearths. When several towns had united to celebrate the festival, the new fire might thus be carried for several miles. The new fruits were then dressed on the new fires and eaten with bear’s oil, which was deemed indispensable. At one point of the festival the men rubbed the new corn between their hands, then on their faces and breasts.[1] During the festival which followed, the warriors, dressed in their wild martial array, their heads covered with white down and carrying white feathers in their hands, danced round the sacred arbour, under which burned the new fire. The ceremonies lasted eight days, during which the strictest continence was practised. Towards the conclusion of the festival the warriors fought a mock battle; then the men and women together, in three circles, danced round the sacred fire. Lastly, all the people smeared themselves with white clay and bathed in running water. They came out of the water ‘believing themselves out of the reach of temporal evil for their past vicious conduct.’ So they departed in joy and peace.

The solemn preparations thus made for eating the new corn prove that it was eaten as a sacrament. In the Boeroe and Creek customs, this sacrament is combined with a sacrifice, and in course of time the sacrifice of first-fruits tends to throw the sacrament into the shade, if not to supersede it. The mere fact of having offered the first-fruits to the gods or ancestral spirits comes now to be thought a sufficient preparation for eating the new corn; the gods having received their share, man is free to enjoy the rest. This mode of viewing the new fruits implies that they are regarded no longer as themselves instinct with divine life, but merely as a gift bestowed by the gods upon man, who is bound to express his gratitude and homage to his divine benefactors by presenting them with a portion of the fruits of the earth. But with sacrifice, as distinct from sacrament, we are not here concerned.[2]

The custom of eating bread sacramentally as the body of a god was practised by the Aztecs before the discovery and conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards. Twice a year, in May and December, an image of the great Mexican god Huitzilopochtli or Vitzilipuztli was made of dough, then broken in pieces, and solemnly eaten by his worshippers. The May ceremony is thus described by the historian Acosta. ‘Two daies before this feast, the virgins whereof I have spoken (the which were shut up and secluded in the same temple and were as it were religious women) did mingle a quantitie of the seede of beetes with roasted Mays [maize], and then they did mould it with honie, making an idol of that paste in bignesse like to that of wood, putting insteede of eyes graines of greene glasse, of blue or white; and for teeth graines of Mays set forth with all the ornament and furniture that I have said. This being finished, all the Noblemen came and brought it an exquisite and rich garment, like unto that of the idol, wherewith they did attyre it. Being thus clad and deckt, they did set it in an azured chaire and in a litter to carry it on their shoulders. The morning of this feast being come, an hour before day all the maidens came forth attired in white, with new ornaments, the which that day were called the Sisters of their god Vitzilipuztli, they came crowned with garlands of Mays rosted and parched, being like unto azahar or the flower of orange; and about their neckes they had great chaines of the same, which went bauldrickewise under their left arme. Their cheekes were died with vermillion, their armes from the elbow to the wrist were covered with red parrots’ feathers.’ Young men, crowned like the virgins with maize, then carried the idol in its litter to the foot of the great pyramid- shaped temple, up the steep and narrow steps of which it was drawn to the music of flutes, trumpets, cornets, and drums. ‘While they mounted up the idoll all the people stoode in the Court with much reverence and feare. Being mounted to the top, and that they had placed it in a little lodge of roses which they held readie, presently came the young men, which strawed many flowers of sundrie kindes, wherewith they filled the temple both within and without. This done, all the virgins came out of their convent, bringing peeces of paste compounded of beetes and rosted Mays, which was of the same paste whereof their idol was made and compounded, and they were of the fashion of great bones. They delivered them to the young men, who carried them up and laide them at the idoll’s feete, wherewith they filled the whole place that it could receive no more. They called these morcells of paste the flesh and bones of Vitzilipuztli.’ Then the priests came in their robes of office, ‘and putting themselves in order about these morsells and peeces of paste, they used certaine ceremonies with singing and dauncing. By means whereof they were blessed and consecrated for the flesh and bones of this idoll … The ceremonies, dauncing, and sacrifice ended, they went to unclothe themselves, and the priests and superiors of the temple tooke the idoll of paste, which they spoyled of all the ornaments it had, and made many peeces, as well of the idoll itselfe as of the tronchons which were consecrated, and then they gave them to the people in manner of a communion, beginning with the greater, and continuing unto the rest, both men, women, and little children, who received it with such teares, feare, and reverence as it was an admirable thing, saying that they did eate the flesh and bones of God, wherewith they were grieved. Such as had any sicke folkes demaunded thereof for them, and carried it with great reverence and veneration.’[1]

Before the festival in December, which took place at the winter solstice, an image of the god Huitzilopochtli was made of seeds of various sorts kneaded into a dough with the blood of children. The bones of the god were represented by pieces of acacia wood, This image was placed on the chief altar of the temple, and on the day of the festival the king offered incense to it. Early next day it was taken down and set on its feet in a great hall. Then a priest took a flint-tipped dart and hurled it into the breast of the dough- image, piercing it through and through. This was called ‘killing the god Huitzilopochtli so that his body might be eaten.’ One of the priests cut out the heart of the image and gave it to the king to eat. The rest of the image was divided into minute pieces, of which every man great and small, down to the male children in the cradle, received one to eat. But no woman might taste a morsel. The ceremony was called teoqualo, that is, ‘god is eaten.’[1]

At another festival the Mexicans made little images in human shape to represent the cloud-capped mountains. These images were made of paste of various seeds and were dressed in paper ornaments. Some people made five, others ten, others as many as fifteen of these paste images. They were placed in the oratory of each house and worshipped. Four times in the course of the night offerings of food were made to them in tiny vessels; and people sang and played the flute before them all night. At break of day the priests stabbed the images with a weaver’s instrument, cut off their heads, and tore out their hearts, which they presented to the master of the house on a green saucer. The bodies of the images were then eaten by all the family, especially by the servants, ‘in order that by eating them they might be preserved from certain distempers, to which those persons who were negligent of worship to those deities conceived themselves to be subject.’[2]

We are now able to suggest an explanation of the proverb ‘there are many Manii at Aricia.’[3] Certain loaves made in the shape of men were called by the Romans maniae, and it appears that this kind of loaf was especially made at Aricia.[4] Now, Mania, the name of one of these loaves, was also the name of the Mother or Grandmother of Ghosts,[1] to whom woollen effigies of men and women were dedicated at the festival of the Compitalia. These effigies were hung at the doors of all the houses in Rome; one effigy was hung up for every free person in the house, and one effigy, of a different kind, for every slave. The reason was that on this day the ghosts of the dead were believed to be going about, and it was hoped that they would carry off the effigies at the door instead of the living people in the house. According to tradition, these woollen figures were substitutes for a former custom of sacrificing human beings.[2] Upon data so fragmentary and uncertain, it is of course impossible to build with certainty; but it seems worth suggesting that the loaves in human form, which appear to have been baked at Aricia, were sacramental bread, and that in the old days, when the divine King of the Wood was annually slain, loaves were made in his image, like the paste figures of the gods in Mexico, and were eaten sacramentally by his worshippers.[3] The Mexican sacraments in honour of Huit-zilopochtli were also accompanied by the sacrifice of human victims. The tradition that the founder of the sacred grove at Aricia was a man named Manius, from whom many Manii were descended, would thus be an etymological myth invented to explain the name maniae as applied to these sacramental loaves. A dim recollection of the original connection of these loaves with human sacrifices may perhaps be traced in the story that the effigies dedicated to Mania at the Compitalia were substitutes for human victims. The story itself, however, is probably devoid of foundation, since the practice of putting up dummies to divert the attention of demons from living people is not uncommon. For example, when an epidemic is raging, some of the Dyaks of Borneo set up wooden images at their doors in the hope that the demons of the plague will be deceived into carrying off the images instead of the people.[1] The Minahassa of Celebes will sometimes transport a sick man to another house, leaving on his bed a dummy made up of a pillow and clothes. This dummy the demon is supposed to take by mistake for the sick man, who consequently recovers.[2] Similarly in Burma it is thought that a patient will recover if an effigy be buried in a small coffin.[1]

The custom of killing the god has now been traced amongst peoples who have reached the agricultural stage of society. We have seen that the spirit of the corn, or of other cultivated plants, is commonly represented either in human or in animal form, and that a custom has prevailed of killing annually either the human or the animal representative of the god. The reason for thus killing the corn-spirit in the person of his representative has been given implicitly in the earlier part of this chapter. But, further, we have found a widespread custom of eating the god sacramentally, either in the shape of the man or animal who represents the god, or in the shape of bread made in human or animal form. The reasons for thus partaking of the body of the god are, from the primitive stand-point, simple enough. The savage commonly believes that by eating the flesh of an animal or man he acquires not only the physical, but even the moral and intellectual qualities which were characteristic of that animal or man. To take examples. The Creeks, Cherokees, and kindred tribes of North American Indians ‘believe that nature is possessed of such a property, as to transfuse into men and animals the qualities, either of the food they use, or of those objects that are presented to their senses; he who feeds on venison is, according to their physical system, swifter and more sagacious than the man who lives on the flesh of the clumsy bear, or helpless dunghill fowls, the slow-footed tame cattle, or the heavy wallowing swine. This is the reason that several of their old men recommend, and say, that formerly their greatest chieftains observed a constant rule in their diet, and seldom ate of any animal of a gross quality, or heavy motion of body, fancying it conveyed a dulness through the whole system, and disabled them from exerting themselves with proper vigour in their martial, civil, and religious duties.’[2] The Zaparo Indians of South America ‘will, unless from necessity, in most cases not eat any heavy meats, such as tapir and peccary, but confine themselves to birds, monkeys, deer, fish, etc., principally because they argue that the heavier meats make them unwieldy, like the animals who supply the flesh, impeding their agility, and unfitting them for the chase.’[1] The Namaquas abstain from eating the flesh of hares, because they think it would make them faint-hearted as a hare. But they eat the flesh of the lion, or drink the blood of the leopard or lion to get the courage and strength of these beasts.[2] The Arabs of Eastern Africa believe that an unguent of lion’s fat inspires a man with boldness, and makes the wild beasts flee in terror before him.[3] When a serious disease has attacked a Zulu kraal, the medicine-man takes the bone of a very old dog, which has died a natural death from mere old age, or the bone of an old cow, bull, or other very old animal, and administers it to the healthy as well as to the sick people, in order that they may live to be as old as the animal of whose bone they have partaken.[4] The Miris of Northern India prize tiger’s flesh as food for men; it gives them strength and courage. But ’it is not suited for women; it would make them too strong- minded.’[5] Amongst the Dyaks of North-west Borneo young men and warriors may not eat venison, because it would make them as timid as deer; but the women and very old men are free to eat it.[6] Men of the Buro and Aru Islands, East Indies, eat the flesh of dogs in order to be bold and nimble in war.[7] Amongst the Papuans of the Port Moresby and Motumotu districts, New Guinea, young lads eat strong pig, wallaby, and large fish, in order to acquire the strength of the animal or fish.[1] In Corea the bones of tigers fetch a higher price than those of leopards as a means of inspiring courage. A Chinaman in Soul bought and ate a whole tiger to make himself brave and fierce.[2] The special seat of courage, according to the Chinese, is the gall-bladder; so they sometimes procure the gall-bladders of tigers and bears, and eat the bile in the belief that it will give them courage.[3] In Norse history, Ingiald, son of King Aunund, was timid in his youth, but after eating the heart of a wolf he became very bold; and Hialto gained strength and courage by eating the heart of a bear and drinking its blood.[4] In Morocco lethargic patients are given ants to swallow; and to eat lion’s flesh will make a coward brave.[5] When a child is late in learning to speak, the Turks of Central Asia will give it the tongues of certain birds to eat.[6] A North American Indian thought that brandy must be a decoction of hearts and tongues, ‘Because,’ said he, ‘after drinking it I fear nothing, and I talk wonderfully.’[7] The people of Darfur, in Central Africa, think that the liver is the seat of the soul, and that a man may enlarge his soul by eating the liver of an animal. ‘Whenever an animal is killed its liver is taken out and eaten, but the people are most careful not to touch it with their hands, as it is considered sacred; it is cut up in small pieces and eaten raw, the bits being conveyed to the mouth on the point of a knife, or the sharp point of a stick. Any one who may accidentally touch the liver is strictly forbidden to partake of it, which prohibition is regarded as a great misfortune for him.’ Women are not allowed to eat liver, because they have no soul.[1]

Again, the flesh and blood of brave men are commonly eaten and drunk to inspire bravery. The Australian Kamilaroi eat the heart and liver of a brave man to get his courage.[2] It is a common practice with the Australian blacks to kill a man, cut out his caul-fat, and rub themselves with it, ‘the belief being that all the qualifications, both physical and mental, of the previous owner of the fat were thus communicated to him who used it.’[3] The Italones of the Philippine Islands drink the blood of their slain enemies, and eat part of the back of their heads and of their entrails raw, in order to acquire their courage. For the same reason the Efugaos, another tribe of the Philippines, suck the brains of their foes.[4] Amongst the Kimbunda of Western Africa, when a new king succeeds to the throne, a brave prisoner of war is killed in order that the king and nobles may eat his flesh, and so acquire his strength and courage.[5] The Basutos cut off pieces of their slain enemies and make them into a powder, ‘which is supposed to communicate to them the courage, skill, and good fortune of their adversaries.’[6] The Zulus think that by eating the centre of the forehead and the eyebrow of an enemy they acquire the power of looking steadfastly at a foe.[7] In the Shire Highlands of Africa those who kill a brave man eat his heart to get his courage.[8] For the same purpose the Chinese eat the bile of notorious bandits who have been executed.[1] In New Zealand ‘the chief was an atua [god], but there were powerful and powerless gods; each naturally sought to make himself one of the former; the plan therefore adopted was to incorporate the spirits of others with their own; thus, when a warrior slew a chief he immediately gouged out his eyes and swallowed them, the atua tonga, or divinity, being supposed to reside in that organ; thus he not only killed the body, but also possessed himself of the soul of his enemy, and consequently the more chiefs he slew the greater did his divinity become.’[2]

It is now easy to understand why a savage should desire to partake of the flesh of an animal or man whom he regards as divine. By eating the body of the god he shares in the god’s attributes and powers. And when the god is a corn-god, the corn is his proper body; when he is a vine-god, the juice of the grape is his blood; and so by eating the bread and drinking the wine the worshipper partakes of the real body and blood of his god. Thus the drinking of wine in the rites of a vine-god like Dionysus is not an act of revelry, it is a solemn sacrament.[3]

Killing the Divine Animal

It remains to show that hunting and pastoral tribes, as well as agricultural peoples, have been in the habit of killing their gods. The gods whom hunters and shepherds adore and kill are animals pure and simple, not animals regarded as embodiments of other supernatural beings. Our first example is drawn from the Indians of California, who,  living in a fertile country[1] under a serene and temperate sky, nevertheless rank near the bottom of the savage scale. The Acagchemen tribe of San Juan Capistrano adored the great buzzard. Once a year, at a great festival called Panes or bird-feast, they carried one of these birds in procession to their chief temple, which seems to have been merely an unroofed enclosure of stakes. Here they killed the bird without losing a drop of its blood. The skin was removed entire and preserved with the feathers as a relic or for the purpose of making the festal garment or paelt. The carcass was buried in a hole in the temple, and the old women gathered round the grave weeping and moaning bitterly, while they threw various kinds of seeds or pieces of food on it, crying out, ‘Why did you run away? Would you not have been better with us?’ and so on. They said that the Panes was a woman who had run off to the mountains and there been changed into a bird by the god Chinigchinich. They believed that though they sacrificed the bird annually, she came to life again and returned to her home in the mountains. Moreover they thought that ‘as often as the bird was killed, it became multiplied; because every year all the different Capitanes celebrated the same feast of the Panes, and were firm in the opinion that the birds sacrificed were but one and the same female.’[2]

The unity in multiplicity thus postulated by the Californians is very noticeable and helps to explain their motive for killing the divine bird. The notion of the life of a species as distinct from that of an individual, easy and obvious as it seems to us, appears to be one which the Californian savage cannot grasp. He is unable to conceive the life of the species otherwise than as an individual life, and therefore as exposed to the same dangers and calamities which menace and finally destroy the life of the individual. Apparently he thinks that a  species left to itself will grow old and die like an individual, and that therefore some step must be taken to save from extinction the particular species which he regards as divine. The only means he can think of to avert the catastrophe is to kill a member of the species in whose veins the tide of life is still running strong and has not yet stagnated among the fens of old age. The life thus diverted from one channel will flow, he fancies, more freshly and freely in a new one; in other words, the slain animal will revive and enter on a new term of life with all the spring and energy of youth. To us this reasoning is transparently absurd, but so too is the custom. If a better explanation, that is, one more consonant with the facts and with the principles of savage thought, can be given of the custom, I will willingly withdraw the one here proposed. A similar confusion, it may be noted, between the individual life and the life of the species was made by the Samoans. Each family had for its god a particular species of animal; yet the death of one of these animals, for example an owl, was not the death of the god, ‘he was supposed to be yet alive, and incarnate in all the owls in existence.’[1]

The rude Californian rite which we have just considered has a close parallel in the religion of ancient Egypt. The Thebans and all other Egyptians who worshipped the Theban god Ammon held rams to be sacred and would not sacrifice them. But once a year at the festival of Ammon they killed a ram, skinned it, and clothed the image of the god in the skin. Then they mourned over the ram and buried it in a sacred tomb. The custom was explained by a story that Zeus had once exhibited himself to Hercules clad in the fleece and wearing the head of a ram.[2] Of course the ram in this case was simply the beast-god of Thebes, as the wolf was the beast-god of Lycopolis, and the goat was the beast-god of Mendes. In other words, the ram was Ammon himself. On the  monuments, it is true, Ammon appears in semi-human form with the body of a man and the head of a ram.[1] But this only shows that he was in the usual chrysalis state through which beast-gods regularly pass before they emerge as full-fledged anthropomorphic gods. The ram, therefore, was killed, not as a sacrifice to Ammon, but as the god himself, whose identity with the beast is plainly shown by the custom of clothing his image in the skin of the slain ram. The reason for thus killing the ram- god annually may have been that which I have assigned for the general custom of killing the god and for the special Californian custom of killing the divine buzzard. As applied to Egypt, this explanation is supported by the analogy of the bull-god Apis, who was not suffered to outlive a certain term of years.[2] The intention of thus putting a limit to the life of the god was, as I have argued, to secure him from the weakness and frailty of age. The same reasoning would explain the custom – probably an older one – of putting the beast-god to death annually, as was done with the ram of Thebes.

One point in the Theban ritual – the application of the skin to the image of the god – deserves special attention. If the god was at first the living ram, his representation by an image must have originated later. But how did it originate? The answer to this question is perhaps furnished by the practice of preserving the skin of the animal which is slain as divine. The Californians, as we have seen, preserved the skin of the buzzard; and the skin of the goat, which is killed on the harvest-field as a representative of the corn-spirit, is kept for various superstitious purposes.[3] The skin in fact was kept as a token or memorial of the god, or rather as containing in it a part of the divine life, and it had only to be stuffed or stretched upon a frame to become a regular image of him. At first an image of this kind would be  renewed annually,[1] the new image being provided by the skin of the slain animal. But from annual images to permanent images the transition is easy. We have seen that the older custom of cutting a new May-tree every year was superseded by the practice of maintaining a permanent May-pole, which was, however, annually decked with fresh leaves and flowers and even surmounted each year by a fresh young tree.[2] Similarly when the stuffed skin, as a representative of the god, was replaced by a permanent image of him in wood, stone, or metal, the permanent image was annually clad in the fresh skin of the slain animal. When this stage had been reached, the custom of killing the ram came naturally to be interpreted as a sacrifice offered to the image, and was explained by a story like that of Ammon and Hercules.

West Africa furnishes another example of the annual killing of a sacred animal and the preservation of its skin. The negroes of Issapoo, in the island of Fernando Po, regard the cobra-capella as their guardian deity, who can do them good or ill, bestow riches or inflict disease and death. The skin of one of these reptiles is hung tail downwards from a branch of the highest tree in the public square, and the placing of it on the tree is an annual ceremony. As soon as the ceremony is over, all children born within the past year are carried out and their hands made to touch the tail of the serpent’s skin.[3] The latter custom is clearly a way of placing the infants under the protection of the tribal god.  Similarly in Senegambia a python is expected to visit every child of the Python clan within eight days after birth;[1] and the Psylli, a Snake clan of ancient Africa, used to expose their infants to snakes in the belief that the snakes would not harm true-born children of the clan.[2]

In the Californian, Egyptian, and Fernando Po customs the animal slain probably is, or once was, a totem. At all events, in all three cases the worship of the animal seems to have no relation to agriculture, and may therefore be presumed to date from the hunter or pastoral stage of society. The same may be said of the following custom, though the people who practise it – the Zuni Indians of New Mexico – are now settled in walled villages or towns of a peculiar type, and practise agriculture and the arts of pottery and weaving. But the Zuni custom is marked by certain features which appear to place it in a somewhat different category from the preceding cases. It may be well therefore to describe it at full length in the words of an eye-witness.

‘With midsummer the heat became intense. My brother [i.e. adopted Indian brother] and I sat, day after day, in the cool under-rooms of our house – the latter [sic] busy with his quaint forge and crude applicances, working Mexican coins over into bangles, girdles, ear-rings, buttons, and what not for savage ornament… One day as I sat watching him, a procession of fifty men went hastily down the hill, and off westward over the plain. They were solemnly led by a painted and shell-bedecked priest, and followed by the torch-bearing Shu-lu-wit-si, or God of Fire. After they had vanished, I asked old brother what it all meant.

‘“They are going,” said he, “to the city of the Ka-ka and the home of our others.”

‘Four days after, toward sunset, costumed and masked in the beautiful paraphernalia of the Ka-k’ok-shi, or “Good Dance,” they returned in file up the same pathway, each  bearing in his arms a basket filled with living, squirming turtles, which he regarded and carried as tenderly as a mother would her infant. Some of the wretched reptiles were carefully wrapped in soft blankets, their heads and forefeet protruding – and, mounted on the backs of the plume-bedecked pilgrims, made ludicrous but solemn caricatures of little children in the same position. While I was at supper upstairs that evening, the governor’s brother-in-law came in. He was welcomed by the family as if a messenger from heaven. He bore in his tremulous fingers one of the much abused and rebellious turtles. Paint still adhered to his hands and bare feet, which led me to infer that he had formed one of the sacred embassy.

‘“So you went to Ka-thlu-el-lon, did you?” I asked.

‘“E’e, replied the weary man, in a voice husky with long chanting, as he sank, almost exhausted, on a roll of skins which had been placed for him, and tenderly laid the turtle on the floor. No sooner did the creature find itself at liberty than it made off as fast as its lame legs would take it. Of one accord the family forsook dish, spoon, and drinking-cup, and grabbing from a sacred meal-bowl whole handfuls of the contents, hurriedly followed the turtle about the room, into dark corners, around water-jars, behind the grinding-troughs, and out into the middle of the floor again, praying and scattering meal on its back as they went. At last, strange to say, it approached the footsore man who had brought it.

‘“Ha!” he exclaimed, with emotion; “see, it comes to me again; ah, what great favours the fathers of all grant me this day,” and passing his hand gently over the sprawling animal, he inhaled from his palm deeply and long, at the same time invoking the favour of the gods. Then he leaned his chin upon his hand, and with large wistful eyes regarded his ugly captive as it sprawled about, blinking its meal- bedimmed eyes, and clawing the smooth floor in memory of its native element. At this juncture I ventured a question:

‘“Why do you not let him go, or give him some water?”

‘Slowly the man turned his eyes toward me, an odd mixture of pain, indignation, and pity on his face, while the worshipful family stared at me with holy horror.

‘“Poor younger brother!” he said at last, “know you not how precious it is? It die? It will not die; I tell you, it cannot die.”

‘“But it will die if you don’t feed it and give it water.”

‘“I tell you it cannot die; it will only change houses tomorrow, and go back to the home of its brothers. Ah, well! How should you know?” he mused. Turning to the blinded turtle again: “Ah! my poor dear lost child or parent, my sister or brother to have been! Who knows which? Maybe my own great-grandfather or mother!” And with this he fell to weeping most pathetically, and, tremulous with sobs, which were echoed by the women and children, he buried his face in his hands. Filled with sympathy for his grief, however mistaken, I raised the turtle to my lips and kissed its cold shell; then depositing it on the floor, hastily left the grief-stricken family to their sorrows. Next day, with prayers and tender beseechings, plumes, and offerings, the poor turtle was killed, and its flesh and bones were removed and deposited in the little river, that it might “return once more to eternal life among its comrades in the dark waters of the lake of the dead.” The shell, carefully scraped and dried, was made into a dance-rattle, and, covered by a piece of buckskin, it still hangs from the smoke-stained rafters of my brother’s house. Once a Na- vajo tried to buy it for a ladle; loaded with indignant reproaches, he was turned out of the house. Were any one to venture the suggestion that the turtle no longer lived, his remark would cause a flood of tears, and he would be reminded that it had only “changed houses and gone to live for ever in the home of ‘our lost others.’”’[1]

In this custom we find expressed in the clearest way a belief in the transmigration of human souls into the bodies of turtles.[2] The same belief in transmigration is held by the  Moqui Indians, who belong to the same race as the Zunis. The Moquis are divided into totem clans – the Bear clan, Deer clan, Wolf clan, Hare clan, etc.; they believe that the ancestors of the clans were bears, deer, wolves, hares, etc.; and that at death the members of each clan become bears, deer, etc.[1] The Zuni are also divided into clans, the totems of which agree closely with those of the Moquis, and one of their totems is the turtle.[2] Thus their belief in transmigration into the turtle is probably one of the regular articles of their totem faith. What then is the meaning of killing a turtle in which the soul of a kinsman is believed to be present? Apparently the object is to keep up a communication with the other world in which the souls of the departed are believed to be assembled in the form of turtles. It is a common belief that the spirits of the dead return occasionally to their old homes; and accordingly the unseen visitors are welcomed and feasted by the living, and then sent upon their way.[3] In the Zuni ceremony the dead are fetched back in the form of turtles, and the killing of the turtles is the way of sending back the souls to the spirit-land. Thus the general explanation given above of the custom of killing a god seems inapplicable to the Zuni custom, the true meaning of which is somewhat obscure.

Doubt also hangs over the meaning of the bear-sacrifice offered by the Ainos, a primitive people who are found in the Japanese islands of Yesso and Saghalien, and also in the southern of the Kurile Islands. It is not quite easy to make out the attitude of the Ainos towards the bear. On the one hand they give it the name of Kamui or ‘god’; but as they  apply the same word to strangers,[1] it probably means no more than a being supposed to be endowed with superhuman powers. Again, it is said ‘the bear is their chief divinity;’[2] ‘in the religion of the Ainos the bear plays a chief part;’[3] ‘amongst the animals it is especially the bear which receives an idolatrous veneration;’[4] ‘they worship it after their fashion… There is no doubt that this wild beast inspires more of the feeling which prompts worship than the inanimate forces of nature, and the Ainos may be distinguished as bear-worshippers.’[5] Yet, on the other hand, they kill the bear whenever they can;[6] ‘the men spend the autumn, winter, and spring in hunting deer and bears. Part of their tribute or taxes is paid in skins, and they subsist on the dried meat;’[7] bear’s flesh is indeed one of their staple foods; they eat it both fresh and salted;[8] and the skins of bears furnish them with clothing.[9] In fact, the ‘worship’ of which writers on this subject speak appears to be paid only to the dead animal. Thus, although they kill a bear whenever they can, ‘in the process of dissecting the carcass they endeavour to conciliate the deity, whose representative they have slain, by making elaborate obeisances and deprecatory salutations;’[10] ‘when a bear is trapped or wounded by an arrow, the hunters go through an apologetic or propitiatory ceremony.’[11] The skulls of slain bears receive a place of honour in their huts, or are set up on sacred posts outside the huts, and are treated with much respect; libations of  sake, an intoxicating liquor, are offered to them.[1] The skulls of foxes are also fastened to the sacred posts outside the huts; they are regarded as charms against evil spirits, and are consulted as oracles.[2] Yet it is expressly said, ‘The live fox is revered just as little as the bear; rather they avoid it as much as possible, considering it a wily animal.’[3] The bear cannot, therefore, be described as a sacred animal of the Ainos, and it certainly is not a totem; for they do not call themselves bears, they appear to have no legend of their descent from a bear,[4] and they kill and eat the animal freely.

But it is the bear-festival of the Ainos which concerns us here. Towards the end of winter a young bear is caught and brought into the village. At first he is suckled by an Aino woman; afterwards he is fed on fish. When he grows so strong that he threatens to break out of the wooden cage in which he is confined, the feast is held. But ‘it is a peculiarly striking fact that the young bear is not kept merely to furnish a good meal; rather he is regarded and honoured as a fetish, or even as a sort of higher being.’[5] The festival is generally celebrated in September or October. Before it takes place the Ainos apologise to their gods, alleging that they have treated the bear kindly as long as they could, now they can feed him no longer, and are obliged to kill him. A man who gives a bear-feast invites his relations and friends; in a small village nearly the whole community takes part in the feast. One of these festivals has been described by an eye-witness, Dr Scheube.[6] On entering the hut he found about thirty Ainos present, men, women, and children, all  dressed in their best. The master of the house first offered a libation on the fireplace to the god of the fire, and the guests followed his example. Then a libation was offered to the house-god in his sacred corner of the hut. Meanwhile the housewife, who had nursed the bear, sat by herself, silent and sad, bursting now and then into tears. Her grief was obviously unaffected, and it deepened as the festival went on. Next, the master of the house and some of the guests went out of the hut and offered libations before the bear’s cage. A few drops were presented to the bear in a saucer, which he at once upset. Then the women and girls danced round the cage, their faces turned towards it, their knees slightly bent, rising and hopping on their toes. As they danced they clapped their hands and sang a monotonous song. The housewife and a few old women, who might have nursed many bears, danced tearfully, stretching out their arms to the bear, and addressing it in terms of endearment. The young folks were less affected; they laughed as well as sang. Disturbed by the noise, the bear began to rush about his cage and howl lamentably. Next libations were offered to the inabos or sacred wands which stand outside of an Aino hut. These wands are about a couple of feet high, and are whittled at the top into spiral shavings.[1] Five new wands with bamboo leaves attached to them had been set up for the festival. This is regularly done when a bear is killed; the leaves mean that the bear may come to life again. Then the bear was let out of his cage, a rope was thrown round his neck, and he was led about in the neighbourhood of the hut. While this was being done the men, headed by a chief, shot at the bear with arrows tipped with wooden buttons. Dr Scheube had to do so also. Then the bear was taken before the sacred wands, a stick was put in his mouth, nine men knelt on him and pressed his neck against a beam. In five minutes the bear had expired without uttering a sound. Meantime the women and girls had taken post behind the men, where they danced, lamenting, and beating the men who were killing the bear. The bear’s carcass was next  placed on a mat before the sacred wands; and a sword and quiver, taken from the wands, were hung round the beast’s neck. Being a she-bear, it was also adorned with a necklace and ear-rings. Then food and drink were offered to it, in the shape of millet-broth, millet-cakes, and a pot of sake. The men now sat down on mats before the dead bear, offered libations to it, and drank deep. Meanwhile the women and girls had laid aside all marks of sorrow, and danced merrily, none more merrily than the old women. When the mirth was at its height two young Ainos, who had let the bear out of the cage, mounted the roof of the hut and threw cakes of millet among the company, who all scrambled for them without distinction of age or sex. The bear was next skinned and disembowelled, and the trunk severed from the head, to which the skin was left hanging. The blood, caught in cups, was eagerly swallowed by the men. None of the women or children appeared to drink the blood, though custom did not forbid them to do so. The liver was cut in small pieces and eaten raw, with salt, the women and children getting their share. The flesh and the rest of the vitals were taken into the house to be kept till the next day but one, and then to be divided among the persons who had been present at the feast. Blood and liver were offered to Dr Scheube. While the bear was being disembowelled, the women and girls danced the same dance which they had danced at the beginning – not, however, round the cage, but in front of the sacred wands. At this dance the old women, who had been merry a moment before, again shed tears freely. After the brain had been extracted from the bear’s head and swallowed with salt, the skull, detached from the skin, was hung on a pole beside the sacred wands. The stick with which the bear had been gagged was also fastened to the pole, and so were the sword and quiver which had been hung on the carcass. The latter were removed in about an hour, but the rest remained standing. The whole company, men and women, danced noisily before the pole; and another drinking-bout, in which the women joined, closed the festival.

The mode of killing the bear is described somewhat differently by Miss Bird, who, however, did not witness the ceremony. She says: ‘Yells and shouts are used to excite the bear; and when he becomes much agitated a chief shoots him with an arrow, inflicting a slight wound which maddens him, on which the bars of the cage are raised, and he springs forth, very furious. At this stage the Ainos run upon him with various weapons, each one striving to inflict a wound, as it brings good luck to draw his blood. As soon as he falls down exhausted his head is cut off, and the weapons with which he has been wounded are offered to it, and he is asked to avenge himself upon them.’ At Usu, on Volcano Bay, when the bear is being killed, the Ainos shout, ‘We kill you, Ο bear! come back soon into an Aino.’[1] A very respectable authority, Dr Siebold, states that the bear’s own heart is frequently offered to the dead animal, in order to assure him that he is still in life.[2] This, however, is denied by Dr Scheube, who says the heart is eaten.[3] Perhaps the custom may be observed in some places, though not in others.

The Gilyaks, a Tunguzian people of Eastern Siberia,[4] hold a bear festival of the same sort. ‘The bear is the object of the most refined solicitude of an entire village and plays the chief part in their religious ceremonies.’[5] An old she-bear is shot and her cub is reared, but not suckled in the village. When the bear is big enough he is taken from his cage and dragged through the village. But first he is led to the bank of the river, for this is believed to ensure abundance of fish to each family. He is then taken into every house in the village, where fish, brandy, etc. are offered to him. Some people prostrate themselves before the beast.  His entrance into a house is supposed to bring a blessing; and if he snuffs at the food offered to him, this also is a blessing. Nevertheless they tease and worry, poke and tickle the animal continually, so that he is surly and snappish.[1] After being thus taken to every house, he is tied to a peg and shot dead with arrows. His head is then cut off, decked with shavings, and placed on the table where the feast is set out. Here they beg pardon of the beast and worship him. Then his flesh is roasted and eaten in special vessels of wood finely carved. They do not eat the flesh raw nor drink the blood, as the Ainos do. The brain and entrails are eaten last; and the skull, still decked with shavings, is placed on a tree near the house, Then the people sing and both sexes dance in ranks, as bears.[2]

The Goldi, neighbours of the Gilyaks, treat the bear in much the same way. They hunt and kill it; but sometimes they capture a live bear and keep him in a cage, feeding him well and calling him their son and brother. Then at a great festival he is taken from his cage, paraded about with marked consideration, and afterwards killed and eaten. ‘The skull, jaw-bones, and ears are then suspended on a tree, as an antidote against evil spirits; but the flesh is eaten and much relished, for they believe that all who partake of it  acquire a zest for the chase, and become courageous.’[1]

In the treatment of the captive bear by these tribes there are features which can hardly be distinguished from worship. Such in particular is the Gilyak custom of leading him from house to house, that every family may receive his blessing – a custom parallel to the European one of taking a May-tree or a personal representative of the tree-spirit from door to door in spring, in order that all may share the fresh energies of reviving nature. Again the expected resurrection of the bear is avowedly indicated by the bamboo leaves and by the prayer addressed to him to ‘come back soon into an Aino.’ And that the eating of his flesh is regarded as a sacrament is made probable by the Gilyak custom of reserving special vessels to hold the bear’s flesh on this solemn occasion. How is the reverence thus paid to particular bears to be reconciled with the fact that bears in general are habitually hunted and killed by these tribes for the sake of their flesh and skins? On the one hand, the bear is treated as a god; on the other hand, as a creature wholly subservient to human needs. The apparent contradiction vanishes when we place ourselves at the savage point of view. The savage, we must remember, believes that animals are endowed with feelings and intelligence like those of men, and that, like men, they possess souls which survive the death of their bodies either to wander about as disembodied spirits or to be born again in animal form. To the savage, therefore, who regards all living creatures as practically on a footing of equality with man,[2] the act of killing and eating an animal must wear a very different aspect from that which the  same act presents to us who regard the intelligence of animals as far inferior to our own and deny them the possession of immortal souls. Thus on the principles of his rude philosophy the savage who slays an animal believes himself exposed to the vengeance either of its disembodied spirit or of all the other animals of the same species, whom he considers as knit together, like men, by the ties of kin and the obligations of the blood feud, and therefore as bound to resent the injury done to one of their number. Accordingly the savage makes it a rule to spare the life of those animals which he has no pressing motive for killing, at least such fierce and dangerous animals as are likely to exact a bloody vengeance for the slaughter of one of their kind. Crocodiles are animals of this sort. They are only found in hot countries where, as a rule, food is abundant and primitive man has therefore no reason to kill them for the sake of their tough and unpalatable flesh. Hence it is a general rule among savages to spare crocodiles, or rather only to kill them in obedience to the law of blood feud, that is, as a retaliation for the slaughter of men by crocodiles. For example, the Dyaks of Borneo will not kill a crocodile unless a crocodile has first killed a man. ‘For why, say they, should they commit an act of aggression, when he and his kindred can so easily repay them? But should the alligator take a human life, revenge becomes a sacred duty of the living relatives, who will trap the man-eater in the spirit of an officer of justice pursuing a criminal. Others, even then, hang back, reluctant to embroil themselves in a quarrel which does not concern them. The man-eating alligator is supposed to be pursued by a righteous Nemesis; and whenever one is caught they have a profound conviction that it must be the guilty one, or his accomplice.’[1] So the natives of Madagascar never kill a crocodile ‘except in retaliation for one of their friends who has been destroyed by a crocodile. They believe  that the wanton destruction of one of these reptiles will be followed by the loss of human life, in accordance with the principle of lex talionis.’ The people who live near the lake Itasy in Madagascar make a yearly proclamation to the crocodiles, announcing that they will revenge the death of some of their friends by killing as many crocodiles in return and warning all well-disposed crocodiles to keep out of the way, as they have no quarrel with them, but only with their evil-minded relations who have taken human life.[1] The Foulahs of Senegambia respect crocodiles on similar grounds.[2] The Seminoles, Sioux, and Iowa Indians of North America spare the rattle-snake because they fear that the ghost of the dead rattlesnake would incite its kinsfolk to take vengeance.[3] No consideration will induce a Sumatran to catch or wound a tiger except in self-defence or immediately after the tiger has destroyed a friend or relation. When a European has set traps for tigers, the people of the neighbourhood have been known to go by night to the place and explain to the tiger that the traps are not set by them nor with their consent.[4]

But the savage clearly cannot afford to spare all animals. He must either eat some of them or starve, and when the question thus comes to be whether he or the animal must perish, he is forced to overcome his superstitious scruples and take the life of the beast. At the same time he does all he can to appease his victims and their kinsfolk. Even in the act of killing them he testifies his respect for them, endeavours to excuse or even conceal his share in procuring their death, and promises that their remains will be honourably treated. By thus robbing death of its terrors he hopes to reconcile his victims to their fate and to induce their fellows to come and be killed also. For example, it was a principle with the Kamtchatkans never to kill a land or sea animal without first making excuses to it and begging that the animal would not take it ill. Also they offered it cedar-nuts, etc. to make it think that it was not a victim but a guest at a feast. They believed that this prevented other animals of the same species from growing shy. For instance, after they had killed a bear and feasted on its flesh, the host would bring the bear’s head before the company, wrap it in grass, and present it with a variety of trifles. Then he would lay the blame of the bear’s death on the Russians, and bid the beast wreak his wrath upon them. Also he would ask the bear to tell the other bears how well he had been treated, that they too might come without fear. Seals, sea-lions, and other animals were treated by the Kamtchatkans with the same ceremonious respect.[1] When the Ostiaks have hunted and killed a bear, they cut off its head and hang it on a tree. Then they gather round in a circle and pay it divine honours. Next they run towards the carcass uttering lamentations and saying, ‘Who killed you? It was the Russians. Who cut off your head? It was a Russian axe. Who skinned you? It was a knife made by a Russian.’ They explain, too, that the feathers which sped the arrow on its flight came from the wing of a strange bird, and that they did nothing but let the arrow go. They do all this because they believe that the wandering ghost of the slain bear would attack them on the first opportunity, if they did not thus appease it.[2] Or they stuff the skin of the slain bear with hay; and after celebrating their victory with songs of mockery and insult, after spitting on and kicking it, they set it up on its hind legs, ‘and then, for a considerable time, they bestow on it all the veneration due to a guardian god.’[3] When a party of Koriaks have killed a bear or a wolf, they skin the beast and dress one of themselves in the skin. Then they dance round the skin-  clad man, saying that it was not they who killed the animal, but some one else, generally a Russian. When they kill a fox they skin it, wrap the body in grass, and bid him go tell his companions how hospitably he has been received, and how he has received a new cloak instead of his old one.[1] The Finns used to try to persuade a slain bear that he had not been killed by them, but had fallen from a tree, etc.[2] When the Lapps had succeeded in killing a bear with impunity, they thanked him for not hurting them and for not breaking the clubs and spears which had given him his death wounds; and they prayed that he would not visit his death upon them by sending storms or in any other way.[3] His flesh then furnished a feast.

The reverence of hunters for the bear whom they regularly kill and eat may thus be traced all along the northern region of the Old World, from Behring’s Straits to Lappland. It reappears in similar forms in North America. With the American Indians a bear hunt was an important event for which they prepared by long fasts and purgations. Before setting out they offered expiatory sacrifices to the souls of bears slain in previous hunts, and besought them to be favourable to the hunters. When a bear was killed the hunter lit his pipe, and putting the mouth of it between the bear’s lips, blew into the bowl, filling the beast’s mouth with smoke. Then he begged the bear not to be angry at having been killed, and not to thwart him afterwards in the chase. The carcass was roasted whole and eaten; not a morsel of the flesh might be left over. The head, painted red and blue, was hung on a post and addressed by orators, who heaped praise on the dead beast.[4] When men of the Bear clan in the Otawa tribe killed a bear,  they made him a feast of his own flesh, and addressed him thus: ‘Cherish us no grudge because we have killed you. You have sense; you see that our children are hungry. They love you and wish to take you into their bodies. Is it not glorious to be eaten by the children of a chief?’[1] Amongst the Nootka Indians of British Columbia, when a bear had been killed, it was brought in and seated before the head chief in an upright posture, with a chiefs bonnet, wrought in figures, on its head, and its fur powdered over with white down. A tray of provisions was then set before it, and it was invited by words and gestures to eat. The animal was then skinned, boiled, and eaten.[2]

A like respect is testified for other dangerous animals by the hunters who regularly trap and kill them. When Kafir hunters are in the act of showering spears on an elephant, they call out, ‘Don’t kill us, great captain; don’t strike or tread upon us, mighty chief.’[3] When he is dead they make their excuses to him, pretending that his death was a pure accident. As a mark of respect they bury his trunk with much solemn ceremony; for they say that ‘The elephant is a great lord; his trunk is his hand.’[4] Amongst some tribes of Eastern Africa, when a lion is killed, the carcass is brought before the king, who does homage to it by prostrating himself on the ground and rubbing his face on the muzzle  of the beast.[1] In some parts of Western Africa if a negro kills a leopard he is bound fast and brought before the chiefs for having killed one of their peers. The man defends himself on the plea that the leopard is chief of the forest and therefore a stranger. He is then set at liberty and rewarded. But the dead leopard, adorned with a chiefs bonnet, is set up in the village, where nightly dances are held in its honour.[2] ‘Before leaving a temporary camp in the forest, where they have killed a tapir and dried the meat on a babracot, Indians [of Guiana] invariably destroy this babracot, saying that should a tapir passing that way find traces of the slaughter of one of his kind, he would come by night on the next occasion when Indians slept at that place, and, taking a man, would babracot him in revenge.’[3]

But it is not merely dangerous animals with whom the savage desires to keep on good terms. It is true that the respect which he pays to wild beasts is in some measure proportioned to their strength and ferocity. Thus the savage Stiens of Cambodia, believing that all animals have souls which roam about after their death, beg an animal’s pardon when they kill it, lest its soul should come and torment them. Also they offer it sacrifices, but these sacrifices are proportioned to the size and strength of the animal. The ceremonies observed at the death of an elephant are conducted with much pomp and last seven days.[4] Similar distinctions are drawn by North American Indians. ‘The bear, the buffalo, and the beaver are manidos [divinities] which furnish food. The bear is formidable, and good to eat. They render ceremonies to him, begging him to allow himself to be eaten, although they know he has no fancy for it. We kill you, but you are not annihilated. His head and paws are objects of homage… Other animals are treated similarly from similar reasons… Many of the  animal manidos, not being dangerous, are often treated with contempt – the terrapin, the weasel, polecat, etc.’[1] The distinction is instructive. Animals which are feared, or are good to eat, or both, are treated with ceremonious respect; those which are neither formidable nor good to eat are despised. We have had examples of reverence paid to animals which are both feared and eaten. It remains to prove that similar respect is shown for animals which, without being feared, are either eaten or valued for their skins.

When Siberian sable-hunters have caught a sable, no one is allowed to see it, and they think that if good or evil be spoken of the captured sable, no more sables will be caught. A hunter has been known to express his belief that the sables could hear what was said of them as far off as Moscow. He said that the chief reason why the sable hunt was now so unproductive was that some live sables had been sent to Moscow. There they had been viewed with astonishment as strange animals, and the sables cannot abide that. Another, though minor, cause of the diminished take of sable was, he alleged, that the world is now much worse than it used to be, so that nowadays a hunter will sometimes hide the sable which he has got instead of putting it into the common stock. This also, said he, the sables cannot abide.[2] Alaskan hunters preserve the bones of sables and beavers out of reach of the dogs for a year and then bury them carefully, ‘lest the spirits who look after the beavers and sables should consider that they are regarded with contempt, and hence no more should be killed or trapped.’[3] The Canadian Indians were equally particular not to let their dogs gnaw the bones, or at least certain of the bones, of beavers. They took the greatest pains to collect and preserve these bones and, when the beaver had been caught in a net, they threw them into the river. To a Jesuit who argued that the beavers could not possibly know what became of their bones, the Indians replied, ‘You  know nothing about catching beavers and yet you will be talking about it. Before the beaver is stone dead, his soul takes a turn in the hut of the man who is killing him and makes a careful note of what is done with his bones. If the bones are given to the dogs, the other beavers would get word of it and would not let themselves be caught. Whereas, if their bones are thrown into the fire or a river, they are quite satisfied; and it is particularly gratifying to the net which caught them.’[1] Before hunting the beaver they offered a solemn prayer to the Great Beaver, and presented him with tobacco; and when the chase was over, an orator pronounced a funeral oration over the dead beavers. He praised their spirit and wisdom. ‘You will hear no more,’ said he, ‘the voice of the chieftains who commanded you and whom you chose from among all the warrior beavers to give you laws. Your language, which the medicine-men understand perfectly, will be heard no more at the bottom of the lake. You will fight no more battles with the otters, your cruel foes. No, beavers! But your skins shall serve to buy arms; we will carry your smoked hams to our children; we will keep the dogs from eating your bones, which are so hard.’[2]

The elan, deer, and elk were treated by the North American Indians with the same punctilious respect, and for the same reason. Their bones might not be given to the dogs nor thrown into the fire, nor might their fat be dropped upon the fire, because the souls of the dead  animals were believed to see what was done to their bodies and to tell it to the other beasts, living and dead. Hence, if their bodies were ill used, the animals of that species would not allow themselves to be taken, neither in this world nor in the world to come.[1] A sick man would be asked by the medicine-man whether he had not thrown away some of the flesh of the deer or turtle, and if he answered yes, the medicine-man would say, ‘That is what is killing you. The soul of the deer or turtle has entered into your body to avenge the wrong you did it.’[2] The Sioux will not stick an awl or needle into a turtle, for they are sure that, if they were to do so, the turtle would punish them at some future time.[3] The Canadian Indians would not eat the embryos of the elk, unless at the close of the hunting season; otherwise the mother-elks would be shy and refuse to be caught.[4] Some of the Indians believed that each sort of animal had its patron or genius who watched over and preserved it. An Indian girl having once picked up a dead mouse, her father snatched the little creature from her and tenderly caressed and fondled it. Being asked why he did so, he said that it was to appease the genius of mice, in order that he might not torment his daughter for eating the mouse. With that he handed the mouse to the girl and she ate it.[5]

For like reasons, a tribe which depends for its subsistence, chiefly or in part, upon fishing is careful to treat the fish with every mark of honour and respect. The Indians of Peru ‘adored the fish that they caught in greatest abundance; for they said that the first fish that was made in the world above (for so they named Heaven) gave birth to all  other fish of that species, and took care to send them plenty of its children to sustain their tribe. For this reason they worshipped sardines in one region, where they killed more of them than of any other fish; in others, the skate; in others, the dogfish; in others, the golden fish for its beauty; in others, the crawfish; in others, for want of larger gods, the crabs, where they had no other fish, or where they knew not how to catch and kill them. In short, they had whatever fish was most serviceable to them as their gods.’[1] The Otawa Indians of Canada, believing that the souls of dead fish passed into other bodies of fish, never burned fish bones, for fear of displeasing the souls of the fish, who would come no more to the nets.[2] The Hurons also refrained from throwing fish bones into the fire, lest the souls of the fish should go and warn the other fish not to let themselves be caught, since the Hurons would burn their bones. Moreover, they had men who preached to the fish and persuaded them to come and be caught. A good preacher was much sought after, for they thought that the exhortations of a clever man had a great effect in drawing the fish to the nets. In the Huron fishing village where the French missionary Sagard stayed, the preacher to the fish prided himself very much on his eloquence, which was of a florid order. Every evening after supper, having seen that all the people were in their places and that a strict silence was observed, he preached to the fish. His text was that the Hurons did not burn fish bones. ‘Then enlarging on his theme with extraordinary unction, he exhorted and conjured and invited and implored the fish to come and be caught and to be of good courage and to fear nothing, for it was all to serve their friends who honoured them and did not burn their bones.’[3] The disappearance of herring from the sea about Heligoland in 1530 was attributed by the  fishermen to the fact that two lads had whipped a freshly- caught herring and then flung it back into the sea.[1] The natives of the Duke of York Island annually decorate a canoe with flowers and ferns, lade it, or are supposed to lade it, with shell-money, and set it adrift to pay the fish for those they lose by being caught.[2] It is especially necessary to treat the first fish caught with consideration in order to conciliate the rest of the fish, for their conduct may be supposed to be influenced by the reception given to the first of their kind which is taken. Accordingly the Maoris always put back into the sea the first fish caught, ‘with a prayer that it may tempt other fish to come and be caught.’[3]

Still more stringent are the precautions taken when the fish are the first of the season. On salmon rivers, when the fish begin to run up the stream in spring, they are received with much deference by tribes who, like the Indians of the Pacific Coast of North America, subsist largely upon a fish diet. In British Columbia the Indians used to go out to meet the first fish as they came up the river. ‘They paid court to them, and would address them thus. “You fish, you fish; you are all chiefs, you are; you are all chiefs.”’[4] Amongst the Thlinket of Alaska the first halibut of the season is carefully handled, addressed as a chief, and a festival is given in his honour, after which the fishing goes on.[5] In spring, when the winds blow soft from the south and the salmon begin to run up the Klamath river, the Karoks of California dance for salmon, to ensure a good catch. One of the Indians, called the Kareya or God-man, retires to the mountains and fasts for ten days. On his return the people flee, while he goes to the river, takes the  first salmon of the catch, eats some of it, and with the rest kindles the sacred fire in the sweating-house. ‘No Indian may take a salmon before this dance is held, nor for ten days after it, even if his family are starving.’ The Karoks also believe that a fisherman will take no salmon if the poles of which his spearing-booth is made were gathered on the river-side, where the salmon might have seen them. The poles must be brought from the top of the highest mountain. The fisherman will also labour in vain if he uses the same poles a second year in booths or weirs, ‘because the old salmon will have told the young ones about them.’[1] Among the Indians of the Columbia River, ‘when the salmon make their first appearance in the river, they are never allowed to be cut crosswise, nor boiled, but roasted; nor are they allowed to be sold without the heart being first taken out, nor to be kept over night, but must be all consumed or eaten the day they are taken out of the water. All these rules are observed for about ten days.’[2] They think that if the heart of a fish were eaten by a stranger at the beginning of the season, they would catch no more fish. Hence, they roast and eat the hearts themselves.[3] There is a favourite fish of the Ainos which appears in their rivers about May and June. They prepare for the fishing by observing rules of ceremonial purity, and when they have gone out to fish, the women at home must keep strict silence or the fish would hear them and disappear. When the first fish is caught he is brought home and passed through a small opening at the end of the hut, but not through the door; for if he were passed through the door, ‘the other fish would certainly see him and disappear.’[4] This explains the custom observed by other savages  of bringing game into their huts., not by the door, but by the window, the smoke-hole, or by a special opening at the back of the hut.[1]

With some savages a special reason for respecting the bones of game, and generally of the animals which they eat, is a belief that, if the bones are preserved, they will in course of time be reclothed with flesh, and thus the animal will come to life again. It is, therefore, clearly for the interest of the hunter to leave the bones intact, since to destroy them would be to diminish the future supply of game. Many of the Minnetaree Indians ‘believe that the bones of those bisons which they have slain and divested of flesh rise again clothed with renewed flesh, and quickened with life, and become fat, and fit for slaughter the succeeding June.’[2] Hence on the western prairies of America, the skulls of buffalos may be seen arranged in circles and symmetrical piles, awaiting the resurrection.[3] After feasting on a dog, the Dacotas carefully collect the bones, scrape, wash, and bury them, ‘partly, as it is said, to testify to the dog-species, that in feasting upon one of their number no disrespect was meant to the species itself, and partly also from a belief that the bones of the animal will rise and reproduce another.’[4] In sacrificing an animal the Lapps regularly put aside the bones, eyes, ears, heart, lungs, sexual parts (if the animal was a male), and a morsel of flesh from each limb. Then, after eating the rest of the flesh, they laid the bones etc. in anatomical order in a coffin and buried them with the usual rites, believing that the god to whom the animal was sacrificed would reclothe the bones with flesh and restore the animal to life in Jabme-Aimo, the subterranean world of the dead. Sometimes, as after feasting on a bear, they seem to have  contented themselves with thus burying the bones.[1] Thus the Lapps expected the resurrection of the slain animal to take place in another world, resembling in this respect the Kamtchatkans, who believed that every creature, down to the smallest fly, would rise from the dead and live underground.[2] On the other hand, the North American Indians looked for the resurrection of the animals in the present world. The habit, observed especially by Mongolian peoples, of stuffing the skin of a sacrificed animal, or stretching it on a framework,[3] points rather to a belief in a resurrection of the latter sort. The objection commonly entertained by primitive peoples to break the bones of the animals which they have eaten or sacrificed[4] may be based   either on a belief in the resurrection of the animals, or on a fear of intimidating the other creatures of the same species and offending the ghosts of the slain animals. The reluctance of North American Indians to let dogs gnaw the bones of animals[1] is perhaps only a precaution to prevent the bones from being broken. There are traces in folk-tales of the same primitive belief that animals or men may come to life again, if only their bones are preserved; not uncommonly the animal or man in the story comes to life lame of a limb, because one of his bones has been eaten, broken, or lost.[1] In a Magyar tale, the hero is cut in pieces, but the serpent-king lays the bones together in their proper order, and washes them with water, whereupon the hero comes to life again. His shoulder-blade, however, had been lost, so the serpent-king supplied its place with one of gold and ivory.[2] Such stories, as Mannhardt has seen, explain why Pythagoras, who claimed to have lived many lives, one after the other, was said to have exhibited his golden leg as a proof of his supernatural pretensions.[3] Doubtless he was reported to have explained that at one of his resurrections a leg had been broken or mislaid, and that it had been replaced with one of gold. Similarly, when the murdered Pelops was restored to life, the shoulder which Demeter had eaten was replaced with one of ivory.[4] The story that one of the members of the mangled Osiris was eaten by fish, and that, when Isis collected his scattered limbs, she replaced the missing member with one of wood,[1] may perhaps belong to the same circle of beliefs.

There is a certain rule observed by savage hunters and fishers which, obscure at first sight, may be explained by this savage belief in resurrection. A traveller in America in the early part of this century was told by a half-breed Choctaw that the Indians ‘had an obscure story, somewhat resembling that of Jacob wrestling with an angel; and that the full-blooded Indians always separate the sinew which shrank, and that it is never seen in the venison exposed for sale; he did not know what they did with it. His elder brother, whom I afterwards met, told me that they eat it as a rarity; but I have also heard, though on less respectable authority, that they refrain from it, like the ancient Jews. A gentleman, who had lived on the Indian frontier, or in the nation, for ten or fifteen years, told me that he had often been surprised that the Indians always detatched the sinew; but it had never occurred to him to inquire the reason.’[2] James Adair, who knew the Indians of the South Eastern States intimately, and whose theories appear not to have distorted his view of the facts, observes that ‘when in the woods, the Indians cut a small piece out of the lower part of the thighs of the deer they kill, lengthways and pretty deep. Among the great number of venison-hams they bring to our trading houses, I do not remember to have observed one without it… And I have been assured by a gentleman of character, who is now an inhabitant of South Carolina, and well acquainted with the customs of the Northern Indians, that they also cut a piece out of the thigh of every deer they kill, and throw it away; and reckon it such a dangerous pollution to eat it as to occasion sickness and other misfortunes of sundry kinds, especially by spoiling their guns from shooting with proper force and direction.’[3] In recent years the statement of Adair’s informant has been  confirmed by the French missionary Petitot, who has also published the ‘obscure story’ to which Hodgson refers. The Loucheux and Hare-skin Indians who roam the bleak steppes and forests that stretch from Hudson’s Bay to the Rocky Mountains, and northward to the frozen sea, are forbidden by custom to eat the sinew of the legs of animals. To explain this custom they tell the following ‘sacred story.’ Once upon a time a man found a burrow of porcupines, and going down into it after the porcupines he lost his way in the darkness, till a kind giant called ‘He who sees before and behind’ released him by cleaving open the earth. So the man, whose name was ‘Fireless and Homeless,’ lived with the kind giant, and the giant hunted elans and beavers for him, and carried him about in the sheath of his flint knife. ‘But know, my son,’ said the giant, ‘that he who uses the sky as his head is angry with me, and has sworn my destruction. If he slays me the clouds will be tinged with my blood; they will be red with it, probably.’ Then he gave the man an axe made of the tooth of a gigantic beaver, and went forth to meet his enemy. But from under the ice the man heard a dull muffled sound. It was a whale which was making this noise because it was naked and cold. Warned by the man, the giant went toward the whale, which took human shape, and rushed upon the giant. It was the wicked giant, the kind giant’s enemy. The two struggled together for a long time, till the kind giant cried, ‘Oh, my son! cut, cut the sinew of the leg.’ The man cut the sinew, and the wicked giant fell down and was slain. That is why the Indians do not eat the sinew of the leg. Afterwards, one day the sky suddenly grew red, so Fireless and Homeless knew that the kind giant was dead, and he wept.[1] This myth, it is almost needless to observe, does not really explain the custom. No people ever observed a custom because a mythical being was said to have once acted in a certain way. But, on the contrary, all peoples have invented myths to explain why they observed certain customs. Dismissing, therefore, the story of Fireless and  Homeless as a myth invented to explain why the Indians abstain from eating a particular sinew, it may be suggested[1] that the original reason for observing the custom was a belief that the sinew in question was necessary to reproduction, and that deprived of it the slain animals could not come to life again and stock the steppes and prairies either of the present world or of the spirit land. We have seen that the resurrection of animals is a common article of savage faith, and that when the Lapps bury the skeleton of the male bear in the hope of its resurrection they are careful to bury the genital parts along with it.[2]

Besides the animals which primitive man dreads for their strength and ferocity, and those which he reveres on account of the benefits which he expects from them, there is another class of creatures which he sometimes deems it necessary to conciliate by worship and sacrifice. These are the vermin that infest the crops. To rid himself of these deadly foes the farmer has recourse to a thousand superstitious devices, of which, though many are meant to destroy or intimidate the vermin, others aim at propitiating them and persuading them by fair means to spare the fruits of the earth. Thus Esthonian peasants, in the Island of Oesel, stand in great awe of the weevil, an insect which is exceedingly destructive to the grain. They give it a euphemistic title, and if a child is about to kill a weevil they say, ‘Don’t do it; the more we hurt him, the more he hurts us.’ If they find a weevil they bury it in the earth instead of killing it. Some even put the weevil under a stone in the field and offer corn to it. They think that thus it is appeased and does less harm.[1] Amongst the Saxons of Transylvania, in order to keep sparrows from the corn, the sower begins by throwing the first handful of seed backwards over his head, saying, ‘That is for you, sparrows.’ To guard the corn against the attacks of leaf-flies (Erdflöhe) he shuts his eyes and scatters three handfuls of oats in different directions. Having made this offering to the leaf-flies he feels sure that they will spare the corn. A Transylvanian way of securing the crops against all birds, beasts, and insects, is this: After he has finished sowing, the sower goes once more from end to end of the field imitating the gesture of sowing, but with an empty hand. As he does so he says, ‘I sow this for the animals; I sow it for everything that flies and creeps, that walks and stands, that sings and  springs, in the name of God the Father, etc.’[1] The following is a German way of freeing a garden from caterpillars. After sunset or at midnight the mistress of the house, or another female member of the family, walks all round the garden dragging a broom after her. She must not look behind her, and must keep murmuring, ‘Good evening, Mother Caterpillar, you shall come with your husband to church.’ The garden gate is left open till the following morning.[2]

Sometimes in dealing with vermin the farmer resorts neither to unmitigated severity nor to unbounded indulgence, but aims at adopting a judicious compromise between the two; kind but firm, he tempers severity with mercy. An ancient Greek treatise on farming advises the husbandman who would rid his lands of mice to act thus: ‘Take a sheet of paper and write on it as follows: “I adjure you, ye mice here present, that ye neither injure me nor suffer another mouse to do so. I give you yonder field” (here you specify the field); “but if ever I catch you here again, by the Mother of the Gods I will rend you in seven pieces.” Write this, and stick the paper on an unhewn stone in the field before sunrise, taking care to keep the written side uppermost.’[3] Sometimes the desired object is supposed to be attained by treating with high distinction one or two chosen individuals of the obnoxious species, while the rest are pursued with relentless rigour. In the East Indian island of Bali, the mice which ravage the rice-fields are caught in great numbers, and burned in the same way that corpses are burned. But two of the captured mice are allowed to live, and receive a little packet of white linen. Then the people bow down before them, as before gods, and  let them go.[1] In some parts of Bohemia the peasant, though he kills field mice and gray mice without scruple, always spares white mice. If he finds a white mouse he takes it up carefully, and makes a comfortable bed for it in the window; for if it died the luck of the house would be gone, and the gray mice would multiply fearfully in the house.[2] When caterpillars invaded a vineyard or field in Syria, the virgins were gathered, and one of the caterpillars was taken and a girl made its mother. Then they bewailed and buried it. Thereafter they conducted the ‘mother’ to the place where the caterpillars were, consoling her, in order that all the caterpillars might leave the garden.[3] On the 1st of September, Russian girls ‘make small coffins of turnips and other vegetables, enclose flies and other insects in them, and then bury them with a great show of mourning.’[4]

In these latter examples the deference shown to a few chosen individuals of the species is apparently regarded as entitling a person to exterminate with impunity all the rest of the species upon which he can lay hands. This principle perhaps explains the attitude, at first sight puzzling and contradictory, of the Ainos towards the bear. The flesh and skin of the bear regularly afford them food and clothing; but since the bear is an intelligent and powerful animal, it is necessary to offer some satisfaction or atonement to the bear species for the loss which it sustains in the death of so many of its members. This satisfaction or atonement is made by rearing young bears, treating them, so long as they live, with respect, and killing them with extraordinary marks of sorrow and devotion. Thus the other bears are appeased, and do not resent the slaughter of their kind by attacking the slayers or deserting the country, and thus depriving the Ainos of one of their means of subsistence.

Thus the primitive worship of animals assumes two forms, which are in some respects the converse of each other. On the one hand animals are respected, and are therefore neither killed nor eaten. Totemism is a form of this worship, if worship it can be called; but it is not the only form, for we have seen that dangerous and useless animals, like the crocodile, are commonly revered and spared by men who do not regard the animal in question as their totem. On the other hand animals are worshipped because they are habitually killed and eaten. In both forms of worship the animal is revered on account of some benefit, positive or negative, which the savage hopes to receive from it. In the former worship the benefit comes either in the positive form of protection, advice, and help which the animal affords the man, or in the negative one of abstinence from injuries which it is in the power of the animal to inflict. In the latter worship the benefit takes the material form of the animal’s flesh and skin. The two forms of worship are in some measure antithetical: in the one, the animal is not eaten because it is revered; in the other, it is revered because it is eaten. But both may be practised by the same people, as we see in the case of the North American Indians, who, while they revere and spare their totem animals, also revere the animals and fish upon which they subsist. The aborigines of Australia have totemism in the most primitive form known to us, but, so far as I am aware, there is no evidence that they attempt, like the North American Indians, to conciliate the animals which they kill and eat. The means which the Australians adopt to secure a plentiful supply of game appear to be based not on conciliation, but on sympathetic magic,[1] a principle to which the North American Indians also resort for the same purpose.[2] If this is so, it  would appear that the totemistic respect for animals is older than the other, and that, before hunters think of worshipping the game as a means of ensuring an abundant supply of it, they seek to attain the same end by sympathetic magic. This, again, would show – what there is good reason for believing – that sympathetic magic is one of the earliest means by which man endeavours to adapt the agencies of nature to his needs.

Corresponding to the two distinct types of animal worship, there are two distinct types of the custom of killing the animal god. On the one hand, when the revered animal is habitually spared, it is nevertheless killed – and sometimes eaten – on rare and solemn occasions. Examples of this custom have been already given and an explanation of them offered. On the other hand, when the revered animal is habitually killed, the slaughter of any one of the species involves the killing of the god, and is atoned for on the spot by apologies and sacrifices, especially when the animal is a powerful and dangerous one; and, in addition to this ordinary and everyday atonement, there is a special annual atonement, at which a select individual of the species is slain with extraordinary marks of respect and devotion. Clearly the two types of sacramental killing – the Egyptian and the Aino types, as we may call them for distinction – are liable to be confounded by an observer; and, before we can say to which type any particular example belongs, it is necessary to ascertain whether the animal sacramentally slain belongs to a species which is habitually spared, or to one which is habitually killed by the tribe. In the former case the example belongs to the Egyptian type of sacrament, in the latter to the Aino type.

The practice of pastoral tribes appears to furnish examples of both types of sacrament. ‘Pastoral tribes,’ says the most learned ethnologist of the day, ‘being sometimes obliged to sell their herds to strangers who may handle the bones disrespectfully, seek to avert the danger which such a sacrilege would entail by consecrating one of the herd as an object of worship, eating it sacramentally in the family circle with closed doors, and afterwards treating the bones with all the ceremonious respect which, strictly speaking, should be accorded to every head of cattle, but which, being punctually paid to the representative animal, is deemed to be paid to all. Such family meals are found among various peoples, especially those of the Caucasus. When amongst the Abchases the shepherds in spring eat their common meal with their loins girt and their staffs in their hands, this may be looked upon both as a sacrament and as an oath of mutual help and support. For the strongest of all oaths is that which is accompanied with the eating of a sacred substance, since the perjured person cannot possibly escape the avenging god whom he has taken into his body and assimilated.’[1] This kind of sacrament is of the Aino or expiatory type, since it is meant to atone to the species for the possible ill-usage of individuals. An expiation, similar in principle but different in details, is offered by the Kalmucks to the sheep whose flesh is one of their staple foods. Rich Kalmucks are in the habit of consecrating a white ram under the title of ‘the ram of heaven’ or ‘the ram of the spirit.’ The animal is never shorn and never sold; but when it grows old and its owner wishes to consecrate a new one, the old ram must be killed and eaten at a feast to which the neighbours are invited. On a lucky day, generally in autumn when the sheep are fat, a sorcerer kills the old ram, after sprinkling it with milk. Its flesh is eaten; the skeleton, with a portion of the fat, is burned on a turf altar; and the skin, with the head and feet, is hung up.[1]

An example of a sacrament of the Egyptian type is furnished by the Todas, a pastoral people of Southern India, who subsist largely upon the milk of their buffaloes. Amongst them ‘the buffalo is to a certain degree held sacred’ and ‘is treated with great kindness, even with a degree of adoration, by the people.’[2] They never eat the flesh of the cow buffalo, and as a rule abstain from the flesh of the male. But to the latter rule there is a single exception. Once a year all the adult males of the village join in the ceremony of killing and eating a very young male calf – seemingly under a month old. They take the animal into the dark recesses of the village wood, where it is killed with a club made from the sacred tree of the Todas (the tûde or Millingtonia). A sacred fire having been made by the rubbing of sticks, the flesh of the calf is roasted on the embers of certain trees, and is eaten by the men alone, women being excluded from the assembly. This is the only occasion on which the Todas eat buffalo flesh.[3] The Madi or Moru tribe of Central Africa, whose chief wealth is their cattle, though they also practise agriculture, appear to kill a lamb sacramentally on certain solemn occasions. The custom is thus described by Dr Felkin. ‘A remarkable custom is observed at stated times – once a year, I am led to believe. I have not been able to ascertain what exact meaning is attached to it. It appears, however, to relieve the  people’s minds, for beforehand they evince much sadness, and seem very joyful when the ceremony is duly accomplished. The following is what takes place: A large concourse of people of all ages assemble, and sit down round a circle of stones, which is erected by the side of a road (really a narrow path). A very choice lamb is then fetched by a boy, who leads it four times round the assembled people. As it passes they pluck off little bits of its fleece and place them in their hair, or on to some other part of their body. The lamb is then led up to the stones, and there killed by a man belonging to a kind of priestly order, who takes some of the blood and sprinkles it four times over the people. He then applies it individually. On the children he makes a small ring of blood over the lower end of the breast bone, on women and girls he makes a mark above the breasts, and the men he touches on each shoulder. He then proceeds to explain the ceremony, and to exhort the people to show kindness… When this discourse, which is at times of great length, is over, the people rise, each places a leaf on or by the circle of stones, and then they depart with signs of great joy. The lamb’s skull is hung on a tree near the stones, and its flesh is eaten by the poor. This ceremony is observed on a small scale at other times. If a family is in any great trouble, through illness or bereavement, their friends and neighbours come together and a lamb is killed: this is thought to avert further evil. The same custom prevails at the grave of departed friends, and also on joyful occasions, such as the return of a son home after a very prolonged absence.’[1] The sorrow thus manifested by the people at the annual slaughter of the lamb clearly indicates that the lamb slain is a divine animal, whose death is mourned by his worshippers,[2] just as the death of the sacred buzzard was mourned by the Californians and the  death of the Theban ram by the Egyptians. The smearing each of the worshippers with the blood of the lamb is a form of communion with the divinity;[1] the vehicle of the divine life is applied externally instead of being taken internally, as when the blood is drunk or the flesh eaten.

The form of communion in which the sacred animal is taken from house to house, that all may enjoy a share of its divine influence, has been exemplified by the Gilyak custom of promenading the bear through the village before it is slain. A similar form of communion with the sacred snake is observed by a Snake tribe in the Punjaub. Once a year in the month of September the snake is worshipped by all castes and religions for nine days only. At the end of August the Mirasans, especially those of the Snake tribe, make a snake of dough which they paint black and red, and place on a winnowing basket. This basket they carry round the village, and on entering any house they say –

‘God be with you all!

May every ill be far!

May our patron’s (Gugga’s) word thrive!’

They then present the basket with the snake, saying –

‘A small cake of flour:

A little bit of butter:

If you obey the snake,

You and yours shall thrive!’

Strictly speaking, a cake and butter should be given, but it is seldom done. Every one, however, gives something, generally a handful of dough or some corn. In houses where there is a new bride or whence a bride has gone, or where a son has been born, it is usual to give a rupee and a quarter, or some cloth. Sometimes the bearers of the snake also sing –

‘Give the snake a piece of cloth,

And he will send a lively bride.’

When every house has been thus visited, the dough snake is buried and a small grave is erected over it. Hither during  the nine days of September the women come to worship. They bring a basin of curds, a small portion of which they offer at the snake’s grave, kneeling on the ground and touching the earth with their foreheads. Then they go home and divide the rest of the curds among the children. Here the dough snake is clearly a substitute for a real snake. This is proved by the fact that in districts where snakes abound the worship is offered, not at the grave of the dough snake, but in the jungles where snakes are known to be. Besides this yearly worship performed by all the people, the members of the Snake tribe worship in the same way every morning after a new moon. The Snake tribe is not uncommon in the Punjaub. Members of it will not kill a snake and they say that its bite does not hurt them. If they find a dead snake, they put clothes on it and give it a regular funeral.[1]

Ceremonies closely analogous to this Indian worship of the snake have survived in Europe into recent times, and doubtless date from a very primitive paganism. The best- known example is the ‘hunting of the wren.’ By many European peoples – the ancient Greeks and Romans, the modern Italians, Spaniards, French, Germans, Dutch, Danes, Swedes, English, and Welsh – the wren has been designated the king, the little king, the king of birds, the hedge king, etc.,[2] and has been reckoned amongst those birds which it is extremely unlucky to kill. In England it is thought that if any one kills a wren or harries its nest, he will infallibly break a bone or meet with some dreadful misfortune within the year;[3] sometimes it is thought that the cows will give bloody milk.[4] In Scotland the wren is called ‘the Lady of Heaven’s hen,’ and boys say –

‘Malisons, malisons, mair than ten,

That harry the Ladye of Heaven’s hen!’[1]

At Saint Donan, in Brittany, people believe that if children touch the young wrens in the nest, they will suffer from the fire of St Lawrence, that is, from pimples on the face, legs, etc.[2] In other parts of France it is believed that if a person kills a wren or harries its nest, his house will be struck by lightning, or that the fingers with which he did the deed will shrivel up and drop off, or at least be maimed, or that his cattle will suffer in their feet.[3] Notwithstanding such beliefs, the custom of annually killing the wren has prevailed widely both in this country and in France. In the Isle of Man last century the custom was observed on Christmas Eve or rather Christmas morning. On the 24th of December, towards evening, all the servants got a holiday; they did not go to bed all night, but rambled about till the bells rang in all the churches at midnight. When prayers were over, they went to hunt the wren, and having found one of these birds they killed it and fastened it to the top of a long pole with its wings extended. Thus they carried it in procession to every house chanting the following rhyme –

‘We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin,

We hunted the wren for Jack of the Can,

We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin,

We hunted the wren for every one.’

After going from house to house and collecting all the money they could, they laid the wren on a bier ‘with the utmost solemnity, singing dirges over her in the Manks language, which they call her knell; after which Christmas begins.’ After the burial the company outside the churchyard formed a circle and danced to music. About the middle of the present century the burial of the wren took place in the Isle of Man on St Stephen’s Day (December  26th). Boys went from door to door with a wren suspended by the legs in the centre of two hoops which crossed each other at right angles and were decorated with evergreens and ribbons. The bearers sang certain lines in which reference was made to boiling and eating the bird. If at the close of the song they received a small coin, they gave in return a feather of the wren; so that before the end of the day the bird often hung almost featherless. The wren was then buried, no longer in the churchyard, but on the seashore or in some waste place. The feathers distributed were preserved with religious care, it being believed that every feather was an effectual preservative from shipwreck for a year, and a fisherman would have been thought very foolhardy who had not one of them.[1]

In Ireland the ‘hunting of the wren’ still takes place in parts of Leinster and Connaught. On Christmas Day or St Stephen’s Day the boys hunt and kill the wren, fasten it in the middle of a mass of holly and ivy on the top of a broomstick, and on St Stephen’s Day go about with it from house to house, singing –

‘The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,

St Stephen’s Day was caught in the furze;

Although he is little, his family’s great,

I pray you, good landlady, give us a treat.’

Money or food (bread, butter, eggs, etc.) were given them, upon which they feasted in the evening. Sometimes in Ireland, as in the Isle of Man, the bird was hung by the leg in the centre of two hoops crossing each other at right angles.[2] In Essex a similar custom used to be observed at Christmas, and the verses sung by the boys were almost identical with those sung in Ireland.[3] In Pembrokeshire a wren, called the King, used to be carried about on Twelfth Day in a box with glass windows surmounted by a wheel, from which hung various coloured ribbons. The men and boys who carried it from house to house sang songs, in one of which they wished ‘joy, health, love, and peace’ to the inmates of the house.’[1]

In the first half of this century similar customs were still observed in various parts of the south of France. Thus at Carcassone, every year on the first Sunday of December the young people of the street Saint Jean used to go out of the town armed with sticks, with which they beat the bushes, looking for wrens. The first to strike down one of these birds was proclaimed King. Then they returned to the town in procession, headed by the King, who carried the wren on a pole. On the evening of the last day of the year the King and all who had hunted the wren marched through the streets of the town with torches and music. At the door of every house they stopped, and one of them wrote with chalk on the door vive le roi! with the number of the year which was about to begin. On the morning of Twelfth Day the King again marched in procession with great pomp, wearing a crown and a blue mantle and carrying a sceptre. In front of him was borne the wren fastened to the top of a pole, which was adorned with a wreath of olive, oak, and mistletoe. After hearing high mass in the church, surrounded by his officers and guards, he visited the bishop, mayor, magistrates, and the chief inhabitants, collecting money to defray the expenses of the royal banquet which took place in the evening.[2] At En- traigues men and boys used to hunt the wren on Christmas Eve. When they caught one alive they presented it to the priest, who, after the midnight mass, set the bird free in the church. At Mirabeau the priest blessed the bird. If the men failed to catch a wren and the women succeeded in doing so, the women had the right to mock and insult the men, and to blacken their faces with mud and soot, if they  caught them.[1] At La Ciotat, near Marseilles, a large body of men armed with swords and pistols used to hunt the wren every year about the end of December. When a wren was caught it was hung on the middle of a pole which two men carried, as if it were a heavy burden. Thus they paraded round the town; the bird was weighed in a great pair of scales; and then the company sat down to table and made merry.[2]

The parallelism between this custom of ‘hunting the wren’ and some of those we have considered, especially the Gilyak procession with the bear, and the Indian one with the snake, seems too close to allow us to doubt that they all belong to the same circle of ideas. The worshipful animal is killed with special solemnity once a year; and before or immediately after death, he is promenaded from door to door, that each of his worshippers may receive a portion of the divine virtues that are supposed to emanate from the dead or dying god. Religious processions of this sort must have had a great place in the ritual of European peoples in prehistoric times, if we may judge from the numerous traces of them which have survived in folk-  custom. A well-preserved specimen is the following, which survived in the Highlands of Scotland and in St Kilda down to the latter half of last century. On the evening before New Year’s Day, it is usual for the cowherd and the young people to meet together, and one of them is covered with a cow’s hide. The rest of the company are provided with staves, to the end of which bits of raw hide are tied. The person covered with the hide runs thrice round the dwelling-house, deiseil – i.e. according to the course of the sun; the rest pursue, beating the hide with their staves, and crying [here follows the Gaelic], “Let us raise the noise louder and louder; let us beat the hide.” They then come to the door of each dwelling-house, and one of them repeats some verses composed for the purpose. When admission is granted, one of them pronounces within the threshold the beannachadthurlair, or verses by which he pretends to draw down a blessing upon the whole family [here follows the Gaelic], “May God bless this house and all that belongs to it, cattle, stones, and timber! In plenty of meat, of bed and body-clothes, and health of men, may it ever abound!” Then each burns in the fire a little bit of hide which is tied to the end of the staff. It is applied to the nose of every person and domestic animal that belongs to the house. This, they imagine, will tend much to secure them from diseases and other misfortunes during the ensuring year. The whole of the ceremony is called colluinn, from the great noise which the hide makes.’[1] From another authority,[2] we learn that the hide of which pieces were burned in each house and applied to the inmates was the breast part of a sheep-skin.  Formerly, perhaps, pieces of the cow-hide in which the man was clad were detached for this purpose, just as in the Isle of Man a feather of the wren used to be given to each household. Similarly, as we have seen, the human victim whom the Khonds slew as a divinity was taken from house to house, and every one strove to obtain a relic of his sacred person. Such customs are only another form of that communion with the deity which is attained most completely by eating the body and drinking the blood of the god.

In the ‘hunting of the wren,’ and the procession with the man clad in a cow-skin, there is nothing to show that the customs in question have any relation to agriculture. So far as appears, they may date from the pre-agricultural era when animals were revered as divine in themselves, not merely as divine because they embodied the corn-spirit; and the analogy of the Gilyak procession of the bear, and the Indian procession of the snake is in favour of assigning the corresponding European customs to this very early date. On the other hand, there are certain European processions of animals, or of men disguised as animals, which may possibly be purely agricultural in their origin;[1] in other words, the animals which figure in them may have been from the first nothing but representatives of the corn-spirit conceived in animal shape. But it is at least equally possible that these processions originated in the pre-agricultural era, and have only received an agricultural tinge  from the environment in which they have so long survived. But the question is an obscure and difficult one, and cannot be here discussed.

Transference of Evil

The custom of killing the god has now been proved to have been practised by peoples in the hunting, pastoral, and agricultural stages of society, and the various reasons for observing the custom have been explained. One aspect of the custom still remains to be noticed. The accumulated misfortunes and sins of the whole people are sometimes laid upon the dying god, who is supposed to bear them away for ever, leaving the people innocent and happy. The notion that we can transfer our pains and griefs to some other being who will bear them in our stead is familiar to the savage mind. It arises from a very obvious confusion between the physical and the mental. Because it is possible to transfer a load of wood, stones, or what not, from our own back to the back of another, the savage fancies that it is equally possible to transfer the burden of his pains and sorrows to another, who will suffer them in his stead. Upon this idea he acts, and the result is an endless number of often very unamiable devices for putting off upon some one else the trouble which a man shrinks from bearing himself. Such devices are amongst the most familiar facts in folk-lore; but for the benefit of readers who are not professed students of folklore, a few illustrations may be given.

It is not necessary that the pain or trouble should be transferred from the sufferer to a person; it may equally well be transferred to an animal or a thing, though in the last case the thing is often only a vehicle to convey the trouble to the first person who touches it. In some of the East Indian islands epilepsy is believed to be cured by striking the patient on the face with the leaves of certain trees and then throwing the leaves away. The epilepsy is believed to have passed into the leaves, and to have been thrown away with them.[1]  To cure toothache some of the Australian blacks apply a heated spear-thrower to the cheek. The spear-thrower is then cast away, and the toothache goes with it, in the shape of a black stone called karriitch. Stones of this kind are found in old mounds and sandhills. They are carefully collected and thrown in the direction of enemies, in order to give them toothache.[1] When a Moor has a headache, he will sometimes take a lamb or a goat and beat it till it falls down, believing that the headache will thus be transferred to the animal.[2] After an illness, a Bechuana king seated himself upon an ox which lay stretched on the ground. The native doctor next poured water on the king’s head till it ran down over his body. Then the head of the ox was held in a vessel of water till the animal expired; whereupon the doctor declared, and the people believed, that the ox died of the king’s disease, which had been transferred to it from the king.[3] Amongst the Malagasy the vehicle for carrying away evils is called a faditra. ‘The faditra is anything selected by the sikidy [divining-board] for the purpose of taking away any hurtful evils or diseases that might prove injurious to an individual’s happiness, peace, or prosperity. The faditra may be either ashes, cut money, a sheep, a pumpkin, or anything else the sikidy may choose to direct. After the particular article is appointed, the priest counts upon it all the evils that may prove injurious to the person for whom it is made, and which he then charges the faditra to take away for ever. If the faditra be ashes, it is blown, to be carried away by the wind. If it be cut money, it is thrown to the bottom of deep water, or where it can never be found. If it be a sheep, it is carried away to a distance on the shoulders of a man, who runs with all his might, mumbling as he goes, as if in the greatest rage against the faditra for the evils it is bearing away. If it be a pumpkin, it is carried on the shoulders to a little distance, and there dashed upon the ground with every appearance of fury and indignation.’[4] A Malagasy was  informed by a diviner that he was doomed to a bloody death, but that possibly he might avert his fate by performing a certain rite. Carrying a small vessel full ofblood upon his head, he was to mount upon the back of a bullock; while thus mounted, he was to spill the blood upon the bullock’s head, and then send the animal away into the wilderness, whence it might never return.[1]

The Battas of Sumatra have a ceremony which they call ‘making the curse to fly away.’ When a woman is childless, a sacrifice is offered to the gods of three grasshoppers, representing a head of cattle, a buffalo, and a horse. Then a swallow is set free, with a prayer that the curse may fall upon the bird and fly away with it.[2] At the cleansing of a leper and of a house suspected of being tainted with leprosy, the Jews let a bird fly away.[3] Amongst the Miaotse of China, when the eldest son of the house attains the age of seven years, a ceremony called ‘driving away the devil’ takes place. The father makes a kite of straw and lets it fly away in the desert, bearing away all evil with it.[4] In Morocco most wealthy Moors keep a wild boar in their stables, in order that the jiun and evil spirits may be diverted from the horses and enter into the boar.[5] The Dyaks believe that certain men possess in themselves the power of neutralising bad omens. So, when evil omens have alarmed a farmer for the safety of his crops, he takes a small portion of his farm produce to one of these wise men, who eats it raw for a small consideration, ‘and thereby appropriates to himself the evil omen, which in him becomes innocuous, and thus delivers the other from the ban of the pemali or taboo.’[6] In  Travancore, when a Rajah is dangerously ill and his life is despaired of, a holy Brahman is brought, who closely embraces the King, and says, ‘O King! I undertake to bear all your sins and diseases. May your Highness live long and reign happily.’ Then the sin-bearer is sent away from the country, and never allowed to return.[1] Amongst the Burghers or Badagas of the Neilgherry Hills in Southern India, when a death has taken place, the sins of the deceased are laid upon a buffalo calf. A set form of confession of sins, the same for every one, is recited aloud, then the calf is set free, and is never afterwards used for common purposes. ‘The idea of this ceremony is that the sins of the deceased enter the calf, or that the task of his absolution is laid on it. They say that the calf very soon disappears, and that it is never after heard of.’[2]

Similar attempts to shift the burden of disease and sin from one’s self to another person, or to an animal or thing, have been common in ancient and modern Europe. Grave writers of antiquity recommended that, if a man be stung by a scorpion, he should sit upon an ass with his face to the tail, or whisper in the ear of the ass, ‘A scorpion has stung me’; in either case, they thought, the pain would be transferred from the man to the ass.[3] A Roman cure for fever was to pare the patient’s nails, and stick the parings with wax upon a neighbour’s door before sunrise; the fever  then passed from the sick man to his neighbour.[1] Similar devices must have been practised by the Greeks; for in laying down laws for his ideal state, Plato thinks it too much to expect that men should not be alarmed at finding certain wax figures adhering to their doors or to the tombstones of their parents, or lying at cross-roads.[2] In modern Europe there is no end to such devices. Thus the Orkney Islanders will wash a sick person and then throw the water down at a gateway, in the belief that the sickness will leave the patient and be transferred to the first person who passes through the gate.[3] A Bavarian cure for the fever is to write upon a piece of paper, ‘Fever, stay away, I am not at home,’ and to put the paper in some person’s pocket. The latter then catches the fever and the patient is rid of it.[4] Another cure is for the patient to stick a twig of the elder-tree in the ground without speaking. The fever then adheres to the twig, and whoever pulls up the twig will catch the disease.[5] To get rid of warts, take a string and make as many knots in it as you have warts. Then lay the string under a stone. Whoever treads upon the stone will get the warts, and you will be rid of them.[6] Gout may be transferred from a man to a tree thus. Pare the nails of the sufferer’s fingers and clip some hairs from his legs. Bore a hole in an oak, stuff the nails and hair in the hole, stop up the hole again, and smear it with cow’s dung. If for three months afterwards, the patient is free of gout, then the oak has it in his stead.[7] A Flemish cure for the ague is to go early in the morning to an old willow, tie three knots in one of its branches, say, ‘Good-morrow, Old One, I give thee the cold, good-morrow. Old One,’ then turn and run away without looking round.[8] A cure current in Sunderland for a cough is  to shave the patient’s head and hang the hair on a bush. When the birds carry the hair to their nests, they will carry the cough with it. A Northamptonshire and Devonshire cure is to put a hair of the patient’s head between two slices of buttered bread and give it to a dog. The dog will get the cough and the patient will lose it.[1] In the Greek island of Carpathus the priest ties a red thread round the neck of a sick person. Next morning the friends of the patient remove the thread and go out to the hillside, where they tie the thread to a tree, thinking that they thus transfer the sickness to the tree.[2]

The old Welsh custom known as ‘sin-eating’ is another example of the supposed transference of evil from one person to another. According to Aubrey, ‘In the County of Hereford was an old Custome at funeralls to hire poor people, who were to take upon them all the sinnes of the party deceased. One of them, I remember, lived in a cottage on Rosse-high way (he was a long, leane, ugly, lamentable poor raskal). The manner was that when the Corps was brought out of the house and layd on the Biere; a Loafe of bread was brought out, and delivered to the Sinne-eater over the corps, as also a Mazar-bowle of maple (Gossips bowle) full of beer, which he was to drinke up, and sixpence in money, in consideration whereof he took upon him (ipso facto) all the Sinnes of the Defunct, and freed him (or her) from walking after they were dead… I believe this custom was heretofore used over all Wales… In North Wales the Sinne-eaters are frequently made use of; but there, instead of a Bowle of Beere, they have a bowle of Milke.’[3] According to a letter dated 1st February, 1714–5, ‘within the memory of our fathers, in Shropshire, in those villages adjoyning to Wales, when a person dyed, there was notice given to an old sire (for so they called him), who presently  repaired to the place where the deceased lay, and stood before the door of the house, when some of the family came out and furnished him with a cricket, on which he sat down facing the door. Then they gave him a groat, which he put in his pocket; a crust of bread, which he eat; and a full bowle of ale, which he drank off at a draught. After this he got up from the cricket and pronounced, with a composed gesture, the ease and rest of the soul departed for which he would pawn his own soul. This I had from the ingenious John Aubrey, Esq.’[1] In recent years some doubt has been thrown on Aubrey’s account of the custom.[2] The practice, however, is reported to have prevailed in a valley not far from Llandebie to a recent period. An instance was said to have occurred about forty years ago.[3] Aubrey’s statement is supported by the analogy of similar customs in India. When the Rajah of Tanjore died in 1801, some of his bones and the bones of the two wives, who were burned with his corpse, were ground to powder and eaten, mixed with boiled rice, by twelve Brahmans. It was believed that the sins of the deceased passed into the bodies of the Brahmans, who were paid for the service.[4] A Brahman, resident in a village near Raipúr, stated that he had eaten food (rice and milk) out of the hand of the dead Rajah of Biláspúr,  and that in consequence he had been placed on the throne for the space of a year. At the end of the year he had been given presents and then turned out of the territory and forbidden apparently to return. He was an outcast among his fellows for having eaten out of a dead man’s hand.[1] A similar custom is believed to obtain among the hill states about Kangra, and to have given rise to a caste of ‘outcaste’ Brahmans. At the funeral of a Rání of Chambá rice and ghí were eaten out of the hands of the corpse by a Brahman paid for the purpose. Afterwards a stranger, who had been caught outside the Chambá territory, was given the costly wrappings of the corpse, then told to depart and never show his face in the country again.[2] In Oude when an infant was killed it used to be buried in the room in which it had been born. On the thirteenth day afterwards the priest had to cook and eat his food in that room. By doing so he was supposed to take the whole sin upon himself and to cleanse the family from it.[3] At Utch Kurgan in Turkistan Mr Schuyler saw an old man who was said to get his living by taking on himself the sins of the dead and thenceforth devoting his life to prayer for their souls.[4]

Expulsion of Evils

These examples illustrate the primitive principle of the transference of ills to another person, animal, or thing. In the instances cited the principle is applied for the benefit of individuals only. But analogous proceedings are employed by barbarous peoples to rid a whole community of all their troubles at a blow. The frame of mind which prompts such wholesale clearances of evil may be described in the language of Mr Im Thurn, for though he wrote of the Indians of Guiana in particular, his description is capable of  a much wider application. He says: ‘Thus the whole world of the Indian swarms with these [spiritual] beings. If by a mighty mental effort we could for a moment revert to a similar mental position we should find ourselves surrounded by a host of possibly hurtful beings, so many in number that to describe them as innumerable would fall ridiculously short of the truth. It is not therefore wonderful that the Indian fears to move beyond the light of his camp- fire after dark, or, if he is obliged to do so, carries a firebrand with him that he may at least see among what enemies he walks; nor is it wonderful that occasionally the air round the settlement seems to the Indian to grow so full of beings that a peaiman [sorcerer], who is supposed to have the power of temporarily driving them away, is employed to effect a general clearance of these beings, if only for a time.’[1] Such general clearances of evil influences may be divided into two classes, according as the expelled evils are immaterial and invisible or are embodied in a material vehicle or scapegoat. The former may be called the direct or immediate expulsion of evils; the latter the indirect or mediate expulsion, or the expulsion by scapegoat. We begin with examples of the former.

In the island of Rook, between New Guinea and New Britain, when any misfortune has happened, all the people run together, scream, curse, howl, and beat the air with sticks to drive away the devil (Marsába), who is supposed to be the author of the mishap. From the spot where the mishap took place they drive him step by step to the sea, and on reaching the shore they redouble their shouts and blows in order to expel him from the island. He generally retires to the sea or to the island of Lottin.[2] The natives of New Britain ascribe sickness, drought, the failure of crops, and in short all misfortunes, to the influence of wicked spirits. So at times when many people sicken and die, as at the beginning of the rainy season, all the inhabitants of a district, armed with branches and clubs, go out by moon-  light to the fields, where they beat and stamp on the ground with wild howls till morning, believing that this drives away the devils.[1] When a village has been visited by a series of disasters or a severe epidemic, the Minahassa of Celebes lay the blame upon the devils who are infesting the village and must be expelled from it. Accordingly, early one morning all the people, men, women, and children, quit their homes, carrying their household goods with them, and take up their quarters in temporary huts which have been erected outside the village. Here they spend several days, offering sacrifices and preparing for the final ceremony. At last the men, some wearing masks, others with their faces blackened, and so on, but all armed with swords, guns, pikes, or brooms, steal cautiously and silently back to the deserted village. Then, at a signal from the priest, they rush furiously up and down the streets and into and under the houses (which are raised on piles above the ground), yelling and striking on walls, doors, and windows, to drive away the devils. Next, the priests and the rest of the people come with the holy fire and march nine times round each house and thrice round the ladder that leads up to it, carrying the fire with them. Then they take the fire into the kitchen, where it must burn for three days continuously. The devils are now driven away, and great and general is the joy.[2] The Alfoers of Halmahera attribute epidemics to the devil who comes from other villages to carry them off. So, in order to rid the village of the disease, the sorcerer drives away the devil. From all the villagers he receives a costly garment and places it on four vessels, which he takes to the forest and  leaves at the spot where the devil is supposed to be. Then with mocking words he bids the demon abandon the place.[1] In the Key Islands, south of New Guinea, when sickness prevails, the people erect a stage on the shore and load it with meat and drink. Then the priest in presence of the people bans the spirits which are causing the disease, whereupon the people run back to the village at full speed, like fugitives.[2]

In the island of Nias, when a man is seriously ill and other remedies have been tried in vain, the sorcerer proceeds to exorcise the devil who is causing the illness. A pole is set up in front of the house, and from the top of the pole a rope of palm-leaves is stretched to the roof of the house. Then the sorcerer mounts the roof with a pig, which he kills and allows to roll from the roof to the ground. The devil, anxious to get the pig, lets himself down hastily from the roof by the rope of palm-leaves, and a good spirit, invoked by the sorcerer, prevents him from climbing up again. If this remedy fails, it is believed that other devils must still be lurking in the house. So a general hunt is made after them. All the doors and windows in the house are closed, except a single dormer-window in the roof. The men, shut up in the house, hew and slash with their swords right and left to the clash of gongs and the rub-a-dub of drums. Terrified at this onslaught the devils escape by the dormer-window, and sliding down the rope of palm-leaves take themselves off. As all the doors and windows, except the one in the roof, are shut, the devils cannot get into the house again. In the case of an epidemic the proceedings are similar. All the gates of the village, except one, are closed; every voice is raised, every gong and drum beaten, every sword brandished. Thus the devils are driven out and the last gate is shut behind them. For eight days thereafter the village is in a state of siege, no one being allowed to enter it.[1] When cholera has broken out in a Burmese village the able-bodied men scramble on the roofs and lay about them with bamboos and billets of wood, while all the rest of the population, old and young, stand below and thump drums, blow trumpets, yell, scream, beat floors, walls, tin-pans, everything to make a din. This uproar, repeated on three successive nights, is thought to be very effective in driving away the cholera demons.[2] When small-pox first appeared amongst the Kumis of South-Eastern India, they thought it was a devil come from Arracan. The villages were placed in a state of siege, no one being allowed to leave or enter them. A monkey was killed by being dashed on the ground, and its body was hung at the village gate. Its blood, mixed with small river pebbles, was sprinkled on the houses, the threshold of every house was swept with the monkey’s tail, and the fiend was adjured to depart.[3] At Great Bassam, in Guinea, the French traveller Hecquard witnessed the exorcism of the evil spirit who was believed to make women barren. The women who wished to become mothers offered to the fetish wine-vessels or statuettes representing women suckling children. Then being assembled in the fetish hut, they were sprinkled with rum by the priest, while young men fired guns and brandished swords to drive away the demon.[4] When sickness was prevalent in a Huron village, and all other remedies had been tried in vain, the Indians  had recourse to the ceremony called Lonouyroya, ‘which is the principal invention and most proper means, so they say, to expel from the town or village the devils and evil spirits which cause, induce, and import all the maladies and infirmities which they suffer in body and mind.’ Accordingly, one evening the men would begin to rush like madmen about the village, breaking and upsetting whatever they came across in the wigwams. They threw fire and burning brands about the streets, and all night long they ran howling and singing without cessation. Then they all dreamed of something, a knife, dog, skin, or whatever it might be, and when morning came they went from wigwam to wigwam asking for presents. These they received silently, till the particular thing was given them which they had dreamed about. On receiving it they uttered a cry of joy and rushed from the hut, amid the congratulations of all present. The health of those who received what they had dreamed of was believed to be assured; whereas those who did not get what they had set their hearts upon regarded their fate as sealed.[1]

The observance of such ceremonies, from being occasional, tends to become periodic. It comes to be thought desirable to have a general riddance of evil spirits at fixed times, usually once a year, in order that the people may make a fresh start in life, freed from all the malignant influences which have been long accumulating about them. Some of the Australian blacks annually expelled the ghosts  of the dead from their territory. The ceremony was witnessed by the Rev W. Ridley on the banks of the river Barwan. ‘A chorus of twenty, old and young, were singing and beating time with boomerangs… Suddenly, from under a sheet of bark darted a man with his body whitened by pipeclay, his head and face coloured with lines of red and yellow, and a tuft of feathers fixed by means of a stick two feet above the crown of his head. He stood twenty minutes perfectly still, gazing upwards. An aboriginal who stood by told me he was looking for the ghosts of dead men. At last he began to move very slowly, and soon rushed to and fro at full speed, flourishing a branch as if to drive away some foes invisible to us. When I thought this pantomime must be almost over, ten more, similarly adorned, suddenly appeared from behind the trees, and the whole party joined in a brisk conflict with their mysterious assailants… At last, after some rapid evolutions in which they put forth all their strength, they rested from the exciting toil which they had kept up all night and for some hours after sunrise: they seemed satisfied that the ghosts were driven away for twelve months. They were performing the same ceremony at every station along the river, and I am told it is an annual custom.’[1]

Certain seasons of the year mark themselves naturally out as appropriate moments for a general expulsion of devils. Such a moment occurs towards the close of an Arctic winter, when the sun reappears on the horizon after an absence of weeks or months. Accordingly, at Point Barrow, the most northerly extremity of Alaska, and nearly of America, the Eskimo choose the moment of the sun’s reappearance to hunt the mischievous spirit Tuña from every house. The ceremony was witnessed a few years ago by the members of the United States Polar Expedition, who wintered at Point Barrow. A fire was built in front of the council-house, and an old woman was posted at the entrance to every iglu (Eskimo house). The men gathered round the council-fire, while the young women and girls drove the spirits out of every iglu with their knives, stabbing viciously under the bunk and deer-skins, and calling upon Tuña to leave the iglu. When they thought he had been driven out of every hole and corner, they thrust him down through the hole in the floor and chased him into the open air with loud cries and frantic gestures. Meanwhile the old woman at the entrance of the iglu made passes with a long knife in the air to keep him from returning. Each party drove the spirit towards the fire and invited him to go into it. All were by this time drawn up in a semicircle round the fire, when several of the leading men made specific charges against the spirit; and each after his speech brushed his clothes violently, calling on the spirit to leave him and go into the fire. Two men now stepped forward with rifles loaded with blank cartridges, while a third brought a vessel of urine and flung it on the fire. At the same time one of the men fired a shot into the fire; and as the cloud of steam rose it received the other shot, which was supposed to finish Tuña for the time being.[1] In autumn, when heavy gales are raging, the Eskimo of Baffin Land think that the female spirit Sedna dwells amongst them, and the most powerful enchanter is employed to drive her out. Beside a small hole in the centre of the floor a line of seal-skin is coiled up. Holding a sealing-spear in his left hand the enchanter watches the hole in the floor. Another sorcerer sits in the rear of the hut chanting songs to attract Sedna. Now she is heard approaching under the floor of the hut. When she reaches the hole the enchanter strikes her with his harpoon and pays out the line. A severe struggle ensues, but ultimately Sedna flies to her country, Adlivun. The performance is cleverly managed. When the harpoon is drawn out of the hole it is covered with blood, and the heavy breathing of Sedna can be distinctly heard under the floor.[2]

The Iroquois inaugurated the new year in January, February,  or March (the time varied) with a ‘festival of dreams’ like that which the Hurons observed on special occasions.[1] The whole ceremonies lasted several days, or even weeks, and formed a kind of Saturnalia. Men and women, variously disguised, went from wigwam to wigwam smashing and throwing down whatever they came across. It was a time of general licence; the people were supposed to be out of their senses, and therefore not to be responsible for what they did. Accordingly, many seized the opportunity of paying off old scores by belabouring obnoxious persons, drenching them with ice-cold water, and covering them with filth or hot ashes. Others seized burning brands or coals and flung them at the heads of the first persons they met. The only way of escaping from these persecutors was to guess what they had dreamed of. On one day of the festival the ceremony of driving away evil spirits from the village took place. Men clothed in the skins of wild beasts, their faces covered with hideous masks, and their hands with the shell of the tortoise, went from hut to hut making frightful noises; in every hut they took the fuel from the fire and scattered the embers and ashes about the floor with their hands. The general confession of sins which preceded the festival was probably a preparation for the public expulsion of evil influences; it was a way of stripping the people of their moral burdens, that these might be collected and cast out. This New Year festival is still celebrated by some of the heathen Iroquois, though it has been shorn of its former turbulence. A conspicuous feature in the ceremony is now the sacrifice of the White Dog, but this appears to have been added to the festival in comparatively modern times, and does not figure in the oldest descriptions of the ceremonies. We shall return to it later on.[2] A great annual festival of the  Cherokee Indians was the Propitiation, ‘Cementation,’ or Purification festival. ‘It was celebrated shortly after the first new moon of autumn, and consisted of a multiplicity of rigorous rites, fastings, ablutions, and purifications. Among the most important functionaries on the occasion were seven exorcisers or cleansers, whose duty it was, at a certain stage of the proceedings, to drive away evil, and purify the town. Each one bore in his hand a white rod of sycamore. “The leader, followed by the others, walked around the national heptagon, and coming to the treasure or store-house to the west of it, they lashed the eaves of the roofs with their rods. The leader then went to another house, followed by the others, singing, and repeated the same ceremony until every house was purified.” This ceremony was repeated daily during the continuance of the festival. In performing their ablutions they went into the water and allowed their old clothes to be carried away by the stream, by which means they supposed their impurities removed.’[1]

In September the Incas of Peru celebrated a festival called Situa, the object of which was to banish from the capital and its vicinity all disease and troubles. The festival fell in September because the rains begin about this time, and with the first rains there was generally much sickness. As a preparation for the festival the people fasted on the first day of the moon after the autumnal equinox. Having fasted during the day, and the night being come, they baked a coarse paste of maize. This paste was made of two sorts. One was kneaded with the blood of children aged five to ten years, the blood being obtained by bleeding the children between the eye-brows. These two kinds of paste were baked separately, because they were for different uses. Each family assembled at the house of the eldest brother to celebrate the feast; and those who had no elder brother went to the house of their next relation of greater age. On the same night all who had fasted during the day washed their bodies, and taking a little of the blood-kneaded paste, rubbed it over their head, face, breast, shoulders, arms, and  legs. They did this in order that the paste might take away all their infirmities. After this the head of the family anointed the threshold with the same paste, and left it there as a token that the inmates of the house had performed their ablutions and cleansed their bodies. Meantime the High Priest performed the same ceremonies in the temple of the Sun. As soon as the Sun rose, all the people worshipped and besought him to drive all evils out of the city, and then they broke their fast with the paste that had been kneaded without blood. When they had paid their worship and broken their fast, which they did at a stated hour, in order that all might adore the Sun as one man, an Inca of the blood royal came forth from the fortress, as a messenger of the Sun, richly dressed, with his mantle girded round his body, and a lance in his hand. The lance was decked with feathers of many hues, extending from the blade to the socket, and fastened with rings of gold. He ran down the hill from the fortress brandishing his lance, till he reached the centre of the great square, where stood the golden urn, like a fountain, that was used for the sacrifice of chicha. Here four other Incas of the blood royal awaited him, each with a lance in his hand, and his mantle girded up to run. The messenger touched their four lances with his lance, and told them that the Sun bade them, as his messengers, drive the evils out of the city. The four Incas then separated and ran down the four royal roads which led out of the city to the four quarters of the world. While they ran, all the people, great and small, came to the doors of their houses, and with great shouts of joy and gladness shook their clothes, as if they were shaking off dust, while they cried, ‘Let the evils be gone. How greatly desired has this festival been by us. Ο Creator of all things, permit us to reach another year, that we may see another feast like this.’ After they had shaken their clothes, they passed their hands over their heads, faces, arms, and legs, as if in the act of washing. All this was done to drive the evils out of their houses, that the messengers of the Sun might banish them from the city. This was done not only in the streets through which the Incas ran, but generally in all quarters of the city. Moreover, they all danced, the Inca himself amongst them, and bathed in the rivers and fountains, saying that their maladies would come out of them. Then they took great torches of straw, bound round with cords. These they lighted, and passed from one to the other, striking each other with them, and saying, ‘Let all harm go away.’ Meanwhile the runners ran with their lances for a quarter of a league outside the city, where they found four other Incas ready, who received the lances from their hands and ran with them. Thus the lances were carried by relays of runners for a distance of five or six leagues, at the end of which the runners washed themselves and their weapons in rivers, and set up the lances, in sign of a boundary within which the banished evils might not return.[1]

The negroes of Guinea annually banish the devil from all their towns with much ceremony. At Axim, on the Gold Coast, this annual expulsion is preceded by a feast of eight days, during which mirth and jollity reign, and ‘a perfect lampooning liberty is allowed, and scandal so highly exalted, that they may freely sing of all the faults, villanies, and frauds of their superiors as well as inferiors, without punishment, or so much as the least interruption.’ On the eighth day they hunt out the devil with a dismal cry, running after him and pelting him with sticks, stones, and whatever comes to hand. When they have driven him far enough out of the town, they all return. In this  way he is driven out of more than a hundred towns at the same time. To make sure that he does not return to their houses, the women wash and scour all their wooden and earthen vessels, ‘to free them from all uncleanness and the devil.’[1] At Onitsha, on the Quorra River, Mr J. C. Taylor witnessed the celebration of New Year’s Day by the negroes. It fell on 20th December 1858. Every family brought a firebrand out into the street, threw it away, and exclaimed as they returned, ‘The gods of the new year! New Year has come round again.’ Mr Taylor adds, ‘The meaning of the custom seems to be that the fire is to drive away the old year with its sorrows and evils, and to embrace the new year with hearty reception.’[2] Of all Abyssinian festivals that of Mascal or the Cross is celebrated with the greatest pomp. The eve of the festival witnesses a ceremony which doubtless belongs to the worldwide class of customs we are dealing with. At sunset a discharge of firearms takes place from all the principal houses. ‘Then every one provides himself with a torch, and during the early part of the night bonfires are kindled, and the people parade the town, carrying their lighted torches in their hands. They go through their houses too, poking a light into every dark corner in the hall, under the couches, in the stables, kitchen, etc., as if looking for something lost, and calling out, ‘Akho, akhoky! turn out the spinage, and bring in the porridge; Mascal is come!’… After this they play, and poke fun and torches at each other.’[3]

Sometimes the date of the annual expulsion of devils is fixed with reference to the agricultural seasons. Among the Hos of North-Eastern India the great festival of the year is the harvest home, held in January, when the granaries are full of grain, and the people, to use their own expression, are full of devilry. ‘They have a strange notion that at this period men and women are so overcharged with vicious  propensities, that it is absolutely necessary for the safety of the person to let off steam by allowing for a time full vent to the passions. ‘The ceremonies open with a sacrifice to the village god of three fowls, two of which must be black. Along with them are offered flowers of the Palás tree, bread made from rice-flour, and sesamum seeds. These offerings are presented by the village priest, who prays that during the year about to begin they and their children may be preserved from all misfortune and sickness, and that they may have seasonable rain and good crops. Prayer is also made in some places for the souls of the dead. At this time an evil spirit is supposed to infest the place, and to get rid of it men, women, and children go in procession round and through every part of the village with sticks in their hands, as if beating for game, singing a wild chant, and shouting vociferously, till they feel assured that the evil spirit must have fled. Then they give themselves up to feasting and drinking rice-beer, till they are in a fit state for the wild debauch which follows. The festival now ’becomes a saturnale, during which servants forget their duty to their masters, children their reverence for parents, men their respect for women, and women all notions of modesty, delicacy, and gentleness; they become raging bacchantes.’ Usually the Hos are quiet and reserved in manner, decorous and gentle to women. But during this festival ‘their nature appears to undergo a temporary change. Sons and daughters revile their parents in gross language, and parents their children; men and women become almost like animals in the indulgence of their amorous propensities.’ The Mundaris, kinsmen and neighbours of the Hos, keep the festival in much the same manner. ‘The resemblance to a Saturnale is very complete, as at this festival the farm labourers are feasted by their masters, and allowed the utmost freedom of speech in addressing them. It is the festival of the harvest home; the termination of one year’s toil, and a slight respite from it before they commence again.’[1]

Amongst some of the Hindoo Koosh tribes, as among  the Hos and Mundaris, the expulsion of devils takes place after harvest. When the last crop of autumn has been got in, it is thought necessary to drive away evil spirits from the granaries. A kind of porridge called mool is eaten, and the head of the family takes his matchlock and fires it into the floor. Then, going outside, he sets to work loading and firing till his powder horn is exhausted, while all his neighbours are similarly employed. The next day is spent in rejoicings. In Chitral this festival is called ‘devil-driving.’[1] On the other hand the Khonds of India expel the devils at seed-time instead of at harvest. At this time they worship Pitteri Pennu, the god of increase and of gain in every shape. On the first day of the festival a rude car is made of a basket set upon a few sticks, tied upon bamboo rollers for wheels. The priest takes this car first to the house of the lineal head of the tribe, to whom precedence is given in all ceremonies connected with agriculture. Here he receives a little of each kind of seed and some feathers. He then takes the car to all the other houses in the village, each of which contributes the same things. Lastly, the car is conducted to a field without the village, attended by all the young men, who beat each other and strike the air violently with long sticks. The seed thus carried out is called the share of the ‘evil spirits, spoilers of the seed.’ ‘These are considered to be driven out with the car; and when it and its contents are abandoned to them, they are held to have no excuse for interfering with the rest of the seed-corn.’ Next day each household kills a hog over the seed for the year, and prays to Pitteri Pennu. The elders then feast upon the hogs. The young men are excluded from the repast, but enjoy the privilege of waylaying and pelting with jungle fruit their elders as they return from the feast. Upon the third day the lineal head of the tribe goes out and sows his seed, after which all the rest may do so.[2]

The people of Bali, an island to the east of Java, have periodical expulsions of devils upon a great scale. Generally the time chosen for the expulsion is the day of the ‘dark moon’ in the ninth month. When the demons have been long unmolested the country is said to be ‘warm,’ and the priest issues orders to expel them by force, lest the whole of Bali should be rendered uninhabitable. On the day appointed the people of the village or district assemble at the principal temple. Here at a cross-road offerings are set out for the devils. After prayers have been recited by the priests, the blast of a horn summons the devils to partake of the meal which has been prepared for them. At the same time a number of men step forward and light their torches at the holy lamp which burns before the chief priest. Immediately afterwards, followed by the bystanders, they spread in all directions and march through the streets and lanes crying, ‘Depart! go away!’ Wherever they pass, the people who have stayed at home hasten by a deafening knocking on doors, beams, rice-blocks, etc., to take their share in the expulsion of devils. Thus chased from the houses, the fiends flee to the banquet which has been set out for them; but here the priest receives them with curses which finally drive them from the district. When the last devil has taken his departure, the uproar is succeeded by a dead silence, which lasts during the next day also. The devils, it is thought, are anxious to return to their old homes, and in order to make them think that Bali is not Bali but some desert island, no one may stir from his own premises for twenty-four hours. Even ordinary household work, including cooking, is discontinued. Only the watchmen may show themselves in the streets. Wreaths of thorns and leaves are hung at all the entrances to warn strangers from entering. Not till the third day is this state of siege raised, and even then it is forbidden to work at the rice-fields or to buy and
sell in the market. Most people still stay at home, striving to while away the time with cards and dice.[1]

In some parts of Fiji an annual ceremony took place which has much the aspect of an expulsion of devils. The time of its celebration was determined by the appearance of a certain fish or sea-slug (balolo) which swarms out in dense shoals from the coral reefs on a single day of the year, usually in the last quarter of the moon in November. The appearance of the sea-slugs was the signal for a general feast at those places where they were taken. An influential man ascended a tree and prayed to the spirit of the sky for good crops, fair winds, and so on. Thereupon a tremendous clatter, with drumming and shouting, was raised by all the people in their houses for about half an hour. This was followed by a dead quiet for four days, during which the people feasted on the sea-slug. All this time no work of any kind might be done, not even a leaf plucked nor the offal removed from the houses. If a noise was made in any house, as by a child crying, a forfeit was at once exacted by the chief. At daylight on the expiry of the fourth night the whole town was in an uproar; men and boys scampered about, knocking with clubs and sticks at the doors of the houses and crying ‘Sinariba.’ This concluded the ceremony.[2]

On the night before spring begins the Japanese throw roasted beans against the walls and floors of their houses, crying thrice loudly, ‘Away from here, wicked spirit!’ but adding softly, ‘Enter, Ο god of riches!’[3] Amongst some of the Hindus of the Punjaub on the morning after Diwali or the festival of lamps (at which the souls of ancestors are  believed to visit the house) the oldest woman of the family takes all the sweepings and rubbish of the family and throws them out, with the words, ‘Let all dirt and wretchedness depart from here, and all good fortune come in.’[1] In Tonquin a theckydaw or general expulsion of malevolent spirits commonly took place once a year, especially if there was a great mortality amongst men or cattle, ‘the cause of which they attribute to the malicious spirits of such men as have been put to death for treason, rebellion, and conspiring the death of the king, general, or princes, and in mat revenge of the punishment they have suffered, they are bent to destroy everything and commit horrible violence. To prevent which their superstition has suggested to them the institution of this theckydaw as a proper means to drive the devil away, and purge the country of evil spirits.’ The day appointed for the ceremony was generally the 25th of February, one month after the commencement of the new year, which began on the 25th of January. The intermediate month was a season of feasting, merry-making of all kinds, and general licence. During the whole month the great seal was kept shut up in a box, face downwards, and the law was, as it were, laid asleep. All courts of justice were closed; debtors could not be seized; small crimes, such as petty larceny, fighting, and assault, escaped with impunity; only treason and murder were taken account of and the malefactors detained till the great seal should come into operation again. At the close of the saturnalia the wicked spirits were driven away. Great masses of troops and artillery having been drawn up with flying colours and all the pomp of war, ‘the general beginneth then to offer meat offerings to the criminal devils and malevolent spirits (for it is usual and customary likewise amongst them to feast the condemned before their execution), inviting them to eat and drink, when presently he accuses them in a strange language, by characters and figures, etc., of many offences and crimes committed by them, as to their having disquieted the land, killed his elephants and horses, etc., for  all which they justly deserved to be chastised and banished the country. Whereupon three great guns are fired as the last signal; upon which all the artillery and musquets are discharged, that, by their most terrible noise the devils may be driven away; and they are so blind as to believe for certain, that they really and effectually put them to flight.’[1]

In Cambodia the expulsion of evil spirits took place in March. Bits of broken statues and stones, considered as the abode of the demons, were collected and brought to the capital. Here as many elephants were collected as could be got together. On the evening of the full moon volleys of musketry were fired and the elephants charged furiously to put the devils to flight.[2] In Siam the banishment of demons is annually carried into effect on the last day of the old year. A signal gun is fired from the palace; it is answered from the next station, and so on from station to station, till the firing has reached the outer gate of the city. Thus the demons are driven out step by step. As soon as this is done a consecrated rope is fastened round the circuit of the city walls to prevent the banished demons from returning. The rope is made of tough couch-grass and is painted in alternate stripes of red, yellow, and blue.[3] The Shans of Southern China annually expel the fire-spirit. The ceremony was  witnessed by the English Mission under Colonel Sladen on the 13th of August 1868. Bullocks and cows were slaughtered in the market-place; the meat was all sold, part of it was cooked and eaten, while the rest was fired out of guns at sundown. The pieces of flesh which fell on the land were supposed to become mosquitoes, those which fell in the water were believed to turn into leeches. In the evening the chiefs retainers beat gongs and blew trumpets; and when darkness had set in torches were lit and a party, preceded by the musicians, searched the central court for the fire-spirit, who is supposed to lurk about at this season with evil intent. They then searched all the rooms and the gardens, throwing the light of the torches into every nook and corner where the evil spirit might find a hiding-place.[1]

Annual expulsions of demons or of evil influences are not unknown in Europe at the present day. Amongst the heathen Wotyaks, a Finnish people of Eastern Russia, all the young girls of the village assemble on the last day of the year or on New Year’s Day armed with sticks, the ends of which are split in nine places. With these they beat every corner of the house and yard, saying, ‘We are driving Satan out of the village.’ Afterwards the sticks are thrown into the river below the village, and as they float down stream Satan goes with them to the next village, from which he must be driven out in turn. In some villages the expulsion is managed otherwise. The unmarried men receive from every house in the village groats, flesh, and brandy. These they take to the field, light a fire under a fir-tree, boil the groats, and eat of the food they have brought with them, after pronouncing the words, ‘Go away into the wilderness, come not into the house.’ Then they return to the village and enter every house where there are young women. They take hold of the young women and throw them into the snow, saying, ‘May the spirits of disease leave you.’ The remains of the groats and the other food are then distributed among all the houses in proportion to the amount that each contributed, and each family consumes its share. According to a Wotyak of the Malmyz district the young men throw into the snow whomever they find in the houses, and this is called ‘driving out Satan;’ moreover some of the boiled groats are thrown into the fire with the words, ‘O god, afflict us not with sickness and pestilence, give us not up as a prey to the spirits of the wood.’ But the most antique form of the ceremony is that observed by the Wotyaks of the Kasan Government. First of all a sacrifice is offered to the Devil at noon. Then all the men assemble on horseback in the centre of the village, and decide with which house they shall begin. When this question, which often gives rise to hot disputes, is settled, they tether their horses to the paling, and arm themselves with whips, clubs of lime-wood, and bundles of lighted twigs. The lighted twigs are believed to have the greatest terrors for Satan. Thus armed, they proceed with frightful cries to beat every corner of the house and yard, then shut the door, and spit at the ejected fiend. So they go from house to house, till the Devil has been driven from every one. Then they mount their horses and ride out of the village, yelling wildly and brandishing their clubs in every direction. Outside of the village they fling away the clubs and spit once more at the Devil.[1] The Cheremiss, another Finnish people of Eastern Russia, chase Satan from their dwellings by beating the walls with cudgels of lime-wood. When he has fled to the wood, they pelt the trees with some of the cheese-cakes and eggs which furnished the feast.[2]

In Albania on Easter Eve the young people light torches of resinous wood and march in procession, swinging them, through the village. At last they throw the torches into the river, crying, ‘Ha, Kore! we throw you into the river, like these torches, that you may never return.’[3] In some villages of Calabria the month of March is inaugurated with the expulsion of the witches. It takes place at night to the sound of the church bells, the people running about the streets and crying, ‘March is come.’ They say that the witches roam about in March, and the ceremony is repeated every Friday evening during the month.[1] In the Tyrol the expulsion of witches takes place on the first of May. On a Thursday at midnight bundles are made up of resinous splinters, black and red spotted hemlock, caper-spurge, rosemary, and twigs of the sloe. These are kept and burned on May Day by men who must first have received plenary absolution from the church. On the last three days of April all the houses are cleansed and fumigated with juniper berries and rue. On May Day, when the evening bell has rung and the twilight is falling, the ceremony of ‘burning out the witches,’ as it is called, begins. Men and boys make a racket with whips, bells, pots, and pans; the women carry censers; the dogs are unchained and run barking and yelping about. As soon as the church bells begin to ring, the bundles of twigs, fastened on poles, are set on fire and the incense is ignited. Then all the house-bells and dinner- bells are rung, pots and pans are clashed, dogs bark, every one must make a noise. And amid this hubbub all scream at the pitch of their voices –

‘Witch flee, flee from here,

Or it will go ill with thee.’

Then they run seven times round the houses, the yards, and the village. So the witches are smoked out of their lurking- places and driven away.[2] At Brunnen in Switzerland the boys go about in procession on Twelfth Night, carrying torches and lanterns, and making a great noise with horns, cow-bells, whips, etc. This is said to frighten away the two female spirits of the wood, Strudeli and Strätteli.[1]

Scapegoats

Thus far the examples cited have belonged to the class of direct or immediate expulsion of ills. It remains to illustrate the second class of expulsions, in which the evil influences are either embodied in a visible form or are at least supposed to be loaded upon a material medium, which acts as a vehicle to draw them off from the people, village, or town. The Pomos of California celebrate an expulsion of devils every seven years, at which the devils are represented by disguised men. ‘Twenty or thirty men array themselves in harlequin rig and barbaric paint, and put vessels of pitch on their heads; then they secretly go out into the surrounding mountains. These are to personify the devils. A herald goes up to the top of the assembly-house, and makes a speech to the multitude. At a signal agreed upon in the evening the masqueraders come in from the mountains, with the vessels of pitch flaming on their heads, and with all the frightful accessories of noise, motion, and costume which the savage mind can devise in representation of demons. The terrified women and children flee for life, the men huddle them inside a circle, and, on the principle of fighting the devil with fire, they swing blazing firebrands in the air, yell, whoop, and make frantic dashes at the marauding and bloodthirsty devils, so creating a terrific spectacle, and striking great fear into the hearts of the assembled hundreds of women, who are screaming and fainting and clinging to their valorous protectors. Finally the devils succeed in getting into the assembly-house, and the bravest of the men enter and hold a parley with them. As a conclusion of the whole farce, the men summon courage, the devils are expelled from the assembly-house, and with a prodigious row and racket of sham fighting are chased away into the mountains.’[1] In spring, as soon as the willow leaves were full grown on the banks of the river, the Mandan Indians celebrated their great annual festival, one of the features of which was the expulsion of the devil. A man, painted black to represent the devil, entered the village from the prairie, chased and frightened the women, and acted the part of a buffalo bull in the buffalo dance, the object of which was to ensure a plentiful supply of buffaloes during the ensuing year. Finally he was chased from the village, the women pursuing him with hisses and gibes, beating him with sticks, and pelting him with dirt.[2] On the last night of the year the palace of the Kings of Cambodia is purged of devils. Men painted as fiends are chased by elephants about the palace courts. When they have been expelled, a consecrated thread of cotton is stretched round the palace to keep them out.[3] The Kasyas, a hill tribe of Assam, annually expel the demons. The ceremony takes place on a fixed month in the year, and part of it consists in a struggle between two bands of men who stand on opposite sides of a stream, each side tugging at the end of a rope which is stretched across the water. In this contest, which resembles the game of ‘French and English,’ the men on one side probably represent the demons.[4] At Carmona in  Andalusia, on one day of the year, boys are stripped naked and smeared with glue in which feathers are stuck. Thus disguised, they run from house to house, the people trying to avoid them and to bar their houses against them.[1] The ceremony is probably a relic of an annual expulsion of devils.

Oftener, however, the expelled demons are not represented at all, but are understood to be present invisibly in the material and visible vehicle which conveys them away. Here, again, it will be convenient to distinguish between occasional and periodical expulsions. We begin with the former.

The vehicle which conveys away the demons may be of various kinds. A common one is a little ship or boat. Thus, in the southern district of the island of Ceram, when a whole village suffers from sickness, a small ship is made and filled with rice, tobacco, eggs, etc., which have been contributed by all the people. A little sail is hoisted on the ship. When all is ready, a man calls out in a very loud voice, ‘O all ye sicknesses, ye small-poxes, agues, measles, etc., who have visited us so long and wasted us so sorely, but who now cease to plague us, we have made ready this ship for you, and we have furnished you with provender sufficient for the voyage. Ye shall have no lack of food nor of sin nor of pinang nor of tobacco. Depart, and sail away from us directly; never come near us again, but go to a land which is far from here. Let all the tides and winds waft you speedily thither, and so convey you thither that for the time to come we may live sound and well, and that we may never see the sun rise on you again.’ Then ten or twelve men carry the vessel to the shore, and let it drift away with the land- breeze, feeling convinced that they are free from sickness for ever, or at least till the next time. If sickness attacks them again, they are sure it is not the same sickness, but a different one, which in due time they dismiss in the same manner. When the demon-laden bark is lost to sight, the bearers return to the village, whereupon a man cries out, ‘The sicknesses are now gone, vanished, expelled, and sailed away.’ At this all the people come running out of their houses, passing the word from one to the other with great joy, beating on gongs and on tinkling instruments.[1]

Similar ceremonies are commonly resorted to in other East Indian islands. Thus in Timorlaut, to mislead the demons who are causing sickness, a small prao, containing the image of a man and provisioned for a long voyage, is allowed to drift away with wind and tide. As it is being launched, the people cry, ‘O sickness, go from here; turn back; what do you here in this poor land?’ Three days after this ceremony a pig is killed, and part of the flesh is offered to Dudilaa, who lives in the sun. One of the oldest men says, Old sir, I beseech you, make well the grandchildren, children, women, and men, that we may be able to eat pork and rice and to drink palm-wine. I will keep my promise. Eat your share, and make all the people in the village well.’ If the prao is stranded at any inhabited spot, the sickness  will break out there. Hence a stranded prao excites much alarm amongst the coast population, and they immediately burn it, because demons fly from fire.[1] In the island of Buro the prao which carries away the demons of disease is about twenty feet long, rigged out with sails, oars, anchor, etc., and well stocked with provisions. For a day and a night the people beat gongs and drums, and rush about to frighten the demons. Next morning ten stalwart young men strike the people with branches, which have been previously dipped in an earthen pot of water. As soon as they have done so, they run down to the beach, put the branches on board the prao, launch another prao in great haste, and tow the disease-burdened prao far out to sea. There they cast it off, and one of them calls out, ‘Grandfather Small-pox, go away – go willingly away – go visit another land; we have made you food ready for the voyage, we have now nothing more to give.’ When they have landed, all the people bathe together in the sea.[2] In this ceremony the reason for striking the people with the branches is clearly to rid them of the disease-demons, which are then supposed to be transferred to the branches. Hence the haste with which the branches are deposited in the prao and towed away to sea. So in the inland districts of Ceram, when small-pox or other sickness is raging, the priest strikes all the houses with consecrated branches, which are then thrown into the river, to be carried down to the sea;[3] exactly as amongst the Wotyaks of Russia the sticks which have been used for expelling the devils from the village are thrown into the river, that the current may sweep the baleful burden away. In Amboina, for a similar purpose, the whole body of the patient is rubbed with a live white cock, which is then placed on a little prao and committed to the waves;[4] and in the Babar archipelago the bark which is to carry away to sea the sickness of a whole village contains a bowl of ashes taken from every kitchen in the village, and another bowl into which all the sick people have spat.[1] The plan of putting puppets in the boat to represent sick persons, in order to lure the demons after them, is not uncommon.[2]

The practice of sending away diseases in boats is known outside the limits of the East Indian Archipelago. Thus when the people of Tikopia, a small island in the Pacific, to the north of the New Hebrides, were attacked by an epidemic cough, they made a little canoe and adorned it with flowers. Four sons of the principal chiefs carried it on their shoulders all round the island, accompanied by the whole population, some of whom beat the bushes, while others uttered loud cries. On returning to the spot from which they had set out, they launched the canoe on the sea.[3] In the Nicobar Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, when there is much sickness in a village or no fish are caught, the blame is laid upon the spirits. They must be propitiated with offerings. All relations and friends are invited, a huge pig is roasted, and the best of it is eaten, but some parts are offered to the shades. The heap of offerings remains in front of the house till it is carried away by the rising tide. Then the priests, their faces reddened with paint and swine’s blood, pretend to catch the demon of disease, and, after a hand-to-hand struggle, force him into a model boat, made of leaves and decked with garlands, which is then towed so far to sea that neither wind nor tide is likely to drive it back to the shore.[1]

Often the vehicle which carries away the collected demons or ills of a whole community is an animal or scapegoat. In the Central Provinces of India, when cholera breaks out in a village, every one retires after sunset to his house. The priests then parade the streets, taking from the roof of each house a straw, which is burnt with an offering of rice, ghi, and turmeric, at some shrine to the east of the village. Chickens daubed with vermilion are driven away in the direction of the smoke, and are believed to carry the disease with them. If they fail, goats are tried, and last of all pigs.[2] When cholera is very bad among the Bhárs, Malláns, and Kurmís of India, they take a goat or a buffalo – in either case the animal must be a female, and as black as possible – then they tie some grain, cloves, and red lead in a yellow cloth on its back, and turn it out of the village. It is conducted beyond the boundary, and is not allowed to return.[3] The people of the city and cantonments of Sagar being afflicted with a violent influenza, ‘I had an application from the old Queen Dowager of Sagar to allow of a noisy religious procession, for the purpose of imploring deliverance from this great calamity. Men, women, and children in this procession were to do their utmost to add to the noise by “raising their voices in psalmody,” beating upon their brass pots and pans with all their might, and discharging firearms where they could get them. Before the noisy crowd was to be driven a buffalo, which had been purchased by general subscription, in order that every family might participate in the merit. They were to follow it out eight miles, where it was to be turned loose for any man who would take it. If the animal returned the disease must return with it, and the ceremony be performed over again. … It was, however, subsequently determined that the animal should be a goat; and he was driven before the crowd accordingly. I have on several occasions been requested to allow of such noisy ceremonies in cases of epidemics.’[1] Once, when influenza was raging in Pithuria, a man had a small carriage made, after a plan of his own, for a pair of scapegoats, which were harnessed to it and driven to a wood at some distance, where they were let loose. From that hour the disease entirely ceased in the town. The goats never returned; had they done so, ‘the disease must have come back with them.’[2] The idea of the scapegoat is not uncommon in the hills of the Eastern Ghats. In 1886, during a severe outbreak of small-pox, the people of Jeypur made ‘puja’ to a goat, marched it to the Ghats, and let it loose on the plains.[3] In Southern Konkan, on the appearance of cholera, the villagers went in procession from the temple to the extreme boundaries of the village, carrying a basket of cooked rice covered with red powder, a wooden doll representing the pestilence, and a cock. The head of the cock was cut off at the village boundary, and the body was thrown away. When cholera was thus transferred from one village to another, the second village observed the same ceremony and passed on the scourge to its neighbours, and so on through a number of villages.[4] When the Aymara Indians were suffering from a plague, they loaded a llama with the clothes of the plague-stricken people, and drove the animal into the mountains, hoping that it would take the plague away with it.[5] Sometimes the scapegoat is a man. Some of the aboriginal tribes of China, as a protection against pestilence, select a man of great muscular strength to act the part of scapegoat. Having besmeared his face with paint, he performs many antics with the view of enticing all pestilential and noxious influences to attach themselves to him only. He is assisted by a priest. Finally the scapegoat, hotly pursued by men and women beating gongs and tomtoms, is driven with great haste out of the town or village.[1] A Hindu cure for the murrain is to hire a man of the Chamár caste, turn his face away from the village, brand him with a red-hot sickle, and let him go out into the jungle, taking the murrain with him. He must not look back.[2]

The mediate expulsion of evils by means of a scapegoat or other material vehicle, like the immediate expulsion of them in invisible form, tends to become periodic, and for a like reason. Thus every year, generally in March, the people of Leti, Moa, and Lakor send away all their diseases to sea. They make a prao about six feet long, rig it with sails, oars, rudder, etc., and every family deposits in it some rice, fruit, a fowl, two eggs, insects that ravage the fields, etc. Then they let it drift away to sea, saying, ‘Take away from here all kinds of sickness, take them to other islands, to other lands, distribute them in places that lie eastward, where the sun rises.’[3] The Biajas of Borneo annually send to sea a little bark laden with the sins and misfortunes of the people. The crew of any ship that falls in with the ill-omened bark at sea will suffer all the sorrows with which it is laden.[4] At the beginning of the dry season, every year, the Nicobar islanders carry the model of a ship through their villages. The devils are chased out of the huts, and driven on board the little ship, which is then launched and suffered to sail away with the wind.[5] At Sucla-Tirtha, in India, an earthen pot containing the accumulated sins of the people is (annually?) set adrift on the river. Legend says that the custom originated with a wicked priest who, after atoning for his guilt by a course of austerities and expiatory ceremonies, was directed to sail upon the river in a boat with white sails. If the white sails turned black, it would be a sign that his sins were forgiven him. They did so, and he joyfully allowed the boat to drift with his sins to sea.[1] Amongst many of the aboriginal tribes of China, a great festival is celebrated in the third month of every year. It is held by way of a general rejoicing over what the people believe to be a total annihilation of the ills of the past twelve months. This annihilation is supposed to be effected in the following way. A large earthenware jar filled with gunpowder, stones, and bits of iron is buried in the earth. A train of gunpowder, communicating with the jar, is then laid; and a match being applied, the jar and its contents are blown up. The stones and bits of iron represent the ills and disasters of the past year, and the dispersion of them by the explosion is believed to remove the ills and disasters themselves. The festival is attended with much revelling and drunkenness.[2] At Old Calabar, in Guinea, the devils are expelled once every two years. A number of figures called nabikems are made of sticks and bamboos, and fixed indiscriminately about the town. Some of them represent human beings, others birds, crocodiles, and so on. After three or four weeks the devils are expected to take up their abode in these figures. When the night comes for their general expulsion, the people feast and sally out in parties, beating at empty corners, and shouting with all their might. Shots are fired, the nabikems are torn up with violence, set in flames, and flung into the river. The orgies last till daybreak, and the town is considered to be rid of evil influences for two years to come.[3] Mr George Bogle, the English envoy sent to Tibet by Warren Hastings, witnessed the celebration of the Tibetan New Year’s Day at Teshu Lumbo the capital of the Teshu Lama. ‘The figure of a man, chalked upon paper, was laid upon the ground. Many strange ceremonies, which to me who did not understand them appeared whimsical, were performed about it; and a great fire being kindled in a corner of the court, it was at length held over it, and being formed of combustibles, vanished with much smoke and explosion. I was told it was a figure of the devil.’[1]

On one day of the year some of the people of the Western Himalayas take a dog, intoxicate him with spirits and bhang or hemp, and having fed him with sweetmeats, lead him round the village and let him loose. They then chase and kill him with sticks and stones, and believe that, when they have done so, no disease or misfortune will visit the village during the year.[2] In some parts of Breadalbane it was formerly the custom on New Year’s Day to take a dog to the door, give him a bit of bread, and drive him out, saying, ‘Get away you dog! Whatever death of men, or loss of cattle would happen in this house to the end of the present year, may it all light on your head!’[3] It appears that the white dogs annually sacrificed by the Iroquois at their New Year Festival are, or have been, regarded as scapegoats. According to Air J. V. H. Clark, who witnessed the ceremony in January 1841, on the first day of the festival all the fires in the village were extinguished, the ashes scattered to the winds, and a new fire was kindled with flint and steel. On a subsequent day, men dressed in fantastic costumes went round the village, gathering the sins of the people. On the morning of the last day of the festival, two white dogs, decorated with red paint, wampum, feathers, and ribbons were led out. They were soon strangled, and hung on a ladder. Firing and yelling succeeded, and half an hour later the dogs were taken into a house, ‘where the peoples’ sins were transferred to them.’ The dogs were afterwards burnt on a pyre of wood.[4] According to the Rev Mr Kirkland, who wrote last century, the ashes of the pyre upon which one of the white dogs was burned were carried through the village and sprinkled at the door of every house.[1] Formerly, however, as we have seen, the Iroquois expulsion of evils was immediate and not by scapegoat.[2] The Jews annually laid all the sins of the people upon the head of a goat and sent it away into the wilderness.3

The scapegoat upon whom the sins of the people are periodically laid, may also be a human being. At Onitsha, on the Quorra River, two human beings are annually sacrificed to take away the sins of the land. The victims are purchased by public subscription. All persons who, during the past year, have fallen into gross sins, such as incendiarism, theft, adultery, witchcraft, etc. are expected to contribute 28 ngugas, or a little over £2. The money thus collected is taken into the interior of the country and expended in the purchase of two sickly persons ‘to be offered as a sacrifice for all these abominable crimes – one for the land and one for the river.[3] A man from a neighbouring town is hired to put them to death. The sacrifice of one of these victims was witnessed by the Rev J. C. Taylor on 27th February 1858. The sufferer was a woman, about nineteen or twenty years of age. She was dragged alive along the ground, face downwards, from the king’s house to the river, a distance of two miles. The crowds who accompanied her cried ’Wickedness! wickedness!’ The intention was ‘to take away the iniquities of the land. The body was dragged along in a merciless manner, as if the weight of all their wickedness was thus carried away.’[1] In Siam it was formerly the custom on one day of the year to single out a woman broken down by debauchery, and carry her on a litter through all the streets to the music of drums and hautboys. The mob insulted her and pelted her with dirt; and after having carried her through the whole city, they threw her on a dunghill or a hedge of thorns outside the ramparts, forbidding her ever to enter the walls again. They believed that the woman thus drew upon herself all the malign influences of the air and of evil spirits.[2] The people of Nias offer either a red horse or a buffalo as a public sacrifice to purify the land and obtain the favour of the gods. Formerly, it is said, a man was bound to the same stake as the buffalo, and when the animal was killed, the man was driven away; no one might receive him, converse with him, or give him food.[3] Doubtless he was supposed to carry away the sins and misfortunes of the people.

In Tibet the ceremony of the scapegoat is marked by some peculiar features. The Tibetan New Year begins with the new moon, which appears about 15th February. For twenty-three days afterwards the government of Lhásá, the capital, is taken out of the hands of the ordinary rulers and entrusted to the monk of the Debang monastery who offers to pay the highest sum for the privilege. The successful bidder is called the Jalno, and he announces the fact in person through the streets of Lhásá, bearing a silver stick. Monks from all the neighbouring monasteries and temples assemble to pay him homage. The Jalno exercises his authority in the most arbitrary manner for his own benefit, as all the fines which he exacts are his by purchase. The profit he makes is about ten times the amount of the purchase money. His men go about the streets in order to discover any conduct on the part of the inhabitants that can be found fault with. Every house in Lhásá is taxed at this time, and the slightest fault is punished with unsparing rigour by fines. This severity of the Jalno drives all working classes out of the city till the twenty-three days are over. Meantime, all the priests flock from the neighbourhood to the Máchindránáth temple, where they perform religious ceremonies. The temple is a very large one, standing in the centre of the city, surrounded by bazaars and shops. The idols in it are richly inlaid with gold and precious stones. Twenty-four days after the Jalno has ceased to have authority, he assumes it again, and for ten days acts in the same arbitrary manner as before. On the first of the ten days the priests assemble as before at the Máchindránáth temple, pray to the gods to prevent sickness and other evils among the people, ‘and, as a peace-offering, sacrifice one man. The man is not killed purposely, but the ceremony he undergoes often proves fatal.[1] Grain is thrown against his head, and his face is painted half white, half black.’ On the tenth day, all the troops in Lhásá march to the temple and form in line before it. The victim is brought forth from the temple and receives small donations from the assembled multitude. He then throws dice with the Jalno. If the victim wins, much evil is foreboded; but if the Jalno wins, there is great rejoicing, for it is then believed that the victim has been accepted by the gods to bear all the sins of the people of Lhásá. Thereupon his face is painted half white and half black, a leathern coat is put on him, and he is marched to the walls of the city, followed by the whole populace, hooting, shouting, and firing volleys after him. When he is driven outside the city, the people return, and the victim is carried to the Same monastery. Should he die shortly afterwards, the people say it is an auspicious sign; but if not, he is kept a prisoner at the monastery for a whole year, after which he is allowed to return to Lhásá.[1]

Human scapegoats, as we shall see presently, were well known in classical antiquity, and even in mediaeval Europe the custom seems not to have been wholly extinct. In the town of Halberstadt in Thüringen there was a church which was said to have been founded by Charlemagne. In this church every year a man was chosen, who was believed to be stained with heinous sins. On the first day of Lent he was brought to the church, dressed in mourning garb, with his head muffled up. At the close of the service he was turned out of the church. During the forty days of Lent he perambulated the city barefoot, neither entering the churches nor speaking to any one. The canons took it in turn to feed him. After midnight he was allowed to sleep on the streets. On the day before Good Friday, after the consecration of the holy oil, he was readmitted to the church and absolved from his sins. The people gave him money. He was called Adam, and was now believed to be in a state of innocence.[2] At Entlebuch in Switzerland, down to the close of last century, the custom of annually expelling a scapegoat was preserved in the ceremony of driving ‘Pos- terli’ from the village into the lands of the neighbouring village. ‘Posterli’ was represented by a lad disguised as an old witch or as a goat or an ass. Amid a deafening noise of horns, clarionets, bells, whips, etc. he was driven out. Sometimes ‘Posterli’ was represented by a puppet, which was drawn in a sledge and left in a corner of the neighbouring village. The ceremony took place on the Thursday evening of the last week but one before Christmas.[3]

Sometimes the scapegoat is a divine animal. The people of Malabar share the Hindu reverence for the cow, to kill and eat which ‘they esteem to be a crime as heinous as homicide or wilful murder.’ Nevertheless ‘the Brahmans transfer the sins of the people into one or more Cows, which are then carry’d away, both the Cows and the Sins wherewith these Beasts are charged, to what place the Brahman shall appoint.’[1] When the ancient Egyptians sacrificed a bull, they invoked upon its head all the evils that might otherwise befall themselves and the land of Egypt, and thereupon they either sold the bull’s head to the Greeks or cast it into the river.[2] Now, it cannot be said that in the times known to us the Egyptians worshipped bulls in general, for they seem to have commonly killed and eaten them.[3] But a good many circumstances point to the conclusion that originally all cattle, bulls as well as cows, were held sacred by the Egyptians. For not only were all cows esteemed holy by them and never sacrificed, but even bulls might not be sacrificed unless they had certain natural marks; a priest examined every bull before it was sacrificed; if it had the proper marks, he put his seal on the animal in token that it might be sacrificed; and if a man sacrificed a bull which had not been sealed, he was put to death. Moreover, the worship of the black bulls Apis and Mnevis, especially the former, played an important part in Egyptian religion; all bulls that died a natural death were carefully buried in the suburbs of the cities, and their bones were afterwards collected from all parts of Egypt and buried in a single spot; and at the sacrifice of a bull in the great rites of Isis all the worshippers beat their breasts and mourned.[4] On the whole, then, we are perhaps entitled to infer that bulls were originally, as cows were always, esteemed sacred by the Egyptians, and that the slain bull upon whose head they laid the misfortunes of the people was once a divine scapegoat. It seems not improbable that the lamb annually slain by the Madis of Central Africa is a divine scapegoat, and the same supposition may partly explain the Zuni sacrifice of the turtle.[1]

Lastly, the scapegoat may be a divine man. Thus, in November the Gonds of India worship Ghansyam Deo, the protector of the crops, and at the festival the god himself is said to descend on the head of one of the worshippers, who is suddenly seized with a kind of fit and, after staggering about, rushes off into the jungle, where it is believed that, if left to himself, he would die mad. As it is, he is brought back, but does not recover his senses for one or two days. ‘The idea is, that one man is thus singled out as a scapegoat for the sins of the rest of the village.’[2] In the temple of the Moon the Albanians of the Eastern Caucasus kept a number of sacred slaves, of whom many were inspired and prophesied. When one of these men exhibited more than usual symptoms of inspiration and wandered solitary up and down the woods, like the Gond in the jungle, the high priest had him bound with a sacred chain and maintained him in luxury for a year. At the end of the year he was anointed with unguents and led forth to be sacrificed. A man whose business it was to slay these human victims and to whom practice had given dexterity, advanced from the crowd and thrust a sacred spear into the victim’s side, piercing his heart. From the manner in which the slain man fell, omens were drawn as to the welfare of the commonwealth. Then the body was carried to a certain spot where all the people stood upon it as a purificatory ceremony.[3] This last circumstance clearly indicates that the sins of the people were transferred to the victim, just as the Jewish priest transferred the sins of the people to the scapegoat by laying his hand on the animal’s head; and since the man was believed to be possessed by the divine spirit, we have here an undoubted example of a man-god slain to take away the sins and misfortunes of the people.

The foregoing survey of the custom of publicly expelling the accumulated evils of a village or district suggests a few general observations. In the first place, it will not be disputed that what I have called the immediate and the mediate expulsions of evil are identical in intention; in other words, that whether the evils are conceived of as invisible or as embodied in a material form, is a circumstance entirely subordinate to the main object of the ceremony, which is simply to effect a total clearance of all the ills that have been infesting a people. If any link were wanting to connect the two kinds of expulsion, it would be furnished by such a practice as that of sending the evils away in a boat. For here, on the one hand, the evils are invisible and intangible; and, on the other hand, there is a visible and tangible vehicle to convey them away. And a scapegoat is nothing more than such a vehicle.

In the second place, when a general clearance of evils is resorted to periodically, the interval between the celebrations of the ceremony is commonly a year, and the time of year when the ceremony takes place usually coincides with some well-marked change of season – such as the close of winter in the arctic and temperate zones, and the beginning or end of the rainy season in the tropics. The increased mortality which such climatic changes are apt to produce, especially amongst ill-fed, ill- clothed, and ill-housed savages, is set down by primitive man to the agency of demons, who must accordingly be expelled. Hence, in New Britain and Peru, the devils are or were driven out at the beginning of the rainy season. When a tribe has taken to agriculture, the time for the general expulsion of devils is naturally made to agree with one of the great epochs of the agricultural year, as sowing or harvest; but, as these epochs themselves often coincide with changes of season, it does not follow that the transition from the hunting or pastoral to the agricultural life involves any alteration in the time of celebrating this great annual rite. Some of the agricultural communities of India and the Hindoo Koosh, as we have seen, hold their general clearance of demons at harvest, others at sowing-time. But, at whatever season of the year it is held, the general expulsion of devils commonly marks the beginning of the new year. For, before entering on a new year, people are anxious to rid themselves of the troubles that have harassed them in the past; hence the fact that amongst so many people – Iroquois, Ton- quinese, Siamese, Tibetans, etc. – the beginning of the new year is inaugurated with a solemn and public banishment of evil spirits.

In the third place, it is to be observed that this public and periodic expulsion of devils is commonly preceded or followed by a period of general licence, during which the ordinary restraints of society are thrown aside, and all offences, short of the gravest, are allowed to pass unpunished. In Guinea and Tonquin the period of licence precedes the public expulsion of demons; and the suspension of the ordinary government in Lhásá previous to the expulsion of the scapegoat is perhaps a relic of a similar period of universal licence. Amongst the Hos the period of licence follows the expulsion of the devil. Amongst the Iroquois it hardly appears whether it preceded or followed the banishment of evils. In any case, the extraordinary relaxation of all ordinary rules of conduct on such occasions is doubtless to be explained by the general clearance of evils which precedes or follows it. On the one hand, when a general riddance of evil and absolution from all sin is in immediate prospect, men are encouraged to give the rein to their passions, trusting that the coming ceremony will wipe out the score which they are running up so fast. On the other hand, when the ceremony has just taken place, men’s minds are freed from the oppressive sense, under which they generally labour, of an atmosphere surcharged with devils; and in the first revulsion of joy they overleap the limits commonly imposed by custom and morality. When the ceremony takes place at harvest-time, the elation of feeling which it excites is further stimulated by the state of physical wellbeing produced by an abundant supply of food.[1]

Fourthly, the employment of a divine man or animal as a scapegoat is especially to be noted; indeed, we are here directly concerned with the custom of banishing evils only in so far as these evils are believed to be transferred to a god who is afterwards slain. It may be suspected that the custom of employing a divine man or animal as a public scapegoat is much more widely diffused than appears from the examples cited. For, as has already been pointed out, the custom of killing a god dates from so early a period of human history that in later ages, even when the custom continues to be practised, it is liable to be misinterpreted. The divine character of the animal or man is forgotten, and he comes to be regarded merely as an ordinary victim. This is especially likely to be the case when it is a divine man who is killed. For when a nation becomes civilised, if it does not drop human sacrifices altogether, it at least selects as victims only such criminals as would be put to death at any rate. Thus, as in the Sacaean festival at Babylon, the killing of a god may come to be confounded with the execution of a criminal.

If we ask why a dying god should be selected to take upon himself and carry away the sins and sorrows of the people, it may be suggested that in the practice of using the divinity as a scapegoat we have a combination of two customs which were at one time distinct and independent. On the one hand we have seen that it has been customary to kill the human or animal god in order to save his divine life from being weakened by the inroads of age. On the other hand we have seen that it has been customary to have a general expulsion of evils and sins once a year. Now, if it occurred to people to combine these two customs, the result would be the employment of the dying god as a scapegoat. He was killed, not originally to take away sin, but to save the divine life from the degeneracy of old age; but, since he had to be killed at any rate, people may have thought that they might as well seize the opportunity to lay upon him the burden of their sufferings and sins, in order that he might bear it away with him to the unknown world beyond the grave.

The use of the divinity as a scapegoat clears up the ambiguity which, as we saw, appeared to hang about the European folk-custom of ‘carrying out Death.’[1] Grounds have been shown for believing that in this ceremony the so-called Death was originally the spirit of vegetation, who was annually slain in spring, in order that he might come to life again with all the vigour of youth. But, as we saw, there are certain features in the ceremony which are not explicable on this hypothesis alone. Such are the marks of joy with which the effigy of Death is carried out to be buried or burnt, and the fear and abhorrence of it manifested by the bearers. But these features become at once intelligible if we suppose that the Death was not merely the dying god of vegetation, but also a public scapegoat, upon whom were laid all the evils that had afflicted the people during the past year. Joy on such an occasion is natural and appropriate; and if the dying god appears to be the object of that fear and abhorrence which are properly due not to himself, but to the sins and misfortunes with which he is laden, this arises merely from the difficulty of distinguishing or at least of marking the distinction between the bearer and the burden. When the burden is of a baleful character, the bearer of it will be feared and shunned just as much as if he were himself instinct with those dangerous properties of which, as it happens, he is only the vehicle. Similarly we have seen that disease-laden and sin-laden boats are dreaded and shunned by East Indian peoples.[1] Again, the view that in these popular customs the Death is a scapegoat as well as a representative of the divine spirit of vegetation derives some support from the circumstance that its expulsion is always celebrated in spring and chiefly by Slavonic peoples. For the Slavonic year began in spring;[2] and thus, in one of its aspects, the ceremony of ‘Carrying out Death’ would be an example of the widespread custom of expelling the accumulated evils of the past year before entering on a new one.

We are now prepared to notice the use of the scapegoat in classical antiquity. Every year on the 14th of March a man clad in skins was led in procession through the streets of Rome, beaten with long white rods, and driven out of the city. He was called Mamurius Veturius,[3] that is, ‘the old Mars,‘[1] and as the ceremony took place on the day preceding the first full moon of the old Roman year (which began on 1st March), the skin-clad man must have represented the Mars of the past year, who was driven out at the beginning of a new one. Now Mars was originally not a god of war but of vegetation. For it was to Mars that the Roman husbandman prayed for the prosperity of his corn and his vines, his fruit-trees and his copses;[2] it was to Mars that the priestly college of the Arval Brothers, whose business it was to sacrifice for the growth of the crops,[3] addressed their petitions almost exclusively;[4] and it was to Mars, as we saw,[5] that a horse was sacrificed in October to secure an abundant harvest. Moreover, it was to Mars, under his title of ’Mars of the woods’ (Mars Silvanus) that farmers offered sacrifice for the welfare of their cattle.[6] We have already seen that cattle are commonly supposed to be under the special patronage of tree-gods.[7] Once more, the fact that the vernal month of March was dedicated to Mars seems to point him out as the deity of the sprouting vegetation. Thus the Roman custom of expelling the old Mars at the beginning of the New Year in spring is identical with the Slavonic custom of ‘carrying out Death,’ if the view here taken of the latter custom is correct. The similarity of the Roman and Slavonic customs has been already remarked by scholars, who appear, however, to have taken Mamurius Veturius and the corresponding figures in the Slavonic ceremonies to be representatives of the old year rather than of the old god of vegetation.[1] It is possible that ceremonies of this kind may have come to be thus interpreted in later times even by the people who practised them. But the personification of a period of time is too abstract an idea to be primitive. However, in the Roman, as in the Slavonic, ceremony, the representative of the god appears to have been treated not only as a deity of vegetation but also as a scapegoat. His expulsion implies this; for there is no reason why the god of vegetation, as such, should be expelled the city. But it is otherwise if he is also a scapegoat; it then becomes necessary to drive him beyond the boundaries, that he may carry his sorrowful burden away to other lands. And, in fact, Mamurius Veturius appears to have been driven away to the land of the Oscans, the enemies of Rome.[2]

The ancient Greeks were also familiar with the use of a human scapegoat. At Plutarch’s native town of Chaeronea in Boeotia, there was a ceremony of this kind performed by the chief magistrate at the Town Hall, and by each householder at his own home. It was called the ‘expulsion of hunger. ‘A slave was beaten with rods of the agnus castus, and turned out of doors with the words, Out with hunger, and in with wealth and health.’ When Plutarch held the office of chief magistrate of his native town he performed this ceremony at the Town Hall, and he has recorded the discussion to which the custom afterwards gave rise.[1] The ceremony closely resembles the Japanese, Hindoo, and Highland customs already described.[2]

But in civilised Greece the custom of the scapegoat took darker forms than the innocent rite over which the amiable and pious Plutarch presided. Whenever Marseilles, one of the busiest and most brilliant of Greek colonies, was ravaged by a plague, a man of the poorer classes used to offer himself as a scapegoat. For a whole year he was maintained at the public expense, being fed on choice and pure food. At the expiry of the year he was dressed in sacred garments, decked with holy branches, and led through the whole city, while prayers were uttered that all the evils of the people might fall on his head. He was then cast out of the city.[3] The Athenians regularly maintained a number of degraded and useless beings at the public expense; and when any calamity, such as plague, drought, or famine befell the city, they sacrificed two of these outcasts as scapegoats. One of the victims was sacrificed for the men and the other for the women. The former wore round his neck a string of black, the latter a string of white figs. Sometimes, it seems, the victim slain on behalf of the women was a woman. They were led about the city and then sacrificed, apparently by being stoned to death outside the city.[1] But such sacrifices were not confined to extraordinary occasions of public calamity; it appears that every year, at the festival of the Thargelia in May, two victims, one for the men and one for the women, were led out of Athens and stoned to death.[2]

From the Lover’s Leap, a white bluff at the southern end of their island, the Leucadians used annually to hurl a criminal into the sea as a scapegoat. But to lighten his fall they fastened live birds and feathers to him, and a flotilla of small boats waited below to catch him and convey him beyond the boundary.[3] Doubtless these humane precautions were a mitigation of an earlier custom of flinging the scapegoat into the sea to drown. The custom of the scapegoat as practised by the Greeks of Asia Minor in the sixth century bc was as follows. When a city suffered from plague, famine, or other public calamity, an ugly or deformed person was chosen to take upon himself all the evils by which the city was afflicted. He was brought to a suitable place where dried figs, a barley loaf, and cheese were put into his hand. These he ate. Then he was beaten seven times upon his genital organs with squills and branches of the wild fig and other wild trees. Afterwards he was burned on a pyre constructed of the wood of forest trees; and his ashes were cast into the sea.[1] A similar custom appears to have been annually celebrated by the Asiatic Greeks at the harvest festival of the Thargelia.[2]

In the ritual just described the beating of the victim with squills, branches of the wild fig, etc., cannot have been intended to aggravate his sufferings, otherwise any stick would have been good enough to beat him with. The true meaning of this part of the ceremony has been explained by W. Mannhardt.[3] He points out that the ancients attributed to squills a magical power of averting evil influences, and accordingly hung them up at the doors of their houses and made use of them in purificatory rites.[4] Hence the Arcadian custom of beating the image of Pan with squills at a festival or whenever the hunters returned empty-handed,[5] must have been meant, not to punish the god, but to purify him from the harmful influences which were impeding him in the exercise of his divine functions as a god who should supply the hunter with game. Similarly the object of beating the human scapegoat on the genital organs with squills, etc., must have been to release his reproductive energies from any restraint or spell under which they might be laid by demoniacal or other malignant agency; and as the Thargelia at which he was annually sacrificed was an early harvest festival,[1] we must recognise in him a representative of the creative and fertilising god of vegetation. The representative of the god was annually slain for the purpose I have indicated, that of maintaining the divine life in perpetual vigour, untainted by the weakness of age; and before he was put to death it was not unnatural to stimulate his reproductive powers in order that these might be transmitted in full activity to his successor, the new god or new embodiment of the old god, who was doubtless supposed immediately to take the place of the one slain.[2] Similar reasoning would lead to a similar treatment of the scapegoat on special occasions, such as drought or famine. If the crops did not answer to the expectation of the husbandman, this would be attributed to some failure in the generative powers of the god whose function it was to produce the fruits of the earth. It might be thought he was under a spell or was growing old and feeble. Accordingly he was slain in the person of his representative, with all the ceremonies already described, in order that, born young again, he might infuse his own youthful vigour into the stagnant energies of nature. On the same principle we can understand why Mamurius Veturius was beaten with rods, why the slave at the Chaer- onean ceremony was beaten with the agnus castus (a tree to which magical properties were ascribed),[3] why the effigy of Death in north Europe is assailed with sticks and stones, and why at Babylon the criminal who played the god was scourged before he was crucified. The purpose of the scourging was not to intensify the agony of the divine sufferer, but on the contrary to dispel any malignant influences by which at the supreme moment he might conceivably be beset.

The interpretation here given to the custom of beating the human scapegoat with certain plants is supported by many analogies. With the same intention some of the Brazilian Indians beat themselves on the genital organs with an aquatic plant, the white aninga, three days before or after the new moon.[1] We have already had examples of the custom of beating sick people with the leaves of certain plants or with branches in order to rid them of the noxious influences.[2] At the autumn festival in Peru people used to strike each other with torches saying, ‘Let all harm go away.’[3] Indians of the Quixos, in South America, before they set out on a long hunting expedition, cause their wives to whip them with nettles, believing that this renders them fleeter and helps them to overtake the peccaries. They resort to the same proceeding as a cure for sickness.[4] At Mowat in New Guinea small boys are beaten lightly with sticks during December ‘to make them grow strong and hardy.’[5] In Central Europe a similar custom is very commonly observed in spring. On the 1st of March the Albanians strike men and beasts with cornel branches, believing that this is very good for their health.[6] On Good Friday and the two previous days people in Croatia and Slavonia take rods with them to church, and when the service is over they beat each other ‘fresh and healthy.’[7] In some parts of Russia people returning from the church on Palm Sunday beat the children and servants who have stayed at home with palm branches, saying, ‘Sickness into the forest, health into the bones.’[1] In Germany the custom is widely known as Schmeckostern, being observed at Eastertide. People beat each other, especially with fresh green twigs of the birch. The beating is supposed to bring good luck; the person beaten will, it is believed, be free of vermin during the summer, or will have no pains in his back or his legs for a year.[2]

If the view here taken of the Greek scapegoat is correct, it obviates an objection which might otherwise be brought against the main argument of this chapter. To the theory that the priest of Nemi was slain as a representative of the spirit of the grove, it might have been objected that such a custom has no analogy in classical antiquity. But reasons have now been given for believing that the human being periodically and occasionally slain by the Asiatic Greeks was regularly treated as an embodiment of a divinity. Probably the persons whom the Athenians kept to be sacrificed were similarly treated as divine. That they were social outcasts did not matter. On the primitive view a man is not chosen to be the mouth-piece or embodiment of a god on account of his high moral qualities or social standing. The divine afflatus descends equally on the good and the bad, the lofty and the lowly. If then the civilised Greeks of Asia and Athens habitually sacrificed men whom they regarded as incarnate gods, there can be no inherent improbability in the supposition that at the dawn of history a similar custom was observed by the semi-barbarous Latins in the Arician Grove.

Killing the God in Mexico

BUT THE religion of ancient Mexico, as it was found and described by the Spanish conquerors in the sixteenth century, offers perhaps the closest parallels to the rule of the Arician priesthood, as I conceive that rule to have been originally observed. Certainly nowhere does the custom of killing the human representative of a god appear to have been carried out so systematically and on so extensive a scale as in Mexico. ‘They tooke a captive,’ says Acosta, ‘such as they thought good; and afore they did sacrifice him unto their idolls, they gave him the name of the idoll, to whom hee should be sacrificed, and apparelled him with the same ornaments like their idoll, saying that he did represent the same idoll. And during the time that this representation lasted, which was for a yeere in some feasts, in others six moneths, and in others lesse, they reverenced and worshipped him in the same maner as the proper idoll; and in the meane time he did eate, drincke, and was merry. When hee went through the streetes the people came forth to worship him, and every one brought him an almes, with children and sicke folkes, that he might cure them, and bless them, suffering him to doe all things at his pleasure, onely hee was accompanied with tenne or twelve men lest he should flie. And he (to the end he might be reverenced as he passed) sometimes sounded upon a small flute, that the people might prepare to worship him. The feast being come, and hee growne fatte, they killed him, opened him, and eat him, making a solempne sacrifice of him.’[1] For example, at the annual festival of the great god Tez- catlipoca, which fell about Easter or a few days later, a young man was chosen to be the living image of Tezcatli- poca for a whole year. He had to be of unblemished body, and he was carefully trained to sustain his lofty role with becoming grace and dignity. During the year he was lapped in luxury, and the king himself took care that the future victim was apparelled in gorgeous attire, ‘for already he esteemed him as a god.’ Attended by eight pages clad in the royal livery, the young man roamed the streets of the capital day and night at his pleasure, carrying flowers and playing the flute. All who saw him fell on their knees before him and adored him, and he graciously acknowledged their homage. Twenty days before the festival at which he was to be sacrificed, four damsels, delicately nurtured, and bearing the names of four goddesses, were given him to be his brides. For five days before the sacrifice divine honours were showered on him more abundantly than ever. The king remained in his palace, while the whole court went after the destined victim. Everywhere there were solemn banquets and balls. On the last day the young man, still attended by his pages, was ferried across the lake in a covered barge to a small and lonely temple, which, like the Mexican temples in general, rose in the form of a pyramid. As he ascended the stairs of the temple he broke at every step one of the flutes on which he had played in the days of his glory. On reaching the summit he was seized and held down on a block of stone, while a priest cut open his breast with a stone knife, and plucking out his heart, offered it to the sun. His head was hung among the skulls of previous victims, and his legs and arms were cooked and prepared for the table of the lords. His place was immediately filled up by another young man, who for a year was treated with the same profound respect, and at the end of it shared the same fate.[1]

The idea that the god thus slain in the person of his representative comes to life again immediately, was graphically represented in the Mexican ritual by skinning the slain man-god and clothing in his skin a living man, who thus became the new representative of the godhead. Thus at an annual festival a woman was sacrificed who represented Toci or the Mother of the Gods. She was dressed with the ornaments, and bore the name of the goddess, whose living image she was believed to be. After being feasted and diverted with sham fights for several days, she was taken at midnight to the summit of a temple, and beheaded on the shoulders of a man. The body was immediately flayed, and one of the priests, clothing himself in the skin, became the representative of the goddess Toci. The skin of the woman’s thigh was removed separately, and a young man who represented the god Cinteotl, the son of the goddess Toci, wrapt it round his face like a mask. Various ceremonies then followed, in which the two men, clad in the woman’s skin, played the parts respectively of the god and goddess.[1] Again, at the annual festival of the god Totec, a number of captives having been killed and skinned, a priest clothed himself in one of their skins, and thus became the image of the god Totec. Then wearing the ornaments of the god – a crown of feathers, golden necklaces and ear-rings, scarlet shoes, etc. – he was enthroned, and received offerings of the first fruits and first flowers of the season, together with bunches of the maize which had been kept for seed.[2] Every fourth year the Quauhtitlans offered sacrifices in honour of the god of fire. On the eve of the festival they sacrificed two slaves, skinned them, and took out their thigh bones. Next day two priests clothed themselves in the skins, took the bones in their hands, and with solemn steps and dismal howlings descended the stairs of the temple. The people, who were assembled in crowds below, called out, ‘Behold, there come our gods.’[3]

Thus it appears that human sacrifices of the sort I suppose to have prevailed at Aricia were, as a matter of fact, systematically offered on a large scale by a people whose level of culture was probably not inferior, if indeed it was not distinctly superior, to that occupied by the Italian races at the early period to which the origin of the Arician priesthood must be referred. The positive and indubitable evidence of the prevalence of such sacrifices in one part of the world may reasonably be allowed to strengthen the probability of their prevalence in places for which the evidence is less full and trustworthy. Taken all together, the evidence affords a fair presumption that the custom of killing men whom their worshippers regard as divine has prevailed in many parts of the world. Whether the general explanation which I have offered of that custom is adequate, and whether the rule that the priest of Aricia had to die a violent death is, as I have tried to show, a particular instance of the general custom, are questions which I must now leave to the judgment of the reader.

1. Meiners, Geschichte der Religionen, i. 48.

2. R. I. Dodge, Our Wild Indians, p. 112.

3. Blumentritt, ‘Der Ahnencultus und die relig. Anschauungen der Malaien des Philippinen-Archipels,’ in Mittheilungen d. Wiener Geogr. Gesellschaft, 1882, p. 198.

1. Theophilus Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, the Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi, pp. 56, 69.

2. Diodorus, iii. 61; Pomponius Mela, ii. 7, 112; Minucius Felix, Octavius, 21.

3. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35; Philochorus, Fragm. 22, in Müller’s Fragm. Hist. Graec. i. p. 387.

4. Porphyry, Vit. Pythag. 16.

5. Philochorus, Fr. 184, in Fragm. Hist. Graec. ii. p. 414.

6. Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 574 sq.

1. See above, p. 103 sqq.

2. Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific, p. 163.

1. Ch. Wilkes, Narrative of the U.S. Exploring Expedition (London, 1845), iii. 96.

2. U.S. Exploring Expedition, Ethnology and Philology, by H. Hale (Philadelphia, 1846), p. 65. Cp. Th. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, i. 183; J.E. Erskine, Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific, p. 248.

3. Turner, Samoa, p. 335.

1. Martin Flad, A Short Description of the Falasha and Kamants in Abyssinia, p. 19.

2. J. B. Labat, Relation historique de l’Ethiopie Occidentale, i. 260 sq.; W. Winwood Reade, Savage Africa, p. 362.

3. Diodorus Siculus, iii. 6; Strabo, xvii, 2, 3.

4. Emin Pasha in Central Africa, being a Collection of his Letters and Journals (London, 1888), p. 91.

5. P. Guillemé, ‘Credenze religiose dei Negri di Kibanga nell’ Alto Congo,’ in Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari, vii. (1888) p. 231.

1. Nathaniel Isaacs, Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa, i. p. 295 sq., cp. pp. 232, 290 sq.

2. Above, p. 39 sq.

1. Dos Santos, ‘History of Eastern Ethiopia’ (published at Paris in 1684), in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, xvi. 684.

1. Plutarch, Agesilaus, 3.

2. Herodotus, iii, 20; Aristotle, Politics, iv. 4, 4; Athenaeus, xiii. p. 566. According to Nicolaus Damascenus (Fr. 142, in Fragm. Historic. Graecor. ed. C. Müller, iii, p. 463), the handsomest and bravest man was only raised to the throne when the king had no heirs, the heirs being the sons of his sisters. But this limitation is not mentioned by the other authorities. Among the Gordioi the fattest man was chosen king; among the Syrakoi, the tallest, or the man with the longest head. Zenobius, v. 25.

3. G. Nachtigal, Saharâ und Sûdân (Leipzig, 1889), iii. 225; Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, i. 220.

4. Strabo, xvii. 2, 3; Diodorus, iii. 7.

1. Mohammed Ebn-Omar El-Tounsy, Voyage au Darfour (Paris, 1845), p. 162 sq.; Travels of an Arab Merchant in Soudan, abridged from the French by Bayle St John (London, 1854), P. 78; Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Parìs) IVme Série, iv. (1852) p. 539 sq.

2. R. W. Felkin, ‘Notes on the Waganda Tribe of Central Africa,’ in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, xiii. (1884–1886) p. 711.

3. Narrative of events in Borneo and Celebes, from the Journals of James Brooke, Esq., Rajah of Sarawak. By Captain R. Mundy, i. 134.

4. Simon Grunau, Preussische Chronik, herausgegeben von Dr Μ. Perlbach (Leipzig, 1876), i. p. 97.

1. Barbosa, A Description of the Coasts of East Africa and  Malabar in the beginning of the Sixteenth Century (Hakluyt Society, 1866), p. 172 sq.

1. Alex. Hamilton, ‘A new Account of the East Indies,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, viii. 374.

1. Athenaeus, xiv. p. 639 c; Dio Chrysostom, Orat. iv. p. 69 sq. (vol. i. p. 76, ed. Dindorf). Dio Chrysostom does not mention his authority, but it was probably either Berosus or Ctesias. Though the execution of the mock king is not mentioned in the passage of Berosus cited by Athenaeus, the omission is probably due to the fact that the mention of it was not germane to Athenaeus’s purpose, which was simply to give a list of festivals at which masters waited on their servants. That the ζωγáνaς was put to death is further shown by Macrobius, Sat. iii. 7, 6, ‘Animas vero sacratorum hominum quos † zanas Graeci vocant, dis debitas aestimabant,’ where for zanas we should probably read ζωγáνας with Liebrecht, in Philologus, xxii. 710, and Bachofen, Die Sage von Tanaquil, p. 52, note 16. The custom, so far as appears from our authorities, does not date from before the Persian domination in Babylon; but probably it was much older. In the passage of Dio Chrysostom ἐκρἑμασαν should be translated ‘crucified’ (or ‘impaled’), not ‘hung.’ It is strange that this, the regular, sense of κρεμáννυμι, as applied to executions, should not be noticed even in the latest edition of Liddell and Scott’s Greek Lexicon. Hanging, though a mode of suicide, was not a mode of execution in antiquity either in the east or west. In one of the passages cited by L. and S. for the sense ‘to hang’ (Plutarch, Caes. 2), the context proves that the meaning is ‘to crucify.’

1. E. Aymonier, Notice sur le Cambodge, p. 61; J. Moura, Le Royaume du Cambodge, i. 327 sq. For the connection of the temporary king’s family with the royal house, see Aymonier, op. cit. p. 36 sq.

1. Pallegoix, Description du Royaume Thai ou Siam, i. 250; Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, iii. 305–309, 526–528; Turpin, History of Siam, in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, ix. 581 sq. Bowring (Siam, i. 158 sq.) copies, as usual, from Pallegoix.

1. Lieut. Col. James Low, ‘On the Laws of Muung Thai or Siam,’ in Journal of the Indian Archipelago, i. (Singapore, 1847) p. 339; Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, iii. 98, 314, 526 sq.

2. C. Β. Klunzinger, Bilder aus Oberägypten, der Wüste und dem Rothen Meere, p. 180 sq.

1. J. W. Boers, ‘Oud volksgebruik in het Rijk van Jambi,’ in Tijdschrift voor Neêrland’s Indië, iii. (1840), dl. i. 372 sqq.

2. Panjab Notes and Queries, i. 674.

3. Aeneas Sylvius, Opera (Bâle, 1571), p. 409 sq.; Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, p. 253. According to Grimm (who does not refer to Aeneas Sylvius) the cow and mare stood beside the prince, not the peasant.

1. Lasicius, ‘De diis Samagitarum caeterorumque Sarmatarum,’ in Respublica sive Status Regni Poloniae, Lituaniae, Prussiae, Livoniae, etc. (Elzevir, 1627), p. 306 sq.; id. edited by W. Mannhardt in Magazin herausgegeben von der Lettisch-Literärischen Gesellschaft, xiv. 91 sq.

1. Macrobius, Saturn, v. 19, 13.

2. See above, p. 147 sqq.

1. Philo of Byblus, quoted by Eusebius, Praepar. Evang. i. 10, 29 sq.

2. 2 Kings iii. 27.

3. Porphyry, De abstin, ii. 56.

4. Diodorus, xx. 14.

5. Porphyry, De abstin, ii. 54.

6. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, ii. 311.

1. Strachey, Historie of travaille into Virginia Britannia (Hakluyt Society), p. 84.

2. J. L. Krapf, Travels, Researches, and Missionary Labours during an Eighteen Years’ Residence in Eastern Africa, p. 69 sq. Dr Krapf, who reports the custom at second hand, thinks that the existence of the pillar may be doubted, but that the rest of the story harmonises well enough with African superstition.

3. F. J. Mone, Geschichte des Heidenthums im nördlichen Europa, i. 119.

1. Above, p. 36 sqq.

2. Nieuwenhuisen en Rosenberg, ‘Verslag omtrent het eiland Nias,’ in Verhandelingen van het Batav. Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, xxx. 85; Rosenberg, Der Malayische Archipel, p. 160; Chatelin, ‘Godsdienst en bijgeloof der Niassers,’ in Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land-en Volkenkunde, xxvi. 142 sq.; Sundermann, ‘Die Insel Nias und die Mission daselbst,’ in Allgemeine Missions- Zeitschrift, xi. 445.

1. Ch. Wilkes, Narrative of the U.S. Exploring Expedition (London, 1845), iv. 453; U.S. Exploring Expedition, Ethnography and Philology, by H. Hale, p. 203.

2. D. G. Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 270 sq.

3. Servius on Virgil, Aen. iv. 685; Cicero, In Verr. ii. 5, 45; K. F. Hermann, Griech, Privatalterthümer, ed. Blumner, p. 362 note I.

4. Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folklore, p. 7 sq.

1. Fr. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, i. 235 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 320 sq.

1. E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben, pp. 409–419; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 349 sq.

2. E. Sommer, Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Sachsen und Thüringen, p. 154 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 335 sq.

1. W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 336.

2. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen, p. 61; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 336 sq.

3. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen, p. 263; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 343.

1. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen, p. 269 sq.

2. See above, p. 78 sq.

1. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen, p. 264 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 353 sq.

2. See pp. 208, 210.

3. See p. 13 sqq.

1. See p. 208.

1. Above, p. 3.

2. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii.2 323 sq.

1. See above, p. 5.

2. Caesar, Bell. Gall. vi. 16; Adam of Bremen, Descript. Insul. Aquil. c. 27; Olaus Magnus, iii. 6; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 i. 35 sqq.; Mone, Geschichte des nordischen Heidenthums, i. 69, 119, 120, 149, 187 sq.

1. J. G. Bourke, Snake Dance of the Moquis of Αrizοna, p. 196 sq.

2. Euripides, Iphig. in Taur. 1458 sqq.

3. Nieuwenhuisen en Rosenberg, ‘Verslag omtrent het eiland Nias,’ in Verhandelingen van het Batav. Genootsch. van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, xxx. 43.

4. J. A. Dubois, Moeurs, Institutions et Ceremonies des Peuples de l’Inde, i. 151 sq.

5. ‘The Rudhirádhyáyă, or sanguinary chapter,’ translated from the Calica Puran by W. C. Blaquiere, in Asiatick Researches, v. 376 (8vo. ed. London, 1807).

1. Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 281.

2. Ib., p. 258 sq.

1. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 645; K. Haupt, Sagenbuch der Lausitz, ii. 58; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen, p. 86 sq.; id., Das festliche Jahr, p. 77 sq. The Fourth Sunday in Lent is also known as Mid-Lent, because it falls in the middle of Lent, or as Laetare from the first word of the liturgy for the day. In the Roman Calendar it is the Sunday of the Rose, Domenica rosae.

2. See p. 209.

3. E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebraüche aus Schwaben, p. 371.

1. J. Haltrich, Zur Volkskunde der Siebenbürger Sachsen (Wien, 1885), p. 284. sq.

2. Leoprechting, Aus dem Lechrain, p. 162 sqq.; Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 411.

3. E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben p. 374; cp. Birlinger, Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, ii. 55.

1. Ε. Meier, op. cit. p. 372.

2. Ib. p. 373.

3. Ib. pp. 373, 374.

4. A. Kuhn, Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen aus Westfalen, ii. 130.

5. F. J. Wiedemann, Aus dem inneren und äusseren Leben der Ehsten, p. 353.

6. E. Meier, op. cit. p. 374.

1. H. Pröhle, Harzbilder, p. 54.

2. Aug. Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, p. 193.

3. Witzschel, op. cit. p. 199.

4. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 642.

1. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest.-Kalender aus Böhmen, p. 90 sq.

2. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, op. cit. p. 91.

3. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 639 sq.; Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 412.

1. Grimm, op. cit. ii. 644; K. Haupt, Sagenbuch der Lausitz, ii. 55.

2. Grimm, op. cit. ii. 640, 643.

3. Vernalecken, Mythen und Bräuche des Volkes in Oesterreich, p. 294 sq.; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest.-Kalender aus Böhmen, p. 90.

4. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 640.

5. J. Α. Ε. Köhler, Volksbrauch, Aberglauben, Sagen und andre alte Ueberlieferungen im Voigtlande, p. 171.

1. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Das festliche Jahr, p. 80.

2. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 211.

3. Ib. p. 210.

4. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 652; H. Usener, ‘Italische Mythen,’ in Rheinisches Museum, Ν. F. xxx. (1875) p. 191 sq.

5. G. Pitrè, Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane (Palermo, 1881), p. 207 sq.

1. Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari, iv. (1885) p. 294 sq.

2. H. Usener, op. cit. p. 193.

3. Vincenzo Dorsa, La tradizione greco-latina negli usi e nelle credenze popolari della Calabria citeriore (Cosenza, 1884), p. 43 sq.

4. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 652; H. Usener, ‘Italische Mythen,’ in Rheinisches Museum, Ν. F. xxx. (1875) p. 191 sq.

1. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen, p. 89 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 156. This custom has been already referred to. See p. 70.

2. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Das festliche Jahr, p. 82; Philo vom Walde, Schlesien in Sage und Brauch (N.D. preface dated 1883), p. 122.

3. Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, p. 192 sq.

1. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 643 sq.; K. Haupt, Sagenbuch der Lausitz, ii. 54 sq.; Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 412 sq.; Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 211.

2. Grimm, op. cit. ii. 644; K. Haupt, op. cit. ii. 55.

1. Ε. Gerard, The Land beyond the Forest, ii. 47–49.

2. This is also the view taken of the custom by Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 419.

1. Vernalecken, Mythen und Bräuche des Volkes in Oesterreich, p. 293 sq.

2. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Das festliche Jahr, p. 82.

3. Philo vom Walde, Schlesien in Sage und Brauch, p. 122.

1. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 640 sq.

2. See above, p. 222.

3. K. Schwenk, Die Mythologie der Slawen, p. 217 sq.

4. Above, p. 225.

5. See above, pp. 71, 225.

6. Above, p. 225, and Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 644; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen, p. 87 sq.

7. Above, p. 225.

1. See above, p. 227 sqq.

2. Above, pp. 220, 221, 226; and Grimm, D. M.4 ii. 643.

3. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen, p. 88. Sometimes the effigy of Death (without a tree) is carried round by boys who collect gratuities. Grimm, D. M.4 ii. 644.

4. Above, p. 208.

1. Wiedemann, Aus dem inneren und äusseren Leben der Ehsten, p. 353; Holzmayer, ‘Osiliana,’ in Verhandlungen der gelehrten Estnischen Gesellschaft zu Dorpat, vii. Heft 2, p. 10 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 407 sq.

1. W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 417–421.

2. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 221.

1. Ralston, op. cit. p. 241.

2. Ralston, op. cit. p. 243 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 414.

3. W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 414 sq.; Ralston, op. cit. p. 244.

1. Ralston, op. cit. p. 245; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 416.

2. W. Mannhardt, l.c.; Ralston, l.c.

1. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 644.

1. J. G. von Hahn, Albanesische Studien, i. 160.

2. Captain R. C. Temple, in Indian Antiquary, xi. (1882) p. 297 sq.

1. See above, p. 80 sqq.

2. Above, p. 60 sqq.

1. Baudissin, Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, i. 299; W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald-und Feldkulte, p. 274.

2. Plutarch, Alcibiades, 18; Zenobius, Centur, i. 49; Theocritus, xv. 132 sq.; Eustathius on Homer, Od. xi. 590.

3. Besides Lucian (cited below) see Jerome, Comment, in Ezechiel. viii. 14, in qua (solemnitate) plangitur quasi mortuus, et postea reviviscens, canitur atque laudatur… interfectionem et resurrectionem. Adonidis planctu et gaudio prosequens.

4. Theocritus, xv.

5. W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 277.

6. Lucian, De dea Syria, 6. The words ἐς τòν ἡἑρα πἑμπουσι imply that the ascension was supposed to take place in the presence, if not before the eyes, of the worshipping crowds.

1. Lucian, op. cit. 8. The discoloration of the river and the sea was observed by Maundrell on 17 March 1696 and 27 March 1697. See his ‘Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem,’ in Bonn’s Early Travels in Palestine, edited by Thomas Wright, p. 411. Renan observed the discoloration at the beginning of February; Baudissin, Studien, i. 298 (referring to Renan, Mission de Phénicie, p. 283). Milton’s lines will occur to most readers.

2. Ovid, Metam, x. 735, compared with Bion i. 66. The latter, however, makes the anemone spring from the tears, as the rose from the blood of Adonis.

3. W. Robertson Smith, ‘Ctesias and the Semiramis legend,’ in English Historical Review, April 1887, following Lagarde.

4. In the Alexandrian ceremony, however, it appears to have been the image of Adonis only which was thrown into the sea.

1. Apollodorus, Biblioth. iii. 14, 4; Schol. on Theocritus, i. 109; Antoninus Liberalis, 34; Tzetzes on Lycophron, 829; Ovid, Metam. x. 489 sqq.; Servius on Virgil, Aen. v. 72, and on Bucol, x. 18; Hyginus, Fab. 58, 164; Fulgentius, iii. 8. The word Myrrha or Smyrna is borrowed from the Phoenician (Liddell and Scott, Greek Lexicon, s.v. σμύρνα). Hence the mother’s name, as well as the son’s, was taken directly from the Semites.

2. Schol. on Theocritus, iii. 48; Hyginus, Astronom, ii. 7; Lucian, Dialog, deor. xi. 1; Cornutus, De natura deorum, 28, p. 163 sq. ed. Osannus; Apollodorus, iii. 14, 4.

1. Thus, after the autumual equinox the Egyptians celebrated the ‘nativity of the sun’s walking-sticks,’ because, as the sun declined daily in the sky, and his heat and light diminished, he was supposed to need a staff with which to support his steps. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 52.

2. Schol. on Theocritus, iii. 48, ὁ Αδωνις, ἤγουν ὁ‘σιτος ὁ σπειρόμενος, ἐξ μνας ἐν τη γ ποιεῖ ἀπὸ τς σπορς, καὶ ἔξ μνας ἔχει αὐτὸν ἡ ’Αφροδίτη, τουτέστιν η εὐκρασία. το ἀέρος, καὶ ἐκτότε λαμβάνουσιν αύτὸν οι ἄνθρωποι. Jerome on Ezech. c. viii. 14. Eadem gentilitas hujuscemodi fabudas poetarum, quae habent turpitudinem, interpretatur subtiliter interfectionem et resurrectionem Adonidis planctu et gaudio prosequens: quorum alterum in seminibus, quae moriuntur in terra, alterum in segetibus, quibus mortua semina renascuntur, ostendi putat. Ammianus Marcellinus, xix. 1, 11, in sollemnibus adonidis sacris, quod simulacrum aliquod esse frugum adultarum religiones mysticae docent. Id. xxii. 9,15, amato Veneris, ut fabulae fingunt, apri dente ferali deleto, quod in adulto flore sectarum est indicium frugum. Clemens Alexandr. Hom. 6, 11 (quoted by W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald-und Feldkulte, p. 281), λάμβανουσι δὲ καὶ Ἄδωνιν εἰς ὡραίονς καρπούς Etymolog. Magn. Ἄδωνις κύριον ‘δύναται καὶ ὁ καρπὸς εîναι ἄδωνις· οîον ἀδώνειος καρπός, ἀρέσκν. Eusebius, Praepar. Eυang. iii. 11,9, Ἄδωνις τῆς τῶν τελείων καρπων ἐκτομῆς σύμβολον.

1. D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, ii. 27; id., Ueber Tammûz und die Menschenυerehrung bei den alten Babyloniern, p. 38.

2. The comparison is due to Felix Liebrecht (Zur Volkskunde, p. 259).

1. For the authorities see W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald-und Feldkulte, p. 279, note 2, and p. 280, note 2; to which add Diogenianus, i. 14; Plutarch, De sera num. vind. 17. Women only are mentioned as planting the gardens of Adonis by Plutarch, l.c.; Julian, Convivium, p. 329 ed. Spanheim (p. 423 ed. Hertlein); Eustathius on Homer, Od. xi. 590. On the other hand Diogenianus, l.c. says φυτεύοντες ἢ φυτεύουσαι.

2. Plutarch, Alcibiades, 18; id., Nicias, 13. The date of the sailing of the fleet is given by Thucydides, vi. 30, θέρους μεσοῦντος ἢδη.

1. In hot southern countries like Egypt and the Semitic regions of Western Asia, where vegetation depends chiefly or entirely upon irrigation, the purpose of the charm is doubtless to secure a plentiful flow of water in the streams. But as the ultimate object and the charms for securing it are the same in both cases, it has not been thought necessary always to point out the distinction.

2. See above, p. 14.

3. W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 214; W. Schmidt, Das Jahr und seine Tage in Meinung und Brauch der Romänen Siebenbürgens, p. 18 sq.

4. G. A. Heinrich, Agrarische Sitten und Gebräuche unter den Sachsen Siebenbürgens (Hermannstadt, 1880), p. 24; Wsissocki, Sitten und Brauch der Siebenbürger Sachsen (Hamburg, 1888), p. 32.

1. Matthäus Praetorius, Deliciae Prussicae, 55; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 214 sq. note.

2. Praetorius, op. cit., 60; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 215, note.

3. A. H. Sayce, Religion of the ancient Babylonians (Hibbert Lectures, 1887), p. 221 sqq.; W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald-und Feldkulte, p. 275.

4. According to Jerome (on Ezechiel, viii. 14), Thammuz was June; but according to modern scholars the month corresponded rather to July, or to part of June and part of July. Movers, Die Phoenizier, i. 210; Mannhardt, A.W.F. p. 275. My friend, Prof. W. Robertson Smith, informs me that owing to the variations of the local Syrian calendars the month Thammuz fell in different places at different times, from midsummer to autumn, or from June to September.

1. Α. Η. Sayce, op. cit. p. 238.

2. Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 259.

1. Above, p. 58.

1. Antonio Bresciani, Dei costumi dell’ isola di Sardegna comparati cogli antichissimi popoli orientali (Rome and Turin, 1866), p. 427 sq.; R. Tennant, Sardinia and its Resources (Rome and London, 1885), p. 187; S. Gabriele, ‘Usi dei contadini della Sardegna,’ Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari, vii. (1888) p. 469 sq. Tennant says that the pots are kept in a dark warm place, and that the children leap across the fire.

1. See ch. i. p. 67 sq.

2. p. 232.

3. L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden, p. 257.

1. W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 464; Leoprechting, Aus dem Lechrain, p. 183.

2. G. Pitrè, Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane, p. 296 sq.

1. G. Pitrè, op. cit. p. 302 sq.; Antonio de Nino, Usi Abruzzesi, i. 55 sq.; Gubernatis, Usi Nuziali, p. 39 sq. Cp. Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari, i. 135. At Smyrna a blossom of the agnus castus is used on St John’s Day for a similar purpose, but the mode in which the omens are drawn is somewhat different, Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari, vii. (1888) p. 128 sq.

2. Matthäus Praetorius, Deliciae Prussicae, herausgegeben von Dr W. Pierson (Berlin, 1871), p. 56.

3. See p. 234 sq.

1. G. Pitrè, Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane, p. 211. A similar custom is observed at Cosenza in Calabria. Vincenzo Dorsa, La tradizione grecolatina, etc., p. 50. For the Easter ceremonies in the Greek Church, see R. A. Arnold, From the Levant (London, 1868), i. 251 sqq.

2. κήπους ὡσίουν ἐπιταυίους ’Δδώνιδι, Eustathius on Homer, Od. xi, 590.

3. Hippolytus, Refut. omn. haeres. v. 9, p. 168, ed. Duncker and Schneidewin; Socrates, Hist. Eccles. iii. 23, §§ 51 sqq. p. 204.

1. That Attis was killed by a boar was stated by Hermesianax, an elegiac poet of the fourth century bc (Pausanias, vii. 17); cp. Schol. on Nicander, Alex.

2. The other story is told by Arnobius (Adversus nationes, v. 5 sqq.) on the authority of Timotheus, an otherwise unknown writer, who professed to derive it ex reconditis antiquitatum libris et ex intimis mysteriis. It is obviously identical with the account which Pausanias mentions (l.c.) as the story current in Pessinus.

3. Pausanias, vii. 17; Julian, Orat, v. 177 Β.

4. Ovid, Metam. x. 103 sqq.

5. On the festival see especially Marquardt, Römische Staatsverωaltung, iii.2 370 sqq.; Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquites grecques at romaines, i. p. 1685 sq. (article ‘Cybèle’); W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald-und Feldkulte, p. 291 sqq.; id., Baumkultus, p. 572 sqq.

1. Julian, Orat. v. 168 c; Joannes Lydus, De mensibus, iv. 41; Arnobius, Advers, nationes, 0v. cc. 7,16 sq.; Firmicus Maternus, De errore profan, relig. 27.

2. Julian, l.c. and 169 c.

3. Trebellius Pollio, Claudius, 4; Tertullian, Apologet. 25. For other references, see Marquardt, l.c.

4. Diodorus, iii. 59; Firmicus Maternus, De err. profan, relig. 3; Arnobius, Advers, nat. v. 16; Schol. on Nicander, Alex. 8; Servius on Virgil, Aen. ix. 116; Arrian, Tactica, 33. The ceremony described in Firmicus Maternus, c. 22 (nocte quadam simulacrum in lectica supinum ponitur et per numeros digestis fletibus plangitur… Idolum sepelis. Idolum plangis, etc.), may very well be the mourning and funeral rites of Attis, to which he had more briefly referred in c. 3.

5. On the Hilaria see Macrobius, Saturn, i. 21,10; Julian, Orat. v. 168 D,169 d; Damascius, Vita Isidori, in Photius, p. 345A 5 sqq. ed. Bekker. On the resurrection, see Firmicus Maternus, 3, reginae suae amorem [Phryges] cum luctibus annuis consecrarunt, et ut satis iratae mulieri facerent aut ut paenitenti solacium quaererent, quem paulo ante sepelierant revixisse jactarunt… Mortem ipsius [i.e. of Attis] dicunt, quod semina collecta conduntur, vitam rursus quod jacta semina annuis vicibus † reconduntur [renascuntur, C. Halm]. Again cp. id. 22, Idolum sepelis. Idolum plangis, idolum de sepultura proferis, et miser cum haec feceris gaudes; and Damascius, l.c. Τὴν Των ίλαρίων καλουμένην ἐορτην ὅπερ ἐδήλου τὴ έζ ἄδου γεγονυῖαν ἠμῶν σωτηρίαν. This last passage, compared with the formula in Firmicus Maternus, c. 22.
θαρρειτε μύσται του θεου σεσωμένου
ἔσται γὰρ ἠμιν ἐκ πόνων σωτηρία,
makes it probable mat the ceremony described by Firmicus, c. 22, is the resurrection of Attis.

1. Ovid, Fast. iv. 337 sqq.; Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii, 3. For other references see Marquardt and Mannhardt, ll.cc.

2. Pausanias, vii. 17; Arnobius, Adv. nationes, v. 6.; cp. Hippolytus, Refut. omn. haeres. v. 9, pp. 166, 168.

3. See above, p. 226 sq.

4. Firmicus Maternus, 27.

1. Above, p. 81.

2. Hippolytus, Ref. omn. haeres. v. cc. 8, 9, pp. 162, 168; Firmicus Maternus, De errore prof. relig. 3.

3. Julian, Orat. v. 174 a. b.

4. Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums,5 i. 456, note 4; Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon d. griech. u. röm. Mythologie, i. c. 724. Cp. Polybius, xxii. 20 (18).

5. The conjecture is that of Henzen in Annal. d. Inst. 1856, p. 110, referred to in Roscher, l.c.

6. See pp. 86, 198.

1. Article ‘Phrygia,’ in Encyclopaedia Britannica, ninth ed. xviii. 853.

2. op. cit xii. 5, 3.

3. The myth, in a connected form, is only known from Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, cc. 13–19. Some additional details, recovered from Egyptian sources, will be found in the work of Adolf Erman, Aegypten und aegytisches Leben im Altertum, p. 365 sqq.

1. Le Page Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 110; Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 614; Ad. Erman, l.c.; Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, i. § 56 sq.

2. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 13; Diodorus, i. 14; Tibullus, i. 7, 29 sqq.

3. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 8.

1. So Brugsch, op. cit. p. 617. Plutarch, op. cit. 39, says four days, beginning with the 17th of the month Athyr.

2. In the Alexandrian year the month Athyr corresponded to November. But as the old Egyptian year was vague, that is, made no use of intercalation, the astronomical date of each festival varied from year to year, till it had passed through the whole cycle of the astronomical year. From the fact, therefore, that, when the calendar became fixed, Athyr fell in November, no inference can be drawn as to the date at which the death of Osiris was originally celebrated. It is thus perfectly possible that it may have been originally a harvest festival, though the Egyptian harvest falls, not in November, but in April; cp. Selden, De diis Syris, p. 335 sq.; Parthey on Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, c. 39.

3. Brugsch, l.c. For a specimen of these lamentations see Brugsch, op. cit. p. 631 sq.; Records of the Past, ii. 119 sqq. For the annual ceremonies of finding and burying Osiris, see also Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum, 2 § 3; Servius on Virgil, Aen. iv. 609.

1. Brugsch, op. cit. p. 617 sq.; Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, p. 377 sq.

2. Erman, l.c.; Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1878), iii. 68, 82; Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion, p. 46.

3. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35. ὁμολογείî δὲ καὶ τὰ τιτανικὰ καὶ νὺζ τελεία τοἳς λεγομένοις Ὀσίριδος διασπασμοῖς καὶ τοῖς ἀναβιώσεσι καὶ παλιγγενἐσίαις, ὀμοιως δὲ καὶ τὰ περὶ τὰς ταφάς.

4. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 39.

1. Tibullus, i. 7, 33 sqq.

2. Brugsch, op. cit. p. 621.

3. Servius on Virgil, Georg, i. 166.

4. Above, p. 228.

1. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 73, cp. 331; Diodorus, i. 88.

2. Plutarch, op. cit. 31; Herodotus, ii. 38.

3. Herrera, quoted by Bastian, Culturländer des alten Amerika, ii. 639.

4. Lefébure, Le mythe Osirien (Paris,1874–75), Ρ. 188.

5· Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum, 2, § 6, defensores eorum volunt addere physicam rationem, frugum semina Osirim dicentes esse, him terram, Tyfonem calorem: et quia maturatae fruges calore ad vitam hominum colliguntur et divisae a terrae consortio separantur et rursus adpropinquante hieme seminantur, hanc volunt esse mortem Osiridis, cum fruges recondunt, inventionem vero, cum fruges genitali terrae fomento conceptae annua rursus coeperint procreatione generari; Eusebius, Praepar, Evang, iii. 11, 31, ὁ δὲ, Ὄσιρις παρ’ Αλγυπτίοις τὴν κάρπιμον παρίστησι δύναμιν, ἣν, θρήνοις άπομειλίσ-σονται εἰς γῆν ἀφανιζομένην ἐν τῷ σπόρῳ, καὶ ὑ ‘ημῶν καταναλισκομένην εἰς τὰς τροφάς.

1. Op. cit. 27, § I.

2. Isis et Osiris, 21, αἰνῶ δὲ τομήν ξύλου καὶ σχίσιν λίνου καὶ χοὰς χεομένας, διὰ τò πολλὰ τῶν μυστικῶν ἀναμεμῖχθαι τούτοις. Again, c. 42, τò δὲ ζύλον ἐν ταῖς λεγομέναις Ὀσίριδος ταφαῖς τέμνοντες κατασκευάζουσι λάρνακα μηνοειδῆ.

3· See above, p. 260.

4. Lefébure, Le mythe Osirien, pp. 194, 198, referring to Mariette, Denderah, iv. 66 and 72.

5. Lefébure, op. cit. pp. 195, 197.

1. Birch, in Wilkinson’s Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1878), iii. 84.

2. Wilkinson, op. cit. iii. 63 sq.; 1 Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, i, § 56, 60.

3. Wilkinson, op. cit. iii. 349 sq.; Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 621; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 20. In Plutarch l.c. Parthey proposes to read μυρίκηs for μηθίδηs, and this conjecture appears to be accepted by Wilkinson, l.c.

4. Lefébure, Le my the Osirien, p. 191.

5. Lefébure, op. cit. p. 188.

6. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35. One of the points in which the myths of Isis and Demeter agree, is that both goddesses in their search for the loved and lost one are said to have sat down, sad at heart and weary, on the edge of a well. Hence those who had been initiated at Eleusis were forbidden to sit on a well. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 15; Homer, Hymn to Demeter, 98 sq.; Pausanias, i. 39, 1; Apollodorus, i. 5, 1; Nicander, Theriaca, 486; Clemens Alex., Protrept. ii. 20.

1. Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 645.

2. C. P. Tiele, History of Egyptian Religion, p. 57.

3. Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 111.

4. Diodorus, i. 14. Eusebius (Praeparat. Evang. iii. 3) quotes from Diodorus (i. 11–13) a long passage on the early religion of Egypt, prefacing the quotation (c. 2) with the remark γράφει δὲ καὶ τὰ περὶ τούτων πλατύτερον μἐν ὁ Μανέθως, ἐπετετμημένως δἐ ‘o Διόδωρος, which seems to imply that Diodorus epitomised Manetho.

5. Brugsch, op. cit. p. 647.

6. Brugsch, op. cit. p. 649.

7. Brugsch, l.c.

1. Herodotus, ii. 59, 156; Diodorus, i. 13, 25, 96; Apollodorus, ii. 1. 3: Tzetzes, Schol in Lycophron. 212.

2. Antholog. Planud. 264,1.

3. Orphica, ed. Abel, p. 295 sqq.

4. Jablonski, Pantheon Ageyptiorum (Frankfurt, 1750), i. 125 sq.

5. i. 11.

6. See p. 265, note.

1. See the Saturnalia, bk. i.

2. Saturn, i. 21, 11.

3. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient4 (Paris, 1886), p. 35.

4. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1878), iii. 353.

5. Isis et Osiris, 52.

6. De errore profan, religionum, 8.

7. Lepsius, ‘Ueber den ersten aegyptischen Götterkreis und seine geschichtlich-mythologische Entstehung,’ in Abhandlungen der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1851, p. 194 sq.

1. The view here taken of the history of Egyptian religion is based on the sketch in Erman’s Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, p. 351 sqq.

1. On this attempted revolution in religion see Lepsius in Verhandl. d. königl. Akad. d. Wissensch. zu Berlin, 1851, pp. 196–201; Erman, op. cit., p. 355 sqq.

1. Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion, p. 44.

1. Tiele, op. cit. p. 46.

2. Ib. p. 45.

3. Le Page Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 111 sqq.

4. Hibbert Lectures, 1879, Ρ. 113. Cp. Maspero, Histoire ancienne,4 p. 35; Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, i. §§ 55, 57.

1. There are far more plausible grounds for identifying Osiris with the moon than with the sun – 1. He was said to have lived or reigned twenty-eight years; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, cc. 13, 42. This might be taken as a mythical expression for a lunar month. 2. His body was rent into fourteen pieces (ib. cc. 18, 42). This might be interpreted of the moon on the wane, losing a piece of itself on each of the fourteen days which make up the second half of a lunation. It is expressly mentioned that Typhon found the body of Osiris at the full moon (ib. 8); thus the dismemberment of the god would begin with the waning of the moon.3. In a hymn supposed to be addressed by Isis to Osiris, it is said that Thoth

‘Placeth thy soul in the bark Ma-at,

In that name which is thine, of God Moon.’

And again,

‘Thou who contest to us as a child each month,

We do not cease to contemplate thee,

Thine emanation heightens the brilliancy

Of the stars of Orion in the firmament,’ etc.

Records of the Past, i. 12 1 sq.; Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 629 sq. Here then Osiris is identified with the moon in set terms. If in the same hymn he is said to ‘illuminate us like Ra’ (the sun), this, as we have already seen, is no reason for identifying him with the sun, but quite the contrary. 4. At the new moon of the month Phanemoth, being the beginning of spring, the Egyptians celebrated what they called ‘the entry of Osiris into the moon.’ Plutarch, Is. ct Os. 43.5. The bull Apis, which was regarded as an image of the soul of Osiris (Is. et Os. cc. 20, 29), was born of a cow which was believed to have been impregnated by the moon (ib. 43). 6. Once a year, at the full moon, pigs were sacrificed simultaneously to the moon and Osiris. Herodotus, ii. 47; cont’d over/cont’d Plutarch, Is. et Os. . 8. The relation of the pig to Osiris will be examined later on.

Without attempting to explain in detail why a god of vegetation, as I take Osiris to have been, should have been brought into such close connection with the moon, I may refer to the intimate relation which is vulgarly believed to subsist between the growth of vegetation and the phases of the moon. See e.g. Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 221, xvi. 190, xvii. 108, 215, xviii. 200, 228, 308, 314; Plutarch, Quaest. Conviv. iii. 10,3; Aulus Gellius, xx. 8,7; Macrobius, Saturn, vii. 16,29 sq. Many examples are furnished by the ancient writers on agriculture, e.g. Cato, 37, 4; Varro, i. 37; Geoponica, i. 6.

1. Herodotus, ii. 42, 49, 59, 144, 156; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 13, 35; id., Quaest. Conviv. iv. 5, 3; Diodorus, i. 13, 25, 96, iv. 1; Orphica, Hymn 42; Eusebius, Praepar. Evang. iii. 11, 31; Servius on Virgil, Aen.. xi. 287; id., on Georg, i. 166; Hippolytus, Refut. omn. haeres. v. 9, p. 168; Socrates, Eccles. Hist. iii. 23, p. 204; Tzetzes, Schol. in Lycophron, 212; Διηγὴματα, xxii. 2, in Mythographi Graeci, ed. Westermann, p. 368; Nonnus, Dionys. iv. 269 sq.; Cornutus, De natura deorum, c. 28; Clemens Alexandr. Protrept, ii. 19; Firmicus Maternus, De errore profan. relig. 7.

2. Lucian, De dea Syria, 7.

1. Herodotus, ii. 49.

2. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35.

3. Osiris, Attis, Adonis, and Dionysus were all explained by him as the sun; but he stopped short at Demeter (Ceres), whom, however, he interpreted as the moon. See the Saturnalia, bk. i.

1. On Dionysus in general see Preller, Griechische Mythologie,3 i. 544 sqq.; Fr Lenormant, article ‘Bacchus’ in Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités grecques et romaines, i, 591 sqq.; Voigt and Thraemer’s article ‘Dionysus,’ in Roscher’s Ausführliches Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, i. c. 1029 sqq.

2. Plutarch, Quaest. Conviv. v. 3, Διούσῳ δὲ δενδρίτῃ πάντες, ὡς ἒπος εἰπεῖν, ‘Eλληνες θύουσιν.

3· Hesychius, s.v. Ἔνδενδρος.

4. See the pictures of his images, taken from ancient vases, in Bötticher, Baumkultus der Hellenen, plates 42, 43, 43 A, 43 Β, 44; Daremberg et Saglio, op. cit. i. 361, 626.

5. Daremberg et Saglio, op. cit. i. 626.

6. Cornutus, De natura deorum, 30.

7. Pindar, quoted by Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35.

8. Maximus Tyrius, Dissertat. viii. 1.

9. Athenaeus, iii. pp. 78 c, 82 D.

10. Himerius, Orat. i. 10, Διόνυσος γεωργεῖ.

11. Orphica, Hymn 1. 4, liii. 8.

1. Aelian, Var. Hist. iii. 41; Hesychius, s.v. ⌀λέω[ς]. Cp. Plutarch, Quaest. Conviv. v. 8, 3.

2. Pausanias, i. 31, 4; id. vii. 21, 6 (2).

3. Plutarch, Quaest. Conviv. v. 3.

4. Pausanias, ii. 2, 6 (5) sq. Pausanias does not mention the kind of tree; but from Euripides, Bacchae, 1064 sqq., and Philostratus, Imag. i. 17 (18), we may infer that it was a pine; though Theocritus (xxvi. 11) speaks of it as a mastich- tree.

5. Müller-Wieseler, Denkmäler der alten Kunst, ii. pl. xxxii. sqq. Baumeister, Denkmäler des klassischen Altertums, i. figures 489, 491, 492, 495. Cp. Lenormant in Daremberg et Saglio, i. 623; Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 700.

6. Pausanias, i. 31, 6 (3).

7. Athenaeus, iii. p. 78 c.

1. Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum, 6.

2. Clemens Alexandr., Protrept. ii. 17. Cp. Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 1111 sqq.

3. Clemens Alexandr., Protrept. ii. 19.

4. Clemens Alexandr., Protrept. ii. 18; Proclus on Plato’s Timaeus, iii. 200 D, quoted by Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 562, and by Abel, Orphica, p. 234. Others said that the mangled body was pieced together, not by Apollo but by Rhea. Cornutus, De natura deorum, 30.

5. Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 572 sqq. For a conjectural restoration of the temple, based on ancient authorities and an examination of the scanty remains, see an article by Professor J. H. Middleton, in Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. ix.p. 282 sqq.

6. Diodorus, iii. 62.

1. Macrobius, Comment, in Somn. Scip. i. 12, 12; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini tres Romae nuper repent (commonly referred to as Mythographi Vaticani), ed. G. H. Bode (Cellis, 1834), iii. 12, 5, p. 246; Origen, c. Cels. iv. 171, quoted by Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 713.

2. Himerius, Orat. ix. 4.

3. Proclus, Hymn to Minerva, in Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 561; Orphica, ed. Abel, p. 235.

4. Hyginus, Fab. 167.

5. The festivals of Dionysus were biennial in many places. See Schömann, Griechische Alterthümer,3 ii. 500 sqq. (The terms for the festival were τριετηρίς, τριετηρικός, both terms of the series being included in the numeration, in accordance with the ancient mode of reckoning.) Probably the festivals were formerly annual and the period was afterwards lengthened, as has happened with other festivals. See W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 172, 175, 491, 533 sq., 598. Some of the festivals of Dionysus, however, were annual.

6. Firmicus Maternus, De err. prof, relig. 6.

7. Mythogr. Vatic. ed. Bode, l.c.

8. Plutarch, Consol, ad uxor. 10. Cp. id., Isis et Osiris, 35; id., De ei Delphico, 9; id., De esu carnium, i. 7.

1. Pausanias, ii. 31, 2, and 37, 5; Apollodorus, iii. 5, 3.

2. Pausanias, ii. 37, 5 sq.; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35; id., Quaest Conviv. iv. 6, 2.

3. Himerius, Orat. iii. 6, xiv. 7.

4. For Dionysus, see Lenormant in Daremberg et Saglio, i. 632. For Osiris, see Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1878), iii. 65.

5. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35; id., Quaest. Graec. 36; Athenaeus, xi. 476 a; Clemens Alexandr., Protrept. ii. 16; Orphica, Hymn xxx. vv. 3, 4, xlv. 1, lii. 2, liii. 8; Euripides, Bacchae, 99; Schol. on Aristophanes, Frogs, 357; Nicander, Alexipharmaca, 31; Lucian, Bacchus, 2.

6. Euripides, Bacchae, 920 sqq., 1017.

7. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35; Athenaeus, l.c.

8. Diodorus, iii. 64, 2, iv. 4, 2; Cornutus, De natura deorum, 30.

9. Diodorus, l.c.; Tzetzes, Schol. in Lycophr. 209; Philostratus, Imagines, i. 14 (15).

1. Müller-Wieseler, Denkmäler der alten Kunst, ii. pl. xxxiii.; Daremberg et Saglio, i. 619 sq., 631; Roscher, Ausführl. Lexikon, i. c., 1149 sqq.

2. Welcker, Alte Denkmäler, v. taf. 2.

3. Plutarch, Quaest. Graec. 36; id., Isis et Osiris, 35.

4. Nonnus, Dionys. vi. 205.

5. Firmicus Maternus, De errore profan, religionum, 6.

6. Euripides, Bacchae, 735 sqq.; Schol. on Aristophanes, Frogs, 357.

7. Hesychius, s.v.  Ἔριφος ο Διόνυσος, on which there is a marginal gloss ὁ μικρὸς ἀίξ, ὁ ἐν τῷ ἔαρι φαιυόμενος, ἤγουν ὁ πρώος;   Stephanus Byzant, s.v.  Ἀκρώρεια. The title Είραφιώτης is probably to be explained in the same way. [Homer], Hymn xxxiv. 2; Porphyry, De abstin. iii. 17; Dionysius, Perieg. 576; Etymolog. Magnum, p. 371, 57.

8. Apollodorus, iii. 4, 3.

1. Ovid, Metam. v. 329; Antoninus Liberalis, 28; Mythogr. Vatic. ed. Bode, i. 86, p. 29.

2. Arnobius, Adv. nationes, v. 19. Cp. Suidas, s. v. αὶγὶζειν. As fawns appear to have been also torn in pieces at the rites of Dionysus (Photius, s. ν. νεβρὶζειν; Harpocration, s.v. νεβρὶζων), it is probable that the fawn was another of the god’s embodiments. But of this there seems no direct evidence. Fawn-skins were worn both by the god and his worshippers (Cornutus, De natura deorum, c. 30). Similarly the female Bacchanals wore goat-skins (Hesychius, s. v. τραγηφόροι).

1. Varro, De re rustica i. 2, 19; Virgil, Georg, ii. 380, and Servius, ad l., and on Aen. iii. 118; Ovid, Fasti, i. 353 sqq.; id., Metam. xv. 114 sq.; Cornutus, De natura deorum, 30.

2. Euripides, Bacchae, 138 sq. ἀγρεύων αἷμα αἷμα τραγοκτόνον, ὠμοφάγον χάριν.

3· Schol. on Aristophanes, Frogs, 357.

4. Hera αἰγοφάγος at Sparta, Pausanias, iii. 15, 9 (cp. the representation of Hera clad in a goat’s skin, with the animal’s head and horns over her head, Müller-Wieseler, Denkmäler der alten Kunst, i. No. 299 B); Apollo ὀψοφάγος at Elis, Athenaeus, 346 B; Artemis καπροφάγος in Samos, Hesychius, s.v. καπροφάγος; cp. id., s.v. κριοφάγος. Divine titles derived from killing animals are probably to be similarly explained, as Dionysus αίγόβολος, Pausanias ix. 8, 2; Rhea or Hecate κυνοσφαγής, Tzetzes, Schol. in Lycophr. 77; Apollo λυκοκτόνος, Sophocles, Electra, 6; Apollo σαυροκτόνος, Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxiv. 70.

1. Porphyry, De abstin. ii. 55.

2. Pausanias, ix. 8, 2.

3. Plutarch, Quaest. Graec. 38.

4. Aelian, Nat. An. xii. 34. Cp. W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, i. 286 sqq.

1. It is to be remembered that on the Mediterranean coasts the harvest never falls so late as autumn.

2. On Demeter as a corn-goddess see Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen, p. 224 sqq.; on Proserpine in the same character see Cornutus, De nat. deor.c. 28; Varro in Augustine, Civ. Dei, vii. 20; Hesychius, s.v. Φερσεφόνεια; Firmicus Maternus, De errore prof, relig. 17. In his careful account of Demeter as a corn-goddess Mannhardt appears to have overlooked the very important statement of Hippolytus (Refut. omn. haeres.v. 8, p. 162, ed. Duncker and Schneidewin) that at the initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries (the most famous of all the rites of Demeter) the central mystery revealed to the initiated was a reaped ear of corn.

3. Welcker, Griechische Götterlehre ii. 532; Preller, in Pauly’s Real-Encyclopädie für class. Alterthumswiss. vi. 107; Lenormant, in Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités grecques et romaines, i. pt. ii. 1047 sqq.

4. Homer, Hymn to Demeter, Apollodorus, i. 5; Ovid, Fasti, iv. 425 sqq.; id., Metam.v. 385 sqq.

5. A third, according to Homer, H. to Demeter, 399, and Apollodorus, i. 5, 3; a half, according to Ovid, Fasti, iv. 614; id., Metam.v. 567; Hyginus, Fab. 146.

1. Schömann, Griech, Alterthümer,3 ii. 393; Preller, Griech. Mythologie,3 i. 628 sq., 644 sq., 650 sq. The evidence of the ancients on this head, though not full and definite, seems sufficient. See Diodorus, v. 4; Firmicus Maternus, cc. 7, 27; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 69; Apuleius, Met. vi. 2; Clemens Alex., Protrept. ii. §§ 12,17.

2. Mythol. Forschungen, p. 292 sqq.

3. Etymol. Magnum, p. 264,12 sq.

4. O. Schrader, Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte^2 (Jena, 1890), pp. 409, 422; V. Hehn, Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere in ihrem Uebergang aus Asïen,4 p. 54. Δηαí is doubtless equivalent etymologically to ζειαí, which is often taken to be spelt, but this seems uncertain.

5. Hesiod, Theog. 971; Lenormant, in Daremberg et Saglio, i. pt. ii.p. 1029.

6. W. Mannhardt, Mythol. Forsch.p. 296.

7. Ib.p. 297.

1. W. Mannhardt, Mythol. Forsch.p. 297 sq.

2. Ib. p. 299.

3. Ib. p. 300.

4. Ib. p. 310.

5. Ib. p. 310 sq.

6. Ib. p. 316.

1. Ib.p. 316.

2. Ib.p. 316 sq.

3. See above, pp. 14 sq., 244 sq.

4. W. Mannhardt, op. cit.p. 317.

5. Ib.p. 317 sq.

1. W. Mannhardt, Mythol Forsch.p. 318.

2. Ib.p. 318.

3. Ib.p. 318 sq.

1. Sébillot, Coutumes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne, p. 306.

2. W. Mannhardt, M. F. p. 319.

3. Ib.p. 320.

4. Ib.p. 321.

1. W. Mannhardt, op. cit. pp. 321, 323, 325 sq.

2. Ib.p. 323; Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, ii. p. 219, No. 403.

3. W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 325.

4. Ib.p. 323.

5. Ib.

6. Ib.p. 323 sq.

7. Ib.p. 324.

1. W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 320.

2. Ib.p. 325.

3. See above, p. 71 sqq.

4. W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 324.

5. Ib. p. 324 sq.

6. Ib. p. 325.

7. Ib. p. 327.

8. Ib. p. 328.

1. Jamieson, Dictionary of the Scottish Language, s.v. ‘Maiden.’; W. Mannhardt, Mythol. Forschungen, p. 326.

2. Communicated by my friend Prof W. Ridgeway, of Queen’s College, Cork.

3. W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 328.

4. Ib.

5. Ib. p. 328 sq.

1. W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 329.

2. Ib. p. 330.

3. Ib. p. 330.

4. Ib. p. 331.

5. Ib. p. 331.

6. Ib. p. 332.

1. Hutchinson, History of Northumberland, ii. ad finem, 17, quoted by Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 20, Bohn’s ed.

2. Quoted by Brand, op. cit. ii. 22.

3. W. Mannhardt, Mythol. Forsch.p. 333 sq.

4. Ib.p. 334.

1. W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 334.

2. Ib.p. 336.

3. Ib.p. 336.

4. Ib.p. 336; Baumkultus, p. 612.

5. W. Mannhardt, Die Korndämonen, p. 28.

1. W. Mannhardt, l. c.

2. Ib.; Henderson, Folklore of the Northern Counties, p. 87; Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 20, Bohn’s ed.; Chambers’s Book of Days, ii. 377 sq. Cp. Folklore Journal, vii. 50.

3. Brand, op. cit. ii. 21 sq.

4. Folklore Journal, vi. 268 sq.

1. From information supplied by Archie Leitch, gardener, Rowmore, Garelochhead.

2. Communicated by Mr Macfarlane of Faslane, Gareloch.

3. Jamieson, Dictionary of the Scottish Language, s.v. ‘Maiden.’

4. W. Gregor, in Revue des Traditions populaires, iii. 533 (485 B); id., Folklore of the North-East of Scotland, p. 182. An old Scottish name for the Maiden (autumnalis nymphula) was Rapegyrne. See Fordun, Scotichron. ii. 418, quoted in Jamieson’s Dict, of the Scottish Language, s.v. ‘Rapegyrne.’

5. W. Mannhardt, Die Korndämonen, p. 30; Folklore Journal, vii. 50.

1. W. Mannhardt, l. c.; Sommer, Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Sachsen und Thüringen, p. 160 sq.

2. See above, p. 71 sqq.

3. Above, pp. 286, 287.

4. Above, p. 262.

5. Above, p. 58 sqq.

6. Above, pp. 287, 288.

1. Above, pp. 287, 297.

2. See above, p. 288 sq.

3. Above, p. 292; cp. Kuhn, Westfälische Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen, ii. No. 516.

4. Above, pp. 289, 2907, 297.

1. See above, p. 8 sqq.

1. Above, p. 293.

2. Above, p. 291.

3. Above, p. 287, cp. 288.

4. Above, pp. 287, 296.

5. Above, p. 296 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Korndämonen, pp. 7, 26. Amongst the Wends the last sheaf, made into a puppet and called the Old Man, is hung in the hall till next year’s Old Man is brought in. Schulenburg, Wendisches Volksthum, p. 147. In Inverness and Sutherland the Maiden is kept till the next harvest. Folklore Journal, vii. 50, 53 sq. Cp. Kuhn, Westfälische Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen, ii. Nos. 501, 517.

1. Acosta, Hist. of the Indies, v.c. 28, vol. ii. p. 374 (Hakluyt Society, 1880).

2. W. Mannhardt, Mythol. Forsch.p. 342 sq. Mannhardt’s authority is a Spanish tract (Carta pastoral de exortacion e instruccion contra las idolatrias de los Indios del arçobispado de Lima) by Pedro de Villagomez, Archbishop of Lima, published at Lima in 1649, and communicated to Mannhardt by J. J. v. Tschudi.

1. Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des Nations civilisées du Mexique, iii. 40 sqq.

1. Η. Μ. Elliot, Supplemental Glossary of Terms used in the North Western Provinces, edited by J. Beames, i. 254.

2. Spenser St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East,2 i. 187, 192 sqq.

1. Ε. Β. Cross, On the Karens,’ In Journal of the American Oriental Society, iv. 309.

2. See above, p. 297.

3. Veth, Java, i. 524–526.

1. Homer, Od. v. 125 sqq.; Hesiod, Theog. 969 sqq.

1. See above, p. 295 sq.

2. It is possible that a ceremony performed in a Cyprian worship of Ariadne may have been of this nature. Plutarch, Theseus,20, ἐν δὴ τὴ θυσιᾳ τοῦ Τορπιαίου μηνὸς ισταμένου δευτέρα κατα-κλινόμενόν τινα τῶν νεανίσκων φθέγγεσθαι και ποιεῖν ἂπερ ὠδινουσαι γυναῖκες. We have already seen grounds for regarding Ariadne as a goddess or spirit of vegetation (above, p. 88). If, however, the reference is to the Syro-Macedonian calendar, in which Gorpiaeus corresponds to September (Daremberg et Saglio, i. 831), the ceremony could not have been a harvest celebration, but may have been a vintage one. Amongst the Minnitarees in North America, the Prince of Neuwied saw a tall strong woman pretend to bring up a stalk of maize out of her stomach; the object of the ceremony was to secure a good crop of maize in the following year. Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das innere Nord-Amerika, ii. 269.

3. W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 468 sq., 480 sqq.; id., Antike Wald-und Feldkulte, p. 288 sq.; id., Mythologische Forschungen, pp. 146 sqq., 340 sqq.; Van Hoëvell, Ambon en de Oeliasers, p. 62 sq.; Wilken, in Indische Gids, June 1884, pp. 958, 963 sq. Cp. Marco Polo, trans. Yule,2 i. 212 sq.

1. See above, p. 288 sq.

2. Cp. Preller, Griech. Mythol.3 i. 628, note 3. In Greece the annual descent of Proserpine appears to have taken place at the Great Eleusinian Mysteries and at the Thesmophoria, that is, about the time of the autumn sowing. But in Sicily her descent seems to have been celebrated when the corn was fully ripe (Diodorus, v. 4), that is, in summer.

3. Homer, Hymn to Demeter, 401 sqq.; Preller, l.c.

1. In some places it was customary to kneel down before the last sheaf, in others to kiss it. W. Mannhardt, Korndämonen, 26; id., Mytholog. Forschungen, p. 339; Folklore Journal, vi. 270.

2. Above, p. 285 sq.

1. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, she is represented as controlling the growth of the corn. See above, p. 284.

1. See above, pp. 260 sqq., 264 sqq.

2. Pauly, Real-Encyclopädie der class. Alterthumswiss, v. 1011.

3. Above, p. 89 sq.

1. Diodorus, i, 14, ἔτι γὰρ καὶ νῦν κατὰ τὸν θερισμὸν τοὐς πρώτους ἀμηθέντας στάχυς θέντας τοὐς ἀνθρώπους κόπτεσθαι πλησίον τοῦ δράγματος κ.τ.λ. For θέντας we should perhaps read σύνθεντας, which is supported by the following δράγματος.

1. Herodotus, ii. 79; Pollux, iv. 54; Pausanias, ix. 29; Athenaeus, 620 A.

2. Brugsch, Adonisklage und Linoslied, p. 24.

3. Above, p. 305.

4. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 249 sq.

5. Homer, Il. xviii. 570; Herodotus, ii. 79; Pausanias, ix. 29; Conon, Narrat, 19. For the form Ailinus see Suidas, s. v.; Euripides, Orestes, 1395; Sophocles, Ajax, 627. Cp. Moschus, Idyl. iii. 1; Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo, 20.

6. Conon, l.c.

1. W. Mannhardt, A. W. F. p. 281.

2. Pausanias, l.c.

3. Pollux, iv. 54; Athenaeus, 619 F, 620 A; Hesychius,svv. Βῶρμον and Μαριανδυνὸς θρῆνος.

4. The story was told by Sositheus in his play of Daphnis. His verses have been preserved in the tract of an anonymous writer. See Scriptores rerum mirabilium, ed. Westermann, p. 220; also Athenaeus, 415 B; Schol. on Theocritus, x. 41; Photius, Suidas, and Hesychius, s.v. Lityerses; Apostolius, x. 74. Photius mentions the sickle. Lityerses is the subject of a special study by Mannhardt (Mythologische Forschungen, p. 1 sqq.), whom I follow.

1. Pollux, iv. 54.

2. In this comparison I closely follow Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch.p. 18 sqq.

1. Cp. above, p. 293. On the other hand, the last sheaf is sometimes an object of desire and emulation. See p. 289. It is so at Balquhidder also, Folklore Journal, vi. 269; and it was formerly so on the Gareloch, Dunbartonshire, where there was a competition for the honour of cutting it, several handfuls of standing corn being concealed under sheaves. (From the information of Archie Leitch. See note on p. 297).

2. W. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch.p. 19 sq.

1. W. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch. p. 20; Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, ii. 217.

2. Above, p. 297 sq.

3. W. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch. p. 22.

1. W. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch, p. 22.

2. Ib. p. 22 sq.

3. Ib. p. 23.

4. Ib. p. 23 sq.

5. Ib. p. 24.

6. Ib. p. 24.

1. W. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch.p. 24.

2. Ib. p. 24 sq.

3. Ib. p. 25.

4. Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, P. 223.

5. W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 25 sq.

6. C. A. Elliot, Hoshangábád Settlement Report, p. 178, quoted in Panjab Notes and Queries, iii. Nos. 8, 168.

1. W. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsth. p. 31.

2. Ib. p. 334.

3. Ib. p. 330.

4. Ib.

5. Ib. p. 331.

1. W. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch. p. 335.

2. Ib.p. 335.

3. Above, pp. 288, 293, 301.

4. W. Mannhardt,Korndäm., p. 26.

5. Above, p. 295.

6. W. Mannhardt,M. F. b. 50.

7. Ib.p. 50 sq.

8. See above, pp. 244 sq., 286, 290, 292, 293.

1. W. Mannhardt,op. cit.p. 32 sqq. Cp. Revue des Traditions populaires, iii. 598.

2. W. Mannhardt, Mythol. Forsch.p. 35 sq.

3. Ib.p. 36.

4. For the evidence, see ib. p. 36, note 2. The idea which lies at the bottom of the phrase seems to be explained by the following Cingalese custom. ‘There is a curious custom of the threshing-floor called ’Goigote’ – the tying of the cultivator’s knot. When a sheaf of corn has been threshed out, before it is removed the grain is heaped up and the threshers, generally six in number, sit round it, and taking a few stalks, with the ears of corn attached, jointly tie a knot and bury it in the heap. It is left there until all the sheaves have been threshed and the corn winnowed and measured. The object of this ceremony is to prevent the devils from diminishing the quantity of corn in the heap. ‘C. J. R. Le Mesurier,’ Customs and Superstitions connected with the Cultivation of Rice in the Southern Province of Ceylon,’ in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, N. S., xvii. (1885) 371. The ‘key’ in the European custom is probably intended to serve the same purpose as the ‘knot’ in the Cingalese custom.

1. W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 39.

1. W. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch. p. 39 sq.

2. Ib.p. 40. For the speeches made by the woman who binds the stranger or the master, see ib.p. 41; Lemke, Volksthümliches in Ostpreussen, i. 23 sq.

3. W. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch. p. 41 sq.

1. W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 42.

2. Ib.p. 42. See above, p. 295. In Thüringen a being called the Rush-cutter used to be much dreaded. On the morning of St John’s Day he was wont to walk through the fields with sickles tied to his ankles cutting avenues in the corn as he walked. To detect him, seven bundles of brushwood were silently threshed with the flail on the threshing-floor, and the stranger who appeared at the door of the barn during the threshing was the Rush-cutter. Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, p. 221. With the Binsenschneider compare the Bilschneider. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, ii. 210 sq.

3. W. Mannhardt,op. cit. p. 47 sq.

1. W. Mannhardt, op. cit.p. 48. To prevent a rationalistic explanation of this custom, which, like most rationalistic explanations of folk-custom, would be wrong, it may be pointed out that a little of the crop is sometimes left on the field for the spirit under other names than ‘the Poor Old Woman.’ Thus in a village of the Tilsit district, the last sheaf was left standing on the field ‘for the Old Rye-woman.’ M. F. p. 337. In Neftenbach (Canton of Zürich) the first three ears of corn reaped are thrown away on the field ‘to satisfy the Corn-mother and to make the next year’s crop abundant.’ Ib. In Thüringen when the after-grass (Grummet) is being got in, a little heap is left lying on the field; it belongs to ‘the Little Wood-woman’ in return for the blessing she has bestowed. Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, p. 224. At Kupferberg, Bavaria, some corn is left standing on the field when the rest has been cut. Of this corn left standing, they say that ‘it belongs to the Old Woman,’ to whom it is dedicated in the following words –

‘We give it to the Old Woman;

She shall keep it.

Next year may she be to us

As kind as this time she has been.’

M. F. p. 337 sq. These last expressions are quite conclusive. See also Mannhardt, Korndämonen, p. 7 sq. In Russia a patch of unreaped corn is left in the field and the ears are knotted together; this is called ‘the plaiting of the beard of Volos.’ ‘The unreaped patch is looked upon as tabooed; and it is believed that if any one meddles with it he will shrivel up, and become twisted like the interwoven ears.’ Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 251. In the North-east of Scotland a few stalks were sometimes left unreaped for the benefit of ‘the aul’ man.’ W. Gregor, Folklore of the North-East of Scotland, p. 182. Here ‘the aul’ man’ is probably the equivalent of the Old Man (der Alte) of Germany.

1. M. F. p. 48.

2. Ib. p. 48 sq.

3. Ib. p. 49.

4. Ib.p. 49 sq.; Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube,2 § 400; Töppen, Aberglaube aus Masuren^2 p. 57.

5. The explanation of the custom is Mannhardt’s. M. F. p. 49.

6. Odyssey, xvii, 485 sqq. Cp. Plato, Sophist, 216 A.

1. For throwing him into the water, see p. 321.

2. Cieza de Leon, Travels, translated by Markham, p. 203 (Hakluyt Society, 1864).

3. Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des Nations civilisées du Mexique, i. 274; Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 340.

4. Bastian, Die Culturländer des alten Amerika, ii. 639 (quoting Herrara). See above, p. 262.

1. E. James, Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, ii. 80 sq.; Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, v. 77 sqq.; De Smet, Voyages aux Montagnes Rocheuses, nouvelle ed. 1873, p. 121 sqq. The accounts by Schoolcraft and De Smet of the sacrifice of the Sioux girl are independent and supplement each other.

2. Labat, Relation historique de l’Ethiopie occidentale, i. 380.

1. John Adams, Sketches taken during Ten Voyages in Africa between the years 1786 and 1800, p. 25.

2. P. Bouche, La Côte des Esclaves, p. 132.

3. Arbousset et Daumas, Voyage d’exploration au Nord-est de la Colonie du Cap de Bonne-Esperance, p. 117 sq.

4. Panjab Notes and Queries, ii. No. 721.

5. Major S. C. Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 113 sq. Major-General John Campbell, Wild Tribes of Khondistan, pp. 52–58, etc.

1. J. Campbell, op. cit. p. 56.

2. S. C. Macpherson, op. cit. p. 115 sq.

3. Ib. p. 113.

1. S. C. Macpherson, op. cit. p. 117 sq.; J. Campbell, p. 112.

2. S. C. Macpherson, p. 118.

3. J. Campbell, p. 54.

4. Ib. pp. 55, 112.

5. S. C. Macpherson, p. 119; J. Campbell, p. 113.

1. S. C. Macpherson, p. 127. Instead of the branch of a green tree, Campbell mentions two strong planks or bamboos (p. 57) or a slit bamboo (p. 182).

2. J. Campbell, pp. 56, 58, 120.

3. Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 288, quoting Colonel Campbell’s Report.

4. J. Campbell, p. 126. The elephant represented the Earth Goddess herself, who was here conceived in elephant-form, Campbell, pp. 51, 126. In the hill tracts of Goomsur she was represented in peacock-form, and the post to which the victim was bound bore the effigy of a peacock, Campbell, p. 54.

5. S. C. Macpherson, p. 130.

1. Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 288, referring to Colonel Campbell’s Report.

2. S. C. Macpherson, p. 129. Cp. J. Campbell, pp. 55, 58, 113, 121, 187.

3. J. Campbell, p. 182.

4. S. C. Macpherson, p. 128; Dalton, l.c.

5. J. Campbell, pp. 55, 182.

6. J. Campbell, p. 187.

1. J. Campbell, p. 112.

2. S. C. Macpherson, p. 118.

1. Above, pp. 329, 330.

1. Above, pp. 287, 288.

2. Above, pp. 286, 296, 297.

3. Above, p. 320.

4. Above, p. 321.

5. Above, pp. 244 sq., 290, 292, 321.

1. Above, p. 321.

1. W. Mannhardt, Korndämonen, p. 5.

2. Pfannenschmid, Germanische Erntefeste, p. 98.

1. Above, p. 323 sq.

2. Above, p. 201.

3. Above, p. 255.

4. Above, p. 59.

1. I do not know when the corn is reaped in Phrygia; but considering the high upland character of the country, harvest is probably later there than on the coasts of the Mediterranean.

1. Above, p. 313 sq.

2. Above, p. 314.

3. Hesychius, s.v. Βῶρμον.

4. Apollodorus, ii. 6,3.

5. The scurrilities exchanged in both ancient and modern times between vine-dressers, vintagers, and passers-by seem to belong to a different category. See W. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch. p. 53 sq.

1. Above, p. 329 sqq.

2. Above, p. 241 sq.

3. Above, pp. 328, 330, 334.

4. For this fact of the probable correspondence of the months, which supplies so welcome a confirmation of the conjecture in the text, I am indebted to my friend Professor W. Robertson Smith, who furnishes me with the  following note: ‘In the Syro-Macedonian calendar Lous represents Ab, not Tammuz. Was it different in Babylon? I think it was, and one month different, at least in the early times of the Greek monarchy in Asia. For we know from a Babylonian observation in the Almagest (Ideler, i. 396) that in 229 B. c. Xanthicus began on February 26. It was therefore the month before the equinoctial moon, not Nisan but Adar, and consequently Lous answered to the lunar month Tammuz.’

1. Above, p. 313.

2. Apollodorus, ii. 5, 11; Schol. on Apollonius Rhodius, iv. 1396; Plutarch, Parall. 38. Herodotus (ii. 45) discredits the idea that the Egyptians ever offered human sacrifices. But his authority is not to be weighed against that of Manetho (Plutarch, Is. et Os. 73), who affirms that they did.

1. E. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, i. § 57.

2. Diodorus, i. 88; Plutarch, Is. et Os. 73; cp. id., 30, 33.

3. Above, pp. 262, 329, 336.

4. Festus, s.v. Catularia. Cp. id., s.v. rutilae canes; Columella, x. 343; Ovid, Fasti, iv. 905 sqq.; Pliny, Ν. Η. xviii. § 14.

5. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, ii. 207, No. 362; Βavaria, Landes-und Volkskunde des Konigreichs Bayern, iii. 343.

6. Above, pp. 330, 334.

1. Above, pp. 328, 329.

2. Plutarch, Is. et Os. 18.

1. Plutarch, Is. et Os. 22, 30, 31, 33, 73.

2. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (ed. 1878), iii. 81.

3. Pausanias, i. 22, 3, viii. 5, 8, viii. 42, 1.

4. Cornutus, De not. deor.c. 28.

1. Hone, Every-day Book, ii.c. 1170 sq.

2. Miss C. S. Burne and Miss G. F. Jackson, Shropshire Folk-lore, p. 372 sq., referring to Mrs Bray’s Traditions of Devon, i. 330.

1. Hone, op. cit. ii. 1172.

2. Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 20 (Bohn’s ed.); Burne and Jackson, op. cit. p. 371.

3. Burne and Jackson, l.c.

4. W. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch. p. 185.

5. See above, p. 297.

6. W. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch. p. 185.

7. Ib.

1. Revue des Traditions populaires, ii. 500.

2. Above, p. 295.

3. U. Jahn, Die deutschen Opfergebräuche bei Ackerbau und Vichzucht, pp. 166–169; Pfannenschmid, Germanische Erntefeste, p. 104 sq.; Kuhn, Westfälische Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen, ii. Nos. 491, 492; Kuhn und Schwartz, Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche, p. 395, No. 97; Lynker, Deutsche Sagen und Sitten in hessischen Gauen, p. 256, No. 340.

1. W. Mannhardt, Die Korndämonen, pp. 1–6.

1. W. Mannhardt, Roggenwolf und Roggenhund (Danzig, 1865), p. 5; id., Antike Wald-und Feldkulte, p. 318 sq.; id., Mythol. Forsch.p. 103; Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, p. 213.

2. W. Mannhardt, Roggenwolf u. Roggenhund, p. 7 sqq.; id., A. W. F.p. 319.

3. W. Mannhardt, Roggenwolf, etc.p. 10.

4. W. Mannhardt, M. F. p. 104.

1. W. Mannhardt, M. F. p. 104

2. Ib. p. 104 sq. On the Harvest-May, see above, vol.i.p. 59.

3. Ib. p. 105.

4. Ib. p. 30.

5. Ib. pp. 30, 105.

6. Ib. p. 105 sq.

7. A. W. F. p. 320; Roggenwolf, p. 24.

8. Roggenwolf, p. 24.

9. Ib. p. 24.

10. Ib. p. 25.

1. Roggenwolf, p. 28; A. W. F. p. 320.

2. Roggenwolf, p. 25.

3. Ib. p. 26.

4. Ib. p. 26; A. W. F. p. 320.

5. A. W. F. p. 321.

6. Ib. p. 321 sq.

7. Ib. p. 320.

1. A. W. F. p. 320 sq.

2. Ib. p. 322.

3. Ib. p. 323.

4. Die Korndämonen, p. 13.

5. Ib.; Schmitz, Sitten und Sagen des Eifler Volkes, i.p. 95; Kuhn, Westfälische Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche, ii.p. 181; Kuhn und Schwartz, Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche, p. 398.

6. G. A. Heinrich, Agrarische Sitten und Gebräuche unter den Sachsen Siebenbürgens, p. 21.

1. Die Korndämonen, p. 13. Cp. Kuhn and Schwartz, l.c.

2. Die Korndämonen, p. 13.

3. Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, p. 220.

4. Die Korndämonen, p. 13 sq.; Kuhn, Westfälische Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche, ii.p. 180 sq.; Pfannenschmid, Germanische Erntefeste, p. 110.

5. Die Korndämonen, p. 14; Pfannenschmid, op. cit. pp. 111, 419 sq.

6. Die Korndämonen, p. 15. So in Shropshire, where the corn-spirit is conceived in the form of a gander (see above, p. 349), the expression for overthrowing a load at harvest is ‘to lose the goose,’ and the penalty used to be the loss of the goose at the harvest supper (Burne and Jackson, Shropshire Folk-lore, p. 375); and in some parts of England the harvest supper was called the Harvest Gosling, or the Inning Goose (Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 23, 26, Bohn’s ed.).

1. Die Korndämonen, p. 14.

2. Ib. p. 15.

3. M. F. p. 30.

4. Die Korndämonen, p. 15.

5. Ib. p. 15 sq.

6. Ib. p. 15; M. F. p. 30.

1. Die Korndämonen, p. 1.

2. Folklore Journal, vii. 47.

3. Die Korndämonen, p. 3.

4. Lemke, Volksthümliches in Ostpreussen, i. 24.

5. G. A. Heinrich, Agrarische Sitten und Gebräuche unter den Sachsen Siebenbürgens, p. 21.

6. Above, p. 350.

7. Μ. F. p. 29.

8. Ibid p. 29 sq.; Die Korndämonen, p. 5.

1. A. W. F. pp. 172–174; M. F. p. 30.

2. W. Mannhardt, A. W. F. p. 155 sq.

1. W. Mannhardt, A. W. F. p. 157 sq.

2. Ib. p. 159.

3. Ib. p. 161 sq.

4. Ib. p. 162.

5. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, ii.p. 232 sq. No. 426; Α. W. F. p. 162.

6. Panzer,op. cit. ii.p. 228 sq. No. 422; A. W. F. p. 163.

1. A. W. F. p. 163.

2. Ib. p. 164.

3. Ib. p. 164.

4. Ib. p. 164 sq.

5. Ib. p. 165.

1. Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii, 24, Bohn’s ed.; A. W. F. p. 165.

2. Above, p. 327.

3. A. W. F. p. 165.

4. Ib. p. 166; M. F. p. 185.

1. A. W. F. p. 166.

2. Above, p. 360.

3. Holzmayer, Osiliana, p. 107.

4. G. A. Heinrich, Agrarische Sitten u. Gebräuche unter den Sachsen Siebenbürgens, p. 19. Cp. Β. Κ. p. 482 sqq.

1. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, ii.p. 225 sqq. No. 421; Α. W. F. p. 167 sq.

2. A. W. F. p. 168.

3. E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben, p. 445, No. 162; A. W. F. p. 168.

4. A. W. F. p. 169.

5. Panzer, op. cit. ii.p. 224 sq. No. 420; A. W. F. p. 169.

6. A. W. F. p. 169.

1. A. W. F. p. 170.

2. Ib.

3. Praetorius, Deliciae Prussicae, p. 23 sq.; Β. Κ. p. 394 sq.

4. Μ. F. p. 58.

5. Ib.

1. M. F. p. 62.

2. Ib. p. 59.

3. Above, p. 355.

4. Μ. F. p. 59.

5. E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben, p. 440 sq. Nos. 151., 152, 153; Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, ii.p. 234, No. 428; Μ. F. p. 59.

6. Panzer, op. cit. ii.p. 233, No. 427; Μ. F. p. 59.

7. Μ. F. p. 59 sq.

1. M. F. p. 58.

2. Ib. p. 58 sq.

3. Ib. p. 60.

1. Ε. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben, p. 444 sq.No. 162; Μ. F. p. 61.

2. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, ii.p. 233, No. 427.

3. Μ. F. p. 61 sq.

4. Ib. p. 62.

5. Ib. p. 62.

6. E. Meier, op. cit. p. 445 sq. No. 163.

1. M. F. p. 60.

2. Ib. p. 62.

3. Above, p. 295 sq.

4. Laisnel de la Salle, Croyances et Légendes du Centre de la France, ii, 135.

5. M. F. p. 62, ‘Il fait le veau.’

6. Ib. p. 62.

7. Ib. p. 63.

1. M. F. p. 167.

2. Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 24, Bohn’s ed.

1. Burne and Jackson, Shropshire Folklore, p. 373 sq.

2. M. F. p. 167.

1. Laisnel de la Salle, Croyances et Légendes du Centre de la France, ii. 133; M. F. p. 167 sq.

2. Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, p. 213, No. 4.

3. Holzmayer, Osiliana, p. 107; M. F. p. 187.

4. Birlinger, Aus Schwaben, ii. 328.

5. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, ii. pp. 223, 224, Nos. 417, 419.

6. M. F. p. 112.

7. E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben, p. 445, No. 162.

1. Birlinger, Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, ii. 425, No. 379.

2. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, ii. pp. 221–224, Nos. 409–15, 418.

3. Μ. F. p. 186 sq.

1. Above, p. 353.

2. Above, p. 372 sq.

3. M. F. p. 187.

4. Ibid.p. 187 sq.; Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, pp. 189, 218; W. Kolbe, Hessische Volks-Sitten und Gebräuche (Marburg, 1888), p. 35.

5. M. F. p. 188; Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 220.

6. A. W. F. p. 197 sq.; Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, ii.p. 491; Jamieson, Dictionary of the Scottish Language, s.v. ‘Maiden’; Afzelius, Volkssagen und Volkslieder aus Schwedens älterer und neuerer Zeit, übersetzt von Ungewitter, i. 9.

1. Above, p. 355 sq.

2. L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden, pp. 169 sq., 182. On Christmas night children sleep on a bed of the Yule straw (ib.p. 177).

3. Jahn, Deutsche Opfergebräuche, p. 215. Cp. above, vol.i. p. 60.

4. Afzelius, op. cit.i. 31.

1. Afzelius, op. cit.i. 9; Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden, pp. 181, 185.

2. Above, pp. 357 sq., 360, 361, 363 sq., 368, 370, 374. In regard to the hare, the substitution of brandy for hare’s blood is doubtless comparatively modern.

1. Die Korndämonen, p. 1.

1. Herodotus, ii. 46.

2. Preller, Griechische Mythologie,1 i. 600; A. W. F. p. 138.

1. A. W. F. p. 139.

2. Pollux, iv. 118.

3. A. W. F. p. 142 sq.

4. Ovid, Fasti, ii. 361; iii. 312; v. 101; id., Heroides, iv. 49.

5. Macrobius, Sat.i. 22, 3.

6. Homer, Hymn to Aphrodite, 262 sqq.

7. Pliny, N. H. xii. 3; Ovid, Metam. vi. 392; id., Fasti, iii. 303, 309; Gloss. Isid. Mart. Cap. ii. 167, cited by Mannhardt, A. W. F. p. 113.

8. Pliny, Ν. H. xii. 3; Martianus Capella, ii. 167; Augustine, Civ. Dei, xv. 23; Aurelius Victor, Origo gentis Romanae, iv. 6.

9. Servius on Virgil, Ecl. vi. 14; Ovid, Metam. vi. 392 sq.; Martianus Capella, ii. 167.

10. B. K. p. 138 sq.; A. W. F. p. 145.

1. Servius on Virgil, Georg, i. 10.

2. Above, p. 360 sqq.

3. A. W. F. ch. iii.

4. Above, p. 326 sq.

5. Above, p. 280 sq.

1. Above, p. 279 sq.

2. Above, p. 367 sqq.

3. A. Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, ii. 232.

1. Pausanias, i. 24, 4; id., i. 28, 10; Porphyry, De abstinentia, ii. 29 sq.; Aelian, Var. Hist. viii. 3; Schol. on Aristophanes, Peace, 419; Hesychius, Suidas, and Etymol. Magnum, s.v. βούφονια. The date of the sacrifice (14th Skirophorion) is given by the Schol. on Aristophanes and the Etym. Magn.; and this date corresponds, according to Mannhardt (M. F. p. 68), with the close of the threshing in Attica. No writer mentions the trial of both the axe and the knife. Pausanias speaks of the trial of the axe, Porphyry and Aelian of the trial of the knife. But from Porphyry’s description it is clear that the slaughter was carried out by two men, one wielding an axe and the other a knife, and that the former laid the blame on the latter. Perhaps the knife alone was condemned. That the King Archon (on whom see above, p. 6), presided at the trial of all lifeless objects, is mentioned by Pollux, viii. 90; cp. id. viii. 120.

1. The real import of the name bouphonia was first perceived by Prof W. Robertson Smith. See his Religion of the Semites, i. 286 sqq.

2. Varro, De re rustica, ii. 5, 4. Cp. Columella, vi. praef. § 7. Perhaps, however, Varro’s statement may be merely an inference drawn from the ritual of the bouphonia and the legend told to explain it.

1. Β. Κ. p. 409.

2. See above, p. 208.

1. Hecquard, Reise an die Küste und in das Innere von West-Afrika, pp. 41–43·

2. Above, pp. 350, 411.

1. China Review, i. 62, 154, 162, 203 sq.; Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, p. 375 sq., ed. Paxton Hood; Gray, China, ii. 115 sq.

2. Above, pp. 223, 228.

3. See above, p. 372. sqq.

4. Schol. on Aristophanes, Acharn. 747.

1. Overbeck, Griechische Kunstmythologie, ii. 493; Müller-Wieseler, Denkmäler d. alt. Kunst, ii. pl. viii. 94.

2. Hyginus, Fab. 277; Cornutus, De nat. deor. c. 28; Macrobius, Sat.i. 12, 23; Schol. on Aristophanes, Acharn. 747; id. on Frogs, 338; id. on Peace, 374; Servius on Virgil, Georg, ii,380; Aelian, Nat. Anim.x. 16.

3. For the authorities on the Thesmophoria and a discussion of some doubtful points in the festival, I may be permitted to refer to my article ‘Thesmophoria’ in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, ninth ed.

4. Photius, s.v. στἡνια, speaks of the ascent of Demeter from the lower world; and Clement of Alexandria speaks of both Demeter and Proserpine as having been engulfed in the chasm (Protrept. ii. § 17). The original equivalence of Demeter and Proserpine must be borne steadily in mind.

5. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 69; Photius, s.v. στἡνια.

1. E. Rohde, ‘Unedirte Lucians-scholien, die attischen Thesmophorien und Haloen betreffend,’ in Rheinisches Museum, N. F. xxv. (1870) 548 sqq. Two passages of classical writers (Clemens Alex., Protrept. ii. § 17 and Pausanias, ix. 8, 1) refer to the rites described by the Scholiast on Lucian, and had been rightly interpreted by Lobeck (Aglaophamus, p. 827 sqq.)

2. The scholiast speaks of them as megara and adyta. Megara (from a Phoenician word meaning ‘cavern,’ ‘subterranean chasm,’ Movers, Die Phoenizier, i. 220) were properly subterranean vaults or chasms sacred to the gods. See Hesychius, quoted by Movers, l.c. (the passage does not appear in M. Schmidt’s minor edition of Hesychius); Porphyry, De antro nymph. 6.

3. We infer this from Pausanias, ix. 8, 1, though the passage is incomplete and apparently corrupt. For ἐν Δωδώνῃ Lobeck proposes to read ἀναδῦναι or ἀναδοθῆναι. At the spring and autumn festivals of Isis at Tithorea geese and goats were thrown into the adyton and left there till the following festival, when the remains were removed and buried at a certain spot a little way from the temple. Pausanias, x. 32, 14 (9). This analogy supports the view that the pigs thrown into the caverns at the Thesmophoria were left there till the next festival.

1. Ovid, Fasti, iv. 461–466, upon which Gierig remarks, ‘Sues melius poeta omisisset in hoc narratione.’ Such is the wisdom of the commentator.

1. Pausanias, i. 14, 3.

2. Schol. on Aristophanes, Frogs, 338.

3. Above, p. 363 sq.

4. Above, p. 367 sq.

5. Above, p. 358.

6. Above, p. 375.

7. Above, p. 375 sq.

1. In Clemens Alex., Protrept. ii. 17, for μεγαρίζοντες χοίρους ἐκβάλλουσι Lobeck (Aglaophamus, p. 831) would read μεγάροις ζῶντας χοίρους ἐμβάλλουσι. For his emendation of Pausanias, see above, p. 388.

2. It is worth noting that in Crete, which was an ancient seat of Demeter worship (see above, p. 284), the pig was esteemed very sacred and was not eaten, Athenaeus, 375 F-376 A. This would not exclude the possibility of its being eaten sacramentally, as at the Thesmophoria.

3. Pausanias, viii. 42.

4. Above, p. 371 sqq.

1. Pausanias, viii. 25 and 42. On the Phigalian Demeter, see W. Mannhardt, M. F. p. 244 sqq.

2. Above, p. 252 sq.

3. Above, p. 252.

4. Demosthenes, De corona, p. 313.

5. Above, p. 240.

6. Cureton, Spicilegium Syriacum, p. 44.

1. Lucian, De dea Syria, 54.

2. The heathen Harranians sacrificed swine once a year and ate the flesh; En-Nedîm, in Chwolsohn’s Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, ii. 42. My friend Professor W. Robertson Smith has conjectured that the wild boars annually sacrificed in Cyprus on 2nd April Joannes Lydus, De mensibus, iv. 45) represented Adonis himself. See his Religion of the Semites, i. 272 sq., 392.

3. Plutarch, Quaest. Conviv. iv. 5.

1. Isaiah lxv. 3, 4, lxvi. 3, 17.

2. Herodotus, ii. 47; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 8; Aelian, Nat. Anim.x. 16.

3. Herodotus, l.c.

4. Plutarch and Aelian, ll. cc.

5. Herodotus, l.c.

6. Herodotus, ii. 47 sq.; Aelian and Plutarch, ll. cc. Herodotus distinguishes the sacrifice to the moon from that to Osiris. According to him, at the sacrifice to the moon, the extremity of the pig’s tail, together with the spleen and the caul, were covered with fat and burned; the rest of the flesh was eaten. On the evening (not the eve, see Stein on the passage) of the festival the sacrifice to Osiris took place. Each man slew a pig before his door, then gave it to the swineherd, from whom he had bought it, to take away.

1. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, pp. 432, 452.

2. Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington), p. 225.

3. Ib.p. 231.

4. J. Crevaux, Voyages dans l’Amérique du Sud, p. 59.

5. Turner, Samoa, pp. 17 sq., 50 sq.

1. Leviticus xvi. 23 sq.

2. Porphyry, De abstin, ii. 44. For this and the Jewish examples I am indebted to my friend Prof W. Robertson Smith.

3. Mariner, Tonga Islands, i. 434, note; ii. 82, 222 sq.

1. Above, p. 143 sqq.

2. Casalis, The Basutos, p. 211; Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, p. 255; John Mackenzie, Ten Years north of the Orange River, p. 135 note.

3. J. Mackenzie, l.c.

4. Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington), p. 225.

5. Ib.p. 275.

6. Turner, Samoa, p. 76.

7. Ib.p. 70.

1. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philos. viii. 8.

2. Aelian, Nat. Anim.x. 16. The story is repeated by Pliny, Nat. Hist. xviii. 168.

3. Lefébure, Le my the Osirien, i. 44.

4. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 8. Lefébure (op. cit.p. 46) recognises that in this story the boar is Typhon himself.

1. This important principle was first recognised by Prof W. Robertson Smith. See his article ‘Sacrifice,’ Encycl Britann. 9th ed. xxi. 137 sq. Cp. his Religion of the Semites, pp. 353 sq., 391 sq.

2. Plutarch, Isis et Οsiris, 31.

1. Lefébure, Le mythe Osirien, p. 48 sq.

2. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 33, 73; Diodorus, i. 88.

3. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 31; Diodorus, i. 88. Cp. Herodotus, ii. 38.

4. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 20, 29, 33, 43; Strabo, xvii. 1, 31; Diodorus, i. 21, 85; Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, 5 i. 55 sqq. On Apis and Mnevis, see also Herodotus, ii. 153, iii. 27 sq.; Ammianus Marcellinus, xxii. 14, 7; Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 184 sqq.; Solinus, xxxii. 17–21; Cicero, De not. deor.i. 29; Aelian, Nat. Anim. xi. 10 sq.; Plutarch, Quaest. Conviv. viii. 1, 3; id., Isis et Osiris, 5, 35; Eusebius, Praepar. Evang. iii. 13, 1 sq.; Pausanias, i. 18, 4, vii. 22, 3 sq. Both Apis and Mnevis were black bulls, but Apis had certain white spots.

1. Diodorus, i. 21.

2. On the religious reverence of pastoral peoples for their cattle, and the possible derivation of the Apis and Isis-Hathor worship from the pastoral stage of society, see W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, i. 277 sqq.

3. Herodotus, ii. 41.

1. Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 184; Solinus, xxxii. 18; Ammianus Marcellinus, xxii. 14, 7. The spring or well in which he was drowned was perhaps the one from which his drinking water was procured; he might not drink the water of the Nile. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 5.

2. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 56.

3. Maspero, Histoire ancienne, 4 p. 31. Cp. Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, 5 i. 56.

4. See above, p. 371 sqq.

1. Athenaeus, 587 A; Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 204. Cp. Encycl. Britann. 9th ed. art. ‘Sacrifice,’ xxi. 135.

2. Varro, De agri cult.i. 2, 19 sq.

3. Herodotus, ii. 42.

1. Festus, ed. Müller, pp. 178, 179, 220; Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 97; Polybius, xii. 4 B. The sacrifice is referred to by Julian, Oral 176 D.

1. Ovid, Fasti, iv. 731 sqq., cp. 629 sqq.; Propertius, v. 1, 19 sq.

2. Above, p. 385 sq.

3. Above, pp. 350 and 353.

4. Above, p. 376.

5. Livy, ii. 5.

1. Festus, ed. Müller, pp. 130, 131.

2. The October horse is the subject of an essay by Mannhardt (Mytholog. Forsch. pp. 156–201), of which the above account is a summary.

1. M. F. p. 179.

2. Β. Κ. p. 205. It is not said that the dough-man is made of the new corn; but probably this is, or once was, the case.

1. Praetorius, Deliciae Prussicae, pp. 60–64; A. W. F. p. 249 sqq.

2. Bezzenberger, Litauische Forschungen (Göttingen, 1882), p. 89.

3. Simon Grunau, Preussische Chronik, ed. Perlbach, i. 91.

4. Holzmayer, Osiliana, p. 108.

5. On iron as a charm against spirits, see above, p. 150 sq.

6. Folklore Journal, vii. 54.

7. Communicated by the Rev. J. J. C. Yarborough, of Chislehurst, Kent. See Folklore Journal, vii. 50.

1. G. A. Wilken, Bijdrage tot de kennis der Alfoeren van het eiland Boeroe, p. 26.

2. P. N. Wilken, ‘Bijdragen tot de kennis van de zeden en gewoonten der Alfoeren in de Minahassa,’ in Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, vii. (1863) p. 127.

3. N. P. Wilken en J. A. Schwarz, ‘Allerlei over het land en volk van Bolaang Mongondou,’ in Mededeel.v.w.h. Nederl. Zendelinggen. xi. 369 sq.

1. Η. Harkness, Description of a Singular Aboriginal Race inhabiting the Summit of the Neilgherry Hills, p. 56 sq.

2. Gover, Folk-songs of Southern India, p. 105 sqq.; Folk-lore Journal, vii. 302 sqq.

1. Gover, ‘The Pongol Festival in Southern India,’ Journ. R. Asiatic Society, N. S. v. (1871) p. 91 sqq.

2. Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, p. 103.

3. Crowther and Taylor, The Gospel on the Banks of the Niger, p. 287 sq. Mr Taylor’s information is repeated in West African Countries and Peoples, by J. Africanus, B. Horton (London, 1868), p. 180 sq.

4. Speckmann, Die Hermannsburger Mission in Afrika, p. 150 sq. On the Zulu feast of first-fruits, see also N. Isaacs, Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa, ii. 291 sq.; Arbousset et Daumas, Voyage d’exploration, etc. p. 308 sq.; Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, p. 389 note; South African Folk-lore Journal, i. 135 sqq.; Fritsch, Die Eíngeborenen Süd-Afrikas, p. 143; Lewis Grout, Zululand, p. 160 sqq. From Mr Grout’s description it appears that a bull is killed and its gall drunk by the king and people. In killing it the men must use nothing but their naked hands. The flesh of the bull is given to the boys to eat what they like and burn the rest; the men may not taste it. As a final ceremony the king breaks a green calabash in presence of the people, ‘thereby signifying that he opens the new year, and grants the people leave to eat of the fruits of the season.’ If a man eats the new fruits before the festival, he will die or is actually put to death.

1. The ceremony is described independently by James Adair, History of the American Indians (London, 1775), pp. 96–111; W. Bartram, Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida (London, 1792), p. 507 sq.; Β. Hawkins, ‘Sketch of the Creek country,’ in Collections of the Georgia Historical Society, iii. (Savannah, 1848), pp. 75– 78; A. A. M’Gillivray, in Schoolcraft’s Indian Tribes, v. 257 sq. Adair’s description is the fullest and has been chiefly followed in the text. In Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians, by William Bartram (1789), with prefatory and supplementary notes, by E. G. Squier, p. 75, there is a description – extracted from an MS. of J. H. Payne (author of Home, Sweet Home) – of the similar ceremony observed by the Cherokees. I possess a copy of this work in pamphlet form, but it appears to be an extract from the transactions or proceedings of a society, probably an American one. Mr Squier’s preface is dated New York, 1851.

1. W. Bartram, Travels, p. 507.

2. So amongst the Cherokees, according to J. H. Payne, an arbour of green boughs was made in the sacred square; then ‘a beautiful bushy-topped shade-tree was cut down close to the roots, and planted in the very centre of the sacred square. Every man then provided himself with a green bough.’

3. So Adair. Bartram, on the other hand, as we have seen, says that the old vessels were burned and new ones prepared for the festival.

1. Β. Hawkins, ‘Sketch,’ etc., p. 76.

2. See Note on Offerings of first-fruits’ on page 671.

1. Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, bk.v.c. 24, vol. ii. pp. 356–360 (Hakluyt Society, 1880).

1. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, iii. 297–300 (after Torquemada); Clavigero, History of Mexico, trans, by Cullen; i. 309 sqq.; Sahagun, Histoire generate des choses de la Nouvelle-Espagne, traduite et annotee par Jourdanet et Siméon (Paris, 1880), p. 203 sq.; J. G. Müller, Geschichte der amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 605.

2. Clavigero, i. 311; Sahagun, pp. 74, 156 sq.; Müller, p. 606; Bancroft, iii. 316. This festival took place on the last day of the 16th month (which extended from 23rd December to 11th January). At another festival the Mexicans made the semblance of a bone out of paste and ate it sacramentally as the bone of the god. Sahagun, p. 33.

3. See above, p. 4 sq.

4. Festus, ed. Müller, pp. 128, 129, 145. The reading of the last passage is, however, uncertain (‘et Ariciae genus panni fieri; quod manici † appelletur’).

1. Varro, De ling. lat. ix. 61; Arnobius, Adv. nationes, iii. 41; Macrobius, Saturn, i. 7, 35; Festus, p. 128, ed. Müller. Festus speaks of the mother or grandmother of the larvae; the other writers speak of the mother of the lares.

2. Macrobius, l. c.; Festus, pp. 121, 239, ed. Müller. The effigies hung up for the slaves were called pilae, not maniae. Pilae was also the name given to the straw-men which were thrown to the bulls to gore in the arena. Martial, Epigr. ii. 43, 5 sq.; Asconius, In Cornel, p. 55, ed. Kiessling and Schoell.

3. The ancients were at least familiar with the practice of sacrificing images made of dough or other materials as substitutes for the animals themselves. It was a recognised principle that when an animal could not be easily obtained for sacrifice, it was lawful to offer an image of it made of bread or wax. Servius on Virgil, Aen. ii. 116. (Similarly a North-American Indian dreamed that a sacrifice of twenty elans was necessary for the recovery of a sick girl; but the elans could not be procured, and the girl’s parents were allowed to sacrifice twenty loaves instead. Relations des Jesuites, 1636, p. 11, ed. 1858). Poor people who could not afford to sacrifice real animals offered dough images of them. Suidas, s.v. βοῦς, ἕβδομος; cp. Hesychius, s. vv. βοῦς, ἑβδομος βοῦς. Hence bakers made a regular business of baking cakes in the likeness of all the animals which were sacrificed to the gods. Proculus, quoted and emended by Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 1079. When Cyzicus was besieged by Mithridates and the people could not procure a black cow to sacrifice at the rites of Proserpine, they made a cow of dough and placed it at the altar. Plutarch, Lucullus, 10. In a Boeotian sacrifice to Hercules, in place of the ram which was the proper victim, an apple was regularly substituted, four chips being stuck in it to represent legs and two to represent horns. Pollux, i. 30 sq. The Athenians are said to have once offered to Hercules a similar substitute for an ox. Zenobius, Cent.v. 22. And the Locrians, being at a loss for an ox to sacrifice, made one out of figs and sticks, and offered it instead of the animal. Zenobius, Cent.v. 5. At the Athenian festival of the Diasia cakes shaped like animals were sacrificed. Schol. on Thucydides, i. 126, quoted by Lobeck, l.c. We have seen above (p. 396) that the poorer Egyptians offered dough images of pigs and ate them sacramentally.

1. P. J. Veth, Borneo’s Wester Afdeeling, ii. 309.

2. N. Graafland, De Minahassa, i. 326.

1. Shway Yoe, The Burman, ii. 138.

2. James Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 133.

1. Alfred Simson, Travels in the Wilds of Ecuador (London, 1887), p. 168; id. in Journal of the Anthrop. Institute, vii. 503.

2. Theophilus Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, the Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi, p. 106. Compare John Buchanan, The Shire Highlands, p. 138; Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, p. 438 note.

3. Jerome Becker, La Vie en Afrique, (Paris and Brussels, 1887), ii. 366.

4. Callaway, Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus, p. 175 note.

5. Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 33.

6. St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East,2 i. 186, 206.

7. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, pp. 10, 262.

1. James Chalmers, Pioneering in New Guinea, p. 166.

2. Proceedings Royal Geogr, Society, N. S. viii. (1886) p. 307.

3. J. Henderson, ‘The Medicine and Medical Practice of the Chinese,’ Journ. North China Branch R. Asiatic Society, New Series, i. (Shanghai, 1865) p. 35 sq.

4. Müller on Saxo Grammaticus, vol. ii.p. 60.

5. Leared, Morocco and the Moors, p. 281.

6. Vambery, Das Türkenvolk, p. 218.

7. Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, vi. 8.

1. Felkin, ‘Notes on the For tribe of Central Africa,’ in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, xiii. (1884– 1886) p. 218.

2. W. Ridley, Kamilaroi, p. 160.

3. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, ii. 313.

4. Blumentritt, ‘Der Ahnencultus und die religiösen Anschauungen der Malaien des Philippinen-Archipels,’ in Mittheilungen d. Wiener Geogr. Gesellschaft, 1882, p. 154.

5. Magyar, Reisen in Süd-Afrika in den Jahren 1849–1857, pp. 273–276.

6. Casalis, The Basutos, p. 257 sq.

7. Callaway, Nursery Tales, Traditions and Histories of the Zulus, p. 163 note.

8. John Buchanan, The Shire Highlands, p. 138.

1. Journal of the North China Branch Royal Asiatic Society, l.c.

2. R. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants (London, 1870), p. 352. Cp. ib.p. 173; Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 358; J. Dumont D’Urville, Voyage autour du Monde sur la corvette Astrolabe, ii. 547; Journal of the Anthrop. Inst. xix. 108.

3. On the custom of eating a god, see also a paper by Felix Liebrecht ‘Der aufgegessene Gott,’ in Zur Volkskunde, pp. 436–439; and especially W. R. Smith, art. ‘Sacrifice,’ Encycl. Britann. 9th ed. vol. xxi, p. 137 sq. On wine as the blood of a god, see above, p. 157 sqq.

1. This does not refer to the Californian peninsula, which is an arid and treeless wilderness of rock and sand.

2. Boscana, in Alfred Robinson’s Life in California (New York, 1846), p. 291 sq.; Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, iii, 168.

1. Turner, Samoa, p. 21, cp. pp. 26, 61.

2. Herodotus, ii. 42. The custom has been already referred to, above, p. 404.

1. Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, i.§58. Cp. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, iii. 1 sqq. (ed. 1878).

2. Above, p. 402 sq.

3. Above, p. 363 sq.

1. The Italmens of Kamtchatka, at the close of the fishing season, used to make the figure of a wolf out of grass. This figure they carefully kept the whole year, believing that it wedded with their maidens and prevented them from giving birth to twins; for twins were esteemed a great misfortune. Steller, Beschreibung von dem Lande Kamtschatka, p. 327 sq. According to Hartknoch (Dissertat, histor. de variis rebus Prussicis, p. 163; Altpreussen, p. 161) the image of the old Prussian god Curcho was annually renewed. But see Mannhardt, Die Korndämonen, p. 27.

2. Above, p. 69.

3. T. J. Hutchinson, Impressions of Western Africa (London, 1858), p. 196 sq. The writer does not expressly state that a serpent is killed annually, but his statement implies it.

1. Revue d’Ethnographie, iii. 397.

2. Varro in Priscian, x. 32, vol.i.p. 524, ed. Keil; Pliny, Nat. Hist. vii. § 14. Pliny’s statement is to be corrected by Varro’s.

1. Mr Frank H. Cushing, ‘My Adventures in Zuñi,’ in The Century, May 1883, p. 45 sq.

2. Mr Cushing, indeed, while he admits that the ancestors of the Zuni may have believed in transmigration, says, ‘Their belief, today, however, relative to the future life is spiritualistic.’ But the expressions in the text seem to leave no room for doubting that the transmigration into turtles is a living article of Zuni faith.

1. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, iv. 86. On the totem clans of the Moquis, see J. G. Bourke, Snake-Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, pp. 116 sq., 334 sqq.

2. For this information I am indebted to the kindness of Captain J. G. Bourke, 3rd Cavalry, U. S. Army, author of the work mentioned in the preceding note.

3. The old Prussian and Japanese customs are typical. For the former, see above, p. 151. For the latter, Charlevoix, Histoire et Description generate du Japon, i. 128 sq. Thunberg, Voyages au Japon, etc. iv. 18 sqq. A general account of such customs must be reserved for another work.

1. B. Scheube, ‘Der Baerencultus und die Baerenfeste der Ainos,’ in Mittheilungen der deutschen Gesellschaft b. S. und S. Ostasiens (Yokama), Heft xxii.p. 45.

2. Transactions of the Ethnological Society, iv. 36.

3. Rein, Japan, i. 446.

4. H. von Siebold, Ethnologische Studien über die Ainos auf der Insel Yesso, p. 26.

5. Miss Bird, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (new ed. 1885), p. 275.

6. Trans. Ethnol. Soc.l.c.

7. Miss Bird, op. cit.p. 269.

8. Scheube, Die Ainos, p. 4.

9. Scheube, ‘Baerencultus,’ etc.p. 45; Joest, in Verhandlungen d. Berliner Gesell.f. Anthropologie, 1882, p. 188.

10. Trans. Ethnol. Soc. l.c.

11. Miss Bird, op. cit. p. 277.

1. Scheube, Die Ainos, p. 15; Siebold, op. cit.p. 26; Trans. Ethnol. Soc.l. c.; Rein, Japan, i. 447; Von Brandt, ‘The Ainos and Japanese,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. iii. 134; Miss Bird, op. cit. pp. 275, 276.

2. Scheube, Die Ainos, pp. 15, 16; Journ. Anthrop. Inst. iii. 134.

3. Scheube, Die Ainos, p. 16.

4. Reclus (Nouvelle Géographie Universelle, vii. 755) mentions a (Japanese?) legend which attributes the hairiness of the Ainos to the fact of their first ancestor having been suckled by a bear. But in the absence of other evidence this is no proof of totemism.

5. Rein, Japan, i. 447.

6. ‘Der Baerencultus,’ etc. See above.

1. Scheube, ‘Baerencultus,’ etc.p. 46; id., Die Ainos, p. 15; Miss Bird, op. cit.p. 273 sq.

1. Miss Bird, op. cit.p. 276 sq. Miss Bird’s information must be received with caution, as there are grounds for believing that her informant deceived her.

2. Siebold, Ethnolog. Studien über die Ainos, p. 26.

3. ‘Baerencultus,’ etc.p. 50 note.

4. They inhabit the banks of the lower Amoor and the north of Saghalien. E. G. Ravenstein, The Russians on the Amur, p. 389·

5. ‘Notes on the River Amur and the adjacent districts,’ translated from the Russian, Journal Royal Geogr. Soc. xxviii. (1858) p. 396.

1. Compare the custom of pinching the frog before cutting off his head, above p. 79. In Japan sorceresses bury a dog in the earth, tease him, then cut off his head and put it in a box to be used in magic. Bastian, Die Culturländer des alten Amerika, i. 475 note, who adds ‘wie im ostindischen Archipelago die Schutzseele gereizt wird.' He probably refers to the Batta Pang-hulu-balang. See Rosenberg, Der Malayische Archipel, p. 59 sq.; W. Ködding, ‘Die Batakschen Götter/ in Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift, xii. (1885) 478 sq.; Neumann, ‘Het Pane-en Bila-stroomgebied op het eiland Sumatra,’ in Tijdschrift v. h. Nederl. Aardrijks Genootsch. ii. series, dl. iii. Afdeeling: meer uitgebreide artikelen, No. 2, p. 306.

2. W. Joest, in Scheube, Die Ainos, p. 17; Revue d’Ethnographie, ii. 307 sq. (on the authority of Mr Seeland); Internationales Archiv für Ethnologie, i. 102 (on the authority of Captain Jacobsen). What exactly is meant by ‘dancing as bears’ ('tanzen beide Geschlechter Reigentänze, wie Bären,’ Joest, l. e.) does not appear.

1. Ravenstein, The Russians on the Amur, p. 379 sq.; Τ. W. Atkinson, Travels in the Regions of the Upper and Lower Amoor (London, 1860), p. 482 sq.

2. A Bushman, questioned by the Rev Mr Campbell, ‘could not state any difference between a man and a brute – he did not know but a buffalo might shoot with bows and arrows as well as a man, if it had them.’ John Campbell, Travels in South Africa, being a Narrative of a Second Journey in the Interior of that Country, ii. 34. When the Russians first landed on one of the Alaskan islands the people took them for cuttle-fish, ‘on account of the buttons on their clothes.’ Petroff, Alaska, p. 145.

1. Rev J. Perham, ‘Sea Dyak Religion,’ Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society; No. 10, p. 221. Cp. C. Hupe, ‘Korte verhandeling over de godsdienst zeden, enz. der Dajakkers,’ in Tijdschrift voor Neêrland’s Indië, 1846, dl. iii. 160; S. Müller, Reizen en onderzoekingen in den Indischen Archipel, i. 238; Perelaer, Ethnographische Beschrijving der Dayaks, p. 7.

1. Sibree, The Great African Island, p. 269.

2. Raffenel, Voyage dans l’Afrique Occidentale (Paris, 1846), p. 84 sq.

3. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, v. 65.

4· Marsden, History of Sumatra, p. 292.

1. Steller, Beschreibung von dem Lande Kamtschatka, pp. 280, 331.

2. Voyages au Nord (Amsterdam, 1727), viii. 41, 416; Pallas, Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des russischen Reichs, iii. 64; Georgi, Beschreibung aller Nationen des russischen Reichs,
p. 83.

3. Erman, Travels in Siberia, ii. 43. For the veneration of the polar bear by the Samoyedes, who nevertheless kill and eat it, see ib. 54 sq.

1. Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. 26.

2. Max Buch, Die Wotjäken, p. 139.

3. Scheffer, Lapponia (Frankfort, 1673), p. 233 sq. The Lapps ‘have still an elaborate ceremony in hunting the bear. They pray and chant to his carcase, and for several days worship before eating it.’ E. Rae, The White Sea Peninsula (London, 1881), p. 276.

4. Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, v. 173 sq.; Chateaubriand, Voyage en Amérique, pp. 172–181 (Paris, Michel Lévy, 870).

1. Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, vi. 171. Morgan states that the names of the Otawa totem clans had not been obtained (Ancient Society, p. 167). From the Lettres édifiantes; vi. 168– 171, he might have learned the names of the Hare, Carp, and Bear clans, to which may be added the Gull clan, as I learn from an extract from The Canadian Journal (Toronto) for March 1858, quoted in the Academy, 27th September 1884, p. 203.

2. A Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt, p. 117 (Middletown, 1820), p. 133 (Edinburgh, 1824).

3. Stephen Kay, Travels and Researches in Caffraria (London, 1833); p. 138.

4. Alberti, De Kaffers aan de Zuidkust van Afrika (Amsterdam, 1810), p. 95. Alberti’s information is repeated by Lichtenstein (Reisen im südlichen Afrika, i. 412), and by Rose (Four Years in Southern Africa, p. 155). The burial of the trunk is also mentioned by Kay, l.c.

1. Jerome Becker, La Vie en Afrique (Paris and Brussels, 1887), ii. 298 sq. 305.

2. Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, ii. 243.

3. Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, p. 352.

4. Mouhot, Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China, i. 252; Moura, Le Royaume du Cambodge, i. 422.

1. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, v. 420.

2. J. G. Gmelin, Reise durch Sibirien, ii. 278.

3. W. Dall; Alaska and its Resources, p. 89.

1. Relations des Jésuites, 1634, p. 24, ed. 1858. Nets are regarded by the Indians as living creatures who not only think and feel but also eat, speak, and marry wives. Sagard, Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons, p. 256 (p. 178 sq. of the Paris reprint, Librairie Tross, 1865); S. Hearne, Journey to the Northern Ocean, p. 329 sq.; Relations des Jésuites, 1636, p. 109; ib. 1639, p. 95; Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, v. 225; Chateaubriand, Voyage en Amérique, p. 140 sqq.

2. Chateaubriand, Voyage en Amérique, pp. 175, 178. They will not let the blood of beavers fall on the ground, or their luck in hunting them would be gone. Relations des Jésuites, 1633, p. 21. Compare the rule about not allowing the blood of kings to fall on the ground, above, p. 153 sqq.

1. Hennepin, Nouveau voyage d’un pais plus grand que l’Europe (Utrecht, 1698), p. 141 sq.; Relations des Jésuites, 1636, p. 109; Sagard, Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons, p. 255 (p. 178 of the Paris reprint). Not quite consistently the Canadian Indians used to kill every elan they could overtake in the chase, lest any should escape to warn their fellows (Sagard, l. c.)

2. Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, viii. 339.

3. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, iii. 230.

4. Relations des Jésuites, 1634, p. 26.

5. Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, v. 443.

1. Garcilasso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, First Part, bk.i. ch. 10, vol.p. 49 sq., Hakluyt Society. Cp. id., ii.p. 148.

2.  Relations des Jésuites, 1667, p. 12.

3. Sagard, Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons, p. 255 sqq. (p. 178 sqq. of the Paris reprint).

1. Schleiden, Das Salz, p. 47. For this reference I am indebted to my friend Prof W. Robertson Smith.

2. W. Powell, Wanderings in a Wild Country, p. 66 sq.

3. R. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui; or, New Zealand and its Inhabitants, p. 200; A. S. Thomson, The Story of New Zealand, i. 202; E. Tregear, ‘The Maoris of New Zealand,’ Journal Anthrop. Inst. xix. 109.

4. Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation,4 p. 277, quoting Metlahkatlah, p. 96.

5. W. Dall, Alaska and its Resources, p. 413.

1. Stephen Powers, Tribes of California, p. 31 sq.

2. Alex. Ross, Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River, p. 97.

3. Ch. Wilkes, Narrative of the U. S. Exploring Expedition, iv. 324; v. 119, where it is said, ‘a dog must never be permitted to eat the heart of a salmon; and in order to prevent this, they cut the heart of the fish out before they sell it.’

4. H. C. St John, ‘The Ainos,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. ii. 253; id. Notes and Sketches from the Wild Coasts of Nipon, p. 27 sq.

1. Scheffer, Lapponia, p. 242 sq.; Journ. Anthrop. Inst. vii. 207; Revue d’Ethnographie, ii. 308 sq.

2. James, Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, i. 257.

3. Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 278.

4. Keating, Expedition to the Source of St Peter’s River, i. 452.

1.  E. J. Jessen, De Finnorum Lapponumque Norwegicorum religione pagana tractatus singularis, pp. 46 sq., 52 sq., 65. The work of Jessen is bound up (paged separately) with the work of C. Leem, De Lapponibus Finmarchiae eorumque lingua, vita, et religione pristina commentatio (Latin and Danish), Copenhagen, 1767. Compare Leem’s work, pp. 418–420 (Latin), 428 sq., also Acerbi, Travels through Sweden, Finnland, and Lapland, ii. 302.

2. Steller, Beschreibung von dem Lande Kamtschatka, p. 269; Kraschennikow, Kamtschatka, p. 246.

3. See Erman, referred to above, p. 445 sq.; Gmelin, Reise durch Sibirien, i. 274, ii. 182 sq., 214; Vambery, Das Türkenvolk, p. 118 sq. When a fox, the sacred animal of the Conchucos in Peru, had been killed, its skin was stuffed and set up. Bastian, Die Culturländer des alten Amerika, i. 443. Cp. the bouphonia, above, p. 382 sq.

4. At the annual sacrifice of the White Dog, the Iroquois were careful to strangle the animal without shedding its blood or breaking its bones. The dog was afterwards burned. L. H. Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 210. It is a rule with some of the Australian blacks that in killing the native bear they must not break his bones. They say that the native bear once stole all the water of the river, and that if they were to break his bones or take off his skin before roasting him, he would do so again. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 447 sqq. When the Tartars whom Carpini visited killed animals for eating, they might not break their bones but burned them with fire, Carpini, Historia Mongalorum (Paris, 1838), cap. iii. § i, 2, p. 620. North American Indians might not break the bones of the animals which they ate at feasts. Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, vi. 72. In the war feast held by Indian warriors after leaving home, a whole animal was cooked and had to be all eaten. No bone of it might be broken. After being stripped of the flesh the bones were hung on a tree. Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner, p. 287. On St Olaf’s Day (29th July) the Karels of Finland kill a lamb, without using a knife, and roast it whole. None of its bones may be broken. The lamb has not been shorn since spring. Some of the flesh is placed in a corner of the room for the house-spirits, some is deposited on the field and beside the birch-trees which are destined to be used as May-trees next year. W. Mannhardt, A. W. F. p. 160 sq. note. The Innuit (Esquimaux) of Point Barrow, Alaska, carefully preserve unbroken the bones of the seals which they have caught and return them to the sea, either leaving them in an ice-crack far out from the land or dropping them through a hole in the ice. By doing so they think they secure good fortune in the pursuit of seals. Report of the International Expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska (Washington, 1885), p. 40. In this last custom the idea probably is that the bones will be reclothed with flesh and the seals come to life again. The Mosquito Indians of Central America carefully preserved the bones of deer and the shells of eggs, lest the deer or chickens should die or disappear. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 741. The Yurucares of Bolivia ‘carefully put by even small fish bones, saying that unless this is done the fish and game will disappear from the country.’ Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 278.

1. Relations des Jésuites, 1634, p. 25, ed. 1858; A. Mackenzie, Voyages through the Continent of America, civ; J. Dunn, History of the Oregon Territory, p. 99; Whymper in Journ. Royal Geogr. Soc. xxxviii. (1868) p. 228; id. in Transact. Ethnolog. Soc. vii. 174; A. P. Reid, ‘Religious Belief of the Ojibois Indians,’ in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. iii. 111. After a meal the Indians of Costa Rica gather all the bones carefully and either burn them or put them out of reach of the dogs. W. M. Gabb, On the Indian Tubes and Languages of Costa Rica (read before the American Philosophical Society, 20th Aug. 1875), p. 520 (Philadelphia, 1875). The fact that the bones are often burned to prevent the dogs getting them does not contradict the view suggested in the text. It may be a way of transmitting the bones to the spirit-land. The aborigines of Australia burn the bones of the animals which they eat, but for a different reason; they think that if an enemy got hold of the bones and burned them with charms, it would cause the death of the person who had eaten the animal. Native Tribes of South Australia, pp. 24, 196.

1. Mannhardt, Germanische Mythen, pp. 57–74; id., Β. Κ.
p. 116; Cosquin, Contes populaires de Lorraine, ii. 25; Hartland, ‘The physicians of Myddfai,’ Archaeological Review, i. 30 sq. In folk-tales, as in primitive custom, the blood is sometimes not allowed to fall on the ground. See Cosquin, l.c.

2. W. Mannbardt, Germ. Myth.p. 66.

3. Jamblichus, Vita Pythag. §§ 92, 135, 140; Porphyry, Vit. Pythag. § 28.

4. Pindar, Olymp, i. 37 sqq., with the Scholiast.

1. Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 18. This is one of the sacred stories which the pious Herodotus (ii. 48) concealed and the pious Plutarch divulged.

2. Adam Hodgson, Letters from North America, i. 244.

3. Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 137 sq.

1. Petitot, Monographie des Dènè-Dindjie (Paris, 1867), pp. 77, 81 sq.; id., Traditions indiennes du Canada Nord-ouest (Paris, 1886), p. 132 sqq., cp. pp. 41, 76, 213, 264.

1. The first part of this suggestion is that of my friend Prof. W. Robertson Smith. See his Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, first series, p. 360; note 2. The Faleshas, a Jewish sect of Abyssinia, after killing an animal for food, ‘carefully remove the vein from the thighs with its surrounding flesh.’ Halévy, ‘Travels in Abyssinia,’ in Publications of the Society of Hebrew Literature, second series, vol. ii.p. 220.

2. It seems to be a common custom with hunters to cut out the tongues of the animals which they kill. Omaha hunters remove the tongue of a slain buffalo through an opening made in the animal’s throat. The tongues thus removed are sacred and may not touch any tool or metal except when they are boiling in the kettles at the sacred tent. They are eaten as sacred food. Third Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington), p. 289 sq. Indian bear-hunters cut out what they call the bear’s little tongue (a fleshy mass under the real tongue) and keep it for good luck in hunting or burn it to determine from its crackling, etc., whether the soul of the slain bear is angry with them or not. Kohl, Kitschi-Gami, ii. 251 sq.; Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, v. 173; Chateaubriand, Voyage en Amérique, pp. 179 sq., 184. In folk-tales the hero commonly cuts out the tongue of the wild beast which he has slain and preserves it as a token. The incident serves to show that the custom was a common one, since folk-tales reflect with accuracy the customs and beliefs of a primitive age. For examples of the incident, see Blade, Contes populaires recueillis en Agenais, pp. 12, 14; Dasent, Tales from the Norse, p. 133 sq. (‘Shortshanks’); Schleicher, Litauische Märchen, p. 58; Sepp, Altbayerischer Sagenschatz, p. 114; Köhler on Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Märchen, ii. 230; Apollodorus, iii. 13, 3; Mannhardt, A. W. F. p. 53; Poestion, Lappländische Märchen, p. 231 sq. It may be suggested that the cutting out of the tongues is a precaution to prevent the slain animals from telling their fate to the live animals and thus frightening away the latter. At least this explanation harmonises with the primitive modes of thought revealed in the foregoing customs.

1. Holzmayer, Osiliana, p. 105 note.

1. Heinrich, Agrarische Sitten und Gebräuche unter den Sachsen Siebenbürgens, p. 15 sq.

2. E. Krause, ‘Aberglaubische Kuren und sonstiger Aberglaube in Berlin,’ Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xv. (1883) P· 93·

3. Geoponica, xiii. 5. According to the commentator, the field assigned to the mice is a neighbour’s, but it may be a patch of waste ground on the farmer’s own land.

1. R. van Eck, ‘Schetsen van het eiland Bali,’ in Tijdschrijt voor Nederlandsch Indië, N. S. viii. (1879) p. 125.

2. Grohmann, Aberglauben und Gebräuche aus Böhmen und Mähren, § 405.

3. Lagarde, Reliquiae juris ecclesiastici antiquissimae, p. 135. For this passage I am indebted to my friend Prof. W. Robertson Smith, who kindly translated it for me from the Syriac.

4. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 255.

1. Compare Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 280, with the customs referred to in the following note.

2. Catlin, O-Kee-pa, Folium reservatum; Lewis and Clarke, Travels to the Source of the Missouri River (London, 1815), i. 205 sq.

1. A. Bastian, in Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie, und Urgeschichte, 1870–71, p. 59. Reinegg (Beschreibung des Kaukasus, ii. 12 sq.) describes what seems to be a sacrament of the Abghazses (Abchases). It takes place in the middle of autumn. A white ox called Ogginn appears from a holy cave, which is also called Ogginn. It is caught and led about amongst the assembled men (women are excluded) amid joyful cries. Then it is killed and eaten. Any man who did not get at least a scrap of the sacred flesh would deem himself most unfortunate. The bones are then carefully collected, burned in a great hole, and the ashes buried there.

1. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, vi. 632 note. On the Kalmucks as a people of shepherds and on their diet of mutton, see Georgi, Beschreibung aller Nationen des russischen Reichs, p. 406 sq., cp. 207; B. Bergmann, Nomadische Streifereien unter den Kalmücken, ii. 80 sqq., 122; Pallas, Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des russischen Reichs, i. 319, 325. According to Pallas, it is only rich Kalmucks who commonly kill their sheep or cattle for eating; ordinary Kalmucks do not usually kill them except in case of necessity or at great merry-makings. It is, therefore, especially the rich who need to make expiation.

2. W. E. Marshall, Travels amongst the Todas, p. 129 sq. On the Todas, see also above, p. 36.

3. Marshall, op. cit. pp. So sq. 130.

1. R. W. Felkin, ‘Notes on the Madi or Moru tribe of Central Africa,’ Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, xii. (1882–84) p. 336 sq.4

2. The fact that the flesh of sheep appears to be now eaten by the tribe as a regular article of food (Felkin, op. cit.p. 307), is not inconsistent with the original sanctity of the sheep.

1. See W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, i.p. 325 sq.

1. Panjab Notes and Queries, ii. No. 555.

2. See Brand, Popular Antiquities, iii. 195 sq., Bohn’s ed.; Swainson, Folklore of British Birds, p. 36; E. Rolland, Fanne populaire de la France, ii. 288 sqq. The names for it are βασιλισκος, regulus, rex avium (Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 90; x. 203), re di siepe, reyezuelo roitelet, rot des oiseaux, Zaunkönig, etc.

3. Brand, Popular Antiquities, iii. 194.

4. Chambers, Popular Rhymes of Scotland, p. 188.

1. Chambers, Popular Rhymes of Scotland, p. 186.

2. P. Sébillot, Traditions et Superstitions de la Haute Bretagne, ii. 214.

3. Rolland, op. cit. ii. 294 sq.; Sébillot, l. c.; Swainson, op. cit. p. 42.

1. G. Waldron, Description of the Isle of Man (reprinted for the Manx Society, Douglas, 1865), p. 49 sqq.; J. Train, Account of the Isle of Man, ii. 124 sqq. 141.

2. Brand, Popular Antiquities, iii. 195; Swainson, Folklore of British Birds, p. 36 sq.; Rolland, Faune populaire de la France, ii. 297; Professor W. Ridgeway in Academy, 10th May 1884, p. 332; Dyer, British Popular Customs, p. 497.

3. Henderson, Folklore of the Northern Counties, p. 125.

1. Swainson, op. cit. p. 40 sq.

2. Rolland, op. cit. ii. 295 sq.; J. W. Wolf, Beiträge sur deutschen Mythologie, ii. 437 sq.

1. Rolland, op. cit. ii. 296 sq.

2. Brand’s Popular Antiquities, iii. 198. The ‘hunting of the wren’ may be compared with a Swedish custom. On the 1st of May children rob the magpies’ nests of both eggs and young. These they carry in a basket from house to house in the village and show them to the housewives, while one of the children sings some doggerel lines containing a threat that, if a present is not given, the hens, chickens, and eggs will fall a prey to the magpie. They receive bacon, eggs, milk, etc., upon which they afterwards feast. L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden, p. 237 sq. The resemblance of such customs to the ‘swallow song’ and ‘crow song’ of the ancient Greeks (on which see Athenaeus, pp. 359, 360) is obvious and has been remarked before now. Probably the Greek swallow-singers and crow-singers carried about dead swallows and crows or effigies of them. In modern Greece it is said to be still customary for children on 1st March to go about the streets singing spring songs and carrying a wooden swallow, which is kept turning on a cylinder. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 636.

1. John Ramsay, Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 438 sq.; cp. Chambers, Popular Rhymes of Scotland, p. 166 sq.; Samuel Johnson, Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, p. 228 sq. (first American edition, 1810). The custom is clearly referred to in the ‘Penitential of Theodore,’ quoted by Kemble, Saxons in England, i. 525; Elton, Origins of English History, p. 411; ‘Si quis in Kal. Januar, in cervulo vel vitula vadit, id est in ferarum habitus se communicant, et vestiuntur pellibus pecudum et assumunt capita bestiarum, etc.

2. Chambers, l.c.

1. Such are the Bohemian processions at the Carnival when a man called the Shrovetide Bear, swathed from head to foot in peas-straw and sometimes wearing a bear’s mask, is led from house to house. He dances with the women of the house, and collects money and food. Then they go to the ale-house, where all the peasants assemble with their wives. For at the Carnival, especially on Shrove Tuesday, it is necessary that every one should dance, if the flax, the corn, and the vegetables are to grow well. The higher they leap the better will be the crops. Sometimes the women pull out some of the straw in which the Shrovetide Bear is swathed, and put it in the nests of the geese and fowls, believing that this will make them lay well. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest.-Kalender aus Böhmen, pp. 49–52. On similar customs, see W. Mannhardt, A. W. F. pp. 183–200.

1. J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, pp. 266 sq., 305, 357 sq.; cp. id. pp. 141, 340.

1. J. Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 59.

2. Dapper, Description de l’Afrique, p. 117.

3. John Campbell, Travels in South Africa (second journey), ii. 207 sq.

4. Ellis, History of Madagascar, i. 422 sq.; cp. id. pp. 232, 435, 436 sq.; Sibree, The Great African Island, p. 303 sq.

1. Ellis, op. cit.i. 374; Sibree, op. cit.p. 304; Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar Magazine, iii. 263.

2. Ködding, ‘Die Batakschen Götter,’ Allgemeine Missions- Zeitschrift, xii, (1885) 478.

3. Leviticus xiv. 7, 53. For a similar use in Arabia see Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentumes, p. 156; W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, i. 402.

4. R. Andree, Ethnographische Parallele und Vergleiche, p. 29 sq.

5. A. Leared, Morocco and the Moors, p. 301.

6. J. Perham, ‘Sea Dyak Religion,’ in Journ. Straits Branch Royal Asiatic Soc. No. 10, p. 232.

1. S. Mateer, Native Life in Travancore, p. 136.

2. H. Harkness. Singular Aboriginal Race of the Neilgherry Hills, p. 133; Metz, The Tribes Inhabiting the Neilgherry Hills, p. 78; Jagor, ‘Ueber die Badagas im Nilgiri-Gebirge,’ Verhandl.d. Berlin. Gesell.f. Anthropol. (1876), p. 196 sq. For the custom of letting a bullock go loose after a death, compare also Grierson, Bihar Peasant Life, p. 409; Ibbetson, Settlement Report of the Panipat, Tahsil, and Karnal Parganah of the Karnal district (Allahabad, 1883) p. 137. In the latter case it is said that the animal is let loose ‘to become a pest.’ Perhaps the older idea was that the animal carried away death from the survivors. The idea of sin is not primitive.

3. Geoponica, xiii. 9, xv. 1: Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxviii. § 155. The authorities for these cures are respectively Apuleius and Democritus. The latter is probably not the atomic philosopher. See Archaeological Review, i. 180, note.

1. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxviii. § 86.

2. Plato, Laws, xi.c. 12, p. 933 n.

3. Ch. Rogers, Social Life in Scotland, iii. 226.

4. G. Lammert, Volkmedizin und medizinischer Aberglaube in Bayern, p. 264.

5. Ib.p. 263.

6. Strackerjan, Aberglaube und Sagen aus dem Herzogthum Oldenburg, i. § 85.

7. Carl Meyer, Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters, p. 104.

8. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 4 ii. 979.

1. Henderson, Folklore of the Northern Counties, p. 143. Collections of cures by transference will be found in Strackerjan’s work, cited above, i. § 85 sqq.; W. G. Black, Folk-medicine, ch. ii. Cp. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii.c. 36.

2. Blackwood’s Magazine, February 1886, p. 239.

3. Aubrey, Remains of Gentilisme and Judaisme (Folklore Society, 1881), p. 35 sq.

1. Bagford’s letter in Leland’s Collectanea, i. 76, quoted by Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 246 sq., Bohn’s ed.

2. In the Academy, 13th Nov. 1875, p. 505, Mr D. Silvan Evans stated that he knew of no such custom anywhere in Wales: and Miss Burne knows no example of it in Shropshire. Burne and Jackson, Shropshire Folklore, p. 307 sq.

3. The authority for the statement is a Mr Moggridge, reported in Archaeologia Cambrensis, second series, iii. 330. But Mr Moggridge did not speak from personal knowledge, and as he appears to have taken it for granted that the practice of placing bread and salt upon the breast of a corpse was a survival of the custom of ‘sin-eating,’ his evidence must be received with caution. He repeated his statement, in somewhat vaguer terms, at a meeting of the Anthropological Institute, 14th December 1875. See Journ. Anthrop. Inst.v. 423 sq.

4. Dubois, Moeurs des Peuples de l’Inde, ii. 32.

1. R. Richardson, in Panjab Notes and Queries, i. No. 674.

2. Panjab Notes and Queries, i. No. 674; ii. No. 559. Some of these customs have been already referred to in a different connection. See above, p. 199.

3. Op. cit. iii. No. 745.

4. E. Schuyler, Turkistan, ii. 28.

1. E. F. im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, p. 356 sq.

2. Paul Reina, ‘Ueber die Bewohner der Insel Rook,’ Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde, N. F. iv. 356.

1. R. Parkinson, Im Bismarck-Archipel, p. 142.

2. [P. N. Wilken], ‘De godsdienst en godsdienstplegtigheden der Alfoeren in de Menahassa op het eiland Celebes,’ Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indië, December 1849, pp. 392–394; id., ‘Bijdragen tot de kennis van de zeden en gewoonten der Alfoeren, in de Minahassa,’ Mededeelingen v. w. het Nederland. Zendelinggenootsch. vii. (1863) 149 sqq.; J. G. F. Riedel, ‘De Minahasa in 1825,’ Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land-en Volkenkunde, xviii. (1872), 521 sq. Wilken’s first and fuller account is reprinted in Graafland’s De Minahassa, i. 117–120.

1. Riedel, ‘Galela und Tobeloresen,’ in Zeitschrift f. Ethnologie, xvii. (1885) 82; G. A. Wilken, Het Shamanisme bij de Volken van de Indischen Archipel, p. 58.

2. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 239.

1. Nieuwenhuisen en Rosenberg, Verslag omtrent het eiland Nias, p. 116 sq.; Rosenberg, Der Malayische Archipel, p. 174 sq. Cp. Chatelin, ‘Godsdienst en Bijgeloof der Niassers,’ Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-Land-en Volkenkunde, xxvi. 139. The Dyaks also drive the devil at the point of the sword from a house where there is sickness. See Hupe, ‘Korte verhandeling over de godsdienst, zeden, enz. der Dajakkers’ in Tijdschrift voor Neêrland’s Indië, viii. (1846) dl. iii.p. 149.

2. Forbes, British Burma, p. 223; Shway Yoe, The Burman, i. 282, ii. 105 sqq.; Baslian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, ii. 98.

3. Lewin, Wild Tubes of South-Eastern India, p. 226.

4. Hecquard, Reise an die Küste und in das Innere von West Afrika, p. 43.

1. Sagard, Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons, p. 279 sqq. (195 sq. of the Paris reprint). Compare Relations des Jésuites, 1639, pp. 88–92 (Canadian reprint), from which it appears that each man demanded the subject of his dream in the form of a riddle, which the hearers tried to solve. The propounding of riddles is not uncommon as a superstitious observance. Probably enigmas were originally a kind of divination. Cp. Vambery, Das Türkenvolk, p. 232 sq.; Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen, etc.p. 267 sq. In Bolang Mongondo (Celebes) riddles may never be asked except when there is a corpse in the village. N. P. Wilken en J. A. Schwarz, ‘Allerlei over het land en volk van Bolaäng Mongondou,’ Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsch. Zendelinggenootschap, xi. (1867) p. 357.

1. The Rev W. Ridley, in J. D. Lang’s Queensland, p. 441; cp. Ridley. Kamilaroi, p. 149.

1. Report of the International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska (Washington, 1885), p. 42 sq.

2. Franz Boas, ‘The Eskimo,’ Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada for 1887, vol.v. (Montreal, 1888), sect. ii. 36 sq.

1. Above, p. 490.

2. Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, vi. 82 sqq.; Timothy Dwight, Travels in New England and New York, iv. 201 sq.; L. H. Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 207 sqq.; Mrs E. A. Smith, ‘Myths of the Iroquois,’ Second Annual Report of the Burean of Ethnology (Washington, 1883), p. 112 sqq.; Horatio Hale, ‘Iroquois sacrifice of the White Dog,’ American Antiquarian, vii. 7 sqq.; W. M. Beauchamp, ‘Iroquois White Dog feast,’ ib.p. 235 sqq.

1. Squier’s notes upon Bartram’s Creek and Cherokee Indians, p. 78, from the MS of Mr Payne. See above, p. 414 note.

1. Garcilasso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Yucas, pt.i. bk. vii. ch. 6, vol. ii.p. 228 sqq., Markham’s translation; Molina, Tables and Rites of the Yncas, ‘in Rites and Laws of the Yucas (Hakluyt Society, 1873), P· 20 sqq.; Acosta, History of the Indies, bk.v. ch. 28, vol. ii.p. 375 sq. (Hakluyt Society, 1880). The accounts of Garcilasso and Molina are somewhat discrepant, but this may be explained by the statement of the latter that ’in one year they added, and in another they reduced the number of ceremonies, according to circumstances.’ Molina places the festival in August, Garcilasso and Acosta in September. According to Garcilasso there were only four runners in Cuzco; according to Molina there were four hundred. Acosta’s account is very brief. In the description given in the text features have been borrowed from all three accounts, where these seemed consistent with each other.

1. Bosman’s ‘Guinea,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, xvi. 402. Cp. Pierre Bouche, La Côte des Esclaves, p. 395.

2. S. Crowther and J. C. Taylor, The Gospel on the Banks of the Niger, p 320.

3. Mansfield Parkyns, Life in Abyssinia, p. 285 sqq.

1. Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 196 sq.

1. Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, p. 103.

2. W. Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 357 sq. Possibly this case belongs more strictly to the class of mediate expulsions, the devils being driven out upon the car. Perhaps, however, the car with its contents is regarded rather as a bribe to induce them to go than as a vehicle in which they are actually carted away. Anyhow it is convenient to take this case along with those other expulsions of demons which are the accompaniment of an agricultural festival.

1. R. van Eck, ‘Schetsen van het eiland Bali,’ Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indië, N. S. viii. (1879) 58–60. Van Eck’s account is reprinted in J. Jacobs’s Eenigen tijd onder de Baliërs (Batavia, 1883), p. 190 sqq.

2. U. S. Exploring Expedition, Ethnography and Philology, by H. Hale, p. 67 sq.; Ch. Wilkes, Narrative of the U. S. Exploring Expedition, iii. 90 sq. According to the latter, the sea-slug was eaten by the men alone, who lived during the four days in the temple, while the women and boys remained shut up in their houses.

3. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, v. 367.

1. Panjab Notes and Queries, ii. No. 792; D. C. J. Ibbetson, Outlines of Panjab Ethnography, p. 119.

1. Baron, ‘Description of the Kingdom of Tonqueen,’ Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, ix. 673, 695 sq.; cp. Richard, ‘History of Tonquin,’ ib.p. 746. The account of the ceremony by Tavernier (whom Baron criticises very unfavourably) is somewhat different. According to him the expulsion of wicked souls at the New Year is combined with sacrifice to the honoured dead. See Harris, Voyages and Travels, i. 823.

2. Aymonier, Notice sur le Cambodge, p. 62.

3. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, iii. 237, 298, 314, 529 sq.; Pallegoix, Royaume Thai ou Siam, i. 252. Bastian (p. 314), with whom Pallegoix seems to agree, distinctly states that the expulsion takes place on the last day of the year. Yet both state that it occurs in the fourth month of the year. According to Pallegoix (i. 253) the Siamese year is composed of twelve lunar months, and the first month usually begins in December. Hence the expulsion of devils would commonly take place in March, as in Cambodia.

1. J. Anderson, Mandalay to Momien, p. 308.

1. Max Buch, Die Wotjäken, p. 153 sq.

2. Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, ii. 94.

3. J. G. von Hahn, Albanesische Studien, i. 160. Cp. above, p. 235.

1. Vincenzo Dorsa, La tradizione greco-latina negli usi e nelle credenze popolari della Calabria Citeriore, p. 42 sq.

2. Von Alpenburg, Mythen und Sagen Tirols, p. 260 sq. A Westphalian form of the expulsion of evil is the driving out the Süntevögel, Sunnenvögel, or Sommervögel, i. e., the butterfly. On St Peter’s Day, 22nd February, children go from house to house knocking on them with hammers and singing doggerel rhymes in which they bid the Sommervögel to depart. Presents are given to them at every house. Or the people of the house themselves go through all the rooms, knocking on all the doors, to drive away the Sunnenvögel. If this ceremony is omitted, it is thought that various misfortunes will be the consequence. The house will swarm with rats, mice, and other vermin, the cattle will be sick, the butterflies will multiply at the milk-bowls, etc. Woeste, Volksüberlieferungen in der Grafschaft Mark, p. 24; J. W. Wolf, Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie, i. 87; Α. Kuhn, Westfälische Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen, ii. §§ 366–374; Montanus, Die deutschen Volksfeste, Volksbräuche, etc., p. 21 sq.; Jahn, Die deutschen Opfergebräuche bei Ackerbau und Viehzucht, pp. 94–96.

1. Usener, ‘Italische Mythen,’ in Rheinisches Museum, N. F. xxx. 198.

1. S. Powers, Tribes of California, p. 159.

2. G. Catlin, North American Indians, i. 166 sqq.; id., O-kee-pa, a Religious Ceremony, and other Customs of the Mandans.

3. Moura, Le Royaume du Cambodge, i. 172. Cp. above, p. 503.

4. A. Bastian, in Verhandl.d. Berlin. Gesellsch.f. Anthropol. 1881, p. 151; cp. id., Völkerstämme am Brahmaputra, p. 6 sq. Amongst the Chukmas of South-east India the body of a priest is conveyed to the place of cremation on a car; ropes are attached to the car, the people divide themselves into two equal bodies and pull at the ropes in opposite directions. One side represents the good spirits; the other, the powers of evil. The contest is so arranged that the former are victorious. Sometimes, however, the young men representing the demons are inclined to pull too vigorously, but a stick generally quells this unseemly ardour in the cause of evil. ‘Lewin, Wild Tubes of South-Eastern India, p. 185. The contest is like that between the angels and devils depicted in the frescoes of the Campo Santo at Pisa. In Burma a similar contest takes place at the funeral of a holy man; but there the original meaning of the ceremony appears to be forgotten. See Sangermano, Description of the Burmese Empire (ed. 1885), p. 98; Forbes, British Burma, p. 216 sq.; Shway Yoe, The Burman, ii. 334 sq., 342. Sometimes ceremonies of this sort are instituted for a different purpose. In some East Indian islands when the people want a rainy wind from the west, the population of the village, men, women, and children, divide into two parties and pull against each other at the ends of a long bamboo. But the party at the eastern end must pull the harder, in order to draw the desired wind out of the west. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 282. The Cingalese perform a ceremony like Trench and English’ in honour of the goddess Patiné. Forbes, Eleven Years in Ceylon (London, 1840), i. 358.

1. Folklore Journal, vii. 174.

1. François Valentyn, Oud-en nieuw Ost-Indiën, iii. 14. Backer, L’Archipel Archipel Indien, p. 377 sq., copies from Valentyn.

1. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 304 sq.

2. Ib. p. 25 sq.

3. Ib. p. 141.

4. Ib. p. 78.

1. Riedel, op. cit.p. 357.

2. Ib. pp. 266, 304 sq., 327, 357. For other examples of sending away disease-laden boats in these islands, ib. pp. 181, 210; Van Eck, ‘Schetsen van het eiland Bali,’ Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indië, N. S. viii. (1879) p. 104; Bastian, Indonesien, i. 147; Hupe, ‘Korte verhandeling over de godsdienst, zeden, enz. der Dajakkers,’ Tijdschrift voor Neêrland’s Indië, 1846, dl. iii. 150; Campen, ‘De godsdienst, begrippen der Halmaherasche Alfoeren,’ Tijdschrift voor Indische Τaal-Land-en Volkenkunde, xxvii. (1882) p. 441; Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. 12, pp. 229–231; Van Hasselt, Volksbeschrijving van Midden-Sumatra, p. 98.

3. J. Dumont D’Urville, Voyage autour du monde et a la recherche de La Pérouse, sur la corvette Astrolabe, v. 311.

1. Roepstorff, ‘Ein Geisterboot der Nicobaresen,’ Verhandl. der Berlin. Gesellsch.f. Anthropologie (1881), p. 401. For Siamese applications of the same principle to the cure of individuals, see Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, iii. 295 sq., 485 sq.

2. Panjab Notes and Queries, i. No. 418.

3. Id. iii. No. 373.

1. Panjab Notes and Queries, ii. No. 1127.

2. Id. ii. No. 1123.

3. F. Fawcett, On the Saoras (or Savaras),’ Journ. Anthrop. Soc. Bombay, i, 213 note.

4. Journ. Authrop. Soc. Bombay, i. 37.

5. R. Andree, Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleiche (first series), p. 30.

1. J. H. Gray, China, ii. 306.

2. Panjab Notes and Queries, i. 598.

3. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 393·

4. Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, ii. 93.

5. Id. ii. 91.

1. Asiatic Researches, ix. 96 sq.

2. J. H. Gray, China, ii. 306 sq.

3. T. J. Hutchinson, Impressions of Western Africa, p. 162.

1. Bogle and Manning, Tibet, edited by C. R. Markham, p. 106 sq.

2. Ε. Τ. Atkinson, ‘Notes on the History of Religion in the Himalaya of the North-West Provinces,’ Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, liii. pt.i. (1884), p. 62.

3. Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, from the MSS of John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, edited by Alex. Allardyce (Edinburgh, 1888), ii. 439.

4. W. M. Beauchamp, ‘The Iroquois White Dog Feast,’ American Antiquarian, vii. 237.

1. Ib.p. 236; T. Dwight, Travels in New England and New York, iv. 202.

2. Above, p. 492 sq.

3. Leviticus xvi. Modern Jews sacrifice a white cock on the eve of the Festival of Expiation, nine days after the beginning of their New Year. The father of the family knocks the cock thrice against his own head, saying, ‘Let this cock be a substitute for me, let it take my place, let death be laid upon this cock, but a happy life bestowed on me and on all Israel.’ Then he cuts its throat and dashes the bird violently on the ground. The intestines are thrown on the roof of the house. The flesh of the cock was formerly given to the poor. Buxtorf, Synagoga Judaica, c. xxv.

1. S. Crowther and J. C. Taylor, The Gospel on the Banks of the Niger, pp. 343–345. Cp. J. F. Schön and S. Crowther, Journals, p. 48 sq. The account of the custom by J. Africanus B. Horton (West African Countries and Peoples p. 185 sq.) is entirely from Taylor.

2. Turpin, ‘History of Siam,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, ix. 579.

3. Ködding, ‘Die Bataksche Götter,’ Allgemeine Missions- Zeitschrift, xii. (1885) pp. 476, 478.

1. The ceremony referred to is probably the one performed on the tenth day, as described in the text.

1. ‘Report of a Route Survey by Pundit – from Nepal to Lhasa,’ etc., Journal Royal Geogr. Soc. xxxviii. (1868) pp. 167, 170 sq.; Tour Years’ Journeying through Great Tibet, by one of the Trans-Himalayan Explorers,’ Proceed. Royal Geogr. Soc. N. S. vii. (1885) p. 67 sq.

2. Aeneas Sylvius, Opera (Bâle, 1571), p. 423 sq.

3. Usener, ‘Italische Mythen,’ Rheinisches Museum, Ν. F. xxx. 198.

1. J. Thomas Phillips, Account of the Religion, Manners, and Learning of the People of Malabar, pp. 6, 12 sq.

2. Herodotus, ii. 39.

3. Herodotus, ii. 38–41; Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, iii. 403 sqq. (ed. 1878).

4. Herodotus, l.c.

1. See above, pp. 431 sqq., 468 sq.

2. Panjab Notes and Queries, ii. No. 335.

3. Strabo, xi. 4, 7. For the custom of standing upon a sacrificed victim, cp. Demosthenes, p. 642; Pausanias, iii. 20, 9.

1. In the Dassera festival, as celebrated in Nepaul, we seem to have another instance of the annual expulsion of demons preceded by a time of licence. The festival occurs at the beginning of October and lasts ten days, during its continuance there is a general holiday among all classes of the people. The city of Kathmandu at this time is required to be purified, but the purification is effected rather by prayer than by water-cleansing. All the courts of law are closed, and all prisoners in jail are removed from the precincts of the city… The Kalendar is cleared, or there is a jail-delivery always at the Dassera of all prisoners. ‘This seems a trace of a period of licence. At this time ’it is a general custom for masters to make an annual present, either of money, clothes, buffaloes, goats, etc., to such servants as have given satisfaction during the past year. It is in this respect, as well as in the feasting and drinking which goes on, something like our “boxing-time” at Christmas.’ On the seventh day at sunset there is a parade of all the troops in the capital, including the artillery. At a given signal the regiments commence firing, the artillery takes it up, and a general firing goes on for about twenty minutes, when it suddenly ceases. This probably represents the expulsion of the demons. ‘The grand cutting of the rice-crops is always postponed till the Dassera is over, and commences all over the valley the very day afterwards.’ See the description of the festival in Oldfield’s Sketches from Nipal, ii. 342–351. On the Dassera in India, see Dubois, Moeurs, Institutions et Ceremonies des Peuples de l’Inde, ii. 329 sqq. Amongst the Wasuahili of East Africa New Year’s Day was formerly a day of general licence, ‘every man did as he pleased. Old quarrels were settled, men were found dead on the following day, and no inquiry was instituted about the matter.’ Ch. New, Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa, p. 65. In Ashantee the annual festival of the new yams is a time of general licence. See the Note on Offerings of first fruits’, p. 671.

1. See above, p. 234 sq.

1. Above, pp. 510 sq., 515.

2. Η. Usener, ‘Italische Mythen,’ Rheinisches Museum, Ν. F. (1875) xxx. 194.

3. Joannes Lydus, De mensibus, iii. 29, iv. 36. Lydus places the expulsion on the ides of March, that is 15th March. But this seems to be a mistake. See Usener, ‘Italische Mythen,’ Rheinisches Museum, xxx. 209 sqq. Again, Lydus does not expressly say that Mamurius Veturius was driven out of the city, but he implies it by mentioning the legend that his mythical prototype was beaten with rods and expelled the city. Lastly, Lydus only mentions the name Mamurius. But the full name Mamurius Veturius is preserved by Varro, Ling. Lat. vi. 45; Festus, ed. Müller, p. 131; Plutarch, Numa, 13.

1. Usener, op. cit.p. 212 sq.; Rosscher, Apollon und Mars, p. 27; Preller, Römische Mythologie,3 i. 360 Vaniček, Griechisch-Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, p. 715. The three latter scholars take Veturius as = annuus, because vetus is etymologically equivalent to ἔτος. But, as Usener argues, it seems quite unallowable to take the Greek meaning of the word instead of the Latin.

2. Cato, De agri cult. 141.

3. Varro, De lingua latina, v. 85.

4. See the song of the Arval Brothers in Acta Fratrum Arvalium, ed. Henren, p. 26 sq.; Wordsworth, Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin, p. 158.

5. Above, p. 405.

6. Cato, De agri cult. 83.

7. Above, p. 60 sqq.p. 89 sq.

1. Preller, Römische Mythologie,3 i. 360; Rosscher, Apollon und Mars, p. 49; Usener, op. cit. The ceremony also closely resembles the Highland New Year ceremony described above, p. 475 sq.

2. Propertius, v. 2, 61 sq.; Usener, op. cit.p. 210. One of the functions of the Salii or dancing priests, who during March went up and down the city dancing, singing, and clashing their swords against their shields (Livy, i. 20; Plutarch, Numa, 13; Dionysius Halicarn. Antiq. ii. 70) may have been to rout out the evils or demons from all parts of the city, as a preparation for transferring them to the scapegoat Mamurius Veturius. Similarly, as we have seen (above, p. 517 sq.), among the Iroquois, men in fantastic costume went about collecting the sins of the people as a preliminary to transferring them to the scapegoat dogs. We have had many examples of armed men rushing about the streets and houses to drive out demons and evils of all kinds. The blows which were showered on Mamurius Veturius seem to have been administered by the Salii (Servius on Virgil, Aen. vii. 188; Minucius Felix, 24, 3; Preller, Röm. Myth.3 i. 360, note 1; Rosscher, Apollon und Mars, p. 49). The reason for beating the scapegoat will be explained presently. As priests of Mars, the god of agriculture, the Salii probably had also certain agricultural functions. They were named from the remarkable leaps which they made. Now dancing and leaping high are common sympathetic charms to make the crops grow high. See Peter, Volksthümliches aus Oesterreichisch Schlesien, ii. 266; E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben, p. 499, No. 333; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest.-Kalender aus Böhmen, p. 49; O. Knoop, Volkssagen, etc., aus dem östlichen Hinterpommern, p. 176, No. 197; Ε. Sommer, Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Sachsen und Thüringen, p. 148; Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, p. 190, No. 13; Woeste, Volksüberlieferungen in der Grafschaft Mark, p. 56; Bavaria, ii. 298; id., iv. Abth. ii. pp. 379, 382; Heinrich, Agrarische Sitten u. Gebräuche unter den Sachsen Siebenbürgens, p. 11 sq.; Schulenberg, Wendische Volkssagen und Gebräuche, p. 252; Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube,2 § 657; Jahn, Die deutsche Opfergebräuche bei Ackerbau und Vie-zucht, p. 194 sq.; cp. Schott, Walachische Mährchen, p. 301 sq.; Gerard, The Land beyond the Forest, i. 264; Cieza de Leon, Travels (Hakluyt Soc. 1864), p. 413. Was it one of the functions of the Salii to dance and leap on the fields at the spring or autumn sowing, or at both? The dancing processions of the Salii took place in October as well as in March (Marquardt, Sacralwesen,2 p. 436 sq.), and the Romans sowed both in spring and autumn (Columella, ii. 9, 6 sq.) In their song the Salii mentioned Saturnus or Saeturnus the god of sowing (Festus, p. 325, ed. Müller, Saeturnus is an emendation of Ritschl’s. See Wordsworth, Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin, p. 405). The weapons borne by the Salii, while effective against demons in general, may have been especially directed against the demons who steal the seed corn or the ripe grain. Compare the Khond and Hindoo Koosh customs described above, p. 173. In Western Africa the field labours of tilling and sowing are sometimes accompanied by dances of armed men on the field. See Labat, Voyage du Chevalier des Marchais en Guinée, Isles voisines, et à Cayenne, ii.p. 99 of the Paris ed., p. 80 of the Amsterdam ed.; Olivier de Sanderval, De l’Atlantique au Niger par le Foulah-Djallon (Paris, 1883), p. 230. In Calicut (Southern India) ‘they plough the land with oxen as we do, and when they sow the rice in the field they have all the instruments of the city continually sounding and making merry. They also have ten or twelve men clothed like devils, and these unite in making great rejoicing with the players on the instruments, in order that the devil may make that rice very productive.’ Varthema, Travels (Hakluyt Soc. 1863), p. 166 sq. The resemblance of the Salii to the sword-dancers of northern Europe has been pointed out by K. Müllenhoff, ‘Ueber den Schwerttant,’ in Festgaben für Gustav Homeyer (Berlin, 1871). In England the Morris Dancers who accompanied the procession of the plough through the streets on Plough Monday (the first Monday after Twelfth Day) sometimes wore words (Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 305, Bohn’s ed.), and sometimes they ‘wore small bunches of corn in their hats, from which the wheat was soon shaken out by the ungainly jumping which they called dancing… Bessy rattled his box and danced so high that he showed his worsted stockings and corduroy breeches.’ Chambers, Book of Days, i. 94. It is to be observed that in the ‘Lord of Misrule,’ who reigned from Christmas till Twelfth Night (see Brand, Popular Antiquities, i, 497 sqq.), we have a clear trace of one of those periods of general licence and suspension of ordinary government which so commonly occur at the end of the old year or beginning of the new one in connection with a general expulsion of evils. The fact that this period of licence immediately preceded the procession of the Morris Dancers on Plough Monday seems to indicate that the functions of these dancers were like those which I have attributed to the Salii. But the parallel cannot be drawn out here. Cp. meantime Dyer, British Popular Customs, pp. 31, 39. The Salii were said to have been founded by Morrius, King of Veii (Servius on Virgil, Aen. viii. 285). Morrius seems to be etymologically the same with Mamurius and Mars (Usener, Italische Mythen, p. 213). Can the English Morris (in Morris dancers) be the same? Analogy suggests that at Rome the Saturnalia, which fell in December when the Roman year began in January, may have been celebrated in February when the Roman year began in March. Thus at Rome, as in so many places, the public expulsion of evils at the New Year would be preceded by a period of general licence, such as the Saturnalia was. A trace of the former celebration of the Saturnalia in February or the beginning of March may perhaps be seen in the Matronalia, celebrated on 1st March, at which mistresses feasted their slaves, just as masters feasted theirs at the Saturnalia. Macrobius, Saturn.i. 12, 7; Solinus, i. 35, p. 13, ed. Mommsen; Joannes Lydus, De mensibus, iii. 15.

1. Plutarch, Quaest. Conviv. vi. 8.

2. See above, pp. 176, 194.

3. Servius on Virgil, Aen. iii. 57, from Petronius.

1. Helladius, in Photius, Bibliotheca, p. 534 A, ed. Bekker; School. on Aristophanes, Frogs, 734, and on Knights, 1136; Hesychius, s.v. φαρμακοί; cp. Suidas, s. vv. κάθαρμα, φαρμακός,  and φαρμακούς; Lysias, Orat. vi. 53. That they were stoned is an inference from Harpocration. See next note.

2. Harpocration, s.v. φαρμακός, who says δύο ἄνδρας Ἀθήνησιν έξηγον καθάρσια ἐσομένους της πόλεως ἐν τοις φαργηλίοις, ἕνα μἐν ὑπέρ των ἀνδρῶν, ἔνα δὲ ὑπὲρ τῶν γυναικῶν. He does not expressly state that they were put to death; but as he says that the ceremony was an imitation of the execution of a mythical Pharmacus who was stoned to death, we may infer that the victims were killed by being stoned. Suidas (sv. φάρμακος) copies Harpocration.

3. Strabo, x. 2, 9. I do not know what authority Wordsworth (Greece, Pictorial, Historical, and Descriptive, p. 354) has for saying that the priests of Apollo, whose temple stood near the edge of the cliff, sometimes flung themselves down in this way.

1. Tzetzes, Chiliades, v. 726–761. Tzetzes’s authority is the satyrical poet Hipponax.

2. This may be inferred from the verse of Hipponax, quoted by Athenaeus, 370 B, where for φαρμάκου we should perhaps read φαρμακο with Schneidewin (Poetae lyr. Gr.3 ed. Bergk, ii. 763).

3. See his Mytholog. Forschungen, p. 113 sqq., especially 123 sq. 133.

4. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xx. 101; Dioscorides, De mat. med. ii. 202; Lucian, Necyom. 7; id., Alexander, 47; Theophrastus, Superstitious Man.

5. Theocritus, vii. 106 sqq. with the scholiast.

1. Cp. Aug. Mommsen, Heortologie, 414 sqq.; W. Mannhardt, A. W. F. p. 215.

2. At certain sacrifices in Yucatan blood was drawn from the genitals of a human victim and smeared on the face of the idol. De Landa, Relation des choses de Yucatan, ed. Brasseur de Bourbourg (Paris, 1864) p. 167. Was the original intention of this rite to transfuse into the god a fresh supply of reproductive energy?

3. Aelian, Nat. Anim. ix. 26.

1. De Santa-Anna Nery, Folklore Brésilien (Paris, 1889) p. 253.

2. Above, pp. 478, sq. 511. Compare Plutarch, Parallela, 35, where a woman is represented as going from house to house striking sick people with a hammer and bidding them be whole.

3. Acosta, History of the Indies, ii. 375 (Hakluyt Soc). See above, p. 495.

4. Osculati, Esplorazione delle regioni equatoriali lungo il Napo ed il fiume delle Amazzoni (Milan, 1854), p. 118.

5. Ed. Beardmore, Anthropological Notes collected at Mowat, Dandai, New Guinea (1888) (in manuscript).

6. Hahn, Albanesische Studien, i. 155.

7. F. S. Krauss, Kroatien und Slavonien (Vienna, 1889), p. 108.

1. W. Mannhardt, Β. K. p. 257.

2. Ibid. pp. 258–263. See his whole discussion of such customs, pp. 251–303, and Myth. Forsch. pp. 113–153·

1. Acosta, ii. History of the Indies, 323 (Hakluyt Soc. 1880).

1. Sahagun, Histoire des choses de la Nouvelle Espagne (Paris, 1880), pp. 61 sq., 96–99, 103; Acosta, History of the Indies, ii. 350 sq.; Clavigero, History of Mexico, trans, by Cullen, i. 300; Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 319 sq. For other Mexican instances of persons representing deities and slain in that character, see Sahagun, pp. 75, 116 sq., 123, 158 sq., 164 sq., 585 sqq., 589; Acosta, ii. 384 sqq.; Clavigero, i. 312; Bancroft, ii. 325 sqq., 337 sq.

1. Sahagun, pp. 18 sq., 68 sq., 133–139; Bancroft, iii. 353–359.

2. Sahagun, p. 584 sq. For this festival see also id. pp. 37 sq. 58 sq. 60, 87 sqq. 93; Clavigero, i. 297; Bancroft, ii. 306 sqq.

3· Clavigero, i. 283.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Golden Bough

‘Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.’

– FAUST

Between Heaven and Earth

AT the outset of this book two questions were proposed for answer; Why had the priest of Nemi (Aricia) to slay his predecessor? And why, before doing so, had he to pluck the Golden Bough? Of these two questions the first has now been answered. The priest of Nemi, if I am right, embodied in himself the spirit, primarily, of the woods and, secondarily, of vegetable life in general. Hence, according as he was well or ill, the woods, the flowers, and the fields were believed to flourish or fade; and if he were to die of sickness or old age, the plant world, it was supposed, would simultaneously perish. Therefore it was necessary that this priest of the woodlands, this sylvan deity incarnate in a man, should be put to death while he was still in the full bloom of his divine manhood, in order that his sacred life, transmitted in unabated force to his successor, might renew its youth, and thus by successive transmissions through a perpetual line of vigorous incarnations might remain eternally fresh and young, a pledge and security that the buds and blossoms of spring, the verdure of summer woods, and the mellow glories of autumn would never fail.

But we have still to ask, What was the Golden Bough? and why had each candidate for the Arician priesthood to pluck it before he could slay the priest? These questions I will now try to answer.

It will be well to begin by noticing two of those rules or taboos by which, as we have seen, the life of divine kings or priests is regulated. The first of the rules to which I desire to call the reader’s attention is that the divine personage may not touch the ground with his foot. This rule was observed by the Mikado of Japan and by the supreme pontiff of the Zapotecs in Mexico. The latter ‘profaned his sanctity if he so much as touched the ground with his foot.’[1] For the Mikado to touch the ground with his foot was a shameful degradation; indeed, in the sixteenth century, it was enough to deprive him of his office. Outside his palace he was carried on men’s shoulders; within it he walked on exquisitely wrought mats.[2] The king and queen of Tahiti might not touch the ground anywhere but within their hereditary domains; for the ground on which they trod became sacred. In travelling from place to place they were carried on the shoulders of sacred men. They were always accompanied by several pairs of these sacred men; and when it became necessary to change their bearers, the king and queen vaulted on to the shoulders of their new bearers without letting their feet touch the ground.[3] It was an evil omen if the king of Dosuma touched the ground, and he had to perform an expiatory ceremony.[4] The king of Persia was never seen on foot outside his palace.[5]

The second rule to be here noted is that the sun may not shine upon the divine person. This rule was observed both by the Mikado and by the pontiff of the Zapotecs. The latter ‘was looked upon as a god whom the earth was not worthy to hold, nor the sun to shine upon.’[6] The Japanese would not allow that the Mikado ‘should expose his sacred person to the open air, and the sun is not thought worthy to shine on his head.’[1] The heir to the throne of Bogota in Colombia, South America, had to undergo a severe training from the age of sixteen; he lived in complete retirement in a temple, where he might not see the sun nor eat salt nor converse with a woman.[2] The heir to the kingdom of Sogamoso in Colombia, before succeeding to the crown, had to fast for seven years in the temple, being shut up in the dark and not allowed to see the sun or light.[3] The prince who was to become Inca of Peru had to fast for a month without seeing light.[4]

Now it is remarkable that these two rules – not to touch the ground and not to see the sun – are observed either separately or conjointly by girls at puberty in many parts of the world. Thus amongst the negroes of Loango girls at puberty are confined in separate huts, and they may not touch the ground with any part of their bare body.[5] Amongst the Zulus and kindred tribes of South Africa, when the first signs of puberty show themselves ‘while a girl is walking, gathering wood, or working in the field, she runs to the river and hides herself among the reeds for the day so as not to be seen by men. She covers her head carefully with her blanket that the sun may not shine on it and shrivel her up into a withered skeleton, assured result from exposure to the sun’s beams. After dark she returns to her home and is secluded’ in a hut for some time.[6]

In New Ireland girls are confined for four or five years in small cages, being kept in the dark and not allowed to set foot on the ground. The custom has been thus described by an eye-witness. ‘I heard from a teacher about some strange custom connected with some of the young girls here, so I asked the chief to take me to the house where they were. The house was about twenty-five feet in length, and stood in a reed and bamboo enclosure, across the entrance to which a bundle of dried grass was suspended to show that it was strictly “tabu.” Inside the house were three conical structures about seven or eight feet in height, and about ten or twelve feet in circumference at the bottom, and for about four feet from the ground, at which point they tapered off to a point at the top. These cages were made of the broad leaves of the pandanus-tree, sewn quite close together so that no light, and little or no air could enter. On one side of each is an opening which is closed by a double door of plaited cocoa-nut tree and pandanus-tree leaves. About three feet from the ground there is a stage of bamboos which forms the floor. In each of these cages we were told there was a young woman confined, each of whom had to remain for at least four or five years, without ever being allowed to go outside the house. I could scarcely credit the story when I heard it; the whole thing seemed too horrible to be true. I spoke to the chief, and told him that I wished to see the inside of the cages, and also to see the girls that I might make them a present of a few beads. He told me that it was “tabu,” forbidden for any men but their own relations to look at them; but I suppose the promised beads acted as an inducement, and so he sent away for some old lady who had charge, and who alone is allowed to open the doors … She had to undo the door when the chief told her to do so, and then the girls peeped out at us, and, when told to do so, they held out their hands for the beads. I, however, purposely sat at some distance away and merely held out the beads to them, as I wished to draw them quite outside, that I might inspect the inside of the cages. This desire of mine gave rise to another difficulty, as these girls were not allowed to put their feet to the ground all the time they were confined in these places. However, they wished to get the beads, and so the old lady had to go outside and collect a lot of pieces of wood and bamboo, which she placed on the ground, and then going to one of the girls, she helped her down and held her hand as she stepped from one piece of wood to another until she came near enough to get the beads I held out to her. I then went to inspect the inside of the cage out of which she had come, but could scarcely put my head inside of it, the atmosphere was so hot and stifling. It was clean and contained nothing but a few short lengths of bamboo for holding water. There was only room for the girl to sit or lie down in a crouched position on the bamboo platform, and when the doors are shut it must be nearly or quite dark inside. The girls are never allowed to come out except once a day to bathe in a dish or wooden bowl placed close to each cage. They say that they perspire profusely. They are placed in these stifling cages when quite young, and must remain there until they are young women, when they are taken out and have each a great marriage feast provided for them.’[1]

In some parts of New Guinea ‘daughters of chiefs, when they are about twelve or thirteen years of age, are kept indoors for two or three years, never being allowed, under any pretence, to descend from the house, and the house is so shaded that the sun cannot shine on them.’[1] Among the Ot Danoms of Borneo girls at the age of eight or ten years are shut up in a little room or cell of the house and cut off from all intercourse with the world for a long time. The cell, like the rest of the house, is raised on piles above the ground, and is lit by a single small window opening on a lonely place, so that the girl is in almost total darkness. She may not leave the room on any pretext whatever, not even for the most necessary purposes. None of her family may see her all the time she is shut up, but a single slave woman is appointed to wait on her. During her lonely confinement, which often lasts seven years, the girl occupies herself in weaving mats or with other handiwork. Her bodily growth is stunted by the long want of exercise, and when, on attaining womanhood, she is brought out, her complexion is pale and wax-like. She is now shown the sun, the earth, the water, the trees, and the flowers, as if she were newly born. Then a great feast is made, a slave is killed, and the girl is smeared with his blood.[2] In Ceram girls at puberty were formerly shut up by themselves in a hut which was kept dark.[3]

Amongst the Aht Indians of Vancouver Island, when girls reach puberty they are placed in a sort of gallery in the house ‘and are there surrounded completely with mats, so that neither the sun nor any fire can be seen. In this cage they remain for several days. Water is given them, but no food. The longer a girl remains in this retirement the greater honour is it to the parents; but she is disgraced for life if it is known that she has seen fire or the sun during this initiatory ordeal.’[1] Amongst the Thlinkeet or Kolosh Indians of Alaska, when a girl shows signs of womanhood she is shut up in a little hut or cage, which is completely blocked up with the exception of a small air-hole. In this dark and filthy abode she had formerly to remain a year, without fire, exercise, or associates. Her food was put in at the small window; she had to drink out of the wing-bone of a white-headed eagle. The time has now been reduced, at least in some places, to six months. The girl has to wear a sort of hat with long flaps, that her gaze may not pollute the sky; for she is thought unfit for the sun to shine upon.[2] Amongst the Koniags, an Esquimaux people of Alaska, girls at puberty were placed in small huts in which they had to remain on their hands and knees for six months; then the hut was enlarged enough to let them kneel upright, and they had to remain in this posture for six months more.[3]

When symptoms of puberty appeared on a girl for the first time, the Indians of the Rio de la Plata used to sew her up in her hammock as if she were dead, leaving only a small hole for her mouth to allow her to breathe. In this state she continued so long as the symptoms lasted.[1] In similar circumstances the Chiriguanos of Bolivia hoisted the girl in her hammock to the roof, where she stayed for a month; the second month the hammock was let half way down from the roof; and in the third month old women, armed with sticks, entered the hut and ran about striking everything they met, saying they were hunting the snake that had wounded the girl. This they did till one of the women gave out that she had killed the snake.[2] Amongst some of the Brazilian Indians, when a girl attained to puberty, her hair was burned or shaved off close to the head. Then she was placed on a flat stone and cut with the tooth of an animal from the shoulders all down the back, till she ran with blood. Then the ashes of a wild gourd were rubbed into the wounds; the girl was bound hand and foot, and hung in a hammock, being enveloped in it so closely that no one could see her. Here she had to stay for three days without eating or drinking. When the three days were over, she stepped out of the hammock upon the flat stone, for her feet might not touch the ground. If she had a call of nature, a female relation took the girl on her back and carried her out, taking with her a live coal to prevent evil influences from entering the girl’s body. Being replaced in her hammock she was now allowed to get some flour, boiled roots, and water, but might not taste salt or flesh. Thus she continued to the end of the first monthly period, at the expiry of which she was gashed on the breast and belly as well as all down the back. During the second month she still stayed in her hammock, but her rule of abstinence was less rigid, and she was allowed to spin. The third month she was blackened with a certain pigment and began to go about as usual.[3]

Amongst the Macusis of British Guiana, when a girl shows the first signs of puberty, she is hung in a hammock at the highest point of the hut. For the first few days she may not leave the hammock by day, but at night she must come down, light a fire, and spend the night beside it, else she would break out in sores on her neck, throat, etc. So long as the symptoms are at their height, she must fast rigorously. When they have abated, she may come down and take up her abode in a little compartment that is made for her in the darkest corner of the hut. In the morning she may cook her food, but it must be at a separate fire and in a vessel of her own. In about ten days the magician comes and undoes the spell by muttering charms and breathing on her and on the more valuable of the things with which she has come in contact. The pots and drinking vessels which she used are broken and the fragments buried. After her first bath, the girl must submit to be beaten by her mother with thin rods without uttering a cry. At the end of the second period she is again beaten, but not afterwards. She is now ‘clean,’ and can mix again with people.[1] Other Indians of Guiana, after keeping the girl in her hammock at the top of the hut for a month, expose her to certain large ants, whose bite is very painful.[2] The custom of stinging the girl with ants or beating her with rods is intended, we may be sure, not as a punishment or a test of endurance, but as a purification, the object being to drive away the malignant influences with which a girl at such times is believed to be beset and enveloped. Examples of purification, both by beating and by stinging with ants, have already come before us.[3] Probably, beating or scourging as a religious or ceremonial rite always originated with a similar intention. It was meant to wipe off and drive away a dangerous contagion (whether personified as demoniacal or not) which was supposed to be adhering physically, though invisibly, to the body of the sufferer.[1] The pain inflicted on the person beaten was no more the object of the beating than it is of a surgical operation with us; it was a necessary accident, that was all. In later times such customs were interpreted otherwise, and the pain, from being an accident, became the prime object of the ceremony, which was now regarded either as a test of endurance imposed upon persons at critical epochs of life, or as a mortification of the flesh well pleasing to the god. But asceticism, under any shape or form, is never primitive. Amongst the Uaupes of Brazil a girl at puberty is secluded in the house for a month, and allowed only a small quantity of bread and water. Then she is taken out into the midst of her relations and friends, each of whom gives her four or five blows with pieces of sipo (an elastic climber), till she falls senseless or dead. If she recovers, the operation is repeated four times at intervals of six hours, and it is considered an offence to the parents not to strike hard. Meantime, pots of meats and fish have been made ready; the sipos are dipped into them and then given to the girl to lick, who is now considered a marriageable woman.[1]

When a Hindoo maiden reaches maturity she is kept in a dark room for four days, and is forbidden to see the sun. She is regarded as unclean; no one is allowed to touch her. Her diet is restricted to boiled rice, milk, sugar, curd, and tamarind without salt.[2] In Cambodia a girl at puberty is put to bed under a mosquito curtain, where she should stay a hundred days. Usually, however, four, five, ten, or twenty days are thought enough; and even this, in a hot climate and under the close meshes of the curtain, is sufficiently trying.[1] According to another account, a Cambodian maiden at puberty is said to ‘enter into the shade.’ During her retirement, which, according to the rank and position of her family, may last any time from a few days to several years, she has to observe a number of rules, such as not to be seen by a strange man, not to eat flesh or fish, and so on. She goes nowhere, not even to the pagoda. But this state of retirement is discontinued during eclipses; at such times she goes forth and pays her devotions to the monster who is supposed to cause eclipses by catching the heavenly bodies between his teeth.[2] The fact that her retirement is discontinued during an eclipse seems to show how literally the injunction is interpreted which forbids maidens entering on womanhood to look upon the sun.

A superstition so widely diffused as this might be expected to leave traces in legends and folk-tales. And it has done so. In a modern Greek folk-tale the Fates predict that in her fifteenth year a princess must be careful not to let the sun shine on her, for if this were to happen she would be turned into a lizard.[3] A Tyrolese story tells how it was the doom of a lovely maiden to be transported into the belly of a whale if ever a sunbeam fell on her.[4] In another modern Greek tale the Sun bestows a daughter upon a childless woman on condition of taking the child back to himself when she is twelve years old. So, when the child was twelve, the mother closed the doors and windows, and stopped up all the chinks and crannies, to prevent the Sun from coming to fetch away her daughter. But she forgot to stop up the key-hole, and a sunbeam streamed through it and carried off the girl.[1] In a Sicilian story a seer foretells that a king will have a daughter who, in her fourteenth year, will conceive a child by the Sun. So, when the child was born, the king shut her up in a lonely tower which had no window, lest a sunbeam should fall on her. When she was nearly fourteen years old, it happened that her parents sent her a piece of roasted kid, in which she found a sharp bone. With this bone she scraped a hole in the wall, and a sunbeam shot through the hole and impregnated her.[2] The old Greek story of Danae, who was confined by her father in a subterranean chamber or a brazen tower, but impregnated by Zeus, who reached her in the shape of a shower of gold, perhaps belongs to the same class of tales. It has its counterpart in the legend which the Kirgis of Siberia tell of their ancestry. A certain Khan had a fair daughter, whom he kept in a dark iron house, that no man might see her. An old woman tended her; and when the girl was grown to maidenhood she asked the old woman, ‘Where do you go so often?’ – ‘My child,’ said the old dame, ‘there is a bright world. In that bright world your father and mother live, and all sorts of people live there. That is where I go.’ The maiden said, ‘Good mother, I will tell nobody, but show me that bright world.’ So the old woman took the girl out of the iron house. But when she saw the bright world, the girl tottered and fainted; and the eye of God fell upon her, and she conceived. Her angry father put her in a golden chest and sent her floating away (fairy gold can float in fairyland) over the wide sea.[1] The shower of gold in the Greek story, and the eye of God in the Kirgis legend, probably stand for sunlight and the sun. The idea that women may be impregnated by the sun is not uncommon in legends,[2] and there are even traces of it in marriage customs.[3]

The ground of this seclusion of girls at puberty lies in the deeply engrained dread which primitive man universally entertains of menstruous blood. Evidence of this has already been adduced,[1] but a few more facts may here be added. Amongst the Australian blacks ‘the boys are told from their infancy that, if they see the blood, they will early become gray-headed, and their strength will fail prematurely.’ Hence a woman lives apart at these times; and if a young man or boy approaches her she calls out, and he immediately makes a circuit to avoid her. The men go out of their way to avoid even crossing the tracks made by women at such times. Similarly the woman may not walk on any path frequented by men, nor touch anything used by men; she may not eat fish, or go near water at all, much less cross it; for if she did, the fish would be frightened, and the fishers would have no luck; she may not even fetch water for the camp; it is sufficient for her to say Thama to ensure her husband fetching the water himself. A severe beating, or even death, is the punishment inflicted on an Australian woman who breaks these rules.[2] The Bushmen think that, by a glance of a girl’s eye at the time when she ought to be kept in strict retirement, men become fixed in whatever position they happen to occupy, with whatever they were holding in their hands, and are changed into trees which talk.[3] The Guayquiries of the Orinoco think that, when a woman has her courses, everything upon which she steps will die, and that if a man treads on the place where she has passed, his legs will immediately swell up.[4] The Creek and kindred Indians of the United States compelled women at menstruation to live in separate huts at some distance from the village. There the women had to stay, at the risk of being surprised and cut off by enemies. It was thought ‘a most horrid and dangerous pollution’ to go near the women at such times; and the danger extended to enemies who, if they slew the women, had to cleanse themselves from the pollution by means of certain sacred herbs and roots.[1] Similarly, among the Chippeways and other Indians of the Hudson Bay Territory, women at such seasons are excluded from the camp, and take up their abode in huts of branches. They wear long hoods, which effectually conceal the head and breast. They may not touch the household furniture nor any objects used by men; for their touch ‘is supposed to defile them, so that their subsequent use would be followed by certain mischief or misfortune,’ such as disease or death. They may not walk on the common paths nor cross the tracks of animals. They ‘are never permitted to walk on the ice of rivers or lakes, or near the part where the men are hunting beaver, or where a fishing-net is set, for fear of averting their success. They are also prohibited at those times from partaking of the head of any animal, and even from walking in or crossing the track where the head of a deer, moose, beaver, and many other animals have lately been carried, either on a sledge or on the back. To be guilty of a violation of this custom is considered as of the greatest importance; because they firmly believe that it would be a means of preventing the hunter from having an equal success in his future excursions.’[2] So the Lapps forbid women at menstruation to walk on that part of the shore where the fishers are in the habit of setting out their fish.[3]

Amongst the civilised nations of Europe the superstitions which have prevailed on this subject are not less extravagant. In the oldest existing cyclopaedia – the Natural History of Pliny – the list of dangers apprehended from menstruation is longer than any furnished by savages. According to Pliny, the touch of a menstruous woman turned wine to vinegar, blighted crops, killed seedlings, blasted gardens, brought down the fruit from trees, dimmed mirrors, blunted razors, rusted iron and brass (especially at the waning of the moon), killed bees, or at least drove them from their hives, caused mares to miscarry, and so forth.[1] Similarly, in various parts of Europe, it is still believed that if a woman in her courses enters a brewery the beer will turn sour; if she touches beer, wine, vinegar, or milk, it will go bad; if she makes jam, it will not keep; if she mounts a mare, it will miscarry; if she touches buds, they will wither; if she climbs a cherry-tree, it will die.[2]

Thus the object of secluding women at menstruation is to neutralise the dangerous influences which are supposed to emanate from them at such times. That the danger is believed to be especially great at the first menstruation appears from the unusual precautions taken to isolate girls at this crisis. Two of these precautions have been illustrated above, namely, the rules that the girl may not touch the ground nor see the sun. The general effect of these rules is to keep the girl suspended, so to say, between heaven and earth. Whether enveloped in her hammock and slung up to the roof, as in South America, or elevated above the ground in a dark and narrow cage, as in New Ireland, she may be considered to be out of the way of doing mischief, since, being shut off both from the earth and from the sun, she can poison neither of these great sources of life by her deadly contagion. In short, she is rendered harmless by being, in electrical language, insulated. But the precautions thus taken to isolate or insulate the girl are dictated by a regard for her own safety as well as for the safety of others. For it is thought that the girl herself would suffer if she were to neglect the prescribed regimen. Thus Zulu girls, as we have seen, believe that they would shrivel to skeletons if the sun were to shine on them at puberty, and in some Brazilian tribes the girls think that a transgression of the rules would entail sores on the neck and throat. In short, the girl is viewed as charged with a powerful force which, if not kept within bounds, may prove the destruction both of the girl herself and of all with whom she comes in contact. To repress this force within the limits necessary for the safety of all concerned is the object of the taboos in question.

The same explanation applies to the observance of the same rules by divine kings and priests. The uncleanness, as it is called, of girls at puberty and the sanctity of holy men do not, to the primitive mind, differ from each other. They are only different manifestations of the same supernatural energy which, like energy in general, is in itself neither good nor bad, but becomes beneficent or maleficent according to its application.[1] Accordingly, if, like girls at puberty, divine personages may neither touch the ground nor see the sun, the reason is, on the one hand, a fear lest their divinity might, at contact with earth or heaven, discharge itself with fatal violence on either; and, on the other hand, an apprehension, that the divine being thus drained of his ethereal virtue, might thereby be incapacitated for the future performance of those supernatural functions, upon the proper discharge of which the safety of the people and even of the world is believed to hang. Thus the rules in question fall under the head of the taboos which we examined in the second chapter; they are intended to preserve the life of the divine person and with it the life of his subjects and worshippers. Nowhere, it is thought, can his precious yet dangerous life be at once so safe and so harmless as when it is neither in heaven nor in earth, but, as far as possible, suspended between the two.[1]

Balder

A god whose life might in a sense be said to be neither in heaven nor earth but between the two, was the Norse Balder, the good and beautiful god. The story of his death is as follows: Once on a time Balder dreamed heavy dreams which seemed to forebode his death. Thereupon the gods held a council and resolved to make him secure against every danger. So the goddess Frigg took an oath from fire and water, iron and all metals, stones and earth, from trees, sicknesses and poisons, and from all four-footed beasts, birds, and creeping things, that they would not hurt Balder. When this was done Balder was deemed invulnerable; so the gods amused themselves by setting him in their midst, while some shot at him, others hewed at him, and others threw stones at him. But whatever they did, nothing could hurt him; and at this they were all glad. Only Loki, the mischief-maker, was displeased, and he went in the guise of an old woman to Frigg, who told him that the weapons of the gods could not wound Balder, since she had made them all swear not to hurt him. Then Loki asked, ‘Have all things sworn to spare Balder?’ She answered, ‘East of Walhalla grows a plant called mistletoe; it seemed to me too young to swear.’ So Loki went and pulled the mistletoe and took it to the assembly of the gods. There he found the blind god Hödur standing at the outside of the circle. Loki asked him, ‘Why do you not shoot at Balder?’ Hödur answered, ‘Because I do not see where he stands; besides I have no weapon.’ Then said Loki, ‘Do like the rest and show Balder honour, as they all do. I will show you where he stands, and do you shoot at him with this twig.’ Hödur took the mistletoe and threw it at Balder, as Loki directed him. The mistletoe struck Balder and pierced him through and through, and he fell down dead. And that was the greatest misfortune that ever befel gods and men. For a while the gods stood speechless, then they lifted up their voices and wept bitterly. They took Balder’s body and brought it to the sea-shore. There stood Balder’s ship; it was called Ringhorn, and was the hugest of all ships. The gods wished to launch the ship and to burn Balder’s body on it, but the ship would not stir. So they sent for a giantess called Hyrrockin. She came riding on a wolf and gave the ship such a push that fire flashed from the rollers and all the earth shook. Then Balder’s body was taken and placed on the funeral pile upon his ship. When his wife Nanna saw that, her heart burst for sorrow and she died. So she was laid on the funeral pile with her husband, and fire was put to it. Balder’s horse, too, with all its trappings, was burned on the pile.[1]

The circumstantiality of this story suggests that it belongs to the extensive class of myths which are invented to explain ritual. For a myth is never so graphic and precise in its details as when it is a simple transcript of a ceremony which the author of the myth witnessed with his eyes. At all events, if it can be made probable that rites like those described in the Balder myth have been practised by Norsemen and by other European peoples, we shall be justified in inferring that the ritual gave birth to the myth, not the myth to the ritual. For while many cases can be shown in which a myth has been invented to explain a rite, it would be hard to point to a single case in which a myth has given rise to a rite. Ritual may be the parent of myth, but can never be its child.[2]

The main incidents in the myth of Balder’s death are two; first, the pulling of the mistletoe, and second the death and burning of the god. Now both these incidents appear to have formed parts of an annual ceremony once observed by Celts and Norsemen, probably also by Germans and Slavs.

In most parts of Europe the peasants have been accustomed from time immemorial to kindle bonfires on certain days of the year, and to dance round them or leap over them. Customs of this kind can be traced back on historical evidence to the Middle Ages,[1] and their analogy to similar customs observed in antiquity goes with strong internal evidence to prove that their origin must be sought in a period long prior to the spread of Christianity. Indeed the earliest evidence of their observance in Northern Europe is furnished by the attempts made by Christian synods in the eighth century to put them down as heathenish rites.[2] Not uncommonly effigies are burned in these fires, or a pretence is made of burning a living person in them; and there are grounds for believing that anciently human beings were actually burned on these occasions. A brief review of the customs in question will bring out the traces of human sacrifice, and will serve at the same time to throw light on their meaning.[3]

The seasons of the year at which these bonfires are most commonly lit are spring and midsummer, but in some places they are kindled at Hallow E’en (October 31st) and Christmas. In spring the first Sunday in Lent (Quadragesima) and Easter Eve are the days on which in different places the ceremony is observed. Thus in the Eifel Mountains, Rhenish Prussia, on the first Sunday in Lent young people used to collect straw and brushwood from house to house. These they carried to an eminence and piled them up round a tall, slim, beech-tree, to which a piece of wood was fastened at right angles to form a cross. The structure was known as the ‘hut’ or ‘castle.’ Fire was set to it and the young people marched round the blazing ‘castle’ bareheaded, each carrying a lighted torch and praying aloud. Sometimes a straw man was burned in the ‘hut.’ People observed the direction in which the smoke blew from the fire. If it blew towards the corn-fields, it was a sign that the harvest would be abundant. On the same day, in some parts of the Eifel, a great wheel was made of straw and dragged by three horses to the top of a hill. Thither the village boys marched at nightfall, set fire to the wheel, and sent it rolling down the slope. Two lads followed it with levers to set it in motion again in case it should anywhere meet with a check.[1] About Echternach the same ceremony is called ‘burning the witch.’[2] At Voralberg in the Tyrol on the first Sunday in Lent a slender young fir-tree is surrounded with a pile of straw and fire-wood. At the top of the tree is fastened a human figure called the ‘witch’; it is made of old clothes and stuffed with gunpowder. At night the whole is set on fire and boys and girls dance round it, swinging torches and singing rhymes in which the words ‘corn in the winnowing-basket, the plough in the earth’ may be distinguished.[3] In Swabia on the first Sunday in Lent a figure called the ‘witch’ or the ‘old wife’ or ‘winter’s grandmother’ is made up of clothes and fastened to a pole. This is stuck in the middle of a pile of wood, to which fire is applied. While the ‘witch’ is burning the young people throw blazing discs into the air. The discs are thin round pieces of wood, a few inches in diameter, with notched edges to imitate the rays of the sun or stars. They have a hole in the middle, by which they are attached to the end of a wand. Before the disc is thrown it is set on fire, the wand is swung to and fro, and the impetus thus communicated to the disc is augmented by dashing the rod sharply against a sloping board. The burning disc is thus thrown off, and mounting high into the air, describes a long curve before it reaches the ground. A single lad may fling up forty or fifty of these discs, one after the other. The object is to throw them as high as possible. The wand by which they are hurled must, at least in some parts of Swabia, be of hazel. Sometimes the lads also leap over the fire brandishing blazing torches of pine-wood. The charred embers of the burned ‘witch’ and discs are taken home and planted in the flax-fields the same night, in the belief that they will keep vermin from the fields.[1] In the Rhön Mountains, Bavaria, on the first Sunday in Lent the people used to march to the top of a hill or eminence. Children and lads carried torches, brooms daubed with tar, and poles swathed in straw. A wheel, wrapt in combustibles, was kindled and rolled down the hill; and the young people rushed about the fields with their burning torches and brooms, till at last they flung them in a heap, and standing round them, struck up a hymn or a popular song. The object of running about the fields with the blazing torches was to ‘drive away the wicked sower.’ Or it was done in honour of the Virgin, that she might preserve the fruits of the earth throughout the year and bless them.[2]

It seems hardly possible to separate from these bonfires, kindled on the first Sunday in Lent, the fires in which, about the same season, the effigy called Death is burned as part of the ceremony of ‘carrying out Death.’ We have seen that at Spachendorf, Austrian Silesia, on the morning of Rupert’s Day (Shrove Tuesday?) a straw-man, dressed in a fur coat and a fur cap, is laid in a hole outside the village and there burned, and that while it is blazing every one seeks to snatch a fragment of it, which he fastens to a branch of the highest tree in his garden or buries in his field, believing that this will make the crops to grow better. The ceremony is known as the ‘burying of Death.’[3] Even when the straw-man is not designated as Death, the meaning of the observance is probably the same; for the name Death, as I have tried to show, does not express the original intention of the ceremony. At Cobern in the Eifel Mountains the lads make up a straw-man on Shrove Tuesday. The effigy is formally tried and accused of having perpetrated all the thefts that have been committed in the neighbourhood throughout the year. Being condemned to death, the straw-man is led through the village, shot, and burned upon a pyre. They dance round the blazing pile, and the last bride must leap over it.[1] In Oldenburg on the evening of Shrove Tuesday people used to make long bundles of straw, which they set on fire, and then ran about the fields waving them, shrieking, and singing wild songs. Finally they burnt a straw-man on the field.[2] In the district of Düsseldorf the straw-man burned on Shrove Tuesday was made of an unthreshed sheaf of corn.[3] On the first Monday after the spring equinox the urchins of Zurich drag a straw-man on a little cart through the streets, while at the same time the girls carry about a May-tree. When vespers ring, the straw-man is burned.[4] In the district of Aachen on Ash Wednesday a man used to be encased in peas-straw and taken to an appointed place. Here he slipped quietly out of his straw casing, which was then burned, die children thinking that it was the man who was being burned.[5] In the Val di Ledro (Tyrol) on the last day of the Carnival a figure is made up of straw and brushwood and then burned. The figure is called the Old Woman, and the ceremony ‘burning the Old Woman.’[6]

Another occasion on which these fire-festivals are held is Easter Eve, the Saturday before Easter Sunday. On that day it has been customary in Catholic countries to extinguish all the lights in the churches, and then to make a new fire, sometimes with flint and steel, sometimes with a burning-glass. At this fire is lit the Easter candle, which is then used to rekindle all the extinguished lights in the church. In many parts of Germany a bonfire is also kindled, by means of the new fire, on some open space near the church. It is consecrated, and the people bring sticks of oak, walnut, and beech, which they char in the fire, and then take home with them. Some of these charred sticks are thereupon burned at home in a newly-kindled fire, with a prayer that God will preserve the homestead from fire, lightning, and hail. Thus every house receives ‘new fire.’ Some of the sticks are placed in the fields, gardens, and meadows, with a prayer that God will keep them from blight and hail. Such fields and gardens are thought to thrive more than others; the corn and the plants that grow in them are not beaten down by hail, nor devoured by mice, vermin, and beetles, no witch harms them, and the ears of corn stand close and full. The charred sticks are also applied to the plough. The ashes of the Easter bonfire, together with the ashes of the consecrated palm branches, are mixed with the seed at sowing. A wooden figure called Judas is sometimes burned in the consecrated bonfire.[1]

Sometimes instead of the consecrated bonfire a profane fire used to be kindled on Easter Eve. In the afternoon the lads of the village collected firewood and carried it to a corn-field or to the top of a hill. Here they piled it together and fastened in the midst of it a pole with a cross-piece, all wrapt in straw, so that it looked like a man with outstretched arms. This figure was called the Easter-man, or the Judas. In the evening the lads lit their lanterns at the new holy fire in the church, and ran at full speed to the pile. The one who reached it first set fire to it and to the effigy. No women or girls might be present, though they were allowed to watch the scene from a distance Great was the joy while the effigy was burning. The ashes were collected and thrown at sunrise into running water, or were scattered over the fields on Easter Monday. At the same time the palm branches which had been consecrated on Palm Sunday, and sticks which had been charred in the fire and consecrated on Good Friday, were also stuck up in the fields. The object was to preserve the fields from hail.[1] In Münsterland, these Easter fires are always kindled upon certain definite hills, which are hence known as Easter or Pascal Mountains. The whole community assembles about the fire. Fathers of families form an inner circle round it. An outer circle is formed by the young men and maidens, who, singing Easter hymns, march round and round the fire in the direction of the sun, till the blaze dies down. Then the girls jump over the fire in a line, one after the other, each supported by two young men who hold her hands and run beside her. When the fire has burned out, the whole assemblage marches in solemn procession to the church, singing hymns. They march thrice round the church, and then break up. In the twilight boys with blazing bundles of straw run over the fields to make them fruitful.[2] In Holland, also, Easter fires used to be kindled on the highest eminences, the people danced round them, and leaped through the flames.[3] In Schaumburg, the Easter bonfires may be seen blazing on all the mountains around for miles. They are made with a tar barrel fastened to a pine-tree, which is wrapt in straw. The people dance singing round them.[4] Easter bonfires are also common in the Harz Mountains and in Brunswick, Hanover, and Westphalia. They are generally lit upon particular heights and mountains which are hence called Easter Mountains. In the Harz the fire is commonly made by piling brushwood about a tree and setting it on fire, and blazing tar barrels are often rolled down into the valley. In Osterode, every one tries to snatch a brand from the bonfire and rushes about with it; the better it burns, the more lucky it is. In Grund there are torch races.[1] In the Altmark, the Easter bonfires are composed of tar barrels, beehives, etc., piled round a pole. The young folk dance round the fire; and when it has died out, the old folk come and collect the ashes, which they preserve as a remedy for the ailments of bees. It is also believed that as far as the blaze of the bonfire is visible, the corn will grow well throughout the year, and no conflagration will break out.[2] In some parts of Bavaria, bonfires were kindled at Easter upon steep mountains, and burning arrows or discs of wood were shot high into the air, as in the Swabian custom already described. Sometimes, instead of the discs, an old waggon wheel was wrapt in straw, set on fire, and sent rolling down the mountain. The lads who hurled the discs received painted Easter eggs from the girls.[3] In some parts of Swabia the Easter fires might not be kindled with iron or flint or steel, but only by the friction of wood.[4] At Braunröde in the Harz Mountains it was the custom to burn squirrels in the Easter bonfire.[5] In the Altmark, bones were burned in it.[6]

In the central Highlands of Scotland bonfires, known as the Beltane fires, were formerly kindled with great ceremony on the 1st of May, and the traces of human sacrifices at them were particularly clear and unequivocal. In the neighbourhood of Callander, in Perthshire, the custom lasted down to the close of last century. The fires were lit by the people of each hamlet on a hill or knoll round which their cattle were pasturing. Hence various eminences in the Highlands are known as ‘the hill of the fires,’ just as in Germany some mountains take their name from the Easter fires which are kindled upon them. On the morning of May Day the people repaired to a hill or knoll and cut a round trench in the green sod, leaving in the centre a platform of turf large enough to contain the whole company. On this turf they seated themselves, and in the middle was placed a pile of wood or other fuel, which of old they kindled with tein-eigin – that is, forced fire or need-fire. The way of making the need-fire was this: ‘The night before, all the fires in the country were carefully extinguished, and next morning the materials for exciting this sacred fire were prepared. The most primitive method seems to be that which was used in the islands of Skye, Mull, and Tiree. A well-seasoned plank of oak was procured, in the midst of which a hole was bored. A wimble of the same timber was then applied, the end of which they fitted to the hole. But in some parts of the mainland the machinery was different. They used a frame of green wood, of a square form, in the centre of which was an axle-tree. In some places three times three persons, in others three times nine, were required for turning round, by turns, the axle-tree or wimble. If any of them had been guilty of murder, adultery, theft, or other atrocious crime, it was imagined either that the fire would not kindle, or that it would be devoid of its usual virtue. So soon as any sparks were emitted by means of the violent friction, they applied a species of agaric which grows on old birch-trees, and is very combustible. This fire had the appearance of being immediately derived from heaven, and manifold were the virtues ascribed to it. They esteemed it a preservative against witchcraft, and sovereign remedy against malignant diseases, both in the human species and in cattle; and by it the strongest poisons were supposed to have their nature changed.’ For many years, however, before the close of last century, the Beltane fires were kindled in the usual way. The fire being lit, the company prepared a custard of eggs and milk, which they ate. Afterwards they amused themselves a while by singing and dancing round the fire. Then ‘they knead a cake of oatmeal, which is toasted at the embers against a stone. After the custard is eaten up they divide the cake into so many portions, as similar as possible to one another in size and shape, as there are persons in the company. They daub one of these portions all over with charcoal until it be perfectly black. They put all the bits of cake into a bonnet. Every one blindfold, draws out a portion. He who holds the bonnet is entitled to the last bit. Whoever draws the black bit is the devoted person who is to be sacrificed to Baal, whose favour they mean to implore, in rendering the year productive of the sustenance of man and beast.’ The victim thus selected ‘was called cailleach bealtine – i.e. the Beltane carline, a term of great reproach. Upon his being known, part of the company laid hold of him, and made a show of putting him into the fire; but, the majority interposing, he was rescued. And in some places they laid him flat on the ground, making as if they would quarter him. Afterwards he was pelted with egg shells, and retained the odious appellation during the whole year. And, while the feast was fresh in people’s memory, they affected to speak of the cailleach bealtine as dead.’ He had to leap thrice through the flames, and this concluded the ceremony.[1]

Another account of the Beltane festival, written in the latter half of last century, is as follows: ‘On the 1st of May the herdsmen of every village hold their Beltien, a rural sacrifice. They cut a square trench on the ground, leaving the turf in the middle; on that they make a fire of wood, on which they dress a large caudle of eggs, butter, oatmeal, and milk, and bring, besides the ingredients of the caudle, plenty of beer and whisky; for each of the company must contribute something. The rites begin with spilling some of the caudle on the ground, by way of libation; on that every one takes a cake of oatmeal, upon which are raised nine square knobs, each dedicated to some particular being, the supposed preserver of their flocks and herds, or to some particular animal, the real destroyer of them; each person then turns his face to the fire, breaks off a knob, and, flinging it over his shoulder, says, “This I give to thee, preserve thou my horses; this to thee, preserve thou my sheep; and so on.” After that they use the same ceremony to the noxious animals: “This I give to thee, Ο fox! spare thou my lambs; this to thee, Ο hooded crow! this to thee, Ο eagle!” When the ceremony is over they dine on the caudle; and, after the feast is finished, what is left is hid by two persons deputed for that purpose; but on the next Sunday they reassemble, and finish the reliques of the first entertainment.’[1] The 1st of May is a great popular festival in the more midland and southern parts of Sweden. On the preceding evening huge bonfires, which should be lighted by striking two flints together, blaze on all the hills and knolls. Every large hamlet has its own fire, round which the young people dance in a ring. The old folk notice whether the flames incline to the north or to the south. In the former case the spring will be cold and backward; in the latter mild and genial.[2]

But the season at which these fire-festivals are most generally held all over Europe is the summer solstice, that is, Midsummer Eve (23rd June) or Midsummer Day (24th June). According to a mediaeval writer the three great features of this festival were the bonfires, the procession with torches round the fields, and the custom of rolling a wheel. The writer adds that the smoke drives away harmful dragons which cause sickness, and he explains the custom of rolling the wheel to mean that the sun has now reached the highest point in the ecliptic, and begins thenceforward to descend.[3] From his description, which is still applicable, we see that the main features of the midsummer fire-festival are identical with those which characterise the spring festivals. In Swabia lads and lasses, hand in hand, leap over the midsummer bonfire, praying that the hemp may grow three ells high, and they set fire to wheels of straw and send them rolling down the hill.[1] In Lechrain bonfires are kindled on the mountains on Midsummer Day; and besides the bonfire a tall beam, thickly wrapt in straw, and surmounted by a cross-piece, is burned in many places. Round this cross, as it burns, the lads dance; and when the flames have subsided, the young people leap over the fire in pairs, a young man and a young woman together. It is believed that the flax will grow that year as high as they leap over the fire; and that if a charred billet be taken from the fire and stuck in a flax field it will promote the growth of the flax.[2] At Deffingen, as they jumped over the midsummer bonfire, they cried out, ‘Flax, flax! may the flax this year grow seven ells high!’[3] In Bohemia bonfires are kindled on many of the mountains on Midsummer Eve; boys and girls, hand in hand, leap over them; cart-wheels smeared with resin are ignited and sent rolling down the hill; and brooms covered with tar and set on fire are swung about or thrown high into the air. The handles of the brooms or embers from the fire are preserved and stuck in gardens to protect the vegetables from caterpillars and gnats. Sometimes the boys run down the hillside in troops, brandishing the blazing brooms and shouting. The bonfire is sometimes made by stacking wood and branches round the trunk of a tree and setting the whole on fire.[4]

In old farm-houses of the Surenthal and Winenthal a couple of holes or a whole row of them may sometimes be seen facing each other in the door-posts of the barn or stable. Sometimes the holes are smooth and round; sometimes they are deeply burnt and blackened. The explanation of them is this. About midsummer, but especially on Midsummer Day, two such holes are bored opposite each other, into which the extremities of a strong pole are fixed. The holes are then stuffed with tow steeped in resin and oil; a rope is looped round the pole, and two young men, who must be brothers or must have the same baptismal name, and must be of the same age, pull the ends of the rope backwards and forwards so as to make the pole revolve rapidly, till smoke and sparks issue from the two holes in the door-posts. The sparks are caught and blown up with tinder, and this is the new and pure fire, the appearance of which is greeted with cries of joy. Heaps of combustible materials are now ignited with the new fire, and blazing bundles are placed on boards and sent floating down the brook. The boys light torches at the new fire and run to fumigate the pastures. This is believed to drive away all the demons and witches that molest the cattle. Finally the torches are thrown in a heap on the meadow and allowed to burn out. On their way back the boys strew the ashes over the fields: this is supposed to make them fertile. If a farmer has taken possession of a new house, or if servants have changed masters, the boys fumigate the new abode and are rewarded by the farmer with a supper.[1]

At Konz, on the Moselle, the midsummer fire-festival used to be celebrated as follows. A quantity of straw, contributed jointly by every house, was collected on the top of the Stromberg Hill. Here, towards evening, the men and boys assembled, while the women and girls took up their position at a certain well down below. On the top of the hill a huge wheel was completely covered with a portion of the collected straw, the remainder of which was made into torches. The mayor of Sierk, who always received a basket of cherries for his services, gave the signal, the wheel was ignited with a torch, and sent rolling down the hill amid shouts of joy. All the men and boys swung their torches in the air, some of them remained on the top of the hill, while others followed the fiery wheel on its course down the hillside to the Moselle. As it passed the women and girls at the well they raised cries of joy which were answered by the men on the top of the hill. The inhabitants of the neighbouring villages also stood on the banks of the river and mingled their voices with the general shout of jubilation. The wheel was often extinguished before it reached the water, but if it plunged blazing into the river the people expected an abundant vintage, and the inhabitants of Konz had the right to exact a waggon-load of white wine from the surrounding vineyards.[1]

In France the midsummer customs are similar. In Poitou a wheel enveloped in straw is set on fire, and people run with it through the fields, which are supposed to be fertilised thereby; also, the people leap thrice over the fire, holding in their hands branches of nut-trees, which are afterwards hung over the door of the cattle-stall. At Brest torches are brandished, and hundreds of them flung up into the air together.[2] In Brittany midsummer fires blaze on the hills, the people dance round them, singing and leaping over the glowing embers. The bonfire is made by piling wood round a pole which is surmounted by a nosegay or crown.[3]

Sometimes, instead of rolling fiery wheels, discs of wood are ignited in the midsummer fires and thrown into the air in the manner already described.[4] At Edersleben, near Sangerhausen, a high pole was planted in the ground and a tar barrel was hung from it by a chain which reached to the ground. The barrel was then set on fire and swung round the pole amid shouts of joy.[5]

In our own country the custom of lighting bonfires at midsummer has prevailed extensively. In the North of England these fires used to be lit in the open streets. Young and old gathered round them; the former leaped over the fires and engaged in games, while the old people looked on. Sometimes the fires were kindled on the tops of high hills. The people also carried firebrands about the fields.[1] In Herefordshire and Somersetshire people used to make fires in the fields on Midsummer Eve ‘to bless the apples.’[2] In Devonshire the custom of leaping over the midsummer fires was also observed.[3] In Cornwall bonfires were lit on Midsummer Eve and the people marched round them with lighted torches, which they also carried from village to village. On Whiteborough, a large tumulus near Launceston, a huge bonfire used to be kindled on Midsummer Eve; a tall summer pole with a large bush at the top was fixed in the centre of the bonfire.[4] At Darowen in Wales small bonfires were lit on Midsummer Eve.[5] On the same day people in the Isle of Man used to light fires to the windward of every field, so that the smoke might pass over the corn; and they folded their cattle and carried blazing furze or gorse round them several times.[6]

In Ireland, ‘on the Eves of St John Baptist and St Peter, they always have in every town a bonfire late in the evening, and carry about bundles of reeds fast tied and fired; these being dry, will last long, and flame better than a torch, and be a pleasing divertive prospect to the distant beholder; a stranger would go near to imagine the whole country was on fire.’[7] Another writer says of the South of Ireland: ‘On Midsummer’s Eve, every eminence, near which is a habitation, blazes with bonfires; and round these they carry numerous torches, shouting and dancing.’[1] An author who described Ireland in the first quarter of last century says: ‘On the vigil of St John the Baptist’s nativity, they make bonfires, and run along the streets and fields with wisps of straw blazing on long poles to purify the air, which they think infectious by believing all the devils, spirits, ghosts, and hobgoblins fly abroad this night to hurt mankind.’[2] Another writer states that he witnessed the festival in Ireland in 1782: ‘Exactly at midnight the fires began to appear, and taking advantage of going up to the leads of the house, which had a widely extended view, I saw on a radius of thirty miles, all around, the fires burning on every eminence which the country afforded. I had a further satisfaction in learning, from undoubted authority, that the people danced round the fires, and at the close went through these fires, and made their sons and daughters, together with their cattle, pass through the fire; and the whole was conducted with religious solemnity.’[3] That the custom prevailed in full force as late as 1867 appears from a notice in the Liverpool Mercury, 29th June 1867, which runs thus: ‘The old pagan fire-worship still survives in Ireland, though nominally in honour of St John. On Sunday night bonfires were observed throughout nearly every county in the province of Leinster. In Kilkenny fires blazed on every hillside at intervals of about a mile. There were very many in the Queen’s county, also in Kildare and Wexford. The effect in the rich sunset appeared to travellers very grand. The people assemble and dance round the fires, the children jump through the flames, and in former times live coals were carried into the corn-fields to prevent blight.’[4]

In Scotland the traces of midsummer fires are few. In reference to the parish of Mongahitter it is said: ‘The Midsummer Eve fire, a relic of Druidism, was kindled in some parts of this country.’[1] Moresin states that on St Peter’s Day (29th June) the Scotch ran about with lighted torches on mountains and high grounds;[2] and at Loudon in Ayrshire it appears that down to the close of last century the custom still prevailed for herdsmen and young people to kindle fires on high grounds on St Peter’s Day.[3] In the Perthshire Highlands on Midsummer Day the cowherd used to go three times round the fold, according to the course of the sun, with a burning torch in his hand. This was believed to purify the flocks and herds and prevent diseases.[4]

In Slavonic countries also the midsummer festival is celebrated with similar rites. In Russia fires are lighted and young people, crowned with flowers, jump through them and drive their cattle through them. In Little Russia a stake is driven into the ground on St John’s Night, wrapt in straw, and set on fire. As the flames rise the peasant women throw birch-tree boughs into them, saying, ‘May my flax be as tall as this bough!’[5] ‘In Ruthenia the bonfires are lighted by a flame procured from wood by friction, the operation being performed by the elders of the party, amid the respectful silence of the rest. But as soon as the fire is “churned,” the bystanders break forth with joyous songs, and when the bonfires are lit the young people take hands, and spring in couples through the smoke, if not through the flames, and after that the cattle in their turn are driven through it.’[6] In many parts of Prussia and Lithuania great fires are kindled on the Eve of St John (Midsummer Eve). All the heights are ablaze with them, as far as the eye can see. The fires are supposed to be a protection against thunder, hail, and cattle disease, especially if next morning the cattle are driven over the places where the fires burned.[1] In some parts of Masuren it is the custom on the evening of Midsummer Day to put out all the fires in the village. Then an oaken stake is driven into the ground, a wheel is fixed on it as on an axle and is made to revolve rapidly, till the friction produces fire. Every one takes home a light from the new fire and rekindles the fire on the domestic hearth.[2] In Bohemia the cows used to be driven over the midsummer fires to protect them from witchcraft.[3] In Servia on Midsummer Eve herdsmen light torches of birch bark and march round the sheepfolds and cattle-stalls; then they climb the hills and there allow the torches to burn out.[4]

In Greece the women light fires on St John’s Eve and jump over them crying, ‘I leave my sins behind me.’[5] Italy must also have had its midsummer bonfires, since at Orvieto they were specially excepted from the prohibition directed against bonfires in general.[6] We have seen that they are still lighted in Sardinia.[7] In Corsica on the Eve of St John the people set fire to the trunk of a tree or to a whole tree, and the young men and maidens dance round the blaze, which is called fucaraja.[8] Midsummer fires are, or were formerly, lighted in Spain.[9] Even the Mohammedans of Algeria and Morocco are reported to have kindled great midsummer bonfires of straw into which they kept throwing incense and spices the whole night, invoking the divine blessing on their fruit-trees.[10]

It remains to show that the burning of effigies of human beings in the midsummer fires was not uncommon. At Rottenburg in Würtemberg, down to the beginning of the present century, a ceremony was observed on Midsummer Day which was called ‘beheading the angel-man.’ A stump was driven into the ground, wrapt with straw, and fashioned into the rude likeness of a human figure, with arms, head, and face. This was the angel-man; round about him wood was piled up. The boys, armed with swords, assembled in crowds, covered the figure completely over with flowers, and eagerly awaited the signal. When the pile of wood was fired and the angel-man burst into a blaze, the word was given and all the boys fell upon him with their swords and hewed the burning figure in pieces. Then they leaped backwards and forwards over the fire.[1] In some parts of the Tyrol a straw-man is carted about the village on Midsummer Day and then burned. He is called the Lotter, which has been corrupted into Luther.[2] In French Flanders down to 1789 a straw figure representing a man was always burned in the midsummer bonfire, and the figure of a woman was burned on St Peter’s Day, 29th June.[3] At Grätz on the 23rd June the common people used to make a puppet called the Tatermann, which they dragged to the bleaching-ground, and pelted with burning besoms till it took fire.[4] In some parts of Russia a figure of Kupalo is burned or thrown into a stream on St John’s Night.[5] The Russian custom of carrying the straw effigy of Kupalo over the midsummer bonfire has been already described.[6]

The best general explanation of these European fire-festivals seems to be the one given by Mannhardt, namely, that they are sun-charms or magical ceremonies intended to ensure a proper supply of sunshine for men, animals, and plants. We have seen that savages resort to charms for making sunshine,[1] and we need not wonder that primitive man in Europe has done the same. Indeed, considering the cold and cloudy climate of Europe during a considerable part of the year, it is natural that sun-charms should have played a much more prominent part among the superstitious practices of European peoples than among those of savages who live nearer the equator. This view of the festivals in question is supported by various considerations drawn partly from the rites themselves, partly from the influence which they are believed to exert upon the weather and on vegetation. For example, the custom of rolling a burning wheel down a hillside, which is often observed on these occasions, seems a very natural imitation of the sun’s course in the sky, and the imitation is especially appropriate on Midsummer Day when the sun’s annual declension begins. Not less graphic is the imitation of his apparent revolution by swinging a burning tar-barrel round a pole.[2] The custom of throwing blazing discs, shaped like suns, into the air is probably also a piece of imitative magic. In these, as in so many cases, the magic force is supposed to take effect through mimicry or sympathy; by imitating the desired result you actually produce it; by counterfeiting the sun’s progress through the heavens you really help the luminary to pursue his celestial journey with punctuality and despatch. The name ‘fire of heaven,’ by which the midsummer fire is sometimes popularly known,[3] clearly indicates a consciousness of the connection between the earthly and the heavenly flame.

Again, the manner in which the fire appears to have been originally kindled on these occasions favours the view that it was intended to be a mock-sun. For, as various scholars have seen,[4] it is highly probable that originally at these festivals fire was universally obtained by the friction of two pieces of wood. We have seen that this is still the case in some places both at the Easter and midsummer fires, and that it is expressly stated to have been formerly the case at the Beltane fires.[1] But what makes it almost certain that this was once the invariable mode of kindling the fire at these periodic festivals is the analogy of the need-fires. Need-fires are kindled, not at fixed periods, but on occasions of special distress, particularly at the outbreak of a murrain, and the cattle are driven through the need-fire, just as they are sometimes driven through the midsummer fires.[2] Now, the need-fire has always been produced by the friction of wood and sometimes by the revolution of a wheel; in Mull, for example, it was made by turning an oaken wheel over nine oaken spindles from east to west, that is, in the direction of the sun. It is a plausible conjecture that the wheel employed to produce the need-fire represents the sun;[3] and if the spring and midsummer fires were originally produced in the same way, it would be a confirmation of the view that they were originally sun-charms. In point of fact there is, as Kuhn has pointed out,[4] some evidence to show that the midsummer fire was originally thus produced. For at Obermedlingen in Swabia the ‘fire of heaven,’ as it was called, was made on St Vitus’s Day (15th June) by igniting a cart-wheel, which, smeared with pitch and plaited with straw, was fastened on a pole twelve feet high, the top of the pole being inserted in the nave of the wheel. This fire was made on the summit of the mountain, and as the flame ascended, the people uttered a set form of words, with eyes and arms directed heavenward.[5] Here the fact of a wheel being fixed on the top of a pole and ignited makes it probable that originally the fire was produced, as in the need-fire, by the revolution of a wheel. The day on which the ceremony takes place (15th June) is near midsummer; and we have seen that in Masuren fire is (or was) actually made on Midsummer Day by turning a wheel rapidly about an oaken pole, though it is not said that the new fire so produced is used to light a bonfire.

Once more, the influence which these bonfires are supposed to exert on the weather and on vegetation goes to show that they are sun-charms, since the effects ascribed to them are identical with those of sunshine. Thus, in Sweden the warmth or cold of the coming season is inferred from the direction in which the flames of the bonfire are blown; if they blow to the south, it will be warm, if to the north cold. No doubt at present the direction of the flames is regarded merely as an augury of the weather, not as a mode of influencing it. But we may be pretty sure that this is one of the cases in which magic has dwindled into divination. So in the Eifel Mountains, when the smoke blows towards the corn-fields, this is an omen that the harvest will be abundant. But doubtless the older view was, not merely that the smoke and flames prognosticated, but that they actually produced an abundant harvest, the heat of the flames acting like sunshine on the corn. Indeed, this older view must still have been held by people in the Isle of Man when they lit fires to windward of their fields in order that the smoke might blow over them. Again, the idea that the corn will grow well as far as the blaze of the bonfire is visible, is certainly a remnant of the belief in the quickening and fertilising power of the bonfires. The same belief reappears in the notion that embers taken from the bonfires and inserted in the fields will promote the growth of the crops, and again it plainly underlies the custom of mixing the ashes of the bonfire with the seed-corn at sowing, or of scattering the ashes by themselves over the field. The belief that the flax will grow as high as the people leap over the bonfire belongs clearly to the same class of ideas. Once more, we saw that at Konz, on the banks of the Moselle, if the blazing wheel which was trundled down the hillside reached the river without being extinguished, this was hailed as a proof that the vintage would be abundant. So firmly was this belief held that the successful performance of the ceremony entitled the villagers to levy a tax upon the owners of the neighbouring vineyards. Here the unextinguished wheel meant an unclouded sun, and this in turn meant an abundant vintage. So the waggon-load of white wine which the villagers received from the vineyards round about was in fact a payment for the sunshine which they had procured for the grapes.

The interpretation of these fire-customs as charms for making sunshine is confirmed by a parallel custom observed by the Hindoos of Southern India at the Pongol or Feast of Ingathering. The festival is celebrated in the early part of January, when, according to Hindoo astrologers, the sun enters the tropic of Capricorn, and the chief event of the festival coincides with the passage of the sun. For some days previously the boys gather heaps of sticks, straw, dead leaves, and everything that will burn. On the morning of the first day of the festival the heaps are fired. Every street and lane has its bonfire. The young folk leap over the fire or pile on fresh fuel. This fire is an offering to Sûrya, the sun-god, or to Agni, the deity of fire; it ‘wakes him from his sleep, calling on him again to gladden the earth with his light and heat.’[1] To say that the fires awaken the sun-god from his sleep is only a metaphorical and perhaps modernised expression of the belief that they actually help to rekindle the sun’s light and heat.

The custom of leaping over the fire and driving cattle through it may be intended, on the one hand, to secure for man and beast a share of the vital energy of the sun, and, on the other hand, to purify them from all evil influences; for to the primitive mind fire is the most powerful of all purificatory agents. The latter idea is obviously uppermost in the minds of Greek women when they leap over the midsummer fire, saying, ‘I leave my sins behind me.’ So in Yucatan at a New Year’s festival the people used to light a huge bonfire and pass through it, in the belief that this was a means of ridding themselves of their troubles.[1] The custom of driving cattle through a fire is not confined to Europe. At certain times the Hottentots make a fire of chips, dry branches, and green twigs, so as to raise a great smoke. Through this fire they drive their sheep, dragging them through by force, if necessary. If the sheep make their escape without passing through the fire, it is reckoned a heavy disgrace and a very bad omen. But if they pass readily through or over the fire, the joy of the Hottentots is indescribable.[2]

The procession or race with burning torches, which so often forms a part of these fire-festivals, appears to be simply a means of diffusing far and wide the genial influence of the bonfire or of the sunshine which it represents. Hence on these occasions lighted torches are very frequently carried over the fields, sometimes with the avowed intention of fertilising them;[3] and with the same intention live coals from the bonfire are sometimes placed in the field ‘to prevent blight.’ The custom of trundling a burning wheel over the fields, which is practised for the express purpose of fertilising them, embodies the same idea in a still more graphic form; since in this way the mock-sun itself, not merely its light and heat represented by torches, is made actually to pass over the ground which is to receive its quickening and kindly influence. Again, the custom of carrying lighted brands round the cattle is plainly equivalent to driving the animals through the fire. It is quite possible that in these customs the idea of the quickening power of fire may be combined with the conception of it as a purgative agent for the expulsion or destruction of evil beings. It is certainly sometimes interpreted in the latter way by persons who practise the customs; and this purgative use of fire comes out very prominently, as we have seen, in the general expulsion of demons from towns and villages. But in the present class of cases this aspect of it is perhaps secondary, if indeed it is more than a later misinterpretation of the custom.

It remains to ask, What is the meaning of burning an effigy in these bonfires? The effigies so burned, as was remarked above, can hardly be separated from the effigies of Death which are burned or otherwise destroyed in spring; and grounds have been already given for regarding the so-called effigies of Death as really representations of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. Are the other effigies, which are burned in the spring and midsummer bonfires, susceptible of the same explanation? It would seem so. For just as the fragments of the so-called Death are stuck in the fields to make the crops grow, so the charred embers of the figure burned in the spring bonfires are sometimes placed in the fields in the belief that they will keep vermin from the crop. Again, the rule that the last married bride must leap over the fire in which the straw-man is burned on Shrove Tuesday, is probably intended to make her fruitful. But, as we have seen, the power of blessing women with offspring is a special attribute of tree-spirits,[1] it is therefore a fair presumption that the burning effigy over which the bride must leap is a representative of the fertilising tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. This character of the effigy, as representative of the spirit of vegetation, is almost unmistakable when the effigy is composed of an unthreshed sheaf of corn or is covered from head to foot with flowers.[2] Again, it is to be noted that instead of an effigy living trees are sometimes burned both in the spring and midsummer bonfires.[3] Now, considering the frequency with which the tree-spirit is represented in human shape, it is hardly rash to suppose that when sometimes a tree and sometimes an effigy is burned in these fires, the effigy and the tree are regarded as equivalent to each other, each being a representative of the tree-spirit. This, again, is confirmed by observing, first, that sometimes the effigy which is to be burned is carried about simultaneously with a May-tree, the former being carried by the boys, the latter by the girls;[1] and, second, that the effigy is sometimes tied to a living tree and burned with it.[2] In these cases, we can scarcely doubt, the tree-spirit is represented, as we have found it represented before, in duplicate, both by the tree and by the effigy. That the true character of the effigy as a representative of the beneficent spirit of vegetation should sometimes be forgotten, is natural. The custom of burning a beneficent god is too foreign to later modes of thought to escape misinterpretation. Naturally enough the people who continued to burn his image came in time to identify it as the effigy of persons, whom, on various grounds, they considered objectionable, such as Judas Iscariot, Luther, and a witch.

The general reasons for killing a god or his representative have been examined in the preceding chapter. But when the god happens to be a deity of vegetation, there are special reasons why he should die by fire. For light and heat are necessary to vegetable growth; and, on the principle of sympathetic magic, by subjecting the personal representative of vegetation to their influence, you secure a supply of these necessaries for trees and crops. In other words by burning the spirit of vegetation in a fire which represents the sun, you make sure that, for a time at least, vegetation shall have plenty of sun. It may be objected that, if the intention is simply to secure enough sunshine for vegetation, this end would be better attained, on the principles of sympathetic magic, by merely passing the representative of vegetation through the fire instead of burning him. In point of fact this is sometimes done. In Russia, as we have seen, the straw figure of Kupalo is not burned in the midsummer fire, but merely carried backwards and forwards across it.[3] But, for the reasons already given, it is necessary that the god should die; so next day Kupalo is stripped of her ornaments and thrown into a stream. In this Russian custom, therefore, the passage of the image through the fire is a sun-charm pure and simple; the killing of the god is a separate act, and the mode of killing him – by drowning – is probably a rain-charm. But usually people have not thought it necessary to draw this fine distinction; for the various reasons already assigned it is advantageous, they think, to expose the god of vegetation to a considerable degree of heat, and it is also advantageous to kill him, and they combine these advantages in a rough-and-ready way by burning him.

Finally, we have to ask, were human beings formerly burned as representatives of the tree-spirit or deity of vegetation? We have seen reasons for believing that living persons have often acted as representatives of the tree-spirit, and have suffered death as such. There is no reason, therefore, why they should not have been burned, if any special advantages were likely to be attained by putting them to death in that way. The consideration of human suffering is not one which enters into the calculations of primitive man. It would have been surprising if it did, when we remember the record of Christian Europe. Now, in the fire-festivals which we are discussing, the pretence of burning people is sometimes carried so far that it seems reasonable to regard it as a mitigated survival of an older custom of actually burning them. Thus in Aachen, as we saw, the man clad in peas-straw acts so cleverly that the children really believe he is being burned. And at the Beltane fires the pretended victim was seized, and a show made of throwing him into the fire, and for some time afterwards people affected to speak of him as dead. In the following customs Mannhardt is probably right in recognising traces of an old custom of burning a leaf-clad representative of the spirit of vegetation. At Wolfeck, in Austria, on Midsummer Day, a boy completely clad in green fir branches goes from house to house, accompanied by a noisy crew, collecting wood for the bonfire. As he gets the wood he sings –

‘Forest trees I want,

No sour milk for me,

But beer and wine,

So can the wood-man be jolly and gay.’[1]

In some parts of Bavaria, also, the boys who go from house to house collecting fuel for the midsummer bonfire envelop one of their number from head to foot in green branches of firs, and lead him by a rope through the whole village.[2] At Moosheim, in Würtemberg, the festival of St John’s Fire usually lasted for fourteen days, ending on the second Sunday after Midsummer Day. On this last day the bonfire was left in charge of the children, while the older people retired to a wood. Here they encased a young fellow in leaves and twigs, who, thus disguised went to the fire, scattered it, and trod it out. All the people present fled at the sight of him.[3]

But it seems possible to go farther than this. Of human sacrifices offered on these occasions the most unequivocal traces, as we have seen, are those which, about a hundred years ago, still lingered at the Beltane fires in the Highlands of Scotland, that is, among a Celtic people who, situated in a remote corner of Europe, enjoying practical independence, and almost completely isolated from foreign influence, had till then conserved their old heathenism better than any other people in the West of Europe. It is significant, therefore, that human sacrifices by fire are known, on unquestionable evidence, to have been systematically practised by the Celts. The earliest description of these sacrifices is by Julius Caesar. As conqueror of the hitherto independent Celts of Gaul, Caesar had ample opportunity of observing the national Celtic religion and manners, while these were still fresh and crisp from the native mint and had not yet been fused in the melting-pot of Roman civilisation. With his own notes Caesar appears to have incorporated the observations of a Greek explorer, by name Posidonius, who travelled in Gaul about fifty years before Caesar carried the Roman arms to the English Channel. The Greek geographer Strabo and the historian Diodorus seem also to have derived their descriptions of the Celtic sacrifices from the work of Posidonius, but independently of each other and of Caesar, for each of the three derivative accounts contains some details which are not to be found in either of the others. By combining them, therefore, we can restore the original account of Posidonius with some certainty, and thus obtain a picture of the sacrifices offered by the Celts of Gaul at the close of the second century BC.[1] The following seem to have been the main outlines of the custom. Condemned criminals were reserved by the Celts in order to be sacrificed to the gods at a great festival which took place once in every five years. The more there were of such victims, the greater was believed to be the fertility of the land.[2] When there were not enough criminals to furnish victims, captives taken in war were sacrificed to supply the deficiency. When the time came the victims were sacrificed by the Druids or priests. Some were shot down with arrows, some were impaled, and some were burned alive in the following manner. Colossal images of wicker-work or of wood and grass were constructed; these were filled with live men, cattle, and animals of other kinds; fire was then applied to the images, and they were burned with their living contents.

Such were the great festivals held once every five years. But besides these quinquennial festivals, celebrated on so grand a scale and with, apparently, so large an expenditure of human life, it seems reasonable to suppose that festivals of the same sort, only on a lesser scale, were held annually, and that from these annual festivals are lineally descended some at least of the fire-festivals which, with their traces of human sacrifices, are still celebrated year by year in many parts of Europe. The gigantic images constructed of osiers or covered with grass in which the Druids enclosed their victims remind us of the leafy framework in which the human representative of the tree-spirit is still so often encased.[1] Considering, therefore, that the fertility of the land was apparently supposed to depend upon the due performance of these sacrifices, Mannhardt is probably right in viewing the Celtic victims, cased in osiers and grass, as representatives of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. These wicker giants of the Druids seem to have still their representatives at the spring and midsummer festivals of modern Europe. At Douay a procession takes place annually on the Sunday nearest to the 7th of July. The great feature of the procession is a colossal figure made of osiers, and called ‘the giant,’ which is moved through the streets by means of rollers and ropes worked by men who are enclosed within the figure. The wooden head of the giant is said to have been carved and painted by Rubens. The figure is armed as a knight with lance and sword, helmet and shield. Behind him march his wife and his three children, all constructed of osiers on the same principle, but on a smaller scale.[2] At Dunkirk the giant is forty to fifty feet high, being made of basket-work and canvas, properly painted and dressed. It contains a great many living men within it, who move it about. Wicker giants of this sort are common in the towns of Belgium and French Flanders; they are led about at the Carnival in spring. The people, it is said, are much attached to these grotesque figures, speak of them with patriotic enthusiasm, and never weary of gazing at them.[3] In England artificial giants seem to have been a standing feature of the midsummer festival. A writer of the sixteenth century speaks of ‘Midsommer pageants in London, where, to make the people wonder, are set forth great and uglie gyants, marching as if they were alive, and armed at all points, but within they are stuffed full of browne paper and tow, which the shrewd boyes, underpeeping, do guilefully discover, and turne to a greate derision.’[1] The Mayor of Chester in 1599 ‘altered many antient customs, as the shooting for the sheriff’s breakfast; the going of the Giants at Midsommer, etc.’[2] In these cases the giants only figure in the processions. But sometimes they are burned in the spring or summer bonfires. Thus the people of the Rue aux Ours in Paris used annually to make a great wicker-work figure, dressed as a soldier, which they promenaded up and down the streets for several days, and solemnly burned on the 3rd of July, the crowd of spectators singing Salve Regina. The burning fragments of the image were scattered among the people, who eagerly scrambled for them. The custom was abolished in 1743.[3] In Brie, Isle de France, a wicker-work giant, eighteen feet high, was annually burned on Midsummer Eve.[4]

Again, the Druidical custom of burning live animals, enclosed in wicker-work, has its counterpart at the spring and midsummer festivals. At Luchon in the Pyrenees on Midsummer Eve ‘a hollow column, composed of strong wicker-work, is raised to the height of about sixty feet in the centre of the principal suburb, and interlaced with green foliage up to the very top while the most beautiful flowers and shrubs procurable are artistically arranged in groups below, so as to form a sort of background to the scene. The column is then filled with combustible materials, ready for ignition. At an appointed hour – about 8 pm – a grand procession, composed of the clergy, followed by young men and maidens in holiday attire, pour forth from the town chanting hymns, and take up their position around the column. Meanwhile, bonfires are lit, with beautiful effect, in the surrounding hills. As many living serpants as could be collected are now thrown into the column, which is set on fire at the base by means of torches, armed with which about fifty boys and men dance around with frantic gestures. The serpents, to avoid the flames, wriggle their way to the top, whence they are seen lashing out laterally until finally obliged to drop, their struggles for life giving rise to enthusiastic delight among the surrounding spectators. This is a favourite annual ceremony for the inhabitants of Luchon and its neighbourhood, and local tradition assigns to it a heathen origin.’[1] In the midsummer fires formerly kindled on the Place de Grève at Paris it was the custom to burn a basket, barrel, or sack full of live cats; sometimes a fox was burned. The people collected the embers and ashes of the fire and took them home, believing that they brought good luck.[2] At Metz midsummer fires were lighted on the Esplanade, and six cats were burned in them.[3] In Russia a white cock was sometimes burned in the midsummer bonfire;[4] in Meissen or Thüringen a horse’s head used to be thrown into it.[5] Sometimes animals are burned in the spring bonfires. In the Vosges cats were burned on Shrove Tuesday; in Elsass they were thrown into the Easter bonfire.[6] We have seen that squirrels were sometimes burned in the Easter fire.

If the men who were burned in wicker frames by the Druids represented the spirit of vegetation, the animals burned along with them must have had the same meaning. Amongst the animals burned by the Druids or in modern bonfires have been, as we saw, cattle, cats, foxes, and cocks; and all of these creatures are variously regarded by European peoples as embodiments of the corn-spirit.[7] I am not aware of any certain evidence that in Europe serpents have been regarded as representatives of the tree-spirit or corn-spirit; [1] as victims at the midsummer festival in Luchon they may have replaced animals which really had this representative character. When the meaning of the custom was forgotten, utility and humanity might unite in suggesting the substitution of noxious reptiles as victims in room of harmless and useful animals.

Thus it appears that the sacrificial rites of the Celts of ancient Gaul can be traced in the popular festivals of modern Europe. Naturally it is in France, or rather in the wider area comprised within the limits of ancient Gaul, that these rites have left the clearest traces in the customs of burning giants of wicker-work and animals enclosed in wicker-work or baskets. These customs, it will have been remarked, are generally observed at or about midsummer. From this we may infer that the original rites of which these are the degenerate successors were solemnised at midsummer. This inference harmonises with the conclusion suggested by a general survey of European folk-custom, that the midsummer festival must on the whole have been the most widely diffused and the most solemn of all the yearly festivals celebrated by the primitive Aryans in Europe. And in its application to the Celts this general conclusion is corroborated by the more or less perfect vestiges of midsummer fire-festivals which we have found lingering in all those westernmost promontories and islands which are the last strongholds of the Celtic race in Europe – Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, the Isle of Man, Scotland, and Ireland. In Scotland, it is true, the chief Celtic fire-festival certainly appear to have been held at Beltane (1st May) and Hallow E’en; but this was exceptional.

To sum up; the combined evidence of ancient writers and of modern folk-custom points to the conclusion that amongst the Celts of Gaul an annual festival was celebrated at midsummer, at which living men, representing the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation, were enclosed in wicker-frames and burned. The whole rite was designed as a charm to make the sun to shine and the crops to grow.

But another great feature of the Celtic midsummer festival appears to have been the gathering of the sacred mistletoe by the Druids. The ceremony has been thus described by Pliny in a passage which has often been quoted. After enumerating the different kinds of mistletoe he proceeds: ‘In treating of this subject, the admiration in which the mistletoe is held throughout Gaul ought not to pass unnoticed. The Druids, for so they call their wizards, esteem nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree on which it grows, provided only that the tree is an oak. But apart from this they choose oak-woods for their sacred groves and perform no sacred rites without oak-leaves; so that the very name of Druids may be regarded as a Greek appellation derived from their worship of the oak.[1] For they believe that whatever grows on these trees is sent from heaven, and is a sign that the tree has been chosen by the god himself. The mistletoe is very rarely to be met with; but when it is found, they gather it with solemn ceremony. This they do especially in the sixth month (the beginnings of their months and years are determined by the moon) and after the tree has passed the thirtieth year of its age, because by that time it has plenty of vigour, though it has not attained half its full size. After due preparations have been made for a sacrifice and a feast under the tree, they hail it as the universal healer and bring to the spot two white bulls, whose horns have never been bound before. A priest clad in a white robe climbs the tree and with a golden[1] sickle cuts the mistletoe, which is caught in a white cloth. Then they sacrifice the victims, praying that God may make his own gift to prosper with those upon whom he has bestowed it. They believe that a potion prepared from mistletoe will make barren animals to bring forth and that the plant is a remedy against all poison.’[2]

In saying that the Druids cut the mistletoe in the sixth month Pliny must have had in his mind the Roman calendar, in which the sixth month was June. Now, if the cutting of the mistletoe took place in June, we may be almost certain that the day which witnessed the ceremony was Midsummer Eve. For in many places Midsummer Eve, a day redolent of a thousand decaying fancies of yore, is still the time for culling certain magic plants, whose evanescent virtue can be secured at this mystic season alone. For example, on Midsummer Eve the fern is believed to burst into a wondrous bloom, like fire or burnished gold. Whoever catches this bloom, which very quickly fades and falls off, can make himself invisible, can understand the language of animals, and so forth. But he must not touch it with his hand; he must spread a white cloth under the fern, and the magic bloom (or seed) will fall into it.[1] Again, St John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum), a herb which is believed to heal all kinds of wounds and to drive away witches and demons, is gathered on Midsummer Eve (Eve of St John), and is worn as an amulet or hung over doors and windows on that day.[2] Again, mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) is believed to possess magic qualities provided it be gathered on St John’s Eve. Hence in France it is called the herb of St John. People weave themselves a girdle of the plant, believing that it will protect them against ghosts, magic, misfortune, and disease, throughout the year. Or they weave garlands of it on St John’s Eve, and look through them at the midsummer bonfire or put them on their heads. Whoever does this will suffer no aches in his eyes or head that year. Sometimes the plant is thrown into the midsummer bonfire.[3] The superstitious association of fern-seed, St John’s wort, and mugwort with Midsummer Eve is widely diffused over Europe. The following associations seem to be more local. In England the orpine (Sedum telephium) is popularly called Midsummer Men, because it has been customary to gather it on Midsummer Eve for the purpose of using it to ascertain the fate of lovers;[4] and in England sprigs of red sage are sometimes gathered on Midsummer Eve for the same purpose.[5] In Bohemia poachers fancy they can make themselves invulnerable by means of fir-cones gathered before sunrise on St John’s Day.[1] Again, in Bohemia wild thyme gathered on Midsummer Day is used to fumigate the trees on Christmas Eve, in order that they may grow well.[2] In Germany and Bohemia a plant called St John’s Flower or St John’s Blood (Hieracium pilosella) is gathered on Midsummer Eve. It should be rooted up with a gold coin. The plant is supposed to bring luck and to be especially good for sick cattle.[3]

These facts by themselves would suffice to raise a strong presumption that, if the Druids cut the mistletoe in June, as we learn from Pliny that they did, the day on which they cut it could have been no other than Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Day. This presumption is converted into practical certainty when we find it to be still a rule of folklore that the mistletoe should be cut on Midsummer Eve.[4] Further, the peasants of Piedmont and Lombardy still go out on Midsummer morning to search the oak-leaves for the ‘oil of St John,’ which is supposed to heal all wounds made with cutting instruments.[5] Originally no doubt the ‘oil of St John’ was simply the mistletoe, or a decoction made from it. For in Holstein the mistletoe, especially oak-mistletoe, is still regarded as a panacea for green wounds;[6] and if, as is alleged, ‘all-healer’ is an epithet of the mistletoe in the modern Celtic speech of Britanny, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland,[7] this can be nothing but a survival of the name by which, as we have seen, the Druids addressed the oak, or rather, perhaps, the mistletoe.

Thus it appears that the two main features of the Balder myth – the pulling of the mistletoe and the burning of the god – were reproduced in the great midsummer festival of the Celts. But in Scandinavia itself, the home of Balder, both these features of his myth can still be traced in the popular celebration of midsummer. For in Sweden on Midsummer Eve mistletoe is ‘diligently sought after, they believing it to be, in a high degree, possessed of mystic qualities; and that if a sprig of it be attached to the ceiling of the dwelling-house, the horse’s stall, or the cow’s crib, the “Troll” will then be powerless to injure either man or beast.’[1] And in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark huge bonfires are kindled on hills and eminences on Midsummer Eve.[2] It does not appear, indeed, that any effigy is burned in these bonfires; but the burning of an effigy is a feature which might easily drop out after its meaning was forgotten. And the name of Balder’s bale-fires (Balder’s Bălar), by which these midsummer fires were formerly known in Sweden,[3] puts their connection with Balder beyond the reach of doubt, and makes it certain that in former times either a living representative or an effigy of Balder must have been annually burned in them. Midsummer was the season sacred to Balder, and the fact that the Swedish poet Tegner, in his Frithiofssaga, places the burning of Balder at midsummer[4] may perhaps be allowed as evidence of a Swedish tradition to that effect. From this double coincidence of the Balder myth, on the one hand with the midsummer festival of Celtic Gaul and on the other with the midsummer festival in Scandinavia, we may safely conclude that the myth is not a myth pure and simple, that is, a mere description of physical phenomena in imagery borrowed from human life; it must undoubtedly be a ritualistic myth, that is a myth based on actual observation of religious ceremonies and purportion to explain them. Now, the standing explanation which myth gives of ritual is that the ritual in question is a periodic commemoration of some remarkable transaction in the past, the actors in which may have been either gods or men. Such an explanation the Balder myth would seem to offer of the annual fire-festivals which, as we saw, must have played so prominent a part in the primitive religion of the Aryan race in Europe. Balder must have been the Norse representative of the being who was burnt in effigy or in the person of a living man at the fire-festivals in question. But if, as I have tried to show, the being so burnt was the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation, it follows that Balder also must have been a tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation.

But it is desirable to determine, if we can, the particular kind of tree or trees, of which a personal representative was burned at the fire-festivals. For we may be quite sure that it was not as a representative of vegetation in general that the victim suffered death. The conception of vegetation in general is too abstract to be primitive. Most probably the victim at first represented a particular kind of sacred tree. Now of all European trees none has such claims as the oak to be considered as pre-eminently the sacred tree of the Aryans. Its worship is attested for all the great branches of the Aryan stock in Europe. We have seen that it was not only the sacred tree, but the principal object of worship of both Celts and Slavs.[1] According to Grimm, the oak ranked first among the holy trees of the Germans, and was indeed their chief god. It is certainly known to have been adored by them in the age of heathendom, and traces of its worship have survived in various parts of Germany almost to the present day.[2] Amongst the ancient Italians, according to Preller, the oak was sacred above all other trees.[3] The image of Jupiter on the Capitol at Rome seems to have been originally nothing but a natural oak-tree.[4] At Dodona, perhaps the oldest of all Greek sanctuaries, Zeus was worshipped as immanent in the sacred oak, and the rustling of its leaves in the wind was his voice.[1] If, then, the great god of both Greeks and Romans was represented in some of his oldest shrines under the form of an oak, and if the oak was the principal object of worship of Celts, Germans, and Slavs, we may certainly conclude that this tree was one of the chief, if not the very chief divinity of the Aryans before the dispersion; and that their primitive home must have lain in a land which was clothed with forests of oak.[2]

Now, considering the primitive character and remarkable similarity of the fire-festivals observed by all the branches of the Aryan race in Europe, we may infer that these festivals form part of the common stock of religious observances which the various peoples carried with them in their wanderings from their original home. But, if I am right, an essential feature of those primitive fire-festivals was the burning of a man who represented the tree-spirit. In view, then, of the place occupied by the oak in the religion of the Aryans, the presumption is that the tree so represented at the fire-festivals must originally have been the oak. So far as the Celts and Slavs are concerned, this conclusion will perhaps hardly be contested. But both for them and for the Germans it is confirmed by a remarkable piece of religious conservatism. The most primitive method known to man of producing fire is by rubbing two pieces of wood against each other till they ignite; and we have seen that this method is still used in Europe for kindling sacred fires such as the need-fire, and that most probably it was formerly resorted to at all the fire-festivals under discussion. Now it is sometimes prescribed that the need-fire, or other sacred fire, must be made by the friction of a particular kind of wood; and wherever the kind of wood is prescribed, whether among Celts, Germans, or Slavs, that wood is always the oak. Thus we have seen that amongst the Slavs of Masuren the new fire for the village is made on Midsummer Day by causing a wheel to revolve rapidly round an axle of oak till the axle takes fire.[1] When the perpetual fire which the ancient Slavs used to maintain chanced to go out, it was rekindled by the friction of a piece of oak-wood, which had been previously heated by being struck with a gray (not a red) stone.[2] In Germany the need-fire was regularly kindled by the friction of oak-wood;[3] and in the Highlands of Scotland, both the Beltane and the need-fires were lighted by similar means.[1] Now, if the sacred fire was regularly kindled by the friction of oak-wood, we may infer that originally the fire was also fed with the same material. In point of fact, the perpetual fire which burned under the sacred oak at the great Slavonian sanctuary of Romove was fed with oak-wood;[2] and that oak-wood was formerly the fuel burned in the midsummer fires may perhaps be inferred from the circumstance that in many mountain districts of Germany peasants are still in the habit of making up their cottage fire on Midsummer Day with a heavy block of oak-wood. The block is so arranged that it smoulders slowly and is not finally reduced to charcoal till the expiry of a year. Then upon next Midsummer Day the charred embers of the old log are removed to make room for the new one, and are mixed with the seed-corn or scattered about the garden. This is believed to promote the growth of the crops and to preserve them from blight and vermin.[3] It may be remembered that at the Boeotian festival of the Daedala, the analogy of which to the spring and midsummer festivals of modern Europe has been already pointed out, the great feature was the felling and burning of an oak.[4] The general conclusion is, that at those periodic or occasional ceremonies, of which the object was to cause the sun to shine, and the fruits of the earth to grow, the ancient Aryans both kindled and fed the fire with the sacred oak-wood.

But if at these solemn rites the fire was regularly made of oak-wood, it follows that the man who was burned in it as a personification of the tree-spirit could have represented no tree but the oak. The sacred oak was thus burned in duplicate; the wood of the tree was consumed in the fire, and along with it was consumed a living man as a personification of the oak-spirit. The conclusion thus drawn for the European Aryans in general is confirmed in its special application to the Celts and Scandinavians by the relation in which, amongst these peoples, the mistletoe stood to the burning of the victim in the midsummer fire. We have seen that among Celts and Scandinavians it has been customary to gather the mistletoe at midsummer. But so far as appears on the face of this custom, there is nothing to connect it with the midsummer fires in which human victims or effigies of them were burned. Even if the fire, as seems probable, was originally always made with oak-wood, why should it have been necessary to pull the mistletoe? The last link between the midsummer customs of gathering the mistletoe and lighting the bonfires is supplied by Balder’s myth, which certainly cannot be disjoined from the customs in question. The myth shows that a vital connection must once have been believed to subsist between the mistletoe and the human representative of the oak who was burned in the fire. According to the myth, Balder could be killed by nothing in heaven or earth except the mistletoe; and so long as the mistletoe remained on the oak, he was not only immortal, but invulnerable. Now, as soon as we see that Balder was the oak, the origin of the myth becomes plain. The mistletoe was viewed as the seat of life of the oak, and so long as it was uninjured nothing could kill or even wound the oak. The conception of the mistletoe as the seat of life of the oak would naturally be suggested to primitive people by the observation that while the oak is deciduous, the mistletoe which grows on it is evergreen. In winter the sight of its fresh foliage among the bare branches must have been hailed by the worshippers of the tree as a sign that the divine life which has ceased to animate the branches yet survived in the mistletoe, as the heart of a sleeper still beats when his body is motionless. Hence when the god had to be killed – when the sacred tree had to be burnt – it was necessary to begin by breaking off the mistletoe. For so long as the mistletoe remained intact, the oak (so people thought) was invulnerable; all the blows of their knives and axes would glance harmless from its surface. But once tear from the oak its sacred heart – the mistletoe – and the tree nodded to its fall. And when in later times the spirit of the oak came to be represented by a living man, it was logically necessary to suppose that, like the tree he personated, he could neither be killed nor wounded so long as the mistletoe remained uninjured. The pulling of the mistletoe was thus at once the signal and the cause of his death.

But since the idea of a being whose life is thus, in a sense, outside itself, must be strange to many readers, and has, indeed, not yet been recognised in its full bearing on primitive superstition, it will be worth while to devote a couple of sections to the subject. The result will be to show that, in assuming this idea as the explanation of the relation of Balder to the mistletoe, I assume a principle which is deeply engraved on the mind of primitive man.

The External Soul in Folk-tales

In a former chapter we saw that, in the opinion of primitive people, the soul may temporarily absent itself from the body without causing death. Such temporary absences of the soul are often believed to involve considerable risk, since the wandering soul is liable to a variety of mishaps at the hands of enemies, and so forth. But there is another aspect to this power of externalising the soul. If only the safety of the soul can be ensured during its absence from the body, there is no reason why the soul should not continue absent for an indefinite time; indeed a man may, on a pure calculation of personal safety, desire that his soul should never return to his body. Unable to conceive of life abstractly as a ‘permanent possibility of sensation’ or a ‘continuous adjustment of internal arrangements to external relations,’ the savage thinks of it as a concrete material thing of a definite bulk, capable of being seen and handled, kept in a box or jar, and liable to be bruised, fractured, or smashed in pieces. It is not needful that the life, so conceived, should be in the man; it may be absent from his body and still continue to animate him, by virtue of a sort of sympathy or ‘action at a distance.’ So long as this object which he calls his life or soul remains unharmed, the man is well; if it is injured, he suffers; if it is destroyed, he dies. Or, to put it otherwise, when a man is ill or dies, the fact is explained by saying that the material object called his life or soul, whether it be in his body or out of it, has either sustained injury or been destroyed. But there may be circumstances in which, if the life or soul remains in the man, it stands a greater chance of sustaining injury than if it were stowed away in some safe and secret place. Accordingly, in such circumstances, primitive man takes his soul out of his body and deposits it for security in some safe place, intending to replace it in his body when the danger is past. Or if he should discover some place of absolute security, he may be content to leave his soul there permanently. The advantage of this is that, so long as the soul remains unharmed in the place where he has deposited it, the man himself is immortal; nothing can kill his body, since his life is not in it.

Evidence of this primitive belief is furnished by a class of folk-tales of which the Norse story of ‘The giant who had no heart in his body’ is perhaps the best-known example. Stories of this kind are widely diffused over the world, and from their number and the variety of incident and of details in which the leading idea is embodied, we may infer that the conception of an external soul is one which has had a powerful hold on the minds of men at an early stage of history. For folk-tales are a faithful reflection of the world as it appeared to the primitive mind; and we may be sure that any idea which commonly occurs in them, however absurd it may seem to us, must once have been an ordinary article of belief. This assurance, so far as it concerns the supposed power of externalising the soul for a longer or shorter time, is amply corroborated by a comparison of the folk-tales in question with the actual beliefs and practices of savages. To this we shall return after some specimens of the tales have been given. The specimens will be selected with a view of illustrating both the characteristic features and the wide diffusion of this class of tales.

In the first place, the story of the external soul is told, in various forms, by all Aryan peoples from Hindustan to the Hebrides. A very common form of it is this: A warlock, giant, or other fairyland being is invulnerable and immortal because he keeps his soul hidden far away in some secret place; but a fair princess, whom he holds enthralled in his enchanted castle, wiles his secret from him and reveals it to the hero, who seeks out the warlock’s soul, heart, life, or death (as it is variously called), and, by destroying it, simultaneously kills the warlock. Thus a Hindoo story tells how a magician called Punchkin held a queen captive for twelve years, and would fain marry her, but she would not have him. At last the queen’s son came to rescue her, and the two plotted together to kill Punchkin. So the queen spoke the magician fair, and pretended that she had at last made up her mind to marry him. ‘“And do tell me,” she said, “are you quite immortal? Can death never touch you? And are you too great an enchanter ever to feel human suffering?” … “It is true,” he said, “that I am not as others. Far, far away – hundreds of thousands of miles from this – there lies a desolate country covered with thick jungle. In the midst of the jungle grows a circle of palm-trees, and in the centre of the circle stand six chattees full of water, piled one above another; below the sixth chattee is a small cage, which contains a little green parrot – on the life of the parrot depends my life – and if the parrot is killed I must die. It is, however,” he added, “impossible that the parrot should sustain any injury, both on account of the inaccessibility of the country, and because, by my appointment, many thousand genii surround the palm-trees, and kill all who approach the place.”’ But the queen’s young son overcame all difficulties, and got possession of the parrot. He brought it to the door of the magician’s palace, and began playing with it. Punchkin, the magician, saw him, and, coming out, tried to persuade the boy to give him the parrot. ‘“Give me my parrot!” cried Punchkin. Then the boy took hold of the parrot and tore off one of his wings; and as he did so the magician’s right arm fell off. Punchkin then stretched out his left arm, crying, “Give me my parrot!” The prince pulled off the parrot’s second wing, and the magician’s left arm tumbled off. “Give me my parrot!” cried he, and fell on his knees. The prince pulled off the parrot’s right leg, the magician’s right leg fell off; the prince pulled off the parrot’s left leg, down fell the magician’s left. Nothing remained of him except the lifeless body and the head; but still he rolled his eyes, and cried, “Give me my parrot!” “Take your parrot, then,” cried the boy; and with that he wrung the bird’s neck, and threw it at the magician and, as he did so, Punchkin’s head twisted round, and with a fearful groan, he died!’[1] In another Hindoo tale an ogre is asked by his daughter, ‘“Papa, where do you keep your soul?” “Sixteen miles away from this place,” said he, “is a tree. Round the tree are tigers, and bears, and scorpions, and snakes; on the top of the tree is a very great fat snake; on his head is a little cage; in the cage is a bird; and my soul is in that bird.”’ The end of the ogre is like that of the magician in the previous tale. As the bird’s wings and legs are torn off, the ogre’s arms and legs drop off; and when its neck is wrung he falls down dead.[2]

In another Hindoo story a princess called Sodewa Bai is born with a golden necklace about her neck, and the astrologer told her parents, ‘This is no common child; the necklace of gold about her neck contains your daughter’s soul; let it, therefore, be guarded with the utmost care; for if it were taken off and worn by another person, she would die.’ So her mother caused it to be firmly fastened round the child’s neck, and, as soon as the child was old enough to understand, she told her its value, and warned her never to let it be taken off. In course of time Sodewa Bai was married to a prince who had another wife living. The first wife, jealous of her young rival, persuaded a negress to steal from Sodewa Bai the golden necklace which contained her soul. The negress did so, and, as soon as she put the necklace round her own neck, Sodewa Bai died. All day long the negress used to wear the necklace; but late at night, on going to bed, she would take it off and put it by till morning; and whenever she took it off, Sodewa Bai’s soul returned to her and she lived. But when morning came, and the negress put on the necklace, Sodewa Bai died again. At last the prince discovered the treachery of his elder wife and restored the golden necklace to Sodewa Bai.[1] In another Hindoo story a holy mendicant tells a queen that she will bear a son, adding, ‘As enemies will try to take away the life of your son, I may as well tell you that the life of the boy will be bound up in the life of a big boal-fish which is in your tank in front of the palace. In the heart of the fish is a small box of wood, in the box is a necklace of gold, that necklace is the life of your son.’ The boy was born and received the name of Dalim. His mother was the Suo or younger queen. But the Duo or elder queen hated the child, and learning the secret of his life, she caused the boal-fish, with which his life was bound up, to be caught. Dalim was playing near the tank at the time, but ‘the moment the boal-fish was caught in the net, that moment Dalim felt unwell; and when the fish was brought up to land, Dalim fell down on the ground, and made as if he was about to breathe his last. He was immediately taken into his mother’s room, and the king was astonished on hearing of the sudden illness of his son and heir. The fish was by the order of the physician taken into the room of the Duo queen, and as it lay on the floor striking its fins on the ground, Dalim in his mother’s room was given up for lost. When the fish was cut open, a casket was found in it; and in the casket lay a necklace of gold. The moment the necklace was worn by the queen, that very moment Dalim died in his mother’s room.’ The queen used to put off the necklace every night, and whenever she did so, the boy came to life again. But every morning when the queen put on the necklace, he died again.[2]

In a Cashmeer story a lad visits an old ogress, pretending to be her grandson, the son of her daughter who had married a king. So the old ogress took him into her confidence and showed him seven cocks, a spinning wheel, a pigeon, and a starling. ‘These seven cocks,’ said she, ‘contain the lives of your seven uncles, who are away for a few days. Only as long as the cocks live can your uncles hope to live; no power can hurt them as long as the seven cocks are safe and sound. The spinning-wheel contains my life; if it is broken, I too shall be broken, and must die; but otherwise I shall live on for ever. The pigeon contains your grandfather’s life, and the starling your mother’s; as long as these live, nothing can harm your grandfather or your mother.’ So the lad killed the seven cocks and the pigeon and the starling, and smashed the spinning-wheel; and at the moment he did so the ogres and ogresses perished.[1] In another story from Cashmeer an ogre cannot die unless a particular pillar in the verandah of his palace be broken. Learning the secret, a prince struck the pillar again and again till it was broken in pieces. And it was as if each stroke had fallen on the ogre, for he howled lamentably and shook like an aspen every time the prince hit the pillar, until at last, when the pillar fell down, the ogre also fell down and gave up the ghost.[2] In another Cashmeer tale an ogre is represented as laughing very heartily at the idea that he might possibly die. He said that ‘he should never die. No power could oppose him; no years could age him; he should remain ever strong and ever young, for the thing wherein his life dwelt was most difficult to obtain.’ It was in a queen bee, which was in a honeycomb on a tree. But the bees in the honeycomb were many and fierce, and it was only at the greatest risk that any one could catch the queen. But the hero achieved the enterprise and crushed the queen bee; and immediately the ogre fell stone dead to the ground, so that the whole land trembled with the shock.[3] In some Bengalee tales the life of a whole tribe of ogres is described as concentrated in two bees. The secret was thus revealed by an old ogress to a captive princess who pretended to fear lest the ogress should die. ‘Know, foolish girl,’ said the ogress, ‘that we ogres never die. We are not naturally immortal, but our life depends on a secret which no human being can unravel. Let me tell you what it is that you may be comforted. You know yonder tank; there is in the middle of it a crystal pillar, on the top of which in deep water are two bees. If any human being can dive into the water and bring up the two bees from the pillar in one breath, and destroy them so that not a drop of their blood falls to the ground, then we ogres shall certainly die; but if a single drop of blood falls to the ground, then from it will start up a thousand ogres. But what human being will find out this secret, or, finding it, will be able to achieve the feat? You need not, therefore, darling, be sad; I am practically immortal.’ As usual, the princess reveals the secret to the hero, who kills the bees, and that same moment all the ogres drop down dead, each on the spot where he happened to be standing.[1] In another Bengalee story it is said that all the ogres dwell in Ceylon, and that all their lives are in a single lemon. A boy cuts the lemon in pieces; and all the ogres die.[2]

In a Siamese or Cambodian story, probably derived from India, we are told that Thossakan or Ravana, the King of Ceylon, was able by magic art to take his soul out of his body and leave it in a box at home, while he went to the wars. Thus he was invulnerable in battle. When he was about to give battle to Rama, he deposited his soul with a hermit called Fire-eye, who was to keep it safe for him. So in the fight Rama was astounded to see that his arrows struck the king without wounding him. But one of Rama’s allies, knowing the secret of the king’s invulnerability, transformed himselfby magic into the likeness of the king, and going to the hermit asked back his soul. On receiving it he soared up into the air and flew to Rama, brandishing the box and squeezing it so hard that all the breath left the King of Ceylon’s body, and he died.[3] In a Bengalee story a prince going into a far country planted with his own hands a tree in the courtyard of his father’s palace, and said to his parents, ‘This tree is my life. When you see the tree green and fresh, then know that it is well with me; when you see the tree fade in some parts, then know that I am in an ill case; and when you see the whole tree fade, then know that I am dead and gone.’[1] In another Indian tale a prince, setting forth on his travels, left behind him a barley plant with instructions that it should be carefully tended and watched, for if it flourished, he would be alive and well, but if it dropped, then some mischance was about to happen to him. And so it fell out. For the prince was beheaded, and as his head rolled off, the barley plant snapped in two and the ear of barley fell to the ground.[2] In the legend of the origin of Gilgit there figures a fairy king whose soul is in the snows and who can only perish by fire.[3]

In Greek tales, ancient and modern, the idea of an external soul is not uncommon. When Meleager was seven days old, the Fates appeared to his mother and told her that Meleager would die when the brand which was blazing on the hearth had burnt down. So his mother snatched the brand from the fire and kept it in a box. But in after years, being enraged at her son for slaying her brothers, she burnt the brand in the fire and Meleager at once expired.[4] Again, Nisus, King of Megara, had a purple or golden hair on the middle of his head, and it was fated that whenever the hair was pulled out the king should die. When Megara was besieged by the Cretans, the king’s daughter Scylla fell in love with Minos, their King and pulled out the fatal hair from her father’s head. So he died.[5] Smilarly Poseidon made Pterelaus immortal by giving him a golden hair on his head. But when Taphos, the home of Pterelaus, was besieged by Amphitryon, the daughter of Pterelaus fell in love with Amphitryon and killed her father by plucking out the golden hair with which his life was bound up.[1] In a modern Greek folk-tale a man’s strength lies in three golden hairs on his head. When his mother pulls them out, he grows weak and timid and is slain by his enemies.[2] In another modern Greek story the life of an enchanter is bound up with three doves which are in the belly of a wild boar. When the first dove is killed, the magician grows sick, when the second is killed, he grows very sick, and when the third is killed, he dies.[3] In another Greek story of the same sort an ogre’s strength is in three singing birds which are in a wild boar. The hero kills two of the birds, and then coming to the ogre’s house finds him lying on the ground in great pain. He shows the third bird to the ogre, who begs that the hero will either let it fly away or give it to him to eat. But the hero wrings the bird’s neck and the ogre dies on the spot.[4] In a variant of the latter story the monster’s strength is in two doves, and when the hero kills one of them, the monster cries out, ‘Ah, woe is me! Half my life is gone. Something must have happened to one of the doves.’ When the second dove is killed, he dies.[5] In another Greek story the incidents of the three golden hairs and the three doves are artificially combined. A monster has three golden hairs on his head which open the door of a chamber in which are three doves; when the first dove is killed, the monster grows sick, when the second is killed, he grows worse, and when the third is killed, he dies.[1] In another Greek tale an old man’s strength is in a ten-headed serpent. When the serpent’s heads are being cut off, he feels unwell, and when the last head is struck off, he expires.[2] In another Greek story a dervish tells a queen that she will have three sons, that at the birth of each she must plant a pumpkin in the garden, and that in the fruit borne by the pumpkins will reside the strength of the children. In due time the infants are born and the pumpkins planted. As the children grow up the pumpkins grow with them. One morning the eldest son feels sick, and on going into the garden they find that the largest pumpkin is gone. Next night the second son keeps watch in a summer-house in the garden. At midnight a negro appears and cuts the second pumpkin. At once the boy’s strength goes out of him and he is unable to pursue the negro. The youngest son, however, succeeds in slaying the negro and recovering the lost pumpkins.[3]

Ancient Italian legend furnishes a close parallel to the Greek story of Meleager. Silvia, the young wife of Septimius Marcellus, had a child by the god Mars. The god gave her a spear, with which he said that the fate of the child would be bound up. When the boy grew up he quarrelled with his maternal uncles and slew them. So in revenge his mother burned the spear on which his life depended.[4] In one of the stories of the Pentamerone a certain queen has a twin brother, a dragon. The astrologers declared at her birth that she would live just as long as the dragon and no longer, the death of the one involving the death of the other. If the dragon were killed, the only way to restore the queen to life would be to smear her temples, breast, pulses, and nostrils with the blood of the dragon.[5] In a modern Roman version of ‘Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp,’ the magician tells the princess whom he holds captive in a floating rock in mid-ocean that he will never die. The princess reports this to the prince her husband, who has come to rescue her. The prince replies, ‘It is impossible but that there should be some one tiling or other that is fatal to him; ask him what that one fatal thing is.’ So the princess asked the magician and he told her that in the wood was a hydra with seven heads; in the middle head of the hydra was a leveret, in the head of the leveret was a bird, in the bird’s head was a precious stone, and if this stone were put under his pillow he would die. The prince procured the stone and the princess laid it under the magician’s pillow. No sooner did the enchanter lay his head on the pillow than he gave three terrible yells, turned himself round and round three times, and died.[1]

Stories of the same sort are current among Slavonic peoples. Thus in a Russian tale a warlock called Koshchei the Deathless is asked where his death is. ‘My death,’ he answered, ‘is in such and such a place. There stands an oak, and under the oak is a casket, and in the casket is a hare, and in the hare is a duck, and in the duck is an egg, and in the egg is my death.’ A prince obtained the egg and squeezed it, whereupon Koshchei the Deathless bent double. But when the prince shivered the egg in pieces, the warlock died.[2] ‘In one of the descriptions of Koshchei’s death, he is said to be killed by a blow on the forehead inflicted by the mysterious egg – that last link in the magic chain by which his life is darkly bound. In another version of the same story, but told of a snake, the fatal blow is struck by a small stone found in the yolk of an egg, which is inside a duck, which is inside a hare, which is inside a stone, which is on an island.’[3] In another variant the prince shifts the fatal egg from one hand to the other, and as he does so Koshchei rushes wildly from side to side of the room. At last the prince smashes the egg, and Koshchei drops dead.[1] In another Russian story the death of an enchantress is in a blue rose-tree in a blue forest. Prince Ivan uproots the rose-tree, whereupon the enchantress straightway sickens. He brings the rose-tree to her house and finds her at the point of death. Then he throws it into the cellar, crying, ‘Behold her death!’ and at once the whole building shakes, ‘and becomes an island, on which are people who had been sitting in Hell, and who offer up thanks to Prince Ivan.’[2] In another Russian story a prince is grievously tormented by a witch who has got hold of his heart, and keeps it seething in a magic cauldron.[3] In a Bohemian tale a warlock’s strength lies in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a stag, which is under a tree. A seer finds the egg and sucks it. Then the warlock grows as weak as a child, ‘for all his strength had passed into the seer.’[4] In a Serbian story a fabulous being called True Steel declares, ‘Far away from this place there is a very high mountain, in the mountain there is a fox, in the fox there is a heart, in the heart there is a bird, and in this bird is my strength.’ The fox is caught and killed and its heart is taken out. Out of the fox’s heart is taken the bird, which is then burnt, and that very moment True Steel falls dead.[5] In a South Slavonian story a dragon tells an old woman, ‘My strength is a long way off, and you cannot go thither. Far in another empire under the emperor’s city is a lake, in that lake is a dragon, and in the dragon a boar, and in the boar a pigeon, and in that is my strength.’[6]

Amongst peoples of the Teutonic stock stories of the external soul are not wanting. In a tale told by the Saxons of Transylvania it is said that a young man shot at a witch again and again. The bullets went clean through her but did her no harm, and she only laughed and mocked at him. ‘Silly earthworm,’ she cried, ‘shoot as much as you like. It does me no harm. For know that my life resides not in me but far, far away. In a mountain is a pond, on the pond swims a duck, in the duck is an egg, in the egg burns a light, that light is my life. If you could put out that light, my life would be at an end. But that can never, never be.’ However, the young man got hold of the egg, smashed it, and put out the light, and with it the witch’s life went out also.[1] In a German story a cannibal called Soulless keeps his soul in a box, which stands on a rock in the middle of the Red Sea. A soldier gets possession of the box and goes with it to Soulless, who begs the soldier to give him back his soul. But the soldier opens the box, takes out the soul, and flings it backward over his head. At the same moment the cannibal drops down stone dead.[2] In an Oldenburg story a king has three sons and a daughter, and for each child there grows a flower in the king’s garden. Each of the flowers is a life flower; it blooms and flourishes while the child lives, but when the child dies it withers away.[3] In another German story an old warlock lives with a damsel all alone in the midst of a vast and gloomy wood. She fears that being old he may die and leave her alone in the forest. But he reassures her. ‘Dear child,’ he said, ‘I cannot die, and I have no heart in my breast.’ But she importuned him to tell her where his heart was. So he said, ‘Far, far from here in an unknown and lonesome land stands a great church. The church is well secured with iron doors, and round about it flows a broad deep moat. In the church flies a bird and in the bird is my heart. So long as that bird lives, I live. It cannot die of itself, and no one can catch it; therefore I cannot die, and you need have no anxiety. However the young man, whose bride the damsel was to have been before the warlock spirited her away, contrived to reach the church and catch the bird. He brought it to the damsel, who stowed him and it away under the warlock’s bed. Soon the old warlock came home. He was ailing, and said so. The girl wept and said, ‘Alas, daddy is dying; he has a heart in his breast after all.’ ‘Child,’ replied the warlock, ‘hold your tongue. I can’t die. It will soon pass over.’ At that the young man under the bed gave the bird a gentle squeeze; and as he did so, the old warlock felt very unwell and sat down. Then the young man gripped the bird tighter, and the warlock fell senseless from his chair. ‘Now squeeze him dead,’ cried the damsel. Her lover obeyed, and when the bird was dead, the old warlock also lay dead on the floor.[1]

In the Norse tale of ‘the giant who had no heart in his body,’ the giant tells the captive princess, ‘Far, far away in a lake lies an island, on that island stands a church, in that church is a well, in that well swims a duck, in that duck there is an egg, and in that egg there lies my heart.’ The hero of the tale obtains the egg and squeezes it, at which the giant screams piteously and begs for his life. But the hero breaks the egg in pieces and the giant at once bursts.[2] In another Norse story a hill-ogre tells the captive princess that she will never be able to return home unless she finds the grain of sand which lies under the ninth tongue of the ninth head of a certain dragon; but if that grain of sand were to come over the rock in which the ogres live, they would all burst ‘and the rock itself would become a gilded palace, and the lake green meadows.’ The hero finds the grain of sand and takes it to the top of the high rock in which the ogres live. So all the ogres burst and the rest falls out as one of the ogres had foretold.[3] In an Icelandic parallel to the story of Meleager, the spae-wives or sybils come and foretell the high destiny of the infant Gestr as he lies in his cradle. Two candles were burning beside the child, and the youngest of the spae-wives, conceiving herself slighted, cried out, ‘I foretell that the child shall live no longer than this candle burns.’ Whereupon the chief sybil put out the candle and gave it to Gestr’s mother to keep, charging her not to light it again until her son should wish to die. Gestr lived three hundred years; then he kindled the candle and expired.[1]

In a Celtic tale a giant says, ‘There is a great flagstone under the threshold. There is a wether under the flag. There is a duck in the wether’s belly, and an egg in the belly of the duck, and it is in the egg that my soul is.’ The egg is crushed, and the giant falls down dead.[2] In another Celtic tale, a sea beast has carried off a king’s daughter, and an old smith declares that there is no way of killing the beast but one. ‘In the island that is in the midst of the loch is Eillid Chaisthion – the white-footed hind, of the slenderest legs, and the swiftest step, and, though she should be caught, there would spring a hoodie out of her, and though the hoodie should be caught, there would spring a trout out of her, but there is an egg in the mouth of the trout, and the soul of the beast is in the egg, and if the egg breaks, the beast is dead.’ As usual the egg is broken and the beast dies.[3] In a Breton story there figures a giant whom neither fire nor water nor steel can harm. He tells a princess whom he has just married, ‘I am immortal, and no one can hurt me, unless he crushes on my breast an egg which is in a pigeon, which is in the belly of a hare; this hare is in the belly of a wolf, and this wolf is in the belly of my brother, who dwells a thousand leagues from here. So I am quite easy on that score.’ A soldier gets the egg and crushes it on the breast of the gaint, who immediately expires.[4] In another Breton tale a giant is called Body-without-Soul because his life does not reside in his body. It resides in an egg, the egg is in a dove, the dove is in a hare, the hare is in a wolf, and the wolf is in an iron chest at the bottom of the sea. The hero kills the animals one after another, and at the death of each animal the giant grows weaker, as if he had lost a limb. When at last the hero comes to the giant’s castle bearing the egg in his hand, he finds Body-without-Soul stretched on his bed at the point of death. So he dashes the egg against the giant’s forehead, the egg breaks and the giant straightway dies.[1]

The notion of an external soul has now been traced in folk-tales told by Aryan peoples from India to Brittany and the Hebrides. We have still to show that the same idea occurs commonly in the popular stories of non-Aryan peoples. In the first place it appears in the ancient Egyptian story of ‘The Two Brothers.’ This story was written down in the reign of Rameses II, about 1300 years BC. It is therefore older than our present redaction of Homer, and far older than the Bible. The outline of the story, so far as it concerns us here, is as follows: Once upon a time there were two brethren; the name of the elder was Anupu and the name of the younger was Bitiu. Now Anupu had a house and a wife, and his younger brother dwelt with him as his servant. It was Anupu who made the garments, and every morning when it grew light he drove the kine afield. As he walked behind them they used to say to him, ‘The grass is good in such and such a place,’ and he heard what they said and led them to the good pasture that they desired. So his kine grew very sleek and multiplied greatly. One day when the two brothers were at work in the field the elder brother said to the younger, ‘Run and fetch seed from the village.’ So the younger brother ran and said to the wife of his elder brother, ‘Give me seed that I may run to the field, for my brother sent me saying, tarry not.’ She said, ‘Go to the barn and take as much as you desire.’ He went and filled a jar full of wheat and barley, and came forth bearing it on his shoulders. When the woman saw him her heart went out to him, and she laid hold of him and said, ‘Come, let us rest an hour together.’ But he said, ‘Thou art to me as a mother, and my brother is to me as a father.’ So he would not hearken to her, but took the load on his back and went away to the field. In the evening, when the elder brother was returning from the field, his wife feared for what she had said. So she took soot and made herself as one who has been beaten. And when her husband came home, she said, ‘When thy younger brother came to fetch seed, he said to me, Come, let us rest an hour together. But I would not and he beat me.’ Then the elder brother became like a panther of the south; he sharpened his knife and stood behind the door of the cow-house. And when the sun set and the younger brother came laden with all the herbs of the field, as was his wont every day, the cow that walked in front of the herd said to him, ‘Behold, thy elder brother stands with a knife to kill thee. Flee before him.’ When he heard what the cow said, he looked under the door of the cow-house and saw the feet of his elder brother standing behind the door, his knife in his hand. So he fled and his brother pursued him with the knife. But the younger brother cried for help to the Sun, and the Sun heard him and caused a great water to spring up between him and his elder brother, and the water was full of crocodiles. The two brothers stood, the one on the one side of the water and the other on the other, and the younger brother told the elder brother all that had befallen. So the elder brother repented him of what he had done and he wept aloud. But he could not come at the farther bank by reason of the crocodiles. His younger brother called to him and said, ‘Go home and tend the cattle thyself. For I will dwell no more in the place where thou art. I will go to the Valley of the Acacia. But this is what thou shalt do for me. Thou shalt come and care for me, if evil befalls me, for I will enchant my heart and place it on the top of the flower of the Acacia; and if they cut the Acacia and my heart falls to the ground, thou shalt come and seek it, and when thou hast found it thou shalt lay it in a vessel of fresh water. Then I shall come to life again. But this is the sign that evil has befallen me; the pot of beer in thine hand shall bubble.’ So he went away to the Valley of the Acacia, but his brother returned home with dust on his head and slew his wife and cast her to the dogs.

For many days afterwards the younger brother dwelt alone in the Valley of the Acacia. By day he hunted the beasts of the field, but at evening he came and laid him down under the Acacia, on the top of whose flower was his heart. And many days after that he built himself a house in the Valley of the Acacia. But the gods were grieved for him; and the Sun said to Khnum, ‘Make a wife for Bitiu, that he may not dwell alone.’ So Khnum made him a woman to dwell with him, who was perfect in her limbs more than any woman on earth, for all the gods were in her. So she dwelt with him. But one day a lock of her hair fell into the river and floated down to the land of Egypt, to the house of Pharaoh’s washerwomen. The fragrance of the lock perfumed Pharaoh’s raiment, and the washerwomen were blamed, for it was said, ‘An odour of perfume in the garments of Pharaoh!’ So the heart of Pharaoh’s chief washerman was weary of the complaints that were made every day, and he went to the quay; and there in the water he saw the lock of hair. He sent one down into the river to fetch it, and, because it smelt sweetly, he took it to Pharaoh. Then Pharaoh’s magicians were sent for and they said, ‘This lock of hair belongs to a daughter of the Sun, who has in her the essence of all the gods. Let messengers go forth to all foreign lands to seek her.’ So the woman was brought from the Valley of the Acacia with chariots and archers and much company, and all the land of Egypt rejoiced at her coming, and Pharaoh loved her. But when they asked her of her husband, she said to Pharaoh, ‘Let them cut down the Acacia and let them destroy him.’ So men were sent with tools to cut down the Acacia. They came to it and cut the flower upon which was the heart of Bitiu; and he fell down dead in that evil hour. But the next day, when the elder brother of Bitiu was entered into his house and had sat down, they brought him a pot of beer and it bubbled, and they gave him a jug of wine and it grew turbid. Then he took his staff and his sandals and hied him to the Valley of the Acacia, and there he found his younger brother lying dead in his house. So he sought for the heart of his brother under the Acacia. For three years he sought in vain, but in the fourth year he found it in the berry of the Acacia. So he threw the heart into a cup of fresh water. And when it was night and the heart had sucked in much water, Bitiu shook in all his limbs and revived. Then he drank the cup of water in which his heart was, and his heart went into its place, and he lived as before.[1]

In the story of Seyf-el-Mulook in the Arabian Nights, the Jinnee declares, ‘When I was born, the astrologers declared that the destruction of my soul would be effected by the hand of one of the sons of the human kings. I therefore took my soul, and put it into the crop of a sparrow, and I imprisoned the sparrow in a little box, and put this into another small box, and this I put within seven other small boxes, and I put these within seven chests, and the chests I put into a coffer of marble within the verge of this circumambient ocean; for this part is remote from the countries of mankind, and none of mankind can gain access to it.’ But Seyf-el-Mulook got possession of the sparrow and strangled it, and the Jinnee fell upon the ground a heap of black ashes.[2] In a modern Arabian tale a king marries an ogress, who puts out the eyes of the king’s forty wives. One of the blinded queens gives birth to a son whom she names Mohammed the Prudent. But the ogress queen hated him and compassed his death. So she sent him on an errand to the house of her kinsfolk the ogres. In the house of the ogres he saw some things hanging from the roof, and on asking a female slave what they were, she said, ‘That is the bottle which contains the life of my lady the queen, and the other bottle beside it contains the eyes of the queens whom my mistress blinded.’ A little afterwards he spied a beetle and rose to kill it. ‘Don’t kill it,’ cried the slave, ‘for that is my life.’ But Mohammed the Prudent watched the beetle till it entered a chink in the wall; and when the female slave had fallen asleep, he killed the beetle in its hole, and so the slave died. Then Mohammed took down the two bottles and carried them home to his father’s palace. There he presented himself before the ogress queen and said, ‘See, I have your life in my hand, but I will not kill you till you have replaced the eyes which you took from the forty queens.’ The ogress did as she was bid, and then Mohammed the Prudent said, ‘There, take your life.’ But the bottle slipped from his hand and fell, the life of the ogress escaped from it, and she died.[1]

In a Kabyl story an ogre declares that his fate is far away in an egg, which is in a pigeon, which is in a camel, which is in the sea. The hero procures the egg and crushes it between his hands, and the ogre dies.[2] In a Magyar folk-tale, an old witch detains a young prince called Ambrose in the bowels of the earth. At last she confided to him that she kept a wild boar in a silken meadow, and if it were killed, they would find a hare inside, and inside the hare a pigeon, and inside the pigeon a small box, and inside the box one black and one shining beetle: the shining beetle held her life, and the black one held her power; if these two beetles died, then her life would come to an end also. When the old hag went out, Ambrose killed the wild boar, took out the hare, from the hare he took the pigeon, from the pigeon the box, and from the box the two beetles; he killed the black beetle, but kept the shining one alive. So the witch’s power left her immediately, and when she came home, she had to take to her bed. Having learned from her how to escape from his prison to the upper air, Ambrose killed the shining beetle, and the old hag’s spirit left her at once.[1] In another Hungarian story the safety of the Dwarf-king resides in a golden cockchafer, inside a golden cock, inside a golden sheep, inside a golden stag, in the ninety-ninth island. The hero overcomes all these golden animals and so recovers his bride, whom the Dwarf-king had carried off.[2] A Samoyed story tells how seven warlocks killed a certain man’s mother and carried off his sister, whom they kept to serve them. Every night when they came home the seven warlocks used to take out their hearts and place them in a dish, which the woman hung on the tent-poles. But the wife of the man whom they had wronged stole the hearts of the warlocks while they slept, and took them to her husband. By break of day he went with the hearts to the warlocks, and found them at the point of death. They all begged for their hearts; but he threw six of their hearts to the ground, and six of the warlocks died. The seventh and eldest warlock begged hard for his heart, and the man said, ‘You killed my mother. Make her alive again, and I will give you back your heart.’ The warlock said to his wife, ‘Go to the place where the dead woman lies. You will find a bag there. Bring it to me. The woman’s spirit is in the bag.’ So his wife brought the bag; and the warlock said to the man, ‘Go to your dead mother, shake the bag and let the spirit breathe over her bones; so she will come to life again.’ The man did as he was bid, and his mother was restored to life. Then he hurled the seventh heart to the ground, and the seventh warlock died.[1]

In a Tartar poem two heroes named Ak Molot and Bulat engage in mortal combat. Ak Molot pierces his foe through and through with an arrow, grapples with him, and dashes him to the ground, but all in vain, Bulat could not die. At last when the combat has lasted three years, a friend of Ak Molot sees a golden casket hanging by a white thread from the sky, and bethinks him that perhaps this casket contains Bulat’s soul. So he shot through the white thread with an arrow, and down fell the casket. He opened it, and in the casket sat ten white birds, and one of the birds was Bulat’s soul. Bulat wept when he saw that his soul was found in the casket. But one after the other the birds were killed, and then Ak Molot easily slew his foe.[2] In another Tartar poem, two brothers going to fight two other brothers take out their souls and hide them in the form of a white herb with six stalks in a deep pit. But one of their foes sees them doing so and digs up their souls, which he puts into a golden ram’s horn, and then puts the ram’s horn in his quiver. The two warriors whose souls have thus been stolen know that they have no chance of victory, and accordingly make peace with their enemies.[3] In another Tartar poem a terrible demon sets all the gods and heroes at defiance. At last a valiant youth fights the demon, binds him hand and foot, and slices him with his sword. But still the demon is not slain. So the youth asked him, ‘Tell me, where is your soul hidden? For if your soul had been hidden in your body, you must have been dead long ago.’ The demon replied, ‘On the saddle of my horse is a bag. In the bag is a serpent with twelve heads. In the serpent is my soul. When you have killed the serpent, you have killed me also.’ So the youth took the saddle-bag from the horse and killed the twelve-headed serpent, whereupon the demon expired.[1] In another Tartar poem a hero called Kök Chan deposits with a maiden a golden ring, in which is half his strength. Afterwards when Kök Chan is wrestling long with a hero and cannot kill him, a woman drops into his mouth the ring which contains half his strength. Thus inspired with fresh force he slays his enemy.[2]

In a Mongolian story the hero Joro gets the better of his enemy the lama Tschoridong in the following way. The lama, who is an enchanter, sends out his soul in the form of a wasp to Joro’s eyes. But Joro catches the wasp in his hand, and by alternately shutting and opening his hand he causes the lama alternately to lose and recover consciousness.[3] In a Tartar poem two youths cut open the body of an old witch and tear out her bowels, but all to no purpose, she still lives. On being asked where her soul is, she answers that it is in the middle of her shoe-sole in the form of a seven-headed speckled snake. So one of the youths slices her shoe-sole with his sword, takes out the speckled snake, and cuts off its seven heads. Then the witch dies.[4] Another Tartar poem describes how the hero Kartaga grappled with the Swan-woman. Long they wrestled. Moons waxed and waned and still they wrestled; years came and went, and still the struggle went on. But the piebald horse and the black horse knew that the Swan-woman’s soul was not in her. Under the black earth flow nine seas; where the seas meet and form one, the sea comes to the surface of the earth. At the mouth of the nine seas rises a rock of copper; it rises to the surface of the ground, it rises up between heaven and earth, this rock of copper. At the foot of the copper rock is a black chest, in the black chest is a golden casket, and in the golden casket is the soul of the Swan-woman. Seven little birds are the soul of the Swan-woman; if the birds are killed the Swan-woman will die straightway. So the horses ran to the foot of the copper rock, opened the black chest, and brought back the golden casket. Then the piebald horse turned himself into a bald-headed man, opened the golden casket, and cut off the heads of the seven birds. So the Swan-woman died.[1] In a Tartar story a chief called Tash Kan is asked where his soul is. He answers that there are seven great poplars, and under the poplars a golden well; seven Maralen (?) come to drink the water of the well, and the belly of one of them trails on the ground; in this Maral is a golden box, in the golden box is a silver box, in the silver box are seven quails, the head of one of the quails is golden and its tail silver; that quail is Tash Kan’s soul. The hero of the story gets possession of the seven quails and wrings the necks of six of them. Then Tash Kan comes running and begs the hero to let his soul go free. But the hero wrings the quail’s neck, and Tash Kan drops dead.[2] In another Tartar poem the hero, pursuing his sister who has driven away his cattle, is warned to desist from the pursuit because his sister has carried away his soul in a golden sword and a golden arrow, and if he pursues her she will kill him by throwing the golden sword or shooting the golden arrow at him.[3]

A Malay poem relates how once upon a time in the city of Indrapoera there was a certain merchant who was rich and prosperous, but he had no children. One day as he walked with his wife by the river they found a baby girl, fair as an angel. So they adopted the child and called her Bidasari. The merchant caused a golden fish to be made, and into this fish he transferred the soul of his adopted daughter. Then he put the golden fish in a golden box full of water, and hid it in a pond in the midst of his garden. In time the girl grew to be a lovely woman. Now the King of Indrapoera had a fair young queen, who lived in fear that the king might take to himself a second wife. So, hearing of the charms of Bidasari, the queen resolved to put her out of the way. So she lured the girl to the palace and tortured her cruelly; but Bidasari could not die, because her soul was not in her. At last she could stand the torture no longer and said to the queen, ‘If you wish me to die, you must bring the box which is in the pond in my father’s garden.’ So the box was brought and opened, and there was the golden fish in the water. The girl said, ‘My soul is in that fish. In the morning you must take the fish out of the water, and in the evening you must put it back into the water. Do not let the fish lie about, but bind it round your neck. If you do this, I shall soon die.’ So the queen took the fish out of the box and fastened it round her neck; and no sooner had she done so, than Bidasari fell into a swoon. But in the evening, when the fish was put back into the water, Bidasari came to herself again. Seeing that she thus had the girl in her power, the queen sent her home to her adopted parents. To save her from further persecution her parents resolved to remove their daughter from the city. So in a lonely and desolate spot they built a house and brought Bidasari thither. Here she dwelt alone, undergoing vicissitudes that corresponded with the vicissitudes of the golden fish in which was her soul. All day long, while the fish was out of the water, she remained unconscious; but in the evening when the fish was put into the water, she revived. One day the king was out hunting, and coming in the house where Bidasari lay unconscious, was smitten with her beauty. He tried to waken her, but in vain. Next day, towards evening, he repeated his visit, but still found her unconscious. However, when darkness fell, she came to herself and told the king the secret of her life. So the king returned to the palace, took the fish from the queen, and put it in water. Immediately Bidasari revived, and the king took her to wife.[1]

The last story of an external soul which I shall notice comes from Nias, an island to the west of Sumatra, which we have visited more than once in the course of this book. Once on a time a chief was captured by his enemies, who tried to put him to death but failed. Water would not drown him nor fire burn him nor steel pierce him. At last his wife revealed the secret. On his head he had a hair as hard as a copper wire and with this wire his life was bound up. So the hair was plucked out, and with it his spirit fled.[1]

The External Soul in Folk-custom

Thus the idea that the soul may be deposited for a longer or shorter time in some place of security outside the body, or at all events in the hair, is found in the popular tales of many races. It remains to show that the idea is not a mere figment devised to adorn a tale, but is a real article of primitive faith, which has given rise to a corresponding set of customs.

We have seen that in the tales the hero, as a preparation for battle, sometimes removes his soul from his body, in order that his body may be invulnerable and immortal in the combat. With a like intention the savage removes his soul from his body on various occasions of real or imaginary danger. Thus we have seen that among the Minahassa of Celebes, when a family moves into a new house, a priest collects the souls of the whole family in a bag, and afterwards restores them to their owners, because the moment of entering a new house is supposed to be fraught with supernatural danger.[2] In Southern Celebes when a woman is brought to bed the messenger who fetches the doctor or the midwife always carries with him a piece of iron, which he delivers to the doctor. The doctor must keep it in his house till the confinement is over, when he gives it back, receiving a fixed sum of money for doing so. The piece of iron represents the woman’s soul, which at this critical time is believed to be safer out of her body than in it. Hence the doctor must take great care of the piece of iron; for if it were lost, the woman’s soul would assuredly, it is supposed, be lost with it.[1]

Again, we have seen that in folk-tales a man’s soul or strength is sometimes represented as bound up with his hair, and that when his hair is cut off he dies or grows weak. So the natives of Amboina used to think that their strength was in their hair and would desert them if it were shorn. A criminal under torture in a Dutch Court of that island persisted in denying his guilt till his hair was cut off, when he immediately confessed. One man who was tried for murder endured without flinching the utmost ingenuity of his torturers till he saw the surgeon standing with a pair of shears. On asking what this was for, and being told that it was to cut his hair, he begged they would not do it, and made a clean breast. In subsequent cases, when torture failed to wring a confession from a prisoner, the Dutch authorities made a practice of cutting off his hair.[2] In Ceram it is still believed that if young people have their hair cut they will be weakened and enervated thereby.[3] In Zacynthus people think that the whole strength of the ancient Greeks resided in three hairs on their breasts, and vanished whenever these hairs were cut; but if the hairs were allowed to grow again, their strength returned.[4]

Again, we have seen that in folk-tales the life of a person is sometimes so bound up with the life of a plant that the withering of the plant will immediately follow or be followed by the death of the person.[5] Similarly among the M’Bengas in Western Africa, about the Gaboon, when two children are born on the same day, the people plant two trees of the same kind and dance round them. The life of each of the children is believed to be bound up with the life of one of the trees; and if the tree dies or is thrown down, they are sure that the child will soon die.[1] In the Cameroons, also, the life of a person is believed to be sympathetically bound up with that of a tree.[2] Some of the Papuans unite the life of a new-born child sympathetically with that of a tree by driving a pebble into the bark of the tree. This is supposed to give them complete mastery over the child’s life; if the tree is cut down, the child will die.[3] After a birth the Maoris used to bury the navel-string in a sacred place and plant a young sapling over it. As the tree grew, it was a tohu oranga or sign of life for the child; if it flourished, the child would prosper; if it withered and died, the parents augured the worst for their child.[4] In Southern Celebes, when a child is born, a cocoa-nut is planted, and is watered with the water in which the after-birth and navel-string have been washed. As it grows up, the tree is called the ‘contemporary’ of the child.[5] So in Bali a cocoa-palm is planted at the birth of a child. It is believed to grow up equally with the child, and is called its ‘life-plant.’[6] On certain occasions the Dyaks of Borneo plant a palm-tree, which is believed to be a complete index of their fate. If it flourishes, they reckon on good fortune; but if it withers or dies, they expect misfortune.[7] It is said that there are still families in Russia, Germany, England, France, and Italy who are accustomed to plant a tree at the birth of a child. The tree, it is hoped, will grow with the child, and it is tended with special care.[1] The custom is still pretty general in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland; an apple-tree is planted for a boy and a pear-tree for a girl, and the people say that the child will flourish or dwindle with the tree.[2] In Mecklenburg the after-birth is thrown out at the foot of a young tree, and the child is then believed to grow with the tree.[3] In England persons are sometimes passed through a cleft tree as a cure for rupture, and thenceforward a sympathetic connection is believed to exist between them and the tree. ‘Thomas Chillingworth, son of the owner of an adjoining farm, now about thirty-four years of age, was, when an infant of a year old, passed through a similar tree, now perfectly sound, which he preserves with so much care that he will not suffer a single branch to be touched, for it is believed that the life of the patient depends on the life of the tree; and the moment that it is cut down, be the patient ever so distant, the rupture returns, and a mortification ensues.’[4] When Lord Byron first visited his ancestral estate of Newstead ‘he planted, it seems, a young oak in some part of the grounds, and had an idea that as it flourished so should he.’[5]

But in practice, as in folk-tales, it is not merely with trees and plants that the life of an individual is occasionally believed to be united by a bond of physical sympathy. The same bond, it is supposed, may exist between a man and an animal or a thing, so that the death or destruction of the animal or thing is immediately followed by the death of the man. The Emperor Romanus Lecapenus was once informed by an astronomer that the life of Simeon prince of Bulgaria was bound up with a certain column in Constantinople, so that if the capital of the column were removed Simeon would immediately die. The Emperor took the hint and removed the capital, and at the same hour, as the emperor learned by inquiry, Simeon died of heart disease in Bulgaria.[1] Amongst the Karens of Burma ‘the knife with which the navel-string is cut is carefully preserved for the child. The life of the child is supposed to be in some way connected with it, for if lost or destroyed it is said the child will not be long-lived.’[2] The Malays believe that ‘the soul of a person may pass into another person or into an animal, or rather that such a mysterious relation can arise between the two that the fate of the one is wholly dependent on that of the other.’[3] In the Banks Islands ‘some people connect themselves with an object, generally an animal, as a lizard or a snake, or with a stone, which they imagine to have a certain very close natural relation to themselves. This, at Mota, is called tamaniu – likeness. This word at Aurora is used for the “atai” [i.e. soul] of Mota. Some fancy dictates the choice of a tamaniu; or it may be found by drinking the infusion of certain herbs and neaping together the dregs. Whatever living thing is first seen in or upon the heap is the tamaniu. It is watched, but not fed or worshipped. The natives believe that it comes at call. The life of the man is bound up with the life of his tamaniu. If it dies, gets broken or lost, the man will die. In sickness they send to see how the tamaniu is, and judge the issue accordingly. This is only the fancy of some.’[4]

But what among the Banks Islanders and the Malays is irregular and occasional, among other peoples is systematic and universal. The Zulus believe that every man has his ihlozi, a kind of mysterious serpent, ‘which specially guards and helps him, lives with him, wakes with him, sleeps and travels with him, but always under ground. If it ever makes its appearance, great is the joy, and the man must seek to discover the meaning of its appearance. He who has no ihlozi must die. Therefore if any one unintentionally kills an ihlozi serpent, the man whose ihlozi it was dies, but the serpent comes to life again.’[1] Amongst the Zapotecs of Central America, when a woman was about to be confined, her relations assembled in the hut, and began to draw on the floor figures of different animals, rubbing each one out as soon as it was completed. This went on till the moment of birth, and the figure that then remained sketched upon the ground was called the child’s tona or second self. ‘When the child grew old enough he procured the animal that represented him and took care of it, as it was believed that health and existence were bound up with that of the animal’s, in fact that the death of both would occur simultaneously,’ or rather that when the animal died the man would die.[2] Among the Indians of Guatemala the nagual or naual is an ‘animate or inanimate object, generally an animal, which stands in a parallel relation to a particular man, so that the weal and woe of the man depend on the fate of the animal.’ Among the Chontal Indians who inhabit the part of Honduras bordering on Guatemala and in point of social culture stand very close to the Pipil Indians of Guatemala, the nagual used to be obtained as follows. The young Indian went into the forest to a lonely place by a river or to the top of a mountain, and prayed with tears to the gods that they would vouchsafe to him what his forefathers had possessed before him. After sacrificing a dog or a bird he laid himself down to sleep. Then in a dream or after awakening from sleep there appeared to him a jaguar, puma, coyote (prairie-wolf), crocodile, serpent, or bird. To this visionary animal the Indian offered blood drawn from his tongue, his ears, and other parts of his body, and prayed for an abundant yield of salt and cacao. Then the animal said to him, ‘On such and such a day you shall go out hunting, and the first animal that meets you will be myself, who will always be your companion and nagual.’ A man who had no nagual could never grow rich. The Indians were persuaded that the death of their nagual would entail their own. Legend affirms that in the first battles with the Spaniards on the plateau of Quetzaltenango the naguals of the Indian chiefs fought in the form of serpents. The nagual of the highest chief was especially conspicuous because it had the form of a great bird, resplendent in green plumage. The Spanish general Pedro de Alvarado killed the bird with his lance, and at the same moment the Indian chief fell dead to the ground.[1]

In many of the Australian tribes each sex regards a particular species of animals in the same way that a Central American Indian regards his nagual, but with this difference, that whereas the Indian apparently knows the individual animal with which his life is bound up, the Australians only know that each of their lives is bound up with some one animal of the species, but they cannot say with which. The result naturally is that every man spares and protects all the animals of the species with which the lives of the men are bound up; and every woman spares and protects all the animals of the species with which the lives of the women are bound up; because no one knows but that the death of any animal of the respective species might entail his or her own; just as the killing of the green bird was immediately followed by the death of the Indian chief, and the killing of the parrot by the death of Punchkin in the fairy tale. Thus, for example, the Wotjobaluk tribe of South Eastern Australia ‘held that “the life of Ngŭnŭngŭnŭt (the Bat) is the life of a man and the life of Yártatgŭrk (the Nightjar) is the life of a woman,” and that when either of these creatures is killed the life of some man or of some woman is shortened. In such a case every man or every woman in the camp feared that he or she might be the victim, and from this cause great fights arose in this tribe. I learn that in these fights, men on one side and women on the other, it was not at all certain which would be victorious, for at times the women gave the men a severe drubbing with their yamsticks while often women were injured or killed by spears.’[1] The particular species of animals with which the lives of the sexes were believed to be respectively bound up varied somewhat from tribe to tribe. Thus whereas among the Wotjobaluk the bat was the animal of the men, at Gunbower Creek on the lower Murray the bat seems to have been the animal of the women, for the natives would not kill it for the reason that ‘if it was killed, one of their lubras [women] would be sure to die in consequence.’[2] But the belief itself and the fights to which it gave rise are known to have extended over a large part of South Eastern Australia, and probably they extended much farther.[3] The belief is a very serious one, and so consequently are the fights which spring from it. Thus where the bat is the men’s animal they ‘protect it against injury, even to the half-killing of their wives for its sake;’ and where the fern owl or large goatsucker (a night bird) is the women’s animal, ‘it is jealously protected by them. If a man kills one, they are as much enraged as if it was one of their children, and will strike him with their long poles.’[4]

The jealous protection thus afforded by Australian men and women to bats and owls respectively (for bats and owls seem to be the creatures usually allotted to men and women respectively) is not based upon purely selfish considerations. For each man believes that not only his own life, but the lives of his father, brothers, sons, etc., are bound up with the lives of particular bats, and that therefore in protecting the bat species he is protecting the lives of all his male relations as well as his own. Similarly, each woman believes that the lives of her mother, sisters, daughters, etc., equally with her own, are bound up with the lives of particular owls, and that in guarding the owl species she is guarding the lives of all her female relations in addition to her own. Now, when men’s lives are thus supposed to be contained in certain animals, it is obvious that the animals can hardly be distinguished from the men, or the men from the animals. If my brother John’s life is in a bat, then, on the one hand, the bat is my brother as well as John; and, on the other hand, John is in a sense a bat, since his life is in a bat. Similarly, if my sister Mary’s life is in an owl, then the owl is my sister and Mary is an owl. This is a natural enough conclusion, and the Australians have not failed to draw it. When the bat is the man’s animal, it is called his brother; and when the owl is the woman’s animal, it is called her sister. And conversely a man addresses a woman as an owl, and she addresses him as a bat.[1] So with the other animals allotted to the sexes respectively in other tribes. For example, among the Kurnai all Emu Wrens were ‘brothers’ of the men, and all the men were Emu Wrens; all Superb Warblers were ‘sisters’ of the women, and all the women were Superb Warblers.[2]

But when a savage names himself after an animal, calls it his brother, and refuses to kill it, the animal is said to be his totem. Accordingly the bat and the owl, the Emu Wren and the Superb Warbler, may properly be described as totems of the sexes. But the assignation of a totem to a sex is comparatively rare, and has hitherto been discovered nowhere but in Australia. Far more commonly the totem is appropriated not to a sex, but to a tribe or clan, and is hereditary either in the male or female line. The relation of an individual to the tribal totem does not differ in kind from his relation to the sex totem; he will not kill it, he speaks of it as his brother, and he calls himself by its name.[1] Now if the relations are similar, the explanation which holds good of the one ought equally to hold good of the other. Therefore the reason why a tribe revere a particular species of animals or plants (for the tribal totem may be a plant) and call themselves after it, must be a belief that the life of each individual of the tribe is bound up with some one animal or plant of the species, and that his or her death would be the consequence of killing that particular animal, or destroying that particular plant. This explanation of totemism squares very well with Sir George Grey’s definition of a totem or kobong in Western Australia. He says, ‘A certain mysterious connection exists between a family and its kobong, so that a member of the family will never kill an animal of the species to which his kobong belongs, should he find it asleep; indeed he always kills it reluctantly, and never without affording it a chance to escape. This arises from the family belief that some one individual of the species is their nearest friend, to kill whom would be a great crime, and to be carefully avoided. Similarly, a native who has a vegetable for his kobong may not gather it under certain circumstances, and at a particular period of the year.’[2] Here it will be observed that though each man spares all the animals or plants of the species, they are not all equally precious to him; far from it, out of the whole species there is only one which is specially dear to him; but as he does not know which the dear one is, he is obliged to spare them all from fear of injuring the one. Again, this explanation of the tribal totem harmonises with the supposed effect of killing one of the totem species. ‘One day one of the blacks killed a crow. Three or four days afterwards a Boortwa (crow) [i.e. a man of the Crow clan or tribe] named Larry died. He had been ailing for some days, but the killing of his wingong [totem] hastened his death.’[1] Here the killing of the crow caused the death of a man of the Crow clan, exactly as, in the case of the sex totems, the killing of a bat causes the death of a Bat man, or the killing of an owl causes the death of an Owl woman. Similarly, the killing of his nagual causes the death of a Central American Indian, the killing of his ihlozi causes the death of a Zulu, the killing of his tamaniu causes the death of a Banks Islander, and the killing of the animal in which his life is stowed away causes the death of the giant or warlock in the fairy tale.

Thus it appears that the story of ‘The giant who had no heart in his body’ furnishes the key to the religious aspect of totemism, that is, to the relation which is supposed to subsist between a man and his totem. The totem, if I am right, is simply the receptacle in which a man keeps his life, as Punchkin kept his life in a parrot, and Bidasari kept her soul in a golden fish. It is no valid objection to this view that when a savage has both a sex totem and a tribal totem his life must be bound up with two different animals, the death of either of which would entail his own. If a man has more vital places than one in his body, why, the savage may think, should he not have more vital places than one outside it? Why, since he can externalise his life, should he not transfer one portion of it to one animal and another to another? The divisibility of life, or, to put it otherwise, the plurality of souls, is an idea suggested by many familiar facts, and has commended itself to philosophers like Plato as well as to savages. It is only when the notion of a soul, from being a quasi-scientific hypothesis, becomes a theological dogma that its unity and indivisibility are insisted upon as essential. The savage, unshackled by dogma, is free to explain the facts of life by the assumption of as many souls as he thinks necessary. Hence, for example, the Caribs supposed that there was one soul in the head, another in the heart, and other souls at all the places where an artery is felt pulsating.[1] Some of the Hidatsa Indians explain the phenomena of gradual death, when the extremities appear dead first, by supposing that man has four souls, and that they quit the body, not simultaneously, but one after the other, dissolution being only complete when all four have departed.[2] The Laos suppose that the body is the seat of thirty spirits, which reside in the hands, the feet, the mouth, the eyes, etc.[3] Hence, from the primitive point of view, it is perfectly possible that a savage should have one soul in his sex totem, and another in his tribal totem. However, as I have observed, sex totems occur nowhere but in Australia; so that as a rule the savage who practises totemism need not have more than one soul out of his body at a time.

If this explanation of the totem as a receptacle in which a man keeps his soul or one of his souls is correct, we should expect to find some totemistic tribes of whom it is expressly stated that every man amongst them is believed to keep at least one soul permanently out of his body, and that the destruction of this external soul is supposed to entail the death of its owner. Such a tribe are the Battas of Sumatra. The Battas are divided into exogamous clans (margas) with descent in the male line; and each clan is forbidden to eat the flesh of a particular animal. One clan may not eat the tiger, another the ape, another the crocodile, another the dog, another the cat, another the dove, another the white buffalo. The reason given by members of a clan for abstaining from the flesh of the particular animal is either that they are descended from animals of that species, and that their souls after death may transmigrate into the animals, or that they or their forefathers have been under certain obligations to the animals. Sometimes, but not always, the clan bears the name of the animal.[1] Thus the Battas have totemism in full. But, further, each Batta believes that he has seven or, on a more moderate computation, three souls. One of these souls is always outside the body, but nevertheless whenever it dies, however far away it may be at the time, that same moment the man dies also.[2] The writer who mentions this belief says nothing about the Batta totems; but on the analogy of the Australian and Central American evidence we can scarcely avoid concluding that the external soul, whose death entails the death of the man, must be housed in the totem animal or plant.

Against this view it can hardly be thought to militate that the Batta does not in set terms affirm his external soul to be in his totem, but alleges other, though hardly contradictory, grounds for respecting the sacred animal or plant of his clan. For if a savage seriously believes that his life is bound up with an external object, it is in the last degree unlikely that he will let any stranger into the secret. In all that touches his inmost life and beliefs the savage is exceedingly suspicious and reserved; Europeans have resided among savages for years without discovering some of their capital articles of faith, and in the end the discovery has often been the result of accident. Above all, the savage lives in an intense and perpetual dread of assassination by sorcery; the most trifling relics of his person – the clippings of his hair and nails, his spittle, the remnants of his food, his very name – all these may, he fancies, be turned by the sorcerer to his destruction, and he is therefore anxiously careful to conceal or destroy them. But if in matters such as these, which are but the outposts and outworks of his life, he is shy and secretive to a degree, how close must be the concealment, how impenetrable the reserve in which he enshrouds the inner keep and citadel of his being! When the princess in the fairy tale asks the giant where he keeps his soul, he generally gives false or evasive answers, and it is only after much coaxing and wheedling that the secret is at last wrung from him. In his jealous reticence the giant resembles the timid and furtive savage; but whereas the exigencies of the story demand that the giant should at last reveal his secret, no such obligation is laid on the savage; and no inducement that can be offered is likely to tempt him to imperil his soul by revealing its hiding-place to a stranger. It is therefore no matter for surprise that the central mystery of the savage’s life should so long have remained a secret and that we should be left to piece it together from scattered hints and fragments and from the recollections of it which linger in fairy tales.

This view of totemism throws light on a class of religious rites of which no adequate explanation, so far as I am aware, has yet been offered. Amongst many savage tribes, especially such as are known to practise totemism, it is customary for lads at puberty to undergo certain initiatory rites, of which one of the commonest is a pretence of killing the lad and bringing him to life again. Such rites become intelligible if we suppose that their substance consists in extracting the youth’s soul in order to transfer it to his totem. For the extraction of his soul would naturally be supposed to kill the youth or, at least, to throw him into a death-like trance, which the savage hardly distinguishes from death. His recovery would then be attributed either to the gradual recovery of his system from the violent shock which it had received, or, more probably, to the infusion into him of fresh life drawn from the totem. Thus the essence of these initiatory rites, so far as they consist in a simulation of death and resurrection, would be an exchange of life or souls between the man and his totem. The primitive belief in the possibility of such an exchange of souls comes clearly out in the story of the Basque hunter who affirmed that he had been killed by a bear, but that the bear had, after killing him, breathed its own soul into him, so that the bear’s body was now dead, but he himself was a bear, being animated by the bear’s soul.[1] This revival of the dead hunter as a bear is exactly analogous to what, if I am right, is supposed to take place in the totemistic ceremony of killing a lad at puberty and bringing him to life again. The lad dies as a man and comes to life again as an animal; the animal’s soul is now in him, and his human soul is in the animal. With good right, therefore, does he call himself a Bear or a Wolf, etc., according to his totem; and with good right does he treat the bears or the wolves, etc., as his brethren, since in these animals are lodged the souls of himself and his kindred.

Examples of this supposed death and resurrection at initiation are the following. Among some of the Australian tribes of New South Wales, when lads are initiated, it is thought that a being called Thuremlin takes each lad to a distance, kills him, and sometimes cuts him up, after which he restores him to life and knocks out a tooth.[2] In one part of Queensland the humming sound of the Bullroarer, which is swung at the initiatory rites, is said to be the noise made by the wizards in swallowing the boys and bringing them up again as young men. ‘The Ualaroi of the Upper Darling River say that the boy meets a ghost which kills him and brings him to life again as a man.’[3] This resurrection appears to be represented at the initiatory rites by the following ceremony. An old man, disguised with stringy bark fibre, lies down in a grave, and is lightly covered up with sticks and earth and as far as possible the natural appearance of the ground is restored, the excavated earth being carried away. The buried man holds a small bush in his hand; it appears to be growing in the soil, and other bushes are stuck in the soil to heighten the effect. The novices are then brought to the edge of the grave and a song is sung, in which the only words used are the ‘class-name’ of the buried man and the word for stringy bark fibre. Gradually, as the song continues, the bush held by the buried man begins to quiver and then to move more and more, and finally the man himself starts up from the grave.[1] Similarly, Fijian lads at initiation were shown a row of apparently dead men covered with blood, their bodies seemingly cut open and their entrails protruding. But at a yell from the priest the pretended dead men sprang to their feet and ran to the river to cleanse themselves from the blood and entrails of pigs with which they had been besmeared.[2]

In the valley of the Congo initiatory rites of this sort are common. In some places they are called Ndembo. ‘In the practice of Ndembo the initiating doctors get some one to fall down in a pretended fit, and in that state he is carried away to an enclosed place outside the town. This is called “dying Ndembo.” Others follow suit, generally boys and girls, but often young men and women … They are
supposed to have died. But the parents and friends supply food, and after a period varying, according to custom, from three months to three years, it is arranged that the doctor shall bring them to life again … When the doctor’s fee has been paid, and money (goods) saved for a feast, the Ndembo people are brought to life. At first they pretend to know no one and nothing; they do not even know how to masticate food, and friends have to perform that office for them. They want everything nice that any one uninitiated may have, and beat them if it is not granted, or even strangle and kill people. They do not get into trouble for this, because it is thought that they do not know better. Sometimes they carry on the pretence of talking gibberish, and behaving as if they had returned from the spirit-world. After this they are known by another name, peculiar to those who have “died Ndembo.” … We hear of the custom far along on the upper river, as well as in the cataract region.’[1] The following account of the rites, as practised in this part of Africa, was given to Bastian by an interpreter. ‘In the land of Ambamba every one must die once, and when the fetish priest shakes his calabash against a village, all the men and lads whose hour is come fall into a state of lifeless torpidity, from which they generally awake after three days. But if the fetish loves a man he carries him away into the bush and buries him in the fetish house often for many years. When he comes to life again, he begins to eat and drink as before, but his understanding is gone and the fetish man must teach him and direct him in every motion, like the smallest child. At first this can only be done with a stick, but gradually his senses return, so that it is possible to talk with him, and when his education is complete, the priest brings him back to his parents. They would seldom recognise their son but for the express assurances of the fetish priest, who moreover recalls previous events to their memory. He who has not gone through the ceremony of the new birth in Ambamba is universally looked down upon and is not admitted to the dances.’ During the period of initiation the novice is sympathetically united to the fetish by which his life is henceforward determined.[1] The novice, plunged in the magic sleep or death-like trance within the sacred hut, ‘beholds a bird or other object with which his existence is thenceforward sympathetically bound up just as the life of the young Indian is bound up with the animal which he sees in his dreams at puberty.’[2]

Rites of this sort were formerly observed in Quo ja, on the west coast of Africa, to the north of the Congo. They are thus described by an old writer: ‘They have another ceremony which they call Belli-Paaro, but it is not for everybody. For it is an incorporation in the assembly of the spirits, and confers the right of entering their groves, that is to say, of going and eating the offerings which the simple folk bring thither. The initiation or admission to the Belli-Paaro is celebrated every twenty or twenty-five years. The initiated recount marvels of the ceremony, saying that they are roasted, that they entirely change their habits and life, and that they receive a spirit quite different from that of other people and quite new lights. The badge of membership consists in some lines traced on the neck between the shoulders; the lines seem to be pricked with a needle. Those who have this mark pass for persons of spirit, and when they have attained a certain age they are allowed a voice in all public assemblies; whereas the uninitiated are regarded as profane, impure, and ignorant persons, who dare not express an opinion on any subject of importance. When the time for the ceremony has come, it is celebrated as follows: By order of the king a place is appointed in the forest, whither they bring the youths who have not been marked, not without much crying and weeping; for it is impressed upon the youths that in order to undergo this change it is necessary to suffer death. So they dispose of their property, as if it were all over with them. There are always some of the initiated beside the novices to instruct them. They teach them to dance a certain dance called killing, and to sing verses in praise of Belli. Above all, they are very careful not to let them die of hunger, because if they did so, it is much to be feared that the spiritual resurrection would profit them nothing. This manner of life lasts five or six years, and is comfortable enough, for there is a village in the forest, and they amuse themselves with hunting and fishing. Other lads are brought thither from time to time, so that the last comers have not long to stay. No woman or uninitiated person is suffered to pass within four or five leagues of the sacred wood. When their instruction is completed, they are taken from the wood and shut up in small huts made for the purpose. Here they begin once more to hold communion with mankind and to talk with the women who bring them their food. It is amusing to see their affected simplicity. They pretend to know no one, and to be ignorant of all the customs of the country, such as the customs of washing themselves, rubbing themselves with oil, etc. When they enter these huts, their bodies are all covered with the feathers of birds, and they wear caps of bark which hang down before their faces. But after a time they are dressed in clothes and taken to a great open place where all the people of the neighbourhood are assembled. Here the novices give the first proof of their capacity by dancing a dance which is called the dance of Belli. After the dance is over, the novices are taken to the houses of their parents by their instructors.’[1]

Among the Indians of Virginia, an initiatory ceremony, called Huskanaw, took place every sixteen or twenty years, or oftener, as the young men happened to grow up. The youths were kept in solitary confinement in the woods for several months, receiving no food but an infusion of some intoxicating roots, so that they went raving mad, and continued in this state eighteen or twenty days. ‘Upon this occasion it is pretended that these poor creatures drink so much of the water of Lethe that they perfectly lose the remembrance of all former things, even of their parents, their treasure, and their language. When the doctors find that they have drank sufficiently of the Wysoccan (so they call this mad potion), they gradually restore them to their senses again by lessening the intoxication of their diet; but before they are perfectly well they bring them back into their towns, while they are still wild and crazy through the violence of the medicine. After this they are very fearful of discovering anything of their former remembrance; for if such a thing should happen to any of them, they must immediately be Huskanaw’d again; and the second time the usage is so severe that seldom any one escapes with life. Thus they must pretend to have forgot the very use of their tongues, so as not to be able to speak, nor understand anything that is spoken, till they learn it again. Now, whether this be real or counterfeit, I don’t know; but certain it is that they will not for some time take notice of any body nor any thing with which they were before acquainted, being still under the guard of their keepers, who constantly wait upon them everywhere till they have learnt all things perfectly over again. Thus they unlive their former lives, and commence men by forgetting that they ever have been boys.’[1]

Among some of the Indian tribes of North America there are certain religious associations which are only open to candidates who have gone through a pretence of being killed and brought to life again. Captain Carver witnessed the admission of a candidate to an association called ‘the friendly society of the Spirit’ among the Naudowessies. The candidate knelt before the chief, who told him that ‘he himself was now agitated by the same spirit which he should in a few moments communicate to him; that it would strike him dead, but that he would instantly be restored again to life … As he spoke this, he appeared to be greatly agitated, till at last his emotions became so violent that his countenance was distorted and his whole frame convulsed. At this juncture he threw something that appeared both in shape and colour like a small bean at the young man, which seemed to enter his mouth, and he instantly fell as motionless as if he had been shot.’ For a time the man lay like dead but under a shower of blows he showed signs of consciousness, and finally, discharging from his mouth the bean or whatever it was the chief had thrown at him, he came to life.[1]In other tribes the instrument by which the candidate is apparently slain is the medicine-bag. The bag is made of the skin of an animal (such as the otter, wild cat, serpent, bear, racoon, wolf, owl, weasel), of which it roughly preserves the shape. Each member of the society has one of these bags, in which he keeps the odds and ends that make up his ‘medicine’ or charms. ‘They believe that from the miscellaneous contents in the belly of the skin bag or animal there issues a spirit or breath, which has the power, not only to knock down and kill a man, but also to set him up and restore him to life.’ The mode of killing a man with one of these medicine-bags is to thrust it at him; he falls like dead, but a second thrust of the bag restores him to life.[2]

A ceremony witnessed by Jewitt during his captivity among the Indians of Nootka Sound doubtless belongs to this class of customs. The Indian king or chief ‘discharged a pistol close to his son’s ear, who immediately fell down as if killed, upon which all the women of the house set up a most lamentable cry, tearing handfuls of hair from their heads, and exclaiming that the prince was dead; at the same time a great number of the inhabitants rushed into the house armed with their daggers, muskets, etc., inquiring the cause of their outcry. These were immediately followed by two others dressed in wolf skins, with masks over their faces representing the head of that animal. The latter came in on their hands and feet in the manner of a beast, and taking up the prince, carried him off upon their backs, retiring in the same manner as they entered.’[3] In another  place Jewitt mentions that the young prince – a lad of about eleven years of age – wore a mask in imitation of a wolf’s head.[1] Now, as the Indians of this part of America are divided into totem clans, of which the Wolf clan is one of the principal, and as the members of each clan are in the habit of wearing some portion of the totem animal about their person,[2] it is probable that the prince belonged to the Wolf clan, and that the ceremony described by Jewitt represented the killing of the lad in order that he might be born anew as a wolf, much in the same way that the Basque hunter supposed himself to have been killed and to have come to life again as a bear. The Toukaway Indians of Texas, one of whose totems is the wolf, have a ceremony in which men, dressed in wolf skins, run about on all fours, howling and mimicking wolves. At last they scratch up a living tribesman, who has been buried on purpose, and putting a bow and arrows in his hands, bid him do as the wolves do – rob, kill, and murder.[3] The ceremony probably forms part of an initiatory rite like the resurrection from the grave of the old man in the Australian rites.

The people of Rook, an island east of New Guinea, hold festivals at which one or two disguised men, their heads covered with wooden masks, go dancing through the village, followed by all the other men. They demand that the circumcised boys who have not yet been swallowed by Marsaba (the devil) shall be given up to them. The boys, trembling and shrieking, are delivered to them, and must creep between the legs of the disguised men. Then the procession moves through the village again, and announces that Marsaba has eaten up the boys, and will not disgorge them till he receives a present of pigs, taro, etc. So all the villagers, according to their means, contribute provisions, which are then consumed in the name of Marsaba.[1] In New Britain all males are members of an association called the Duk-duk. The boys are admitted to it very young, but are not fully initiated till their fourteenth year, when they receive from the Tubuvan a terrible blow with a cane, which is supposed to kill them. The Tubuvan and the Duk-duk are two disguised men who represent cassowaries. They dance with a short hopping step in imitation of the cassowary. Each of them wears a huge hat like an extinguisher, woven of grass or palm-fibres; it is six feet high, and descends to the wearer’s shoulders, completely concealing his head and face. From the neck to the knees the man’s body is hidden by a crinoline made of the leaves of a certain tree fastened on hoops, one above the other. The Tubuvan is regarded as a female, the Duk-duk as a male. No woman may see these disguised men. The institution of the Duk-duk is common to the neighbouring islands of New Ireland and the Duke of York.[2]

Amongst the Galela and Tobelorese of Halmahera, an island to the west of New Guinea, boys go through a form of initiation, part of which seems to consist in a pretence of begetting them anew. When a number of boys have reached the proper age, their parents agree to celebrate the ceremony at their common expense, and they invite others to be present at it. A shed is erected, and two long tables are placed in it, with benches to match, one for the men and one for the women. When all the preparations have been made for a feast, a great many skins of the rayfish, and some pieces of a wood which imparts a red colour to water, are taken to the shed. A priest or elder causes a vessel to be placed in the sight of all the people, and then begins, with significant gestures, to rub a piece of the wood with the ray-skin. The powder so produced is put in the vessel, and at the same time the name of one of the boys is called out. The same proceeding is repeated for each boy. Then the vessels are filled with water, after which the feast begins. At the third cock-crow the priest smears the faces and bodies of the boys with the red water, which represents the blood shed at the perforation of the hymen. Towards daybreak the boys are taken to the wood, and must hide behind the largest trees. The men, armed with sword and shield, accompany them, dancing and singing. The priest knocks thrice on each of the trees behind which a boy is hiding. All day the boys stay in the wood, exposing themselves to the heat of the sun as much as possible. In the evening they bathe and return to the shed, where the women supply them with food.[1]

In the west of Ceram boys at puberty are admitted to the Kakian association.[2] Modern writers have commonly regarded this association as primarily a political league instituted to resist foreign domination. In reality its objects are purely religious and social, though it is possible that the priests may have occasionally used their powerful influence for political ends. The society is in fact merely one of those widely-diffused primitive institutions, of which a chief object is the initiation of young men. In recent years the true nature of the association has been duly recognised by the distinguished Dutch ethnologist, J. G. F. Riedel. The Kakian house is an oblong wooden shed, situated under the darkest trees in the depth of the forest, and is built to admit so little light that it is impossible to see what goes on in it. Every village has such a house. Thither the boys who are to be initiated are conducted blindfolded, followed by their parents and relations. Each boy is led by the hand by two men, who act as his sponsors or guardians, looking after him during the period of initiation. When all are assembled before the shed, the high priest calls aloud upon the devils. Immediately a hideous uproar is heard to proceed from the shed. It is made by men with bamboo trumpets, who have been secretly introduced into the building by a back door, but the women and children think it is made by the devils, and are much terrified. Then the priests enter the shed, followed by the boys, one at a time. As soon as each boy has disappeared within the precincts, a dull chopping sound is heard, a fearful cry rings out, and a sword or spear, dripping with blood, is thrust through the roof of the shed. This is a token that the boy’s head has been cut off, and that the devil has carried him away to the other world, there to regenerate and transform him. So at sight of the bloody sword the mothers weep and wail, crying that the devil has murdered their children. In some places, it would seem, the boys are pushed through an opening made in the shape of a crocodile’s jaws or a cassowary’s beak, and it is then said that the devil has swallowed them. The boys remain in the shed for five or nine days. Sitting in the dark, they hear the blast of the bamboo trumpets, and from time to time the sound of musket shots and the clash of swords. Every day they bathe, and their faces and bodies are smeared with a yellow dye, to give them the appearance of having been swallowed by the devil. During his stay in the Kakian house each boy has one or two crosses tattooed with thorns on his breast or arm. When they are not sleeping, the lads must sit in a crouching posture without moving a muscle. As they sit in a row cross-legged, with their hands stretched out, the chief takes his trumpet, and placing the mouth of it on the hands of each lad, speaks through it in strange tones, imitating the voice of the spirits. He warns the lads under pain of death, to observe the rules of the Kakian society, and never to reveal what has passed in the Kakian house. The novices are also told by the priests to behave well to their blood relations, and are taught the traditions and secrets of the tribe.

Meantime the mothers and sisters of the lads have gone home to weep and mourn. But in a day or two the men who acted as guardians or sponsors to the novices return to the village with the glad tidings that the devil, at the intercession of the priests, has restored the lads to life. The men who bring this news come in a fainting state and daubed with mud, like messengers freshly arrived from the nether world. Before leaving the Kakian house, each lad receives from the priest a stick adorned at both ends with cock’s or cassowary’s feathers. The sticks are supposed to have been given to the lads by the devil at the time when he restored them to life, and they serve as a token that the lads have been in the spirit-land. When they return to their homes they totter in their walk, and enter the house backward, as if they had forgotten how to walk properly; or they enter the house by the back door. If a plate of food is given to them, they hold it upside down. They remain dumb, indicating their wants by signs only. All this is to show that they are still under the influence of the devil or the spirits. Their sponsors have to teach them all the common acts of life, as if they were new-born children. Further, upon leaving the Kakian house the boys are strictly forbidden to eat of certain fruits until the next celebration of the rites has taken place. And for twenty or thirty days their hair may not be combed by their mothers or sisters. At the end of that time the high priest takes them to a lonely place in the forest, and cuts off a lock of hair from the crown of each of their heads. After these initiatory rites the lads are deemed men, and may marry; it would be a scandal if they married before.

The simulation of death and resurrection or of a new birth at initiation appears to have lingered on, or at least to have left traces of itself, among peoples who have advanced far beyond the stage of savagery. Thus, after his investiture with the sacred thread – the symbol of his order – a Brahman is called ‘twice-born.’ Manu says, ‘According to the injunction of the revealed texts the first birth of an Aryan is from his natural mother, the second happens on the tying of the girdle of Muñga grass, and the third on the initiation to the performance of a Srauta sacrifice.’[1] A pretence of killing the candidate appears to have formed part of the initiation to the Mithraic mysteries.[2]

Thus, if I am right, wherever totemism is found, and wherever a pretence is made of killing and bringing to life again at initiation, there must exist or have existed not only a belief in the possibility of permanently depositing the soul in some external object – animal, plant, or what not – but an actual intention of so depositing it. If the question is put, why do men desire to deposit their life outside their bodies? the answer can only be that, like the giant in the fairy tale, they think it safer to do so than to carry it about with them, just as people deposit their money with a banker rather than carry it on their persons. We have seen that at critical periods the life or soul is sometimes temporarily deposited in a safe place till the danger is past. But institutions like totemism are not resorted to merely on special occasions of danger; they are systems into which every one, or at least every male is obliged to be initiated at a certain period of life. Now the period of life at which initiation takes place is regularly puberty; and this fact suggests that the special danger which totemism and systems like it are intended to obviate is supposed not to arise till sexual maturity has been attained, in fact, that the danger apprehended is believed to attend the relation of the sexes to each other. It would be easy to prove by a long array of facts that the sexual relation is associated in the primitive mind with many supernatural perils; but the exact nature of the danger apprehended is still obscure. We may hope that a more exact acquaintance with savage modes of thought will in time disclose this central mystery of primitive society, and will thereby furnish the clue, not only to the social aspect of totemism (the prohibition of sexual union between persons of the same totem), but to the origin of the marriage system.

Conclusion

Thus the view that Balder’s life was in the mistletoe is entirely in harmony with primitive modes of thought. It may indeed sound like a contradiction that, if his life was in the mistletoe, he should nevertheless have been killed by a blow from it. But when a person’s life is conceived as embodied in a particular object, with the existence of which his own existence is inseparably bound up, and the destruction of which involves his own, the object in question may be regarded and spoken of indifferently as the person’s life or as his death, as happens in the fairy tales. Hence if a man’s death is in an object, it is perfectly natural that he should be killed by a blow from it. In the fairy tales Koshchei the Deathless is killed by a blow from the egg or the stone in which his life or death is;[1] the ogres burst when a certain grain of sand – doubtless containing their life or death – is carried over their heads;[2] the magician dies when the stone in which his life or death is contained is put under his pillow;[3] and the Tartar hero is warned that he may be killed by the golden arrow or golden sword in which his soul has been stowed away.[4]

The idea that the life of the oak was in the mistletoe was probably suggested, as I have said, by the observation that in winter the mistletoe growing on the oak remains green, while the oak itself is leafless. But the position of the plant, growing, not from the ground, but from the trunk or branches of the tree, might confirm this idea. Primitive man might think that, like himself, the oak-spirit had sought to deposit his life in some safe place, and for this purpose had pitched on the mistletoe, which, being in a sense neither on earth nor in heaven, was as secure a place as could be found. At the beginning of this chapter we saw that primitive man seeks to preserve the life of his human divinities by keeping them in a sort of intermediate position between earth and heaven, as the place where they are least likely to be assailed by the dangers that encompass the life of man on earth. We can therefore understand why in modern folk-medicine the mistletoe is not allowed to touch the ground; if it touches the ground, its healing virtue is supposed to be gone.[1] This may be a survival of the old superstition that the plant in which the life of the sacred tree was concentrated should not be exposed to the risk incurred by contact with the ground. In an Indian legend, which offers a parallel to the Balder myth, Indra promised the demon Namuci not to kill him by day or by night, nor with what was wet or what was dry. But he killed him in the morning twilight by sprinkling over him the foam of the sea.[2] The foam of the sea is just such an object as a savage might choose to put his life in, because it occupies that sort of intermediate or nondescript position between earth and sky or sea and sky in which primitive man sees safety. It is therefore not surprising that the foam of the river should be the totem of a clan in India.[3] Again, the view that the mistletoe owes its mystic character partly to the fact of its not growing on the ground is confirmed by a parallel superstition about the mountain-ash or rowan-tree. In Jutland a rowan that is found growing out of the top of another tree is esteemed ‘exceedingly effective against witchcraft: since it does not grow on the ground witches have no power over it; if it is to have its full effect it must be cut on Ascension Day.’[1] Hence it is placed over doors to prevent the ingress of witches.[2] Similarly the mistletoe in Germany is still universally considered a protection against witchcraft and in Sweden, as we saw, the mistletoe which is gathered on Midsummer Eve is attached to the ceiling of the house, the horse stall, or the cow’s crib, in the belief that this renders the Troll powerless to injure man or beast.[3]

The view that the mistletoe was not merely the instrument of Balder’s death, but that it contained his life, is countenanced by the analogy of a Scottish superstition. Tradition ran that the fate of the family of Hay was bound up with the mistletoe of a certain oak –

‘While the mistletoe bats on Errol’s oak,

And that oak stands fast,

The Hays shall flourish, and their good gray hawk

Shall not flinch before the blast.

‘But when the root of the oak decays,

And the mistletoe dwines on its withered breast,

The grass shall grow on the Earl’s hearthstone,

And the corbies craw in the falcon’s nest.’

‘A large oak with the mistletoe growing on it was long pointed out as the tree referred to. A piece of the mistletoe cut by a Hay was believed to have magical virtues. “The oak is gone and the estate is lost to the family,” as a local historian says.’[4] The idea that the fate of a family, as distinct from the lives of its members, is bound up with a particular plant or tree, is no doubt comparatively modern. The older view probably was that the lives of all the Hays were in this particular mistletoe, just as in the Indian story the lives of all the ogres are in a lemon; to break a twig of the mistletoe would then have been to kill one of the Hays. Similarly in the island of Rum, whose bold mountains the voyager from Oban to Skye observes to seaward, it was thought that if one of the family of Lachlin shot a deer on the mountain of Finchra, he would die suddenly or contract a distemper which would soon prove fatal.[1] Probably the life of the Lachlins was bound up with the deer on Finchra, as the life of the Hays was bound up with the mistletoe on Errol’s oak.

It is not a new opinion that the Golden Bough was the mistletoe.[2] True, Virgil does not identify but only compares it with the mistletoe. But this may be only a poetical device to cast a mystic glamour over the humble plant. Or, more probably, his description was based on a popular superstition that at certain times the mistletoe blazed out into a supernatural golden glory. The poet tells how two doves, guiding Aeneas to the gloomy vale in whose depth grew the Golden Bough, alighted upon a tree, ‘whence shone a flickering gleam of gold. As in the woods in winter cold the mistletoe – a plant not native to its tree – is green with fresh leaves and twines its yellow berries about the boles; such seemed upon the shady oak the leafy gold, so rustled in the gentle breeze the golden leaf.’[3] Here Virgil definitely describes the Golden Bough as growing on an oak, and compares it with the mistletoe. The inference is almost inevitable that the Golden Bough was nothing but the mistletoe seen through the haze of poetry or of popular superstition.

Now grounds have been shown for believing that the priest of the Arician grove – the King of the Wood – personified the tree on which grew the Golden Bough.[1] Hence, if that tree was the oak, the King of the Wood must have been a personification of the oak-spirit. It is, therefore, easy to understand why, before he could be slain, it was necessary to break the Golden Bough. As an oak-spirit, his life or death was in the mistletoe on the oak, and so long as the mistletoe remained intact, he, like Balder, could not die. To slay him, therefore, it was necessary to break the mistletoe, and probably, as in the case of Balder, to throw it at him. And to complete the parallel, it is only necessary to suppose that the King of the Wood was formerly burned, dead or alive, at the midsummer fire festival which, as we have seen, was annually celebrated in the Arician grove.[2] The perpetual fire which burned in the grove, like the perpetual fire under the oak at Romove, was probably fed with the sacred oak-wood; and thus it would be in a great fire of oak that the King of the Wood formerly met his end. At a later time, as I have suggested, his annual tenure of office was lengthened or shortened, as the case might be, by the rule which allowed him to live so long as he could prove his divine right by the strong hand. But he only escaped the fire to fall by the sword.

Thus it seems that at a remote age in the heart of Italy, beside the sweet lake of Nemi, the same fiery tragedy was annually enacted which Italian merchants and soldiers were afterwards to witness among their rude kindred, the Celts of Gaul, and which, if the Roman eagles had ever swooped on Norway, might have been found repeated with little difference among the barbarous Aryans of the North. The rite was probably an essential feature in the primitive Aryan worship of the oak.[1]

It only remains to ask, Why was the mistletoe called the Golden Bough? The name was not simply a poet’s fancy, nor even peculiarly Italian; for in Welsh also the mistletoe is known as ‘the tree of pure gold.’[2] The whitish-yellow of the mistletoe berries is hardly enough to account for the name. For Virgil says that the Bough was altogether golden, stem as well as leaves,[3] and the same is implied in the Welsh name, ‘the tree of pure gold.’ A clue to the real meaning of the name is furnished by the mythical fern-seed or fern-bloom.

We saw that fern-seed is popularly supposed to bloom like gold or fire on Midsummer Eve. Thus in Bohemia it is said that ‘on St John’s Day fern-seed blooms with golden blossoms that gleam like fire.’[4] Now it is a property of this mythical fern-seed that whoever has it, or will ascend a mountain holding it in his hand on Midsummer Eve, will discover a vein of gold or will see the treasures of the earth shining with a bluish flame.[5] And if you place fern-seed among money, the money will never decrease, however much of it you spend.[1] Sometimes the fern-seed is supposed to bloom at Christmas, and whoever catches it will become very rich.[2] Thus, on the principle of like by like, fern-seed is supposed to discover gold because it is itself golden; and for a similar reason it enriches its possessor with an unfailing supply of gold. But while the fern-seed is described as golden, it is equally described as glowing and fiery.[3] Hence, when we consider that two great days for gathering the fabulous seed are Midsummer Eve and Christmas – that is, the two solstices (for Christmas is nothing but an old heathen celebration of the winter solstice) – we are led to regard the fiery aspect of the fern-seed as primary, and its golden aspect as secondary and derivative. Fern-seed, in fact, would seem to be an emanation of the sun’s fire at the two turning-points of its course, the summer and winter solstices. This view is confirmed by a German story in which a hunter is said to have procured fern-seed by shooting at the sun on Midsummer Day at noon; three drops of blood fell down, which he caught in a white cloth, and these blood-drops were the fern-seed.[4] Here the blood is clearly the blood of the sun, from which the fern-seed is thus directly derived. Thus it may be taken as certain that fern-seed is golden, because it is believed to be an emanation of the sun’s golden fire.

Now, like fern-seed, the mistletoe is gathered either at Midsummer or Christmas[5] – that is, at the summer and winter solstices – and, like fern-seed, it is supposed to possess the power of revealing treasures in the earth. On Midsummer Eve people in Sweden make divining-rods of mistletoe or of four different kinds of wood, one of which must be mistletoe. The treasure-seeker places the rod on the ground after sundown, and when it rests directly over treasure, the rod begins to move as if it were alive.[1] Now, if the mistletoe discovers gold, it must be in its character of the Golden Bough; and if it is gathered at the solstices, must not the Golden Bough, like the golden fern-seed, be an emanation of the sun’s fire? The question cannot be answered with a simple affirmative. We have seen that the primitive Aryans probably kindled the midsummer bonfires as sun-charms, that is, with the intention of supplying the sun with fresh fire. But as this fire was always elicited by the friction of oak wood,[2] it must have appeared to the primitive Aryan that the sun was periodically recruited from the fire which resided in the sacred oak. In other words, the oak must have seemed to him the original storehouse or reservoir of the fire which was from time to time drawn out to feed the sun. But the life of the oak was conceived to be in the mistletoe; therefore the mistletoe must have contained the seed or germ of the fire which was elicited by friction from the wood of the oak. Thus, instead of saying that the mistletoe was an emanation of the sun’s fire, it would be more correct to say that the sun’s fire was regarded as an emanation of the mistletoe. No wonder, then, that the mistletoe shone with a golden splendour, and was called the Golden Bough. Probably, however, like fern-seed, it was thought to assume its golden aspect only at those stated times, especially midsummer, when fire was drawn from the oak to light up the sun.[3] At Pulverbatch, in Shropshire, it was believed within living memory that the oak-tree blooms on Midsummer Eve and the blossom withers before daylight.[1] This fleeting bloom of the oak, if I am right, could originally have been nothing but the mistletoe in its character of the Golden Bough. As Shropshire borders on Wales, the superstition may be Welsh in its immediate origin, though probably the belief is a fragment of the primitive Aryan creed. In some parts of Italy, as we saw,[2] peasants still go out on Midsummer morning to search the oak-trees for the ‘oil of St John,’ which, like the mistletoe, heals all wounds, and is doubtless the mistletoe itself in its glorified aspect. Thus it is easy to understand how a title like the Golden Bough or the ‘tree of pure gold,’ so little descriptive of the real appearance of the plant, should have held its ground as a name for the mistletoe in Italy and Wales, and probably in other parts of the Aryan world.[3]

Now, too, we can fully understand why Virbius came to be confounded with the sun. If Virbius was, as I have tried to show, a tree-spirit, he must have been the spirit of the oak on which grew the Golden Bough; for tradition represented him as the first of the Kings of the Wood. As an oak-spirit he must have been supposed periodically to rekindle the sun’s fire, and might therefore easily be confounded with the sun itself. Similarly we can explain why Balder, an oak-spirit, was described as ‘so fair of face and so shining that a light went forth from him,’[4] and why he should have been so often taken to be the sun. And in general we may say that in primitive society, when the only known way of making fire is by the friction of wood, the savage must necessarily conceive fire as a property stored away, like sap or juice, in trees, from which he has laboriously to extract it. Thus all trees, or at least the particular sorts of trees whose wood he employs in fire-making, must be regarded by him as reservoirs of hidden fire, and it is natural that he should describe them by epithets like golden, shining, or bright. May not this have been the origin of the name, ‘the Bright or Shining One’ (Zeus, Jove) by which the ancient Greeks and Italians designated their supreme god?[1] It is at least highly significant that, amongst both Greeks and Italians, the oak should have been the tree of the supreme god, that at his most ancient shrines, both in Greece and Italy, this supreme god should have been actually represented by an oak, and that so soon as the barbarous Aryans of Northern Europe appear in the light of history, they should be found, amid all diversities of language, of character, and of country, nevertheless at one in worshipping the oak as the chief object of their religious reverence, and extracting their sacred fire from its wood. If we are to judge of the primitive religion of the European Aryans by comparing the religions of the different branches of the stock, the highest place in their pantheon must certainly be assigned to the oak. The result, then, of our inquiry is to make it probable that, down to the time of the Roman Empire and the beginning of our era, the primitive worship of the Aryans was maintained nearly in its original form in the sacred grove at Nemi, as in the oak woods of Gaul, of Prussia, and of Scandinavia; and that the King of the Wood lived and died as an incarnation of the supreme Aryan god, whose life was in the mistletoe or Golden Bough.

If, in bidding farewell to Nemi, we look around us for the last time, we shall find the lake and its surroundings not much changed from what they were in the days when Diana and Virbius still received the homage of their worshippers in the sacred grove. The temple of Diana, indeed, has disappeared, and the King of the Wood no longer stands sentinel over the Golden Bough. But Nemi’s woods are still green, and at evening you may hear the church bells of Albano, and perhaps, if the air be still, of Rome itself, ringing the Angelus. Sweet and solemn they chime out from the distant city, and die lingeringly away across the wide Campagnan marshes. Le roi est mort, vive le roi!

1. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 142.

2. Memorials of Japan (Hakluyt Society, 1850), pp. 14, 141; Varenius, Descriptio regni Japoniae, p. 11; Caron, ‘Account of Japan,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, vii. 613; Kaempfer, ‘History of Japan,’ in id., vii. 716.

3. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, iii. 102 sq. ed. 1836; James Wilson, Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean, p. 329.

4. Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. 81.

5. Athenaeus, 514 c.

6. Bancroft, l.c.

1. Kaempfer, ‘History of Japan,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, vii. 717; Caron, ‘Account of Japan,’ id. vii 613; Varenius, Descriptio regni Japaniae, p. 11, ‘Radiis solis caput nunquam illustrabatur; in apertum aërem non procedebat.’

2. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iv. 359.

3· Alonzo de Zurita, ‘Rapport sur les differentes classes de chefs de la Nouvelle-Espagne,’ p. 30, in Ternaux-Compans’s Voyages, Relations et Mémoires originaux (Paris, 1840); Waitz, l.c.; Bastian, Die Culturländer des alten Amerika, ii. 204.

4. Cieza de Leon, Second Part of the Chronicle of Peru (Hakluyt Soc. 1883), p. 18.

5· Pechuel-Loesche, ‘Indiscretes aus Loango,’ Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, x. (1878) 23.

6. Rev James Macdonald (Reay Free Manse, Caithness), Manners, Customs, Superstitions, and Religions of South African Tribes (in manuscript).

1. The Rev. G. Brown, quoted by the Rev B. Danks, ‘Marriage Customs of the New Britain Group,’ Journ. Anthrop. Institute, xviii. 284 sq.; cp. Rev. G. Brown, ‘Notes on the Duke of York Group, New Britain, and New Ireland,’ Journ. Royal Geogr. Soc. xlvii. (1877) p. 142 sq. Powell’s description of the New Ireland custom is similar (Wanderings in a Wild Country, p. 249). According to him the girls wear wreaths of scented herbs round the waist and neck; an old woman or a little child occupies the lower floor of the cage: and the confinement lasts only a month. Probably the long period mentioned by Mr Brown is that prescribed for chiefs’ daughters. Poor people could not afford to keep their children so long idle. This distinction is sometimes expressly stated; for example, among the Goajiras of Colombia rich people keep their daughters shut up in separate huts at puberty for periods varying from one to four years, but poor people cannot afford to do so for more than a fortnight or a month. F. A. Simons, ‘An exploration of the Goajira Peninsula,’ Proceed. Royal Geogr. Soc. N.S. vii. (1885) p. 791. In Fiji, brides who were being tattooed were kept from the sun. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, i. 170. This was perhaps a modification of the Melanesian custom of secluding girls at puberty. The reason mentioned by Mr Williams, ‘to improve her complexion,’ can hardly have been the original one.

1. Chalmers and Gill, Work and Adventure in New Guinea, p. 159.

2. Schwaner, Borneo, Beschrijving van het stroomgebied van den Barito, etc. ii. 77 sq.; Zimmerman, Die Inseln des Indischen und Stillen Meeres, ii. 632 sq.; Otto Finsch, Neu Guinea und seine Bewohner, p. 116.

3. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 138.

1. Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, p. 93 sq.

2. Erman, ‘Ethnographische Wahrnehmungen u. Erfahrungen an den Küsten des Berings-Meeres,’ Zeitschrift f. Ethnologie, ii. 318 sq.; Langsdorff, Reise um die Welt, ii. 114 sq.; Holmberg, ‘Ethnogr. Skizzen über die Völker d. russischen Amerika,’ Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicae, iv. (1856) p. 320 sq.; Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 110 sq.; Krause, Die Tlinkit-Indianer, p. 217 sq.; Rev Sheldon Jackson, ‘Alaska and its Inhabitants,’ American Antiquarian, ii. 111 sq.; W. M. Grant, in Journal of American Folklore, i. 169. For caps, hoods, and veils worn by girls at such seasons, compare G. H. Loskiel, History of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Indians, i. 56; Journal Anthrop. Institute, vii. 206; G. M. Dawson, Report of the Queen Charlotte Islands, 1878 (Geological Survey of Canada), p. 130 b; Petitot, Monographie des Dènè-Dindjié, pp. 72, 75; id., Traditions indiennes du Canada Nord-Ouest, p. 258.

3. Holmberg, op. cit. p. 401; Bancroft, i. 82; Petroff, Report on the Population, etc. of Alaska, p. 143.

1. Lafitau, Moeurs des Sauvages amériquains, i. 262 sq.

2. Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, viii. 333. On the Chiriguanos see Von Martius, Zur Ethnographie Amerika’s zumal Brasiliens, p. 212 sqq.

3. Thevet, Cosmographie Universelle (Paris, 1575) ii. 946 b sq.; Lafitau, op. cit. i. 290 sqq.

1. Schomburgk, Reisen in Britisch Guiana, ii. 315 sq.; Martius, Zur Ethnographie Amerika’s, p. 644.

2. Labat, Voyage du Chevalier des Marchais en Guinée, Isles voisines, et à Cayenne, iv. p. 365 sq. (Paris ed.), p. 17 sq. (Amsterdam ed.).

3. Above, p. 130 sq., p. 534 sq.

1. This interpretation of the custom is supported by the fact that beating or scourging is inflicted on inanimate objects expressly for the purpose indicated in the text. Thus the Indians of Costa Rica hold that there are two kinds of ceremonial uncleanness, nya and bu-ku-rú. Anything that has been connected with a death is nya. But bu-ku-rú is much more virulent. It can not only make one sick but kill. ‘The worst bu-ku-rú of all is that of a young woman in her first pregnancy. She infects the whole neighbourhood. Persons going from the house where she lives carry the infection with them to a distance, and all the deaths or other serious misfortunes in the vicinity are laid to her charge. In the old times, when the savage laws and customs were in full force, it was not an uncommon thing for the husband of such a woman to pay damages for casualties thus caused by his unfortunate wife … Bu-ku-rú emanates in a variety of ways; arms, utensils, even houses become affected by it after long disuse, and before they can be used again must be purified. In the case of portable objects left undisturbed for a long time, the custom is to beat them with a stick before touching them. I have seen a woman take a long walking stick and beat a basket hanging from the roof of a house by a cord. On asking what that was for, I was told that the basket contained her treasures, that she would probably want to take something out the next day, and that she was driving off the bu-ku-rú. A house long unused must be swept, and then the person who is purifying it must take a stick and beat not only the movable objects, but the beds, posts, and in short every accessible part of the interior. The next day it is fit for occupation. A place not visited for a long time or reached for the first time is bu-ku-rú. On our return from the ascent of Pico Blanco, nearly all the party suffered from little calenturas, the result of extraordinary exposure to wet and cold and want of food. The Indians said that the peak was especially bu-ku-rú, since nobody had ever been on it before.’ One day Mr Gabb took down some dusty blow-guns amid cries of bu-ku-rú from the Indians. Some weeks afterwards a boy died, and the Indians firmly believed that the bu-ku-rú of the blow-guns had killed him. ‘From all the foregoing, it would seem that bu-ku-rú is a sort of evil spirit that takes possession of the object, and resents being disturbed; but I have never been able to learn from the Indians that they consider it so. They seem to think of it as a property the object acquires.’ W. M. Gabb, Indian Tubes and Languages of Costa Rica (read before the American Philosophical Society, 20th August 1875), p. 504 sq.

1. A. R. Wallace, Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, p. 496.

2. Bose, The Hindoos as they are, p. 86. Similarly, after a Brahman boy has been invested with the sacred thread, he is for three days strictly forbidden to see the sun. He may not eat salt, and he is enjoined to sleep either on a carpet or a deer’s skin, without a mattress or mosquito curtain. Ib., p. 186. In Bali, boys who have had their teeth filed, as a preliminary to marriage, are kept shut up in a dark room for three days. Van Eck, ‘Schetsen van bet eiland Bali,’ Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indië, N. S. ix. (1880) 428 sq.

1. Moura, Royaume du Cambodge, i. 377.

2. Aymonier, ‘Notes sur les coutumes et croyances superstitieuses des Cambodgiens,’ Cochinchine Française, Excursions et Reconnaissances, No. 16 (Saigon, 1883), p. 193 sq. Cp. id. Notice sur le Cambodge, p. 50.

3. B. Schmidt, Griechische Märchen, Sagen und Volkslieder, p. 98.

4. Schneller, Märchen und Sagen aus Wälschtirol, No. 22.

1. J. G. von Hahn, Griechische und albanesische Märchen, No. 41.

2. Gonzenbach, Sicilianische Märchen, No. 28. The incident of the bone occurs in other folk-tales. A prince or princess is shut up for safety in a tower and makes his or her escape by scraping a hole in the wall with a bone which has been accidentally conveyed into the tower; sometimes it is expressly said that care was taken to let the princess have no bones with her meal. Hahn, op. cit. No. 15; Gonzenbach, Nos. 26, 27; Pentamerone, No. 23. From this we should infer that it is a rule with savages not to let women handle the bones of animals during their monthly seclusions. We have already seen the great respect with which the savage treats the bones of game (see above, p. 449 sqq.); and women in their courses are specially forbidden to meddle with the hunter or fisher, as their contact or neighbourhood would spoil his sport (see below, p. 557 sqq.). In folk-tales the hero who uses the bone is sometimes a boy; but the incident might easily be transferred from a girl to a boy after its real meaning had been forgotten. Amongst the Hare-skin Indians a girl at puberty is forbidden to break the bones of hares. Petitot, Traditions indiennes du Canada Nord-ouest, p. 258. On the other hand, she drinks out of a tube made of a swan’s bone (Petitot, l.c. and id., Monographie des Dènè-Dindjié, p. 76), and we have seen that a Thlinkeet girl in the same circumstances used to drink out of the wing-bone of a white-headed eagle (Langsdorff, Reise um die Welt, ii. 114).

1. W. Radloff, Proben der Volkslitteratur der türkischen Stämme Süd-Sibiriens, iii. 82 sq.

2. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, i. 416, vi. 25; Turner, Samoa, p. 200; Panjab Notes and Queries, ii. No. 797.

3. Amongst the Chaco Indians of South America a newly-married couple sleep the first night on a skin with their heads towards the west; ‘for the marriage is not considered as ratified till the rising sun shines on their feet the succeeding morning.’ T. J. Hutchinson, ‘The Chaco Indians,’ Transact. Ethnolog. Soc. iii. 327. At old Hindoo marriages, the first ceremony was the ‘Impregnation-rite’ (Garbhādhāna). ‘During the previous day the young married woman was made to look towards the sun, or in some way exposed to its rays.’ Monier Williams, Religious Life and Thought in India, p. 354. Amongst the Turks of Siberia it was formerly the custom on the morning after marriage to lead the young couple out of the hut to greet the rising sun. The same custom is said to be still practised in Iran and Central Asia, the belief being that the beams of the rising sun are the surest means of impregnating the new bride. Vambery, Das Türkenvolk, p. 112.

1. Above, p. 145.

2. Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 186; E. J. Eyre, Journals, ii. 293, 304; W. Ridley, Kamilaroi, p. 157. Journ. Anthrop. Inst. ii. 268, ix. 459 sq.; Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 65, 236. Cp. Sir George Grey, Journals, ii. 344; J. Dawson, Australian Aborigines, ci. sq.

3. Bleek, Brief Account of Bushman Folklore, p. 14; cp. ib. p. 10.

4. Gumilla, Histoire de l’Orénoque, i. 249.

1. James Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 123 sq.

2. S. Hearne, Journey to the Northern Ocean, p. 314 sq.; Alex. Mackenzie, Voyages through the Continent of North America, exxiii.; Petitot, Monographie des Dènè-Dindjié, p. 75 sq.

3. C. Leemius, De Lapponibus Finnmarchiae eorumque lingua vita et religione pristina (Copenhagen, 1767), p. 494.

1. Pliny, Nat. Hist. vii. § 64 sq., xxviii. § 77 sqq. Cp. Geoponica, xii, c. 20, 5, and c. 25, 2; Columella, xi 3, 50.

2. A. Schleicher, Volkstümliches aus Sonnenburg, p. 134; Β. Souché, Croyances, Présages et Traditions diverses, p. 11; V. Fossel, Volksmedicin und medicinischer Aberglaube in Steiermark (Graz, 1886), p. 124. The Greeks and Romans thought that a field was completely protected against insects if a menstruous woman walked round it with bare feet and streaming hair. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvii. 266, xxviii. 78; Columella, x. 358 sq., xl. 3, 64; Palladius, De re rustica, i. 35, 3: Geoponica, xii. 8, 5 sq.; Aelian, Nat. Anim. vi. 36. A similar remedy is employed for the same purpose by North American Indians and European peasants. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, v. 70; Wiedemann, Aus dem inneren und äussern Leben der Ehsten, p. 484. Cp. Haltrich, Zur Volkskunde der Siebenbürger Sachsen, p. 280; Heinrich, Agrarische Sitten und Gebräuche unter den Sachsen Siebenbürgens, p. 14; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 iii. 468.

1. For an example of the beneficent application of the menstrual energy, see note on p. 559.

1. The rules just discussed do not hold exclusively of the persons mentioned in the text, but are applicable in certain circumstances to other tabooed persons and things. Whatever, in fact, is permeated by the mysterious virtue of taboo may need to be isolated from earth and heaven. Mourners are taboo all the world over; accordingly in mourning the Ainos wear peculiar caps in order that the sun may not shine upon their heads. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, v. 366. During a solemn fast of three days the Indians of Costa Rica eat no salt, speak as little as possible, light no fires, and stay strictly indoors, or if they go out during the day they carefully cover themselves from the light of the sun, believing that exposure to the sun’s rays would turn them black. W. M. Gabb, Indian Tubes and Languages of Costa Rica, p. 510. On Yule night it has been customary in parts of Sweden from time immemorial to go on pilgrimage, whereby people learn many secret things and know what is to happen in the coming year. As a preparation for this pilgrimage, ‘some secrete themselves for three days previously in a dark cellar, so as to be shut out altogether from the light of heaven. Others retire at an early hour of the preceding morning to some out-of-the way place, such as a hayloft, where they bury themselves in the hay, that they may neither hear nor see any living creature; and here they remain, in silence and fasting, until after sundown; whilst there are those who think it sufficient if they rigidly abstain from food on the day before commencing their wanderings. During this period of probation a man ought not to see fire.’ L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden p. 194. During the sixteen days that a Pima Indian is undergoing purification for killing an Apache he may not see a blazing fire. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 553. Again warriors on the warpath are strictly taboo; hence Indians may not sit on the bare ground the whole time they are out on a warlike expedition. J. Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 382; Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner, p. 123. The holy ark of the North American Indians is deemed ‘so sacred and dangerous to be touched’ that no one, except the war chief and his attendant, will touch it ‘under the penalty of incurring great evil. Nor would the most inveterate enemy touch it in the woods for the very same reason.’ In carrying it against the enemy they never place it on the ground, but rest it on stones or logs. Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 162 sq. The sacred clam shell of the Elk clan among the Omahas is kept in a sacred bag, which is never allowed to touch the ground. E. James, Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, ii. 47; J. Owen Dorsey, ‘Omaha Sociology,’ Third Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1884), p. 226. Newly born infants are strongly taboo; accordingly in Loango they are not allowed to touch the earth. Pechuel-Loesche, ‘Indiscretes aus Loango,’ Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, x. (1878) p. 29 sq. In Laos the hunting of elephants gives rise to many taboos; one of them is that the chief hunter may not touch the earth with his foot. Accordingly when he alights from his elephant, the others spread a carpet of leaves for him to step upon. E. Aymonier, Notes sur le Laos, p. 26. In some parts of Aberdeenshire, the last bit of standing corn (which, as we have seen, is very sacred) is not allowed to touch the ground; but as it is cut, it is placed on the lap of the ‘gueedman.’ W. Gregor, ‘Quelques coutumes du Nord-Est du Comté d’Aberdeen,’ Revue des Traditions populaires, iii. (1888) 485 b. Sacred food may not, in certain circumstances, touch the ground. F. Grabowsky, ‘Der Distrikt Dusson Timor in Südost-Borneo und seine Bewohner,’ Ausland (1884), No. 24, p. 474; Ch. F. Hall, Narrative of the Second Arctic Expedition, edited by Prof. J. E. Nourse (Washington, 1879), P. 110; Gerard, The Land beyond the Forest, ii. 7. In Scotland, when water was carried from sacred wells to sick people, the water-vessel might not touch the ground. C. F. Gordon Cumming, In the Hebrides, p. 211. On the relation of spirits to the ground, compare Denzil Ibbetson in Panjab Notes and Queries, i. No. 5.

1. Die Edda, übersetzt von Κ. Simrock,8 pp. 286–288, cp. pp. 8, 34, 264. In English the Balder story is told at length by Prof. Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, p. 529 sqq.

2. It is strange to find so learned and judicious a student of custom and myth as H. Usener exactly inverting their true relation to each other. After showing that the essential features of the myth of the marriage of Mars and Nerio have their counterpart in the marriage customs of peasants at the present day, he proceeds to infer that these customs are the reflection of the myth. ‘Italische Mythen,’ Rheinisches Museum, Ν. F. xxx. 228 sq. Surely the myth is the reflection of the custom. Men not only fashion gods in their own likeness (as Xenophanes long ago remarked) but make them think and act like themselves. Heaven is a copy of earth, not earth of heaven.

1. See Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, i. 502, 510, 516.

2. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 518 sq.

3. In the following survey of these fire-customs I follow chiefly W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, kap. vi. p. 497 sqq. Compare also Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 i. 500 sqq.

1. Schmitz, Sitten und Sagen etc. des Eifler Volkes, i. pp. 21–25; Β. Κ. p. 501.

2. Ibid. p. 501.

3. Vonbun, Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie, p. 20; Β. Κ. p. 501.

1. Ε. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben, p. 380 sqq.; Birlinger, Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, ii. 59 sq., 66 sq.; Bavaria, ii. 2, p. 838 sq.; Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, i. p. 211, No. 232, Β. Κ. p. 501 sq.

2. Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, p. 189; Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, ii. 207; B. K. p. 500 sq.

3. Th. Vernalcken, Mythen und Bräuche des Volkes in Oesterreich, p. 293 sq.; B. K. p. 498. See above, p. 228.

1. Schmitz, Sitten, u. Sagen des Eifler Volkes, i. p. 20; Β. Κ. p. 499·

2. Strackerjan, Aberglaube u. Sagen aus dem Herzogthum Oldenburg, ii. 39, No. 306; Β. Κ. p. 499.

3. Β. Κ. p. 499.

4. Ib. p. 498 sq.

5. Ib. p. 499·

6. Schneller, Märchen u. Sagen aus Wälschtirol, p. 234 sq.; Β. K. p. 499 sq.

1. B. K. pp. 502–505; Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube,2 § 81; Zingerle, Sitten, Bräuche und Meinungen des Tiroler Volkes,2 p. 149, §§ 1286–1289; Βavaria, i. 1, p. 371.

1. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, i. p. 212 sq., ii. p. 78 sq.; Β. Κ. p. 505.

2. Strackerjan, Aberglaube und Sagen aus dem Herzogthum Oldenburg, ii. p. 43 sq., No. 313; Β. Κ. p. 505 sq.

3. Wolf, Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie, i. 75 sq.; Β. Κ. p. 506.

4. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 i. 512; Β. Κ. p. 506 sq.

1. H. Pröhle, Harzbilder, p. 63; Kuhn und Schwartz, Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche, p. 373; B. K. p. 507.

2. Kuhn, Märkische Sagen und Märchen, p. 312 sq.; B. K. p. 507.

3. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, i. p. 211 sq.; Β. Κ. p. 507 sq.

4. Birlinger, Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, ii. p. 82, No. 106; Β. Κ. p. 508.

5. Β. Κ. p. 508; cp. Wolf, Beiträge zur deutsch. Myth. i. 74; Grimm, Deutsche Myth.4 i. 512. The two latter writers only state that before the fires were kindled it was customary to hang squirrels in the woods.

6. Kuhn, l.c.; Β. Κ. p. 508.

1. Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 224 sq., Bohn’s ed., quoting Sinclair’s Statistical Account of Scotland, 1794, xi. 620; Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, from the MSS of John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, edited by Alex. Allardyce, ii. 439–445; Β. Κ. p. 508.

1. Pennant, ‘Tour in Scotland,’ Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, iii. 49; Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 226.

2. L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden, p. 233 sq.

3. B. K. p. 509; Brand, Pop. Antiq i. 298 sq.; Grimm, D. M.4 i. 516.

1. Birlinger, Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, ii. p. 96 sqq. No. 128, p. 103 sq. No. 129; E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben, p. 423 sqq.; Β. Κ. p. 510.

2. Leoprechting, Aus dem Lechrain, p. 182 sq.; Β. Κ. p. 510. Cp. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, i. 210; Βavaria, iii. 956.

3. Panzer, op. cit. ii. 549.

4. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest.-Kalender aus Böhmen, pp. 306–311; Β. Κ. p. 510. For the custom of burning a tree in the midsummer bonfires, see p. 68.

1. Rochholz, Deutscher Glaube und Brauch, ii. 144 sqq.

1. Grimm, D. M.4 i. 515 sq.; Β. Κ. p. 510 sq.

2. Wolf, Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie, ii. 393; Grimm, D. M.4 i. 517; Β. K. p. 511.

3. Sébillot, Coutumes populaires de la Haute Bretagne, p. 193 sq.; Wolf, op. cit. ii. 392 sq.

4. Zingerle, Sitten, etc. des Tiroler Volkes,2 p. 159, No. 1354; Panzer, Beitrag, i. 210; Β. Κ. p. 511.

5. Kuhn u. Schwartz, Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche, p. 390; Β. Κ. 511.

1. Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 300 sq., 318, cp. pp. 305, 306, 308 sq.1 Β. K. p. 512.

2. Aubrey, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, p. 96, cp. id. p. 26.

3. Brand, op. cit. i. 311.

4. Id. i. 303, 318, 319; Dyer, British Popular Customs, p. 315.

5. Brand, op. cit. i. 318.

6. J. Train, Account of the Isle of Man, ii. 120.

7. Brand, i. 303, quoting Sir Henry Piers’s Description of Westmeath.

1. Brand, l.c., quoting the author of the Survey of the South of Ireland.

2. Brand, i. 305, quoting the author of the Comical Pilgrim’s Pilgrimage into Ireland.

3. Brand, i. 304, quoting The Gentleman’s Magazine, February 1795, p. 124.

4. Quoted by Dyer, British Popular Customs, p. 321 sq.

1. Brand, i. 311, quoting Statistical Account of Scotland, xxi. 145.

2. Β. K. p. 512.

3. Brand, i. 337.

4. J. Ramsay and A. Allardyce, Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 436.

5. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 240; Grimm, D. M.4 i. 519.

6. Ralston. l.c.

1. Tettau und Temme, Die Volkssagen Ostpreussens, Litthauens und Westpreussens, p. 277; Grimm, D. M.4 i. 519.

2. Töppen, Aberglauben aus Masuren,2 p. 71.

3. Grimm, l.c.; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen, p. 307 note.

4. Grimm, l.c.

5. Grimm, l.c.

6. Grimm, D. M.4 i. 518.

7. Above, p. 248.

8. Gubernatis, Mythologie des Plantes, i. 185.

9. Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 317; Grimm, l.c.

10. G. Ferraro, Superstizioni, usi e proverbi Monferrini, p. 34 sq., referring to Alvise da Cadamosto, Relazion dei viaggi d’Africa, in Ramusio.

1. Birlinger, Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, ii. 100 sq.; Β. Κ. p. 513 sq.

2. Zingerle, Sitten, etc., des Tiroler Volkes,3 p. 159, No. 1353, cp. No. 1355; Β. Κ. p. 513.

3. Wolf, Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie, ii. 392; Β. Κ. p. 513.

4. Β. K. p. 513.

5. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 240.

6. Above, p. 232 sq.

1. Above, p. 19 sqq.

2. Above, p. 578.

3. Birlinger, Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, ii. 57, 97; Β. Κ. p. 510; cp. Panzer, Beitrag, ii. 240.

4. Cp. Grimm, D. M.4 i. 521; Wolf, Beitrage zur deutschen Mythologie, ii. 589; Ad. Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers,2 pp. 41 sq., 47; W. Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 521.

1. See above, pp. 571, 572, 576, 580.

2. On the need-fires, see Grimm, D. M. i. 501 sqq.; Wolf, op. cit. i. 116 sq., ii. 378 sqq.; Kuhn, op. cit. p. 41 sqq.; Β. Κ. p. 518 sqq.; Elton, Origins of English History, p. 293 sq.; Jahn, Die deutschen Opfergebräuche bei Ackerbau und Viehsucht, p. 26 sqq.

3. This is the view of Grimm, Wolf, Kuhn, and Mannhardt.

4. Herabkunft des Feuers,2 p. 47.

5 Panzer, Beitrag, ii. 240.

1. Ch. E. Gover, ‘The Pongol festival in Southern India,’ Journ. Royal Asiatic Society, N.S. v. (1870) p. 96 sq.

1. Diego de Landa, Relation des choses de Yucatan (Paris, 1864), p. 233.

2. Kolben, Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, i. 129 sqq.

3. P. 570. The torches of Demeter, which figure so largely in her myth and on the monuments, are perhaps to be explained by this custom. To regard, with Mannhardt (Β. Κ. p. 536), the torches in the modern European customs as imitations of lightning seems unnecessary.

1. Above, p. 60 sqq.

2. Pp. 568, 582.

3. Pp. 565, 566, 570, 575, 581.

1. p. 568 sq.

2. pp. 565, 566.

3. p. 232.

1. Β. Κ. p. 524.

2. Βavaria, iii. 956; Β. Κ. p. 524.

3. Birlinger, Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, ii. 121 sq., No. 146; Β. Κ. p. 524 sq.

1. Caesar, Bell. Gall. vi. 15; Strabo, iv. 4, 5, p. 198 Casaubon; Diodorus, v. 32. See Mannhardt, B. K. p. 525 sqq.

2. Strabo, iv. 4, 4, p. 197, τὰς δὲ φονικὰς δίκας μάλιστα τούτοις [(i.e. the Druids] ἐπετέτραπτο δικάζειν, ὅταν τε φορὰ τούτων ᾖ, φορὰν καὶ τῆς χώρας νομίζουσιν ύπάρχειν. On this passage see Mannhardt, Β. Κ. p. 529 sqq.

1. See p. 75 sqq.

2. Β. Κ. p. 523, note.

3. Ib; John Milner, The History, Civil and Ecclesiastical, and Survey of the Antiquities of Winchester, i. 8 sq.; Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 323 sq.; James Logan, The Scottish Gael, ii, 358 (new ed.); Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Calendrier Belge, p. 123 sqq.

1. Puttenham, Arte of English Poesie, 1589, p. 128, quoted by Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 323.

2. King’s Vale Royal of England, p. 208, quoted by Brand, l.c.

3. Liebrecht, Gervasius von Tilbury, p. 212 sq.; Β. Κ. p. 514.

4. Β. Κ. pp. 514, 523.

1. Athenaeum, 24th July 1869, p. 115; B. K. p. 515 sq.

2. Wolf, Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie II. 388; Β. Κ. p. 515.

3. Β. Κ. p. 515.

4· Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 i. 519; Β. Κ. p. 515.

5. Β. Κ. p. 515.

6. Ib.

7. Above, pp. 350, 351 sqq.

1. Some of the serpents worshipped by the old Prussians lived in hollow oaks, and as oaks were sacred among the Prussians, the serpents may have been regarded as genii of the trees. Simon Grunau, Preussische Chronik, ed. Perlbach, i.p. 89; Hartknoch, Alt-und Neues Preussen, pp. 143, 163. Serpents, again, played an important part in the worship of Demeter, as we have seen. But that they were regarded as embodiments of her can hardly be assumed. In Siam the spirit of the takhien tree is believed to appear, sometimes in the form of a woman, sometimes in the form of a serpent. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, iii. 251.

1. Pliny derives the name Druid from the Greek drūs, ‘oak.’ He did not know that the Celtic word for oak was the same (daur), and that therefore Druid, in the sense of priest of the oak, was genuine Celtic, not borrowed from the Greek. See Curtius, Griech. Etymologie,5 p. 238 sq.; Vaniček, Griechisch-lateinisches etymolog. Wörterbuch, p. 368 sqq.; Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, p. 221 sqq. In the Highlands of Scotland the word is found in place-names like Bendarroch (the mountain of the oak), Craigandarroch, etc.

1. It is still a folklore rule not to cut the mistletoe with iron; some say it should be cut with gold. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 1001. On the objection to the use of iron in such cases, see Liebrecht, Gervasius von Tilbury, p. 103; and above, p. 151 sqq.

2. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvi. § 249 sqq. On the Celtic worship of the oak, see also Maximus Tyrius, Dissert. viii. 8, Κελτοὶ σέβουσι μἐν Δíα ἄγαλμα δὲ Διὸς Κελτικὸν ύψηλὴ δρῦς With this mode of gathering the mistletoe compare the following. In Cambodia when a man perceives a certain parasitic plant growing on a tamarind-tree, he dresses in white and taking a new earthen pot climbs the tree at mid-day. He puts the plant in the pot and lets the whole fall to the ground. Then in the pot he makes a decoction which renders invulnerable. Aymonier, ‘Notes sur les coutumes et croyances superstitieuses des Cambodgiens,’ in Cochinchine Française, Excursions et Reconnaissances, No. 16, 136.

1. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube,2 § 123; Grohmann, Aberglauben und Gebräuche aus Böhmen und Möhren, §§ 673– 677; Gubernatis, Mythologie des Plantes, ii. 144 sqq.; Friend, Flowers and Flower Lore, p. 362; Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 314 sqq.; Vonbun, Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie, p. 133 sqq.; Burne and Jackson, Shropshire Folklore, p. 242. Cp. Archaeological Review, i. 164 sqq.

2. Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 307, 312; Dyer, Folklore of Plants, pp. 62, 286; Friend, Flowers and Flower Lore, pp. 147, 149, 150, 540; Wuttke, § 134.

3. Grimm, D. M.4 i. 514 sq., ii. 1013 sq., iii. 356; Grohmann, op. cit., § 635–637; Friend, op. cit. p. 75; Gubernatis, Myth. des Plantes, i. 189 sq., ii. 16 sqq.

4. Aubrey, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, p. 25 sq.; Brand, Pop. Ant. i. 329 sqq.; Friend, p. 136.

5. Brand, i. 333.

1. Grohmann, § 1426.

2. Grohmann, § 648.

3. Grohmann, § 681; Wuttke, § 134; Rochholz, Deutscher Glaube und Brauch, i. 9; Gubernatis, Mythologie des Plantes, i. 190.

4. Grimm, D. M.4 iii. 78,353.

5. Gubernatis, Mythologie des Plantes, ii. 73.

6. Friend, Flowers and Flower Lore, p. 378. Hunters believe that the mistletoe heals all wounds and brings luck in hunting. Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers,2 p. 206.

7. Grimm, D. Μ.4 ii. 1009.

1. L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden, p. 269.

2. Lloyd, op. cit. p. 259; Grimm, D. M.4 i. 517 sq.

3. Lloyd, l.c.

4. Grimm, D. M.4 iii. 78, who adds, ‘Mahnen die Johannisfeuer an Baldrs Leichenbrand?’ This pregnant hint, which contains in germ the solution of the whole myth, has been quite lost on the mythologists who since Grimm’s day have enveloped the subject in a cloud of learned dust.

1. Above, pp. 50, 55, 597.

2. Grimm, D. M.4 i. 55 sq., 58 sq., ii, 542, iii. 187 sq.

3. Preller, Röm. Mythol.3 i. 108.

4. Livy, i. 10. Cp. C. Bötticher, Der Baumkultus der Hellenen, p. 133 sq.

1. Bötticher, op. cit. p. 111 sqq.; Preller, Griech. Mythol.4 ed. C. Robert, i. 122 sqq.

2. Without hazarding an opinion on the vexed question of the primitive home of the Aryans, I may observe that in various parts of Europe the oak seems to have been formerly more common than it is now. In Denmark the present beech woods were preceded by oak woods and these by the Scotch fir. Lyell, Antiquity of Man, p. 9; J. Geikie, Prehistoric Europe, p. 486 sq. In parts of North Germany it appears from the evidence of archives that the fir has ousted the oak. O. Schrader, Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte,2 (Jena, 1890), p. 394. In prehistoric times the oak appears to have been the chief tree in the forests which clothed the valley of the Po; the piles on which the pile villages rested were of oak. W. Helbig, Die Italiker in der Poebene, p. 25 sq. The classical tradition that in the olden time men subsisted largely on acorns is borne out by the evidence of the pile villages in Northern Italy, in which great quantities of acorns have been discovered. See Helbig, op. cit. pp. 16 sq., 26, 72 sq.

1. Above, p. 580 sq.

2. Praetorius, Deliciae Prussicae, 19 sq. Mr Ralston states (on what authority I do not know) that if the fire maintained in honour of the Lithuanian god Perkunas went out, it was rekindled by sparks struck from a stone which the image of the god held in his hand. Songs of the Russian People, p. 88.

3. Grimm, D. M.4 i. 502, 503; Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers,2 p. 43; Proble, Harzbilder, p. 75; Bartsch, Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Mecklenburg, ii. 150; Rochholz, Deutscher Glaube und Brauch, ii. 148. The writer who styles himself Montanus says (Die deutschen Volksfeste, etc., p. 127) that the need-fire was made by the friction of oak and fir. Sometimes it is said that the need-fire should be made with nine different kinds of wood (Grimm, D. M.4 i. 503, 505; Wolf, Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie, ii. 380; Jahn, Die deutschen Opfergebräuche, p. 27); but the kinds of wood are not specified.

1. John Ramsay, Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 442; Grimm, D. M.4 i. 506. See above, p. 572.

2. Above, p. 50.

3. Montanus, Die deutschen Volksfeste, etc., p. 127.

4. Above, p. 85.

1. Mary Frere, Old Deccan Days, p. 12 sqq.

2. Maive Stokes, Indian Fairy Tales, p. 58 sqq. For similar stories, see id.p. 187 sq.; Lal Behari Day, Folk-tales of Bengal, p. 121 sq.; F. A. Steel and R. C. Temple, Wide-awake Stories, p. 58 sqq.

1. Old Deccan Days, p. 239 sqq.

2. Lal Behari Day, op. cit. p. 1 sqq. For similar stories of necklaces, see Old Deccan Days, p. 233 sq.; Wide-awake Stories, p. 83 sqq.

1. J. H. Knowles, Folk-tales of Kashmir (London, 1888), p. 49. sq.

2. Ib. p. 134.

3 Id. p. 382 sqq.

1. Lal Behari Day, op. cit. p. 85 sq., cp. id. p. 253 sqq.; Indian Antiquary, i. (1872) 117. For an Indian story in which a giant’s life is in five black bees, see Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions, i. 350.

2. Indian Antiquary, i. 171.

3. A. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, iv. 340 sq.

1. Lal Behari Day, op. cit. p. 189.

2. Wide-awake Stories, pp. 52, 64.

3. G. W. Leitner, The Languages and Races of Dardistan, p. 9.

4. Apollodorus, i. 8; Diodorus, iv. 34; Pausanias, x. 31, 4; Aeschylus, Choeph. 604 sqq.

5. Apollodorus, iii. 15, 8; Aeschylus, Choeph. 612 sqq.; Pausanias, i. 19, 4. According to Tzetzes (Schol. on Lycophron, 650) not the life but the strength of Nisus was in his golden hair; when it was pulled out, he became weak and was slain by Minos. According to Hyginus (Fab. 198) Nisus was destined to reign only so long as he kept the purple lock on his head.

1. Apollodorus, ii. 4, §§ 5, 7.

2. Hahn, Griechische und Albanesische Märchen, i. p. 217; a similar story, id. ii. p. 282.

3. Hahn, op. cit. ii. p. 215 sq.

4. Id. ii. p. 275 sq. Similar stories, id. ii. pp. 204, 294 sq. In an Albanian story a monster’s strength is in three pigeons, which are in a hare, which is in the silver tusk of a wild boar. When the boar is killed, the monster feels ill; when the hare is cut open, he can hardly stand on his feet; when the three pigeons are killed, he expires. Dozon, Contes albanais, p. 132 sq.

5. Hahn, op. cit. ii. p. 260 sqq.

1. Hahn, Griechische und Albanesische Märchen, i. p. 187.

2. Ib. ii. p. 23 sq.

3. Legrand, Contes populaires grecs, p. 191 sqq.

4. Plutarch, Parallela, 26. In both the Greek and Italian stories the subject of quarrel between nephew and uncles is the skin of a boar, which the nephew presented to his lady-love and which his uncles took from her.

5. Basile, Pentamerone, ii. p. 60 sq. (Liebrecht’s German trans.).

1. R. H. Busk, Folklore of Rome, p. 164 sqq.

2. Ralston, Russian Folk-tales, p. 103 sq.; so Dietrich, Russian Popular Tales, p. 23 sq.

3. Ralston, op. cit. p. 109.

1. Ralston, Russian Folk-tales p. 109.

2. Ib., p. 113 sq.

3. Ib., p. 114.

4. Ib., p. 11o.

5. Mijatovics, Serbian Folklore, edited by the Rev W. Denton, p. 172; F. S. Krauss, Sagen und Märchen der Südslaven, i. (No. 34) p. 168 sq.

6. Α. Η. Wratislaw, Sixty Folk-tales from exclusively Slavonic sources (London, 1889), p. 225.

1. Haltrich, Deutsche Volksmärchen aus dem Sachsenlande in Siebenbürgen,4 No. 34 (No. 33 of the first ed.), p. 149 sq.

2. J. W. Wolf, Deutsche Märchen und, Sagen, No. 20, p. 87 sqq.

3. Strackerjan, Aberglaube und Sagen ans dem Herzogthum Oldenburg, ii. p. 306 sq.

1. K. Müllenhoff, Sagen, Märchen und Lieder der Herzogthümer Schleswig-Holstein und Lauenburg, p. 404 sqq.

2. Asbjörnsen og Moe, Norske Folke-Eventyr, No. 36; Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse, p. 55 sqq.

3. Asbjörnsen og Moe, Norske Folke-Eventyr, Ny Samling, No. 70; Dasent, Tales from the Fjeld, p. 229 (‘Boots and the Beasts.’).

1. Mannhardt, Germanische Mythen, p. 592; Jamieson, Dictionary of the Scottish Language, s.v. ‘Yule.’

2. J. F. Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands, i. p. 10 sq.

3. Ib. p. 80 sqq.

4. Sébillot, Contes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne (Paris, 1885), p. 63 sqq.

1. F. M. Luzel, Contes populaires de Basse-Bretagne (Paris, 887). 1 sqq . 449.

1. Maspero, Contes populaires de l’Égypte ancienne (Paris, 1882), p. 5 sqq.

2. Lane’s Arabian Nights, iii. 316 sq.

1. G. Spitta-Bey, Contes arabes modernes (Leyden and Paris, 1883), No. 2, p. 12 sqq. The story in its main outlines is identical with the Cashmeer story of ‘The Ogress Queen’ (J. H. Knowles, Folk-tales of Kashmir, p. 42 sqq.) and the Bengalee story of ‘The Boy whom Seven Mothers Suckled’ (Lal Behari Day, Folk-tales of Bengal, p. 117 sqq.; Indian Antiquary, i. 170 sqq.) In another Arabian story the life of a witch is bound up with a phial; when it is broken, she dies. W. A. Clouston, A Group of Eastern Romances and Stories, p. 30. A similar incident occurs in a Cashmeer story. Knowles, op. cit. p. 73. In the Arabian story mentioned in the text, the hero, by a genuine touch of local colour, is made to drink the milk of an ogress’s breasts and hence is regarded by her as her son. Cp. W. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, p. 149; and for the same mode of creating kinship among other races, see D’Abbadie, Douze ans dans la Haute Ethiopie, p. 272 sq. Tausch, ‘Notices of the Circassians’ Journ. Royal Asiatic Soc. i. (1834) p. 104; Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindu Koosh, pp. 77, 83 (cp. Leitner, Languages and Races of Dardistan, p. 34) Denzil Ibbetson, Settlement Report of the Panipat, Tahsil, and Karnal Paganah of the Karnal District, p. 101; Moura, Royaume du Cambodge, i. 427, F. S. Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven, p. 14.

2. Rivière, Contes populaires de la Kabylie du Djurdjura, p. 191.

1. W. H. Jones and L. L. Kropf, The Folk-tales of the Magyar (London, 1889), p. 205 sq.

2. R. H. Busk, The Folklore of Rome, p. 168.

1. Castren, Ethnologische Vorlesungen über die Altaischen Völker, p. 173 sqq.

2. Schiefner, Heldensagen der Minussinschen Tataren, pp. 172–176.

3. Schiefner, op. cit. pp. 108–112.

1. Schiefner, op. cit. pp. 360–364; Castren, Vorlesungen über die finnische Mythologie, p. 186 sq.

2. Schiefner, op. cit. pp. 189–193. In another Tartar poem (Schiefner, op. cit. p. 390 sq.) a boy’s soul is shut up by his enemies in a box. While the soul is in the box, the boy is dead; when it is taken out, he is restored to life. In the same poem (p. 384) the soul of a horse is kept shut up in a box, because it is feared the owner of the horse will become the greatest hero on earth. But these cases are, to some extent, the converse of those in the text.

3. Schott, ‘Ueber die Sage von Geser Chan,’ Abhandlungen d. Königl. Akad. d. Wissensch. zu Berlin, 1851, p. 269.

4. W. Radloff, Proben der Volkslitteratur der türkischen Stämme Süd-Sibiriens, ii. 237 sq.

1. W. Radloff, op. cit. ii. 531 sqq.

2. Id., iv. 88 sq.

3. W. Radloff, op. cit. i. 345 sq.

1. G. A. Wilken, ‘De Simsonsage,’ De Gids , 1888, No. 5, p. 6 sqq . (of the separate reprint). Cp. Backer, L’Archipel Indien, pp. 144–149.

1. Nieuwenhuisen en Rosenberg, ‘Verslag omtrent het eiland Nias,’ Verhandel. van het Batav. Genootsch. v. Kunsten en Wetenschappan, xxx p. 111; Sundermann, ‘Die Insel Nias,’ Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift, xi, (1884) p. 453.

2. Above, p. 113.

1. B. F. Matthes, Bijdragen tot de Ethnologie van Zuid-Celebes, p. 54.

2. F. Valentyn, Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën, ii. 143 sq.; G. A. Wilken, De Simsonsage, p. 15 sq.

3. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 133.

4. B. Schmidt, Das Volksleben der Neugriechen, p. 206.

5. Above, pp. 614, 616, 617, 619.

1. Revue d’Ethnographie, ii. 223.

2. Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, i. 165.

3. Bastian, Ein Besuch in San Salvador, p. 103 sq.; id., Der Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. 193.

4. R. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui; or, New Zealand and its Inhabitants,2 p. 184; Dumont D’Urville, Voyage autour du monde et à la recherche de La Pérouse sur la corvette Astrolabe, ii. 444.

5. Matthes, Bijdragen tot de Ethnologie van Zuid-Celebes, p. 59.

6. Van Eck, ‘Schetsen van het eiland Balí,’ Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indië, N. S. ix. (1880) p. 417 sq.

7. G. A. Wilken, De Simsonsage, p. 26.

1. Gubernatis, Mythologie des Plantes, i. xxviii. sq.

2. W. Mannhardt, B. K. p. 50; Ploss, Das Kind,2 i. 79.

3. K. Bartsch, Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Mecklenburg, ii. 43, No. 63.

4. Gentleman’s Magazine, October 1804, p. 909, quoted by Brand Popular Antiquities, iii. 289; W. G. Black,Folk-medicine, pp. 31 sq., 67.

5. Moore’s Life of Lord Byron, i. 101.

1. Cedrenus, Compend. Histor. p. 625 b, vol. ii. p. 308, ed. Bekker.

2. F. Mason, ‘Physical Character of the Karens,’ Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1866, pt. ii. p. 9.

3. Matthes, Makassarsch-Hollandsch Woordenboek, s.v. soemâñgá, p. 569; G. A. Wilken, ‘Het animisme bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel,’ De Indische Gids, June 1884, p. 933.

4. R. H. Codrington, ‘Notes on the Customs of Mota, Banks Islands’ (communicated by the Rev Lorimer Fison), Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria, xvi. 136.

1. F. Speckmann, Die Hermannburger Mission in Afrika (Hermannburg, 1876), p. 167.

2. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific Coast, i. 661. The words quoted by Bancroft (p. 662, note) ‘Consérvase entre ellos la creencia de que su vida está unida à la de un animal, y que es forsoso que mueran ellos cuando éste muere,’ are not quite accurately represented by the statement of Bancroft in the text.

1. Otto Stoll, Die Ethnologie der Indianerstämme von uatemala (Leyden, 1889), p. 57 sq.; Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 740 sq.; Bastian, Die Culturländer des alten Amerika, ii. 282.

1. A. W. Howitt, ‘Further Notes on the Australian Class Systems,’ Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xviii. 58.

2. Gerard Krefft, ‘Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of the Lower Murray and Darling,’ Transact. Philos. Soc. New South Wales, 1862–65, p. 359 sq.

3. A. W. Howitt, l.c.

4. Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 52.

1. Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xiv. 350, xv. 416, xviii. 57 (the ‘nightjar’ is apparently an owl).

2. Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, pp. 194, 201 sq., 215; Journ Anthrop. Inst. xv. 416, xviii. 56 sq.

1. The chief facts of totemism have been collected by the present writer in a little work, Totemism (Edinburgh, A. and C. Black, 1887).

2. (Sir) George Grey, Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, ii, 228 sq.

1. Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 169.

1. De la Borde, ‘Relation de l’Origine, etc. des Caraïbes,’ p. 15, in Recueil de divers Voyages faits en Afrique et en l’Amérique (Paris, 1684).

2. Washington Matthews, The Hidatsa Indians, p. 50.

3. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, iii. 248.

1. Ι. Β. Neumann, ‘Het Paneen Bila-stroomgebied op het eiland Sumatra,’ Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijks, Genootsch., Tweede Serie, dl, iii. Afdeeling: meer uitgebreide artikelen, No. 2, p. 311 sq.: id., dl. iv. No. 1, p. 8 sq.; Van Hoëvell, ‘Iets over’t oorlogvoeren der Batta’s,’ Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indië N. S. vii. (1878) p. 434; G. A. Wilken, Over de verwantschap en het huwelijks-en erfrecht bij de volken van het maleische ras, pp. 20 sq., 36; id., Iets over de Papoewas van de Geelvinksbaai, p. 27 sq. (reprint from Bijdragen tot de Τaa-Landen Volkenkunde van Ned.-Indië, 5e Volgreeks ii.); Journal Anthrop. Inst. ix. 295; Backer, L’Archipel Indien, p. 470.

2. Β. Hagen, ‘Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Battareligion,’ Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-Land-en Volkenkunde, xxviii. 514. J. B. Neumann (op. cit. dl. iii. No. 2, p. 299) is the authority for the seven souls.

1. Th. Benfey, Pantschatantra, i. 128 sq.

2. A. L. P. Cameron, ‘Notes on some Tribes of New South Wales,’ Journ. Anthrop. Instit. xiv. 358.

3. A. W. Howitt, ‘On Australian Medicine Men,’ Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xvi. 47 sq. On the Bullroarer (a piece of wood fastened to a cord or thong and swung round so as to produce a booming sound), see A. Lang, Custom and Myth, p. 29 sqq. The religious use of the Bullroarer is best known in Australia, but in the essay just referred to Mr Andrew Lang has shown that the instrument has been similarly employed not only in South Africa and by the Zunis of New Mexico, but also by the ancient Greeks in their religious mysteries. As a sacred instrument it also occurs in Western Africa (R. F. Burton, Abeokuta and the Cameroons Mountains, i. 197 sq.; Bouche, La Côte des Esclaves, p. 184) and in New Guinea (J. Chalmers, Pioneering in New Guinea, p. 85).

1. A. W. Howitt, ‘On some Australian ceremonies of initiation,’ Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xiii. 453 sq. The ‘class-name’ is the name of the totemic division to which the man belongs.

2. L. Fison, ‘The Nanga, or sacred stone enclosure of Wainimala, Fiji,’ Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xiv. 22.

1. W. H. Bentley, Life on the Congo (London, 1887), p. 78 sq.

1. A. Bastian, Ein Besuch in San Salvador, pp. 82 sq. 86.

2. Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, ii. 183; cp. id., pp. 15–18, 30 sq. On these initiatory rites in the Congo region see also Η. Η. Johnston in Proceed. Royal Geogr, Soc. N. S. v. (1883) p. 572 sq. and in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xxl. 472; E. Delmar Morgan, in Proceed. Royal Geogr. Soc. N. S. vi. 193.

1. Dapper, Description de l’Afrique, p. 268 sq. Dapper’s account has been abbreviated in the text.

1. (Beverley’s) History of Virginia (London, 1722), p. 177 sq.

1. J. Carver, Travels through the Interior Parts of North America, pp. 271–275.

2. Carver, op. cit. p. 277 sq.; Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, iii. 287, v. 430 sqq.; Kohl, Kitschi-Gami, i. 64–70.

3. Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt (Middletown, 1820), p. 119.

1. Id., p. 44. For the age of the prince, see id., p. 35.

2. Holmberg, ‘Ueber die Völker des russischen Amerika,’ Acta Soc. Scient. Fennicae, iv. (Helsingfors, 1856) pp. 292 sqq., 328; Petroff, Report on the Population, etc. of Alaska, p. 165 sq.; Α. Krause, Die Tlinkit-Indianer, p. 112; R. C. Mayne, Four years in British Columbia and Vancouver Island, p. 257 sq., 268.

3. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, v. 683. In a letter dated 16th Dec. 1887, Air A. S. Gatschet, of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, writes to me: ‘Among the Toukawe whom in 1884 I found at Fort Griffin [?], Texas, I noticed that they never kill the big or gray wolf, hatchukunän, which has a mythological signification, “holding the earth” (hatch). He forms one of their totem clans, and they have had a dance in his honor, danced by the males only, who carried sticks.’

1. Reina, ‘Ueber die Bewohner der Insel Rook,’ Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde, N. F. iv. (1858) p. 356 sq.

2. R. Parkinson, Im Bismarck Archipel, pp. 129–134; Rev G. Brown, ‘Notes on the Duke of York Group, New Britain, and New Ireland,’ Journ, Royal Geogr. Soc. xlvii. (1878) p. 148 sq.; Η. Η. Romilly, ‘The Islands of the New Britain Group,’ Proceed. Royal Geogr. Soc. N. S. ix. (1887) p. 11 sq.; Rev G. Brown, ib, p. 17; W. Powell, Wanderings in a Wild Country, pp. 60–66; C. Hager, Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land und der Bismarck Archipel, pp. 115–128. The inhabitants of these islands are divided into two exogamous classes, which in the Duke of York Island have two insects for their totems. One of the insects is the mantis religiosus; the other is an insect that mimicks the leaf of the horse-chestnut tree very closely. Rev B. Danks, ‘Marriage customs of the New Britain Group,’ Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xviii. 281 sq.

1. J. G. F. Riedel, ‘Galela und Tobeloresen,’ Zeitschrift f. Ethnologie, xvii. (1885) p. 81 sq.

2. The Kakian association and its initiatory ceremonies have often been described. See Valentyn, Oud en nieuw Oost-Indiën, iii. 3 sq.; Von Schmid, ‘Het Kakihansch Verbond op het eiland Ceram,’ Tijdschrift v. Neêrlands Indië, v. dl. ii. (1843) 25–38; Van Ekris, ‘Het Ceramsche Kakian verbond,’ Mededeelingen van wege net Nederland. Zendelinggenootschap, (1865) ix. 205–226 (repeated with slight changes in Tijdschrift v. Indische Taal-Land-en Volkenkunde, xvi. 1866, pp. 290–315); F. Fournier, ‘De Zuidkust van Ceram,’ Tijdschrift v. Indische Taal-Land-en Volkenkunde, xvi. 154 sqq.; Van Rees, Die Pionniers der Beschaving in Neêrlands Indië, pp. 92–106; Van Hoëvell, Ambon en meer bepaaldelijk de Oeliasers, p. 153 sqq.; Schulze, ‘Ueber Ceram und seine Bewohner,’ Verhandl. d. Berliner Gesell. f. Anthropologie, etc. (1877) p. 117; W. Joest, ‘Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Eingebornen der Insel Formosa und Ceram,’ id. (1882), p. 64; Rosenberg, Der Malayische Archipel, p. 318; Bastian, Indonesien, i. 145–148; Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, pp. 107–111. The best accounts are those of Valentyn, Von Schmid, Van Ekris, Van Rees, and Riedel, which are accordingly followed in the text.

1. Laws of Manu, ii. 169, trans, by Bühler; Dubois, Moeurs, Institutions et Cérémonies des Peuples de l’Inde, i. 125; Monier Williams, Religious Life and Thought in India, pp. 360 sq., 366 sq.

2. Lampridius, Commodus, 91, C. W. King, The Gnostics and their Remains,2 pp. 127, 129.

1. Above, p. 617.

2. Above, p. 620 sq.

3. Above, p. 616 sq.

4. Above, p. 630 sq. In the myth the throwing of the weapons and of the mistletoe at Balder and the blindness of Hödur who slew him remind us of the custom of the Irish reapers who kill the corn-spirit in the last sheaf by throwing their sickles blindfold at it. (See above, p. 292). In Mecklenburg a cock is sometimes buried in the ground and a man who is blindfolded strikes at it with a flail. If he misses it, another tries, and so on till the cock is killed. Bartsch, Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Mecklenburg, ii. 280. In England on Shrove Tuesday a hen used to be tied upon a man’s back, and other men blindfolded struck at it with branches till they killed it. Dyer, British Popular Customs, p. 68. Mannhardt (Die Korndämonen, p. 16 sq.) has made it probable that such sports are directly derived from the custom of killing a cock upon the harvest-field as a representative of the corn-spirit (see above, p. 358). These customs, therefore, combined with the blindness of Hödur in the myth suggest that the man who killed the human representative or the oak-spirit was blindfolded, and threw his weapon or the mistletoe from a little distance After the Lapps had killed a bear – which was the occasion of many superstitious ceremonies – the bear’s skin was hung on a post, and the women, blindfolded, shot arrows at it. Scheffer, Lapponia, p. 240.

1. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 1001, 1010.

2. Folklore Journal, vii. 61.

3. Col. E. T. Dalton, ‘The Kols of Chota-Nagpore,’ Trans. Ethnol. Soc. vi. 36.

1. Jens Kamp, Danske Folkeminder (Odense, 1877), pp. 172, 65 sq. referred to in Feilberg’s Bidrag til en Ordbog over Jyske Almuesmål, Fjerde hefte (Copenhagen, 1888), p. 320. For a sight of Feilberg’s work I am indebted to the kindness of the Rev Walter Gregor, MA, Pitsligo, who pointed out the passage to me.

2. Ε. Τ. Kristensen, Iydske Folkeminder, vi. 380_262, referred to by Feilberg, l.c.

3. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube,2 § 128; L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden, p. 269.

4. Extract from a newspaper, copied and sent to me by the Rev Walter Gregor, MA, Pitsligo. Mr Gregor does not mention the name of the newspaper.

1. Martin, ‘Description of the Western Islands of Scotland,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, iii. 661.

2. Rochholz, Deutscher Glaube und Brauch, i. 9.

3. Virgil, Aen. vi. 203 sqq., cp. 136 sqq. On the mistletoe (viscum) see Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvi. 245 sqq.

1. Virgil (Aen. vi. 201 sqq.) places the Golden Bough in the neighbourhood of Lake Avernus. But this was probably a poetical liberty, adopted for the convenience of Aeneas’s descent to the infernal world. Italian tradition, as we learn from Servius, placed the Golden Bough in the grove at Nemi.

2. See above, p. 3 sq.

1. A custom of annually burning a human representative of the corn-spirit has been noted among the Egyptians, Pawnees, and Khonds. See above, pp. 328, 333, 344 sq. In Semitic lands there are traces of a practice of annually burning a human god. For the image of Hercules (that is, of Baal) which was periodically burned on a pyre at Tarsus, must have been a substitute for a human representative of the god. See Dio Chrysostom, Orat. 33, vol. ii. p. 16, ed. Dindorf; W. R. Smith, The Religion of the Semites, i. 353 sq. The Druids seem to have eaten portions of the human victim. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxx. § 13. Perhaps portions of the flesh of the King of the Wood were eaten by his worshippers as a sacrament. We have seen traces of the use of sacramental bread at Nemi. See above, p. 420 sq.

2. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 1009, pren puraur.

3. Virgil, Aen. vi. 137 sq.

4. Grohmann, Aberglauben und Gebräuche aus Böhmen und Mähren, § 673.

5. Grohmann, op. cit. § 676; Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube, § 123.

1. Zingerle, Sitten, Bräuche und Meinungen des Tiroler Volkes,2 § 882.

2. Zingerle op. cit. § 1573.

3. Grohmann, op. cit. § 675; Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 98.

4. L. Bechstein, Deutscher Sagenbuch No. 500; id. Thüringer Sagenbuch (Leipzig, 1885), ii. No. 161.

5. For gathering it at midsummer, see above, p. 600. The custom of gathering it at Christmas still survives among ourselves. At York ‘on the eve of Christmas Day they carry mistletoe to the high altar of the cathedral, and proclaim a public and universal liberty, pardon, and freedom to all sorts of inferior and even wicked people at the gates of the city, towards the four quarters of heaven.’ Stukeley, Medallic History of Carausius, quoted by Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 525. This last custom is of course now obsolete.

1. Afzelius, Volkssagen und Volkslieder aus Schwedens älterer und neuerer Zeit, i. 41 sq.; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 iii. 289; L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden, p. 266 sq.

2. Above, p. 604.

3. Fern-seed is supposed to bloom at Easter as well as at midsummer and Christmas (Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 98 sq.); and Easter, as we have seen, is one of the times when sunfires are kindled.

1. Burne and Jackson, Shropshire Folklore, p. 242.

2. P. 599.

3. The reason why Virgil represents Aeneas as taking the mistletoe with him to Hades is perhaps that the mistletoe was supposed to repel evil spirits (see above, p. 662). Hence when Charon is disposed to bluster at Aeneas, the sight of the Golden Bough quiets him (Aen. vi. 406 sq.) Perhaps also the power ascribed to the mistletoe of laying bare the secrets of the earth may have suggested its use as a kind of ‘open Sesame’ to the lower world. Compare Aen. vi. 140 sq.
– ‘Sed non ante datur telluris operta subire,
Auricomos quam qui decerpserit arbore fetus’

4. Die Edda, übersetzt von Κ. Simrock,8 p. 264.

1. On the derivation of the names Zeus and Jove from a root meaning ‘shining,’ ‘bright,’ see Curtius, Griech. Etymologie,5 p. 236; Vaniček, Griech,-Latein. Etymolog. Wörterbuch, p. 353 sqq. On the relation of Jove to the oak, compare Pliny, Nat. Hist. xii. § 3, arborum genera numinibus suis dicata perpetuo servantur, ut Jovi aesculus; Servius on Virgil, Georg. iii. 332, omnis quercus Jovi est consecrata. Zeus and Jupiter have commonly been regarded as sky gods, because their names are etymologically connected with the Sanscrit word for sky. The reason seems insufficient.

Note

Offerings of First-fruits

We have seen (p. 408 sqq.) that primitive peoples often partake of the new corn sacramentally, because they suppose it to be instinct with a divine spirit or life. At a later age, when the fruits of the earth are conceived as produced rather than as animated by a divinity, the new fruits are no longer partaken of sacramentally as the body and blood of a god; but a portion of them is presented as a thank-offering to the divine beings who are believed to have produced them. Sometimes the first-fruits are presented to the king, probably in his character of a god. Till the first-fruits have been offered to the deity or the king, people are not at liberty to eat of the new crops. But, as it is not always possible to draw a sharp line between the sacrament and the sacrifice of first-fruits, it may be well to round off this part of the subject by appending some miscellaneous examples of the latter.

Among the Basutos, when the corn has been threshed and winnowed, it is left in a heap on the threshing-floor. Before it can be touched a religious ceremony must be performed. The persons to whom the corn belongs bring a new vessel to the spot, in which they boil some of the grain. When it is boiled they throw a few handfuls of it on the heap of corn, saying, ‘Thank you, gods; give us bread tomorrow also!’ When this is done the rest is eaten, and the provision for the year is considered pure and fit to eat.[1] Here the sacrifice of the first-fruits to the gods is the prominent idea, which comes out again in the custom of leaving in the threshing-floor a little hollow filled with grain, as a thank-offering to the gods.[2] Still the Basutos retain a lively sense of the sanctity of the corn in itself; for, so long as it is exposed to view, all defiled persons are carefully kept from it. If it is necessary to employ a defiled person in carrying home the harvest, he remains at some distance while the sacks are being filled, and only approaches to place them upon the draught oxen. As soon as the load is deposited at the dwelling he retires, and under no pretext may he help to pour the corn into the baskets in which it is kept.[1]

In Ashantee a harvest festival is held in September when the yams are ripe. During the festival the king eats the new yams, but none of the people may eat them till the close of the festival, which lasts a fortnight. During its continuance the grossest liberty prevails; theft, intrigue, and assault go unpunished, and each sex abandons itself to its passions.[2] The Hovas of Madagascar present the first sheaves of the new grain to the sovereign. The sheaves are carried in procession to the palace from time to time as the grain ripens.[3] So in Burma, when the pangati fruits ripen, some of them used to be taken to the king’s palace that he might eat of them; no one might partake of them before the king.[4]

Every year, when they gather their first crops, the Kochs of Assam offer some of the first-fruits to their ancestors, calling to them by name and clapping their hands.[5] In August, when the rice ripens, the Hos offer the first-fruits of the harvest to Sing Bonga, who dwells in the sun. Along with the new rice a white cock is sacrificed; and till the sacrifice has been offered no one may eat the new rice.[6] Among the hill tribes near Rajamahall, in India, when the kosarane grain is being reaped in November or early in December, a festival is held as a thanksgiving before the new grain is eaten. On a day appointed by the chief a goat is sacrificed by two men to a god called Chitariah Gossaih, after which the chief himself sacrifices a fowl. Then the vassals repair to their fields, offer thanksgiving, make an oblation to Kull Gossaih (who is described as the Ceres of these mountaineers), and then return to their houses to eat of the new kosarane. As soon as the inhabitants have assembled at the chief’s house – the men sitting on one side and the women on the other – a hog, a measure of kosarane, and a pot of spirits are presented to the chief, who in return blesses his vassals, and exhorts them to industry and good behaviour; ‘after which, making a libation in the names of all their gods, and of their dead, he drinks, and also throws a little of the kosarane away, repeating the same pious exclamations.’ Drinking and festivity then begin, and are kept up for several days. The same tribes have another festival at reaping the Indian corn in August or September. Every man repairs to his fields with a hog, a goat, or a fowl, which he sacrifices to Kull Gossaih. Then, having feasted, he returns home, where another repast is prepared. On this day it is customary for every family in the village to distribute to every house a little of what they have prepared for their feast. Should any person eat of the new kosarane or the new Indian corn before the festival and public thanksgiving at the reaping of these crops, the chief fines him a white cock, which is sacrificed to Chitariah.[1] In the Central Provinces of India the first grain of the season is always offered to the god Bhimsen or Bhim Deo.[2] In the Punjaub, when sugar-cane is planted, a woman puts on a necklace and walks round the field, winding thread on to a spindle;[3] and when the sugar-cane is cut the first-fruits are offered on an altar, which is built close to the press and is sacred to the sugar-cane god. Afterwards the first-fruits are given to Brahmans. Also, when the women begin to pick the cotton, they go round the field eating ricemilk, the first mouthful of which they spit upon the field toward the west; and the first cotton picked is exchanged at the village shop for its weight in salt, which is prayed over and kept in the house till the picking is finished.[1]

In the island of Tjumba, East Indies, a festival is held after harvest. Vessels filled with rice are presented as a thank-offering to the gods. Then the sacred stone at the foot of a palm-tree is sprinkled with the blood of a sacrificed animal; and rice, with some of the flesh, is laid on the stone for the gods. The palm-tree is hung with lances and shields.[2] The Dyaks of Borneo hold a feast of first fruits when the paddy (unhusked rice) is ripe. The priestesses, accompanied by a gong and drum, go in procession to the farms and gather several bunches of the ripe paddy. These are brought back to the village, washed in cocoa-nut water, and laid round a bamboo altar, which at the harvest festivals is erected in the common room of the largest house. The altar is gaily decorated with white and red streamers, and is hung with the sweet-smelling blossom of the areca palm. The feast lasts two days, during which the village is tabooed; no one may leave it. Only fowls are killed, and dancing and gong-beating go on day and night. When the festival is over the people are free to get in their crops.[3]

The pounding of the new paddy is the occasion of a harvest festival which is celebrated all over Celebes. The religious ceremonies which accompany the feast were witnessed by Dr B. F. Matthes in July 1857. Two mats were spread on the ground, each with a pillow on it. On one of the pillows were placed a man’s clothes and a sword, on the other a woman’s clothes. These were seemingly intended to represent the deceased ancestors. Rice and water were placed before the two dummy figures, and they were sprinkled with the new paddy. Also dishes of rice were set down for the rest of the family and the slaves of the deceased. This was the end of the ceremony.[1] The Minahassa of Celebes have a festival of ‘eating the new rice.’ Fowls or pigs are killed; some of the flesh, with rice and palm-wine, is set apart for the gods, and then the eating and drinking begin.[2] The people of Kobi and Saripati, two villages on the north-east coast of Ceram, offer the first-fruits of the paddy, in the form of cooked rice, with tobacco, etc, to their ancestors, as a token of gratitude. The ceremony is called ‘feeding the dead.’[3] In the Tenim-ber and Timorlaut Islands, East Indies, the first-fruits of the paddy, along with live fowls and pigs, are offered to the matmate. The matmate are the spirits of their ancestors, which are worshipped as guardian-spirits or household gods. They are supposed to enter the house through an opening in the roof, and to take up their abode temporarily in their skulls, or in images of wood or ivory, in order to partake of the offerings and to help the family. They also take the form of birds, pigs, crocodiles, turtles, sharks, etc.[4] In Amboina, after the rice or other harvest has been gathered in, some of the new fruits are offered to the gods, and till this is done, the priests may not eat of them. A portion of the new rice, or whatever it may be, is boiled, and milk of the cocoa-nut is poured on it, mixed with Indian saffron. It is then taken to the place of sacrifice and offered to the god. Some people also pour out oil before the deity; and if any of the oil is left over, they take it home as a holy and priceless treasure, wherewith they smear the forehead and breast of sick people and whole people, in the firm conviction that the oil confers all kinds of blessings.[1] The Irayas and Catalangans of Luzon, tribes of the Malay stock, but of mixed blood, worship chiefly the souls of their ancestors under the name of anitos, to whom they offer the first-fruits of the harvest. The anitos are household deities; some of them reside in pots in the corners of the houses; and miniature houses, standing near the dwelling-house, are especially sacred to them.[2]

In certain tribes of Fiji ‘the first-fruits of the yam harvest are presented to the ancestors in the Nanga [sacred stone enclosure] with great ceremony, before the bulk of the crop is dug for the people’s use, and no man may taste of the new yams until the presentation has been made. The yams thus offered are piled in the Great Nanga, and are allowed to rot there. If any one were impiously bold enough to appropriate them to his own use, he would be smitten with madness. The mission teacher before mentioned told me that when he visited the Nanga he saw among the weeds with which it was overgrown numerous yam vines which had sprung up out of the piles of decayed offerings. Great feasts are made at the presentations of the first-fruits, which are times of public rejoicing, and the Nanga itself is frequently spoken of as the Mbaki, or Harvest.’[3] In other parts of Fiji the practice with regard to the first-fruits seems to have been different, for we are told by another observer that ‘the first-fruits of the yams, which are always presented at the principal temple of the district, become the property of the priests, and form their revenue, although the pretence of their being required for the use of the god is generally kept up.’[4] In Tana, one of the New Hebrides, the general name for gods appeared to be aremha, which meant ‘a dead man.’ The spirits of departed ancestors were among the gods of the people. Chiefs who reached an advanced age were deified after their death, addressed by name, and prayed to on various occasions. They were supposed to preside especially over the growth of the yams and fruit-trees. The first-fruits were presented to them. A little of the new fruit was laid on a stone, or on a shelving branch of the tree, or on a rude temporary altar, made of a few sticks lashed together with strips of bark, in the form of a table, with its four feet stuck in the ground. All being quiet, the chief acted as high priest, and prayed aloud as follows: ’Compassionate father! here is some food for you; eat it; be kind to us on account of it.’ Then all the people shouted. This took place about noon, and afterwards the assembled people feasted and danced till midnight or morning.[1]

In some of the Kingsmill Islands the god most commonly worshipped was called Tubuériki. He was represented by a flat coral stone, of irregular shape, about three feet long by eighteen inches wide, set up on one end in the open air. Leaves of the cocoa-nut palm were tied about it, considerably increasing its size and height. The leaves were changed every month, that they might be always fresh. The worship paid to the god consisted in repeating prayers before the stone, and laying beside it a portion of the food prepared by the people for their own use. This they did at their daily meals, at festivals, and whenever they specially wished to propitiate the favour of the god. The first-fruits of the season were always offered to him. Every family of distinction had one of these stones which was considered rather in the light of a family altar than as an idol.[2]

The following is a description of the festival of first-fruits as it was celebrated in Tonga in the days when a European flag rarely floated among the islands of the Pacific. ‘Inachi. This word means literally a share or portion of any thing that is to be, or has been, distributed out: but in the sense here mentioned it means that portion of the fruits of the earth, and other eatables, which is offered to the gods in the person of the divine chief Tooitonga, which allotment is made once a year, just before the yams in general are arrived at a state of maturity; those which are used in this ceremony being planted sooner than others, and, consequently, they are the first-fruits of the yam season. The object of this offering is to insure the protection of the gods, that their favour may be extended to the welfare of the nation generally, and in particular to the productions of the earth, of which yams are the most important.

‘The time for planting most kinds of yams is about the latter end of July, but the species called caho-caho, which is always used in this ceremony, is put in the ground about a month before, when, on each plantation, there is a small piece of land chosen and fenced in, for the purpose of growing a couple of yams of the above description. As soon as they have arrived at a state of maturity, the How [King] sends a messenger to Tooitonga, stating that the yams for the inachi are fit to be taken up, and requesting that he would appoint a day for the ceremony; he generally fixes on the tenth day afterwards, reckoning the following day for the first. There are no particular preparations made till the day before the ceremony; at night, however, the sound of the conch is heard occasionally in different parts of the islands, and as the day of the ceremony approaches, it becomes more frequent, so that the people of almost every plantation sound the conch three or four times, which, breaking in upon the silence of the night, has a pleasing effect, particularly at Vavaoo, where the number of woods and hills send back repeated echoes, adding greatly to the effect. The day before the ceremony the yams are dug up, and ornamented with a kind of ribbon prepared from the inner membrane of the leaf of a species of pandanus, and dyed red …

‘The sun has scarcely set when the sound of the conch begins again to echo through the island, increasing as the night advances. At the Mooa [capital] and all the plantations the voices of men and women are heard singing Nófo óοa tegger gnaoóe, óοοa gnaoóe, Rest thou, doing no work; thou shalt not work. This increases till midnight, mengenerally singing the first part of the sentence, and the women the last: it then subsides for three or four hours, and again increases as the sun rises. Nobody, however, is seen stirring out in the public roads till about eight o’clock, when the people from all quarters of the island are seen advancing towards the Mooa, and canoes from all the other islands are landing their men; so that all the inhabitants of Tonga seem approaching by sea and land, singing and sounding the conch. At the Mooa itself the universal bustle of preparation is seen and heard; and the different processions entering from various quarters of men and women, all dressed up in new gnatoos, ornamented with red ribbons and wreaths of flowers, and the men armed with spears and clubs, betoken the importance of the ceremony about to be performed. Each party brings in its yams in a basket, which is carried in the arms with great care by the principal vassal of the chief to whom the plantation may belong. The baskets are deposited in the malái[1] (in the Mooa), and some of them begin to employ themselves in slinging the yams, each upon the centre of a pole about eight or nine feet long, and four inches diameter. The proceedings are regulated by attending matabooles.[2] The yams being all slung, each pole is carried by two men upon their shoulders, one walking before the other, and the yam hanging between them, ornamented with red ribbons. The procession begins to move towards the grave of the last Tooitonga (which is generally in the neighbourhood, or the grave of one of his family will do), the men advancing in a single line, every two bearing a yam, with a slow and measured pace, sinking at every step, as if their burden were of immense weight. In the meantime the chiefs and matabooles are seated in a semicircle before the grave, with their heads bowed down, and their hands clasped before them.’ The procession then marched round the grave twice or thrice in a great circle, the conchs blowing and the men singing. Next the yams, still suspended from the poles were deposited before the grave, and their bearers sat down beside them. One of the matabooles of Tooitonga now addressed the gods generally, and afterwards particularly, mentioning the late Tooitonga, and the names of several others. He thanked them for their divine bounty in favouring the land with the prospect of so good a harvest, and prayed that their beneficence might be continued in future. When he had finished, the men rose and resumed their loads, and after parading two or three times round the grave, marched back to the malái, singing and blowing the conchs as before. The chiefs and matabooles soon followed to the same place, where the yams had been again deposited. Here the company sat down in a great circle, presided over by Tooitonga. Then the other articles that formed part of the Inachi were brought forward, consisting of dried fish, mats, etc., which, with the yams, were divided into shares. About a fourth was allotted to the gods, and appropriated by the priests; about a half fell to the king; and the remainder belonged to Tooitonga. The materials of the Inachi having been carried away, the company set themselves to drink cava, and a mataboole addressed them, saying that the gods would protect them, and grant them long lives, if they continued to observe the religious ceremonies and to pay respect to the chiefs.[1]

The Samoans used to present the first-fruits to the spirits (aitu) and chiefs.[2] For example, a family whose god was in the form of an eel presented the first-fruits of their taro plantations to the eel.[3] In Tahiti ‘the first fish taken periodically on their shores, together with a number of kinds regarded as sacred, were conveyed to the altar. The first-fruits of their orchards and gardens were also taumaha, or offered, with a portion of their live stock, which consisted of pigs, dogs, and fowls, as it was supposed death would be inflicted on the owner or the occupant of the land from which the god should not receive such acknowledgment.’[1] In Huahine, one of the Society Islands, the first-fruits were presented to the god Tani. A poor person was expected to bring two of the earliest fruits gathered, of whatever kind; a raatira had to bring ten, and chiefs and princes had to bring more, according to their rank and riches. They brought the fruits to the temple, where they threw them down on the ground, with the words, ‘Here, Tani, I have brought you something to eat.’[2] The chief gods of the Easter Islanders were Make-Make and Haua. To these they offered the first of all the produce of the ground.[3] Amongst the Maoris the offering of the first-fruits of the sweet potatoes to Pani, son of Rongo, the god of sweet potatoes, was a solemn religious ceremony.[4]

It has been affirmed that the old Prussians offered the first-fruits of their crops and of their fishing to the god Curcho, but doubt rests on the statement.[5] The Romans sacrificed the first ears of corn to Ceres, and the first of the new wine to Liber; and until the priests had offered these sacrifices, the people might not eat the new corn nor drink the new wine.[6]

The chief solemnity of the Natchez, an Indian tribe on the Lower Mississippi, was the Harvest Festival or the Festival of New Fire. When the time for the festival drew near, a crier went through the villages calling upon the people to prepare new vessels and new garments, to wash their houses, and to burn the old grain, the old garments, and the old utensils in a common fire. He also proclaimed an amnesty to criminals. Next day he appeared again, commanding the people to fast for three days, to abstain from all pleasures, and to make use of the medicine of purification. Thereupon all the people took some drops extracted from a root which they called the ‘root of blood.’ It was a kind of plantain and distilled a red liquor which acted as a violent emetic. During their three days’ fast the people kept silence. At the end of it the crier proclaimed that the festival would begin on the following day. So next morning, as soon as it began to grow light in the sky, the people streamed from all quarters towards the temple of the Sun. The temple was a large building with two doors, one opening to the east, the other to the west. On this morning the eastern door of the temple stood open. Facing the eastern door was an altar, placed so as to catch the first beams of the rising sun. An image of a chouchouacha (a small marsupial) stood upon the altar; on its right was an image of a rattlesnake, on its left an image of a marmoset. Before these images a fire of oak bark burned perpetually. Once a year only, on the eve of the Harvest Festival, was the sacred flame suffered to die out. To the right of the altar, on ‘this pious morn,’ stood the great chief, who took his title and traced his descent from the Sun. To the left of the altar stood his wife. Round them were grouped, according to their ranks, the war chiefs, the sachems, the heralds, and the young braves. In front of the altar were piled bundles of dry reeds, stacked in concentric rings.

The high priest, standing on the threshold of the temple, kept his eyes fixed on the eastern horizon. Before presiding at the festival he had to plunge thrice into the Mississippi. In his hands he held two pieces of dry wood which he kept rubbing slowly against each other, muttering magic words. At his side two acolytes held two cups filled with a kind of black sherbet. All the women, their backs turned to the east, each leaning with one hand on her rude mattock and supporting her infant with the other, stood in a great semicircle at the gate of the temple. Profound silence reigned throughout the multitude while the priest watched attentively the growing light in the east. As soon as the diffused light of dawn began to be shot with beams of fire, he quickened the motion of the two pieces of wood which he held in his hands; and at the moment when the upper edge of the sun’s disc appeared above the horizon, fire flashed from the wood and was caught in tinder. At the same instant the women outside the temple faced round and held up their infants and their mattocks to the rising sun.

The great chief and his wife now drank the black liquor. The priests kindled the circle of dried reeds; fire was set to the heap of oak bark on the altar, and from this sacred flame all the hearths of the village were rekindled. No sooner were the circles of reeds consumed than the chief’s wife came forth from the temple and placing herself at the head of the women marched in procession to the harvest fields, whither the men were not allowed to follow them. They went to gather the first sheaves of maize and returned to the temple bearing them on their heads. Some of the sheaves they presented to the high priest, who laid them on the altar. Others they used to bake the unleavened bread which was to be eaten in the evening. The eastern door of the sanctuary was now closed, and the western door was opened.

When the day began to decline, the multitude assembled once more at the temple, this time at its western gate, where they formed a great crescent, with the horns turned toward the west. The unleavened bread was held up and presented to the setting sun, and a priest struck up a hymn in praise of his descending light. When darkness had fallen the whole plain twinkled with fires, round which the people feasted; and the sounds of music and revelry broke the silence of night.[1]

1. Casalis, The Basutos, p. 251 sq.

2. Ib. p. 252.

1. Casalis, The Basutos, p. 252 sq.

2. A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, p. 229 sq.; Τ. Ε. Bowdich, Mission to Ashantee, p. 226 sq. (ed. 1873.)

3. J. Cameron, ‘On the Early Inhabitants of Madagascar,’ Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar Magazine, iii. 263.

4. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, ii, 105.

5. Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 91.

6. Dalton, op. cit. p. 198.

1. Thomas Shaw, ‘The Inhabitants of the Hills near Rajamahall,’ Asiatic Researches, iv. 56 sq.

2. Panjab Notes and Queries, i. No. 502.

3. This is curiously unlike the custom of ancient Italy, in most parts of which women were forbidden by law to walk on the highroads twirling a spindle, because this was supposed to injure the crops. Pliny, Nat. Hist, xxviii, § 28.

1. D. C. J. Ibbetson, Outlines of Panjab Ethnography (Calcutta, 1883), p. 119.

2. Fr Junghuhn, Die Battaländer auf Sumatra, ii. 312.

3. Spenser St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, i. 191. On taboos observed at agricultural operations, see id. i. 185; R. G. Woodthorpe, ‘Wild Tribes Inhabiting the so-called Naga Hills,’ Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xi. 71; Old New Zealand, by a Pakeha Maori (London, 1884), p. 103 sq.; R. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui; or, New Zealand and its Inhabitants,2 p. 165 sq.; E. Tregear, ‘The Maoris of New Zealand,’ Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xix. 110.

1. B. F. Matthes, Beknopt Verslag mijner reizen in de Binnenlanden van Celebes, in de jaren 1857 en 1861, p. 5.

2. N. Graafland, De Minahassa i. 165.

3. J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 107.

4. Riedel, op. cit. pp. 281, 296 sq.

1. Fr Valentyn, Oud en nieuw Oost-Indiën, iii. 10.

2. C. Semper, Die Philippinen und ihre Bewohner, p. 56.

3. Rev Lorimer Fison, ‘The Nanga, or sacred stone enclosure, of Wainimala, Fiji,’ Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xiv. 27.

4. J. E. Erskine, Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific, p. 252.

1. Turner, Samoa, p. 318 sq..

2. Horatio Hale, United States Exploring Expedition, Ethnology and Philology, p. 97.

1. The malái is ‘a piece of ground, generally before a large house, or chief’s grave, where public ceremonies are principally held.’ Mariner, Tonga Islands, Vocabulary.

2. The mataboole is ‘a rank next below chiefs or nobles.’ Ib.

1. W. Mariner, Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands (London, 1818), ii. 196–203.

2. Ch. Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, ii. 133.

3. Turner, Samoa, p. 70 sq.

1. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 350.

2. Tyerman and Bennet, Journal of Voyages and Travels, i. 284.

3. Geiseler, Die Oester-Insel (Berlin, 1883), p. 31.

4. E. Tregear, ‘The Maoris of New Zealand,’ Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xix. 110.

5. Hartknoch, Alt und neues Preussen, p. 161; id., Dissertationes historicae de variis rebus Prussicis, p. 163 (appended to his edition of Dusburg’s Chronicon Prussiae). Cp. W. Mannhardt, Die Korndämonen, p. 27.

6. Festus, s.v. sacrima, p. 319, ed. Müller; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xviii. § 8.

1. Chateaubriand, Voyage en Amérique, pp. 130–136 (Michel Lévy, Paris, 1870). Chateaubriand’s description is probably based on earlier accounts, which I have been unable to trace. Compare, however, Le Petit, ‘Relation des Natchez,’ in Recueil de voiages au Nord, ix. 13 sq. (Amsterdam edition); De Tonti, ‘Relation de la Louisiane et du Mississippi,’ ib. v. 122; Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, vi. 183; Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, vii. 18 sq.

APPENDIX ONE

Totemism and Exogamy

A Treatise on Certain Early Forms
of Superstition and Society

Preface

THE man who more than any other deserves to rank as the discoverer of totemism and exogamy was the Scotchman John Ferguson McLennan. It was not that he was the first to notice the mere existence of the institutions in various races nor even that he added very much to our knowledge of them. But with the intuition of genius he perceived or divined the far-reaching influence which in different ways the two institutions have exercised on the history of society. The great service which he rendered to science was that he put the right questions; it was not that he answered them aright. He did indeed attempt, with some confidence, to explain the origin of exogamy, but his explanation is probably erroneous. On the origin of totemism he did not even speculate, or, if he did, he never published his speculations. To the last he appears to have regarded that problem as unsolved, if not insoluble.

While McLennan’s discovery of exogamy attracted attention and excited discussion, his discovery of totemism made comparatively little stir, and outside of a small circle of experts it passed almost unnoticed in the general world of educated opinion. The very few writers who touched on the subject contributed little to its elucidation. For the most part they contented themselves with repeating a few familiar facts or adding a few fresh theories; they did not attempt a wide induction on the basis of a systematic collection and classification of the evidence. Accordingly, when in the year 1886 my revered friend William Robertson Smith, a disciple of McLennan’s, invited me to write the article on totemism for the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was then in course of publication under his editorship, I had to do nearly the whole work of collection and classification for myself with very little help from my predecessors. The article which embodied my researches having proved somewhat too long for its purpose, an abridgment of it only was inserted in the Encyclopaedia; but through Robertson Smith’s friendly mediation Messrs. A. & C. Black kindly consented to publish the original article, unabridged and unchanged, in the form of a small volume. The book comprised little more than a classified collection of facts, for when I wrote it I had as yet formed no theory either of totemism or of exogamy. However, the new evidence which it contained appears to have been welcome to students of primitive man; for since the appearance of the volume in 1887 totemism has received a large, perhaps exorbitant, share of their attention; the literature of the subject, which was extremely scanty before, has swollen enormously in volume; and, better than all, there has been a large accession of facts observed and recorded among living totemic tribes by competent scientific investigators. As the little book has long been out of print and is still, I am told, in demand, I decided to reprint it; and it now occupies the first place in these volumes. The errors which subsequent research has revealed in it are generally not very serious. Such as they are, the reader will find them corrected in the Notes appended to the last volume, in which I have also been careful to retrench the boundaries of totemism wherever, in the first ardour of exploration, I had pushed them too far. I beg the reader, therefore, to read the ‘Notes and Corrections’ throughout in connection with my original treatise.

Having decided to reprint Totemism I resolved to add to it by way of supplement some essays which in the meantime I had written on the subject. The main purpose of these essays, which appeared in The Fortnightly Review for the years 1899 and 1905, was to direct attention to the great importance of the discoveries of Messrs Spencer and Gillen in Central Australia and to point out the necessity of revising and remodelling our old ideas of totemism and exogamy in the light of the new evidence. My judgment as to the need of that revision has never wavered since, but it is only after many years of study that I have come to see how thorough-going that revision must be if our conceptions are to square with the facts. Holding this view I felt that to reprint Totemism without noticing discoveries which had, in my opinion, revolutionised the whole aspect of the subject, would be unpardonable; hence my decision to add the essays in question as an appendix to the reprint. They now occupy the second place in this work. like the original Totemism they are republished without any change except the addition of a marginal summary. Such corrections and modifications of them as subsequent reflection and increased knowledge have suggested will be found in the Notes appended to the last volume.

This was all that at first I proposed to do; for my intention had long been to defer writing a larger treatise on totemism until the whole totemic harvest should have been reaped and garnered; and moreover at the time, a little more than two years ago, I was deeply engaged in other work which I was unwilling to interrupt. Today the totemic harvest still stands white to the sickle in many fields, but it may be left for others hereafter to see the sheaves brought home. My sun is westering, and the lengthening shadows remind me to work while it is day. Be that as it may, having begun with a notice of the new Australian evidence I thought I could hardly pass over in silence the additions which had been made to our knowledge of totemism in other parts of the world, and thus insensibly, step by step, I was led into writing the Ethnographical Survey of Totemism which now forms the great bulk of this book. Its aim is to provide students with what may be called a digest or corpus of totemism and exogamy, so far as the two institutions are found in conjunction. I have taken pains to compile it from the best sources, both published and unpublished, so far as these were accessible, to the rigid exclusion of all such as appeared to me to be of dubious or less than dubious authority. (The facts are arranged in ethnographical order, tribe by tribe, and an attempt has been made to take account of the physical environment as well as of the general social conditions of the principal tribes which are passed in review. In this way I have sought to mitigate the disadvantages incidental to the study of any institution viewed abstractedly and apart from the rest of the social organism with which it is vitally connected.) Such abstract views are indeed indispensable, being imposed by the limitations of the human mind, but they are apt to throw the object out of focus, to exaggerate some of its features, and to diminish unduly others which may be of equal or even greater importance. These dangers cannot be wholly avoided, but they may be lessened by making our study as concrete as is compatible with the necessary degree of abstraction. This accordingly I have attempted to do in writing the Survey.

My account of the facts would be very much more imperfect than it is, had it not been for the liberal assistance which I have received from experts, who have freely imparted to me of their knowledge, generously permitting me in many cases to make use of unpublished information. Amongst those to whom I am indebted for help of various kinds I desire particularly to thank: for Australia, Professor Baldwin Spencer and the late Dr A. W. Howitt; for New Guinea, Dr C. G. Seligmann; for Melanesia and Polynesia, the Rev George Brown, DD, and especially Dr W. H. R. Rivers; for India, Mr J. D. Anderson, Mr W. Crooke, Colonel P. R. T. Gurdon, Sir Herbert Risley, and Mr Edgar Thurston; for Africa, the Hon K. R. Dundas, Mr C. W. Hobley, Mr A. C. Hollis, Mr T. A. Joyce, the Rev H. E. Maddox, Mr H. R. Palmer, the Rev John Roscoe, and Mr N. W. Thomas. My gratitude above all is due to my valued friend the Rev John Roscoe, formerly of the Church Missionary Society, for the great generosity with which he has placed all the stores of his unrivalled knowledge of Central African tribes, especially of the Baganda, unreservedly at my disposal for the purposes of this work. If my account of Central African totemism contains not a little that is new and instructive, it is to him chiefly that I owe it. For America, I desire to return my grateful thanks to the authorities of the Bureau of American Ethnology, the Smithsonian Institution, the American Museum of Natural History at New York, and the Field Columbian Museum at Chicago, who have liberally supplied me with many valuable publications which have been of the greatest assistance to me in my work. Nor would I omit to mention my gallant correspondent, the late Captain J. G. Bourke, of the United States Cavalry, who in the intervals of his arduous professional duties devoted much time to studying and describing with the pen the Indians whom he had fought with the sword.

My primary subject is totemism, and I have treated of exogamy for the most part only so far as it occurs in conjunction with totemism; for the two institutions not only differ but overlap, each of them being sometimes found without the other. Tribes which are exogamous without being totemic do not properly fall within the scope of the book; but I have noticed a few of them, such as the Todas in India and the Masai in Africa, either on the ground of their association with totemic tribes or because their social system presents some features of special interest. However, I must request the reader to bear constantly in mind that the two institutions of totemism and exogamy are fundamentally distinct in origin and nature, though they have accidentally crossed and blended in many tribes. The distinction was for the first time placed in a clear light by the epoch-making researches of Spencer and Gillen in Central Australia, which proved that the exogamous class is a totally different social organisation from the totemic clan and not, as we had previously inclined to suppose, a mere extension of it. Still more recently the same sharp line between totemism and exogamy has been detected by Dr W. H. R. Rivers in the Banks Islands, where the natives have pure totemism and pure exogamy, existing side by side, without the one institution exercising the least influence upon the other. That example should finally set at rest the doubt whether exogamy is or is not a necessary feature of true totemism. If the reader will only remember that the two things, though often conjoined, are really distinct and independent, he will escape many perplexities and much confusion of thought in tracing the history of their relations to each other in the following pages.

Inseparably connected with exogamy is the classificatory system of relationship, and accordingly I have treated it as an integral part of my subject. The discovery of that remarkable system, which is now known to obtain throughout a large part of the human race, was the work of the great American ethnologist L. H. Morgan alone. In spite of its apparent complexity the system originated very simply. A community was bisected into two exogamous and intermarrying groups, and all the men and women were classified according to the generation and the group to which they belonged. The principle of the classification was marriageability, not blood. The crucial question was not, Whom am I descended from? but, Whom may I marry? Each class no doubt included blood relations, but they were placed in it not on the ground of their consanguineous but of their social relationship to each other as possible or impossible husbands and wives. When the custom of group marriage had been replaced by individual marriage, the classificatory terms of relationship continued in use, but as the old group rights fell into abeyance the terms which once expressed them came more and more to designate ties of blood and affinity in our sense of the words. Hence in most races of the world the classificatory system of relationship now survives only as a social fossil testifying to a former condition of exogamy and group marriage which has long passed away.

Having completed the survey of totemism, exogamy, and the classificatory system of relationship I have endeavoured in the last volume to mark the place which the institutions occupy in the history of society, to discuss some theories of their origin, and to state those which I believe to be true or probable. That my conclusions on these difficult questions are final, I am not so foolish as to pretend. I have changed my views repeatedly, and I am resolved to change them again with every change of the evidence, for like a chameleon the candid enquirer should shift his colours with the shifting colours of the ground he treads. All I can say is that the conclusions here formulated are those which I have at present reached after a careful consideration of all the facts known to me. I have not discussed the vexed question of totemism in classical and Oriental antiquity. With the evidence at our disposal the problem hardly admits of a definite solution, and in any case an adequate discussion of it would require a treatise to itself.

In estimating the part played by totemism in history I have throughout essayed, wherever the occasion offered, to reduce within reasonable limits the extravagant pretensions which have sometimes been put forward on behalf of the institution, as if it had been a factor of primary importance in the religious and economic development of mankind. As a matter of fact the influence which it is supposed to have exercised on economic progress appears to be little more than a shadowy conjecture; and though its influence on religion has been real, it has been greatly exaggerated. By comparison with some other factors, such as the worship of nature and the worship of the dead, the importance of totemism in religious evolution is altogether subordinate. Its main interest for us lies in the glimpse which it affords into the working of the childlike mind of the savage; it is as it were a window opened up into a distant past.

Exogamy is also a product of savagery, but it has few or none of the quaint superstitions which lend a certain picturesque charm to totemism. It is, so to say, a stern Puritanical institution. In its rigid logic, its complex rules, its elaborate terminology, its labyrinthine systems of relationship, it presents an aspect somewhat hard and repellant, a formality almost mathematical in its precision, which the most consummate literary art could hardly mollify or embellish. Yet its interest for the student of history is much deeper than that of its gayer and more frivolous sister. For whereas totemism, if it ever existed among the ancestors of the civilised races, has vanished without leaving a trace among their descendants, exogamy has bequeathed to civilisation the momentous legacy of the prohibited degrees of marriage.

However the two institutions may have survived into higher planes of culture, both of them have their roots in savagery, and the intrinsic interest of their study is enhanced by the circumstances of the age in which we live. Our contemporaries of this and the rising generation appear to be hardly aware that we are witnessing the last act of a long drama, a tragedy and a comedy in one, which is being silently played, with no fanfare of trumpets or roll of drums, before our eyes on the stage of history. Whatever becomes of the savages, the curtain must soon descend on savagery for ever. Of late the pace of civilisation has so quickened, its expansion has become so beyond example rapid, that many savage races, who only a hundred years ago still led their old life unknown and undisturbed in the depth of virgin forests or in remote islands of the sea, are now being rudely hustled out of existence or transformed into a pathetic burlesque of their conquerors. With their disappearance or transformation an element of quaintness, of picturesqueness, of variety will be gone from the world. Society will probably be happier on the whole, but it will be soberer in tone, greyer and more uniform in colouring. And as savagery recedes further and further into the past, it will become more and more an object of curiosity and wonder to generations parted from it by an impassable and ever-widening gulf of time. Its darker side will be forgotten, its brighter side will be remembered. Its cruelties, its hardships, its miseries will be slurred over; memory will dwell with delight on whatever was good and beautiful, or may seem to have been good and beautiful, in the long-vanished life of the wilderness. Time, the magician, will cast his unfailing spell over these remote ages. An atmosphere of romance will gather round them, like the blue haze which softens into tender beauty the harsher features of a distant landscape. So the patriarchal age is invested for us with a perennial charm in the enchanting narratives of Genesis and the Odyssey, narratives which breathe the freshness of a summer morning and glister as with dewdrops in the first beams of the rising sun of history.

It is thus that by some strange witchery, some freak of the fairy imagination, who plays us so many tricks, man perpetually conjures up for himself the mirage of a Golden Age in the far past or the far future, dreaming of a bliss that never was and may never be. So far as the past is concerned, it is the sad duty of anthropology to break that dream, to dispel that mirage, to paint savagery in its true colours. I have attempted to do so in this book. I have extenuated nothing, I have softened nothing, and I hope I have exaggerated nothing. As a plain record of a curious form of society which must soon be numbered with the past, the book may continue to possess an interest even when, with the progress of knowledge, its errors shall have been corrected and its theories perhaps superseded by others which make a nearer approach to truth. For though I have never hesitated either to frame theories which seemed to fit the facts or to throw them away when they ceased to do so, my aim in this and my other writings has not been to blow bubble hypotheses which glitter for a moment and are gone; it has been by a wide collection and an exact classification of facts to lay a broad and solid foundation for the inductive study of primitive man.

J. G. FRAZER
CAMBRIDGE,

27th February 1910

Totemism

Reprinted from the First Edition, Edinburgh 1887

A TOTEM is a class of material objects which a savage regards with superstitious respect, believing that there exists between him and every member of the class an intimate and altogether special relation. The name is derived from an Ojibway (Chippeway) word totem, the correct spelling of which is somewhat uncertain. It was first introduced into literature, so far as appears, by J. Long, an Indian interpreter of the last century, who spelt it totam.[1] The form toodaim is given by the Rev Peter Jones, himself an Ojibway;[2] dodaim by Warren[3] and (as an alternative pronunciation to totem) by Morgan;[4] and ododam by Francis Assikinack, an Ottawa Indian.[5] According to the abbé Thavenet[6] the word is properly ote, in the sense of ‘family or tribe,’ possessive otem, and with the personal pronoun nind otem ‘my tribe,’ kit otem ‘thy tribe.’ In English the spelling totem (Keating, James, Schoolcraft,[7] etc.) has become established by custom. The connection between a man and his totem is mutually beneficent; the totem protects the man, and the man shows his respect for the totem in various ways, by not killing it if it be an animal, and not cutting or gathering it if it be a plant. As distinguished from a fetich, a totem is never an isolated individual, but always a class of objects, generally a species of animals or of plants, more rarely a class of inanimate natural objects, very rarely a class of artificial objects.

Considered in relation to men; totems are of at least three kinds: (1) the clan totem, common to a whole clan, and passing by inheritance from generation to generation; (2) the sex totem, common either to all the males or to all the females of a tribe, to the exclusion in either case of the other sex; (3) the individual totem, belonging to a single individual and not passing to his descendants. Other kinds of totems exist and will be noticed, but they may perhaps be regarded as varieties of the clan totem. The latter is by far the most important of all; and where we speak of totems or totemism without qualification, the reference is always to the clan totem.

The Clan Totem – The clan totem is reverenced by a body of men and women who call themselves by the name of the totem, believe themselves to be of one blood, descendants of a common ancestor, and are bound together by common obligations to each other and by a common faith in the totem. Totemism is thus both a religious and a social system. In its religious aspect it consists of the relations of mutual respect and protection between a man and his totem; in its social aspect it consists of the relations of the clansmen to each other and to men of other clans. In the later history of totemism these two sides, the religious and the social, tend to part company; the social system sometimes survives the religious; and, on the other hand, religion sometimes bears traces of totemism in countries where the social system based on totemism has disappeared. How in the origin of totemism these two sides were related to each other it is, in our ignorance of that origin, impossible to say with certainty. But on the whole the evidence points strongly to the conclusion that the two sides were originally inseparable; that, in other words, the farther we go back, the more we should find that the clansman regards himself and his totem as beings of the same species, and the less he distinguishes between conduct towards his totem and towards his fellow-clansmen. For the sake of exposition, however, it is convenient to separate the two. We begin with the religious side.

Totemism as a Religion, or the Relation between a
Man and his Totem

The members of a totem clan call themselves by the name of their totem, and commonly believe themselves to be actually descended from it.

Thus the Turtle clan of the Iroquois are descended from a fat turtle, which, burdened by the weight of its shell in walking, contrived by great exertions to throw it off, and thereafter gradually developed into a man.[1] The Bear and Wolf clans of the Iroquois are descended from bears and wolves respectively.[2] The Cray-Fish clan of the Choctaws were originally cray-fish and lived underground, coming up occasionally through the mud to the surface. Once a party of Choctaws smoked them out, and, treating them kindly, taught them the Choctaw language, taught them to walk on two legs, made them cut off their toe nails and pluck the hair from their bodies, after which they adopted them into the tribe. But the rest of their kindred, the cray-fish, are still living underground.[3] The Carp clan of the Outaouaks are descended from the eggs of a carp which had been deposited by the fish on the banks of a stream and warmed by the sun.[4] The Ojibways are descended from a dog.[5] The Crane clan of the Ojibways are descended from a pair of cranes, which after long wanderings settled on the rapids at the outlet of Lake Superior, where they were transformed by the great spirit into a man and woman.[1] The Black Shoulder clan (a Buffalo clan) of the Omahas were originally buffaloes and dwelt under the surface of the water.[2] The Osages are descended from a male snail and a female beaver. The snail burst his shell, developed arms, feet, and legs, and became a fine tall man; afterwards he married the beaver maid.[3] The clans of the Iowas are descended from the animals from which they take their names, namely, eagle, pigeon, wolf, bear, elk, beaver, buffalo, and snake.[4] The Moquis say that long ago the Great Mother brought from the west nine clans in the form of deer, sand, water, bears, hares, tobacco-plants, and reed-grass. She planted them on the spots where their villages now stand and transformed them into men, who built the present pueblos, and from whom the present clans are descended.[5] The Californian Indians, in whose mythology the coyote or prairie-wolf is a leading personage, are descended from coyotes. At first they walked on all fours; then they began to have some members of the human body, one finger, one toe, one eye, etc., then two fingers, two toes, etc., and so on till they became perfect human beings. The loss of their tails, which they still deplore, was produced by the habit of sitting upright.[6] The Lenape or Delawares were descended from their totem animals, the wolf, the turtle, and the turkey; but they gave precedence to the Turtle clan, because it was descended, not from a common turtle, but from the great original tortoise which bears the world on its back and was the first of living beings.[1] The Haidas of Queen Charlotte Islands believe that long ago the raven, who is the chief figure in the mythology of the north-west coast of America, took a cockle from the beach and married it; the cockle gave birth to a female child whom the raven took to wife, and from their union the Indians were produced.[2] The Kutchin trace the origin of their clans to the time when all beasts, birds, and fish were people; the beasts were one clan, the birds another, and the fish another.[3] The Arawaks in Guiana assert that their clans are descended from the eponymous animal, bird, or plant.[4] Some of the aboriginal tribes of Peru (not the Inca race) were descended from eagles, others from condors.[5] Some of the clans of Western Australia are descended from ducks, swans, and other water fowl.[6] The Geawe-gal tribe in New South Wales believe that each man is akin to his totem in an unexplained way.[7] The Santals in Bengal, one of whose totems is the wild goose, trace their origin to the eggs of a wild goose.[1] In Senegambia each family or clan is descended from an animal (hippopotamus, crocodile, scorpion, etc.) with which it counts kindred.[2] The inhabitants of Funafuti or Ellice Island in the South Pacific believe that the place was first inhabited by the porcupine fish, whose offspring became men and women.[3] The Kalang, who have claims to be considered the aborigines of Java, are descended from a princess and a chief who had been transformed into a dog.[4] Some of the inhabitants of the islands Ambon, Uliase, Keisar (Makisar), and Wetar, and the Aaru and Babar archipelagoes, are descended from trees, pigs, eels, crocodiles, sharks, serpents, dogs, turtles, etc.[5]

Somewhat different are the myths in which a human ancestress is said to have given birth to an animal of the totem species. Thus the Snake clan among the Moquis of Arizona are descended from a woman who gave birth to snakes.[6] The Bakalai in Western Equatorial Africa believe that their women once gave birth to the totem animals; one woman brought forth a calf, others a crocodile, hippopotamus, monkey, boa, and wild pig.[7] In Samoa the prawn or cray-fish was the totem of one clan, because an infant of the clan had been changed at birth into a number of prawns or cray-fish.[8] In some myths the actual descent from the totem seems to have been rationalised away. Thus the Red Maize clan among the Omahas say that the first man of the clan emerged from the water with an ear of red maize in his hand.[1] A subclan of the Omahas say that the reason why they do not eat buffalo tongues and heads is that one of their chief men, while praying to the sun, once saw the ghost of a buffalo, visible from the flank up, rising out of a spring.[2] Two clans of Western Australia, who are named after a small species of opossum and a little fish, think that they are so called because they used to live chiefly on these creatures.[3] Some families in the islands Leti, Moa, and Lakor reverence the shark, and refuse to eat its flesh, because a shark once helped one of their ancestors at sea.[4] The Ainos of Japan say that their first ancestor was suckled by a bear, and that is why they are so hairy.[5]

Believing himself to be descended from, and therefore akin to, his totem, the savage naturally treats it with respect. If it is an animal he will not, as a rule, kill or eat it. In the Mount Gambier tribe (South Australia) ‘a man does not kill or use as food any of the animals of the same subdivision with himself, excepting when hunger compels; and then they express sorrow for having to eat their wingong (friends) or tumanang (their flesh). When using the last word they touch their breasts, to indicate the close relationship, meaning almost a part of themselves. To illustrate: One day one of the blacks killed a crow. Three or four days afterwards a Boortwa (crow) named Larry died. He had been ailing for some days, but the killing of his wingong hastened his death.’[6] Here the identification of the man with his totem is carried very far; it is of the same flesh with him, and to injure any one of the species is physically to injure the man whose totem it is. Mr Taplin was reproached by some of the Narrinyeri (South Australia) for shooting a wild dog; he had thereby hurt their ngaitye (totem).[7] The tribes about the Gulf of Carpentaria greatly reverence  their totems; if any one were to kill the totem animal in presence of the man whose totem it was, the latter would say, ‘What for you kill that fellow? that my father!’ or ‘That brother belonging to me you have killed; why did you do it?’[1] Again, among some Australian tribes ‘each young lad is strictly forbidden to eat of that animal or bird which belongs to his respective class, for it is his brother.’[2] Sir George Grey says of the Western Australian tribes that a man will never kill an animal of his kobong (totem) species if he finds it asleep; ‘indeed, he always kills it reluctantly, and never without affording it a chance to escape. This arises from the family belief that some one individual of the species is their nearest friend, to kill whom would be a great crime, and to be carefully avoided.’[3] Amongst the Indians of British Columbia a man will never kill his totem animal; if he sees another do it, he will hide his face for shame, and afterwards demand compensation for the act. Whenever one of these Indians exhibits his totem badge (as by painting it on his forehead), all persons of the same totem are bound to do honour to it by casting property before it.[4] The Osages, who, as we have seen, believe themselves descended from a female beaver, abstained from hunting the beaver, ‘because in killing that animal they killed a brother of the Osages.’[5] The Ojibways (Chippeways) do not kill, hunt, or eat their totems. An Ojibway who had unwittingly killed his totem (a bear) described how, on his way home after the accident, he was attacked by a large bear, who asked him why he had killed his totem. The man explained, apologised, and was dismissed with a caution.[6] Being descended from a dog, the Ojibways will not eat dog’s flesh, and at one time ceased to employ dogs to draw their sledges.[7] Some of the Indians of Pennsylvania would not kill the rattlesnake, because they said it was their grandfather, and gave them notice of danger by its rattle. They also abstained from eating rabbits and ground-hogs, because ‘they did not know but that they might be related to them.’[1] The Damaras in South Africa are divided into totem clans, called ‘eandas’; and according to the clan to which they belong they refuse to partake, e.g., of an ox marked with black, white, or red spots, or of a sheep without horns, or of draught oxen. Some of them will not even touch vessels in which such food has been cooked, and avoid even the smoke of the fire which has been used to cook it.[2] The negroes of Senegambia do not eat their totems.[3] The Mundas (or Mundaris) and Oraons in Bengal, who are divided into exogamous totem clans, will not kill or eat the totem animals which give their names to the clans.[4] A remarkable feature of some of these Oraon totems is, that they are not whole animals, but parts of animals, as the head of a tortoise, the stomach of a pig. In such cases (which are not confined to Bengal) it is of course not the whole animal, but only the special part which the clansmen are forbidden to eat. Such totems may be distinguished as split totems. The Jagannáthi Kumhár in Bengal abstain from killing or injuring the totems of their respective clans (namely tiger, snake, weasel, cow, frog, sparrow, tortoise), and they bow to their totems when they meet them.[5] The Badris, also in Bengal, may not eat of their totem, the heron.[1] The inhabitants of Ambon Uliase, Keisar (Makisar), Wetar, and the Aaru and Babar archipelagoes may not eat the pigs, crocodiles, sharks, serpents, dogs, turtles, eels, etc., from which they are respectively descended.[2]

When the totem is a plant the rules are such as these. A native of Western Australia, whose totem is a vegetable, ‘may not gather it under certain circumstances and at a particular period of the year.’[3] The Oraon clan, whose totem is the leaf of the Ficus Indicus, will not eat from the leaves of that tree (the leaves are used as plates).[4] Another Oraon clan, whose totem is the Kujrar tree, will not eat the oil of that tree, nor sit in its shade.[5] The Red Maize clan of the Omahas will not eat red maize.[6] Those of the people of Ambon and Uliase who are descended from trees may not use these trees for firewood.[7]

The rules not to kill or eat the totem are not the only taboos; the clansmen are often forbidden to touch the totem or any part of it, and sometimes they may not even look at it.

Amongst the Omaha taboos are the following: (1) The Elk clan neither eat the flesh nor touch any part of the male elk, and they do not eat the male deer.[8] (2) A subclan of the Black Shoulder (Buffalo) clan may not eat buffalo tongues nor touch a buffalo head (split totem).[9] (3) The Hanga clan is divided into two subclans, one of which may not eat buffalo sides, geese, swans, nor cranes, but they may eat buffalo tongues; the other may not eat buffalo tongues but may eat buffalo sides (split totems).[1] (4) Another subclan may not touch the hide of a black bear nor eat its flesh.[2] (5) The Eagle subclan, curiously enough, may not touch a buffalo head.[3] (6) A Turtle subclan may not eat a turtle, but they may touch or carry one.[4] (7) Another clan may not touch verdigris.[5] (8) The Buffalo-Tail clan may not eat a calf while it is red, but they may do so when it turns black; they may not touch a buffalo head; they may not eat the meat on the lowest rib, because the head of the calf before birth touches the mother near that rib.[6] (9) The Deer-Head clan may not touch the skin of any animal of the deer family, nor wear moccasins of deer skin, nor use the fat of the deer for hair-oil; but they may eat the flesh of deer.[7] (10) A subclan of the Deer-Head clan had a special taboo, being forbidden to touch verdigris, charcoal, and the skin of a wild cat. According to others, the whole Deer-Head clan was forbidden to touch charcoal.[8] (11) Another clan does not eat a buffalo calf.[9] (12) Another clan does not touch worms, snakes, toads, frogs, nor any other kind of reptiles; hence they are sometimes called Reptile People.[10]

Of the totem clans in Bengal it is said that they ‘are prohibited from killing, eating, cutting, burning, carrying, using, etc.,’ the totem.[11] The Keriahs in India not only do not eat the sheep, but will not even use a woollen rug.[1] Similarly in ancient Egypt (a nest of totems) the sheep was reverenced and eaten by no one except the people of Wolf town (Lycopolis), and woollen garments were not allowed to be carried into temples.[2] Some of the Bengal totem taboos are peculiar. The Tirki clan of the Oraons, whose totem is young mice, will not look at animals whose eyes are not yet open, and their own offspring are never shown till they are wide awake.[3] Another Oraon clan objects to water in which an elephant has bathed.[4] A Mahili clan will not allow their daughters to enter their houses after marriage; a Kurmi clan will not wear shell ornaments; another will not wear silk; another give children their first rice naked.[5]

The Bechuanas in South Africa, who have a well-developed totem system, may not eat nor clothe themselves in the skin of the totem animal.[6] They even avoid, at least in some cases, to look at the totem. Thus to a man of the Bakuena (Bakwain) or Crocodile clan, it is ‘hateful and unlucky’ to meet or gaze on a crocodile; the sight is thought to cause inflammation of the eyes. So when a Crocodile clansman happens to go near a crocodile he spits on the ground as a preventive charm, and says, ‘There is sin.’ Yet they call the crocodile their father, celebrate it in their festivals, swear by it, and make an incision resembling the mouth of a crocodile in the ears of their cattle as a mark to distinguish them from others.[1] The puti (a kind of antelope) is the totem of the Bamangwats, another Bechuana clan; and to look on it was a great calamity to the hunter or to women going to the gardens.[2] The common goat is the sacred animal (totem?) of the Madenassana Bushmen; yet ‘to look upon it would be to render the man for the time impure, as well as to cause him undefined uneasiness.’[3]

A Samoan clan had for its totem the butterfly. The insect was supposed to have three mouths; hence the Butterfly men were forbidden ‘to drink from a cocoa-nut shell water-bottle which had all the eyes or openings perforated. Only one or at the most two apertures for drinking were allowed. A third would be a mockery, and bring down the wrath of his butterflyship.’[4]

Cross Totems – Another Samoan clan had for its totem the ends of leaves and of other things. These ends were considered sacred, and not to be handled or used in any way. It is said to have been no small trouble to the clansmen in daily life to cut off the ends of all the taro, bread-fruit, and cocoa-nut leaves required for cooking. Ends of yams, bananas, fish, etc., were also carefully laid aside and regarded as being as unfit for food as if they had been poison.[5] This is an example of what may be called a cross totem, i.e. a totem which is neither a whole animal or plant, nor a part of one particular species of animal or plant, but is a particular part of all (or of a number of species of) animals or plants. Other examples of cross totems are the ear of any animal (totem of a Mahili clan in Bengal);[6] the eyes of fish (totem of a Samoan clan);[7] bone (totem of the Sauks and Foxes in North America);[1] and blood (totem of the Blackfeet Indians).[2] More exactly, such totems should be called cross-split totems; while the name cross totem should be reserved for a totem which, overstepping the limits of a single natural species, includes under itself several species. Examples of such cross totems are the small bird totem of the Omahas, the reptile totem of the Omahas,[3] and the big tree totem of the Sauks and Foxes.[4]

Sometimes the totem animal is fed or even kept alive in captivity. A Samoan clan whose totem was the eel used to present the first fruits of the taro plantations to the eels;[5] another Samoan clan fed the cray-fish because it was their totem.[6] The Delawares sacrificed to hares; to Indian corn they offered bear’s flesh, but to deer and bears Indian corn; to fishes they offered small pieces of bread in the shape of fishes.[7] Amongst the Narrinyeri in South Australia men of the Snake clan sometimes catch snakes, pull out their teeth or sew up their mouths, and keep them as pets.[8] In a Pigeon clan of Samoa a pigeon was carefully kept and fed.[9] Amongst the Kalang in Java, whose totem is the red dog, each family as a rule keeps one of these animals, which they will on no account allow to be struck or ill-used by any one.[10] Eagles are kept in cages and fed in some of the Moqui villages, and the eagle is a Moqui totem.[11] The Ainos in Japan keep eagles, crows, owls, and bears in cages, and show a  superstitious reverence for them; the young bear cubs are suckled by the women.[1]

The dead totem is mourned for and buried like a dead clansman. In Samoa, if a man of the Owl totem found a dead owl by the road-side, he would sit down and weep over it and beat his forehead with stones till the blood flowed. The bird would then be wrapped up and buried with as much ceremony as if it had been a human being. ‘This, however, was not the death of the god. He was supposed to be yet alive, and incarnate in all the owls in existence.’[2] The generalisation here implied is characteristic of totemism; it is not merely an individual but the species that is reverenced. The Wanika in Eastern Africa look on the hyaena as one of their ancestors, and the death of a hyaena is mourned by the whole people; the mourning for a chief is said to be as nothing compared to the mourning for a hyaena.[3] A tribe of Southern Arabia used to bury a dead gazelle wherever they found one, and the whole tribe mourned for it seven days.[4] The lobster was generally considered sacred by the Greeks, and not eaten; if the people of Seriphos (an island in the Aegean) caught a lobster in their nets they put it back into the sea; if they found a dead one, they buried it and mourned over it as over one of themselves.[5] At Athens any man who killed a wolf had to bury it by subscription.[6] A Californian tribe which reverenced the buzzard held an annual festival at which the chief ceremony was the killing of a buzzard without losing a drop of its blood. It was then skinned, the feathers were preserved to make a sacred dress for the medicine-man, and the body was buried in holy ground amid the lamentations of the old women, who mourned as for the loss of a relative or friend.[1]

As some totem clans avoid looking at their totem, so others are careful not to speak of it by its proper name, but use descriptive epithets instead. The three totems of the Delawares – the wolf, turtle, and turkey – were referred to respectively as ‘round foot,’ ‘crawler,’ and ‘not chewing,’ the last referring to the bird’s habit of swallowing its food; and the clans called themselves, not Wolves, Turtles, and Turkeys, but ‘Round Feet,’ ‘Crawlers,’ and ‘Those who do not chew.’[2] The Bear clan of the Ottawas called themselves not Bears but Big Feet.[3] The object of these circumlocutions is probably to give no offence to the worshipful animal, just as Swedish herd girls are careful not to call the wolf and the bear by their proper names, fearing that if they heard themselves so called the beasts would attack the cattle. Hence the herd girls call the wolf ‘the silent one,’ ‘grey legs,’ ‘golden tooth’; and the bear ‘the old man,’ ‘great father,’ ‘twelve men’s strength,’ ‘golden feet,’ etc.[4] Similarly the Kamtchatkans never speak of the bear and wolf by their proper names, believing that these animals understand human speech.[5] Bushmen think it very unlucky to refer to the lion by name.[6]

The penalties supposed to be incurred by acting disrespectfully to the totem are various. The Bakalai think that if a man were to eat his totem the women of his clan would miscarry and give birth to animals of the totem kind, or die of an awful disease.[1] The Elk clan among the Omahas believe that if any clansman were to touch any part of the male elk, or eat its flesh or the flesh of the male deer, he would break out in boils and white spots in different parts of the body.[2] The Red Maize subclan of the Omahas believe that, if they were to eat of the red maize, they would have running sores all round their mouth.[3] And in general the Omahas believe that to eat of the totem, even in ignorance, would cause sickness, not only to the eater, but also to his wife and children.[4] White hair is regarded by them as a token that the person has broken a totem taboo, e.g. that a man of the Reptile clan has touched or smelt a snake.[5] The inhabitants of Wetar think that leprosy and madness are the result of eating the totem.[6] The worshippers of the Syrian goddess, whose creed was saturated with totemism, believed that if they ate a sprat or an anchovy their whole bodies would break out in ulcers, their legs would waste away, and their liver melt, or that their belly and legs would swell up.[7] The Egyptians, one of whose totems seems to have been the pig, thought that if a man drank pig’s milk his body would break out in a scab.[8] The Bosch negroes of Guiana think that if they ate the capiaï (an animal like a pig) it would give them leprosy.[9] The Singhie tribe of Dyaks, whose totem seems to be the deer (they will not eat its flesh nor allow it to be carried into their houses or cooked at their fires; the grown men will not even touch it), believe that if any man were to eat deer’s flesh he would go mad; a man who ran about the forest naked, imitating the noises and habits of a deer, was thought to have eaten venison.[1]

The Samoans thought it death to injure or eat their totems. The totem was supposed to take up his abode in the sinner’s body, and there to gender the very thing which he had eaten till it caused his death.[2] Thus if a Turtle man ate of a turtle he grew very ill, and the voice of the turtle was heard in his inside saying, ‘He ate me; I am killing him.’[3] If a Prickly Sea-Urchin man consumed one of these shell-fish, a prickly sea-urchin grew in his body and killed him.[4] Pig’s heart and octopus were equally fatal to the eater who had these for his totem.[5] If a Mullet man ate a mullet he squinted.[6] If a Cockle man picked up a cockle and carried it away from the shore, it appeared on some part of his person; if he actually ate it, it grew on his nose.[7] If a man whose totem was the ends of banana leaves used one of them as a cap, baldness was the result.[8] If a Butterfly man caught a butterfly, it struck him dead.[9] The Wild Pigeon clan might not use as plates the reddish-seared breadfruit leaves ‘under a penalty of being seized with rheumatic swellings, or an eruption all over the body called tangosusu, and resembling chicken-pox.’[10] If a Domestic Fowl man ate of that bird, delirium and death were the consequence.[11]

In such cases, however, the Samoans had a mode of appeasing the angry totem. The offender himself or one of his clan was wrapped in leaves and laid in an unheated oven, as if he were about to be baked. Thus if amongst the Cuttle-Fish clan a visitor had caught a cuttle-fish and cooked it, or if a Cuttle-Fish man had been present at the eating of a cuttle-fish, the Cuttle-Fish clan met and chose a man or woman who went through the pretence of being baked. Otherwise a cuttle-fish would grow in the stomach of some of the clan and be their death.[1] So with the stinging ray fish and the mullet. But if a member of the clan of which these two fish were the joint totem tasted either of them, then, in addition to the baking, he had to drink a cup of rancid oil dregs, probably as a purgative.[2] This pretence of cooking a clansman seems to have been especially obligatory when the totem had been cooked in the oven. To have afterwards used the oven without going through this form of expiation would have been fatal to the family.[3]

In Australia, also, the punishment for eating the totem appears to have been sickness or death.[4] But it is not merely the totem which is tabooed to the Australians; they have, besides, a very elaborate code of food prohibitions, which vary chiefly with age, being on the whole strictest and most extensive at puberty, and gradually relaxing with advancing years. Thus young men are forbidden to eat the emu; if they ate it, it is thought that they would be afflicted with sores all over their bodies.[5] The restrictions on women till they are past the age of child-bearing seem to be more numerous than those on men. Children are not restricted at all, nor are old men and old women.[6] These restrictions are removed by an old man smearing the person’s face with the fat of the forbidden animal.[7]

In some tribes the respect for the totem has lessened or disappeared. Thus the Narrinyeri in South Australia do not kill their totem unless it is an animal which is good for food, when they have no objection to eating it.[8] Mr Eyre never observed any reluctance on the part of the natives of South Australia to kill their totems.[1] Some natives of New South Wales, though they will not themselves kill their totem, have no objection to any one else killing it and they will then eat it.[2] The Dieri in South Australia pay no particular respect to their totems, and they eat them.[3] A Samoan of the Turtle clan, though he would not himself eat a turtle, would help a neighbour to cut up and cook one; but in doing so he kept a bandage over his mouth lest an embryo turtle should slip down his throat, grow up, and kill him.[4]

A Bechuana will kill his totem if it be a hurtful animal, e.g. a lion, but not without apologising to the animal; and the slayer must go through a form of purification for the sacrilege.[5] Similarly in North America, if an Outaouak of the Bear clan killed a bear, he made the beast a feast of its own flesh and harangued it, apologising for the necessity he was under of killing it, alleging that his children were hungry, etc.[6] Some but not all of the Moqui clans abstain from eating their totems.[7] The tribes about Alabama and Georgia had no respect for their totems, and would kill them when they got the chance.[8] The Omahas do not worship their totems.[9]

The relation between a man and his totem is one of mutual help and protection. If the man respects and cares for the totem, he expects that the totem will do the same by him. In Senegambia the totems, when they are dangerous animals, will not hurt their clansmen; e.g. men of the Scorpion clan affirm that scorpions (of a very deadly kind) will run over their bodies without biting them.[10] A similar immunity from snakes was claimed by a Snake clan (Ophiogenes) in Cyprus.[1] Another Snake clan (Ophiogenes) in Asia Minor, believing that they were descended from snakes, and that snakes were their kinsmen, submitted to a practical test the claims of any man amongst them whom they suspected of being no true clansman. They made a snake bite him; if he survived, he was a true clansman; if he died, he was not.[2]

Similar is the test of a medicine-man among the Moxos of Peru. One of their totems is the tiger (jaguar); and a candidate for the rank of medicine-man must prove his kinship to the tiger by being bitten by that animal and surviving the bite.[3] The Psylli, a Snake clan in Africa, had a similar test of kinship; they exposed their new-born children to snakes, and if the snakes left them unharmed or only bit without killing them, the children were legitimate; otherwise they were bastards.[4] In Senegambia, at the present day, a python is expected to visit every child of the Python clan within eight days after birth; a Mandingo of this clan has been known to say that if his children were not so visited, he would kill them.[5] The Malagasy custom of placing a new-born child at the entrance to a cattle-pen, and then driving the cattle over it to see whether they would trample on it or not, was perhaps originally a kinship test.[6] Another birth test of kinship with the sacred animal (though of a different kind) is that used to discover the new Dhurma Raja in Assam. He is supposed to be an incarnation of the deity; and when he dies the child that refuses its mother’s milk and prefers that of a cow is the new Dhurma Raja.[1] This points to a cow totem.

Other totem clans regard a man who has been bitten by the totem, even though he survives, as disowned by the totem, and therefore they expel him from the clan. Among the Crocodile clan of the Bechuanas, if a man has been bitten by a crocodile, or merely had water splashed over him by a crocodile’s tail, he is expelled the clan.[2] Some judicial ordeals may have originated in totem tests of kinship. Thus, in Travancore, there was a judicial ordeal by snakebite; the accused thrust his hand into a mantle in which a cobra was wrapped up; if it bit him, he was guilty; if not, he was innocent.[3] That we have here a relic of totemism appears not only from the worship of snakes in the district, but also from the fact that, if a dead cobra was found by the people, it was burned with the same ceremonies as the body of a man of high caste.[4] Oaths were originally ordeals, and some of them are of totem origin. The Crocodile clan of the Bechuanas swear by the crocodile; the Santals (or Sonthals), a totem tribe of Bengal, are said to adore the tiger (which probably means that the tiger is one of their totems), and to swear on a tiger’s skin is their most solemn oath.[5]

But it is not enough that the totem should merely abstain from injuring, he must positively benefit the men who put their faith in him. The Snake clan (Ophiogenes) of Asia Minor believed that if they were bitten by an adder they had only to put a snake to the wound and their totem would suck out the poison and soothe away the inflammation and the pain.[1] Hence Omaha medicine-men, in curing the sick, imitate the action and voice of their (individual) totem.[2] Members of the Serpent clan in Senegambia profess to heal by their touch persons who have been bitten by serpents.[3] A similar profession was made in antiquity by Snake clans in Africa, Cyprus, and Italy.[4] The Small Bird subclan of the Omahas, though ordinarily they are forbidden to eat small birds, in sickness may eat prairie chickens.[5] The Samoan clan whose totem was the ends of leaves and of other things, though in ordinary life they might not use them, were allowed and even required to fan a sick clansman with the ends of cocoa-nut leaflets.[6] Members of the Sea-Weed clan in Samoa, when they went to fight at sea, took with them some sea-weed, which they threw into the sea to hinder the flight of the enemy; if the enemy tried to pick it up it sank, but rose again when any of the Sea-Weed clan paddled up to it.[7] This resembles the common incident in folk tales of magic obstacles thrown out by fugitives to stay pursuit.

Again, the totem gives his clansmen important information by means of omens. In the Coast Murring tribe of New South Wales each man’s totem warned him of coming danger; if his totem was a kangaroo, a kangaroo would warn him against his foes.[8] The Kurnai in Victoria reverence the crow as one of their ancestors, and think that it watches over them and answers their questions by cawing.[9] The Samoan totems gave omens to their clansmen. Thus, if an owl flew before the Owl clan, as they marched to war, it was a signal to go on; but if it flew across their path, or backwards, it was a sign to retreat.[1] Some kept a tame owl on purpose to give omens in war.[2] The appearance of the totem in or about the house was by some clans regarded as an omen of death; the totem had come to fetch his kinsman. This was the case with land-crabs and eels.[3]

When the conduct of the totem is not all that his clansmen could desire, they have various ways of putting pressure on him. In harvest time, when the birds eat the corn, the Small Bird clan of the Omahas take some corn which they chew and spit over the field. This is thought to keep the birds from the crops.[4] If worms infest the corn the Reptile clan of the Omahas catch some of them and pound them up with some grains of corn which have been heated. They make a soup of the mixture and eat it, believing that the corn will not be infested again, at least for that year.[5] During a fog the men of the Turtle subclan of the Omahas used to draw the figure of a turtle on the ground with its face to the south. On the head, tail, middle of the back, and on each leg were placed small pieces of a red breech-cloth with some tobacco. This was thought to make the fog disappear.[1] Another Omaha clan, who are described as Wind people, ‘flap their blankets to start a breeze which will derive off the mosquitoes.’[2]

It is more difficult to realise the relation between a man and his totem when that totem is an inanimate object. But such totems are rare.

In Australia we find: thunder (Encounter Bay tribe, S. Australia) (Nat. Tr. S. Aust., 186), rain (Dieri, S. Australia) (J. A. I., xii. 33 n.), the star a Aquilae or Fomalhaut (Mukjarawaint, W. Victoria) (id., xii. 33 n., xiii. 193 n.), hot wind and sun (Wotjoballuk, N. W. Victoria) (id., xvi. 31 n.; Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1883, p. 818), honey, (Kamilaroi, N. S. Wales) (J. A. I., xii. 500), and clear water (Kuin-Murbura, Queensland) (id., xiii. 344). Floodwater and lightning are names of what Messrs Fison and Howitt call the two primary classes of the Kiabara tribe in Queensland (id., xiii. 336). As we shall see, they probably are or were totems. In America we find ice (Punka totem) (Morgan, A. S., 155), thunder (Omaha, Kaw, Winnebago, Potawattamie, Sauk and Foxes) (ib., 155, 156, 157, 167, 170), earth (Kaw) (ib., 156), water (Minnitaree, Miami, Moqui) (ib., 159, 168; Bourke, Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, 50, 117, 335), wind (Creek) (Morgan, op. cit., 161; Adair, Hist. Amer. Indians, p. 15; Gatschet, Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, i. p. 155), salt (Creek) (Morgan, loc. cit.; Gatschet, op. cit., i. 156), sun (Miami, Moqui) (Morgan, op. cit., 168; Bourke, op. cit., 50, 117,335 sq.), snow (Miami) (Morgan, loc. cit.; cf. below, p. 36), bone (Sauk and Foxes) (ib., 170), sea (Sauk and Foxes) (ib., 170), sand (Moqui) (ib., 179; Bourke, op. cit., 335), and rain (Moqui) (Morgan, op. cit., 179). In Africa sun and rain are Damara totems (Andersson, Lake Ngami, p. 221). In India one of the constellations is a Santal (Sonthal) totem (As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 76); and the foam of the river is an Oraon totem and not to be eaten by the clansmen (Dalton in Tr. Ethnol. Soc., N. S., vi. 36). In Samoa we have the rainbow, shooting star, cloud, moon, and lightning (Turner, Samoa, 21, 27, 35, 53, 59, 67).

In a few cases colours are totems: thus red is an Omaha totem (Morgan, A. S., p. 155), red paint and blue are Cherokee totems (ib., 164), and vermilion is the name of a subdivision of the Delawares (ib., 172; however, the nature of these subdivisions of the three Delaware clans is not clear). This perhaps explains the aversion which some tribes exhibit for certain colours. Thus red was forbidden in one district of Mangaia (in the South Pacific) because it was thought offensive to the gods (Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific, p. 29). Light yellow is a detestable colour to a Hervey islander (ib., 227). The Yezidis abominate blue (Layard, Nineveh, i. p. 300).

It is remarkable how small a part is played in totemism by the heavenly bodies. In the lists of totems before us, the sun occurs once in Australia, once in Africa, and several times in America (besides Morgan and Bourke as above, cf. M’Lennan in Fortn. Rev., October 1869, p. 413). The sun was the special divinity of the chiefs of the Natchez, but that it was a totem is not certain (cf. Lafitau, Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, i. 168; Charlevoix, Hist. de la Nouvelle France, vi. 177 sq.; Lett. Édif., vii. 9 sq.; Chateaubriand, Voyage en Amerique, 227 sq., ed. 12mo, Michel Lévy; C. C. Jones, Antiquities of the Southern Indians, p. 23); but a star or constellation appears only twice, and the moon appears, with a doubtful exception in America (S. Hearne, Journey from Prince of Wales Fort in Hudson’s Bay to the Northern Ocean, p. 148; it may have been an individual totem), only in Samoa.

With regard to artificial totems, we are told generally that Bengal totems include artificial objects (As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 75), and net is given as a Kurmi totem (ib., 77). In America, tent is a totem of the Kaws (Morgan, A. S., 156); ball of the Onondaga Iroquois (ib., 91);[1] good knife of the Mandans (ib., 158); and knife, lodge, and bonnet of the Minnitarees (ib., 159). Schoolcraft gives cord as a Huron (Wyandot) totem, but it is not included in Morgan and Powell’s lists of Huron totems (Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., iv. 204; Morgan, op. cit., 153; First Rep. Bur. Ethnol., p. 59).

In order, apparently, to put himself more fully under the protection of the totem, the clansman is in the habit of assimilating himself to the totem by dressing in the skin or other part of the totem animal, arranging his hair and mutilating his body so as to resemble the totem, and representing the totem on his body by cicatrices, tattooing, or paint. The mental state thus revealed is illustrated by the belief held by many North American Indians that they have each an animal (bison, calf, tortoise, frog, bird, etc.) in their bodies.[1]

In going to battle the Minnitarees dress in wolf skins; the skin with the tail attached hangs down the back, the man’s head is inserted in a hole in the skin, and the wolf’s head hangs down on his breast.[2] Lewis and Clarke saw a Teton Indian wearing two or three raven skins fixed to the back of the girdle, with the tails sticking out behind; on his head he wore a raven skin split into two parts and tied so as to let the beak project from the forehead.[3] Amongst the Thlinkets on solemn occasions, such as dances, memorial festivals, and burials, individuals often appear disguised in the full form of their totem animals; and, as a rule, each clansman carries at least an easily recognisable part of his totem with him.[4] Condor clans in Peru, who believed themselves descended from the condor, adorned themselves with the feathers of the bird.[5]

The Iowa clans have each a distinguishing mode of dressing the hair, e.g. the Buffalo clan wear two locks of hair in imitation of horns. These modes of dressing the hair, however, are confined to male children, who, as soon as they are grown, shave off all the hair except the scalp-lock, with a fringe of hair surrounding it.[1] Amongst the Omahas, the smaller boys of the Black Shoulder (Buffalo) clan wear two locks of hair in imitation of horns.[2] The Hanga clan of the Omahas (also a Buffalo clan) wear a crest of hair about two inches long, standing erect and extending from ear to ear; this is in imitation of the back of a buffalo.[3] The Small Bird clan of the Omahas ‘leave a little hair in front, over the forehead, for a bill, and some at the back of the head, for the bird’s tail, with much over each ear for the wings.’[4] The Turtle subclan of the Omahas ‘cut off all the hair from a boy’s head, except six locks; two are left on each side, one over the forehead, and one hanging down the back in imitation of the legs, head, and tail of a turtle.’[5] Amongst the Manganja in Eastern Africa ‘one trains his locks till they take the admired form of the buffalo’s horns; others prefer to let their hair hang in a thick coil down their backs, like that animal’s tail.’[6]

The practice of knocking out the upper front teeth at puberty, which prevails in Australia and elsewhere, is, or was once, probably an imitation of the totem. The Batoka in Africa who adopt this practice say that they do so in order to be like oxen, while those who retain their teeth are like zebras.[7] The Manganja chip their teeth to resemble those of the cat or crocodile.[8] It is remarkable that among some Australian tribes who knock out one or two of the upper  front teeth of boys, the most prized ornaments of the women are the two upper front teeth of the kangaroo or wallaby; those are tied together at the roots so as to form a ‘V’, and are worn in a necklace or hung amongst the hair.[1] In other cases it is the boys’ teeth which the women wear round their necks.[2]

The bone, reed, or stick which some Australian tribes thrust through their nose may be also an imitation of the totem. It is not worn constantly, but is inserted when danger is apprehended; which perhaps means that the man then seeks most to assimilate himself to his totem when he most needs the totem’s protection.[3] Kurnai medicine-men could only communicate with the ghosts when they had these bones in their noses.[4]

The Haidas of Queen Charlotte Islands are universally tattooed, the design being in all cases the totem, executed in a conventional style. When several families of different totems live together in the same large house, a Haida chief will have all their totems tattooed on his person.[5] The Iroquois tattooed their totems on their persons.[6] Mr E. James, a high authority on the North American Indians, denies that it was a universal – from which we infer that it was a common – practice with them to have their totems tattooed on their persons.[1] Mackenzie says that the Ojibways (Chippeways) are tattooed on their cheeks or forehead ‘to distinguish the tribe to which they belong.’[2] The Assinibois (Assiniboëls) tattooed figures of serpents, birds, etc. (probably their totems) on their persons.[3] Tribes in South America are especially distinguished by their tattoo marks, but whether these are totem marks is not said.[4] The same applies to the natives of Yule Island,[5] Eskimos of Alaska,[6] and Manganjas in Africa.[7] In one of the Hervey Islands (South Pacific) the tattooing was an imitation of the stripes on two different species of fish, probably totems.[8] The Australians do not tattoo but raise cicatrices; in some tribes these cicatrices are arranged in patterns which serve as the tribal badges, consisting of lines, dots, circles, semicircles, etc.[9] According to one authority, these Australian tribal badges are sometimes representations of the totem.[10] For the cases in which the women alone tattoo see the note below.[11] Again, the totem is sometimes painted on the person of the clansman. This, as we have seen (p. 704), is sometimes done by the Indians of British Columbia. Among the Hurons (Wyandots) each clan has a distinctive mode of painting the face, and, at least in the case of the chiefs at installation, this painting represents the totem.[1] Among the Moquis the representatives of the clans at foot-races, dances, etc., have each a conventional representation of his totem blazoned on breast or back.[2] A Pawnee, whose totem was a buffalo head, is depicted by Catlin with a buffalo’s head clearly painted on his face and breast.[3]

The clansman also affixes his totem mark as a signature to treaties and other documents,[4] and paints or carves it on his weapons, hut, canoe, etc.

Thus the natives of the upper Darling carve their totems on their shields.[5] The Indians who accompanied Samuel Hearne on his journey from Hudson’s Bay to the Pacific painted their totems (sun, moon, and diverse birds and beasts of prey) on their shields before going into
battle.[1] Some Indian tribes going to war carry standards, consisting of representations of their totems drawn on pieces of bark, which are elevated on poles.[2] Among the Thlinkets shields, helmets, canoes, blankets, household furniture, and houses are all marked with the totem, painted or carved. In single combats between chosen champions of different Thlinket clans, each wears a helmet representing his totem.[3] In front of the houses of the chiefs and leading men of the Haidas are erected posts carved with the totems of the inmates. As the houses sometimes contain several families of different totems, the post often exhibits a number of totems, carved one above the other.[4] Or these carvings one above the other represent the paternal totems in the female line, which, descent being in the female line, necessarily change from generation to generation.[5] The coast Indians of British Columbia carve their totems on the beams which support the roofs of their lodges, paint them over the entrance, and paint or carve them on their paddles and canoes.[6] The Pawnees mark their huts and even articles of apparel with their totems.[7] The Delawares (Lenape) painted their totems on their houses. The Turtle clan painted a whole turtle; but the Turkey clan painted only a foot of a turkey; and the Wolf clan only one foot of a wolf, though they sometimes added an outline of the whole animal.[1] In the Ottawa villages the different clans had separate wards, at the gates of which were posts bearing the figure of the clan totem or of parts of it.[2] The Omaha clans paint their totems on their tents.[3] Amongst the Iroquois the totem sign over each wigwam consisted, at least in some cases, of the skin of the totem animal, as of a beaver, a deer, a bear[4] Sometimes the skin is stuffed and stuck on a pole before the door.[5] Lastly, the totem is painted or carved on the clansman’s tomb or grave-post, the figure being sometimes reversed to denote death. It is always the Indian’s totem name, not his personal name, which is thus recorded.[6] Sometimes the stuffed skin of the totem is hung over the grave, or is placed at the dead man’s side.[7]

The identification of a man with his totem appears further to have been the object of various ceremonies observed at birth, marriage, death, and other occasions.

Birth Ceremonies – On the fifth day after birth a child of the Deer-Head clan of the Omahas is painted with red spots on its back, in imitation of a fawn, and red stripes are painted on the child’s arms and chest. All the Deer-Head men present at the ceremony make red spots on their chests.[1] When a South Slavonian woman has given birth to a child, an old woman runs out of the house and calls out, ‘A she-wolf has littered a he-wolf,’ and the child is drawn through a wolfskin, as if to simulate actual birth from a wolf. Further, a piece of the eye and heart of a wolf are sewed into the child’s shirt, or hung round its neck; and if several children of the family have died before, it is called Wolf. The reason assigned for some of these customs is, that the witches who devour children will not attack a wolf.[2] In other words, the human child is disguised as a wolf to cheat its supernatural foes. The same desire for protection against supernatural danger may be the motive of similar totemic customs, if not of totemism in general. The legend of the birth of Zamolxis (it is said that he was so called because a bearskin was thrown over him at birth[3]) points to a custom of wrapping infants at birth in a bearskin, and this again perhaps to a bear totem. The belief of the Getae that their dead went to Zamolxis would thus be the totemic view that the dead clansman is changed into his totem. When a Hindu child’s horoscope portends misfortune or crime, he is born again from a cow, thus: being dressed in scarlet and tied on a new sieve, he is passed between the hindlegs of a cow forward through the forelegs to the mouth and again in the reverse direction, to simulate birth; the ordinary birth ceremonies (aspersion, etc.) are then gone through, and the father smells his son as a cow smells her calf.[4] In India grown persons also may be born again by passing through a golden cow in simulation of birth; this is done when, e.g., they have polluted themselves by contact with unbelievers.[5]

Marriage Ceremonies – Among the Kalang of Java, whose totem is the red dog, bride and bridegroom before marriage are rubbed with the ashes of a red dog’s bones.[1] Among the Transylvanian gypsies, bride and bridegroom are rubbed with a weasel skin.[2] The sacred goatskin (aegis) which the priestess of Athene took to newly married women may have been used for this purpose.[3] At Rome bride and bridegroom sat down on the skin of the sheep which had been sacrificed on the occasion.[4] An Italian bride smeared the doorposts of her new home with wolf’s fat.[5] It is difficult to separate from totemism the custom observed by totem clans in Bengal of marrying the bride and bridegroom to trees before they are married to each other. The bride touches with red lead (a common marriage ceremony) a mahwá tree, clasps it in her arms, and is tied to it. The bridegroom goes through a like ceremony with a mango tree.[6]

Traces of marriage to trees are preserved in Servia. The bride is led to an apple-tree (apples often appear in South Slavonian marriage customs) under which stands a pitcher full of water. Money is thrown into the pitcher; the bride’s veil is taken from her and fastened to the tree; she upsets the pitcher of water with her foot; and a dance three times round the tree concludes the ceremony.[7] Tree marriage appears very distinctly in the Greek festival of the Daedala, at which an oak-tree, selected by special divination, was cut down, dressed as a bride, and conveyed, like a bride, in solemn procession on a waggon with a bridesmaid beside it. The mythical origin of the festival was a mock marriage of Zeus to an oak.[1] The identification with a tree, implied in these marriage ceremonies, is illustrated by a Ricara custom. Ricara Indians used to make a hole in the skin of their neck, pass a string through it, and tie the other end to the trunk of an oak-tree; by remaining tied in this fashion for some time, they thought they became strong and brave like the tree.[2]

The idea of substitution or disguise, which seems to be at the root of these marriage (as of the birth) ceremonies, appears in some Hindu marriages. Thus when a man has lost several wives in succession, he must marry a bird with all ceremony before another family will give him their daughter to wife.[3] Or wishing to marry a third wife, whether his other wives are alive or not, he must first formally wed a plant of a particular kind.[4] When the planets threaten any one with misfortune in marriage, he or she is married to an earthen vessel.[5] Dancing girls of Goa are married to daggers before they may exercise their profession.[1] Courtesans born of courtesans are married to flowering plants, which are planted in the house for the purpose; they water and tend the plants, and observe mourning for them when they die.[2]

Some cases of marriage of human beings to inanimate objects seem to be unconnected with totemism.[3] A totemic marriage ceremony of a different kind is that observed by a Tiger clan of the Gonds, in which two men imitate tigers by tearing to pieces a living kid with their teeth.[4]

Death Ceremonies

In death, too, the clansman seeks to become one with his totem. Amongst some totem clans it is an article of faith that as the clan sprang from the totem, so each clansman at death reassumes the totem form. Thus the Moquis, believing that the ancestors of the clans were respectively rattlesnakes, deer, bears, sand, water, tobacco, etc., think that at death each man, according to his clan, is changed into a rattlesnake, a deer, etc.[1] Amongst the Black Shoulder (Buffalo) clan of the Omahas a dying clansman was wrapped in a buffalo robe with the hair out, his face was painted with the clan mark, and his friends addressed him thus: ‘You are going to the animals (the buffaloes). You are going to rejoin your ancestors. You are going, or your four souls are going, to the four winds. Be strong.’[2] Amongst the Hanga clan, another Buffalo clan of the Omahas, the ceremony was similar, and the dying man was thus addressed: ‘You came hither from the animals, and you are going back thither. Do not face this way again When you go, continue walking.’[3]

Members of the Elk clan among the Omahas, though in life they may not touch any part of a male elk nor taste of a male deer, are buried in moccasins of deer skin.[4] Egyptian queens were sometimes buried in cow-shaped sarcophaguses.[1] Among the Australian Wotjoballuk, men of the Hot-Wind totem are buried with the head in the direction from which the hot wind blows, and men of the Sun totem are buried with their heads towards the sunrise.[2] Among the Marias, a Gond clan whose name is thought to be derived from Mara, ‘a tree,’ the corpse of an adult male is fastened by cords to a mahwa tree in an erect position and then burned.[3] On the anniversary of the death of their kinsmen, the Nataranes in Paraguay carried dead ostriches in procession as representatives of the deceased, probably because the ostrich was the clan totem.[4] Men of the Snow totem among the Pouteoüatmi, contrary to the general custom of the tribe, were burned instead of buried, the belief being that, as snow comes from on high, so the bodies of men of the Snow totem should not be poked away underground, but suffered to rejoin their Snow kindred in the upper air. Once when a man of the Snow totem had been buried underground, the winter was so long and the snow fell so deep that nobody ever thought to see spring any more. Then they bethought them of digging up the corpse and burning it; and lo, the snow stopped falling and spring came with a burst.[5]

Ceremonies at Puberty – The attainment of puberty is celebrated by savages with ceremonies, some of which seem to be directly connected with totemism. The Australian rites of initiation at puberty include the raising of those scars on the persons of the clansmen and clanswomen which serve as tribal badges or actually depict the totem. They also include those mutilations of the person by knocking out teeth, etc., which we have seen reason to suppose are meant to assimilate the man to his totem. When we remember that the fundamental rules of totem society are rules regulating marriage, or rather sexual intercourse, and that these rules are based on distinctions of totem, persons of the same totem being forbidden, under pain of death, to have connection with each other, the propriety of imprinting these marks on the persons of the clansmen and of inculcating these rules on their minds at the very moment when transgression of these all-important rules first becomes possible, is immediately apparent; and the necessity for such marks will further appear when we consider the minute subdivision of savage tribes into local groups, which, at once united and divided by an elaborate code of sexual permissions and prohibitions, are at the same time disjoined by a difference of dialect or even of language, such as, in the absence of some visible symbolism, must have rendered all these permissions and prohibitions inoperative. On this view, a chief object of these initiation ceremonies was to teach the youths with whom they might or might not have connection, and to put them in possession of a visible language, consisting of personal marks and (as we shall see immediately) gestures, by means of which they might be able to communicate their totems to, and to ascertain the totems of, strangers whose language they did not understand. So far, the consideration of these ceremonies would fall naturally under the section dealing with the social side of totemism. But as the rules which it is an object of these ceremonies to inculcate are probably deductions from that fundamental and as yet unexplained connection between a man and his totem, which constitutes the religion of totemism, they may fairly be considered here.

That lessons in conduct, especially towards the other sex, form part of these initiatory rites is certain. The youth is charged ‘to restrict himself to the class (totem division) which his name confines him to … The secrets of the tribe are imparted to him at this time. These instructions are repeated every evening while the Bora ceremony lasts, and form the principal part of it.’[1] To supply the youth with a gesture language for the purpose already indicated may be the intention of the totem dances or pantomimes which form part of the initiatory rites.

E.g., at one stage of these rites in Australia a number of men appear on the scene howling and running on all fours in imitation of the dingo or native Australian dog; at last the leader jumps up, clasps his hands, and shouts the totem name ‘wild dog.’[1] The Coast Murring tribe in New South Wales had an initiatory ceremony at which the totem name ‘brown snake’ was shouted, and a medicine-man produced a live brown snake out of his mouth.[2] The totem clans of the Bechuanas have each its special dance or pantomime, and when they wish to ascertain a stranger’s clan, they ask him ‘What do you dance?’[3] We find elsewhere that dancing has been used as a means of sexual selection. Thus among the Tshimsians, one of the totem tribes on the north-west coast of North America, one of the ceremonies observed by a girl at puberty is a formal dance before all the people.[4] Amongst the Kasias in Bengal, amongst whom husband and wife are always of different clans, Kasia maidens dance at the new moon in March; the young men do not dance but only look on, and many matches are made at these times.[5] On the 15th day of the month Abh the damsels of Jerusalem, clad in white, used to go out and dance in the vineyards, saying, ‘Look this way, young man, and choose a wife. Look not to the face but rather to the family.’[6] Attic maidens between the ages of five and ten had to pretend to be bears; they were called bears, and they imitated the action of bears. No man would marry a girl who had not thus ‘been a bear.’[1]

The totem dances at initiation are to be distinguished from those animal dances, also practised at initiation, the object of which appears to be to give the novice power over the animals represented. Thus an initiatory ceremony in New South Wales is to present to the novices the effigy of a kangaroo made of grass. ‘By thus presenting to them the dead kangaroo, it was indicated that the power was about to be imparted to them of killing that animal.’ The men then tied tails of grass to their girdles and hopped about in imitation of kangaroos, while two others followed them with spears and pretended to wound them.[2] An imitation of a wallaby hunt forms another Australian initiatory ceremony.[3] These hunting dances, or rather pantomimes, at initiation are therefore closely similar to those pantomimes which savage hunters perform before going to the chase, believing that through a sort of sympathetic magic the game will be caught like the actors in the mimic hunt. Thus, before the Koossa Caffres go out hunting one of them takes a handful of grass in his mouth and crawls about on all fours to represent the game, while the rest raise the hunting cry and rush at him with their spears till he falls apparently dead.[4] Negroes of Western Equatorial Africa, before setting out to hunt the gorilla, act a gorilla hunt, in which the man who plays the gorilla pretends to be killed.[1]

Before hunting the bear the Dacotas act a bear pantomime, in which a medicine-man dresses entirely in the skin of a bear, and others wear masques consisting of the skin of the bear’s head, and all of them imitate bears.[2] When buffaloes are scarce, the Mandans dance wearing the skins of buffaloes’ heads with the horns on their heads.[3] ‘Each hunt,’ says Chateaubriand, ‘has its dance, which consists in the imitation of the movements, habits, and cries of the animal to be hunted; they climb like a bear, build like a beaver, galop about like a buffalo, leap like a roe, and yelp like a fox.’[4] The Indians of San Juan Capistrano acted similar hunting pantomimes before the stuffed skin of a coyote or of a mountain cat before they set out for the chase.[5] The ancient Greeks had similar dances for the purpose of catching beasts and birds. Thus a man wearing a headdress or necklace in imitation of a species of owl mimicked the bird and was supposed thus to catch it.[6] Such pantomimes, acted in presence of the animal, may be entirely rational, as in the common cases where the savage disguises himself in the animal’s skin and is thus enabled either to act as a decoy to the herd[7] or to approach and kill the animal.[8] But these pantomimes, when they are acted before the hunt takes place, are of course purely magical.[1]

But in these rites of initiation the religious aspect of totemism is also prominent. In some of the dances this is certainly the case. Thus at their initiatory rites the Yuin tribe in New South Wales mould figures of the totems in earth and dance before them, and a medicine-man brings up out of his inside the ‘magic’ appropriate to the totem before which he stands: before the figure of the porcupine he brings up a stuff like chalk, before the kangaroo a stuff like glass, etc.[2] Again, it is at initiation that the youth is solemnly forbidden to eat of certain foods; but as the list of foods prohibited to youths at puberty both in Australia and America extends far beyond the simple totem, it would seem that we are here in contact with those unknown general ideas of the savage, whereof totemism is only a special product. Thus the Narrinyeri youth at initiation are forbidden to eat twenty different kinds of game, besides any food belonging to women. If they eat of these forbidden foods it is thought they will grow ugly.[3] In the Mycoolon tribe, near the Gulf of Carpentaria, the youth at initiation is forbidden to eat of eaglehawk and its young, native companion and its young, some snakes, turtles, ant-eaters, and emu eggs.[4] In New South Wales the young men at initiation are forbidden to kill and eat (1) ‘any animal that burrows in the ground, for it recalls to mind the foot-holes[1] where the tooth was knocked out, e.g. the wombat; (2) such creatures as have very prominent teeth, for these recall the tooth itself; (3) any animal that climbs to the tree tops, for they are then near to Daramūlŭn,[2] e.g. the native bear; (4) any bird that swims, for it recalls the final washing; (5) nor, above all, the emu, for this is Ngalalbal, the wife of Daramūlŭn, and at the same time “the woman”; for the novice during his probation is not permitted even so much as to look at a woman or to speak to one; and even, for some time after, he must cover his mouth with his rug when one is present.’ These rules are relaxed by degrees by an old man giving the youth a portion of the forbidden animal or rubbing him with its fat.[3] The Kurnai youth is not allowed to eat the female of any animal, nor the emu, nor the porcupine. He becomes free by having the fat of the animal smeared on his face.[4] On the other hand, it is said that ‘initiation confers many privileges on the youths, as they are now allowed to eat many articles of food which were previously forbidden to them.’[5] Thus in New South Wales before initiation a boy may eat only the females of the animals which he catches; but after initiation (which, however, may not be complete for several years) he may eat whatever he finds.[6] About the lower Murray boys before initiation are forbidden to eat emu, wild turkey, swan, geese, black duck, and the eggs of these birds; if they infringed this rule, ‘their hair would become prematurely grey, and the muscles of their limbs would waste away and shrink up.’[1] The Dieri think that if a native grows grey or has much hair on his breast in youth, it has been caused by his eating iguana in childhood.[2] In North America the Creek youths at puberty were forbidden for twelve months to cat of young bucks, turkey-cocks, fowls, peas, and salt.[3] The Andamanese abstain from various kinds of food, including turtle, honey, and pork, for a year or several years before puberty; and amongst the ceremonies by which they are made free of these foods is the smearing of their bodies by the chief with honey and the melted fat of turtle and pork.[4]

These ceremonies seem also to be meant to admit the youth into the life of the clan, and hence of the totem. The latter appears to be the meaning of a Carib ceremony, in which the father of the youth took a live bird of prey, of a particular species, and beat his son with it till the bird was dead and its head crushed, thus transferring the life and spirit of the martial bird to the future warrior. Further, he scarified his son all over, rubbed the juices of the bird into the wounds, and gave him the bird’s heart to eat.[5] Amongst some Australian tribes the youth at initiation is smeared with blood drawn from the arms either of aged men or of all the men present, and he even receives the blood to drink. Amongst some tribes on the Darling this tribal blood is his only food for two days.[1] The meaning of this smearing with blood seems put beyond a doubt by the following custom. Among the Gonds, a non-Aryan race of Central India, the rajas, by intermarriage with Hindus, have lost much of their pure Gond blood, and are half Hindus; hence one of the ceremonies at their installation is ‘the touching of their foreheads with a drop of blood drawn from the body of a pure aborigine of the tribe they belong to.’[2] Further, the Australians seek to convey to the novices the powers and dignity of manhood by means of certain magic passes, while the youths receive the spiritual gift with corresponding gestures.[3] Among some tribes the youths at initiation sleep on the graves of their ancestors, in order to absorb their virtues.[4] It is, however, a very notable fact that the initiation of an Australian youth is said to be conducted, not by men of the same totem, but by men of that portion of the tribe into which he may marry.[1] In some of the Victorian tribes no person related to the youth by blood can interfere or assist in his initiation.[2] Whether this is true of all tribes and of all the rites at initiation does not appear.[3]

Connected with totemism is also the Australian ceremony at initiation of pretending to recall a dead man to life by the utterance of his totem name. An old man lies down in a grave and is covered up lightly with earth; but at the mention of his totem name he starts up to life.[4] Sometimes it is believed that the youth himself is killed by a being called Thuremlui, who cuts him up, restores him to life, and knocks out a tooth.[5] Here the idea seems to be that of a second birth, or the beginning of a new life for the novice; hence he receives a new name at the time when he is circumcised, or the tooth knocked out, or the blood of the kin poured on him.[6] Amongst the Indians of Virginia and the Quojas in Africa, the youths after initiation pretended to forget the whole of their former lives (parents, language, customs, etc.) and had to learn everything over again like new-born babes.[7] A Wolf clan in Texas used to dress up in wolf skins and run about on all fours, howling and mimicking wolves; at last they scratched up a living clansman, who had been buried on purpose, and, putting a bow and arrows in his hands, bade him do as the wolves do – rob, kill, and murder.[1] This may have been an initiatory ceremony, revealing to the novice in pantomime the double origin of the clan – from wolves and from the ground. For it is a common belief with totem clans that they issued originally from the ground.[2]

Connected with this mimic death and revival of a clansman appears to be the real death and supposed revival of the totem itself. We have seen that some Californian Indians killed the buzzard, and then buried and mourned over it like a clansman. But it was believed that, as often as the bird was killed, it was made alive again. Much the same idea appears in a Zuni ceremony described by an eyewitness, Mr Cushing. He tells how a procession of fifty men set off for the spirit-land, or (as the Zunis call it) ‘the home of our others,’ and returned after four days, each man bearing a basket full of living, squirming turtles, One turtle was brought to the house where Mr Cushing was staying, and it was welcomed with divine honours. It was addressed as, ‘Ah! my poor dear lost child or parent, my sister or brother to have been! Who knows which? May be my own great great grandfather or mother?’ Nevertheless, next day it was killed and its flesh and bones deposited in the river, that it might ‘return once more to eternal life among its comrades in the dark waters of the lake of the dead.’ The idea that the turtle was dead was repudiated with passionate sorrow; it had only, they said, ‘changed houses and gone to live for ever in the home of “our lost others.”’[3] The meaning of such ceremonies is not clear. Perhaps, as has been suggested,[1] they are piacular sacrifices, in which the god dies for his people. This is borne out by the curses with which the Egyptians loaded the head of the slain bull.[2] Such solemn sacrifices of the totem are not to be confused with the mere killing of the animal for food, even when the killing is accompanied by apologies and tokens of sorrow. Whatever their meaning, they appear not to be found among the rudest totem tribes, but only amongst peoples like the Zuni and Egyptians, who, retaining totemism, have yet reached a certain level of culture. The idea of the immortality of the individual totem, which is brought out in these ceremonies, appears to be an extension of the idea of the immortality of the species, which is, perhaps, of the essence of totemism, and is prominent, e.g., in Samoa. Hence it is not necessary to suppose that the similar festivals, which, with mingled lamentation and joy, celebrate the annual death and revival of vegetation,[3] are directly borrowed from totemism; both may spring independently from the observation of the mortality of the individual and the immortality of the species.

Closely connected with totemism, though crossing the regular lines of totem kinship, are the sacred dancing bands or associations, which figure largely in the social life of many North American tribes. These bands for the most part bear animal names, and possess characteristic dances, also badges which the members wear in dancing, and which often, though not always, consist of some parts (skin, claws, etc.) of the animals from which the bands take their name. As distinguished from totem clans, these bands consist not of kinsmen, but of members who have purchased the privilege of admission, and who in each society are generally all about the same age, boys belonging to one band, youths to another, and so on through the different stages of life. In some tribes both sexes belong to all the bands; in others there are separate bands for the sexes. Some of the bands are entrusted with certain police functions, such as maintaining order in the camp, on the march, in hunting, etc.[1] Such associations probably originate in a feeling that the protection of the totem is not by itself sufficient; feeling this, men seek an additional protection. Hence some of these bands have ‘medicines’ with which they rub their bodies before going into battle, believing that this makes them invulnerable.[2] However, in the Snake Band of the Moquis we have an instance of a kinship group expanding by natural growth into a religious association,[3] and this is probably not an isolated case. The ‘clans’ which Mr Philander Prescott described as existing among the Dacotas in 1847[4] appear to have been religious associations rather than totem clans. These Dacota ‘clans’ were constituted by the use of the same roots for ‘medicine’; each ‘clan’ had its special ‘medicine,’ and there were constant feuds between them owing to the belief that each ‘clan’ employed its magic ‘medicine’ to injure men of other ‘clans.’ Each ‘clan’ had some sacred animal (bear, wolf, buffalo, etc.), or part of an animal (head, tail, liver, wing, etc.), which they venerated through life, and might not eat nor (if it was a whole animal) kill; nor might they step on or over it.[5] Violation of these rules was thought to bring trouble on the offender. All this is totemic; but the mode of admission to the ‘clans’ (namely, through the great medicine dance) seems appropriate rather to associations.

At this point a few words may be added on two subordinate kinds of totems which have been already referred to.

Sex Totems – In Australia (but, so far as is known at present, nowhere else) each of the sexes has, at least in some tribes, its special sacred animal, whose name each individual of the sex bears, regarding the animal as his or her brother or sister respectively, not killing it nor suffering the opposite sex to kill it. These sacred animals therefore answer strictly to the definition of totems. Thus amongst the Kurnai all the men were called Yeerung (Emu-Wren) and all the women Djeetgun (Superb Warbler). The birds called Yeerung were the ‘brothers’ of the men, and the birds called Djeetgun were the women’s ‘sisters.’ If the men killed an emu-wren they were attacked by the women, if the women killed a superb warbler they were assailed by the men. Yeerung and Djeetgun were the mythical ancestors of the Kurnai.[1] The Kulin tribe in Victoria, in addition to sixteen clan totems, has two pairs of sex totems; one pair (the emu-wren and superb warbler) is identical with the Kurnai pair; the other pair is the bat (male totem) and the small night-jar (female totem). The latter pair extends to the extreme north-western confines of Victoria as the ‘man’s brother’ and the ‘woman’s sister.’[2] Amongst the Coast Murring tribe, as among the Kurnai and Kulin, the emu-wren is the ‘man’s brother,’ but the ‘woman’s sister’ is the tree creeper.[3] Among the Mūkjarawaint in Western Victoria, who have regular clan totems (white cockatoo, black cockatoo, iguana, crow, eaglehawk, etc.), all the men have, besides, the bat for their totem, and all the women have the small night-jar for theirs.[4] The Ta-ta-thi group of tribes in New South Wales, in addition to regular clan totems, has a pair of sex totems, the bat for men and a small owl for women; men and women address each other as Owls and Bats; and there is a fight if a woman kills a bat or a man kills a small owl.[5] Of some Victorian tribes it is said that ‘the common bat belongs to the men, who protect it against injury, even to the half killing of their wives for its sake. The fern owl, or large goatsucker, belongs to the women, and although a bird of evil omen, creating terror at night by its cry, it is jealously protected by them. If a man kills one, they are as much enraged as if it was one of their children, and will strike him with their long poles.’[1] At Gunbower Creek on the lower Murray the natives called the bat ‘brother belonging to blackfellow,’ and would never kill one; they said that if a bat were killed, one of their women would be sure to die.[2] Among the Port Lincoln tribe, South Australia, the male and female of a small lizard seem to be the male and female totems respectively; at least either sex is said to have a mortal hatred of the opposite sex of these little animals, the men always destroying the female and the women the male. They have a myth that the lizard divided the sexes in the human species.[3]

Clearly these sex totems are not to be confounded with clan totems. To see in them, as Messrs Fison and Howitt do or did, merely clan totems in a state of transition from female to male kinship is to confound sex with kinship. Even if such a view could have been held so long as sex totems were only known to exist among the Kurnai, who have no clan totems left, it must have fallen to the ground when sex totems were found coexisting with clan totems, and that either with female or male (uterine or agnatic) descent. The sex totem seems to be still more sacred than the clan totem; for men who do not object to other people killing their clan totem will fiercely defend their sex totem against any attempt of the opposite sex to injure it.[4]

Individual Totems – It is not only the clans and the sexes that have totems; individuals also have their own special totems, i.e. classes of objects (generally species of animals), which they regard as related to themselves by those ties of mutual respect and protection which are characteristic of totemism. This relationship, however, in the case of the individual totem, begins and ends with the individual man, and is not, like the clan totem, transmitted by inheritance. The evidence for the existence of individual totems in Australia, though conclusive, is very scanty. In North America it is abundant.

In Australia we hear of a medicine-man whose clan totem through his mother was kangaroo, but whose ‘secret’ (i.e. individual) totem was the tiger-snake. Snakes of that species, therefore, would not hurt him.[1] An Australian seems usually to get his individual totem by dreaming that he has been transformed into an animal of the species. Thus a man who had dreamed several times that he had become a lace-lizard was supposed to have acquired power over lace-lizards, and he kept a tame one, which was thought to give him supernatural knowledge and to act as his emissary for mischief. Hence he was known as Bunjil Bataluk (Old Lizard).[2] Another man dreamed three times he was a kangaroo; hence he became one of the kangaroo kindred, and might not eat any part of a kangaroo on which there was blood; he might not even carry home one on which there was blood. He might eat cooked kangaroo; but if he were to eat the meat with the blood on it, the spirits would no longer take him up aloft.[3]

In America the individual totem is usually the first animal of which a youth dreams during the long and generally solitary fasts which American Indians observe at puberty. He kills the animal or bird of which he dreams, and henceforward wears its skin or feathers, or some part of them, as an amulet, especially on the war-path and in hunting.[1] A man may even (though this seems exceptional) acquire several totems in this way; thus an Ottawa medicine-man had for his individual totems the tortoise, swan, woodpecker, and crow, because he had dreamed of them all in his fast at puberty.[2] The respect paid to the individual totem varies in different tribes. Among the Slave, Hare, and Dogrib Indians a man may not eat, skin, nor if possible kill his individual totem, which in these tribes is said to be always a carnivorous animal. Each man carries with him a picture of his totem (bought of a trader); when he is unsuccessful in the chase, he pulls out the picture, smokes to it, and makes it a speech.[3]

The sacrifices made to the individual totem are sometimes very heavy; a Mandan has been known to turn loose the whole of his horses and abandon them for ever as a sacrifice to his ‘medicine’ or individual totem.[1] The sacrifices at the fasts at puberty sometimes consist of finger joints.[2] The Mosquito Indians in Central America, after dreaming of the beast or bird, sealed their compact with it by drawing blood from various parts of their body.[3] The Innuits of Alaska (who are not Indians, but belong to the Eskimo family and have no clan totems) do not scruple to eat their guardian animals, and, if unsuccessful, they change their patron. Innuit women have no such guardian animals.[4] The Indians of Canada also changed their okki or manitoo (individual totem) if they had reason to be dissatisfied with it; amongst them, women had also their okkis or manitoos, but did not pay so much heed to them as did the men. They tattooed their individual totems on their persons.[5] Amongst the Indians of San Juan Capistrano, a figure of the individual totem, which was acquired as usual by fasting, was moulded in a paste made of crushed herbs on the right arm of the novice. Fire was then set to it, and thus the figure of the totem was burned into the flesh.[6] Sometimes the individual totem is not acquired by the individual himself at puberty, but is fixed for him independently of his will at birth. Thus among the tribes of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, when a woman was about to be confined, the relations assembled in the hut and drew on the floor figures of different animals, rubbing each one out as soon as it was finished. This went on till the child was born, and the figure that then remained sketched on the ground was the child’s tona or totem. When he grew older the child procured his totem animal and took care of it, believing that his life was bound up with the animal’s, and that when it died he too must die.[1] Similarly in Samoa, at childbirth the help of several ‘gods’ was invoked in succession, and the one who happened to be addressed at the moment of the birth was the infant’s totem. These ‘gods’ were dogs, eels, sharks, lizards, etc. A Samoan had no objection to eat another man’s ‘god’; but to eat his own would have been death or injury to him.[2] Amongst the Quiches in Central America, the sorcerer gives the infant the name of an animal, which becomes the child’s guardian spirit for life.[3] In all such cases there is the possibility of the totem being ancestral; it may be that of the mother or father. In one Central American tribe the son of a chief was free to choose whether he would accept the ancestral totem or adopt a new one; but a son who did not adopt his father’s totem was always hateful to his father during his life.[4] Sometimes the okkis or manitoos acquired by dreams are not totems but fetishes, being not classes of objects but individual objects, such as a particular tree, rock, knife, pipe, etc.[5] When the okkis or manitoos are, as sometimes happens, not acquired by a special preparation like fasting, but picked up at hazard, they have no longer any resemblance to totems, but are fetishes pure and simple.[6] The Andamanese appear to have individual totems, for every man and woman is prohibited all through life from eating some one (or more) fish or animal; generally the forbidden food is one which the mother thought disagreed with the child; but if no food disagreed with him, the person is free to choose what animal he will avoid.[7] Some of the people of Mota, Banks Islands, have a kind of individual totem called tamaniu. It is some object, generally an animal, as a lizard or snake, but sometimes a stone, with which the person imagines that his life is bound up; if it dies or is broken or lost, he will die. Fancy dictates the choice of a tamaniu; or it may be found ‘by drinking an infusion of certain herbs and heaping together the dregs. Whatever living thing is first seen in or upon the heap is the tamaniu. It is watched but not fed or worshipped.’ It is thought to come at call.[1] But as the tamaniu seems to be an individual object, it is a fetish rather than a totem.

Besides the clan totem, sex totem, and individual totem, there are (as has been indicated) some other kinds or varieties of totems; but the consideration of them had better be deferred until the social organisation based on totemism has been described.

Social Aspect of Totemism, or the relation of the men of a totem to each other and to men of other totems.

(1) All the members of a totem clan regard each other as kinsmen or brothers and sisters, and are bound to help and protect each other.[2] The totem bond is stronger than the bond of blood or family in the modern sense. This is expressly stated of the clans of Western Australia and of North-western America,[3] and is probably true of all societies where totemism exists in full force. Hence in totem tribes every local group, being necessarily composed (owing to exogamy) of members of at least two totem clans, is liable to be dissolved at any moment into its totem elements by the outbreak of a blood feud, in which husband and wife must always (if the feud is between their clans) be arrayed on opposite sides, and in which the children will be arrayed against either their father or their mother, according as descent is traced through the mother, or through the father.[1] In blood feud the whole clan of the aggressor is responsible for his deed, and the whole clan of the aggrieved is entitled to satisfaction.[2] Nowhere perhaps is this solidarity carried further than among the Goajiros in Colombia, South America. The Goajiros are divided into some twenty to thirty totem clans, with descent in the female line; and amongst them, if a man happens to cut himself with his own knife, to fall off his horse, or to injure himself in any way, his family on the mother’s side immediately demand payment as blood-money from him. ‘Being of their blood, he is not allowed to spill it without paying for it.’ His father’s family also demands compensation, but not so much.[3]

To kill a fellow-clansman is a heinous offence. In Mangaia ‘such a blow was regarded as falling upon the god [totem] himself; the literal sense of “ta atua” [to kill a member of the same totem clan] being god-striking or god-killing.’[4]

(2) Exogamy – Persons of the same totem may not marry or have sexual intercourse with each other. The Navajos believe that if they married within the clan ‘their bones would dry up and they would die.’[5] But the penalty for infringing this fundamental law is not merely natural; the clan steps in and punishes the offenders. In Australia the regular penalty for sexual intercourse with a person of a forbidden clan is death. It matters not whether the woman be of the same local group or has been captured in war from another tribe; a man of the wrong clan who uses her as his wife is hunted down and killed by his clansmen, and so is the woman; though in some cases, if they succeed in eluding capture for a certain time, the offence may be condoned. In the Ta-ta-thi tribe, New South Wales, in the rare cases which occur, the man is killed but the woman is only beaten or speared, or both, till she is nearly dead; the reason given for not actually killing her being that she was probably coerced. Even in casual amours the clan prohibitions are strictly observed; any violations of these prohibitions ‘are regarded with the utmost abhorrence and are punished by death.’[1] Sometimes the punishment stops short at a severe beating or spearing. Amongst some of the Victorian tribes, ‘should any sign of affection and courtship be observed between those of “one flesh,” the brothers or male relatives of the woman beat her severely; the man is brought before the chief, and accused of an intention to fall into the same flesh, and is severely reprimanded by the tribe. If he persists and runs away with the object of his affections, they beat and “cut his head all over,” and if the woman was a consenting party she is half killed.’[2] An important exception to these rules, if it is correctly reported, is that of the Port Lincoln tribe, which is divided into two clans Mattiri and Karraru, and it is said that though persons of the same clan never marry, yet ‘they do not seem to consider less virtuous connections between parties of the same class [clan] incestuous.’[3] Another exception, which also rests on the testimony of a single witness, is found among the Kunandaburi tribe.[4] Again, of the tribes on the lower Murray, lower Darling, etc., it is said that though the slightest blood relationship is with them a bar to marriage, yet in their sexual intercourse they are perfectly free, and incest of every grade continually occurs.[1]

In America the Algonkins consider it highly criminal for a man to marry a woman of the same totem as himself, and they tell of cases where men, for breaking this rule, have been put to death by their nearest relations.[2] Amongst the Ojibways also death is said to have been formerly the penalty.[3] Amongst the Loucheux and Tinneh the penalty is merely ridicule. ‘The man is said to have married his sister, even though she may be from another tribe and there be not the slightest connection by blood between the two.’[4]

In some tribes the marriage prohibition only extends to a man’s own totem clan; he may marry a woman of any totem but his own. This is the case with the Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands,[5] and, so far as appears, the Narrinyeri in South Australia,[6] and the Western Australian tribes described by Sir George Grey.[7] Oftener, however, the prohibition includes several clans, in none of which is a man allowed to marry. For such an exogamous group of clans within the tribe it is convenient to have a name; we shall therefore call it a phratry (L. H. Morgan), defining it as an exogamous division intermediate between the tribe and the clan. The evidence goes to show that in many cases it was originally a totem clan which has undergone subdivision.

Examples – The Creek Indians are at present divided into about twenty clans (Bear, Deer, Panther, Wild-Cat, Skunk, Racoon, Wolf, Fox, Beaver, Toad, Mole, Maize, Wind, etc.), and some clans have become extinct. These clans are (or were) exogamous; a Bear might not marry a Bear, etc. But further, a Panther was prohibited from marrying not only a Panther but also a Wild-Cat. Therefore the Panther and Wild-Cat clans together form a phratry. Similarly a Toad might not marry a member of the extinct clan Tchu-Kotalgi; therefore the Toad and Tchu-Kotalgi clans formed another phratry. Other of the Creek clans may have been included in these or other phratries; but the memory of such arrangements, if they existed, has perished.[1] The Moquis of Arizona are divided into at least twenty-three totem clans, which are grouped in ten phratries; two of the phratries include three clans, the rest comprise two, and one clan (Blue-Seed-Grass) stands by itself.[2] The Choctaws were divided into two phratries, each of which included four clans; marriage was prohibited between members of the same phratry, but members of either phratry could marry into any clan of the other.[3] The Chickasas are divided into two phratries – (1) the Panther phratry, which includes four clans, namely, the Wild-Cat, Bird, Fish, and Deer; and (2) the Spanish phratry, which includes eight clans, namely, Racoon, Spanish, Royal, Hush-ko-ni, Squirrel, Alligator, Wolf, and Blackbird.[4] The Seneca tribe of the Iroquois was divided into two phratries, each including four clans, the Bear, Wolf, Beaver, and Turtle clans forming one phratry, and the Deer, Snipe, Heron, and Hawk clans forming the other. Originally, as among the Choctaws, marriage was prohibited within the phratry but was permitted with any of the clans of the other phratry; the prohibition, however, has now broken down, and a Seneca may marry a woman of any clan but his own. Hence phratries, in our sense, no longer exist among the Senecas, though the organisation survives for certain religious and social purposes.[5] The Cayuga tribe of Iroquois had also two phratries and eight clans, but one phratry included five clans (Bear, Wolf, Turtle, Snipe, Eel) and the other included three (Deer, Beaver, Hawk).[1] The Onondaga-Iroquois have also eight clans, unequally distributed into two phratries, the Wolf, Turtle, Snipe, Beaver, and Ball forming one phratry, and the Deer, Eel, and Bear clans forming the other.[2] Amongst the Tuscarora-Iroquois the Bear, Beaver, Great Turtle, and Eel clans form one phratry; and the Grey Wolf, Yellow Wolf, Little Turtle, and Snipe form the other.[3] The Wyandots (Hurons) are divided into four phratries, the Bear, Deer, and Striped Turtle forming the first; the Highland Turtle, Black Turtle, and Smooth Large Turtle the second; Hawk, Beaver, and Wolf the third; and Sea Snake and Porcupine the fourth.[4]

The phratries of the Thlinkets and the Mohegans deserve especial attention, because each phratry bears a name which is also the name of one of the clans included in it. The Thlinkets are divided as follows: Raven phratry, with clans Raven, Frog, Goose, Sea-Lion, Owl, Salmon; Wolf phratry, with clans Wolf, Bear, Eagle, Whale, Shark, Auk. Members of the Raven phratry must marry members of the Wolf phratry, and vice versa.[5] Considering the prominent parts played in Thlinket mythology by the ancestors of the two phratries, and considering that the names of the phratries are also names of clans, it seems probable that the Raven and Wolf were the two original clans of the Thlinkets, which afterwards by subdivision became phratries. This was the opinion of the Russian missionary Veniaminof, the best early authority on the tribe.[6] Still more clearly do the Mohegan phratries appear to have been formed by subdivision from clans. They are as follows:[7] Wolf phratry, with clans Wolf, Bear, Dog, Opossum; Turtle phratry, with clans Little Turtle, Mud Turtle, Great Turtle, Yellow Eel; Turkey phratry, with clans Turkey, Crane, Chicken. Here we are almost forced to conclude that the Turtle phratry was originally a Turtle clan which subdivided into a number of clans, each of which took the name of a particular kind of turtle, while the Yellow Eel clan may have been a later subdivision. Thus we get a probable explanation of the origin of split totems; they seem to have arisen by the segmentation of a single original clan, which had a whole animal for its totem, into a number of clans, each of which took the name either of a part of the original animal or of a subspecies of it. We may conjecture that this was the origin of the Grey Wolf and the Yellow Wolf, and the Great Turtle and the Little Turtle clans of the Tuscarora-Iroquois (see above, p. 759); the Black Eagle and the White Eagle, and the Deer and Deer-Tail clans of the Kaws;[1] and of the Highland Turtle (striped), Highland Turtle (black), Mud Turtle, and Smooth Large Turtle clans of the Wyandots (Hurons).[2] This conclusion, so far as concerns the Hurons, is strengthened by the part played in Huron (and Iroquois) mythology by the turtle, which is said to have received on its back the first woman as she fell from the sky, and to have formed and supported the earth by the accretion of soil on its back.[3]

This explanation of the origin of split totems is confirmed by the custom of calling each member of a clan by a name which has some reference to the common totem of the clan. Thus among the birth-names[1] of boys in the Elk clan of the Omahas the following used to be given to sons in order of their birth – Soft Horn, Yellow Horn, Branching Horn, etc. Amongst the men’s names in the same clan are Elk, Standing Elk, White Elk, Big Elk, Dark Breast (of an elk), Stumpy Tail (of an elk), etc. Amongst the women’s names in the same clan are Female Elk, Tail Female, etc.[2] Amongst the names of men in the Black Shoulder (Buffalo) clan of the Omahas are Black Tongue (of a buffalo), He that walks last in the herd, Thick Shoulder (of a buffalo), etc.[3] And so with the names of individual members of other clans.[4] The same custom of naming clansmen after some part or attribute of the clan totem prevails also among the Encounter Bay tribe in South Australia; a clan totem of that tribe is the pelican, and a clansman may be called, e.g., Pouch of a Pelican.[5] Clearly split totems might readily arise from single families separating from the clan and expanding into new clans, while they retained as clan names the names of their individual founders, as White Elk, Pouch of a Pelican. Hence such split totems as Bear’s Liver,[6] Head of a Tortoise, Stomach of a Pig (see above, p. 705); such taboos as those of the subclans of the Omaha Black Shoulder clan (see above, p. 706); and such subclans as the sections of the Omaha Turtle subclan, namely, Big Turtle, Turtle that does not flee, Red-Breasted Turtle, and Spotted Turtle with red eyes.[7] Finally, Warren actually states that the numerous Bear clan of the Ojibways was formerly subdivided into subclans, each of which took for its totem some part of the Bear’s body (head, foot, ribs, etc.), but that these have now merged into two, the common Bear and the Grizzly Bear.[1] The subdivision of the Turtle (Tortoise) clan, which on this hypothesis has taken place among the Tuscarora-Iroquois, is nascent among the Onondaga-Iroquois, for among them ‘the name of this clan is Hahnowa, which is the general word for tortoise; but the clan is divided into two septs or subdivisions, the Hanyatengona, or Great Tortoise, and the Nikahnowaksa, or little Tortoise, which together are held to constitute but one clan.’[2]

On the other hand, fusion of clans is known to have taken place, as among the Haidas, where the Black Bear and Fin-Whale clans have united;[3] and the same thing has happened to some extent among the Omahas and Osages.[4] We may also suspect fusion of clans wherever apparently disconnected taboos are observed by the same clan, as, e.g., the prohibition to touch verdigris, charcoal, and the skin of a cat (above, p. 707). Fusion of clans would also explain those totem badges which are said to be composed of parts of different animals joined together.[5]

In Australia the phratries are still more important than in America. Messrs Howitt and Fison, who have done so much to advance our knowledge of the social system of the Australian aborigines, have given to these exogamous divisions the name of classes; but the term is objectionable, because it fails to convey (1) that these divisions are kinship divisions, and (2) that they are intermediate divisions; whereas the Greek term phratry conveys both these meanings, and is therefore appropriate.

We have seen examples of Australian tribes in which members of any clan are free to marry members of any clan but their own; but such tribes appear to be exceptional. Often an Australian tribe is divided into two (exogamous) phratries, each of which includes under it a number of totem clans; and oftener still there are subphratries interposed between the phratry and the clans, each phratry including two subphratries, and the subphratries including totem clans. We will take examples of the former and simpler organisation first.

The Turra tribe in Yorke Peninsula, South Australia, is divided into two phratries, Wiltū (Eaglehawk) and Mūlta (Seal). The Eaglehawk phratry includes ten totem clans (Wombat, Wallaby, Kangaroo, Iguana, Wombat-Snake, Bandicoot, Black Bandicoot, Crow, Rock-Wallaby, and Emu); and the Seal phratry includes six (Wild Goose, Butterfish, Mullet, Schnapper, Shark, and Salmon). The phratries are of course exogamous, but (as with the Choctaws, Mohegan, and, so far as appears, all the American phratries) any clan of the one phratry may intermarry with any clan of the other phratry.[1] Again, the Wotjoballuk tribe in North-western Victoria is divided into two phratries (Krokitch and Gamutch), each of which includes three totem clans; the rule of intermarriage is the same as before.[2] The Ngarego and Theddora tribes in New South Wales are divided into two phratries, Merūng (Eaglehawk) and Yŭkembrūk (Crow); and each phratry includes eight totem clans.[3]

In Australia, as in America, we have an instance of a tribe with its clans arranged in phratries, but with an odd clan unattached to a phratry. This occurs in Western Victoria, where there are five totem clans thus arranged:

First phratry

{

(1) Long-Billed Cockatoo clan.

(2) Pelican clan.

Second phratry

{

(3) Banksian Cockatoo clan.

(4) Boa Snake clan.

(5) Quail clan.

Here clans 1 and 2 may marry 3, 4, 5; 3 and 4 may marry 1, 2, 5; 5 may marry 1, 2, 3, 4.[4]

But the typical Australian tribe is divided into two exogamous phratries; each of these phratries is subdivided into two subphratries; and these subphratries are subdivided into an indefinite number of totem clans. The phratries being exogamous, it follows that their subdivisions (the subphratries and clans) are so also. The well-known Kamilaroi tribe in New South Wales will serve as an example. Its subdivisions are as follows:[1]

Phratries

Subphratries

Totem Clans

Dilbi

{

Muri[2]
Kubi

{

Kangaroo, Opossum, Bandicoot, Padimelon, Iguana, Black Duck, Eaglehawk, Scrub Turkey, Yellow-Fish, Honey-Fish, Bream.

Kupathin

{

Ipai
Kumbo

{

Emu, Carpet-Snake, Black Snake, Red Kangaroo, Honey, Walleroo, Frog, Cod-Fish.

In such tribes the freedom of marriage is still more curtailed. A subphratry is not free to marry into either subphratry of the other phratry; each subphratry is restricted in its choice of partners to one subphratry of the other phratry; Muri can only marry Kumbo, and vice versa; Kubi can only marry Ipai, and vice versa. Hence (supposing the tribe to be equally distributed between the phratries and subphratries), whereas under the two phratry and clan system a man is free to choose a wife from half the women of the tribe, under the phratry, subphratry, and clan system he is restricted in his choice to one quarter of the women.

The Kiabara tribe, south of Maryborough in Queensland, will furnish another example:[1]

Phratries

Subphratries

Totem Clans

Dilebi (Flood-Water)

{

Baring (Turtle)
Turowine (Bat)

}

?

Cubatine (Lightning)

{

Bulcoin (Carpet-Snake)
Bundah (Native Cat)

}

?

Here Baring marries Bundah, and Turowine marries Bulcoin, and vice versa.

A remarkable feature of the Australian social organisation is that divisions of one tribe have their recognised equivalents in other tribes, whose languages, including the names for the tribal divisions, are quite different. A native who travelled far and wide through Australia stated that ‘he was furnished with temporary wives by the various tribes with whom he sojourned in his travels; that his right to these women was recognised as a matter of course; and that he could always ascertain whether they belonged to the division into which he could legally marry, “though the places were 1000 miles apart, and the languages quite different.”’[2] Again, it is said that ‘in cases of distant tribes it can be shown that the class divisions correspond with each other, as for instance in the classes of the Flinders river and Mitchell river tribes; and these tribes are separated by 400 miles of country, and by many intervening tribes. But for all that, class corresponds to class in fact and in meaning and in privileges, although the name may be quite different and the totems of each dissimilar.’[3] Particular information, however, as to the equivalent divisions is very scanty.[4] Hence it often happens that husband and wife speak different languages and continue to do so after marriage, neither of them ever thinking of changing his or her dialect for that of the other.[1] Indeed, in some tribes of Western Victoria a man is actually forbidden to marry a wife who speaks the same dialect as himself; and during the preliminary visit which each pays to the tribe of the other neither is permitted to speak the language of the tribe whom he or she is visiting.[2] This systematic correspondence between the intermarrying divisions of distinct and distant tribes, with the rights which it conveys to the members of these divisions, points to sexual communism on a scale to which there is perhaps no parallel elsewhere, certainly not in North America, where marriage is always within the tribe, though outside the clan.[1] But even in Australia a man is always bound to marry within a certain kinship group; that group may extend across the whole of Australia, but nevertheless it is exactly limited and defined. If endogamy is used in the sense of prohibition to marry outside of a certain kinship group, whether that group be exclusive of, inclusive of, or identical with the man’s own group, then marriage among the totem societies of Australia, America, and India is both exogamous and endo-gamous; a man is forbidden to marry either within his own clan or outside of a certain kinship group.[2]

Native Australian traditions as to the origin of these various tribal divisions, though small credit can be given to them, deserve to be mentioned. The Dieri tribe has a legend that mankind married promiscuously till Muramura (Good Spirit) ordered that the tribe should be divided into branches which were to be called after objects animate and inanimate (dogs, mice, emus, iguanas, rain, etc.), the members of each division being forbidden to intermarry.[3] The tribes of Western Victoria, whose totems are long-billed cockatoo, pelican, banksian cockatoo, boa snake, and quail, say that their progenitor was a long-billed cockatoo who had a banksian cockatoo to wife; their children, taking their clan from their mother, were Banksian Cockatoos; but, being forbidden by the laws of consanguinity to marry with each other, they had to introduce ‘fresh flesh,’ which could only be done by marriage with strangers; so they got wives from a distance, and hence the introduction of the pelican, snake, and quail totems.[4]

(3) Rules of Descent – In a large majority of the totem tribes at present known to us in Australia and North America descent is in the female line, i.e. the children belong to the totem clan of their mother, not to that of their father. In Australia the proportion of tribes with female to those with male descent is as four to one; in America it is between three and two to one. The table which follows is a very rough one. For instance, the Western Australians, given as one tribe, no doubt include many; and it is possible that the Western Victorian tribes given on Dawson’s authority may include some tribes mentioned separately by other authorities.

Table of Male and Female Descent

AUSTRALIA – Female Descent. – 1, West Australians (Grey, Journ., ii. 226; Brough Smyth, ii. 267); 2 and 3, Ngarego and Theddora (J. A. I., xiii. 437); 4, Wakelbura (J. A. I., xii. 43); 5, Kunandaburi (ib.); 6, Mukjarawaint (ib.); 7, Yerrunthully (J. A. I., xiii. 339, 342); 8, Koogo-Bathy (ib., 339, 343); 9, Kombinegherry (ib., 340, 343); 10, Wonghibon (id., xiv. 348, 350); 11, Barknji (ib., 349, 350); 12, Ta-ta-thi (ib.); 13, Keramin (ib.); 14, Wiraijuri (id., xiii. 436); 15, Wolgal (ib., 437);16, Wotjoballuk (Smithson. Rep. for 1883, p. 818);16– 26, Western Victorian tribes, ten in number (Dawson, Aust. Ab., 1 sq., 26); 27. Wa-imbio (Fison and Howitt, 291; Brough Smyth, i. 86); 28, Port Lincoln tribe (Nat. Tr. of S. Aust., 222); 29. Kamilaroi (Fison and Howitt, 43, 68); 30, Mount Gambier tribe (ib., 34); 31, Darling River tribe (ib.); 32, Mackay tribe, Queensland (ib.).

Male Descent – 1, Turra (Fison and Howitt, 285; J. A. I., xii. 44); 2, Narrinyeri (J. A. I., xii. 44, 508; Nat. Tr. of S. Aust., p. 12); 3, Kulin (J. A. I., xii. 44, 507); 4, Aldolinga (J. A. I., xii. 506);5, Wolgal (ib.); 6, Ikula – partly male (J. A. I., xii. 509); 7, Kiabara (J. A. I., xiii. 336, 341); 8, Mycoolon (J. A. I., xiii. 339, 343); a large tribe or group of tribes (no names given) to the south of the Gulf of Carpentaria (J. A. I., xii. 504). The Gournditch-Mara have male descent, but among them the rule of exogamy has disappeared (Fison and Howitt, p. 275 sq.).

With regard to the Kurnai in Victoria, after all the explanations of Messrs Fison and Howitt, it remains uncertain whether descent in that tribe is female or male. The existence of sex totems among them (which Messrs Fison and Howitt took as evidence that descent was ‘male as to boys, female as to girls’) proves nothing. The tribe is organised in local districts, and apparently a man may take a wife neither from his father’s nor his mother’s district (Fison and Howitt, p. 226 sq.). How deceitful inferences from local prohibitions may be appears from Dawson’s account of the Western Victorian tribes. Among these tribes a man may not marry into his father’s tribe (which seems to be a local division). From this one might infer that descent was male. But in addition to these local exogamous divisions, there are among these tribes totem clans, and children belong to their mother’s clan and may not marry into it. Therefore in these tribes descent is after all female (Dawson Aust. Abor., p. 26).

AMERICA – Female Descent. – 1, Thlinkets (A. Krause, Die Tlinket-Ind., p. 231 sq.); 2, British Columbians (Mayne, Br. Columb., 258); 3, Haidas (Geol. Surv. of Canada, Rep. for 1878–79, p. 134b);4, Loucheux (Smithson. Rep. for 1866, p. 315); 5, Kutchin (Dall, Alaska, p. 197); 6, Iroquois (Morgan, League of the Iroquois, 83; id., A. S., 64); 7, Wyandots or Hurons (First Report, 60; Morgan, A. S., 153); 8, Bella Coola Indians, British Columbia (Original-Mittheil., etc., i. p. 186); 9–17, Creeks, Seminoles, Hitchetes, Yoochees, Alabamas, Coosatees, Natchez (Gatschet, Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, p. 153; Morgan, A. S.,160 sq.; Archaeologia Americana, ii. p. 109); 18, 19, Choctaws, Cherokees (Archaeol. Amer., loc. cit.; Morgan, op. cit., 162, 164); 20, Lenape or Delawares (Morgan, op. cit., 166, 172); 21, 22, Otoes and Missouris (Morgan, op. cit., 156); 23, Mandans (Morgan, op. cit., 158); 24, Minnitarees (ib., 159); 25, Upsarokas or Crows (ib., 159); 26, Chickasas (ib., 163); 27, Menominees (ib., 170); 28, Munsees (ib., 173); 29, Mohegans (ib., 174); 30, Pequots (ib.); 31, Narragansetts (ib.); 32, Moquis (Bourke, Snake Dance, p. 230);33, Goajiros (Proc. Roy. Geogr. Soc., December 1885, p. 790);34, Arawaks (Brett. Ind. Tr. of Guiana, 98; Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, p. 185).

Male Descent – 1, Omahas (Third Rep., 225; Morgan, op. cit., 155); 2, Punkas (Morgan, loc. cit.); 3, Iowas (Morgan, 156); 4, Kaws (ib.); 5, Winnebagoes (id., 157); 6, Ojibways (id., 166; Collect. Minnesota Histor. Soc., v. p. 42); 7, Pottawatamies (Morgan, op. cit., 167); 8, Miamis (id., 168); 9, Shawnees (id., 169); 10, Sauks and Foxes (id., 170); 11, Blood Blackfeet (id., 171); 12, Piegan Blackfeet (ib.); 13, Abenakis (id., 175).

As to the totem tribes of Africa, descent among the Damaras is in the female line,[1] and there are traces of female kin among the Bechuanas.[2] Among the Bakalai property descends in the male line, but this is not a conclusive proof that descent is so reckoned;[3] all the clans in the neighbourhood of the Bakalai have female descent both for blood and property.[4] In Bengal, where there is a considerable body of totem tribes, Mr Risley says that after careful search he and his coadjutors have found no tribe with female descent, and only a single trace of it in one.[5] Colonel Dalton, however, states that the Kasias in Bengal are divided into exogamous tribes with descent in the female line; and with regard to this people he mentions, on the authority of Colonel Yule, that ‘some individuals have a superstitious objection to particular kinds of food, and will not allow such to be brought into their houses. Is not this superstition,’ asks Colonel Dalton very properly, ‘connected with their tribal divisions as amongst the Oraons of Chota Nagpur and the Bechuanas of Africa, who cannot eat the animal after which their tribe is named?’ At least if this is not totemism, it is uncommonly like it.[1] In the exogamous clans or ‘motherhoods’ of the Garos in Bengal descent is also in the female line, and some of the Garo legends point to totemism.[2] It is remarkable either that these examples should have been overlooked by Air Risley and his coadjutors or that both these tribes should have exchanged female for male kinship within the fourteen[3] years which elapsed between the publication of Colonel Dalton’s work and Mr Risley’s paper. With regard to the other undoubtedly totem tribes of Bengal (Oraons, etc.), we may take it on Mr Risley’s authority that descent is in the male line.

In the Australian tribal organisation of two phratries, four subphratries, and totem clans, there occurs a peculiar form of descent of which no plausible explanation has yet been offered. It seems that in all tribes thus organised the children are born into the subphratry neither of their father nor of their mother, and that descent in such cases is either female or male, according as the subphratry into which the children are born is the companion subphratry of their mother’s or of their father’s subphratry. In the former case we have what may be called indirect female descent; in the latter, indirect male descent. But it is only in the subphratry that descent is thus indirect. In the totem clan it is always direct; the child belongs to the clan either of its mother or of its father. Thus in the typical Australian organisation, descent, whether female or male, is direct in the phratry, indirect in the subphratry, and direct in the clan. To take examples, the following is the scheme of descent, so far as the phratries and subphratries are concerned, in the Kamilaroi.

Phratries

Male

Marries

Children are

Dilbi

{

Muri
Kubi

Kumbo
Ipai

Ipai
Kumbo

Kupathin

{

Ipai
Kumbo

Kubi
Muri

Muri
Kubi

This is an example of indirect female descent, because the children belong to the companion subphratry of their mother, not to the companion subphratry of their father. But in the totems the female descent is direct; e.g. if the father is Muri-Kangaroo and the mother is Kumbo-Emu, the children will be Ipai-Emu; if the mother is Kumbo-Bandicoot the children will be Ipai-Bandicoot.[1]

The following is the scheme of descent in the Kiabara tribe[2]:

Phratries

Male

Marries

Children are

Dilebi

{

Baring
Turowine

Bundah
Bulcoin

Turowine
Baring

Cubatine

{

Bulcoin
Bundah

Turowine
Baring

Bundah
Bulcoin

This is an example of indirect male descent, because the children belong to the companion subphratry of their father, not to the companion subphratry of their mother. We have no information as to the totems, but on the analogy of indirect female descent we should expect them to be taken from the father. This at any rate is true of a large tribe or group of tribes to the south of the Gulf of Carpentaria; their rules of marriage and descent, so far as concerns the subphratries, are like those of the Kiabara, and the totems (which at the lower Leichhardt river are the names of fish) are inherited from father to son.[3]

In some Australian tribes sons take their totem from their father and daughters from their mother. Thus the Dieri in South Australia are divided into two phratries, each of which includes under it sixteen totem clans (Caterpillar, Mullet, Dog, Rat, Kangaroo, Frog, Crow, etc.);[4] and if a Dog man marries a Rat woman, the sons of this marriage are Dogs and the daughters are Rats.[5] The Ikula (Morning Star) tribe, at the head of the Great Australian Bight, has, with certain exceptions, the same rule of descent.[1] The tribe includes four totem clans, namely, Būdera (Root), Kura (Native Dog), Būdū (Digger), and Wenŭng (Wombat). The rules of marriage and descent are as follows:

Male.

Marries

Children are

(m.)[2] Budera

{

(f.) Kura
or
(f.) Wenŭng

(m.) Budera; (f.) Kura

(m.) and (f.) Budera

(m.) Kura;

{

(f.) Budera
or
(f.) Būdū

(m.) Kura (f.) Budera

(m.) and (f.) Kura

(m.) Būdū

(f.) Wenŭng

(m.) Būdū; (f.) Wenŭng

(m.) Wenŭng

(f.) Būdū

(m.) Wenŭng(f.) Būdū

Here, in all cases except two, the son takes his totem from his father, the daughter from her mother. The exceptions are where Budera (m.) marries Wenŭng (f.), and where Kura (m.) marries Būdū (f.); in both which cases the children, whether sons or daughters, take their father’s totem. This, combined with the fact that no male of Budu or Wenung is allowed to marry a female of Budera or Kura, points, as Mr Howitt says, to a superiority of Budera and Kura over Būdū and Wenŭng.

It is obvious that the totems of the Dieri and Ikula are not sex totems. A sex totem is confined to members of one sex; whereas all the totems of the Dieri and Ikula are common to both men and women. It is of these totems (and not of sex totems) that it may be said in the words of Messrs Fison and Howitt, that descent is ‘male as to boys, female as to girls.’[3]

Besides the tribes whose line of descent is definitely fixed in the female or male line, or, as with the Dieri and Ikula, half-way between the two, there are a number of tribes which are wavering between female and male descent; amongst whom, in other words, a child may be entered in either his mother’s or his father’s clan. After the researches of Bachofen, M’Lennan, and Morgan, we may be sure that such a wavering marks a transition from female to male descent, and not conversely. Among the Haidas, children regularly belong to the totem clan of their mother; but in very exceptional cases, when the clan of the father is reduced in numbers, the newly born child may be given to the father’s sister to suckle. It is then spoken of as belonging to the paternal aunt, and is counted to its father’s clan.[1] Amongst the Delawares descent is regularly in the female line; but it is possible to transfer a child to its father’s clan by giving it one of the names which are appropriated to the father’s clan.[2] A similar practice prevails with the Shawnees, except that with them male descent is the rule and transference to the mother’s clan (or any other clan) by naming is the exception.[3] In the Hervey Islands, South Pacific, the parents settled beforehand whether the child should belong to the father’s or mother’s clan. The father usually had the preference, but sometimes, when the father’s clan was one which was bound to furnish human victims from its ranks, the mother had it adopted into her clan by having the name of her totem pronounced over it.[4] In Samoa at the birth of a child the father’s totem was usually prayed to first; but if the birth was tedious, the mother’s totem was invoked; and whichever happened to be invoked at the moment of birth was the child’s totem for life.[5]

These modes of effecting the change of kin touched only the children; others affected the children through the mother; they were transferred to their father’s clan by the previous transference of the mother. This, as M’Lennan has observed, was perhaps the intention and doubtless must have been the effect of the custom in Guinea of dedicating one wife to the husband’s Bossum or god.[1] The transference of the wife to the husband’s clan seems to have been the intention of smearing bride and bridegroom with each other’s blood.[2] Amongst some of the totem clans of Bengal the bride is transferred to the husband’s clan by ceremoniously eating or drinking with him.[3] Another mode is to purchase the woman and her offspring. Amongst the Banyai on the Zambesi, if the husband gives nothing, the children of the marriage belong to the wife’s family; but if he gives so many cattle to his wife’s parents the children are his.[4] In the Watubela Islands between New Guinea and Celebes a man may either pay for his wife before marriage, or he may, without paying, live as her husband in her parents’ house, working for her and her parents. In the former case the children belong to him; in the latter they belong to his wife’s family, but he may acquire them subsequently by paying the price.[5] So in Sumatra.[6] Similarly in some Californian tribes, the husband must live with his wife’s family and work for them till he has paid the full price for her and her children; the children of a wife who has not been paid for are regarded as bastards, and treated with contempt.[1]

The couvade or custom in accordance with which the husband takes to his bed and is treated as an invalid when his wife has given birth to a child, is perhaps a fiction intended to transfer to the father those rights over the children which, under the previous system of mother-kin, had been enjoyed by the mother alone.[2] The same may possibly be the intention of the apparently widespread custom of men dressing as women and women as men at marriage. Thus in the Greek island of Cos the bridegroom was attired as a woman when he received his bride.[3] In Central Africa a Masai man dresses as a girl for a month after marriage.[4] Argive brides wore false beards when they slept with their husbands.[5] The Alsatian custom of men dressing as women and women as men at the vintage festival is clearly part of an old marriage ceremony.[6] But perhaps all these mummeries are to be otherwise explained.

Lastly, the transference of the child to the father’s clan may be the object of a ceremony observed by the Todas in Southern India. When the wife has gone seven months with her first child she retires with her husband to the forest, where, at the foot of a tree, she receives from her husband a bow and arrows. She asks him, ‘What is the name of your bow?’ each clan apparently having a different name for its bow. The question and answer are repeated three times. She then deposits the bow and arrows at the foot of the tree. The pair remain on the spot all night, eating a meal in the evening and another in the morning before they return home.[1]

As a rule, perhaps, members of the same totem clan do not eat each other. To this, however, there are large exceptions. The Kurnai and Maneroo observe the rule, eating their slain enemies but not their slain friends.[2] But tribes about the Gulf of Carpentaria after a battle eat their slain friends but not their enemies; and amongst them children, when they die, are eaten.[3] Some Victorian tribes kill their new-born children, eat them, and give them to their elder children to eat, believing that the latter will thus possess the strength of the babes in addition to their own.[4] In some parts of New South Wales it was the custom for the first-born child of every woman to be eaten by the tribe as part of a religious ceremony.[5] The eating of aged relations[6] is intelligible on the principle that ‘the life is not allowed to go out of the family.’ Some of the Victorian tribes, who ate their relations but not their enemies nor members of a different tribe, asserted that they did so, not to gratify their appetites, but only as a symbol of respect and regret for the dead. They only ate the bodies of relations who had died by violence.[7] The Dieri have exact rules according to which they partake of the flesh of dead relations; the mother eats of her children and the children eat of their mother; but the father does not eat of his offspring, nor the offspring of their father.[1] This custom points to the time when the Dieri had female kinship, when therefore the father, as a member of a different tribe, had no right to partake of his child. The eating of dead relations is parallel to the custom of smearing the person with the juices which exude from their decaying corpses.[2] The object of these and similar ceremonies (see above, p. 742 sq.) is to keep the life, regarded as incarnate in the body and blood of the kinsmen, within the circle of the kin. Hence in some tribes at circumcision boys are laid on a platform, formed by the living bodies of the tribesmen,[3] and when the tooth is knocked out they are seated on the shoulders of men on whose breast the blood flows and is not wiped away.[4] The blood of the tribe is not allowed to be spilt on the ground, but is received on the bodies of tribesmen. Bleeding is a native Australian cure for headache, etc.; but in performing the operation they are very careful not to spill any of the blood on the ground, but sprinkle it on each other.[5] Similarly when bleeding is done as a means of producing rain, the blood is made to flow on men, not on the ground.[6] Another form of transferring the blood, i.e. the life of the kin, is seen in an Australian funeral ceremony; the relations gash themselves over the corpse till it and the grave are covered with their blood; this is said to strengthen the dead man and enable him to rise in another country.[7] Among some South American tribes the bones of deceased relations are ground into powder, mixed with a liquid, and so swallowed.[1]

When a North American tribe is on the march, the members of each totem clan camp together, and the clans are arranged in a fixed order in camp, the whole tribe being arranged in a great circle or in several concentric circles.[2] When the tribe lives in settled villages or towns, each clan has its separate ward.[3] The clans of the Osages are divided into war clans and peace clans; when they are out on the buffalo hunt, they camp on opposite sides of the tribal circle; and the peace clans are not allowed to take animal life of any kind; they must therefore live on vegetables unless they can obtain meat in exchange for vegetables from the war clans.[4] Members of the same clan are buried together and apart from those of other clans; hence the remains of husband and wife, belonging as they do to separate clans, do not rest together.[5] It is remarkable that among the Thlinkets the body must always be carried to the funeral pyre and burned by men of another totem,[6] and the presents distributed on these occasions by the representatives of the deceased must always be made to men of a different clan.[7]

*

Here we  must revert to the religious side of totemism, in order to consider some facts which have emerged from the study of its social aspect. We have seen that some phratries, both in America and Australia, bear the names of animals;[1] and in the case of the Thlinkets and Mohegans we have seen reason to believe that the animals which give their names to the phratries were once clan totems. The same seems to hold of the names of the Australian phratries, Eaglehawk, Crow, and Seal, or at least of the two former. For Eaglehawk and Crow are clan totems in other tribes, and are, besides, important figures in Australian mythology. Eaglehawk and Crow, as names of phratries, ‘extended over a large part of Victoria and over the greater part of the extreme west of New South Wales.’[2] They are clan totems of the Dieri in South Australia,[3] the Mukjarawaint in Western Victoria,[4] and the Ta-ta-thi and the Keramin tribes in New South Wales.[5] The eaglehawk is besides a clan totem of the Kamilaroi in New South Wales,[6] the Mycoolon in Queensland,[7] the Barinji in New South Wales,[8] and the Kūinmŭrbŭra in Queensland.[9] The crow is further a clan totem of the Turra tribe,[10] and the Mount Gambier tribe in South Australia,[11] the Kunandabŭri in Queensland,[12] and of the Wonghibon in New South Wales.[13] Among the Dieri the eaglehawk was supposed to inflict a penalty for violating a rule in connection with the knocking out the teeth at initiation.[1] Among the Kurnai the eaglehawk is greatly reverenced; his plumes and talons were used in necromancy; and he figures in their stories in company with the little owl.[2] The Kurnai also reverence the crow as one of their ancestors,[3] and consult it as a bird of omen.[4] According to a Victorian myth, the crow and the eaglehawk were the progenitors, or among the progenitors, of the human race, and now shine as stars in the sky.[5] According to another Victorian myth the eagle and the crow were the creators of the world, and divided the Murray blacks into two classes (clans or phratries), the Eaglehawk and Crow.[6]

Further, there are traces in Australia of the splitting of totems. Thus in the Ta-ta-thi tribe in New South Wales there are two Eaglehawk clans, namely, the Light Brown Eaglehawk and the Brown Coloured Eaglehawk, one in each of the two phratries.[7] Amongst the Kamilaroi there is a Kangaroo clan and a Red Kangaroo clan, one in each of the two phratries.[8] In the Kūnandabŭri tribe in Queensland there are totem clans – Brown Snake, Speckled Brown Snake, Carpet-Snake, also Rat, Kangaroo Rat, and Bush Rat.[9] In the Mūkjarawaint in Western Victoria there are White Cockatoo and Black Cockatoo, also Buff-coloured Snake and Black Snake;[10] in other Victorian tribes there are the Long-Billed Cockatoo and the Banksian Cockatoo;[11] in the Wakelbŭra in Queensland there are Large Bee and Small Bee in different phratries;[12] in the Mycoolon there are Whistling Duck and Black Duck.[13]

From all this we should infer that the objects from which the Australian phratries take their names were once totems. But there seems to be direct evidence that both the phratries and subphratries actually retain, at least in some tribes, their totems. Thus the Port Mackay tribe in Queensland is divided into two phratries, Yungaru and Wutaru, with subphratries Gurgela, Burbia, Wungo, and Kubera; and the Yungaru phratry has for its totem the alligator, and Wutaru the kangaroo;[1] while the subphratries have for their totems the emu (or the carpet snake), iguana, opossum, and kangaroo (or scrub turkey).[2] As the subphratries of this tribe are said to be equivalent to the subphratries of the Kamilaroi, it seems to follow that the subphratries[3] of the Kamilaroi (Muri, Kubi, Ipai, and Kumbo) have or once had totems also. Hence it appears that in tribes organised in phratries, subphratries, and clans, each man has three totems – his phratry totem, his subphratry totem, and his clan totem. If we add a sex totem and an individual totem, each man in the typical Australian tribe has five distinct kinds of totems. What degree of allegiance he owes to his subphratry totem and phratry totem respectively we are not told; indeed, the very existence of such totems, as distinct from clan totems, appears to have been generally overlooked. But we may suppose that the totem bond diminishes in strength in proportion to its extension; that therefore the clan totem is the primary tie, of which the subphratry and phratry totems are successively weakened repetitions.

In these totems superposed on totems may perhaps be discerned a rudimentary classification of natural objects under heads which bear a certain resemblance to genera, species, etc. This classification is by some Australian tribes extended so as to include the whole of nature. Thus the Port Mackay tribe in Queensland (see above, p. 781 sq.) divides all nature between the phratries; the wind belongs to one phratry and the rain to another; the sun is Wutaru and the moon is Yungaru; the stars, trees, and plants are also divided between the phratries.[1] As the totem of Wutaru is kangaroo and of Yungaru alligator, this is equivalent to making the sun a kangaroo and the moon an alligator.

The Mount Gambier tribe in South Australia is divided into two phratries (Kumi and Kroki), which again are subdivided into totem clans. Everything in nature belongs to a totem clan, thus[2]:

Phratries

Totem Clans

Includes

1. Müla = Fish-Hawk

Smoke, honeysuckle, trees, etc.

2. Parangal = Pelican

Dogs, blackwood trees, fire, frost (fem.)

Kumi

3· Wā = Crow

Rain, thunder, lightning, winter, hail, clouds, etc.

4· Wĭla = Black Cockatoo

Stars, moon, etc.

5. Karato = A harmless Snake

Fish, stringybark trees, seals, eels, etc.

Kroki

1. Wērio = Tea-Tree

Ducks, wallabies, owls, cray-fish, etc.

2. Mürna = An edible Root

Bustards, quails, dolvich (a small kangaroo)

3· Karáal = Black crestless Cockatoo

Kangaroo, sheoak trees, summer, sun, autumn (fem.), wind (fem.)

With reference to this classification Mr D. S. Stewart, the authority for it, says, ‘I have tried in vain to find some  reason for the arrangement. I asked, “To what division does a bullock belong?” After a pause came the answer, “It eats grass: it is Boortwerio.” I then said, “A cray-fish does not eat grass; why is it Boortwerio?” Then came the standing reason for all puzzling questions: “That is what our fathers said it was.”’[1] Mr Stewart’s description of the respect paid by a tribesman to the animals of the same ‘subdivision’ as himself has been already quoted (see above, p. 702 sq.); it seems to imply that a man is debarred from killing not only his clan totem (when that is an animal) but also all the animals which are classed under his clan. The natural objects thus classed under and sharing the respect due to the totem may be conveniently called, as Mr Howitt proposes,[2] subtotems. Again, the Wakelbura tribe (Elgin Downs, Queensland) is divided into two phratries (Mallera and Wuthera), four subphratries (Kurgila, Banbe, Wungo, and Obu), and totem clans. Everything in nature is classed under its phratry and subphratry. Thus the broad-leaved box-tree is of the Mallera phratry and the Banbe subphratry, and so is the dingo or native dog. When a man of this tribe dies his corpse must be covered with the boughs of a tree which belongs to the same phratry and subphratry as himself; thus if he is Mallera-Banbe he is covered with boughs of the broad-leaved box-tree, for it also is Mallera-Banbe.[3] So in summoning an assembly the message stick carried by the messenger must be of the same tribal division as the sender and the bearer of the message.[4] Of a group of tribes in N.S. Wales it is said that everything in nature is divided among the tribesmen, some claiming the trees, others the plains, others the sky, stars, wind, rain, and so forth.[5] Again, the Wotjoballuk tribe in North-western Victoria has a system of subtotems, thus[6] –

Phratries

Totem Clans

Subtotems

Krokitch

1. Hot Wind

Each totem has subordinate to it a number of bjects, animal or vegetable, e.g. kangaroo, red gumtree, etc.

2. White crestless Cockatoo

3. Belonging to the Sun

Gamutch

4. Deaf Adder

5. Black Cockatoo

Ditto

6. Pelican

Edit Line Bottom.

Of the subtotems in this tribe Mr Howitt says, ‘They appear to me to be totems in a state of development. Hot wind has at least five of them, white cockatoo has seventeen, and so on for the others. That these subtotems are now in process of gaining a sort of independence may be shown by the following instance: a man who is Krokitch-Wartwut (hot wind) claimed to own all the five subtotems of hot wind (three snakes and two birds), yet of these there was one which he specially claimed as “belonging” to him, namely, Moiwuk (carpet-snake). Thus his totem, hot wind, seems to have been in process of subdivision into minor totems, and this man’s division might have become hot wind carpet-snake had not civilisation rudely stopped the process by almost extinguishing the tribe.’

Combining this important evidence as to the growth of totems with the evidence already noticed of the process by which clans tend to become phratries, we get a view of the growth, maturity, and decay of totems. As subtotems they are growing; as clan totems they are grown; as subphratric and phratric totems they are in successive stages of decay. As fast as one totem attains its full development, and then, beaten out thinner and thinner, melts into the vast reservoir of nature from which it sprang, it is followed at equal intervals by another and another; till all things in nature are seen to be, as it were, in motion, and after a period of mustering and marshalling to fall into their places in the grand totem march.[1]

When, through the change of female to male kinship, and the settlement of a tribe in fixed abodes, society has ceased to present the appearance of a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of clans, and has shaken down into a certain stability and permanence of form, it might be expected that with the longer memory which accompanies an advance in culture the totems which have been generalised into the divinities of larger groups should no longer pass into oblivion, but should retain an elevated rank in the religious hierarchy, with the totems of the subordinate tribal divisions grouped under them either as subordinate divinities or as different manifestations of the general tribal gods. This appears to have been the state of totemism in Polynesia, where geographical conditions favoured an isolation and hence a permanence of the local groups such as was scarcely attainable by savages on the open plains of Australia or the prairies and savannahs of America.[1] Hence in Polynesia we find a considerable approximation to a totem Olympus. In Samoa there were general village gods as well as gods of particular families; and the same deity is incarnate in the form of different animals. One god, for example, is incarnate in the lizard, the owl, and the centipede;[2] another in the bat, domestic fowl, pigeon, and prickly sea urchin;[3] another in the bat, the sea-eel, the cuttle-fish, the mullet, and the turtle;[4] another in the owl and the mullet;[5] another in the bird Porphyris Samoensis, the pigeon, the rail-bird, and the eel;[6] another in the turtle, sea-eel, octopus, and garden lizard.[7] It seems a fair conjecture that such multiform deities are tribal or phratric totems, with the totems of the tribal or phratric subdivisions tacked on as incarnations. As the attribution of human qualities to the totem is of the essence of totemism, it is plain that a deity generalised from or including under him a number of distinct animals and plants must, as his animal and vegetable attributes contradict and cancel each other, tend more and more to throw them off and to retain only those human qualities which to the savage apprehension are the common element of all the totems whereof he is the composite product. In short, the tribal totem tends to pass into an anthropomorphic god. And as he rises more and more into human form, so the subordinate totems sink from the dignity of incarnations into the humbler character of favourites and clients; until, at a later age, the links which bound them to the god having wholly faded from memory, a generation of mythologists arises who seek to patch up the broken chain by the cheap method of symbolism. But symbolism is only the decorous though transparent veil which a refined age loves to throw over its own ignorance of the past.

Apart from the social changes which have favoured the passage of totemism into a higher form of faith, we can detect in the totemic philosophy itself some advances towards the formation of a deity distinct from and superior to all the individuals of the totem species. Thus some North American Indians think that each species of animal has an elder brother, who is the origin of all the animals of the species, and is besides marvellously great and powerful. The elder brothers of birds are in the sky; the elder brothers of animals are in the waters.[1] The Patagonians, who are divided into clans of the Tiger, lion, Guanoco, Ostrich, and so on, think that these clans have each its appropriate deity living in vast caverns underground, with whom the souls of dead clansmen go to dwell.[2] The Peruvians thought that ‘of all the beasts of the earth, there is one alone in heaven like unto them, that which hath care of their procreation and increase.’[1] In all such views the strict totemic standpoint is abandoned. Pure totemism is democratic; it is a religion of equality and fraternity; one individual of the totem species is as good as another. When, therefore, one individual of the totem species is, as elder brother, guardian spirit, or what not, raised to a position of superiority over all the rest, totemism is practically given up, and religion, like society, is advancing to the monarchical stage.

While totemism as a religion tends to pass into the worship first of animal gods and next of anthropomorphic gods with animal attributes, totem clans tend, under the same social conditions, to pass into local clans. Amongst the Kurnai, shut in between the mountains and the sea, phratries and clans have been replaced by exogamous local groups, which generally take their names from the districts, but in some cases from men of note.[2] The Coast Murring tribe in New South Wales has also substituted exogamous local groups for kinship divisions; but, though their totems are decadent and anomalous, they still keep a dying grip on the people, for a man cannot marry a woman of the permitted locality if she is of the same totem as himself.[3]

The totem clans of the Bechuanas have made some progress towards becoming local groups; for the clans as a rule keep together in their own districts, which are known accordingly as ‘the dwelling of the men of the chamois,’ ‘the abode of the men of the monkey,’ etc.[4] In America, if we cannot detect the substitution of local for kindred groups, we can at least see a step towards it in that relaxation of the rule of exogamy which has been observed in widely separated tribes. For example, among the Omahas, who have male descent, a man may marry a woman of the same totem as himself provided she be of another tribe.[1]

Geographical Diffusion of Totemism – In Australia totemism is almost universal.[2] In North America it may be roughly said to prevail, or have prevailed, among all the tribes east of the Rocky Mountains,[3] and among all the Indian (but not the Eskimo) tribes on the north-west coast as far south as the United States frontier. On the other hand, highly competent authorities have failed to find it among the tribes of Western Washington, North-western Oregon, and California.[4] In Panama it exists apparently among the Guaymies: each tribe, family, and individual has a guardian animal, the most prevalent being a kind of parrot.[5] In South America totemism is found among the Goajiros on the borders of Colombia and Venezuela,[1] the Arawaks in Guiana,[2] the Bosch negroes also in Guiana,[3] and the Patagonians.[4] Finding it at such distant points of the continent, we should expect it to be widely prevalent; but with our meagre knowledge of the South American Indians this is merely conjecture. The aborigines of Peru and the Salivas on the Orinoco believed in the descent of their tribes from animals, plants, and natural objects, such as the sun and earth;[5] but this, though a presumption, is not a proof of totemism.

In Africa we have seen that totemism prevails in Senegambia, among the Bakalai on the equator, and among the Damaras and Bechuanas in Southern Africa.[6] There are traces of totemism elsewhere in Africa. In Ashantee different animals are worshipped in different districts, which points to totemism.[7] In Eastern Africa the Gallas are divided into two exogamous sections and have certain forbidden foods.[8] In Abyssinia certain districts or families will not eat of certain animals or parts of animals.[9] The territory of the Hovas in Madagascar is divided and subdivided into districts, the names of the subdivisions referring ‘rather to clans and divisions of people than to place.’ One of these names is ‘the powerful bird,’ i.e. either the eagle or the vulture. The same clan is found occupying separate districts.[1] One Madagascar tribe regard a species of lemur as ‘an embodiment of the spirit of their ancestors, and therefore they look with horror upon killing them.’[2] Other Malagasy tribes and families refrain from eating pigs and goats;[3] others will not eat certain vegetables nor even allow them to be carried into their houses.[4] The only occasion when the Sakalava tribe in Madagascar kill a bull is at the circumcision of a child, who is placed on the bull’s back during the customary invocation.[5]

In Bengal, as we have seen, there are numerous totem tribes among the non-Aryan races. In Siberia the Yakuts are divided into totem clans; the clansmen will not kill their totems (the swan, goose, raven, etc.);[6] and the clans are exogamous.[7] The Altaians, also in Siberia, are divided into twenty-four clans, which, though interfused with each other, retain strongly the clan feeling; the clans are exogamous; each has its own patron divinity and religious ceremonies; and the only two names of clans of these and kindred tribes of which the meanings are given are names of animals.[8] There are traces of totemism in China.[9] In Polynesia it existed, as we have seen, in Samoa. In Melanesia it appears in Fiji,[1] the New Hebrides,[2] and the Solomon Islands.[3] Amongst the Dyaks there are traces of totemism in the prohibition of the flesh of certain animals to certain tribes, respect for certain plants, etc.[4] It exists in the islands of Ambon, Uliase, Leti, Moa, Lakor, Keisar (Makisar), Wetar, and the Aaru and Babar archipelagoes.[5] In the Philippine Islands there are traces of it in the reverence for certain animals, the belief that the souls of ancestors dwell in trees, etc.[6]

With regard to ancient nations, totemism may be regarded as certain for the Egyptians, and highly probable for the Semites,[7] Greeks, and Latins. If proved for one Aryan people, it might be regarded as proved for all; since totemism could scarcely have been developed by any one Aryan branch after the dispersion, and there is no evidence or probability that it ever was borrowed. Professor Sayce finds totemism among the ancient Babylonians, but his evidence is not conclusive.[8]

Origin of Totemism – No satisfactory explanation of the origin of totemism has yet been given. Mr Herbert Spencer finds the origin of totemism in a ‘misinterpretation of nicknames’: savages first named themselves after natural objects; and then, confusing these objects with their ancestors of the same names, reverenced them as they already reverenced their ancestors.[9] The objection to this view is that it attributes to verbal misunderstandings far more influence than, in spite of the so-called comparative mythology, they ever seem to have exercised. Sir John Lubbock also thinks that totemism arose from the habit of naming persons and families after animals; but in dropping the intermediate links of ancestor-worship and verbal misunderstanding, he has stripped the theory of all that lent it even an air of plausibility.[1]

Lastly, it may be observed that, considering the farreaching effects produced on the fauna and flora of a district by the preservation or extinction of a single species of animals or plants, it appears probable that the tendency of totemism to preserve certain species of plants and animals must have largely influenced the organic life of the countries where it has prevailed. But this question, with the kindred question of the bearing of totemism on the original domestication of animals and plants, is beyond the scope of the present article.

Literature

Apart from the original authorities which have been referred to, the literature on totemism is very scanty. The importance of totemism for the early history of society was first recognised by Mr J. F. M’Lennan, in papers published in the Fortnightly Review (October and November 1869, February 1870). The subject has since been treated of by E. B. Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 284 sq.; Sir John Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation, 260 sq.; A. Lang, Custom and Myth, p. 260, etc.; E. Clodd, Myths and Dreams, p. 99 sq.; W. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia. See also Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed., article ‘Sacrifice,’ vol. xxi. p. 135.

1. Voyages and Travels of an Indian Interpreter, p. 86, London, 1791.

2. History of the Ojebway Indians, London, 1861, p. 138.

3. ‘History of the Ojibways,’ in Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, vol. v. (St Paul, Minn., 1885) p. 34.

4. Ancient Society, p. 165.

5. See Academy, 27th Sept. 1884, p. 203.

6. In J. A. Cuoq’s Lexique de la langue Algonquine (Montreal, 1886), p. 312. Thavenet admits that the Indians use ote in the sense of ‘mark’ (limited apparently to a family mark), but argues that the word must mean family or tribe.

7. Expedition to Itasca Lake, New York, 1834, p. 146, etc. Petitot spells it todem in his Monographie des Dènè-Dindjié, p. 40; but he writes otémisme in his Traditions Indiennes du Canada Nord-ouest, p. 446.

1. Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1883, p. 77.

2. Timothy Dwight, Travels in New England and New York (London, 1823), iv. p. 184.

3. Callin, North American Indians, ii. p. 128.

4. Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Paris, 1781, vi. p. 171.

5. A. Mackenzie, Voyages through the Continent of North America, p. cxviii; Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 118. So with the Kaniagmuts, Dall, Alaska and its Resources, p. 404 sq.

1. Morgan, Anc. Soc., p. 180.

2. Third Ann. Rep. of Bur. of Ethnol., Washington, 1884, pp. 229, 231. Another Buffalo clan among the Omahas has a similar legend (ib. p. 233).

3. Schoolcraft, The American Indians, p. 95 sq.; Lewis and Clarke, Travels to the Source of the Missouri River, 8vo, London, 1815, i. p. 12.

4. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, iii. 268 sq.

5. Schoolcraft, Ind. Tri., iv. 86. With the Great Mother Mr Morgan compares the female deity worshipped by the Shawnees under the title of ‘Our Grandmother’ (Anc. Soc., p. 179 n.).

6. Schoolcraft, op. cit., iv. 224 sq., cf. v. 217; Boscana, in A. Robinson’s Life in California, p. 298. Mr Stephen Powers, perhaps the best living authority on the Californian Indians, finds no totems among them (Tribes of California, p. 5). See, however, pp. 147, 199 of his work for some traces of totemism.

1. Brinton, The Lenape and their Legends, p. 39.

2. Geological Survey of Canada, Report of Progress for 1878–79, p. 149B sq.; F. Poole, Queen Charlotte Islands, p. 136; Ausland, 6th October 1884, p. 796. Among the neighbouring Thlinkets the raven (Jēshl) is rather a creator than an ancestor. See Holmberg, ‘Ethnographische Skizzen ueber die Voelker des russischen Amerika,’ in Acta Soc. Sc. Fennicae, Helsingfors, iv. (1856) p. 292 sq.; Baer and Helmersen, Beitr. Zur Kenntn. des russ. Reiches, i. p. 104. So with the wolf in North-West America; it made men and women out of two sticks (Baer and Helmersen, op. cit. i. 93). In Thlinket mythology the ancestor of the Wolf clan is said never to appear in wolf form (Holmberg, op. cit., p. 293).

3. Dall, Alaska, p. 197.

4. Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, p. 184.

5. Garcilasso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas, pt. i. bk. i. chs. 9, 18.

6. Sir George Grey, Vocabulary of the Dialects of South-Western Australia, pp. 29, 61, 63, 66, 71.

7. Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 280.

1. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, p. 209; Asiat. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 76.

2. Revue d’Ethnographie, iii. p. 396, v. p. 81.

3. Turner, Samoa, p. 281.

4. Raffles, History of Java, ed. 1817, i. p. 328.

5. J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige Rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua (The Hague, 1886), pp. 32, 253, 334, 414, 432.

6. Bourke, Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, p. 177.

7. Du Chaillu, Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, p. 308.

8. Turner, op. cit., p. 77.

1. E. James, Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, London, 1823, ii. p. 48 sq.; Third Ann. Rep. of Bur. of Ethnol., p. 231.

2. Third Report, p. 231.

3. Grey, Vocabulary, 4, 95.

4. Riedel, op. cit., p. 376 sq.

5. Reclus, Nouv. Géogr. Univ., vii. p. 755.

6. Stewart, in Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 169.

7. Native Tubes of South Australia, p. 64.

1. Jour. Anthrop. Inst., xiii. p. 300.

2. Ib., p. 303.

3. Grey, Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, ii. p. 228.

4. R. C. Mayne, British Columbia, p. 258.

5. Lewis and Clark, i. p. 12.

6. J. Long, op. cit., p. 87.

7. A. Mackenzie, loc. cit.; Bancroft, i. 118. The dog does not appear in the list of Ojibway totems given by Morgan (A. S., p. 166) and p. Jones (Hist. of Ojebway Indians, p. 138).

1. J. Heckewelder, ‘Account of the History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations who once inhabited Pennsylvania and the neighbouring States,’ in Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc., Philadelphia, 1819, i. p. 245. This, combined with the mention of the ground-hog in the myths of their origin, points, as Heckewelder observes, to a ground-hog tribe or clan (ib., p. 244).

2. C. J. Andersson, Lake Ngami, p. 222 sq.

3. Revue d’Ethnographie, iii. p. 396.

4. Dalton, in Trans. Ethnolog. Soc., New Series, vi. p. 36; id., Ethnol. of Bengal, pp. 189, 254; As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 76. Among the Munda totems are the eel and tortoise; among the Oraons the hawk, crow, heron, eel, kerketar bird, tiger, monkey, and the leaves of the Ficus Indicus.

5. As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 79.

1. Dalton, Ethnol. of Bengal, p. 327.

2. Riedel, op. cit., pp. 61, 253, 341, 414, 432.

3. Grey, Journals, ii. 228 sq.

4. Dalton, Ethn. of Bengal, p. 254; As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 76.

5. Dalton, op. cit., 254; id., in Trans. Ethnol. Soc., vi. p. 36; As. Quart. Rev., loc. cit.

6. E. James, Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, ii. p. 48; Third Rep. Bur. Ethnol., p. 231.

7. Riedel, op. cit., p. 61.

8. James, op. cit., ii. 47; Third Rep., 225.

9. Third Rep., 231.

1. Third Rep., 235.

2. Ib., 237.

3. Ib., 239. There seems to be a cross connection between the Eagles and the Buffaloes among the Omahas; for a subclan of the Buffalo clan (the Black Shoulder clan) had a series of eagle birth-names in addition to the buffalo birth-names common to the whole clan (ib., 231 sq.).

4. Ib., 240. James (op. cit., ii. 49) says they ‘do not touch turtles or tortoises.’

5. James, loc. cit.; Third Rep., 241.

6. James, loc. cit.; Third Rep., 244.

7. James, loc. cit.; Third Rep., 245.

8. Third Rep., 245 sq. Verdigris was thought to symbolise the blue sky.

9. Third Rep., 248.

10. James, ii. 50; Third Rep., 248.

11. As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 75.

1. V. Ball, Jungle Life in India, p. 89.

2. Herod., ii. 42, 81; Plut. Is. et Os., §§ 4, 72. Again the sheep was worshipped in Samos (Aelian, N. A. xii. 40; Clem. Alex., Protrept., 39); and Pythagoras, a native of Samos, forbade his followers to wear or be buried in woollen garments (Herod., ii. 81; Apuleius, De Magia, 56).

3. Dalton, in Tr. Ethnol. Soc., vi. 36. For the totem, id., Ethnol. of Bengal, p. 254; As. Quart. Rev., 76. The reason of the taboo is perhaps a fear of contracting blindness. Some North American Indians will not allow their children to touch the mole, believing that its blindness is infectious (J. Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 133).

4. Tr. Ethnol. Soc., vi. 36.

5. As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 77.

6. Casalis, The Basutos, p. 211.

1. Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, p. 255; John Mackenzie, Ten Years North of the Orange River, p. 135 n.; Casalis, The Basutos, p. 211.

2. J. Mackenzie, op. cit., 391 sq.; cf. Jour. Anthrop. Inst., xvi. p. 84.

3. J. Mackenzie, op. cit., 135.

4. Turner, Samoa, p. 76.

5. Turner, Samoa, 70.

6. As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 77.

7. Turner, op. cit., p. 74.

1. Morgan, A. S., p. 170.

2. Ib., p. 171.

3. Third Rep., 238, 248.

4. Morgan, A. S., 170.

5. Turner, op. cit., p. 71.

6. Ib., p. 77.

7. Loskiel, History of the Mission of the United Brethren in North America, i. p. 40; De Schweinitz, Life of Zeisberger, p. 95 sq.

8. Native Tubes of South Australia, p. 63.

9. Turner, op. cit., p. 64.

10. Raffles, Hist. of Java, i. p. 328, ed. 1817.

11. Bourke, Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, pp. 252, 336.

1. J. A. I., ii. 252, 254; id., iii. 239; Rein, Japan, i. 446 sq.; Siebold, Ethnol. Stud. ueber die Ainos, p. 26; Scheube, Der Baerencultus und die Baerenfest der Ainos, p. 44 sq. Young bears are similarly brought up (though not suckled) by the Giljaks, a people on the lower Amoor, who are perhaps akin to the Ainos (Scheube, Die Ainos, p. 17; Revue d’Ethnographie, ii. p. 307 sq.).

2. Turner, op. cit., p. 21, cf. 26, 60 sq.

3. Charles New, Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa, p. 122.

4. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, p. 195.

5. Aelian, Ν. Α., xiii. 26. The solemn burial of a sardine by a riverside is a ceremony observed in Spain on Ash Wednesday (Folklore Record, iv. 184 sq.).

6. ἀγείρει αὐτῷ τἀ ρòς τὴν ταφήv. Schol. on Apollonius Rhodius, ii. 124.

1. Boscana, in Alfred Robinson’s Life in California, p. 291 sq.; Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, iii. p. 168.

2. Brinton, The Lenape and their Legends, p. 39; Morgan, A. S., p. 171; Heckewelder, p. 247.

3. Acad., 27th Sept. 1884, p. 203, quoting from the Canadian Journal (Toronto), No. 14, March 1858.

4. L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden, p. 251.

5. Steller, Beschr. von dem Lande Kamtschatka, p. 276.

6. J. Mackenzie, Ten Years North of the Orange River, p. 151.

1. Du Chaillu, Equat. Afr., p. 309.

2. Third Rep., 225.

3. Ib., 231.

4. James, Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, ii. p. 50.

5. Third Rep., 275.

6. Riedel, op. cit., p. 452.

7. Plutarch, De Superst., 10; Selden, De dis Syris, p. 269 sq., Leipsic, 1668.

8. Plutarch, Isis et Os.,8.

9. J. Crevaux, Voyages dans l’Amérique du Sud, p. 59.

1. Low, Sarawak, p. 265 sq., 306.

2. Turner, Samoa, p. 17 sq.

3. Ib., p. 50.

4. Ib., 51.

5. Ib., 72.

6. Ib., 61, 75.

7. Ib., 40.

8. Ib., 76.

9. Ib., 76.

10. Ib., 70.

11. Ib., 37.

1. Turner, Samoa, p. 31 sq.

2. Ib., 38, cf. 72.

3. Ib., 59, cf. 58, 69 sq., 72.

4. J. A. I., xiii. p. 192.

5. T. L. Mitchell, Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, ii. p. 341.

6. See especially Eyre, Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia, ii. 293 sq.; but see below, p. 741 sq.

7. J. A. I., xiii. 456, xiv. 316.

8. Native Tubes of South Australia, p. 63.

1. Eyre, Jour., ii. 328.

2. J. A. I., xiv. 350.

3. Mr Samuel Gason of Beltana, South Australia, in a letter to the present writer. See J. A. I., xvii.

4. Turner, op. cit., p. 67 sq.

5. Casalis, The Basutos, p. 211.

6. Lett. Édif., vi. p. 171.

7. Morgan, A. S., p. 180, cf. id., 86.

8. Adair, Hist. Amer. Indians, p. 16.

9. Dorsey, in American Antiquarian, v. 274.

10. Revue d’Ethnographie, iii. p. 396.

1. Pliny, Ν. H., xxviii. 30.

2. Varro in Priscian x. 32, vol. i. p. 524, ed. Keil. For the snake descent of the clan see Strabo, xiii. 1, 14; Aelian, Ν. Α., xii. 39.

3. ‘Relation de la Mission des Moxes dans le Perou,’ printed in Fr Coreal’s Voyages aux Indes Occidentales, iii, p. 249, and in Lett. Édif., viii. p. 89.

4. Varro, loc. cit.; Pliny, N. H., vii. § 14. Pliny has got it wrong end on. He says that if the snakes did not leave the children they were bastards. We may safely correct his statement by Varro’s.

5. Revue d’Ethnographie, iii. p. 397.

6. Ellis, Hist. of Madagascar, i. p. 157. According to Mr Sibree, this was only done with children born in the month Alakaosy (Folklore Rec., ii. 35 sq.).

1. Robinson, Descriptive Account of Assam, p. 342 sq.

2. Livingstone, South Africa, p. 255.

3. J. Canter Visscher, Letters from Malabar, p. 69. For an ordeal by crocodiles in Madagascar (where the crocodile is much reverenced) see Folklore Rec., ii. p. 35, cf. p. 21.

4. Visscher, op. cit., p. 162. For ordeal by snake-bite cf. Asiatick Researches, i. p. 391.

5. Dalton, Eth. of Ben., p. 214. For the Sonthal (Santal) totems see As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 76. For other oaths bearing strong impress of a totem origin (swearing on a bear’s skin, a lizard’s skin, earth of an ant hill, etc.) see Dalton, op. cit., pp. 38, 158, 294.

1. Strabo, xiii. 1, 14. In Madagascar a god of healing was also, like Aesculapius, a god of serpents; his attendants carried living serpents in their hands (Folklore Rec., ii. 20).

2. James, Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, i. p. 247.

3. Revue d’Ethnographie, iii. p. 396.

4. Pliny, N. H., xxviii. 30.

5. Third Rep., 238.

6. Turner, Samoa, 70.

7. Ib., p. 71.

8. J. A. I., xiii. 195 n., xvi. 46.

9. Ib., xv. p. 415.

1. Turner, Samoa, 21, 24, 60.

2. Ib., 25 sq. Other omens were drawn from the rainbow (ib., 21, 35), shooting star (21), species of fish (27), clouds (27), cuttle-fish (29), herons (35), a creeper-bird (38), lizards (44, 47), a species of bird (48), kingfishers (48, 54), dogs (49), bats (51), shark’s teeth (55), lightning (59 sq.), rail bird (61, 65), the bird called porphyris Samoensis (64), eels (66), and centipedes (69).

3. Turner, ib., 66, 72.

4. Third Report, p. 238 sq. The idea perhaps is that the birds eat in the persons of their clansmen, and give tangible evidence that they have eaten their fill. But cf. Riedel, op. cit., p. 327.

5. Third Rep., 248. With this custom compare a Syrian superstition. When caterpillars invaded a vineyard or field the virgins were gathered and one of the caterpillars was taken and a girl made its mother. Then they bewailed and buried it. Thereafter they conducted the ‘mother’ to the place where the caterpillars were, consoling her, in order that all the caterpillars might leave the garden (Lagarde, Reliquiæ juris Ecclesiastici Antiquissimæ, p. 135). Cf. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xv. p. 93; The People of Turkey, by a Consul’s daughter and wife, ii. p. 247.

1. Third Rep., 240.

2. Ib., 241.

1. But according to Mr Beauchamp (American Antiquarian, viii. p. 85) no such totem existed, and the mention of it is due to a misunderstanding.

1. Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das innere Nord-Amerika, ii. pp. 190, 270.

2. Ib., ii. 224. The Minnitarees regard the wolf as especially strong ‘medicine’ (ib.). This is the spirit, if not the letter, of totemism.

3. Lewis and Clarke, Travels to the Source of the Missouri River, i. p. 123, London, 1815.

4. Holmberg, in Acta Soc. Scient. Fennicæ, iv. 293 Sq., 328; Petroff, Report on the Population, Industries, and Resources of Alaska, p. 166.

5. J. G. Müller, Gesch. d. americanischen Urreligionen, p. 327.

1. Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., iii. 269.

2. Third Rep., 229.

3. Ib., 235.

4. Ib., 238.

5. Ib., 240.

6. Livingstone, Zambesi, p. 114. But it does not appear whether this people have totems or not.

7. Livingstone, South Africa, p. 532.

8. Id., Zambesi, p. 115. On the general custom of filing the teeth among savages see Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xiv, p. 213 sq.

1. Tr. Ethnol. Soc., New Series, i. p. 287 sq.; Jour, and Proc. R. Soc. N. S. Wales, xvii. (1883) p. 26; cf. G. F. Angas, Savage Life and Scenes in Austr. and New Zeal, i. pp. 92, 98; Eyre, Jour., ii. p. 342.

2. Collins, Account of the English Colony of N. S. Wales, London, 1798, p. 581.

3. T. L. Mitchell, Three Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales, ii. p. 339.

4. Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 253.

5. Geolog. Surv. of Canada, Rep. for 1878–79, pp. 108b, 135b; Smithsonian Contrib. to Knowl., vol. xxi. No. 267, p. 3 sq.; Nature, 20th January 1887, p. 285; Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1886, p. 67 sq. How different the conventional representation in tattooing may be from the true, we learn from the Hindu tattoo marks (conventionally supposed to represent ducks, geese, peacocks, etc.) depicted by Major-General A. Cunningham in his work, The Stûpa of Bharut, plate lii.

6. E. de Schweinitz, Life and Times of David Zeisberger, p. 78.

1. James, in Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner, p. 315.

2. A. Mackenzie, Voyages through the Continent of North America, p. cxx.

3. Lettr. Édif., vi. 32.

4. Martius, Zur Ethnographie America’s zumal Brasiliens, p. 55.

5. D’Albertis, New Guinea, i. p. 419.

6. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 48.

7. Livingstone, Last Journals, i. p. 110, cf. p. 125.

8. Gill, Myths and Songs of the S. Pacific, p. 95.

9. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. pp. xli sq., 295, ii. 313; Eyre, Journ., ii. 333, 335; Ridley, Kamilaroi, p. 140; Journ. and Proceed. R. Soc. N. S. Wales, 1882, p. 201.

10. Mr Chatfield, in Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 66 n. On tattooing in connection with totemism see Haberlandt, in Mittheil. der anthrop. Gesell, in Wien, xv. (1885) p. [53] sq.

11. Among most of the Californian tribes, the Ainos of Japan, the Chukchi in Siberia, and many of the aborigines of India, it is the women alone who are tattooed. See S. Powers, Tribes of California, p. 109; Siebold, Ethnol. Stud. ueber die Ainos, p. 15; Scheube, Die Ainos, p. 6; Nordenskiöld, Voyage of the Vega, p. 296, popular edition; Dalton,. of Bengal, pp. 114, 157, 161, 219, 251. (Among the Nagas of Upper Assam the men tattoo. Dalton, op. cit., p. 39 sq.) Old pioneers in California are of opinion that the reason why the women alone tattoo is that in case they are taken captive they may be recognised by their own people when opportunity serves. This idea, Mr Powers says, is borne out by the fact that ‘the California Indians are rent into such infinitesimal divisions, any one of which may be arrayed in deadly feud against another at any moment, that the slight differences in their dialects would not suffice to distinguish the captive squaws’ (Powers, Tr. of Calif., p. 109). There may therefore be a grain of truth in the explanation of tattooing given by the Khyen women in Bengal; they say that it was meant to conceal their beauty, for which they were apt to be carried off by neighbouring tribes (Asiatick Researches, xvi. p. 268; Dalton, op. cit., p. 114).

1. First Rep., pp. 62, 64.

2. Bourke, Snake Dance, p. 229.

3. Catlin, N. Anter. Ind., ii. plate 140.

4. Heckewelder, Indian Nations, p. 247.

5. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. pp. xlii, 284.

1. S. Hearne, Journey to the Northern Ocean, p. 148 sq. These, however, may have been individual totems. Some of the Indians had many such figures on their shields.

2. Chateaubriand, Voy. en. Amér., pp. 194, 199, 224; Charlevoix, Hist. de la Nouv. Fr., v. p. 329.

3. Holmberg, in Acta Soc. Sc. Fennicae, iv. 294, 323; Aurel Krause, Die Tlinkit-lndianer, p. 130 sq.; Petroff, Report on Alaska, pp. 166, 170.

4. Smithsonian Contrib. to Knowl., xxi. No. 267, p. 3 sq.; Geol. Surv. of Canada, Rep. for 1878–79, p. 148b; Ausland, October 6, 1884, p. 794; id., 7 September 1885, p. 701. Totem-posts, 50 to 100 feet high, in front of nearly every Thlinket house (Petroff, Report on Alaska, p. 165; Krause, l.c.; Sheldon Jackson, Alaska, p. 78).

5. American Antiquarian, ii. p. 110; Sheldon Jackson, Alaska, p. 81.

6. Mayne, Brit. Columb., p. 257 sq.

7. Magazine of American History, iv. p. 260.

1. Heckewelder, op. cit., p. 247; Brinton, The Lenape and their Legends, pp. 39 sq., 68 sq.

2. Acad., Sept. 27, 1884, p. 203.

3. Third Rep., 229, 240, 248.

4. Second Rep., p. 78.

5. R. I. Dodge, Our Wild Indians (Hartford, Conn., 1882), p. 225.

6. Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., i. p. 356 sq., ii. 49, v. 73; A. Mackenzie, Voyages, etc., pp. xcix, 316; J. Dunn, Hist. of the Oregon Territory, p. 94; Mayne, Br. Columb., pp. 258, 271; A. Krause, Die Tlinkit-Indianer, p. 230; American Antiquarian, ii. p. 112. It has been conjectured that the animal-shaped mounds in the Mississippi valley (chiefly in the State of Wisconsin) are representations of totems (American Antiquarian, iii. p. 7 sq.; vi. pp. 8, 326 sq.).

7. Dodge, op. cit., pp. 158, 225.

1. Third Rep., p. 245 sq.

2. Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven, p. 541 sq.

3. Porphyry, Vit. Pythag., 14. On the etymology of Zamolxis and the possible identity of-olxis with the Greek ἄρκτος, Latin ursus, ‘a bear,’ see V. Hehn, Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere, p. 450.

4. Jour. Asiat. Soc. Beng., liii. (1884) pt. i. p. 101.

5. Asiatick Researches, vi. p. 535 sq.; Liebrecht, Gervasius von Tilbury, p. 171; id., Zur Volkskunde, p. 397. For an Ojibway birth ceremony cf. P. Jones, Hist. of Ojebway Indians, p. 160, cf. p. 138.

1. Raffles, Hist. of Java, i. 328. On rubbing with ashes as a religious ceremony cf. Spencer, De legibus Hebraeorum ritualibus, vol. ii. Diss. iii. Lib. iii. cap. 1.

2. Original-Mittheil. aus der ethnolog. Abtheil, der Königl. Museen zu Berlin, i. p. 156.

3. Suidas, s.v. αἰγίς.

4. Servius on Virgil, Aen., iv. 374; Festus, s.v. In pelle.

5. Pliny, Nat. Hist., xxviii. 142.

6. Dalton, Ethn. of Bengal, p. 194 (Mundas), p. 319 (Kurmis). Among the Mundas both bride and bridegroom are sometimes married to mango trees. For Kurmi totems see As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 77.

7. Krauss, Südsl., p. 450. With regard to upsetting the pitcher, it is to be noted that water is an important element in marriage ceremonies, e.g. among the same Mundas who are married to trees, a pitcher of water is poured over both bride and bridegroom (Dalton, op. cit., 194). Two cabbages, one from the garden of the bride and another from that of the bridegroom, play a very important part in rural weddings in Lorraine (George Sand, La Mare au Diable, Appendix v.; Folklore Rec., iii. p. 271 sq.).

1. Pausanias, ix. 3; Eusebius, Praep. Evang., iii. 1 and 2. The oak was especially associated with Zeus. See Bötticher, Der Baumkultus der Hellenen, p. 408 sq. The oak of Zeus (like a totem) gave omens to its worshippers; and the ceremony of making rain by means of an oak branch (Paus., viii. 38) is remarkably like ceremonies observed for the purpose of making rain by the sacred Buffalo society among the Omahas (Third Rep., p. 347) and by a set of worshippers in totem-ridden Samoa (Turner, Samoa, p. 45).

2. Lewis and Clarke, i. p. 155, 8vo, 1815.

3. Indian Antiquary, x. p. 333.

4. Ind. Antiq., iv. p. 5; Jour. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, liii. pt. i. p. 99 sq.

5. J. A. S. Beng., liii. i. p. 100.

1. Ind. Antiq., xiii. p. 168 sq.

2. Ind. Antiq., ix. p. 77. We are reminded of the Gardens of Adonis. See W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald-und Feldkulte, p. 279 sq.

3. Thus in Java the man who taps a palm for palm wine goes through a form of marriage with the tree before he begins to tap it (Wilken, in De Indische Gids, June 1884, p. 963, cf. 962). The Hurons annually married their fishing nets, with great ceremony, to two young girls (Relations des Jésuites, 1636, p. 109; ib., 1639, p. 95; Charlevoix, Hist. de la Nouv. Fr., v. p. 225; Chateaubriand, Voy. en Amer., p. 140 sq.; Parkman, Jesuites of North America, p. lxix.)· The old Egyptian custom, in time of drought, of dressing a woman as a bride and throwing her into the Nile is the subject of Ebers’s novel Nilbraut, noticed in the Athenaeum, July 2, 1887, p. 12. The custom seems to be the foundation of legends like those of Andromeda and Hesione. For a Norse Andromeda see Asbjörnsen og Moe, Norske Folke-Eventyr (First Series), No. 24 (Dasent’s Tales from the Norse, p. 125 sq.). The custom shadowed forth in these legends may be only another form of the Egyptian customs referred to by Pindar (in Strabo, xvii. 1, 19 – the full passage is omitted in some MSS, and editions; cf. Aelian, Nat. An., vii. 19; Herodotus, ii. 46; Plutarch, Brut. Rat. Uti, 5; Clemens Alex., Protr., 32; and of which a trace appears in Italy (Ovid, Fast., ii. 441). This would bring us round to totemism. It is therefore notable that the Andromeda story occurs in Senegambia, where totemism exists. See Bérenger-Feraud, Contes populaires de la Senegambia, p. 185 sq. The Mandan custom (Catlin, O-Kee-pa, Fol. reserv. ii.) is hardly parallel, though Liebrecht (Zur Volkskunde, p. 395) seems to think so.

4. Dalton, op. cit., p. 280.

1. Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., iv. 86.

2. Third Rep., p. 229. As to the ‘four souls,’ many savages are much more liberally provided with souls than civilised men. See Rel. des Jés., 1636, p. 133; Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Nord-Amerika, ii. 206; Charlevoix, Hist. de la Nouv. Fr., vi. p. 75; Laborde, ‘Rel. de Porigine, etc., des Caraibes,’ p. 15, in Recueil de divers Voyages faits en Afrique et en l’Amérique (Paris, 1684); Washington Matthews, The Hidatsa Indians, p. 50; Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 91 sq.; Schoolcraft, Am. Ind., pp. 127, 204; id., Ind. Tr., iv. 70; Arctic Papers for the Expedition of 1875, p. 275; Williams, Fiji, i. p. 241; Wilken, ‘Het animisme bij de volken van den indischen archipel,’ in Ind. Gids, June 1884, p. 929 sq.; id., Ueber das Haaropfer, p. 75 n.

3. Third Rep., p. 233.

4. Ib., 225.

1. Lepsius, Chronologie der Aegypter, p. 309 n.; cf. Herodotus, ii. 129; Stephanus Byzant. s.v. Βούσιρις.

2. J. A. I., xvi. p. 31 n.

3. Dalton, Ethn. of Beng., pp. 278, 283.

4. Charlevoix, Hist. du Paraguay, i. p. 462.

5. Rel. des Jés., 1667, p. 19; Lettr. Édif., vi. 169 sq.

1. J. A. I., xiii. 296, cf. 450.

1. J. A. I., xiii. 450.

2. Ib., xvi. p. 43. At the initiatory rites of the Phrygian god Sabazius, a snake (or a golden image of one) was drawn through the novice’s robe. Arnobius, Adv. Nat., v. 21; Firmicus Maternus, De errore profan, relig., 10; Clem. Alex., Protrept., § 16. Cf. Demosth., p. 313 (De Corona, § 260); Strab., x. 3, 18. See Foucart, Des Associations religieuses chez les Grecs, p. 66 sq.

3. Livingstone, South Africa, p. 13; J. Mackenzie, Ten Years North of the Orange River, p. 391, cf. p. 135 n.; J. A. I., xvi. p. 83.

4. Geol. Surv. of Canada, Report for 1878–79, p. 131b; for the Tshimsian totems, ib., 134B.

5. Tr. Eth. Soc., New Series, vii. 309; for Kasia exogamy, Dalton, Ethn. of Beng., p. 56.

6. Mishna, Ta‘anith, iv. 8 (Surenhus., ii. p. 385).

1. Schol. on Aristophanes, Lysist. 645; Harpocration, s.v. άρκτεῦσαι; Suidas, s.v. άρκτεῦσαι and ἄρκτος ἦ βρανρωνίοις; Bekker’s Anecd. Gr., p. 206,4; ib. 444, 30. This sacred dance or pantomime was a dedication of the damsels to either the Brauronian or Munychian Artemis; and legend said that a tame bear had been kept in her sanctuary. The Arcadian Artemis, as K. O. Müller says (Dorier,2 i. p. 376), appears to be identical with Callisto; and Callisto was the ancestress of the Arcadians (= Bear people, from ἄρκος, another form of ἄρκτος), was herself turned into a bear, and was represented seated on a bearskin (Paus., x. 31, 10). For an African example see Dapper, Description de l’Afrique (Amsterdam, 1686), p. 249.

2. Collins, Account of the English Colony of New South Wales, London, 1798, pp. 569, 571; Angas, Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand, ii. p. 219.

3. J. A. I., xiii. p. 449.

4. Lichtenstein, Travels in S. Afr., i. p. 269.

1. W. W. Reade, Savage Africa, p. 194 sq.

2. Catlin, Amer. Indians, i. p. 245. Cf. Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., iv. 60; the Dacotas ‘pretend to charm some kinds of animals by mimicking them, and sometimes succeed in killing game in this way.’

3. Catlin, op. cit., i. 127. Cf. Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Nord-Amerika, ii. p. 263 sq.

4. Chateaubriand, Voy. en Amér., p. 142 sq.

5. Bancroft, Nat. Races of the Pac. St., iii. p. 167.

6. Julius Pollux, iv. 103; Aelian, Ν. Α., xv. 28; Athenaeus, 391ab, 629f.

7. Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., iv. 93.

8. E.g. American Naturalist, iv. 136 sq.; American Antiquarian, viii. 328. Iroquois hunters wore skeleton frameworks of wood over which they threw the skin of whatever animal they wished to imitate. J. A. I., xiv. p. 246.

1. For other examples of animal dances or pantomimes (some of them apparently merely recreations) see Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., v. p. 277; Catlin, Amer. Ind., ii. 126, 248; Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Nord-Amerika, ii. p. 246; S. Powers, Tr. of Calif., p. 199 sq.; Bancroft, Nat. Races of the Pac. St., i. p. 706; Rep. of Internat. Polar Exped, to Point Barrow, Alaska, p. 41 sq.; Ε. James, Exped, to the Rocky Mountains, ii. 58; American Antiquarian, vii. p. 211; A. R. Wallace, Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, p. 296 sq.; Revue d’Ethnographie, vi. (1887) p. 54; Dalton, Ethn. of Beng., p. 155 sq.; Pallas, Reise durch verschiedene Theile des russischen Reichs, iii. p. 64 sq.; Andersson, Lake Ngami, p. 230; Original-Mittheil, aus der ethnolog. Abth. der Königl. Museen zu Berlin, i. pp. 179 sq., 184; Eyre, Journals, ii. p. 233.

2. Journ. and Proc. R. Soc. N. S. Wales, 1882, p. 206.

3. Nat. Tribes of S. Austral., p. 17.

4. J. A. I., xiii. p. 295.

1. Amongst these tribes the novice is placed with his feet in a pair of holes preparatory to the knocking out of the tooth (J. A. I., xiii. p. 446 sq.; ib., xiv. p. 359; Journ. and Proc. R. Soc. N. S. Wales, 1883, p. 26).

2. I.e. the mythical being who is supposed to have instituted these ceremonies (J. A. I., xiii. 442, 446).

3. J. A. I., xiii. p. 455 sq.

4. Ib., xiv. p. 316.

5. Ib., 360. So with the Uaupés on the Amazon (A. R. Wallace, Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, p. 496).

6. Journ. and Proc. R. Soc. N. S. Wales, 1882, p. 208.

1. Journ. and Proc. R. Soc. N. S. Wales, 1883, p. 27.

2. Native Tubes of S. Australia, p. 279.

3. Gatschet, Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, i. p. 185. For superstitious abstinence from salt cf. Adair, Hist. Amer. Indians, pp. 59, 115, 125, 166; Acosta, Hist. of the Indies, v. 17; Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., v. p. 268; Du Tertre, Histoire generale des Antilles, vol. ii. (Paris, 1667) p. 371; Bancroft, Nat. Races of the Pac. St., i. p. 520 n.; Sievers, Reise in der Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, p. 94; C. Bock, Headhunters of Borneo, pp. 218, 223; Plutarch, Qu. Conviv., viii. 8, 2; id., Is. et Osir., 5; A. R. Wallace, Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, p. 502; Asiatick Researches, vii. p. 307; Duff Macdonald, Africana, i. pp. 110, 170; Grierson, Bihar Peasant Life, p. 405. For an African example of the prohibition of different foods at successive periods of life see Dapper, Description, de l’Afrique, p. 336.

4. E. H. Man, Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, p. 62 sq.

5. Rochefort, Ηist. nat. et mor. des Iies Antilles (Rotterdam, 1666), p. 556; Du Tertre, Histoire generale des Antilles, vol. ii. p. 377.

1. J. A. I., xiii. 128, 295; G. F. Angas, Savage Life and Scenes in Austr, and New Zeal., i. 115; Nat. Tubes of S. Austr., 162 sq., 227, 232, 234, 270; Brough Smyth, i. 67 sq.; Fison and Howitt, 286. The Australians also draw blood from themselves and give it to their sick relations to drink (J. A. I., xiii. 132 sq.). So do the Hare Indians in America (Petitot, Monographie des Dènè-Dindjié, p. 60; id., Traditions Indiennes du Canada Nord-ouest, p. 269). Amongst the Guamos on the Orinoco the chief was bound to draw blood from his body wherewith to anoint the stomach of a sick clansman. If sickness was at all prevalent he was thus reduced to great emaciation (Gumilla, Hist. de l’Orenoque, i. p. 261). The Chinese sometimes cut pieces out of their flesh and give them to their sick parents to eat (Dennys, Folklore of China, p. 68 sq.). Amongst some of the Caribs a new-born child was smeared with its father’s blood (Rochefort, op. cit., p. 552). In all these cases the idea is that the life of the clan or family is in the blood, and may be transferred with the blood from one member of it to another. For another way of communicating the common life of the clan to a sick member of it, see Jour, and Proc. R. Soc. N.S. Wales, 1883, p. 32.

2. J. Forsyth, Highlands of Central India, p. 137.

3. J. A. I., xiii, 451.

4. Jour. and Proc. R. Soc. N.S. Wales, 1882, p. 172.

1. Howitt, in J. A. I., xiii. 458.

2. Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 30.

3. We should certainly expect it not to be true of the blood-smearing. And this ceremony appears not to be practised by the tribes referred to by Howitt and Dawson, ll.cc. The plucking out of the hair of the pubis (see below) is performed by men of a different tribe (Eyre, Journals, ii. p. 337).

4. J. A. I., xiii. 453 sq.

5. Ib., xiv. 358.

6. Angas, i. 115; Brough Smyth, i. 75 n.; J. A. I., xiv. 357, 359; Nat. Tr. of S. Austr., pp. 232, 269. Hence, too, the plucking of the hair from the pubis or incipient beard of the youth at initiation. See Eyre, Journals, ii. pp. 337 sq., 340; Native Tribes of S. Australia, p. 188.

7. R. Beverley, History of Virginia (London, 1722), p. 177 sq.; Dapper, Description de l’Afrique, p. 268. On initiation regarded as a new birth see Kulischer, in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xv. p. 194 sq.

1. Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., v. 683.

2. Lewis and Clarke, i. 190, ed. 1815; Dwight, Travels in New England and New York, iv. p. 185; Third Rep., p. 237; Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Nord-Amerika, ii. 160; C. C. Jones, Antiquities of the Southern Indians, p. 4 sq. The Californian Indians think that their coyote ancestors were moulded directly from the soil (S. Powers, Tribes of California, pp. 5, 147).

3. Mr Cushing, in Century Magazine, May 1883.

1. See Encyclopaedia Britannica, article ‘Sacrifice,’ vol. xxi. p. 137.

2. Herod., ii. 39.

3. See Ency. Brit., 3 ninth ed., article ‘Thesmophoria.’

1. See Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Nord-Amerika, i. 401, 440 sq., 576–579, ii. 138–146, 217–219, 240 sq.; Third Rep., pp. 342–355, cf. Second Rep., p. 16.

2. Third Report, 349, 351.

3. Bourke, Snake Dance, p. 180 sq.

4. In Schoolcraft’s Ind. Tr., ii. 171, 175.

5. Stepping over a person or thing is not, to the primitive mind, merely disrespectful; it is supposed to exercise an injurious influence on the person or thing stepped over.

1. Fison and Howitt, 194, 201 sq., 215, 235.

2. J. A. I., xv. p. 416, cf. xii. p. 507.

3. Id., xv. 416.

4. J. A. I., xii. 45.

5. Id., xiv. 350.

1. Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 52.

2. Trans. Philosoph. Soc. N. S. Wales, 1862–1865, p. 359 sq.

3. Angas, op. cit., i. 109; Nat. Tr. of S. Austr., p. 241.

4. J. A. I., xiv, p. 350.

1. J. A. I., xvi. p. 50.

2. Ib., 34.

3. Ib., 45. The aversion, in certain cases, of savages to blood seems to be an important factor in their customs. The North American Indians, ‘through a strong principle of religion, abstain in the strictest manner from eating the blood of any animal’ (Adair, Hist. Amer. Ind., p. 134). They ‘commonly pull their new-killed venison (before they dress it) several times through the smoke and flame of the fire, both by the way of a sacrifice and to consume the blood, life, or animal spirits of the beast, which it would be a most horrid abomination to eat’ (ib., p. 117). Many of the Slave, Hare, and Dogrib Indians will not taste the blood of game; hunters of the two former tribes collect the blood in the paunch of the animal and bury it in the snow at some distance from the flesh (Petitot, Monographie des Dènè-Dindjié, p. 76). Men have a special objection to see the blood of women, at least at certain times; they say that if they were to see it they would not be able to fight against their enemies and would be killed (Mrs James Smith, The Booandik Tribe, p. 5). Hence, although bleeding is a common Australian cure for men, women are not allowed to be bled (Angas, i. p. 111). This aversion is perhaps the explanation of that seclusion of women at puberty, childbirth, etc., which has assumed different forms in many parts of the world.

1. Catlin, N. Amer. Indians, i. p. 36 sq.; Schoolcraft, Ind. Tr., v. p. 196; id. Amer. Ind., p. 213; Lettr, Édif., vi. 173; Washington Matthews, Hidatsa Indians, p. 50; Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, p. 173 sq.; Bancroft, i. 283 sq.; id., iii. 156; Mayne, Brit. Columb., p. 302; p. Jones, Hist. Ojebway Indians, p. 87 sq.; Loskiel, i. 40; Tr. Ethnol. Soc., New Series, iv. 281, 295 sq.; Petitot, Monographie des Dènè-Dindjié, p. 36; Collect. Minnes. Hist. Soc., v. p. 65; American Antiquarian, ii. p. 10; Parkman, Jesuits in North America, p. ixx sq.

2. Schoolcraft, Am. Ind., p. 210.

3. Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1866, p. 307; cf. Petitot, l.c.

1. Lewis and Clarke, i. p. 189 sq., 8vo ed., 1815.

2. Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Nord-Amerika, ii. p. 166.

3. Bancroft, i. p. 740 sq.

4. Dall, Alaska, p. 145.

5. Charlevoix, Hist. de la Nouv. Fr., vi. 67 sq. The word okki is Huron; manitoo is Algonkin (ib.; Sagard, Le grand Voyage du pays des Hurons, p. 231).

6. Boscana, in A. Robinson’s Life in California, pp. 270 sq., 273; Bancroft, i. 414, iii. 167 sq.

1. Bancroft, i. 661.

2. Turner, Samoa, 17.

3. Bancroft, i. 703.

4. Ib., i. 753.

5. Lafitau, Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, i. 370 sq.; Charlevoix, Hist. de la Nouv. Fr., vi. 68; Kohl, Kitchi Gami, i. 85 sq.

6. Rel. des Jés., 1648, p. 74 sq..

7. Ε. Η. Man, Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, p. 134.

1. The Rev R. H. Codrington, in Trans. and Proc. Roy. Soc. of Victoria, xvi. p. 136. The Banks Islanders are divided into two exogamous intermarrying divisions with descent in the female line (ib., p. 119 sq.), but these divisions seem not to possess totems.

2. James, in Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner, p. 313; p. Jones, Hist. Ojebway Indians, p. 138; Geol. Surv. of Canada, Rep. for 1878–79, p. 134b; H. Hale, The Iroquois Book of Rites, p. 52; A. Hodgson, Letters from North America, i. p. 246; Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 81 sq.

3. Grey, Journ., ii. 231; Report of the Smithsonian Inst. for 1866, p. 315; Petroff, Rep. on Alaska, p. 165. Other authorities speak to the superiority of the totem bond over the tribal bond (Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 82; Mayne, Brit. Columb., p. 257; American Antiquarian, ii. p. 109).

1. Grey, Journals, ii. 230, 238 sq.; Smithsonian Rep., loc. cit.

2. Fison and Howitt, 156 sq., 216 sq. Sometimes the two clans meet and settle it by single combat between picked champions (Journ. and Proc. R. Soc. N. S. Wales, 1882, p. 226).

3. Simons, in Proc. R. Geogr. Soc., Nov. 1885, p. 789 sq. Simons’s i     Marta (Leipsic, 1887), p. 255 sq.

4. Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific, p. 38.

5. Bourke, Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, p. 279.

1. Howitt, in Rep. of the Smithsonian Inst. for 1883, p. 804; Fison and Howitt, pp. 64–67, 289, 344 sq.; J. A. I., xiv. p. 351 sq.

2. Dawson, Austr. Abor., p. 28.

3. Nat. Tr. of S. Australia, p. 222.

4. Howitt, in Ann. Rep. of the Smithsonian Inst. for 1883, p. 804.

1. Journ. and Proc. R. Soc. N. S. Wales, 1883, p. 24; Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria, vi. p. 16.

2. James, in Tanner’s Narr., p. 313.

3. Collect. Minnesota Histor. Soc., v. p. 42.

4. Ann. Rep. Smithson. Inst. for 1866, p. 315.

5. Geol. Surv. of Canada, Rep. for 1878–79, p. 134b.

6. Nat. Tr. of S. Austr., p. 12; J. A. I., xii. p. 46.

7. Grey, Journ., ii. p. 226.

1. Gatschet, Migration Legend of the Greek Indians, p. 154 sq.

2. Bourke, Snake Dance, p. 336.

3. Archaeologia Americana, Trans. and Collect. Americ. Antiq. Soc., vol. ii. p. 109; Morgan, A. S., pp. 99, 162.

4. Morgan, A. S., pp. 99, 163.

5. Morgan, op. cit., pp. 90, 94 sq.

1. Morgan, op. cit., p. 91.

2. Morgan, op. cit., p. 91 sq.

3. Morgan, op. cit., p. 93.

4. First Rep., p. 60.

5. A. Krause, Die Tlinkit-Indianer, 112, 220; Holmberg, op. cit. 293, 313; Pinart, in Bull. Soc. Anthrop. Paris, 7th Nov. 1872, p. 792 sq.; Petroff, Rep. on Alaska, p. 165 sq.

6. Petroff, op. cit., p. 166.

7. Morgan, op. cit., p. 174.

1. Morgan, op. cit., p. 156.

2. First Rep., p. 59.

3. Rel. des Jés., 1636, p. 101; Lafitau, Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, i. p. 94; Charlevoix, Hist. de la Nouv. Fr., vi. p. 147; T. Dwight, Travels in New England and New York, iv. p. 180 sq. Precedence was given to the Turtle clan among the Iroquois (the kindred of the Hurons) (T. Dwight, op. cit., iv. p. 185; Zeisberger, in H. Hale, The Iroquois Book of Rites, p. 54 n.), the Delawares (Brinton, The Lenape and their Legends, p. 39; De Schweinitz, Life of Zeisberger, p. 79), and the Algonkins (Leland, Algonquin Legends of New England, p. 51 n.); and Heckewelder (op. cit., p. 81) states generally that the Turtle clan always takes the lead in the government of an Indian tribe. In the Delaware mythology the turtle plays the same part as in the Huron mythology (see above, p. 700).

1. ‘Two classes of names were in use, one adapted to childhood and the other to adult life, which were exchanged at the proper period in the same formal manner; one being taken away, to use their expression, and the other bestowed in its place’ (Morgan, A. S., p. 79).

2. Third Rep., p. 227 sq.

3. Ib., 232.

4. Ib., 236–41, 243–48, 250; Morgan, A. S., p. 169 n.

5. Nat. Tr. of S. Austr., p. 187.

6. p. Jones, Hist. Ojebway Ind., p. 138.

7. Third Rep., p. 240 sq.

1. Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, v. p. 49.

2. H. Hale, The Iroquois Book of Rites, p. 53 sq.

3. Geol. Surv. of Canada, Rep. for 1878–79, p. 134b.

4. Third Rep., p. 235; American Naturalist, xviii. p. 114.

5. Acad, 27th Sept. 1884, p. 203.

1. Fison and Howitt, p. 285.

2. Howitt, in Rep. of the Smithson. Inst. for 1883, p. 818.

3. J. A. I., xiii. p. 437 n.

4. Dawson, Austr. Abor., p. 26 sq.

1. J. A. I., xii. 500.

2. The names of the subphratries here given are the names of the male members of each. There is a corresponding female form for each, formed by the addition of tha to the masculine. Thus Muri – Matha (contracted for Muritha), Kubi – Kubitha, Ipai – Ipatha, Kumbo – Butha (contracted for Kumbatha) (Fison and Howitt, p. 37 n.). In a tribe of Western Victoria the feminine termination is heear (Dawson, Anstr. Abor., p. 26); in a Queensland tribe it is an (Fison and Howitt, p. 33); in some tribes it is un or gun (Ridley, in Brough Smyth, ii. p. 288). The tribe at Wide Bay, Queensland, appears to have five subphratries, with male and female names (Ridley, loc. cit.). In some tribes the male and female names of the subphratries are distinct words (see J. A. I., xiii. pp. 300, 343, 345). In describing the rules of marriage and descent these feminine forms or names are for simplicity’s sake omitted.

1. J. A. I., xiii. 336, 341.

2. Fison and Howitt, p. 53 sq.; cf. Brough Smyth, i. p. 91.

3. J. A. I., xiii. p. 300.

4. For a few particulars see Fison and Howitt, 38, 40; Brough Smyth, ii. 288; J. A. I., xiii. 304, 306, 346, xiv. 348 sq., 351.

1. Nat. Tr. of S. Austr., p. 249.

2. Dawson, Austr. Abor., 27, 30 sq.; cf. Fison and Howitt, p. 276. The custom observed in some places of imposing silence on women for a long time after marriage may possibly be a relic of the custom of marrying women of a different tongue (cf. Haxthausen, Transkaukasia, i. 200 sq.; ib., ii. 23; Krauss, Südsl., p. 450; Hahn, Albanes. Stud., i. 147). Hence too perhaps the folklore incident of the silent bride (cf. Grimm, Kinder und Hausmährchen, No. 3; Crane, Popular Italian Tales, p. 54 sq.). In a modern Greek folk-tale which presents some points of resemblance to the legend of Peleus and Thetis the silent bride is a Nereid; hence Schmidt conjectures with great probability that the expression of Sophocles, quoted by the scholiast on Pindar, Nem. iv. 60 (ἀφθόγγους γάμους), means that Thetis was silent during her married life (B. Schmidt, Volksleben der Neugriechen, p. 116). Amongst the Caribs the language of the men differed to some extent from that of the women (see Rochefort, Hist. des lies Antilles, p. 350; La Borde, ‘Relation de l’origine, etc., des Caraibes,’ in Rec. de divers voyages faits en Afr. et en l’Amer., Paris, 1684, pp. 4, 39; Humboldt, Reise in die Aequinoctial-Gegenden des Neuen Continents, iv. 204 sq. (Hauff’s German trans.); Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, 186; Lucien de Rosny, Les lies Antilles, 23, 261). So amongst the Mbayas in Paraguay (Azara, Voyages dans l’Amérique Méridionale, ii. p. 106). In the Booandik tribe, South Australia, persons connected by marriage talk to each other in a low whining voice and use words different from those in common use (Mrs James Smith, The Booandik Tribe, p. 5).

1. First Rep., p. 63. Between North-American tribes ‘there were no intermarriages, no social intercourse, no intermingling of any kind, except that of mortal strife’ (Dodge, Our Wild Indians, p. 45).

2. Cf. First Rep., loc. cit.; As. Quart, Rev., July 1886, p. 89 sq.

3. Nat. Tr. of S. Austr., p. 260 sq.

4. Dawson, Austr. Abor., p. 27.

1. Andersson, Lake Ngami, p. 221.

2. Casalis, The Basutos, p. 179 sq.

3. Because property may descend in the male, while kinship is traced in the female line, as with the natives of Western Australia (Grey, Journals, ii. 230, 232 sq.) and some Victorian tribes (Dawson, Austral. Aborigines, 7, 26). In Mota, Banks Islands, where kinship is traced in the female line, landed property descends in the female line (i.e. to sister’s children), but personal property in the male line (i.e. to sons); but the practice is for the sons to redeem the land with the personal property. See the Rev R. H. Codrington, in Trans. and Proc. Roy. Soc. of Victoria, xvi. p. 119 sq.

4. Du Chaillu, Journey to Ashango Land, 429; id., Equat. Afr., 308 sq.

5. As. Quart. Rev., July 1886, p. 94.

1. Dalton, Ethnol. of Beng., p. 56 sq.

2. Dalton, op. cit., 6o, 63.

3. Or seven years, if we accept the statements in the Indian Antiquary, viii. (1879) p. 205; but these may be borrowed from Colonel Dalton.

1. Fison and Howitt, p. 37 sq.; J. A. I., xiii. 335, 341, 344.

2. J. A. I., xiii. 336, 341.

3. J. A. I., xii. 504. Mr Howitt, to whom we are indebted for this information, omits to give the names of the tribe and its subdivisions.

4. J. A. I., xii. 500.

5. Letter of Mr S. Gason to the present writer.

1. J. A. I., xii. 509.

2. m. = male; f. = female.

3. J. A. I., xii. 45. The opposite rule of descent (sons belong to the mother’s, daughters to the father’s family) is observed in the islands of Leti, Moa, and Lakor (Riedel, op. cit., pp. 384, 392).

1. Geol. Surv. of Canada, Rep. for 1878–79, p. 134b.

2. Morgan, A. S., p. 172 sq.

3. Ib., 169.

4. Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific, p. 36.

5. Turner, Samoa, p. 78 sq. The child might thus be transferred to a clan which was that neither of his father nor of his mother (see above, p. 752).

1. M’Lennan, Patriarchal Theory, 235 sq.; Bosman’s ‘Guinea,’ in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, xvi. 420.

2. Dalton, Eth. of Beng., p. 220. In some parts of New Guinea bride and bridegroom draw blood from each other’s foreheads (S. Müller, Reizen en Onderzoekingen in den Indischen Archipel, i. p. 105). In Bengal the ceremony appears to have usually degenerated into smearing each other with red lead (Dalton, op. cit., 160, 194, 216, 253, 319). The blood of animals, when used for this purpose, as by the Dyaks, may be a substitute for that of the bride and bridegroom; possibly it may be the blood of the totem (Perelaer, Ethnogr. Beschrijv. der Dajaks, p. 52; Tijdschrift v. Indische Taal-Land-en Volkenkunde, xxv. (1879) p. 116; Ausland, 16th June 1884, p. 469; Journals of James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, i. p. 204; Carl Bock, Head-Hunters of Borneo, p. 222).

3. Dalton, op. cit., 193, 216; cf. Lewin, Wild Races of South-Eastern India, 177 sq.

4. Livingstone, Travels in S. Afr., 622 sq.; cf. M’Lennan, Patriarchal Theory, 324 sq.

5. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Papua en Selebes, 205 sq.

6. Marsden, Hist. of Sumatra, 257 sq.; Schreiber, Die Battas in ihrem Verhältniss zu den Malaien von Sumatra, p. 34; Junghuho, Die Battaländer auf Sumatra, ii. 131 sq.

1. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 350.

2. This is the view of Bachofen, Mutterrecht, 255 sq.; Girand-Teulon, Les origines du manage et de la famille, 138 sq.; Post, Die Anfänge des Staats-und Rechtslebens, 18; and (with some limitations) Zmigrodzki, Die Mutter bei den Völkern des arischen Stammes, 270.

3. Plutarch, Qu. Gr., 58.

4. J. Thomson, Through Masai Land, 442.

5. Plutarch, De mul. virt., 4.

6. Mannhardt, Der Baumkultus, 314. For forms of marriage as means of communicating fertility to the fields cf. ib., 480 sq.; id., Mythol. Forsch., 340; Wilken, in De Indische Gids, June 1884, pp.958, 962.

1. Marshall, Travels among the Todas, 214 sq. The Todas have male descent for themselves, but retain female descent for their sacred cattle (ib., 132).

2. Fison and Howitt, 214, 218, 223 sq.

3. J. A. I., xiii. 283.

4. Trans. Ethn. Soc., New Series, i. 289.

5. Brough Smyth, ii. 311.

6. For examples see Journals of James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, i. p. 209; Garcilasso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas, 1. i. 12; Riedel, op. cit., p. 267; Herodotus, iv. 26; Mela, 11. i. 9.

7. Dawson, Austr. Abor., 67.

1. Nat. Tr. of S. Australia, p. 274.

2. Fison and Howitt, 243 sq.; Riedel, op. cit., p. 308.

3. Nat. Tr. of S. Austr., 230; Brough Smyth, i. 75 n.; Eyre, Journals, ii. p. 335.

4. Collins, Account of the English Colony of N.S.W., London, 1798, p. 580.

5. Angas, Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand, i. 110 sq.

6. Nat. Tr. of S. Aust., 277.

7. Brough Smyth, ii. 274; Grey, Journ., ii. 332; J. A. I., xiii. 134 sq.

1. J. G. Müller, Gesch. der Amerik. Urreligionen, 289 sq.; A. R. Wallace, Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, p. 498. Artemisia drank the ashes of Mausolus (Aulus Gellius, x. 18; Valerius Maximus, iv. 6, 5). On the question of American cannibalism cf. Müller, op. cit., p. 144 sq.; R. I. Dodge, Hunting Grounds of the Great West, p. 420.

2. First Rep., 64; Third Rep., 219 sq.; American Naturalist, xviii. p. 113 sq.

3. Gatschet, Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, 154; Bourke, Snake Dance, 229; Acad., 27th Sept. 1884, p. 203.

4. The Rev J. Owen Dorsey, in American Naturalist, xviii. p. 113.

5. Adair, Hist. Amer. Ind. 183 sq.; Morgan, A. S., 83 sq.; Brinton, The Lenape and their Legends, 54; id., Myths of the New World, 87 n.; A. Hodgson, Letters from North America, i. p. 259; Dalton, Eth. of Beng., 56; cf. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, 315 sq.

6. Holmberg, op. cit., 324.

7. Krause, Die Tlinkit-Indianer, 223.

1. As among the Chickasas, Thlinkets, and Mohegans in America; and the Turra, Ngarego, and Theddora tribes in Australia (see above, pp. 757–60, 762 sq.). The subphratries of the Kiabara also bear animal names. See above, p. 764.

2. J. A. I., xiii. 437, n. i; Fison and Howitt, 322.

3. J. A. I., xii. 500; id., xiii. 338.

4. Id., xii. 45.

5. Id., xiv. 349.

6. Id., xii. 500, xiii. 335.

7. Id., xiii. 303, 339.

8. Id., xiv. 348.

9. Id., xiii. 336, 344.

10. Id., xii. 45.

11. Fison and Howitt, 168.

12. J. A. I., xii. 45, xiii. 338.

13. Id., xiv. 348.

1. Nat. Tr. of S. Austr., 267.

2. Fison and Howitt, 323.

3. J. A. I., xv. 415.

4. Id., xvi. 46.

5. Brough Smyth, i. 431.

6. Id., i. 423 sq.

7. J. A. I., xiv. 349.

8. Id., xii. 500.

9. J. A. I., xii. 45.

10. Ib.

11. Dawson, Austr. Abor., p. 26.

12. J. A. I., xiii. 337.

13. Ib., 339.

1. Fison and Howitt, p. 38 sq.,40. The Rockhampton tribe (Queensland) has the same phratries, but its subphratries are different (J. A. I., xiii. 336).

2. Fison and Howitt, p. 41. The totems of the phratries and subphratries are given by different authorities, who write the native names of the subphratries differently. But they seem to be speaking of the same tribe; at least Mr Fison understands them so.

3. The names of the Kamilaroi phratries, Dilbi and Kupathin, are clearly identical with Dilebi and Cubatine, the names of the Kiabara phratries (see above, p. 764), and the latter mean Flood-water and Lightning. Are these phratric totems both of the Kamilaroi and Kiabara?

1. Brough Smyth, i. 91; Fison and Howitt, 168; cf. J. A. I., xii. 300.

2. Fison and Howitt, loc. cit.

1. Fison and Howitt, 169.

2. In Smithson. Rep. for 1883, p. 818.

3. J. A. I., xiii, 191, 337.

4. Ib., 438 n.

5. J. A. I., xiv. 350.

6. Smithson. Rep., loc. cit.

1. In America, as in Australia, the totems seem always to have been in a state of flux. Mr Beauchamp has shown this for the Iroquois (American Antiquarian, viii. 82 sq.).

1. Mr Horatio Hale says that the American totem clans ‘were not permanent, but were constantly undergoing changes, forming, dividing, coalescing, vanishing’ (H. Hale, The Iroquois Book of Rites, p. 51). On the rapid disintegration of North American tribes whenever external pressure is removed see Dodge, Our Wild Indians, p. 45 sq.

2. Turner, Samoa, 46 sq.

3. Ib., 51.

4. Ib., 56 sq.

5. Ib., 60 sq.

6. Ib., 64 sq.

7. Ib., 72.

1. Rel. des jés., 1634, 13; cf. Lettr. Édif., vi. 334; Charlevoix, Hist. de la Nouv. Fr., v. 443, vi. 78.

2. T. Falkner, Description of Patagonia (Hereford, 1774), p. 114.

1. Acosta, History of the Indies, ii. p. 305 (Hakluyt Society).

2. Fison and Howitt, 224 sq.

3. J. A. I., xiii. 437.

4. Casalis, The Basutos, p. 212.

1. Third Rep., 257. For general statements of the relaxation of exogamy see Baer and Helmersen, Beitr. z. Kenntn. des russischen Reiches, i. 104; p. Jones, Hist. Ojebway Indians, 138; Collect. Minnesota Hist. Soc., v. p. 42; Smithson Rep. for 1866, 315; Dall, Alaska, 196 sq.; Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, 175. The Dacotas (Sioux) seem to have lost the totem system since 1767 (see Morgan, A. S., 154; J. Carver, Travels, 255 sq., London, 1781; Keating, Expedition to the Source of the Missouri River, ii. 157; James, in Tanner’s Narrative, 313 sq.; Collect. Minnes. Hist. Soc., v. p. 43). In Australia, though the exogamy of the clan seems to remain intact, the exogamy of the subphratry is relaxed in the case (apparently exceptional) of the Kamilaroi permission to marry a half-sister on the father’s side (see Fison and Howitt, p. 42 sq.).

2. Perhaps the only known exceptions are the Kurnai in eastern, and the Gournditch-mora in Western Victoria. For the latter see Fison and Howitt, p. 275. Of the aborigines on the lower Murray it is said that ‘they are not divided into clans, castes, or grades, but live on a footing of perfect equality’ (Beveridge, in Trans. Roy. Soc. Victoria, vi. p . 21). But probably this does not exclude the existence of totem clans.

3. Gatschet, Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, 153; H. Hale, The Iroquois Book of Rites, p. 51.

4. George Gibbs, in Contrib. to N. American Ethnol., i. 184; S. Powers, Tr. of Calif., 5.

5. A. Pinart, in Revue d’Ethnographie; vi. p. 36.

1. Simons, in Proc. R. Geog. Soc., Dec. 1885, pp. 786, 796.

2. Brett, Ind. Tubes of Guiana, 98; Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, 175 sq.

3. Crevaux, Voyages dans l’Amérique du Sud, p. 59. One clan has the red ape for its totem, others the turtle, crocodile, etc.

4. Falkner, Descr. of Patagonia, 114.

5. Garcilasso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas, pt.i. bk. i. chs. 9, 10, 11, 18; Gumilla, Hist. de l’Orenoque, i. 175 sq.

6. Revue d’Ethnographie, iii. 396 sq., v. 81; Du Chaillu, Equat. Afr., 308 sq.; id., Journey to Ashango Land, 427, 429; C. J. Andersson, Lake Ngami, 221 sq.; Livingstone, Trav. in S. Africa, 13; Casalis, The Basutos, 211; J. Mackenzie, Ten Years North of the Orange River, 393; J. A. I., xvi. 83 sq.

7. Bowdich, Mission to Ashantee, ed. 1873, p. 216.

8. Charles New, Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa, 272, 274.

9. Mansfield Parkyns, Life in Abyssinia, 293; Tr. Ethnol. Soc., New Series, vi. 292.

1. Ellis, Hist. of Madagascar, i. 87.

2. Folklore Record, ii. 22.

3. Ib.

4. Ib., 30.

5. Id., iv. 45.

6. Strahlenberg, Description of the North and Eastern Parts of Europe and Asia, but more particularly of Russia, Siberia, and Great Tartary, London, 1738, p. 383.

7. Middendorf, Siber. Reise, p. 72, quoted by Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation, p. 135. The present writer has been unable to find the passage of Middendorf referred to.

8. W. Radloff, Aus Siberien, i. 216, 258. The Ostiaks, also in Siberia, are divided into exogamous clans, and they reverence the bear (Castren, Vorlesungen ueber die Altaischen Völker, 107, 115, 117). This, however, by no means amounts to a proof of totemism.

9. Morgan, A. S., p. 364 sq. One of the aboriginal tribes of China worships the image of a dog (Gray, China, ii. 306).

1. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, ed. 1860, i. 219 sq.

2. Turner, Samoa, 334.

3. Fison and Howitt, p. 37 n.

4. Low, Sarawak, 265 sq., 272–274, 306; Journal of the Indian Archipelago, iii.p. 590; St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, i. 186 sq., 203; cf. Wilken, in Ind. Gids, June 1884, p. 988 sq.; Ausland, 16th June 1884, p. 470.

5. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Papua en Selebes, pp. 32, 61, 253, 334, 341, 376 sq., 414, 432.

6. Blumentritt, Der Ahnencultus und die religiösen Anschauungen der Malaien des Philippinen Archipel, 159 sq.

7. See W. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia.

8. A. Η. Sayce, The Religion of the Ancient Babylonians (Hibbert Lectures, 1887), p. 279 sq.

9. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 367.

1. Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation, p. 260.

APPENDIX TWO

The Origin of Totemism

Reprinted from the Fortnightly Review, April and May 1899

The Origin of Totemism

NEARLY thirty years have passed since, in the pages of the Fortnightly Review, the late J. F. M’Lennan drew the attention of students to Totemism as a system which, in his opinion, had deeply influenced the religious and social history of mankind.[1] His brilliant disciple, my lamented friend the late W. Robertson Smith, took up the subject, and, carrying out the investigation on the lines laid down by his predecessor, essayed to show that Totemism lay at the root of Semitic religion, and hence of the faith which is now embraced by the most civilised nations of the earth. Of late years the theory has been pushed still further by Mr F. B. Jevons, who finds in this rude scheme of society and superstition the germs out of which not only all religion but all material progress have been evolved in the course of ages.

It is fortunate that while theories on this subject have accumulated, facts have also accumulated, though perhaps not in an equal proportion. The two regions of the world in which the Totemic system is known to have prevailed most extensively are North America and Australia, and both of them, within the last three decades, have yielded a harvest, not inconsiderable in amount, to the anthropological reaper. In North America the enlightened efforts of the United States Government, setting an example which, alas, no other Government has had the wisdom to follow, have been directed towards gleaning all that still remains to be learned of the ancient manners and customs of the aboriginal race, who are now rapidly disappearing or being absorbed by their conquerors. On the north-west coast of the same continent, where the disintegrating influence of European civilisation has penetrated more slowly, and where, consequently, the fabric of native society has held longer together, inquiries instituted by the British Association have also borne good fruit. In Australia the harvest is still abundant, but the labourers are few. Yet the study of the aborigines of this continent is of incalculable importance for the history of man, since in their archaic forms of society and modes of thought we seem to touch the farthest past, the most rudimentary stage of human life now open to observation on the globe. It is the honourable distinction of two men, Mr A. W. Howitt and Mr Lorimer Fison, to have perceived the immense value of the Australian facts, and to have laboured untiringly to collect and explain them. To their influence and example it is due in large measure that we now possess a considerable body of information on the remarkable social organisation of the Australian tribes, and not the least of their claims to be gratefully remembered by posterity will be the stimulus they gave to the inquiries of Messrs Spencer and Gillen, whose great work on the natives of Central Australia has lately been published.[1] In this work we possess for the first time a full and authentic account of thoroughly primitive savages living in the totem stage, and practically unaffected by European influence. Its importance as a document of human history can, therefore, hardly be over-estimated. A little consideration will enable the reader to realise this more clearly.

Among the great land masses or continents of the world Australia is at once the smallest and the most isolated, and hence its plants and animals are in general of a less developed and more archaic type than those of the other continents. For the same reason aboriginal man has remained on the whole, down to the present day, in a more primitive state in Australia than elsewhere. In the struggle for existence progress depends mainly on competition: the more numerous the competitors the fiercer is the struggle, and the more rapid, consequently, is evolution. The comparatively small area of Australia, combined with its physical features – notably the arid and desert nature of a large part of the country – has always restricted population, and by restricting population has retarded progress. This holds true above all of the central region, which is not only cut off from the outer world by its position, but is also isolated by natural barriers from the rest of the continent. Here, then, in the secluded heart of the most secluded continent the scientific inquirer might reasonably expect to find the savage in his very lowest depths, to detect humanity in the chrysalis stage, to mark the first blind gropings of our race after freedom and light.

The reader who turns to The Native Tribes of Central Australia with such hopes and expectations will not, I venture to predict, be disappointed. Here he will find a full description of what is perhaps the most extraordinary set of customs and beliefs ever put on record. To illustrate the gulf which divides these savages from ourselves it must here suffice to mention two facts. In the first place, although they suffer much from cold at night under the frosty stars of the clear Australian heaven, the idea of using as garments the warm furs of the wild animals which they kill and eat has never entered into their minds. They huddle, naked and shivering, about little fires, into which, when they drop off to sleep, they are apt to roll and scorch themselves. In the second place, they have no notion that mankind is propagated by the union of the sexes; indeed, when the idea is suggested to them they steadfastly reject it. Their own theory to account for the continuation of the species is sufficiently remarkable. They suppose that in certain far-off times, to which they give the name of ‘Alcheringa,’ their ancestors roamed about in bands, each band consisting of members of the same totem group. Where they died their spirits went into the ground and formed, as it were, spiritual store-houses, the external mark of which is some natural feature, generally a stone or tree. Such spots are scattered all over the country, and the ancestral spirits who haunt them are ever waiting for a favourable opportunity to be born again into the world. When one of them sees his chance he pounces out on a passing girl or woman and enters into her. Then she conceives, and in due time gives birth to a child, who is firmly believed to be a reincarnation of the spirit that darted into the mother from the rock or tree. It matters not whether a woman be young or old, a matron or a maid, all are alike liable to be thus impregnated by the spirits, although it has been shrewdly observed by the natives that the spirits on the whole exhibit a preference for such women as are young and fat. Accordingly, when a plump damsel, who shrinks from the burden of maternity, is obliged to pass one of the spots where the disembodied spirits are supposed to lurk, she disguises herself as a withered old hag and hobbles past, bent up double, leaning on a stick, wrinkling her smooth young face, and mumbling in a cracked and wheezy voice, ‘Don’t come to me, I am an old woman.’ Thus, in the opinion of these savages, every conception is what we are wont to call an immaculate conception, being brought about by the entrance into the mother of a spirit apart from any contact with the other sex. Students of folklore have long been familiar with notions of this sort occurring in the stories of the birth of miraculous personages,[1] but this is the first case on record of a tribe who believe in immaculate conception as the sole cause of the birth of every human being who comes into the world. A people so ignorant of the most elementary of natural processes may well rank at the very bottom of the savage scale.

Thus it will be obvious that a complete and accurate record of the thoughts and habits of a people so low down in the scale of humanity must possess the highest scientific interest; for it is now generally admitted that all the civilised races of mankind have at some time passed through the stage of savagery, and that on a close scrutiny the seeds of most of the institutions on which we pride ourselves may be discovered, still partially or wholly undeveloped, in the customs of the rudest tribes. A record of this sort has been given to the world by the devoted labours of Messrs Spencer and Gillen, who have thereby earned the gratitude, not of this generation only, but of all future generations who shall henceforth interest themselves in tracing the slow evolution of civilisation out of savagery. It is no exaggeration to say that, among the documents which students of the early history of man will in future be bound to consult, there can, from the nature of the case, be few or none of more capital importance than The Native Tribes of Central Australia. For in a few years the simple savages who, at the end of the nineteenth century still think the thoughts and retain the habits of primeval man, will have perished, or be so changed that all their old-world ways will be gone irretrievably. Everywhere the savages are dying out, and as they go they take with them page after page of the most ancient history of our race. The study of savage man may be compared to the Sibyl, who, as she threw away leaf after leaf, still demanded the same price for the ever diminishing number that remained. Our chances of preserving for future generations a record of these tribes – the beaten and dying runners in life’s race – are lessening year by year, enhancing rather than diminishing, as they drop away, the value of the few trustworthy records we have secured. For there is this difference between the Sibyl of Cumae and the Sibyl of anthropology: the revelation promised by the former was not lost for ever with the fluttering leaves – the future will in time reveal itself to the future; but who shall read in ages to come the vanished record of the past?

I will illustrate by a single example the way in which the customs and beliefs of these Central Australian savages may throw light on the growth of a great institution. The institution which I shall select is great enough, for it is the Roman Empire. We have all read in our schooldays of the device to which Romulus is said to have resorted for the purpose of peopling the city that was destined to become the mistress of the ancient world. On the slope of the Capitoline Hill, then buried deep in the shady horror of a dark and tangled wood, he established a sanctuary of some god or spirit unknown, and proclaimed that all who resorted thither, whether bond or free, should be safe, and should receive lands and citizenship. Lured by these promises, a multitude of broken men – slaves escaping from their masters, debtors who had outrun the bailiffs, murderers with the avengers of blood hot on their tracks – flocked from all the country round to the new town on the Tiber, and a motley population of wretches, ruffians, and desperadoes soon gathered within the massive walls and became the terror of their neighbours.[1] This tradition has not received from historians the attention it deserves. There are good grounds for believing that many cities have sprung up in nearly the same way as Rome is said to have done, not so much through the arbitrary decree of a founder as through the existence of an immemorial sanctuary, within which outlawed and desperate men have found safety and taken up their abode. I propose to show that the germ of such an institution exists, or has existed, in many savage communities, and that the full-grown institution still flourishes in various parts of the world.

To begin with the lowest savages, the natives of Central Australia have certain sacred spots – generally caves in the heart of their wild and lonely hills – which may be regarded as the first rudiment of a city or house of refuge. Here are kept the mysterious sticks and stones (churinga) with which the spirits not only of all their dead ancestors but also of all the living members of the tribe are intimately associated. Everything in such spots and their immediate neighbourhood is sacred; nothing must be done to disturb the spirits. No plant may be pulled there, no branch broken. The very animals that run thither are safe from the hunter; no native would dare to spear a kangaroo or wallaby on the holy ground. Within its limits men, too, are safe from their pursuers; so long as they do not pass the bounds they may not be touched.[1] In some parts of New Guinea the dubu or temple serves as an asylum. A man who is pursued by his enemy and takes refuge in it is perfectly safe. If any one tried to smite him in the temple it is believed that his arms and legs would shrivel up, and that he could do nothing but wish for death.[2] Similarly, among the rude Indians of California, described by the Spanish missionary, Father Boscana, every temple enjoyed the right of asylum. Criminals who had once reached a temple (vanquech) were secure, not only within but also outside the precinct; they might thenceforth go abroad without fear of molestation; the mere entrance into the sacred place had purged their guilt.[3] The Ojibways are said to have had sanctuaries in which every murderer might seek refuge, it being universally believed that no vengeance might be taken on him there. The German traveller, J. G. Kohl, heard that the murderer of a Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company was actually living at the time securely in one of these asylums. [4]

Among more advanced peoples it seems that the tombs, or other places believed to be haunted by the spirits of dead chiefs or kings, are especially apt to develop into asylums. Thus in the monarchical States of the Gallas, in Eastern Africa, homicides enjoy a legal right of asylum if they have succeeded in taking refuge in a hut near the burial-place of the King, which is not far from the King’s house.[5] Similarly, among the Barotse of Southern Africa, the tombs of the Kings, in number about seventy-five, are sanctuaries or places of refuge; and so, too, are the residences of the Queen and the Prime Minister.[1] Among the Ovambo of South-western Africa the village of a great chief is abandoned at his death; only the members of a certain family remain to prevent it from falling into utter decay. Condemned criminals who contrive to escape to one of these deserted villages are safe, at least for a time; for even the chief himself may not pursue a fugitive into the sacred place.[2] In Upolu, one of the Samoan islands, a certain god, Vave, had his abode in an old tree, which served as an asylum for murderers and other offenders who had incurred the penalty of death. ‘If that tree was reached by the criminal, he was safe, and the avenger of blood could pursue no farther, but wait investigation and trial. It is said that the King of a division of Upolu, called Atua, once lived at that spot. After he died the house fell into decay, but the tree was fixed on as representing the departed King, and out of respect for his memory it was made the substitute of a living and Royal protector. It was called o le asi pulu tangata, “the asi tree, the refuge of men.” This reminds me of what I once heard from a native of another island. He said that at one time they had been ten years without a King, and so anxious were they to have some protecting substitute that they fixed upon a large O’a tree (Bischoffia Javanica), and made it the representative of a King, and an asylum for the thief or the homicide when pursued by the injured in hot haste for vengeance.’[3]

In Koetei, a district of Borneo, criminals guilty of capital offences who can take refuge in the Sultan’s dalam may not be slain there, but they lose their freedom for ever, and their children also become slaves. Such refugees, male and female, generally intermarry, and serve the Sultan as domestics, retainers, soldiers, police-agents, and so on. They are a curse to the country. Being drawn, for the most part, from the scum of the population, and always going about armed, they terrify peaceable folk by their brutal and insolent behaviour.[1]

This last example is instructive. It shows how outlaws or refugees may grow into an important and dangerous element of the population. All that is needed to produce this effect is, besides immunity, a rule that the descendants of outcasts shall themselves be outcasts. Where this rule prevails, and the outlaws are segregated in towns or villages of their own, it is obvious that we have a state of matters very like that which is said to have obtained at Rome in its earliest days. Now such a condition of things actually exists at present among the secluded and barbarous tribes of the Siah Posh Kafirs, who inhabit the savage glens and highlands of the Hindu Kush. Amongst them every manslayer is obliged to quit his home and take up his abode in one or other of certain villages or ‘cities of refuge,’ as Sir George Robertson calls them. And it is not merely the slayer himself who is thus banished: his sons, if they are not grown up at the time of the homicide, generally become outcasts too, and so do his daughters’ husbands and their descendants. The result is that there are whole villages peopled mainly by manslayers or their offspring.[2] It is well known that the Hebrews had cities of refuge, within which a manslayer might not be touched by the avenger of blood.[3] A similar institution existed among the more advanced aboriginal tribes of North America, and has been described by a writer of last century, who laboured under the impression that in the Redskins he had discovered the long lost Ten Tribes of Israel. This luminous idea does not, however, impair the value of his testimony, of which we have independent confirmation. He says: ‘Each of these Indian nations have either a house or a town of refuge, which is a sure asylum to protect a manslayer or the unfortunate captive if they can once enter into it. The Cheerake, though now exceedingly corrupt, still observe the law so inviolably as to allow their beloved town the privilege of protecting a wilful murderer; but they seldom allow him to return home afterwards in safety – they will revenge blood for blood, unless in some very particular case.’ ‘Formerly,’ says the same writer, ‘when one of the Cheerake murdered an English trader, he immediately ran off for the town of refuge; but as soon as he got in view of it the inhabitants discovered him by the close pursuit of the shrill war whoo-whoop, and, for fear of irritating the English, they instantly answered the war-cry, ran to arms, intercepted, and drove him off into Tennase River (where he escaped, though mortally wounded), lest he should have entered the reputed holy ground and thus it had been stained with the blood of their friend, or he had obtained sanctuary to the danger of the community.’[1] Among the Creek Indians the cities of refuge were called the White Towns, while the towns which afforded no asylum were known as the Red or War Towns.[2]

A link is wanting to connect these cities of refuge in America, Palestine, and the Hindu Kush, with the less developed forms of asylum which we have met with among various tribes of savages. For none of these cities is reported to have grown up gradually through the drifting of the waifs and strays of society towards a rock of refuge, such as a tomb or other holy place offers in the troubled sea of barbarism. This missing link appears to be supplied in Western Africa. Here, in the regions of the French Congo and Calabar, are sanctuaries in which evidoers of all kinds – for example, thieves, sorcerers, and women who have been guilty of the inexpiable offence of giving birth to twins – seek, and find, safety. These sanctuaries cover considerable tracts of ground, being large enough to contain a whole village with its lands. Whoever can make good his escape to one of them is absolutely secure. But the society, as might be expected, is rather numerous than select; its great charm lies more in a general easiness and freedom of manners than in any natural delicacy or studied refinement. A man of Miss Kingsley’s acquaintance, who had been obliged to betake himself for a time to one of these communities, found the society so intolerable that he preferred to quit it at all hazards.[1]

With these facts before us, we may fairly conjecture that not a few towns in ancient and modern times may have arisen through the gradual accretion of the dregs and outcasts of society about some spot of peculiar holiness. The view that Rome originated in this manner is supported by tradition, and is, perhaps, not belied by anything in the ancient or modern history of the city; certainly it accords well with the belief of the ancients themselves that the Romans were a mixed race. Thus, to go back to the point from which we started, the sacred caves of the rude savages in the wilds of Australia may not unreasonably be regarded as representing in germ an institution out of which a great city, perhaps even a great empire, might, under more favourable circumstances, have been developed.

But it is time to turn to my more immediate subject. In this paper I desire to call attention to some of the novel features of Central Australian Totemism, as they are disclosed to us by the researches of Messrs Spencer and Gillen, and further to consider how far the new facts may require us to modify or recast our old views of Totemism in general. It may be well to begin by reminding the reader that a totem is a class of natural phenomena or material objects – most commonly a species of animals or plants – between which and himself the savage believes that a certain intimate relation exists. The exact nature of the relation is not easy to ascertain; various explanations of it have been suggested, but none has as yet won general acceptance. Whatever it may be, it generally leads the savage to abstain from killing or eating his totem, if his totem happens to be a species of animals or plants. Further, the group of persons who are knit to any particular totem by this mysterious tie commonly bear the name of the totem, believe themselves to be of one blood, and strictly refuse to sanction the marriage or cohabitation of members of the group with each other. This prohibition to marry within the group is now generally called by the name of Exogamy. Thus, Totemism has commonly been treated as a primitive system both of religion and of society. As a system of religion it embraces the mystic union of the savage with his totem; as a system of society it comprises the relations in which men and women of the same totem stand to each other and to the members of other totemic groups. And corresponding to these two sides of the system are two rough-and-ready tests or canons of Totemism: first, the rule that a man may not kill or eat his totem animal or plant; and second, the rule that he may not marry or cohabit with a woman of the same totem. Whether the two sides – the religious and the social – have always co-existed or are essentially independent, is a question which has been variously answered. Some writers – for example, Sir John Lubbock and Mr Herbert Spencer – have held that Totemism began as a system of society only, and that the superstitious regard for the totem developed later, through a simple process of misunderstanding. Others, including J. F. M’Lennan and Robertson Smith, were of opinion that the religious reverence for the totem is original, and must, at least, have preceded the introduction of Exogamy.

Now, when we consider the totemic system of the Central Australian tribes, as it is described by Messrs Spencer and Gillen, one of the things that strikes us most is the extraordinary discrepancy between their traditions and their practice. If their traditions may be trusted, their ancestors certainly did not observe the totemic rules which are now practised by their descendants. Let us take what I have called the canons of Totemism and see how they apply to the present practice of these natives, and to what is represented as having been the practice of their forefathers in days gone by.

First, the rule that a man may not kill or eat his totem animal or plant. Roughly speaking, this rule is fairly well observed, with certain remarkable exceptions, by the Central Australians at present. ‘A man will only eat very sparingly of his totem, and even if he does eat a little of it, which is allowable to him, he is careful, in the case, for example, of an Emu man, not to eat the best part, such as the fat.’[1] In a note on this passage the authors add: ‘The people of the Emu totem very rarely eat the eggs, unless very hungry and short of food, in which case they would eat, but not too abundantly. If an Emu man found a nest of eggs, and was very hungry, he might cook one, but he would take the remainder into camp and distribute them. If he were not very hungry all the eggs would be distributed. The flesh of the bird may be eaten sparingly, but only a very little of the fat; the eggs and fat are more ekirinja, or taboo, than the meat. The same principle holds good through all the totems; a Carpet-snake man will eat sparingly of a poor snake, but he will scarcely touch the reptile if it be fat.’ Elsewhere, Messrs Spencer and Gillen observe that ‘at the present day the totemic animal or plant, as the case may be, is almost, but not quite, taboo, or, as the Arunta people call it, ekirinja, to the members of the totem.’[2] Yet the traditions of these same natives represent their ancestors as possessing and freely exercising the right to kill and eat their totem animals and plants, ‘as if this were, indeed, a functional necessity.’[3]

Second, the rule that a man may not marry or cohabit with a woman of the same totem. At the present day this rule is strictly observed by a group of Central Australian tribes, of which the Urabunna may be taken as typical. It is not observed at all by another group of tribes, of which the Arunta may be regarded as representative. Among these latter tribes the totemic system has no effect on marriage and descent; a man may marry a woman of the same totem or he may not, and his children may belong either to his or to his wife’s totem, or to neither, or some to one and some to the other. Very different was the state of things in the past, if we may trust tradition, the evidence of which ‘seems to point back to a time when a man always married a woman of his own totem. The reference to men and women of one totem always living together in groups would appear to be too frequent and explicit to admit of any other satisfactory explanation. We never meet [in tradition] with an instance of a man living with a woman who was not of his own totem.’[1]

Thus the Central Australian tribes have clear and positive traditions of a time when they regularly killed and ate their totem, and always married women of the same totem as themselves. Such traditions, it is plain, fly straight in the face of all our old notions of Totemism. Are we, therefore, at liberty to reject them as baseless? Certainly not. Their very discordance with the practice of the natives at the present day is the best guarantee that they contain a substantial element of truth. They could not have been invented to explain customs which they contradict. Every theory of Central Australian Totemism must reckon with them; none can be satisfactory which does not show how the gulf between the present and past totemic system of the native can be bridged.

Bearing this in mind, let us look at the existing system more closely. First, we must note that while the totems of these tribes are generally animals or plants, they are not exclusively so: we hear of totems of the wind, the sun, the evening star, fire, water, cloud, and so on; ‘in fact there is scarcely an object, animate or inanimate, to be found in the country occupied by the natives which does not give its name to some totemic group of individuals.’[2] Next, let us observe that each totem group performs certain sacred ceremonies called Intichiuma, the object of which, whenever the totem happens to be an animal or plant, is to ensure the multiplication of the animals or plants of that species. These ceremonies, to which the natives seem to attach more importance than to any others,[1] are generally held at what may be called the approach of the Australian spring. ‘The Intichiuma are closely associated with the breeding of the animals and the flowering of the plants with which each totem is respectively identified, and as the object of the ceremony is to increase the number of the totemic animal or plant, it is most naturally held at a certain season. In Central Australia the seasons are limited, so far as the breeding of animals and the flowering of plants is concerned, to two – a dry one of uncertain and often great length, and a rainy one of short duration and often of irregular occurrence. The latter is followed by an increase in animal life and an exuberance of plant growth which, almost suddenly, transforms what may have been a sterile waste into a land rich in various forms of animals, none of which have been seen for, it may be, many months before, and gay with the blossoms of endless flowering plants. In the case of many of the totems it is just when there is promise of the approach of a good season that it is customary to hold the ceremony.’[2]

The analogy of these ceremonies to the spring and midsummer festivals of our European peasantry, as the latter have been interpreted by W. Mannhardt, is obvious. To dwell on the analogy would be out of place here. I shall have an opportunity elsewhere of pointing the moral which is to be drawn from it. Here I will only ask the reader to observe that, like their European analogues these Australian ceremonies are in their essence magical rather than religious. (The distinction between religion and magic may be said to be that while the former is an attempt to propitiate or conciliate the higher powers, the latter is an attempt to compel or coerce them. Thus, while religion assumes that the great controlling powers of the world are so far akin to man as to be liable, like him, to be moved by human prayers and entreaties, magic makes no such assumption. To the magician it is a matter of indifference whether the cosmic powers are conscious or unconscious, spiritual or material, for in either case he imagines that he can force them by his enchantments and spells to do his bidding. Now as the Intichiuma ceremonies are supposed to produce their effect directly and necessarily, and ‘their performance is not associated in the native mind with the idea of appealing to the assistance of any supernatural being,’[1] it is plain that they are magical in their nature, rather than religious.) A brief notice of some of them will set this in a clear light.

In order to ensure a plentiful supply of a certain grub known as the witchetty grub, which is a favourite article of diet with the natives, and only appears for a short time after rain, the men of the Witchetty Grub totem repair to a shallow cave in a ravine, where lies a large block of quart-zite, surrounded by some small rounded stones. The large block represents the full-grown grubs; the small stones stand for the eggs. On reaching the cave the head man of the totem group begins to sing, while he taps the large block with a wooden trough, such as is used for scooping the earth out of burrows. All the other men at the same time tap it with twigs of a particular gum-tree, chanting the while. The burden of their song is an invitation to the insect to go and lay eggs. Next the leader takes up one of the smaller stones, representing an egg, and strikes each man in the stomach with it, saying, ‘You have eaten much food,’ after which he butts at the man’s stomach with his forehead. When this ceremony is over, they all descend from the cave into the bed of the ravine, and stop under a rock, at which a great leader of the Witchetty Grub totem in the far past is said to have cooked, pulverised, and eaten the grub. The head man of the party strikes this rock with his trough, while the older men again chant invitations to the animal to come from all directions and lay eggs. Ceremonies of the same sort are performed at ten different places. When the round has been completed the party returns home. Here, at some distance from the main camp, a long narrow structure of boughs has meanwhile been got ready; it is designed to represent the chrysalis from which the full-grown insect emerges. Into this structure the men, every one with the sacred design of the totem painted in red ochre and pipeclay on his body, enter and sing of the grub in the various stages of its development. After chanting thus for a while, they shuffle out of the mock chrysalis one by one with a gliding motion, singing all the time about the emergence of the real insect out of the real chrysalis, of which their own performance is clearly an imitation. The whole of these ceremonies, from beginning to end, must be performed by the men fasting; not until the whole is over are the performers allowed to eat and drink.

When men of the Emu totem desire to multiply emus they set about it as follows. Several of the men open veins in their arms and allow the blood to stream on the ground, till a patch about three yards square is saturated with it. When the blood is dry it forms a hard surface, on which the men of the totem paint in white, red, yellow and black a design intended to represent various parts of the emu, such as the fat, of which the natives are very fond, the eggs in various stages of development, the intestines, and the feathers. Further, several men of the totem, acting the part of ancestors of the Emu clan, dress themselves up to resemble emus and imitate the movements and aimless gazing about of the bird; on their heads are fastened sacred sticks (churinga), about four feet long, and tipped with emu feathers, to represent the long neck and small head of the emu.

Again, when men of the Hakea Flower totem wish to produce a plentiful supply of the flower they go to a certain stone which stands in a shallow pit beside an ancient hakea tree. The stone is supposed to represent a mass of hakea flowers, and the tree to mark the spot where an ancestress of the clan passed into the ground long ago. The men sit down in the pit round about the stone and chant songs, inviting the tree to flower much, and the blossoms to be full of honey. Then one of them opens a vein in his arm, and lets the blood spurt all over the stone; this is meant to imitate the preparation of a favourite beverage made by steeping the flower in water.

Again, there is a sort of manna which the natives use as food, and which forms the totem of one of their clans. It is produced by the mulga tree (Acacia aneura). When the members of the totem clan desire to ensure an abundant crop of this manna they resort to a certain great boulder of grey rock, which is oddly marked with black and white seams. This boulder is thought to represent a mass of the manna, and the same significance is attributed to some smaller stones which lie on the top of it. The ceremony begins by the digging up of a sacred bull-roarer (churinga), which is buried in the ground at the foot of the great boulder. It, too, stands for a mass of manna. Then the head man climbs to the top of the boulder and rubs it with the bull-roarer, after which he takes the smaller stones and rubs them, too, on the great boulder. Meanwhile, the other men, sitting around, chant an invitation to the dust produced by the rubbing of the stones to go out and generate a plentiful supply of manna on the mulga trees. Finally, with twigs of the mulga, the leader sweeps away the dust which has gathered on the surface of the stone; his intention, thereby, is to cause the dust to settle on the trees, and so produce manna.

The last of the Intichiuma ceremonies which I shall cite is the one performed by men of the Kangaroo totem, to ensure the multiplication of kangaroos. For this purpose they proceed to the foot of a hill on the slope of which, some twenty feet above the plain, two blocks of stone project, one above the other. One of these stones is supposed to represent a male kangaroo, and the other a female kangaroo. The head man of the totem clan and another man, who stands to the former in the relation of mother’s uncle, whether blood or tribal, climb up the hill and rub these two blocks with a stone, one of them rubbing the one block and the other the other. Lower down the hill is a rocky ledge, supposed to be haunted by the spirits of multitudes of kangaroos which died here long ago. This ledge is next painted with alternate vertical stripes of red and white to indicate the red fur and white bones of a kangaroo. When the painting is done, some young men go up, seat themselves on the ledge, and opening veins in their arms, allow the blood to spurtle over the edge of the rock on which they are seated. The object of this ceremony, according to the natives, is to drive the spirits of the kangaroos out of the rock in all directions, and so to ensure the multiplication of the animals. While the young men are thus bleeding themselves on the top of the ledge the others sit down below, watching them and singing songs in reference to the increase in the number of kangaroos which is expected to follow from this performance.

Without entering into more details, I may say that ceremonies of the same general character as the preceding appear to be practised by members of all the other clans or groups who have animals or plants for their totems. The object of all such ceremonies, avowedly, is to increase the number of the totem animal or plant, and this object the natives sincerely believe that they attain by these means. Thus we see that each totem clan imagines itself possessed of a direct control over the animal or plant whose name it bears, and this control it exercises for the purpose of multiplying the number of its totem plant or animal. But the question at once suggests itself, Why should they trouble themselves to multiply animals or plants which, by their rules, they are almost wholly debarred from eating? For it is to be remembered that the totem animal or plant is almost, though not quite, tabooed to men and women of the totem. The answer to this question can only be that, though the members of each totem group do not benefit, or hardly benefit at all, by multiplying their totem animal or plant, the members of all the other totem groups do benefit by it, since their food supply is believed to be increased thereby. In other words, the Intichiuma ceremonies are performed by each totem group, not on its own behoof, but on behoof of all the others, the general effect of all the ceremonies being supposed to be an increase of the total supply of food available for the whole tribe, which, it is needful to bear in mind, includes a large number of totem clans. The system is, in fact, one of co-operative magic – each group works its spells for the good of all the rest and benefits in its turn through the enchantments practised by the others.

The conclusion that ceremonies for the multiplication of certain plants and animals, all of which are used as food by some members of the tribe, can have no other aim than that of increasing the food supply of the tribe as a whole may seem so obvious as to need no argument in its support. Yet the view of Totemism which it implies is so novel and so totally opposed to all our previous notions on the subject that it is desirable to put it beyond the reach of doubt. For the view is neither more nor less than this: that one at least of the functions of a totem clan is to provide a plentiful supply of its own totem animal or plant to be used as food by the other members of the tribe. That this is, indeed, the intention of the Intichiuma ceremonies among the Central Australian tribes is clearly brought out by the following facts.

When the ceremony for the multiplication of the witchetty grubs has been performed, and the grub becomes plentiful and fully grown, the Witchetty Grub men, women, and children go out daily and collect large supplies of the grub, which they bring into camp and cook, so that it becomes dry and brittle; and in this state they store it away in wooden troughs and pieces of bark. At the same time, the others, who do not belong to the Witchetty Grub totem, are also out gathering the grub, but they must bring all that they find into the camp; for this food must on no account be eaten like other food out in the bush, or the men of the totem would be angry and the grub would disappear. The supply of grubs lasts only a very short time, and when they grow less plentiful the store of cooked grubs is taken to the men’s camp, where, acting under the instructions of the head man of the Witchetty Grub totem, all the men assemble. Those who do not belong to the totem then place their stores before those who do, and the head man thereupon takes one of the troughs and, with the help of other men of the totem, grinds up the dried grubs between stones. Next he and the same men all help themselves to a little of the food and eat it, after which he hands back what remains to the other people. Then he takes a trough from his own store, and after he has ground up the contents he and the men of the totem once more eat a little; lastly, they pass the bulk of what remains to those who do not belong to the Witchetty Grub totem. After this ceremony, the Witchetty Grub men and women may eat very sparingly of the grub. They are not absolutely forbidden to eat it, but they must do so only to a small extent, for if they were to eat too much the power of successfully performing the Intichiuma ceremony would depart from them, and there would be very few grubs. On the other hand, it is just as important for them, and especially for the head man, to eat a little of the totemic animal, since to eat none would have the same disastrous effect as to eat too much.

Similarly, when the ceremony for increasing the number of kangaroos has been performed, the younger men go out hunting kangaroos and bring back the animals which they have killed to the older men, who have stayed in the camp. Here the old men of the Kangaroo totem eat a little of the kangaroo and anoint the bodies of those who took part in the ceremony with its fat, after which the meat is distributed to all the men assembled. When this has been done, the Kangaroo men may eat sparingly of kangaroos; but there are certain choice parts of the animal, such as the tail, which no Kangaroo man or woman must on any account touch.

Again, there is a certain bulb of a Cyperaceous plant which the natives call irriakura. When the men of the Irriakura totem have performed their ceremony for multiplying the bulb, they do not eat of it for some time afterwards. Then persons who do not belong to the totem bring in a quantity of the bulb to the camp and hand it over to the head man and other men of the Irriakura totem. These latter rub some of the tubers between their hands, thus getting rid of the husks, and then, putting the tubers in their mouths, blow them out again in all directions. After this the Irriakura people may eat sparingly of the bulbs.

After the magic rite for multiplying bandicoots has been performed by men of the Bandicoot totem the animal is not eaten until it becomes plentiful. When this is so, men who do not belong to the Bandicoot totem go out in search of a bandicoot, and when they have caught it they bring it into the camp and there put some of the animal’s fat into the mouths of the Bandicoot men; moreover, they rub the fat over their own bodies. After this the Bandicoot men may eat a little of the animal.

Once more, when the Intichiuma ceremony for increasing the supply of the idnimita grub has been performed, and the grub (which is that of a large longicorn beetle) has become plentiful, the men who do not belong to the Idnimita totem collect the insects and bring them into the camp. There they lay their store before the men of the totem, who eat some of the smaller grubs and hand back the rest to the men who do not belong to the totem. When this has been done the men of the Idnimita totem may eat sparingly of the grub.

Thus we see that, after the ceremonies for the multiplication of the various totemic animals and plants have been observed, these animals and plants are killed or gathered and eaten, sparingly by the men who have the particular animal or plant for their totem, but freely by the rest. There can, therefore, be no doubt that the intention of the Intichiuma ceremonies, so far as the totems are edible animals or plants, is to ensure a plentiful supply of food for the tribe. In other words, the performance of one of these solemn rites by men who have an animal for their totem is merely a means to enable the other members of the tribe to kill and eat that animal. Indeed, the men of the totem will even, as we saw in the case of the Witchetty Grub men, kill and cook their totem in large quantities for the benefit of the rest of the community. The same readiness on the part of a man to aid others in catching and killing his own totem came out in the case of a Euro man who made and charmed a magic implement (churinga) for the express purpose of thereby enabling a Plum-tree man to catch and kill euros (a kind of kangaroo).[1]

This explanation of the Intichiuma rites is the one given by Messrs Spencer and Gillen, whose arguments and conclusion I have merely stated in a slightly different form. No other explanation of the ceremonies seems to me to be possible. But further, as the authors acutely point out, the facts which we have passed in review appear to indicate that the men of any particular totem are supposed not only to control the numbers of their totem animal or plant, but also to have a first right to eat it. This appears from the custom of bringing in the first supply of the animal or plant into camp, and laying it before the men of the totem, who are permitted, and indeed required, to eat of it before any one else is allowed to do so. The same idea comes out very clearly in some of the native traditions. Thus they say that once on a time a Hakea Flower woman was changed into a Bandicoot woman by another woman of the latter totem, and that after the transformation she ate bandicoots, that is, her totem animal. Again, it is said that a Euro man once started out in pursuit of a kangaroo which he was anxious to kill and eat, but that to enable himself to do so he first of all changed himself into a Kangaroo man. These traditions point to a time when, if you wished to eat bandicoot you had to belong to the Bandicoot totem; and if you wished to kill and eat kangaroos, you had to belong to the Kangaroo totem; in short, they seem to carry us back to a time when among these tribes a man’s special function in life was to kill and eat his totem animal. At the present day this old system, if it was indeed such, has been greatly modified. As a rule, a man no longer kills and eats his totem animal, and the aid which he gives his fellow-tribesmen in filling their stomachs with it, though it is regarded as very important, is still only indirect.

Hitherto we have considered only the Intichiuma ceremonies which deal with animal and vegetable totems. But, as we have seen, the totems of the Central Australian tribes comprise almost every natural object known to the native, and each totem clan or group has its own Intichiuma ceremony. The ceremony performed by the men of the Water totem has for its end the making of rain; it is held especially at the season when rain may be expected to fall, but may also be held whenever there has been a long drought and water is scarce. like the other Intichiuma rites, those of the Water totem are purely magical in their nature. A man decorated with white down struts slowly up and down a trench, causing his body and legs to quiver in an extraordinary way, and when he is done some young fellows, who have been lying down in a shelter of branches, jump up and rush out screaming in imitation of the spur-winged plover. As to the Intichiuma ceremonies of the other inanimate totems, such as wind, fire, sun, cloud, and so on, we have unfortunately no information; but, arguing by analogy, we may surmise that just as it is the business of Kangaroo men to make kangaroos, of Hakea Flower men to make Hakea flowers, and of Water men to make rain, so it is the business of Wind men to make wind, of Fire men to make fire, of Sun men to make sunshine, and similarly with the rest. In short, Totemism among the Central Australian tribes appears, if we may judge from the Intichiuma ceremonies, to be an organised system of magic intended to procure for savage man a plentiful supply of all the natural objects whereof he stands in need.

The thought naturally presents itself to us: Have we not in these Intichiuma ceremonies the key to the original meaning and purpose of Totemism among the Central Australian tribes, perhaps even of Totemism in general? The suggestion is not made by Messrs Spencer and Gillen in The Native Tubes of Central Australia, but it occurred to me in reading the proofs of their book last September, and in a letter written in that month I communicated it to Professor Spencer. From his reply I learned, without surprise, that he had been coming independently to a similar conclusion. To quote from his letter, which is dated Melbourne, 20th October 1898 –

‘In thinking over the totem question I have been coming more and more to the conclusion that the religious aspect of the totem is the more ancient, and that the now existing social aspect has been tacked on at a later period, and, so far as our central tribes are concerned, your theory that each group of people was originally charged with the duty of securing the multiplication of the particular object the name of which it bears appears to me to fit in admirably with the facts. In many of the central tribes (Arunta, Ilpirra, Warramunga, etc.) the religious aspect is developed almost to the exclusion of the social, while in others (Dieri, Urabunna, etc.) the social is more strongly developed, but at the same time the presence of Intichiuma ceremonies indicates the existence of a religious aspect which is, moreover, identical in nature with that of the Arunta, etc., system. A rough map of Australia is, perhaps, rather instructive in connection with this. The dotted outline with R indicates the area occupied by tribes amongst whom the religious aspect is predominant. R + S indicates that the tribes have the same religious aspect associated with the totem, but that the social (as indicated by the totems regulating marriage) is also well developed; while S indicates that the social aspect is the predominant one. It is also worth noting that over the large area in the centre, where conditions of life are more precarious in the matter of food and water supply, the religious aspect predominates, whilst it is least marked in the area which is well wooded and watered and where the food supply is more constant. This serves to indicate, so far as Australia is concerned, a relationship between food supply and the development of the religious aspect of the totemic system at the present day.’

On this I will only remark that if the Intichiuma ceremonies do really give the clue to Totemism, the aspect of the totemic system, which we have hitherto been accustomed to describe as religious, deserves rather to be called magical, and in this change of designation I believe that Professor Baldwin Spencer is now disposed to acquiesce. His own views as to the probable origin of Totemism will be found stated in a forthcoming number of the Journal of the Anthropological Institute. In the main they accord with those which I was led to adopt from a consideration of the same facts. The merit of the discovery, if it should prove to be such, clearly belongs to the writers who have laboriously collected the facts, and presented them in such a masterly form that any one may see for himself the conclusion to which they point.

The general explanation of Totemism to which the Intichiuma ceremonies seem to point is that it is primarily an organised and co-operative system of magic designed to secure for the members of the community, on the one hand, a plentiful supply of all the commodities of which they stand in need, and, on the other hand, immunity from all the perils and dangers to which man is exposed in his struggle with nature. Each totem group, on this theory, was charged with the superintendence and control of some department of nature from which it took its name, and with which it sought, as far as possible, to identify itself. If the things which composed the department assigned to a particular group were beneficial to man, as in the case of edible animals and plants, it was the duty of the group to foster and multiply them; if, on the other hand, they were either noxious by nature, or might, under certain circumstances, become so, as in the case of ravenous beasts, poisonous serpents, rain, wind, snow, and so on, then it was the duty of the group to repress and counteract these harmful tendencies, to remedy any mischief they might have wrought, and perhaps to turn them as efficient engines of destruction against foes. This latter side of totemic magic, which may perhaps be described as the negative or remedial side, hardly appears in our accounts of Central Australian Totemism; but we shall meet with examples of it elsewhere.

In favour of this hypothetical explanation of Totemism I would urge that it is simple and natural, and in entire conformity with both the practical needs and the modes of thought of savage man. Nothing can be more natural than that man should wish to eat when he is hungry, to drink when he is thirsty, to have fire to warm him when he is cold, and fresh breezes to cool him when he is hot; and to the savage nothing seems simpler than to procure for himself these and all other necessaries and comforts by magic art. We need not, therefore, wonder that in very ancient times communities of men should have organised themselves more or less deliberately for the purpose of attaining objects so natural by means that seemed to them so simple and easy. The first necessity of savage, as of civilised, man is food, and with this it accords that wherever Totemism exists the majority of the totems are invariably animals or plants – in other words, things which men can eat. The great significance of this fact has hitherto been concealed from us by the prohibition so commonly laid on members of a totem clan to eat their totem animal or plant. But the discovery of the Intichiuma ceremonies among the Central Australian tribes proves that in keeping our eye on the prohibition to eat the totem we have hitherto been looking at only one side of the medal, and that the less important of the two. For these ceremonies show – what no one had previously dreamed of – that the very man who himself abstains in general from eating his totem will, nevertheless, do all in his power to enable other people to eat it; nay, that his very business and function in life is to procure for his fellow-tribesmen a supply of the animal or plant from which he takes his name, and to which he stands in so intimate a relation. With the new facts before us, we may safely conjecture that whatever the origin of the prohibition observed by each clan to eat its totem, that prohibition is essentially subordinate, and probably ancillary to the great end of enabling the community as a whole to eat of it – in other words, of contributing to the common food supply.

Viewed in this light, Totemism is a thoroughly practical system designed to meet the everyday wants of the ordinary man in a clear and straightforward way. There is nothing vague or mystical about it, nothing of that metaphysical haze which some writers love to conjure up over the humble beginnings of human speculation, but which is utterly foreign to the simple, sensuous, and concrete modes of thought of the savage. Yet for all its simplicity and directness we cannot but feel that there is something impressive, and almost grandiose, in the comprehensiveness, the completeness, the vaulting ambition of this scheme, the creation of a crude and barbarous philosophy. All nature has been mapped out into departments; all men have been distributed into corresponding groups; and to each group of men has been assigned, with astounding audacity, the duty of controlling some one department of nature for the common good. Religion, it will be observed, has no place in the scheme. Man is still alone with nature, and fancies he can sway it at his will. Later on, when he discovers his mistake, he will bethink himself of gods, and beg them to pull for him the strings that hang beyond his reach.

A further recommendation of this way of regarding Totemism is that it falls in with the traditions as well as with the practice of the Central Australian tribes. We have seen that, according to these traditions, people began by regularly eating their totems, and marrying women of the same totem group as themselves. To the ordinary view of Totemism, which treats as fundamental the prohibitions to eat the totem animal or plant, and to marry a woman of the same totem group, these traditions present almost insuperable difficulties; the adherents of that view have, indeed, little choice but to reject the traditions as baseless, although strong grounds exist, as I have pointed out, for holding them to be authentic. But if we accept the theory that Totemism is merely an organised system of magic intended to secure a supply, primarily of food, and secondarily of everything else that a savage wants, the difficulties vanish. For, on this hypothesis, why should not a man partake of the food which he is at so much pains to provide? And why should he not marry a woman whose function in life is the same as his own? Nay, we may go a step farther, and say that, according to a fundamental principle of Totemism, there are good reasons why he should do both of these things. That principle, to which I would now direct the reader’s attention, is the identification of a man with his totem.

Among the Central Australians, we are told, ‘the totem of any man is regarded, just as it is elsewhere, as the same thing as himself.’[1] Thus a Kangaroo man, discussing the matter with Messrs Spencer and Gillen, pointed to a photograph of himself which had just been taken, and remarked: ‘That one is just the same as me; so is a kangaroo.’ This incapacity to distinguish between a man and a beast, difficult as it is for us to realise, is common enough, even among savages who have not the totemic system. A Bushman, questioned by a missionary, ‘could not state any difference between a man and a brute – he did not know but a buffalo might shoot with bows and arrows as well as a man, if it had them.’[2] When the Russians first landed on one of the Alaskan Islands the natives took them for cuttle-fish, ‘on account of the buttons on their clothes.’[3] The Bororos, a tribe of Brazilian Indians, calmly maintain that they are birds of a gorgeous red plumage, which live in their native forests. It is not merely that they will be changed into these birds at their death, but they actually are identical with them in their life, and they treat the birds accordingly, as they would their fellow-tribesmen, keeping them in captivity, refusing to eat their flesh, and mourning for them when they die. However, they kill the wild birds for their feathers, and, though they will not kill, they pluck the tame ones to adorn their own naked brown bodies with the brilliant plumage of their feathered brethren.[4] Now, it is by identifying himself with his totem that the Central Australian native produces the effects he aims at. If he desires to multiply grubs, he pretends to be a grub himself, emerging from the chrysalis state; if his wish is to ensure a plentiful supply of emus, he dresses himself up as an emu, and mimicks the bird; for by thus converting himself into a grub, or an emu, he thinks he can move the other grubs and emus to comply with his wishes.

But it is not merely by disguising himself as an animal and copying its habits that the Central Australian savage seeks to identify himself with his totem. All over the world primitive man believes that by absorbing the flesh and blood of an animal he acquires the qualities of the creature, and so far identifies himself with it. Examples of the belief are too well known to be cited. The same idea forms the basis of the familiar blood-convenant practised by so many races: two men make themselves akin by each transfusing into the veins of the other a little of his own blood. From this point of view it is quite natural that the savage, desirous of uniting himself as closely as possible with his totem, should partake of its flesh and blood. And we have seen that according to the Central Australian traditions men did commonly eat their totems in days of old. In those early times the Kangaroo people may have lived chiefly on kangaroos, strengthening their kangaroo nature by constantly absorbing the flesh of the animal whose name they took and whose habits they copied. The Opossum men may have justified their name by consuming more opossum meat than anybody else; and so with the members of the other totem clans. With this it would agree that two clans of Western Australia, who are named after a small species of opossum and a little fish, believe themselves to be so called because they used to live chiefly on these creatures.[1] Even at the present day in Central Australia, though men are in general nearly forbidden to partake of their totem animal or plant, they are still bound occasionally to eat a little of it as a solemn ceremony, because it is believed that otherwise they could not successfully perform the Intichiuma ceremonies, and that the supply of the plant or animal would consequently fail. Clearly they think that, in order to multiply the members of their totem, they must identify themselves with it by taking into their bodies the flesh and blood of the animal or the fibre of the plant. Here, then, in the heart of Australia, among the most primitive savages known to us, we find the actual observance of that totem sacrament which Robertson Smith, with the intuition of genius, divined years ago,[1] but of which positive examples have hitherto been wanting.

The reason why men should in course of time deny themselves the food on which they had formerly subsisted, and which they continued to provide for the use of others, is not obvious. We may conjecture that the change came about through an attempt to carry out more consistently than before that identification of a man with his totem, which seems to be of the essence of the system. Men may have remarked that animals as a rule, and plants universally, do not feed upon their own kind; and hence a certain inconsistency may have been perceived in the conduct of Grub men who lived on grubs, of Grass-seed men who ate grass-seed, and so with the other animal and vegetable totems. It might be argued that men who behaved so unlike the real animals and plants could not be true Grubs, Emus, Grass-seeds, and so on, and therefore could not effectively perform the all-important ceremonies for multiplying the beasts, birds, and vegetables on which the tribe depended for its subsistence. Further, a wish to conciliate and entice the creatures which it was desired to catch for food may have helped to establish the taboo on killing and eating the totem. This wish is widely prevalent among savages, and manifests itself in many quaint observances, which the hunter and his friends are bound to comply with for the sake of alluring the game, and making death appear to them as painless and even attractive as may be. Among tribes which have the totemic system this need of adopting a conciliatory attitude towards any particular sort of animal would naturally be felt chiefly by that part of the community whose special business it was to breed and kill the animal in question; in other words, it would be felt chiefly by the group or clan which had the particular species of animal for its totem. For it is to be remembered that in early times the members of a clan appear to have been by profession the hunters or butchers as well as the breeders of their totem animal; this comes out in the legend of the Euro man who turned himself into a Kangaroo man in order to kill a kangaroo, and a trace of the same custom appears in the case of the other Euro man, at the present day, who made and charmed a magical instrument for the very purpose of enabling a Plum-tree man to catch euro. Now, if it came to be generally thought that a Kangaroo man, for example, would be more likely to entice kangaroos to their fate if he were, so to say, personally known to them as one who had no selfish ends to gain by cultivating their acquaintance, public opinion would gradually impress on the Kangaroo men the duty of abstaining in the interest of the majority from the slaughter and consumption of kangaroos, and they would be urged to confine themselves to their more important function of securing by magical means a plentiful supply of the animal for their fellows. If this explanation is right, the common practice of sparing the totem animal originated in anything but a superstitious reverence for the creature as a superior being endowed with marvellous attributes; it was more analogous to the blandishments which a shepherd or herdsman will lavish on a sheep or a bullock for the purpose of catching the animal and handing it over to the butcher. Nor need we suppose that in abdicating their ancient right of eating kangaroo-flesh the men of the Kangaroo totem were either coerced by their fellows or animated by a noble impulse of disinterested devotion to the common weal. A similar self-denying ordinance would be simultaneously imposed by common consent on all the other clans which had animals or plants for their totem; and thus each clan, in renouncing a single kind of food for the benefit of the community, would calculate on receiving in return a more abundant supply of all the rest, not so much because there would be fewer mouths to feed with each kind of viand, as because the abstinence practised by the several clans was expected to add to the efficacy of their charms for multiplying and attracting the game. For we must bear in mind that under the totemic system the various clans or stocks do not live isolated from each other, but are shuffled up together within a narrow area, and exert their magic powers for the common good.

This answer to the question why men gave up the right of eating their totems is put forward with diffidence. The problem is difficult, and I am far from feeling confident that the solution here suggested is the true one. So far as the explanation rests on a supposed desire to conciliate the totem it is open to the objection, raised by my friend Professor Baldwin Spencer, in the letter to which I have referred, that the Central Australian natives at the present day seem to show no other trace of an attempt to conciliate or appease the game which they kill and eat. I have no wish to disguise or extenuate the force of the objection. Indeed, I had myself, nearly ten years ago, remarked on this absence of the conciliation of game among the Australian aborigines, whom in that respect I contrasted with the North American Indians.[1] Yet it is not easy to see how, without introducing the idea of conciliation in some form, we are to explain the attitude of the savage towards his totem animal.

On the new theory of Totemism it is thus quite easy to understand why men should have begun by regularly eating their totem animal or plant, as in fact they seem to have done, if the Central Australian traditions can be trusted. The real difficulty, indeed, is to explain how they ever came to give up the habit. Similarly the theory suggests a very simple reason why men should have begun by marrying women of their own totem group in preference to any others, as they are represented doing in the Central Australian legends. On the principle of the identification of the members of a clan with their totem, what can be more natural than that an Emu man should wed an Emu woman and an Opossum man should marry an Opossum woman, just as an emu cock mates with an emu hen and a male opossum pairs with a female opossum? Now this, which may be described as the natural system of Totemism, is just the one which appears from their traditions to have prevailed among the Central Australian tribes before the introduction of Exogamy.[1] Whatever the origin of Exogamy, there is the clearest traditional testimony that among the Central Australians it was an innovation imposed on an existing system of totem clans who previously knew nothing of such a rule.[2] This accords perfectly with the present hypothesis that the natural and original system of Totemism was one in which men and women of the same totem regularly cohabited with each other. Further, it is supported by the striking fact that among a large group of the Central Australian tribes the law of Exogamy is not now, and apparently never has been, applied to the totem clans.[3]

The principle of the identification of a man with his totem may be looked at from the two points of view according, as we think mainly of identifying the man, let us say, with an animal, or of identifying the animal with the man. In the former case we have, so to say, a man who is transformed into an animal, in the latter case we have an animal which is changed into a man. Now the Central Australian natives appear to have taken measures to ensure this double transformation. By transfusing the life of their totem animals into their own bodies, the men and women of each clan converted themselves, as far as they could, into animals; and by transfusing their own human life into the bodies of animals they converted the animals as far as it lay in their power, into men and women. The first of these transferences of life was effected by eating the flesh and blood of the animals; the second appears to have been effected by means of certain magical instruments called churinga and nurtunjas.

The churinga are slabs of stone or wood carved, for the most part, with devices relating to the totem; in shape they generally resemble the well-known instrument called a bull-roarer, which is employed by savages in many parts of the world in the performance of their most solemn rites and deepest mysteries. Among the Central Australian tribes every man, woman, and child has one of these mysterious implements specially associated with him or her from birth to death; those of each group are kept together hidden away in a small cave or crevice in some secluded spot among the hills, and the entrance to the cave is carefully blocked up with stones arranged so naturally as not to arouse the suspicion of a chance wayfarer that here lie concealed the most sacred possessions of the tribe. The loss of these deeply-prized sticks and stones is the most terrible evil that can befall a group of people; natives who found their cave robbed of its precious contents have been known to remain in camp for a fortnight, weeping and lamenting over the loss, and plastering themselves with pipeclay, the emblem of mourning for the dead. Further, it is believed that in the far-off times of the Alcheringa their ancestors also had each his own churinga, which he carried with him in his wanderings about the country, and dropped on the ground where he died. On this belief Messrs Spencer and Gillen remark: ‘We meet in tradition with unmistakable traces of the idea that the churinga is the dwelling-place of the spirit of the Alcheringa ancestors. In one special group of Achilpa men, for example, the latter are reported to have carried about a sacred pole or nurtunja with them during their wanderings. When they came to a camping-place and went out hunting the nurtunja was erected, and upon this the men used to hang their churinga when they went out from camp, and upon their return they took them down again and carried them about. In these churinga they kept, so says the tradition, their spirit part.’[1] Further, the same writers observe: ‘We have evidently in the churinga belief a modification of the idea which finds expression in the folklore of so many peoples, and according to which primitive man, regarding his soul as a concrete object, imagines that he can place it in some secure spot apart, if needs be, from his body, and thus, if the latter be in anyway destroyed, the spirit part of him still persists unharmed.’[2] At the present day, as the authors point out, this ancient belief has been modified among the tribes of Central Australia. The loss or injury of the churinga is indeed a thing to be deeply deplored, and the man who suffers such a mishap fears vaguely that some evil thing will befall him in consequence of it; but he does not apprehend that the loss, or even the destruction of the sacred stick or stone, must necessarily entail his death. In short, the natives no longer regard the churinga as the abode of their spirits laid up for safety in the secret cave, like the soul of the ogre or warlock in the children’s story, hidden far, far away in some fairy bird or beast at the world’s end. Even to the naked savage of the Australian wilderness the time for such beliefs has gone by. Yet they are nearer far to him than to us, for he ascribes them, not as we do to imaginary beings, to the giants and monsters of nursery tales, but to his own real forefathers, whose figures can yet be discerned, faint and dim, in the distance as they recede down the long road that leads to fairyland.

The second of the implements by means of which the Central Australian appears, like the giant or ogre in the story, to have formerly transferred his spirit to some beast or bird or thing is the magic pole or nurtunja.[3] This is an instrument which still plays a great part in the sacred ceremonies of the natives. It takes many forms, but in every case it stands for the totem with which the particular ceremony is concerned. Thus, if the ceremony relates to the Wild Cat totem, the nurtunja will represent a wild cat; if it relates to the Sun totem, the nurtunja will represent the sun; and so on. Hence, when we hear that in the remote days of the Alcheringa the men of the Achilpa, or Wild Cat totem, before they went out hunting, hung up their churinga, in which they kept their spirits, on a nurtunja, which necessarily represented a wild cat, we can hardly avoid the inference that in doing so they believed themselves to be placing their spirits in their totem animals, the wild cats. That they permanently kept their spirits in the animals is not suggested by the legend; on the contrary, as they are said to have hung up the churinga on the nurtunja when they went out hunting, and to have taken them down again when they came back, the natural inference seems to be that they only deposited their spirits temporarily in the animals for a definite purpose and withdrew them again when the occasion was over. Now, the occasion mentioned in the legend is the chase, and as in the days of the Alcheringa, to which the legend refers, people seem to have subsisted mainly on their totem animal or plant, we may conjecture that when the Wild Cat men went out hunting the game they sought above all were wild cats. If this was so, the previous transference of their spirits to the animals, effected by hanging up the sticks or stones, in which they kept their spirits, on a pole which represented a wild cat, can hardly have had any other intention than that of compelling the creatures to come to the hunters and be quietly knocked on the head. ‘If we can only put ourselves or a good part of ourselves,’ so these primitive huntsmen may have argued, ‘into yon wild cats which are now scurrying from us, we shall very soon make them, whether they like it or not, walk straight up to us, and so we shall kill them quite comfortably and make a meal of them. And, of course, in doing so we shall get back the vital part of ourselves which we temporarily transferred to the animals.’ On the other hand, if the game which the Wild Cat men went out to hunt were not wild cats, the motive of the hunters in depositing their spirits in the nurtunja, and hence in their totem, the wild cats, must have been different. It may have been done simply for safety, lest during the hunt any accident should befall them; for clearly, in the absence of their spirits, which they had taken the precaution of leaving elsewhere before they started, nothing that might happen to their mere empty carcases could have any serious consequences. Whichever of these explanations be adopted, the tradition points clearly to a custom of depositing a man’s spirit, for longer or shorter periods, in the body of his totem animal. Vestiges of the same custom are also preserved in the practice, which the natives still keep up, of hanging their churinga upon nurtunjas in certain solemn ceremonies concerned with the totems.[1] The practice is identical with that ascribed to the Wild Cat men in the legend, and its original meaning is probably the same. For example, before the novices undergo the painful operation of subincision they are made to embrace a sacred pole (nurtunja) to which some churinga are often, though not invariably, attached. The effect of thus embracing the pole is thought to be that the lads will not feel the griding knife. Perhaps their ancestors, who invented this primitive pain-killer, held that by extracting the spirits of the novices from their bodies and transferring them for a time to the pole, or to the totem which it represented, they rendered the bodies of the youth inert and numb. To effect this salutary purpose it may originally have been deemed needful in every case to attach to the pole the churinga or receptacles in which the lads kept their spirits; but with the decay of old ideas about the churinga it is no longer considered indispensable to fasten any churinga at all to the pole, and a simple embrace bestowed on the latter by the novice now passes occasionally for a sufficient anaesthetic.

Some time ago I suggested that the transference of a man’s spirit or soul for safety to some external object constituted the essence of Totemism, that in fact a totem is no more than a sort of strong box, in which a savage keeps his soul. The evidence for the former practice of such a soul-transference among the Central Australians has now been put before the reader. That it is slight and scanty I fully admit. Such as it is, when considered along with the Intichiuma ceremonies and other indications, it seems to show that the purpose of the transference was not so much to deposit the man’s life in a secure place as to enable him to control the totem for his own and the common good. When the totem was an animal this control was directed to multiplying the species and compelling the members of it to come and be killed for food. When the totem was the sun the savage would hope, by placing a vital part of himself in the luminary, to direct its course and secure a due supply of light and heat for himself and his fellows. And so, mutatis mutandis, with the other totems. But it is quite possible that the other motive – the natural desire of frail man to put all that is mortal of him beyond the reach of chance and change – may also have operated. That it really did so is strongly suggested both by the rigorous precautions taken to conceal the precious objects with which the spirits of the tribesmen are so closely associated, and by the bitter grief and vague alarm excited by their loss.

If the intention of transfusing a portion of a man’s life into an animal was in part at least to exercise a sort of mesmeric attraction over the creature, and thereby to catch and kill it, the apparent inconsistency in the conduct of the hunter, who first endows a beast with his own spirit, and then kills and devours it, need cause no difficulty, for, in consuming the flesh and blood, he recovers all of himself that he put into the animal. The case, however, is somewhat different when the animal which contains his life is killed and eaten by somebody else. If I deposit my soul in a hare, and my brother John shoots that hare, roasts, and swallows it, what becomes of my soul? Am I not thereby put in the parlous state of being left without a soul? To meet this obvious danger it is necessary that John should know the state of my soul, and that, knowing it, he should, whenever he shoots a hare, take steps to extract and restore to me my soul before he cooks and dines upon the animal. This, we may conjecture, is in part the intention of a Central Australian rite which has been already described. We have seen that after the Intichiuma ceremony the first supply of the totem animal which is brought into the camp is solemnly laid before the men of the totem, who eat a little of it and then pass on the remainder to the others to be consumed by them. By thus partaking first of their totem animal the men of the totem may be supposed not merely to absorb its qualities sacramentally but also to recover that portion of their own spirit which they had temporarily deposited in the animal. In this connection the ceremonies observed by a Brazilian tribe in killing some sorts of game and fish are instructive. The Bororos believe that the souls of their medicine-men transmigrate at death into the bodies of certain kinds of large and succulent animals and fish, which are reckoned the greatest dainties, such, for instance, as the tapir, the cayman, the large jahu fish, and a sort of shad. Whenever one of these creatures is killed a ceremony has to be performed over it by a medicine-man before its flesh can be eaten, the purpose of the ceremony being to make sure that the animal cannot be restored to life. Cowering down on the ground, the wizard blows and spits upon the carcase, claps it, and shrieks and spits into its open mouth. Nay more, he is bound to be present at the actual killing of the animal. If, for example, a jahu fish or a shad were caught in a net when no medicine-man was by, the fish would be set free again. The Indians think that any one who ate fish, flesh, or fowl over which the needful ceremony had not been performed would soon die.[1] The analogy between the Brazilian and the Australian practice is, if I am right, very close. Both peoples believe that the bodies of certain animals are tenanted by the souls of men belonging to their tribe; both use these animals as food; and both perform certain ceremonies over the dead animals for the purpose of disengaging the souls of their friends from the carcases of the beasts before they proceed to convey the latter into their own bellies. The only essential difference between them is that in the Brazilian case the souls so disengaged are the souls of the dead, while in the Australian case they are the souls of the living.[1]

We have still to inquire how far the explanation of Totemism suggested by the new Australian facts is confirmed by similar facts observed among totemic peoples in other parts of the world. I may remind the reader that the explanation, based on the Intichiuma ceremonies, is that the totem clans are essentially bands of magicians charged with the duty of controlling and directing the various departments of nature for the good of man. A crucial question, therefore, is, Are analogous ceremonies performed by totem groups in other parts of the world? and in general are totem clans elsewhere than in Australia credited with the power of exercising control over the totem? Before adducing some evidence of the existence of such beliefs and practices in various parts of the world, I would ask the reader to remember that, although the Intichiuma ceremonies have probably been practised from time immemorial in the centre of Australia, they were never observed by Europeans until quite lately; nay, that one of the authors, to whom we are indebted for their discovery, lived (as I understand) on intimate terms with the natives for many years without getting the least inkling that any such solemn ceremonies were going on around him. With his experience before us we may surmise that similar rites practised by other totem tribes have escaped the notice of Europeans elsewhere, and that the scantiness of the evidence for their existence is due not so much to the rarity of the ceremonies themselves as to the ignorance or carelessness of observers. With this caution I proceed to give the few notices I have thus far collected of customs and beliefs analogous to those revealed in the Intichiuma ceremonies of the Central Australians.

In one of the Torres Straits Islands members of the Dog clan were believed to understand the habits of dogs, and to be able to exercise special control over them.[1] In one of the New Hebrides, when a man wished to catch octopus he used to take one of the members of the Octopus family with him; the latter stood on the beach and called out, ‘So-and-so wants octopus,’ and then plenty of octopuses would come and be caught.[2] On a cloudy morning the Sun clan of the Bechuanas were wont to make the sun shine out through the clouds; the chief kindled a new fire in his dwelling, and every one of his subjects carried a light from it to his own hut.[3] The intention of the ceremony clearly was, by means of sympathetic magic, to blow up into a brighter blaze the smouldering fire of the sun. In the Murray Islands, Torres Straits, it is the duty of the Sun clan to imitate the rising and setting of the sun,[4] probably to ensure the punctual performance of his daily duties by the orb of day. Among the Omahas of North America the Small Bird clan performs a magic ceremony to keep small birds from the corn; the Reptile clan performs a similar ceremony to protect the crops from worms; and the Wind clan think they can start a breeze by flapping their blankets.[5] The same Wind clan practises a magic rite to stop a blizzard. They paint one of their boys red, and he rolls over and over in the snow, reddening it for some distance all around him. This stops the blizzard,[6]the notion apparently being that the white snow will not fall when it knows that it will be thus reddened and defiled. In another North American tribe the Hare clan seems to have been credited with the power of stopping a heavy and long-continued fall of snow; at least, this seems a natural inference from a passage in one of the letters of the early Jesuit missionaries. The writer tells a story to explain why the body of a certain old man, who had just died, was burned instead of being buried, though interment was the regular mode of disposing of the dead in the tribe. ‘They regard it as certain,’ says he, ‘that the father of this old man was a hare, which walks on the snow in winter, and that thus the snow, the hare, and the old man are of the same village, that is to say, are kinsmen. They add that the hare said to his wife that he would not suffer his children to remain under ground – it was not suitable to their rank, seeing they were kinsmen of the snow, whose country is high up in the sky; and that if ever his children were put in the ground after their death he would pray to the snow, his kinsman, to punish mankind for their fault by falling so thick and so long that there would be spring no more.’ In confirmation of this story the Indians told the missionary that three years ago the brother of this same old man died at the beginning of winter, and that as he was buried instead of burned the snow fell so heavily and the winter was so long that they began to fear they would never see spring again. However, they bethought themselves of digging up the body of the kinsman of the snow and burning it; and no sooner had they done so than, sure enough, the snow ceased to fall, and spring came with a burst.[1] Apparently, the men whose bodies had thus to be burnt belonged to the Hare clan, and yet were deemed so closely akin to the snow that to burn their bodies was equivalent to melting the snow itself. We may conjecture that the same men were believed in their lifetime to be able to stop a snowfall by their charms and spells.

Some of these examples explain the attitude of a totem clan towards its totem when the totem is or may, under certain circumstances, become of a noxious and maleficent nature. In such cases it is the function of the clan, not, of course, to multiply the numbers of the totem or increase its virulence, but, on the contrary, to disarm, counteract, and keep within due bounds its dangerous influence. Hence, members of the Snake clan in Senegambia profess to heal by their touch persons who have been bitten by serpents;[1] and the same profession was made by Serpent clans in antiquity.[2] Similarly, in Central Australia, members of the Fly totem claim to cure, by the touch of a magic implement (churinga), eyes which are swollen and inflamed with fly-bites.[3] And, on analogy, we may conjecture that certain Arab families, who believed their blood to be a remedy for hydrophobia,[4] were descended from men of a Dog totem.

Further, when the case of the Indian, who was a kinsman of the snow as well as of hares, is considered in the light of the preceding discussion, we arrive at a simple explanation of a peculiar feature of Australian Totemism which has hitherto baffled inquirers. In many Australian tribes the members of a totem clan believe themselves to stand in a very intimate relation, not merely to their own totem, but to a number of other natural objects or phenomena; and this relation seems to amount to a claim of ownership, the natives affirming that the things belong to them.[5] It has been proposed by Mr Howitt to designate these things as sub-totems or pseudo-totems; they might also be called multiplex totems. To take instances of them, we are told that in some tribes of New South Wales ‘everything in the universe is divided among the different members of the tribe; some claim the trees, others the plains, others the sky, stars, wind, rain, and so forth.’[6] Another writer, speaking of a tribe in Queensland, says: ‘Everything in nature, according to them, is divided between the classes. The wind belongs to one, and the rain to the other. The sun is Wutaroo, and the moon is Yungaroo. The stars are divided between them; and if a star is pointed out they will tell you to which division it belongs.’[1] Among the Wakelbura and kindred tribes of Northern Queensland we are told that everything, animate and inanimate, belongs to one or other of the two exogamous classes into which the tribes are divided. A wizard in performing his incantations may use only things which belong to his own class. The stage on which a corpse is set must be made of the wood of a tree which is of the same class as the deceased, and similar rules hold in other matters.[2] In the Mount Gambier tribe of South Australia, which includes ten totem clans, the men of the Black Cockatoo totem claim to stand in this peculiar relation towards the moon, the stars, etc.; men of the Fish-Hawk totem claim honeysuckle, smoke, etc.; men of the Pelican totem claim dogs, blackwood trees, fire, frost, etc.; men of the Crow totem claim thunder, lightning, rain, hail, winter, clouds, etc.; men of a Snake totem claim fish, seals, eels, stringy-bark trees, etc.; men of the Tea-tree totem claim ducks, wallabies, owls, crayfish, opossum, etc.; men of the black, crestless Cockatoo claim kangaroos, sheoak trees, sun, wind, summer and autumn. A man will not, if he can help it, either kill or eat any of the animals which he thus regards as peculiarly his own; if he is compelled by hunger to do so, he expresses his sorrow at having to eat his ‘friends,’ or his ‘flesh,’ by touching his breast as a sign of relationship.[3] In the Wotjoballuk tribe of North-western Victoria men of the Hot Wind totem looked upon as their own three different kinds of snakes and two kinds of birds; the men of the White Cockatoo totem asserted a right to no less than seventeen different species of plants and animals; and claims of the same sort were advanced by the members of the other totem clans, namely, the Black Cockatoo clan, the Sun clan, the Deaf Adder clan, and the Pelican clan.[1]

Now, on the hypothesis that each totem clan is a band of magicians, whose function it is to control certain natural phenomena for the common good, we can easily see that, where the totem clans were not numerous, it might be found necessary to entrust several departments of nature to each clan. Thus, to take the case of the Wotjoballuk tribe, which we have just been considering, it seems to have included no more than six totem clans, four of which were concerned with species of birds or beasts (pelican, adder, black and white cockatoo), one with the sun, and one with the wind. Clearly, if each of these six clans were to give its attention exclusively to its particular totem, whole departments of nature, including multitudinous species of animals and plants, would be uncared for, and the consequences to the tribe might be disastrous. What would become of kangaroos, opossums, and wallabies if it was nobody’s business to multiply them? How could gum-trees be reasonably expected to flourish, and plum-trees to bear fruit, if they were suffered to droop and dwine in the cold shade of indifference and neglect? The thing was not to be thought of. There was nothing for it but that the members of each clan should buckle to and, after discharging their primary duty to their totem, should devote their superfluous energies to the laudable task of keeping a few more of the great processes of nature a-going. Again, take the ten clans of the Mount Gambier tribe, with their totems – fish-hawk, pelican, crow, two sorts of black cockatoo, a harmless snake, the tea-tree, and an edible root (the totems of two clans are unknown). Consider how far even fish-hawks, pelicans, crows, black cockatoos, etc., are from exhausting the sum total of the universe, and you will readily perceive why Crow men, in addition to looking after crows, had to take charge of thunder, lightning, rain, hail, etc.; why Black Cockatoo men, not content with exercising a due supervision over black cockatoos, had to extend the sphere of their operations to the sun, the wind, the summer, the autumn, and so on. In short, the fewer the clans the more numerous necessarily were the magical functions to be discharged by each, if the great cosmic movement was still to go on.

We can now hazard a conjecture as to the meaning of the numerous prohibitions imposed on each of the clans in the Queensland tribes, whose social system has been so patiently observed and recorded by Mr W. E. Roth.[1] Among these tribes the members of each exogamous class are forbidden to eat, not merely one, but several, and sometimes many different kinds of animals. The exogamous classes are four in number, and the lists of foods prohibited to each class, though constant throughout each tribe, are found to vary from tribe to tribe. In one district, for example, the class called Koopooroo are not allowed to eat iguana, whistler duck, black duck, ‘blue-fellow’ crane, yellow dingo, and small yellow fish ‘with-one-bone-in-him’; another class, called Woongko, have to avoid scrub-turkey, eagle-hawk, bandicoot, brown snake, black dingo, and white duck; a third class have to do without kangaroo, carpet-snake, teal, white-bellied brown-headed duck, various kinds of diver birds, ‘trumpeter’ fish, and a kind of black bream; while members of the fourth class, called Bunburi, dare not eat emu, yellow snake, galah parrot, and a certain species of hawk. They firmly believe that if any one were to eat a forbidden food he would fall sick and probably die, and that the food could never satisfy his hunger. Should the delinquent be caught in the act by his fellow tribesmen, he would in all probability be put to death.[2] With the evidence as to the Intichiuma ceremonies of the Central Australians before us, we may surmise that the animals which are thus tabooed to the various intermarrying classes of these Queensland tribes are neither more nor less than what I have proposed to call multiplex totems, and that the members of each of these classes are, or have at some time been, bound to perform ceremonies of the same sort as the Intichiuma for the multiplication of all the kinds of animals which they are forbidden to eat. The surmise is confirmed by the circumstance that, though the members of each class are forbidden to eat the animals in question, they are not forbidden to kill them. In other words, they are at liberty to provide their fellows with the food of which they may not themselves partake. This entirely agrees with the view of Totemism here suggested, that it is a co-operative system designed to procure for the community a supply, primarily of food, and secondarily of all the other necessaries of life. It is interesting to observe that Mr Roth, to whom we are indebted for our knowledge of the social system of these Queensland tribes, has been led by a different chain of reasoning to the conclusion that ‘the whole class system has been devised by a process of natural selection, to regulate the proper distribution of the total quantity of food available.’[1] But under a superficial appearance of agreement his conclusion differs fundamentally from the one which we have reached. For while he supposes that the rules of abstinence imposed on each class had no other object than that of leaving more food for the remaining mouths of the tribe, the conclusion to which we have been led by a consideration mainly of the Intichiuma ceremonies is that such rules of abstinence originated rather in a belief that by observing them the members of each group or class would possess, in a higher degree than before, those magical powers for the multiplication and enticing of the game to which the tribe, as a whole, trusted for its supply of food.[2]

It may be asked how an elaborate social organisation, based on the mutual co-operation of many separate groups, and aiming at nothing less than a systematic control of the whole of nature, can possibly have sprung up among savages so rude as the Australians. The answer seems to be that the system may have begun in a humble way by the union of a few neighbouring groups under the influence of some able men, and may have gradually spread to more distant groups, extending its scope and perfecting its organisation as more and more groups fell in with the scheme. That such a thing may have happened appears to result from the observations of Messrs Spencer and Gillen. They remark that, ‘after carefully watching the natives during the performance of their ceremonies, and endeavouring as best we could to enter into their feelings, to think as they did, and to become, for the time being, one of themselves, we came to the conclusion that if one or two of the most powerful men settled upon the advisability of introducing some change, even an important one, it would be quite possible for this to be agreed upon and carried out.’[1]

It might be premature to say that the admirable researches and discoveries of Messrs Spencer and Gillen have finally solved the problem of Totemism; but at least they seem to point to a solution more complete and satisfactory than any that has hitherto been offered.

1. J. F. M’Lennan, ‘The Worship of Animals and Plants,’ Fortnightly Review, Oct. and Nov. 1869, Feb. 1870.

1. The Native Tribes of Central Australia. By Baldwin Spencer, MA, some time Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, Professor of Biology in the University of Melbourne; and F. J. Gillen, Special Magistrate and Sub-Protector of the Aborigines, Alice Springs, South Australia. London: Macmillan & Co. 1899.

1. Many examples are collected by Mr E. S. Hartland, in his learned work, The Legend of Perseus.

1. Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Rom., i. 15; Livy, i, 8; Strabo, v. 230, ed. Casaubon; Plutarch, Romulus, 9.

1. Spencer and Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 134 sq.

2. J. Chalmers and W. Wyatt Gill, Work and Adventure in New Guinea, p. 186.

3. Boscana, in [A. Robinson’s] Life in California, p. 262. New York, 1846.

4. J. G. Kohl, Kitschi-Gami, ii, p. 67. Bremen, 1859.

5. Ph. Paulitschke, Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas: Die Geistige Cultur der Danâkil, Galla und Somâl, p. 157. Berlin, 1896.

1. L. Decle, Three Years in Savage Africa, p. 75. London, 1898.

2. H. Schinz, Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika, p. 312.

3. G. Turner, Samoa, pp. 64 sq.

1. S. W. Tromp, ‘Uit de Salasila van Koetei,’ Bijdragen tot de taal-land-en volkenkunde van Nederlandsch Indië, xxxvii.p. 84 sq. 1888.

2. Sir G. S. Robertson, The Kafirs of the Hindu Kush, p. 440 sq., London, 1896.

3. Numbers, xxxv. 6–34.

1. J. Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 158. London, 1775.

2. H. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, v. p. 279.

1. Miss Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, p. 466. London, 1897. In the text I have embodied some additional details, which Miss Kingsley was kind enough to give me in conversation.

1. The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 202.

2. Ib., p. 206.

3. Op. cit., p. 209.

1. Op. cit., p. 419.

2. The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 112.

1. Op. cit., p. 167.

2. Op. cit., p. 169 sq.

1. The Native Tubes of Central Australia, p. 170.

1. The Native Tubes of Central Australia, p. 203.

1. The Native Tubes of Central Australia, p. 202, cf. p. 168.

2. J. Campbell, Travels in South Africa, being a Narrative of a Second Journey in that Country, ii. p. 34.

3. I. Petroff, Report on the Population, Industries, and Resources of, Alaska, p. 145.

4. K. von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, pp. 352, 512.

1. Sir George Grey, Vocabulary of the Dialects of South-Western Australia, pp. 4, 95.

1. Religion of the Semites, p. 276. sq. Edinburgh, 1889.

1. ‘The aborigines of Australia have Totemism in the most primitive form known to us, but, so far as I am aware, there is no evidence that they attempt, like the North American Indians, to conciliate the animals which they kill and eat. The means which the Australians adopt to secure a plentiful supply of game appear to be based, not on conciliation, but on sympathetic magic.’ – The Golden Bough, p. 465 sq.

1. See above, p. 438.

2. The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 420.

3. This remarkable exception to the rule that totem clans, when they fall within the sphere of our observation, are generally exogamous, appears to be susceptible of a very simple explanation in accordance with the hypothesis here put forward. Briefly stated, the explanation is this: that the object of Exogamy was to prevent the marriage, primarily of brothers with sisters, and secondarily, of parents with children; and that in consequence of the peculiar rules regulating the descent of the totems in these tribes an application of the principle of Exogamy to their totem clans could not have prevented such marriages, and was, therefore, never attempted. This I hope to explain fully at some future time in dealing with the origin of Exogamy. (See above, pp. 492 sq.)

1. The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 138.

2. Op. cit., p. 137.

3. An equivalent, though differently shaped, instrument is known among the Southern Arunta as a waninga. See The Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 306–309.

1. The Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 253, 284, 312 sq.

1. K. von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, pp. 492 sq., 512.

1. The remarkable ceremonies observed by some of the Torres Straits Islanders before they will eat of the turtles which they have caught may, perhaps, be explained in the same way. Among some of the islanders the turtle is a totem. See A. C. Haddon, ‘The Secular and Ceremonial Dances of Torres Straits,’ Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, vi. (1893) p. 150 sq.

1. A. C. Haddon, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xix. PP· 325,393· 1890.

2. R. C. Codrington, The Melanesians, p. 26.

3. Arbouset et Daumas, Voyage d’ Exploration au Nord-est de la Colonie du Cap de Bonne Espérance, p. 350 sq. Paris, 1842.

4. A. E. Hunt, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxviii. p. 6.

5. J. Owen Dorsey, in Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 238 sq., 241, 248. Washington, 1884.

6. J. Owen Dorsey, in Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 410 sq. Washington, 1894.

1. Relations des Jésuites (1667), p. 19 (of the Canadian reprint). Compare Lettres édifiantes et curienses, vi. pp. 169–171.

1. Revue d’Ethnographie, iii.p. 396.

2. Strabo, xiii.p. 588 (ed. Casaubon); Pliny, Nat. Hist., xxviii. 30.

3. The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 546.

4. W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 369. New edition, 1894.

5. A. W. Howitt, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xviii. p. 61.

6. A. L. P. Cameron, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xiv. p. 350.

1. G. F. Bridgman, in Fison and Howitt’s Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 168. Compare id., in Brough Smyth’s Aborigines of Victoria, i.p. 91.

2. J. C. Muirhead, cited by Mr. Howitt, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xviii.p. 61, note; Compare id., in E. M. Curr’s Australian Race, iii.p. 27 sq.

3. D. S. Stewart, in Fison and Howitt’s Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 168 sq.; id., in Ε. Μ. Curr’s Australian Race, iii.p. 461 sq.

1. A. W. Howitt, in Report of the Smithsonian. Institute for 1883, p. 818.

1. W. E. Roth, Ethnological Studies among the North-west-central Queensland Aborigines (Brisbane and London, 1897); id., Notes on Social and Individual Nomenclature among certain North Queensland Aborigines, read before the Royal Society of Queensland, Nov. 13, 1897.

2. W. E. Roth, Ethnological Studies, etc., p. 57 sq.

1. Notes on Social and Individual Nomenclature among certain North Queensland Aborigines (read before the Royal Society of Queensland, Dec. 11, 1897), p. 10.

2. The Battas of Sumatra seem also to have multiplex totems. They are divided into exogamous clans called margas, one of which has for its totems the ape and the goat; another has the tiger, the panther, and beasts of that sort; while a third has the wild turtle, and other kinds of pigeons. See J. B. Neumann, ‘Het Pane en Bilastroomgebied op het eiland Sumatra,’ Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, Tweede Serie, Deei iv., Afdeeling: Meer uitgebreide artikelen, No. 1, p. 8 sq. Amsterdam, 1887.

1. The Native Tubes of Central Australia, p. 12.

APPENDIX THREE

The Scope of Social Anthropology

A Lecture Delivered Before the University of Liverpool, 14th May, 1908

The Scope of Social Anthropology

THE subject of the chair which I have the honour to hold is Social Anthropology. As the subject is still comparatively new and its limits are still somewhat vague, I shall devote my inaugural lecture to defining its scope and marking out roughly, if not the boundaries of the whole study, at least the boundaries of that part of it which I propose to take for my province.

Strange as it may seem, in the large and thriving family of the sciences, Anthropology, or the Science of Man, is the latest born. So young indeed is the study that three of its distinguished founders in England, Professor E. B. Tylor, Lord Avebury, and Mr Francis Galton, are happily still with us. It is true that particular departments of man’s complex nature have long been the theme of special studies. Anatomy has investigated his body, psychology has explored his mind, theology and metaphysics have sought to plumb the depths of the great mysteries by which he is encompassed on every hand. But it has been reserved for the present generation, or rather for the generation which is passing away, to attempt the comprehensive study of man as a whole, to enquire not merely into the physical and mental structure of the individual, but to compare the various races of men, to trace their affinities, and by means of a wide collection of facts to follow as far as may be the evolution of human thought and institutions from the earliest times. The aim of this, as of every other science, is to discover the general laws to which the particular facts may be supposed to conform. I say, may be supposed to conform, because research in all departments has rendered it antecedently probable that everywhere law and order will be found to prevail if we search for them diligently, and that accordingly the affairs of man, however complex and incalculable they may seem to be, are no exception to the uniformity of nature. Anthropology, therefore, in the widest sense of the word, aims at discovering the general laws which have regulated human history in the past, and which, if nature is really uniform, may be expected to regulate it in the future.

Hence the science of man coincides to a certain extent with what has long been known as the philosophy of history as well as with the study to which of late years the name of Sociology has been given. Indeed it might with some reason be held that Social Anthropology, or the study of man in society, is only another expression for Sociology. Yet I think that the two sciences may be conveniently distinguished, and that while the name of Sociology should be reserved for the study of human society in the most comprehensive sense of the words, the name of Social Anthropology may with advantage be restricted to one particular department of that immense field of knowledge. At least I wish to make it perfectly clear at the outset that I for one do not pretend to treat of the whole of human society, past, present, and future. Whether any single man’s compass of mind and range of learning suffice for such a vast undertaking, I will not venture to say, but I do say without hesitation or ambiguity that mine certainly do not. I can only speak of what I have studied, and my studies have been mostly confined to a small, a very small part of man’s social history. That part is the origin, or rather the rudimentary phases, the infancy and childhood, of human society, and to that part accordingly I propose to limit the scope of Social Anthropology, or at all events my treatment of it. My successors in the chair will be free to extend their purview beyond the narrow boundaries which the limitation of my knowledge imposes on me. They may survey the latest developments as well as the earliest beginnings of custom and law, of science and art, of morality and religion, and from that survey they may deduce the principles which should guide mankind in the future, so that those who come after us may avoid the snares and pitfalls into which we and our fathers have slipped. For the best fruit of knowledge is wisdom, and it may reasonably be hoped that a deeper and wider acquaintance with the past history of mankind will in time enable our statesmen to mould the destiny of the race in fairer forms than we of this generation shall live to see –

‘Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire

To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire.

Would we not shatter it to bits – and then

Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s desire!’

But if you wish to shatter the social fabric, you must not expect your professor of Social Anthropology to aid and abet you. He is no seer to discern, no prophet to foretell a coming heaven on earth, no mountebank with a sovran remedy for every ill, no Red Cross Knight to head a crusade against misery and want, against disease and death, against all the horrid spectres that war on poor humanity. It is for others with higher notes and nobler natures than his to sound the charge and lead it in this Holy War. He is only a student, a student of the past, who may perhaps tell you a little, a very little, of what has been, but who cannot, dare not tell you what ought to be. Yet even the little that he can contribute to the elucidation of the past may have its utility as well as its interest when it finally takes its place in that great temple of science to which it is the ambition of every student to add a stone. For we cherish a belief that if we truly love and seek knowledge for its own sake, without any ulterior aim, every addition we may make to it, however insignificant and useless it may appear, will yet at last be found to work together with the whole accumulated store for the general good of mankind.

Thus the sphere of Social Anthropology as I understand it, or at least as I propose to treat it, is limited to the crude beginnings, the rudimentary development of human society: it does not include the maturer phases of that complex growth, still less does it embrace the practical problems with which our modern statesmen and lawgivers are called upon to deal. The study might accordingly be described as the embryology of human thought and institutions, or, to be more precise, as that enquiry which seeks to ascertain, first, the beliefs and customs of savages, and, second, the relics of these beliefs and customs which have survived like fossils among peoples of higher culture. In this description of the sphere of Social Anthropology it is implied that the ancestors of the civilised nations were once savages, and that they have transmitted, or may have transmitted, to their more cultured descendants ideas and institutions which, however incongruous with their later surroundings, were perfectly in keeping with the modes of thought and action of the ruder society in which they originated. In short, the definition assumes that civilisation has always and everywhere been evolved out of savagery. The mass of evidence on which this assumption rests is in my opinion so great as to render the induction incontrovertible. At least, if any one disputes it I do not think it worth while to argue with him. There are still, I believe, in civilised society people who hold that the earth is flat and that the sun goes round it; but no sensible man will waste time in the vain attempt to convince such persons of their error, even though these flatteners of the earth and circulators of the sun appeal with perfect justice to the evidence of their sense in support of their hallucination, which is more than the opponents of man’s primitive savagery are able to do.

Thus the study of savage life is a very important part of Social Anthropology. For by comparison with civilised man the savage represents an arrested or rather retarded stage of social development, and an examination of his customs and beliefs accordingly supplies the same sort of evidence of the evolution of the human mind that an examination of the embryo supplies of the evolution of the human body. To put it otherwise, a savage is to a civilised man as a child is to an adult; and just as the gradual growth of intelligence in a child corresponds to, and in a sense recapitulates, the gradual growth of intelligence in the species, so a study of savage society at various stages of evolution enables us to follow approximately, though of course not exactly, the road by which the ancestors of the higher races must have travelled in their progress upward through barbarism to civilisation. In short, savagery is the primitive condition of mankind. and if we would understand what primitive man was we must know what the savage now is.

But here it is necessary to guard against a common misapprehension. The savages of today are primitive only in a relative, not in an absolute sense. They are primitive by comparison with us; but they are not primitive by comparison with truly primaeval man, that is, with man as he was when he first emerged from the purely bestial stage of existence. Indeed, compared with man in his absolutely pristine state even the lowest savage of today is doubtless a highly developed and cultured being, since all evidence and all probability are in favour of the view that every existing race of men, the rudest as well as the most civilised, has reached its present level of culture, whether it be high or low, only after a slow and painful progress upwards, which must have extended over many thousands, perhaps millions, of years. Therefore when we speak of any known savages as primitive, which the usage of the English language permits us to do, it should always be remembered that we apply the term primitive to them in a relative, not in an absolute sense. What we mean is that their culture is rudimentary compared with that of the civilised nations, but not by any means that it is identical with that of primaeval man. It is necessary to emphasise this relative use of the term primitive in its application to all known savages without exception, because the ambiguity arising from the double meaning of the word has been the source of much confusion and misunderstanding. Careless or unscrupulous writers have made great play with it for purposes of controversy, using the word now in the one sense and now in the other as it suited their argument at the moment, without perceiving, or at all events without indicating, the equivocation. In order to avoid these verbal fallacies it is only necessary to bear steadily in mind that while Social Anthropology has much to say of primitive man in the relative sense, it has nothing whatever to say about primitive man in the absolute sense, and that for the very simple reason that it knows nothing whatever about him, and, so far as we can see at present, is never likely to know anything. To construct a history of human society by starting from absolutely primordial man and working down through thousands or millions of years to the institutions of existing savages might possibly have merits as a flight of imagination, but it could have none as a work of science. To do this would be exactly to reverse the proper mode of scientific procedure. It would be to work a priori from the unknown to the known instead of a posteriori from the known to the unknown. For we do know a good deal about the social state of the savages of today and yesterday, but we know nothing whatever, I repeat, about absolutely primitive human society. Hence a sober enquirer who seeks to elucidate the social evolution of mankind in ages before the dawn of history must start, not from an unknown and purely hypothetical primaeval man, but from the lowest savages whom we know or possess adequate records of; and from their customs, beliefs, and traditions as a solid basis of fact he may work back a little way hypothetically through the obscurity of the past; that is, he may form a reasonable theory of the way in which these actual customs, beliefs, and traditions have grown up and developed in a period more or less remote, but probably not very remote, from the one in which they have been observed and recorded. But if, as I assume, he is a sober enquirer, he will never expect to carry back this reconstruction of human history very far, still less will he dream of linking it up with the very beginning, because he is aware that we possess no evidence which would enable us to bridge even hypothetically the gulf of thousands or millions of years which divides the savage of today from primaeval man.

It may be well to illustrate my meaning by an example. The matrimonial customs and modes of tracing relationships which prevail among some savage races, and even among peoples at a higher stage of culture, furnish very strong grounds for believing that the systems of marriage and consanguinity which are now in vogue among civilised peoples must have been immediately preceded at a more or less distant time by very different modes of counting kin and regulating marriage; in fact, that monogamy and the forbidden degrees of kinship have replaced an older system of much wider and looser sexual relations. But to say this is not to affirm that such looser and wider relations were characteristic of the absolutely primitive condition of mankind; it is only to say that actually existing customs and traditions clearly indicate the extensive prevalence of such relations at some former time in the history of our race. How remote that time was, we cannot tell; but, estimated by the whole vast period of man’s existence on earth, it seems probable that the era of sexual communism to which the evidence points was comparatively recent; in other words, that for the civilised races the interval which divides that era from our own is to be reckoned by thousands rather than by hundreds of thousands of years, while for the lowest of existing savages, for example, the aborigines of Australia, it is possible or probable that the interval may not be greater than a few centuries. Be that as it may, even if on the strength of the evidence I have referred to we could demonstrate the former prevalence of a system of sexual communism among all the races of mankind, this would only carry us back a single step in the long history of our species; it would not justify us in concluding that such a system had been practised by truly primaeval man, still less that it had prevailed among mankind from the beginning down to the comparatively recent period at which its existence may be inferred from the evidence at our disposal. About the social condition of primaeval man, I repeat, we know absolutely nothing, and it is vain to speculate. Our first parents may have been as strict monogamists as Whiston or Dr Primrose, or they may have been just the reverse. We have no information on the subject, and are never likely to get any. In the countless ages which have elapsed since man and woman first roamed the happy garden hand in hand or jabbered like apes among the leafy boughs of the virgin forest, their relations to each other may have undergone innumerable changes. For human affairs, like the courses of the heaven, seem to run in cycles: the social pendulum swings to and fro from one extremity of the scale to the other: in the political sphere it has swung from democracy to despotism, and back again from despotism to democracy; and so in the domestic sphere it may have oscillated many a time between libertinism and monogamy.

If I am right in my definition of Social Anthropology, its province may be roughly divided into two departments, one of which embraces the customs and beliefs of savages, while the other includes such relics of these customs and beliefs as have survived in the thought and institutions of more cultured peoples. The one department may be called the study of savagery, the other the study of folklore. I have said something of savagery: I now turn to folklore, that is, to the survivals of more primitive ideas and practices among peoples who in other respects have risen to a higher plane of culture. That such survivals may be discovered in every civilised nation will hardly now be disputed by anybody. When we read, for example, of an Irishwoman roasted to death by her husband on a suspicion that she was not his wife but a fairy changeling,[1] or again, of an Englishwoman dying of lockjaw because she had anointed the nail that wounded her instead of the wound,[2] we may be sure that the beliefs to which these poor creatures fell victims were not learned by them in school or at church, but had been transmitted from truly savage ancestors through many generations of outwardly though not really civilised descendants. Beliefs and practices of this sort are therefore rightly called superstitions, which means literally survivals. It is with superstitions in the strict sense of the word that the second department of Social Anthropology is concerned.

If we ask how it happens that superstitions linger among a people who in general have reached a higher level of culture, the answer is to be found in the natural, universal, and ineradicable inequality of men. Not only are different races differently endowed in respect of intelligence, courage, industry, and so forth, but within the same nation men of the same generation differ enormously in inborn capacity and worth. No abstract doctrine is more false and mischievous than that of the natural equality of men. It is true that the legislator must treat men as if they were equal, because laws of necessity are general and cannot be made so as to fit the infinite variety of individual cases. But we must not imagine that because men are equal before the law they are therefore intrinsically equal to each other. The experience of common life sufficiently contradicts such a vain imagination. At school and at the universities, at work and at play, in peace and in war, the mental and moral inequalities of human beings stand out too conspicuously to be ignored or disputed. On the whole the men of keenest intelligence and strongest characters lead the rest and shape the moulds into which, outwardly at least, society is cast. As such men are necessarily few by comparison with the multitude whom they lead, it follows that the community is really dominated by the will of an enlightened minority[1] even in countries where the ruling power is nominally vested in the hands of the numerical majority. In fact, disguise it as we may, the government of mankind is always and everywhere essentially aristocratic. No juggling with political machinery can evade this law of nature. However it may seem to lead, the dull-witted majority in the end follows a keener-witted minority. That is its salvation and the secret of progress. The higher human intelligence sways the lower, just as the intelligence of man gives him the mastery over the brutes. I do not mean that the ultimate direction of society rests with its nominal governors, with its kings, its statesmen, its legislators. The true rulers of men are the thinkers who advance knowledge; for just as it is through his superior knowledge, not through his superior strength, that man bears rule over the rest of the animal creation, so among men themselves it is knowledge which in the long run directs and controls the forces of society. Thus the discoverers of new truths are the real though uncrowned and unsceptred kings of mankind; monarchs, statesmen, and law-givers are but their ministers, who sooner or later do their bidding by carrying out the ideas of these master minds. The more we study the inward workings of society and the progress of civilisation, the more clearly shall we perceive how both are governed by the influence of thoughts which, springing up at first we know not how or whence in a few superior minds, gradually spread till they have leavened the whole inert lump of a community or of mankind. The origin of such mental variations, with all their far-reaching train of social consequences, is just as obscure as is the origin of those physical variations on which, if biologists are right, depends the evolution of species, and with it the possibility of progress. Perhaps the same unknown cause which determines the one set of variations gives rise to the other also. We cannot tell. All we can say is that on the whole in the conflict of competing forces, whether physical or mental, the strongest at last prevails, the fittest survives. In the mental sphere the struggle for existence is not less fierce and internecine than in the physical, but in the end the better ideas, which we call the truth, carry the day. The clamorous opposition with which at their first appearance they are regularly greeted whenever they conflict with old prejudices may retard but cannot prevent their final victory. It is the practice of the mob first to stone and then to erect useless memorials to their greatest benefactors. All who set themselves to replace ancient error and superstition by truth and reason must lay their account with brickbats in their life and a marble monument after death.

I have been led into making these remarks by the wish to explain why it is that superstitions of all sorts, political, moral, and religious, survive among peoples who have the opportunity of knowing better. The reason is that the better ideas, which are constantly forming in the upper stratum, have not yet filtered through from the highest to the lowest minds. Such a filtration is generally slow, and by the time that the new notions have penetrated to the bottom, if indeed they ever get there, they are often already obsolete and superseded by others at the top. Hence it is that if we could open the heads and read the thoughts of two men of the same generation and country but at opposite ends of the intellectual scale, we should probably find their minds as different as if the two belonged to different species. Mankind, as it has been well said, advances in échelons; that is, the columns march not abreast of each other but in a straggling line, all lagging in various degrees behind the leader. The image well describes the difference not only between peoples, but between individuals of the same people and the same generation. Just as one nation is continually outstripping some of its contemporaries, so within the same nation some men are constantly outpacing their fellows, and the foremost in the race are those who have thrown off the load of superstition which still burdens the backs and clogs the footsteps of the laggards. To drop metaphor, superstitions survive because, while they shock the views of enlightened members of the community, they are still in harmony with the thoughts and feelings of others who, though they are drilled by their betters into an appearance of civilisation, remain barbarians or savages at heart. That is why, for example, the barbarous punishments for high treason and witchcraft and the enormities of slavery were tolerated and defended in this country down to modern times. Such survivals may be divided into two sorts, according as they are public or private; in other words, according as they are embodied in the law of the land or are practised with or without the connivance of the law in holes and corners. The examples I have just cited belong to the former of these two classes. Witches were publicly burned and traitors were publicly disembowelled in England not so long ago, and slavery survived as a legal institution still later. The true nature of such public superstitions is apt, through their very publicity, to escape detection, because until they are finally swept away by the rising tide of progress, there are always plenty of people to defend them as institutions essential to the public welfare and sanctioned by the laws of God and man.

It is otherwise with those private superstitions to which the name of folklore is usually confined. In civilised society most educated people are not even aware of the extent to which these relics of savage ignorance survive at their doors. The discovery of their wide prevalence was indeed only made last century, chiefly through the researches of the brothers Grimm in Germany. Since their day systematic enquiries carried on among the less educated classes, and especially among the peasantry, of Europe have revealed the astonishing, nay, alarming truth that a mass, if not the majority, of people in every civilised country is still living in a state of intellectual savagery, that, in fact, the smooth surface of cultured society is sapped and mined by superstition. Only those whose studies have led them to investigate the subject are aware of the depth to which the ground beneath our feet is thus as it were honeycombed by unseen forces. We appear to be standing on a volcano which may at any moment break out in smoke and fire to spread ruin and devastation among the gardens and palaces of ancient culture wrought so laboriously by the hands of many generations. After looking on the ruined Greek temples of Paestum and contrasting them with the squalor and savagery of the Italian peasantry, Renan said, ‘I trembled for civilisation, seeing it so limited, built on so weak a foundation, resting on so few individuals even in the country where it is dominant.’[1]

If we examine the superstitious beliefs which are tacitly but firmly held by many of our fellow-countrymen, we shall find, perhaps to our surprise, that it is precisely the oldest and crudest superstitions which are most tenacious of life, while views which, though also erroneous, are more modern and refined, soon fade from the popular memory. For example, the high gods of Egypt and Babylon, of Greece and Rome, have for ages been totally forgotten by the people and survive only in the books of the learned; yet the peasants, who never even heard of Isis and Osiris, of Apollo and Artemis, of Jupiter and Juno, retain to this day a firm belief in witches and fairies, in ghosts and hobgoblins, those lesser creatures of the mythical fancy in which their fathers believed long before the great deities of the ancient world were ever thought of, and in which, to all appearance, their descendants will continue to believe long after the great deities of the present day shall have gone the way of all their predecessors. The reason why the higher forms of superstition or religion (for the religion of one generation is apt to become the superstition of the next) are less permanent than the lower is simply that the higher beliefs, being a creation of superior intelligence, have little hold on the minds of the vulgar, who nominally profess them for a time in conformity with the will of their betters, but readily shed and forget them as soon as these beliefs have gone out of fashion with the educated classes. But while they dismiss without a pang or an effort articles of faith which were only superficially imprinted on their minds by the weight of cultured opinion, the ignorant and foolish multitude cling with a sullen determination to far grosser beliefs which really answer to the coarser texture of their undeveloped intellect. Thus while the avowed creed of the enlightened minority is constantly changing under the influence of reflection and enquiry, the real, though unavowed, creed of the mass of mankind appears to be almost stationary, and the reason why it alters so little is that in the majority of men, whether they are savages or outwardly civilised beings, intellectual progress is so slow as to be hardly perceptible.

Thus from an examination, first, of savagery and, second, of its survivals in civilisation, the study of Social Anthropology attempts to trace the early history of human thought and institutions. The history can never be complete, unless indeed science should discover some mode of reading the faded record of the past of which we in this generation can hardly dream. We know indeed that every event, however insignificant, implies a change, however slight, in the material constitution of the universe, so that the whole history of the world is, in a sense, engraved upon its face, though our eyes are too dim to read the scroll. It may be that in the future some wondrous reagent, some magic chemical, may yet be found to bring out the whole of nature’s secret handwriting for a greater than Daniel to interpret to his fellows. That will hardly be in our time. With the resources at present at our command we must be content with a very brief, imperfect, and in large measure conjectural account of man’s mental and social development in prehistoric ages. As I have already pointed out, the evidence, fragmentary and dubious as it is, only runs back a very little way into the measureless past of human life on earth; we soon lose the thread, the faintly glimmering thread, in the thick darkness of the absolutely unknown. Even in the comparatively short space of time, a few thousand years at most, which falls more or less within our ken, there are many deep and wide chasms which can only be bridged by hypotheses, if the story of evolution is to run continuously. Such bridges are built in anthropology as in biology by the Comparative Method, which enables us to borrow the links of one chain of evidence to supply the gaps in another. For us who deal, not with the various forms of animal life, but with the various products of human intelligence, the legitimacy of the Comparative Method rests on the well-ascertained similarity of the working of the human mind in all races of men. I have laid stress on the great inequalities which exist not only between the various races, but between men of the same race and generation; but it should be clearly understood and remembered that these divergencies are quantitative rather than qualitative, they consist in differences of degree rather than of kind. The savage is not a different sort of being from his civilised brother: he has the same capacities, mental and moral, but they are less fully developed: his evolution has been arrested, or rather retarded, at a lower level. And as savage races are not all on the same plane, but have stopped or tarried at different points of the upward path, we can to a certain extent, by comparing them with each other, construct a scale of social progression and mark out roughly some of the stages on the long road that leads from savagery to civilisation. In the kingdom of mind such a scale of mental evolution answers to the scale of morphological evolution in the animal kingdom.

From what I have said I hope you have formed some idea of the extreme importance which the study of savage life possesses for a proper understanding of the early history of mankind. The savage is a human document, a record of man’s efforts to raise himself above the level of the beast. It is only of late years that the full value of the document has been appreciated; indeed, many people are probably still of Dr Johnson’s opinion, who, pointing to the three large volumes of Voyages to the South Seas which had just come out, said: ‘Who will read them through? A man had better work his way before the mast than read them through; they will be eaten by rats and mice before they are read through. There can be little entertainment in such books; one set of savages is like another.’[1] But the world has learned a good deal since Dr Johnson’s day; and the records of savage life, which the sage of Bolt Court consigned without scruple to the rats and mice, have now their place among the most precious archives of humanity. Their fate has been like that of the Sibylline Books. They were neglected and despised when they might have been obtained complete; and now wise men would give more than a king’s ransom for their miserably mutilated and imperfect remains. It is true that before our time civilised men often viewed savages with interest and described them intelligently, and some of their descriptions are still of great scientific value. For example, the discovery of America naturally excited in the minds of the European peoples an eager curiosity as to the inhabitants of the new world, which had burst upon their gaze, as if at the waving of a wizard’s wand the curtain of the western sky had suddenly rolled up and disclosed scenes of glamour and enchantment. Accordingly some of the Spaniards who explored and conquered these realms of wonder have bequeathed to us accounts of the manners and customs of the Indians, which for accuracy and fulness of detail probably surpass any former records of an alien race. Such, for instance, is the great work of the Franciscan friar Sahagun on the natives of Mexico, and such the work of Garcilasso de la Vega, himself half an Inca, on the Incas of Peru. Again, the exploration of the Pacific in the eighteenth century, with its revelation of fairy-like islands scattered in profusion over a sea of eternal summer, drew the eyes and stirred the imagination of Europe; and to the curiosity thus raised in many minds, though not in Dr Johnson’s, we owe some precious descriptions of the islanders, who, in those days of sailing ships, appeared to dwell so remote from us that the poet Cowper fancied their seas might never again be ploughed by English keels.[1]

These and many other old accounts of savages must always retain their interest and value for the study of Social Anthropology, all the more because they set before us the natives in their natural unsophisticated state, before their primitive manners and customs had been altered or destroyed by European influence. Yet in the light of subsequent research these early records are often seen to be very defective, because the authors, unaware of the scientific importance of facts which to the ordinary observer might appear trifling or disgusting, have either passed over many things of the highest interest in total silence or dismissed them with a brief and tantalising allusion. It is accordingly necessary to supplement the reports of former writers by a minute and painstaking investigation of the living savages in order to fill up, if possible, the many yawning gaps in our knowledge. Unfortunately this cannot always be done, since many savages have either been totally exterminated or so changed by contact with Europeans that it is no longer possible to obtain trustworthy information as to their old habits and traditions. But whenever the ancient customs and beliefs of a primitive race have passed away unrecorded, a document of human history has perished beyond recall. Unhappily this destruction of the archives, as we may call it, is going on apace. In some places, for example, in Tasmania, the savage is already extinct; in others, as in Australia, he is dying. In others again, for instance in Central and Southern Africa, where the numbers and inborn vigour of the race shew little or no sign of succumbing in the struggle for existence, the influence of traders, officials, and missionaries is so rapidly disintegrating and effacing the native customs, that with the passing of the older generation even the memory of them will soon in many places be gone. It is therefore a matter of the most urgent scientific importance to secure without delay full and accurate reports of these perishing or changing peoples, to take permanent copies, so to say, of these precious monuments before they are destroyed. It is not yet too late. Much may still be learned, for example, in West Australia, in New Guinea, in Melanesia, in Central Africa, among the hill tribes of India and the forest Indians of the Amazons. There is still time to send expeditions to these regions, to subsidise men on the spot, who are conversant with the languages and enjoy the confidence of the natives; for there are such men who possess or can obtain the very knowledge we require, yet who, unaware or careless of its inestimable value for science, make no effort to preserve the treasure for posterity, and, if we do not speedily come to the rescue, will suffer it to perish with them. In the whole range of human knowledge at the present moment there is no more pressing need than that of recording this priceless evidence of man’s early history before it is too late. For soon, very soon, the opportunities which we still enjoy will be gone for ever. In another quarter of a century probably there will be little or nothing of the old savage life left to record. The savage, such as we may still see him, will then be as extinct as the dodo. The sands are fast running out: the hour will soon strike: the record will be closed: the book will be sealed. And how shall we of this generation look when we stand at the bar of posterity arraigned on a charge of high treason to our race, we who neglected to study our perishing fellowmen, but who sent out costly expeditions to observe the stars and to explore the barren ice-bound regions of the poles, as if the polar ice would melt and the stars would cease to shine when we are gone? Let us awake from our slumber, let us light our lamps, let us gird up our loins. The Universities exist for the advancement of knowledge. It is their duty to add this new province to the ancient departments of learning which they cultivate so diligently. Cambridge, to its honour, has led the way in equipping and despatching anthropological expeditions; it is for Oxford, it is for Liverpool, it is for every University in the land to join in the work.

More than that, it is the public duty of every civilised state actively to co-operate. In this respect the United States of America, by instituting a bureau for the study of the aborigines within its dominions, has set an example which every enlightened nation that rules over lower races ought to imitate. On none does that duty, that responsibility, lie more clearly and more heavily than on our own, for to none in the whole course of human history has the sceptre been given over so many and so diverse races of men. We have made ourselves our brother’s keepers. Woe to us if we neglect our duty to our brother! It is not enough for us to rule in justice the peoples we have subjugated by the sword. We owe it to them, we owe it to ourselves, we owe it to posterity, who will require it at our hands, that we should describe them as they were before we found them, before they ever saw the English flag and heard, for good or evil, the English tongue. The voice of England speaks to her subject peoples in other accents than in the thunder of her guns. Peace has its triumphs as well as war: there are nobler trophies than captured flags and cannons. There are monuments, airy monuments, monuments of words, which seem so fleeting and evanescent, that will yet last when your cannons have crumbled and your flags have mouldered into dust. When the Roman poet wished to present an image of perpetuity, he said that he would be remembered so long as the Roman Empire endured, so long as the white-robed procession of the Vestals and Pontiffs should ascend the Capitol to pray in the temple of Jupiter. That solemn procession has long ceased to climb the slope of the Capitol, the Roman Empire itself has long passed away, like the empire of Alexander, like the empire of Charlemagne, like the empire of Spain, yet still amid the wreck of kingdoms the poet’s monument stands firm, for still his verses are read and remembered. I appeal to the Universities, I appeal to the Government of this country to unite in building a monument, a beneficent monument, of the British Empire, a monument

Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens

Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis

Annorum series, et fuga temporum.

J. G. Frazer

1908

1. This happened at Ballyvadlea, in the county of Tipperary, in 1895. For details of the evidence given at the trial of the murderers, see ‘The “Witch-burning” at Clonmel,’ Folklore, vi. (1895) pp. 373–384.

2. This happened at Norwich in June 1902. See The People’s Weekly Journal for Norfolk, July 19, 1902, p. 8.

1. I say ‘an enlightened minority,’ because in any large community there are always many minorities, and some of them are very far from enlightened. It is possible to be below as well as above the average level of our fellows.

1. E. Renan et M. Berthelot, Correspondance (Paris, 1898), pp. 75 sq.

1. J. Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson^9 (London, 1822), iv. 315.

1. In boundless oceans, never to be passed By navigators uninform’d as they, Or ploughe’d perhaps by British bark again.

The Task, book 1.629 sqq.

APPENDIX FOUR

The Worship of Nature

The Worship of Nature

THE mind of man refuses to acquiesce in the phenomena of sense. By an instinctive, an irresistible impulse it is driven to seek for something beyond, something which it assumes to be more real and abiding than the shifting phantasmagoria of this sensible world. This search and this assumption are not peculiar to philosophers; they are shared in varying degrees by every man and woman born into the world. Take, for example, a ploughman. He wakes at cockcrow and prepares to begin the familiar round of labour. He sees his wife lighting the cottage fire and preparing his morning meal, his children gathering expectant round the table: he hears the crackling of the fire on the hearth, the lowing of cows, the distant bleating of sheep and barking of dogs. And with these sights before his eyes and these sounds in his ears he has more or less consciously in his mind the scene that awaits him in the fields and on the way to it. He has a vision, for a vision it is, of the village church and churchyard with its solemn yews and its grassy mounds sleeping in the morning sunshine; of the turn in the road where he catches a glimpse of a winding river and of far blue hills; of the gate opening into the field where he is to toil till evening, pacing behind the plough drawn by the patient horses up and down the long furrows of upturned brown earth. He does not reflect on these things, still less does he question their reality. He assumes that they exist somewhere outside and independently of him, and that other eyes will see the old familiar scenes and that other ears will hear the old familiar sounds when his own are stopped for ever in the churchyard mould.

In the same way every one of us is perpetually, every hour of the day, implicitly constructing a purely imaginary world behind the immediate sensations of light and colour, of touch, of sound, and of scent which are all that we truly apprehend; and oddly enough it is this visionary world, the creation of thought, which we dub the real world in contradistinction to the fleeting data of sense. Thus viewed, the mind of man may be likened to a wizard who, by the help of spirits or the waving of his magic wand, summons up scenes of enchantment which, deceived by the very perfection of his art, he mistakes for realities. Only by deliberate reflection is it possible to perceive how unsubstantial, in the last resort, is the seemingly solid structure of what we call the material universe. In the literal acceptation of the word, it consists of such stuff as dreams are made of. The only difference between the dreams of sleep and the dreams which we call our waking life is the greater orderliness which distinguishes the latter. Their succession is so regular that to a great extent we can predict it with confidence, and experience daily and hourly confirms the prediction. We anticipate, for example, the sights that will meet us when we pass into the garden or the neighbouring street, and the anticipation is invariably fulfilled. This fulfilment, countless times repeated, of our expectation is perhaps the principal cause, as certainly it is the best justification, of our instinctive belief in the reality of an external world. It is this regularity in the succession of phenomena which breeds in our mind the conception of a cause; in the last analysis cause is simply invariable sequence. The observation of such sequences is essential to the conduct, nay to the existence, of life, not only in men but in animals; with its help we are able to foresee the future and to adapt ourselves to it; without it we must perish prematurely.

But while mankind in general tacitly assumes that behind the phenomena of sense there is a real world of a more substantial and abiding nature, there are men who occupy themselves by predilection with the investigation of that assumed external world. They ask, is there really such a world hidden behind the veil of sensible phenomena? and if so, what are its origin and nature? and what laws, if any, does it obey? The men who ask these questions as to the ultimate reality of the world are philosophers in the widest sense of the word, and, roughly speaking, their answers fall into one of two classes according as they find the ultimate reality of the world in matter or in mind. On the one view, the ultimate reality is dead, unconscious, inhuman; on the other view, it is living, conscious, and more or less analogous to human feeling and intelligence; according to the one, things existed first and mind was developed out of them afterwards; according to the other, mind existed first and created, or at all events set in order, the realm of things. On the one view, the world is essentially material; on the other, it is essentially spiritual. Broadly speaking, science accepts the former view, at least as a working hypothesis; religion unhesitatingly embraces the latter.

Whichever hypothesis be adopted, the mind, in obedience to a fundamental law, seeks to form a conception which will simplify, and if possible unify, the multitudinous and seemingly heterogeneous phenomena of nature. Thus, to deal first with the materialistic hypothesis, ancient Greek philosophers attempted to reduce the apparent multitude and diversity of things to a single element, whether it was water, or fire, or what not. Others, less ambitious, were content to postulate the existence of four distinct and irreducible elements, fire, air, earth, and water. For a long time modern chemistry continued to multiply the apparently ultimate and irreducible elements of which the material universe was believed to be composed, till the number of elements had reached some eighty-eight. But, as has been observed by an eminent philosopher of our time,[1] science could not rest content with the theory that the universe was built up out of just eighty-eight different sorts of things, neither more nor less; to limit the kind of atoms to eighty-eight seemed as arbitrary as to limit the number of fundamental religious truths to thirty-nine. In both cases the mind naturally craves for either more or less; and for the sake of unity and simplicity it prefers less rather than more. In the case of science that craving has in recent years been satisfied by the more or less probable reduction of all the old chemical elements to the single element of hydrogen, of which the rest would appear to be only multiples.[1] Similarly in biology the theory of evolution reduces the innumerable species of plants and animals to unity by deriving them all from a single simple type of living organism.[2]

Thus alike in regard to the organic and the inorganic world the science of today has attained to that unity and simplicity of conception which the human intellect imperiously demands if it is to comprehend in some measure the infinite complexity of the universe, or rather of its shadows reflected on the illumined screen of the mind. Yet, as that complexity is infinite, so the search for the ultimate unity is probably endless also. For we may suspect that the finality, which seems to crown the vast generalisations of science, is after all only illusory, and that the tempting unity and simplicity which they offer to the weary mind are not the goal but only halting-places in the unending march. The fair-seeming fruit of knowledge too often turns out to be apples of Sodom. A closer inspection of the apparently simple result may reveal within it a fresh and as yet undreamed-of complexity, which in its turn may prove to be the starting-point of another quest, longer and more arduous than that which had yielded to the mind a brief and transient repose. For the thinker there is no permanent place of rest. He must move for ever forwards, a pilgrim of the night eternally pressing towards the faint and glimmering illumination that eternally retreats before him. With Ulysses he may say that –

‘All experience is an arch wherethro’

Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move’[1]

A gradual process of simplification and unification, like that which marks the progress of science or the materialistic interpretation of the world, may be traced in the history of religion or the spiritualistic interpretation of the world. Savages explain the phenomena of nature and of human life by supposing the existence of a multitude of spiritual beings, whether gods or ghosts, who people the sky, the air, the sea, the woods, the springs, the rivers, and by their actions bring about all the varied effects which a materialistic philosophy refers to the agency of impersonal forces. Such, for example, was the theory of the Polynesians before, for their misfortune, a European flag ever floated in the Pacific. ‘By their rude mythology, each lovely island was made a sort of fairyland, and the spells of enchantment were thrown over its varied scenes. The sentiment of the poet that –

“Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth,

Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep,”

was one familiar to their minds; and it is impossible not to feel interested in a people who were accustomed to consider themselves surrounded by invisible intelligences, and who recognised in the rising sun – the mild and silver moon – the shooting star – the meteor’s transient flame – the ocean’s roar – the tempest’s blast, or the evening breeze – the movements of mighty spirits. The mountain’s summit, and the fleecy mists that hang upon its brows – the rocky defile – the foaming cataract – and the lonely dell – were all regarded as the abode or resort of these invisible beings.’[1]

The same theory long persisted among peoples at a far higher level of culture than the rude islanders of the Pacific –

‘The lively Grecian, in a land of hills,

Rivers and fertile plains, and sounding shores,—

Under a cope of sky more variable,

Could find commodious place for every God.

… The traveller slaked

His thirst from rill or gushing fount, and thanked

The Naiad. Sunbeams upon distant hills

Gliding apace, with shadows in their train,

Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed

Into fleet Oreads sporting visibly.

The Zephyrs, fanning, as they passed, their wings,

Lacked not, for love, fair objects whom they wooed

With gentle whisper.’[2]

When man began seriously to reflect on the nature of things, it was almost inevitable that he should explain them on the analogy of what he knew best, that is, by his own thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Accordingly he tended to attribute to everything, not only to animals, but to plants and inanimate objects, a principle of life like that of which he was himself conscious, and which, for want of a better name, we are accustomed to call a soul. This primitive philosophy is commonly known as animism. It is a childlike interpretation of the universe in terms of man. Whether or not it was man’s earliest attempt at solving the riddle of the world, we cannot say. The history of man on earth is long; the evidence of geology and archaeology appears to be continually stretching the life of the species farther and farther into the past. It may be that the animistic hypothesis is only one of many guesses at truth which man has successively formed and rejected as unsatisfactory. All we know is that it has found favour with many backward races down to our own time. To illustrate it by a concrete example I will quote a dialogue between a missionary and his native pupil which was published in the present year of grace (1924), and which sets in the clearest light the antithesis between the savage and the civilised interpretation of physical phenomena. The contrast is all the more striking because the materialistic hypothesis of phenomena is here advocated by a Christian missionary, who would doubtless apply to the universe in general that spiritualistic theory which he scouts as absurd in particular cases. The scene of the dialogue is in British New Guinea or Papua, as it is now called. The missionary writes as follows:

‘I knew the natives believed that when a tree was felled its soul was dispossessed and had to seek an abiding-place in another tree. Its preference was for a tree of the species from which it had been expelled, but failing it there were alternative species in which it could dwell temporarily. As an illustration I was told that when an aravea tree was felled its soul entered a laura, a species of the acacia group, and remained there until it could re-establish itself in another aravea tree. I saw in this belief an opportunity to question the other belief in the presence of a soul in everything that exists. Assuming that timber had no soul because when the tree was felled from which it came its soul was expelled, I took as an object likely to help me to prove my case an old table standing on the verandah of our house.’ On the subject of this table the missionary thereupon engaged in an edifying conversation with a native Papuan lad who had come to lay the cloth for dinner. As recorded by the missionary, the conversation ran thus:

‘I began something in this way. “Your people say that everything has its own soul, but they also say that when a tree is felled its soul is expelled.” He replied, “That is so.” “Well, then,” I asked, “how can this table have a soul, seeing that when the tree was felled from which its timber was sawed, the tree soul fled to another tree habitat?” I can recall the image of that lad’s face as I write; it beamed with amused interest as he put this question, “How could it be here as a table if it had not a soul inside it to hold it together?” I did not regard that as a poser, and replied, “It is here as a table because skilled men sawed the timber from a felled tree, cut it into lengths, shaped them into legs and top, nailed and glued the parts together, and it is held together by glue and nails, not by a soul.” A Papuan does not contradict any one whom he regards as a chief. He could not even seem to confuse me, or in any way to suggest that my ignorance was palpable to him. He stooped down, got under the table, drew his finger-tips along the planks, came from under the table, stood up, drew quite near to me, held the finger-tips so that I could see them plainly and said, “Those tiny pellets you can see under my finger-nails came from the table, others will fall from it like them, and so the table will go on wasting until it will crumble away altogether; then, and not till then, its soul will flee away and it will no longer be a table.” It was my turn, but I had nothing to say; only much to think about, to marvel about. He had not done, however, until he had given me what he considered the most conclusive evidence of the presence of soul in things. Again he stretched his right hand towards me and said, “Each of those little pellets between my finger-nails has its soul; if it had not we could not see it, it could not be.” Such were his views of the omnipresence of soul.’[1]

Thus while the savage stoutly maintained the spiritualistic theory of natural phenomena, the missionary as stoutly maintained the materialistic theory and rejected the spiritualistic interpretation as childish and absurd. In doing so he undoubtedly followed the general trend of civilised thought, which for centuries has been gradually emptying the external world of all spiritual contents and reducing it to a welter of unconscious forces:

‘Unbewusst der Freuden, die sie schenket,

Nie entzückt von ihrer Herrlichkeit,

Nie gewahr des Geistes, der sie lenket,

Sel’ger nie durch meine Seligkeit,

Fühllos selbst für ihres Künstlers Ehre,

Gleich dem toten Schlag der Pendeluhr,

Dient sie knechtisch dem Gesetz der Schwere,

Die entgötterte Natur.

‘Morgen wieder neu sich zu entbinden,

Wühlt sie heute sich ihr eigenes Grab,

Und an ewig gleicher Spindel winden

Sich von selbst die Monde auf und ab.

Müssig kehrten zu dem Dichterlande

Heim die Götter, unnütz einer Welt,

Die, entwachsen ihrem Gängelbande,

Sich durch eignes Schweben hält.’[1]

Yes, the gods of Greece are gone, and only poets are left to mourn their departure:

‘Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.’

This process of despiritualising the universe, if I may be allowed to coin the phrase, has been a very slow and gradual one, lasting for ages. After men had peopled with a multitude of individual spirits every rock and hill, every tree and flower, every brook and river, every breeze that blew, and every cloud that flecked with silvery white the blue expanse of heaven, they began, in virtue of what we may call the economy of thought, to limit the number of the spiritual beings of whom their imagination at first had been so prodigal. Instead of a separate spirit for every individual tree, they came to conceive of a god of the woods in general, a Silvanus or what not; instead of personifying all the winds as gods, each with his distinct character and features, they imagined a single god of the winds, an Aeolus, for example, who kept them shut up in bags and could let them out at pleasure to lash the sea into fury. To put it otherwise, the innumerable multitude of spirits or demons was generalised and reduced to a comparatively small number of deities; animism was replaced by polytheism. The world was now believed to be governed by a pantheon of gods and goddesses, each with his or her individual character, powers, and functions, in virtue of which they were entrusted with the control of particular departments of nature or of human life. By this generalisation the instinctive craving of the mind after simplification and unification of its ideas received a certain measure of satisfaction; but the satisfaction was only partial and temporary. The intelligence could not finally acquiesce in the conception of a number of separate and more or less independent deities, whose inclinations and activities constantly conflicted with each other.

The same process of abstraction and generalisation, the same desire for simplification and unification, which had evolved polytheism out of animism, now educed monotheism out of polytheism; the many gods, who had long divided among them the sway of the world, were deposed in favour of one solitary deity, the maker and controller of all things. At first this one God was conceived, for example, by the Jews, as regulating the whole course of nature by a series of arbitrary acts of will and as liable to be deflected from his purposes by judicious appeals to his passions or his interests. But as time went on, and the uniformity of nature and the immutability of natural law were gradually recognised and firmly established by every advance of science, it was found necessary, or advisable, to relieve the deity of his multifarious duties as the immediate agent of every event in the natural world, and to promote him, if I may say so, to a higher sphere in the supernatural world, as the creator or architect of the universe; while the management of affairs in this sublunary region was committed to his subordinate agents, the purely physical forces of attraction and repulsion, which modern science, if I apprehend it aright, appears to resolve into gravitation and electricity, or possibly into electricity alone. Thus the spiritualistic theory of the world has undergone a process of simplification and unification analogous to that undergone by the materialistic theory: as the materialistic hypothesis has reduced the multitudinous forms of matter to one substance, hydrogen, so the spiritualistic hypothesis has reduced the multitude of spirits to one God.

Both theories aim at ascertaining and defining the ultimate reality; the one discovers it in hydrogen and electricity, the other in a deity. How far the two supplement or conflict with each other, is a nice question which might suitably be discussed by a Gifford lecturer; but an adequate discussion of it would require a combination of philosophic and scientific attainments to which I can lay no claim. All that I desire to point out is that both hypotheses aim at explaining and justifying our instinctive belief in the reality of a world beyond the immediate data of sense. This is no less true of the materialistic than of the spiritualistic hypothesis; for we must constantly bear in mind that the atoms and electrons into which modern science resolves the material world are as truly beyond the reach of our senses as are gnomes and fairies, and any other spiritual beings. It is true that we may have much better reasons for believing in the existence of atoms and electrons than of ghosts and hobgoblins; but in themselves atoms and electrons, ghosts and hobgoblins are equally hypothetical and therefore, in the strict sense of the word, imaginary, beings, invented to account for sensible phenomena. The supposed effects of both we can perceive, but not the things themselves. We can see, for example, the grassy ring which is said to be made by the feet of fairies dancing their rounds by moonlight on the greensward, but the fairies themselves we cannot see. We can perceive the bright line which is said to be the luminous trail left behind by an atom of helium shooting athwart a darkened chamber;[1] but the atom itself escapes our purblind vision as completely as do the fairies.

Even if, through some as yet undreamed-of refinement of our scientific instruments, atoms and electrons should be brought within the ken of our senses, can we doubt that science would at once proceed to analyse the now perceptible atoms and electrons into some minuter and imperceptible particles of matter, and so on to infinity? Already science assumes that every atom is, as it were, a little sun with planets in the form of electrons revolving about it.[1] May it not be that each of these tiny suns comprises within itself a still tinier sun, or rather an incalculable number of such suns in the shape of atoms, and that in every one of these atoms of an atom a solar system, nay a whole starry universe, a miniature copy of ours, with all its wealth of vegetable and animal life, is, like our own, in process of evolution or decay? Conversely, we may imagine that this universe of ours which seems to us so inconceivably vast, is no more than an atom vibrating in a vaster universe; and so on to infinity.[2]

Thus it is that thought perpetually outstrips sense in the infinitely little as in the infinitely great; however far we extend the field of vision, whether to stars of unimaginable distance, or to corpuscles of unimaginable minuteness, thought still passes beyond them in the endless search after the real, the invisible, the eternal. We stand as it were at a point between two infinities neither of which we can ever hope to reach, yet both of which, by the pressure of some force unknown, we are perpetually urged to pursue. Thought is poised on a knife-edge between two abysses, into the unfathomable depths of which she is for ever peering, till her sight grows dim and her brain reels in the effort to pierce the thick gloom that closes the vista on either hand. Yet we understate the mystery that compasses about our little life when we speak of it as if it were only twofold, the mystery of the infinitely great and the infinitely small in space; for is there not also the twofold mystery of time, the mystery of the infinite past and the mystery of the infinite future? Thus our metaphor of thought poised between two abysses needs to be corrected and expanded: not two, but four infinites, four gulfs, four bottomless chasms yawn at her feet; and down into them some Tempter – or is it some bright angel? – whispering at her ear, perpetually lures her to plunge, only, it would seem, to beat and flutter her ineffectual wings in the impenetrable darkness. Yet even here, unappalled by the apparently insoluble nature of the enigma, the human mind refuses to acquiesce in these manifold antitheses. Of late, if I apprehend it aright, philosophy or science (for on fundamental questions these two sisters, after following the circle of human knowledge in opposite directions, tend to meet and kiss at last), philosophy or science has recently been at work to simplify the ultimate problems by reducing the seemingly irreducible principles of space and time to a single reality.[1] It is not for me to pronounce an opinion on this bold generalisation. I refer to it only as perhaps the latest effort of the philosophic or scientific mind to unify and harmonise the apparently heterogeneous and discordant constituents of the universe.

The Gifford lectures were founded to stimulate and advance the study of natural theology. By natural theology I understand the conception which man, without the aid of revelation, has formed to himself of the existence and nature of a God or gods. The theme is a vast one, exceeding the capacity of any single man to treat of adequately in a course of twenty lectures. Accordingly your lecturers have naturally and rightly chosen to deal with those particular sides or aspects of the subject with which their own special studies had made them in some measure acquainted. I propose to follow their example. As you are perhaps aware, my attention has been given almost exclusively to the early history, I may almost say to the embryology, of natural religion; I mean, to the ideas which the ancients and the backward races of mankind formed of the divine nature and its relations to the world. Accordingly in the lectures which I have the honour to deliver in this place I purpose to take certain of these ideas as my subject, to describe the conceptions themselves and the practical consequences which have been deduced from them, whether in the shape of ritual or of rules for the guidance of life. I am aware that the description of beliefs and customs which the enlightened portion of mankind has long agreed to dismiss as false and absurd, if not as monstrous, vicious, and cruel, is apt to be somewhat tedious and repellent; certainly it lacks the vivid interest which would naturally attach to a discussion such as I have indicated of the relations between the latest advances of science and the latest advances, or retreats, of theology. Still I trust that an account even of crude theories and preposterous practices may not be wholly destitute of interest and instruction, if it enables us to picture to ourselves something of the effort which it has cost our predecessors to grope their way through the mists of ignorance and superstition to what passes with us of this generation for the light of knowledge and wisdom. They were the pioneers who hewed their way through a jungle that might well have seemed impenetrable to man: they made the paths smooth for those who were to come after: we walk in their footsteps, and reap at our ease the harvest which they sowed with labour and anguish. The gratitude we owe them for the inestimable service which they have rendered us should temper the harsh judgments which we are too apt to pass on their errors, on what a hasty verdict stigmatises as their follies and their crimes; and the lesson which we draw from the contemplation of their long wanderings and manifold aberrations in the search for the true and the good should be one rather of humility than of pride; it should teach us how weak and frail is human nature, and by what a slender thread hangs the very existence of our species, like a speck or mote suspended in the inconceivable infinities of the universe.

Accordingly the natural theology of which I propose to treat is the theology of simple folk, not the theology of the schools, where the doctrine of the divine nature has been elaborated and refined by age-long discussion and the successive contributions of generations of subtle thinkers. Who then are the simple folk whose theological notions we are about to study together? The great bulk of them may be described as savages, by which I mean the races of lower culture, so far as their customs and beliefs have not been modified by contact with civilisation. Under simple folk I include also the uneducated classes in civilised countries, and especially the peasantry, among whom ancient modes of thought and of practice commonly linger long after they have disappeared among the more enlightened members of the community. The beliefs and customs handed down by tradition from time immemorial among the unlearned are commonly comprised under the general term of folklore; as the great bulk of them probably originated in a very remote antiquity, they furnish valuable evidence as to the habits and ideas which may be presumed to have prevailed generally in former times, before the advance of knowledge, and with it of civilisation, gradually ousted them from polite society and drove them into holes and corners, where they subsist like bats and owls in the darkness of ignorance and superstition. Accordingly I shall sometimes appeal to folklore for evidence of ancient modes of thought and practice, which, however strange and barbarous they may seem to civilised eyes, often shed a flood of light on the religion of our primitive forefathers.

Lastly, I shall draw not a few of my illustrations from the ancient religions of India, of Egypt, of Babylon, of Greece, and of Rome. As society in these countries at the epochs to which I shall refer was not only civilised, but had recorded its civilisation in copious and elaborate literatures, it might be objected that I have no right to include these peoples among the simple folks from whom I profess to derive the materials of these lectures. It is true no doubt that in many respects the theology and ritual of ancient India and classical antiquity had been modified and refined, even in very early days, by the influence of a higher thought and a purer morality than can be expected of an ignorant and unenlightened multitude. Yet after making every allowance for such improvements, gradually and no doubt for the most part silently effected by the intellectual and moral progress of the leaders, we must still regard the national religions of these civilised peoples as essentially popular creations, and as bearing on their face the indelible imprint of their origin. In other words, they were not, like the great historical religions, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, created each at a blow by the genius of a single founder, who was raised far above his fellows by the loftiness or the energy of his personal character, by the force of his moral enthusiasm or of his worldly ambition, and by the breadth of his intellectual outlook. On the contrary, all the evidence points to the conclusion that the national religions of ancient India and the Mediterranean basin were in general the fruit of a long, gradual, and so to say natural evolution, which lasted for many ages and was effected rather by the tacit and almost unconscious co-operation of the many than by the purposeful intervention of a few outstanding individuals.

To this general rule perhaps the only exception is the religion of ancient Israel, which undoubtedly bears the clearest marks of having been profoundly and repeatedly modified not only by the deliberate action of able and far-seeing legislators, but by the moral enthusiasm of the prophets. Yet even these men, who have exerted on the history of humanity an influence which it would hardly be possible to exaggerate, even they did not create the religion of their people; the substance of it had no doubt been handed down, generation after generation, from times beyond the memory of man: all that the great lawgivers and prophets did was to reform the ancient faith by purging it of its grosser elements and adapting it in some measure to their own high ideals of religion and ethics. But these reformations were not complete; indeed they could not be so; the weaknesses and imperfections of human nature alike in reformers and reformed forbade, as they will always forbid, the realisation of the fairest dreams. Hence it came about that even after the reformers had done their work, the national religion of Israel retained not a few crudities that had been bequeathed to it from ruder ages, relics of ignorance and barbarism which neither legislators nor prophets had been able to efface from the book of the law and the hearts of the people. Such relics are folklore, and to some of them I may allow myself to refer in the course of these lectures without, I trust, incurring the suspicion of trespassing on the forbidden ground of revelation.

Such, then, are the sources from which I propose to draw most of the facts illustrative of that department of natural theology which I have taken as the subject of my lectures. Before closing this general introduction to the course, it remains to indicate briefly the principal forms which natural religion is commonly found to assume in its earlier stages, with which alone we are here concerned.

As I have already pointed out, the natural religion to which I purpose to confine my attention is that of simple folk, or in other words of primitive peoples, if I may be allowed to use the ambiguous word primitive in a relative, not an absolute sense, to denote a level of culture much below that which has been reached by educated persons in modern civilised society. If then, we survey the natural religion of primitive peoples in all parts of the world, we shall probably discover that it everywhere assumes one of two forms, which, far from being incompatible with each other, are usually found to be embraced simultaneously and with equal confidence by the worshippers. One of them is the worship of nature, the other is the worship of the dead. I must say a few words about each.

First, in regard to the worship of nature, I mean by that the worship of natural phenomena conceived as animated, conscious, and endowed with both the power and the will to benefit or injure mankind. Conceived as such they are naturally objects of human awe and fear. Their life and consciousness are supposed to be strictly analogous to those of men; they are thought to be subject to the same passions and emotions, and to possess powers which, while they resemble those of man in kind, often far exceed them in degree. Thus to the mind of primitive man these natural phenomena assume the character of formidable and dangerous spirits whose anger it is his wish to avoid, and whose favour it is his interest to conciliate. To attain these desirable ends he resorts to the same means of conciliation which he employs towards human beings on whose goodwill he happens to be dependent; he proffers requests to them, and he makes them presents; in other words, he prays and sacrifices to them; in short, he worships them. Thus what we may call the worship of nature is based on the personification of natural phenomena. Whether he acts deliberately in pursuance of a theory, or, as is more probable, instinctively in obedience to an impulse of his nature, primitive man at a certain stage, not necessarily the earliest, of his mental evolution attributes a personality akin to his own to all, or at all events to the most striking, of the natural objects, whether animate or inanimate, by which he is surrounded. This process of personification appears to be the principal, though it is probably not the only source of the worship of nature among simple folk. The worship of nature will form the subject of my Gifford lectures.

The other form of natural religion to which I have referred is the worship of the dead. While it differs from the worship of nature in itself and in the presuppositions on which it rests, it is perhaps equally diffused among men[1] and has probably exerted at least an equal influence on their thought and institutions. The assumptions on which the worship of the dead is founded are mainly two: first, that the dead retain their consciousness and personality, and second, that they can powerfully influence the fortunes of the living for good or evil. To put it otherwise, the human soul is supposed to survive the death of the body and in its disembodied state to be capable of benefiting or injuring the survivors. Thus a belief in immortality, or at all events in the survival of consciousness and personality for an indefinite time after death, is the keystone of that propitiation or worship of the dead which has played a most important part in history and has been fraught with the most momentous consequences for good or evil to humanity.

When I undertook to deliver these lectures, my intention was to devote my first course to the worship of nature, and my second course to the worship of the dead, thus rounding off, in outline at least, the whole sphere of natural religion among simple folks. But when I addressed myself to the writing of the lectures, I found the materials for the study of the worship of nature far too copious to be compressed into a course often lectures. They overflowed the prescribed limits and promised to furnish ample materials for a second course. Accordingly, instead of attempting to deal more or less cursorily with the two forms of natural religion, the worship of nature, and the worship of the dead, I have decided that it will be better to give both courses to a more thorough investigation of the worship of nature alone. In my next lecture I will open the subject with some account of the worship of the sky in Aryan antiquity.

J. G. Frazer

1925

1. Bertrand Russell, The A B C of Atoms (London, 1923), p. 19.

1. ‘Physicists now believe that all of the elements are compounded of hydrogen atoms, bound together by negative electrons. Thus helium is made up of four hydrogen atoms, yet the atomic weight of helium (4) is less than four times that of hydrogen (1.008). The difference may represent the mass of the electrical energy released when the transmutation occurred’ (G. E. Hale, The New Heavens, New York and London, 1922, p. 80). At present the number of multiples of hydrogen, and consequently the number of the elements, postulated by physicists appears to be ninety-two, but of these several remain to be discovered, their existence being rendered probable by gaps in the series of atomic numbers, which begins with hydrogen at one and ends with uranium at ninety-two. See Sir William Bragg, Concerning the Nature of Things (London, 1925), pp. 36 sq. In this passage Sir W. Bragg is speaking of the difference between the elements as consisting, not in the different multiples of hydrogen, but in the different number of electrons which they can normally attract or hold as satellites. But apparently the number of multiples of hydrogen in an element is identical with the number of its electrons, and both of them with its atomic number.

2. For a full and clear statement of the evidence, see A. Dendy, Outlines of Evolutionary Biology, Third Edition (London, 1923).

1. Tennyson, Ulysses.

1. W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, Second Edition (London, 1832–1836), i. 331.

2. Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book IV. ll. 718–721, 871–879.

1. J. H. Holmes, In Primitive New Guinea (London, 1924), pp. 154 sq. In quoting the text I have substituted for the native word imunu the English word ‘soul’, which is its nearest equivalent. Mr Holmes defines imunu as ‘soul, living principle’, ‘the soul of things’, p. 150.

1. Schiller, Die Götter Griechenlands.

1. Sir William Bragg, Concerning the Nature of Things, pp. 25 sqq.

1. Sir William Bragg, Concerning the Nature of Things, p. 29; F. Soddy, Matter and Energy (London, 1920), pp. 186 sq.

2. The thought of the two infinities, the infinitely great and the infinitely little, which equally evade the utmost span of man’s puny intellect, was long ago eloquently enforced by Pascal in a famous passage. See Pascal, Pensées sur la Vérité de la Religion Chrétienne, par J. Chevalier (Paris, 1925), i. 43 sqq. In modern times the same idea has been set forth by Ernest Renan in what we may call his confession of philosophic faith written towards the end of his life. See E. Renan, ‘Examen de Conscience philosophique’, Feuilles détachées (Paris, 1892), pp. 407 sqq.

1. Compare Bertrand Russell, The A B C of Relativity (London, 1925), pp. 58 sqq. In speaking so glibly of infinities, as I have done in the text, I should mention that at the present time several scientific gentlemen are engaged in reconstructing the universe on a new and improved pattern of finite dimensions. Indeed, two of these reconstructions are now complete and ready for delivery. But as the two differ fundamentally from each other, and the value of both seems dubious, the unscientific laity may perhaps be pardoned for temporarily acquiescing in the old-fashioned infinities and in the antiquated notion of a radical distinction between space and time. See Bertrand Russell, The A B C of Relativity, pp. 164 sqq.: ‘Two somewhat different finite universes have been constructed, one by Einstein, the other by De Sitter’, etc. The cont’d over/ cont’d difference between the two, according to Mr Russell, is that, whereas in Einstein’s universe it is only space that is queer, in De Sitter’s universe both space and time have gone mad, so that only a hatter would be in a position to understand them. Even Einstein, it appears, after ejecting absolute space and time by the front door, has smuggled them in by the back – a melancholy backsliding which deals a staggering blow to the reconstructed universe and encourages the profane to indulge in a chimerical hope of the continued existence and sanity of both space and time.

1. Compare Max Müller, Introduction to the Science of Religion, p. 211: ‘The worship of the spirits of the departed is perhaps the most widely spread form of natural superstition all over the world.’

Index

- Aachen: fire festival at 1, 2

- Aargau (Switzerland), trees planted at births in 1

- Aaru Archipelago 1, 2

- Abchases, eating practice of shepherds in spring among the 1

- Aberdeenshire, ceremony at the cutting of the last sheaf in 1

- About this work 1

- Abyssinia: festivals in 1;

- rain-making on the outskirts of 1

- Acagchemen tribe, adoration of the buzzard by the 1

- Achilles, unshorn 1

- Adonis (Thammuz): anthropomorphic presence 1;

- commemoration of the death of Adonis and Aphrodite at Alexandria 1 ;

- as a corn-spirit 1, 2;

- gardens of 1 ;

- killed on Mount Lebanon hunting wild boars 1;

- lament of 1, 2;

- myth and worship of 1, 2 ;

- as a pig 1;

- probable origin of the cult of 1 ;

- rites of, similar to those of Osiris 1

- Aegira, blood drunk before prophesying at 1

- Aethiopian kings confined to their palaces 1

- Afghanistan: Boundary Mission, reception by the natives of the 1;

- reception of strangers in 1

- Africa: back-thorn held sacred in Bechuanaland 1;

- Bakalai of West Africa 1, 2, 3;

- bark garments for pregnant women in Congo 1;

- Barotse of South Africa 1;

- the chief a demigod in 1;

- Basutos and the reflection-soul 1;

- Batoka in 1;

- belief in the souls of trees in Congo 1 ;

- blood of cattle not shed by the Damaras of South 1;

- boys at circumcision in Natal 1;

- burying of cut hair and nails by Kafirs of Natal 1;

- Cameroons, the life of a person supposed to be bound up with that of a tree by the 1;

- cannibalism by the Basutos 1;

- the Chitomé in the kingdom of Congo 1, 2 ;

- Crocodile clan in Bechuanaland 1;

- crocodile superstition in Bechuanaland 1;

- custom of the Damaras after travel 1;

- Damaras of South Africa 1, 2;

- descent among totem clans in Bechuanaland 1;

- elephant hunters in Natal 1;

- Emin Pasha’s reception in a Central African village 1;

- first-fruit offerings by the Basutos 1 ;

- Fors of Central Africa, preservation of nail parings by the 1;

- Gallas of East Africa 1;

- human heart eaten in the Shire Highlands of 1;

- initiatory rights in the valley of the Congo 1 ;

- Lamb killed sacramentally by the Madi tribe of Central Africa 1 ;

- Manganjas of East Africa 1, 2;

- ‘Manii, there are many in Africa,’ explanation of the proverb 1 ;

- M’Bengas of West Africa, life of a child supposed to be bound up with that of a tree by the 1 ;

- negroes and soul-selling in Congo 1;

- New Year festival in Natal 1;

- origins of totemism in Bechuanaland 1;

- Ovambo of South-west Africa 1;

- priestly kings on the west coast of 1;

- purification after travel in Bechuanaland 1;

- Quoja (West Africa) 1;

- initiatory rites in 1 ;

- rain-charm in Bechuanaland 1;

- reluctance to accept the crown in some parts of West 1 ;

- sun superstition in Bechuanaland 1 ;

- superstition concerning childbirth among the

- Damaras of South 1;

- totem clans in

- Bechuanaland 1, 2;

- totem system in Bechuanaland 1 ;

- transference of ills in Bechuanaland 1;

- Waganda of Central Africa, worship by the 1;

- Wanika of East Africa 1;

- weather kings common in 1;

- West African rain-makers 1

- Agathocles’ defeat of the Carthaginians 1

- Ague, cure for 1

- Ahnebergen (Stade), threshing custom at 1

- Aht Indians, seclusion of girls among the 1

- Ain, May-day customs in the Département de l’ 1

- Arnos of Japan 1, 2 ;

- bear festival of the 1 ;

- preparation for fishing 1;

- treatment of the bear 1;

- type of sacrament of the 1

- Alaskan sable hunters 1

- Alban hills 1;

- Mount Alban 1

- Albania: beating in 1;

- Easter Eve custom in 12 3;

- scapegoat in 1

- Alexandria, commemoration of the death of Adonis and Aphrodite at 1

- Alfoers of Celebes:

- ceremony for restoring the soul 1;

- driving away the devil by the 1 ;

- function of their high priest Leleen 1;

- priest sows the first rice seed and plucks the first ripe rice 1;

- priest’s hair uncut 1

- Algeria, midsummer fires in 1

- Alligator, man-eating 1

- Alps, May-day custom in the 1

- Altdorf, ‘Carnival Fool’ at 1

- Altisheim (Swabia), harvest custom in 1

- Altmark: Easter bonfires 1;

- Whitsuntide customs in 1, 2

- Amboina: disease boats in 1 ;

- first-fruit offerings in 1 ;

- hair burying in 1;

- recovery of soul from demons in 1;

- soul-abstracting in 1;

- soul shadows in 1;

- sprinkling the sick with spices in 1;

- strength thought to be in the hair in 1

- Ambon Island 1, 2

- Amenhôtep IV and the sun-god 1, 2

- Ammon of Thebes: rage of the sun-god Ra against 1 ;

- rains held sacred by the worshippers of 1

- Ancient religions 1

- Andaman Islanders 1;

- belief in the reflection as the soul 1

- Anderida forest, remnants in wealds of Kent, Surrey and Sussex 1

- Anemone, connection with Adonis 1

- Angel-man, beheading the 1

- Angoulême, custom of burning a poplar on St Peter’s Day in 1

- Angoy, king must have no bodily defects 1

- Animal, killing the Divine 1

- Animal worship: burnt as representative of the spirit of vegetation 1 ;

- eaten to obtain its quality 1 ;

- employed as a scapegoat 1, 2 ;

- respect shown by the savage for the animal he kills 1 ;

- sacred carried in procession 1 ;

- savage belief in the resurrection of the animal killed 1 ;

- spared by savages from fear of the vengeance of other animals of the same kind 1 ;

- two types of 1

- Annamites, soul superstition among the 1

- Antaymour kings responsible for the general welfare 1

- Anthropological Institute, Journal of the 1

- Antrim, harvest custom in 1

- Apache Indians, rain-making by the 1

- Apalai Indians, ceremony on the arrival of a stranger by the 1

- Aphrodite 1

- Apis of Memphis 1 ;

- the sacred Egyptian bull drowned 1

- Apollo Diradiotes, blood of sacrificial lamb drunk in the temple of 1

- Apple-tree, superstition with regard to the, by barren women 1

- Arabia, belief concerning a man’s shadow in 1

- Arabian stories, the external soul in 1

- Arabic belief in the properties of lion’s fat 1

- Arabs, rain-making by the heathen 1

- Arawaks of Guiana 1

- Arcadia: beating the scapegoat 1;

- rain-charm in 1

- Archon of Plataeae, may not touch iron 1

- Arden, forest of 1

- Argive tradition concerning Dionysus 1

- Ariadne, marriage of 1

- Arician Grove 1;

- cult of the 1;

- explanation of the proverb: ‘there are many Manii at Aricia’ 1 ;

- harvest celebration 1;

- Manius the traditional founder of the 1;

- ritual 1 ;

- sacramental bread baked at 1

- Artemis, ritual at Halae of 1

- Aru Islands: custom after a death in the 1;

- dog’s flesh eaten 1;

- hair cutting 1;

- soul superstition in the 1

- Arval Brothers: priestly college of the, and the sacred grove 1 ;

- sacred grove of the, and iron 1

- Aryans: oak the sacred tree of the 1;

- primitive worship 1 ;

- totemism and the 1;

- tree worshippers 1, 2

- Ascension Day custom 1, 2

- Aschbach (Bavaria), harvest custom in 1

- Ash Wednesday customs 1, 2, 3, 4

- Ashantees: first-fruit offerings by the 1;

- royal blood not shed in 1

- Asia Minor, Pontiffs of 1

- Assam, Dhurma Raja in 1

- Assassination by sorcery, fear of 1

- Assinibois Indians 1

- Associationist psychology xvii

- Athenaeus 1

- Athene, relation of the goat to 1

- Athens: annual marriage of the Queen to Dionysus at 1 ;

- rites of Adonis observed in 1;

- ritual at the sacrifice of the ox in 1, 2;

- scapegoats in 1

- Attis: myth and festival of 1, 2;

- as a pig 1;

- probability that the high priest of, was slain in the character of the god 1;

- probable origin of the cult of 1 ;

- relation to Lityerses 1 ;

- rites of, similar to those of Osiris 1 ;

- a tree-spirit or corn-spirit 1

- Atum of Heliopolis 1

- Aurich (East Friesland), ‘cutting the hare’s tail (last corn) off’ in 1

- Australia: Aborigines of: annual expulsion of ghosts 1 ;

- attack the dust columns of red sand 1;

- charm for staying the sun 1;

- fear of women’s blood 1, 2;

- remedy for toothache 1;

- Bandicoot totem 1, 2;

- blood may not be spilt on the ground in some parts of 1 ;

- Bora ceremony in 1 ;

- ceremony on entering strange territory by the Australians 1;

- churinga (carved stone or wood with devices relating to the totem) 1 ;

- Coast Murring tribe in New South Wales 1, 2, 3;

- Dieri in South 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ;

- exogamy in Central 1;

- Fly totem 1;

- Geawe-gal tribe of New South Wales 1;

- hair burning after child-birth in 1;

- Hakea Flower totem 1, 2, 3;

- Ikula (Morning Star) tribe of the Australian Bight 1 ;

- initiation rites at puberty in 1 ;

- initiatory rites in Queensland 1 ;

- Intichiuma ceremonies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

- Kamilaroi of: cannibalism by the 1;

- Kamilaroi tribe of New South Wales 1, 2 ;

- Kangaroo totem 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

- Kiabara tribe of Queensland 1, 2;

- Kurnai in Victoria 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

- medicine men in: and recall of the soul 1;

- Mount Gambier tribe in South 1, 2, 3, 4;

- Narrinyeri in South 1, 2, 3, 4;

- novel features of Central Australian totemism 1 ;

- nurtunja (magic pole) 1, 2 ;

- Opossum totem 1, 2;

- ornamentation by totem tribes in 1, 2;

- ownership claims to natural objects 1 ;

- punishment for eating the totem in 1;

- rain-making

- by the Dieyerie of Southern 1;

- rules of descent in 1 ;

- sacred spots of aborigines of 1 ;

- seclusion of women in 1;

- sex totems in 1 ;

- social aspect of totemism in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ;

- Ta-ta-thi tribe of New South Wales 1, 2;

- totem clans of Western 1;

- totemic function, control of natural objects 1 ;

- totemism 1, 2 ;

- Turra tribe of South Australia 1;

- Wakelburas of Queensland 1;

- Witchetty Grub totem 1, 2, 3, 4;

- Wotjoballuk tribe in Victoria 1, 2, 3, 4;

- Wotjobaluk in: rain-making by the 1;

- Yuin tribe of New South Wales 1

- Austria: ceremony of driving out Death in Austrian Silesia 1;

- charm for lulling the wind in 1;

- harvest custom in 1;

- May-tree in 1;

- Muhkälbchen (mythical calf) in 1;

- old peasant belief in the souls of trees in 1

- Auxerre: reaping custom at 1;

- threshing ceremony at 1

- Axim (Gold Coast), annual expulsion of devils at 1

- Aymara Indians, scapegoat used in times of plague by the 1

- Aztecs: aversion to wine 1;

- and the reflection-soul 1

- Baba, a name given to the last sheaf 1

- Babar Archipelago 1, 2

- Babar Islands: restoration of the soul in the 1;

- the soul believed to be in the shadow 1

- Babylon: legend concerning the goddess Istar (Astarte, Aphrodite) 1 ;

- Sacaea festival at 1

- Baffin Land, expulsion of evil by the Eskimo of 1

- Bakalai of West Africa 1, 2, 3

- Balder: bale-fires of 1 ;

- killed by the mistletoe 1 ;

- life in the mistletoe of 1 ;

- myth of 1, 2 ;

- personified in the oak 1

- Bali: custom at a birth 1;

- mice and the rice fields of the island of 1;

- periodic expulsion of devils 1, 2

- Balquhidder, harvest custom in 1

- Balwe (Westphalia), ‘Carnival Fool’ at 1

- Bandicoot totem 1, 2

- Banjar kings held responsible for the weather 1

- Banks Islanders 1 ;

- Tamaniu of the 1

- Banyai of the Zambesi 1

- Baranton, fountain of 1

- Barcelona, Mid-Lent custom in 1

- Bari tribe, rain kings of the 1

- Barotse of South Africa 1;

- the chief a demigod in 1

- Barren women’s superstition regarding the apple-tree 1

- Bassam, Great: ceremony of driving out the evil spirit 1;

- sacrifice of oxen at 1

- Basutos: cannibalism by the 1;

- first-fruit offerings by the 1 ;

- and the reflection-soul 1

- Bat 1

- Batoka in Africa 1

- Battambang, rain-charm in 1

- Battas of Sumatra: belief in plurality of souls 1;

- ceremony of making the curse fly away by the 1;

- fighting the wind 1;

- refuse to fell trees 1;

- soul straying 1 ;

- soul superstition 1, 2;

- totemism among the 1

- Bavaria: cure for fever in 1;

- Easter bonfires in 1;

- harvest custom in 1 ;

- May custom in 1;

- Midsummer bonfires in 1;

- Walber in 1, 2;

- Whitsuntide representative of the tree-spirit in 1

- Bear: ceremony at killing a 1 ;

- ceremony before a bear-hunt 1 ;

- dead, treated with respect 1 ;

- sacrifice of the 1 ;

- Shrovetide 1

- Beasts, divine, held responsible for the course of nature 1

- Beating as a ceremonial purification 1, 2

- Beauce, straw man in Orleans district 1

- Beavers, superstition about killing 1

- Bechuanaland: Crocodile clan in 1;

- crocodile superstition in 1;

- descent among totem clans in 1;

- hack-thorn held sacred in 1;

- origins of totemism in 1;

- purification after travel 1;

- rain-charm in 1;

- sun superstition in 1 ;

- totem clans in 1, 2;

- totem system in 1 ;

- transference of ills in 1

- Bedouins, pursuing the wind 1

- Belfast, harvest custom at 1

- Belgium, procession with wicker giant in 1

- Belli-Paaro, ceremony in Quoja of 1

- Beltane fires 1, 2, 3

- Bengal: Gardens of Adonis in 1 ;

- human sacrifice by the Khonds (Kandhs) in 1 ;

- totem clans of 1, 2, 3, 4

- Bernkastel, reaping custom in 1

- Berosus 1

- Berry: belief regarding the birth of the corn-spirit in 1;

- harvest custom 1

- Bhagats, mock human sacrifices by the 1

- Bhotan, man worshippers in 1

- Biajas of Borneo, expulsion of diseases to sea by the 1

- Bidasari, story of 1

- Bilaspur, custom at the death of a Rajah 1

- Birch-tree dressed in women’s clothes in Russia at Whitsuntide 1

- Birth ceremonies 1

- Bison, resurrection of the 1

- Bithynia, lament by the reapers in 1

- Black Lake 1

- Blankenfelde (Potsdam), harvest custom in 1

- Bleeding trees 1

- Blekinge, midsummer ceremonies in 1

- Blood: dread of contact with 1;

- inspiration by blood-drinking 1;

- primitive dread of menstruous 1 ;

- royal blood not spilt: upon the ground 1 ;

- sight of women’s, debilitating effect of 1;

- soul thought to be in the 1 ;

- taboo concerning 1

- Boba (Old Woman), a name given to the last sheaf 1

- Boeotians of Plataea, festival of the 1, 2

- Boeroe, ceremony at the rice harvest in 1

- Bogota, restrictions on the heir to the throne in 1

- Bohemia: ceremony of bringing back summer 1 ;

- ceremony of carrying out Death 1 ;

- harvest custom 1 ;

- Mid-Lent custom 1 ;

- midsummer custom 1, 2;

- midsummer fires in 1;

- superstition held by poachers in 1;

- superstition regarding death 1;

- Whit Monday custom 1, 2 ;

- white mice spared in 1

- Böhmer Wald Mountains, custom of the reapers in the 1

- Bolang Mongondo: ceremony at rice harvest in 1;

- preservation of cut hair 1;

- recapture of the soul in 1

- Bombay, soul superstition in 1

- Bomma, Namvulu Vumu, King of the Rain and Storm at 1

- Bones of animals not broken by savages 1

- Boni, king of, and his courtiers 1

- Booandik tribe superstition concerning the blood of women 1

- ‘Book of the Dead’ 1, 2

- Bormus, the name given to the lament of the Bithynian reapers 1, 2

- Borneo: abduction of the soul of the Dyaks of 1;

- bad omens 1;

- belief in the souls of trees among the Dyaks 1;

- custom in, regarding infested persons 1;

- custom in epidemic 1;

- custom with regard to strangers by the Ot Damons of 1;

- Dyaks may not eat venison 1;

- Dyaks spare the crocodile 1;

- expulsion of diseases to sea by the Biajas of 1;

- first-fruit offerings by the Dyaks of 1;

- harvest custom 1, 2;

- palm tree and the Dyaks of 1;

- refuge for criminals in 1 ;

- restoration of the soul 1 ;

- seclusion of girls among the Ot Damons 1;

- Singhie tribe of 1 ;

- superstitious attribution to novel things of the Dasuns of 1

- Bororos of Brazil 1, 2

- Bosch of Guiana 1

- Bouphonia (Murder of the ox) 1, 2

- Brabant, Whitsuntide custom in North 1

- Brahmans: sin eaters 1 ;

- soul story of the 1;

- temple of the 1 ;

- transference of sins by the 1

- Braller (Transylvania): Ash Wednesday custom in 1;

- harvest custom in 1

- Brandy, North American Indian theory about 1

- Braunsberg (East Prussia), harvest ceremony in 1

- Brazilian Indians: girls and puberty among the Uaupes 1

- Brazilian Indians: self-beating by the 1;

- treatment of girls at the age of puberty by the 1, 2

- Bresse: ceremony regarding the last sheaf 1 ;

- May customs in 1

- Brest, fire festival at 1

- Briançon: harvest ceremony at 1;

- May-day in the neighbourhood of 1

- Bride, a name given to the binder of the last shelf 1

- Bridegroom of May (le fiancé du mois de Mai) 1

- Brie: burning of mock giant in 1;

- harvest custom in 1, 2 ;

- May-day custom in 1

- British Columbia, fish ceremony by the Indians of 1

- Brittany: Breton custom concerning wrens 1;

- Breton peasant and the wind 1; Breton stories,

- external soul in 1 ;

- midsummer fires in 1;

- reaping custom in Upper 1

- Bruck in Styria, harvest custom in 1

- Brüd’s bed in the Highlands 1

- Brunnen, Twelfth Night custom at 1

- Brunswick: Easter fires in the 1;

- Whitsuntide custom in 1

- Buchan, John 1

- Buddhist animism 1

- Buddist Tartar worship 1

- Buffalo: belief in the resurrection of the 1;

- held sacred by the Todas 1

- Buffalo-bull 1

- Buir (Cologne), last sheaf shaped as wolf at 1

- Bulgaria: custom at the laying of a foundation stone 1 ;

- folk-tale concerning Simeon, prince of 1 ;

- harvest custom in 1;

- rain-charm in 1

- Bull: the corn-spirit as a 1 ;

- Dionysus as a 1, 2 ;

- Osiris and the 1 ;

- sacred 1 ;

- as a scapegoat 1

- Burghers (Badagas) of South India: first seed sowing and reaping among the 1 ;

- transference of sins by the 1

- Burgundian kings deposed in times of scarcity 1

- Burma: ceremony of driving away cholera in 1;

- first-fruit offerings in 1;

- head-washing in 1;

- mock burial in time of sickness in 1 ;

- mode of executing princes of the blood in 1 ;

- soul and the people of 1 ;

- superstition concerning having anyone above their heads 1

- Burnt sacrifices among the Celts 1

- Buro Islands: disease boats from 1;

- dog’s flesh eaten in the 1

- Burying alive 1

- Busiris, legend of 1

- Butterfly, the Samoans and the 1

- Buzzard, sacrifice of the sacred 1

- Byblus, lamentation for the death of Adonis at 1

- Caird, Edward 1

- Calabar, revellings at the expulsion of devils in Old 1

- Calabria: custom of ‘sawing the old woman’ in 1;

- expulsion of witches in 1

- Calcutta, iron-charm used in 1

- Calf, the corn-spirit as a 1

- Calicut: kings killed at the expiry of twelve years (subsequently allowed to defend themselves) 1, 2, 3, 4

- Californian Indians 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

- sacrifice of the buzzard 1 ;

- their opinion of the dust columns 1

- Caligula 1

- Cambodia: ceremony of ther cutting of the king’s hair in 1;

- ceremony of trampling down the ‘rice-mountain’ 1;

- expulsion of evil spirits, etc. in 1, 2;

- external soul in story from 1 ;

- its sacred tree 1;

- kings of 1;

- kings of fire and water in 1 ;

- man’s head not touched in 1;

- search for inspired man in time of epidemic in 1;

- seclusion of girls in 1 ;

- the Steins of Cambodia and the killing of animals 1;

- temporary kings of 1;

- touching the king’s body in 1

- Cambridgeshire, harvest custom in 1

- Cameroons, the life of a person supposed to be bound up with that of a tree by the 1

- Canadian Indians: beaver hunting by the 1 ;

- detention of the soul among the 1;

- respect for elk 1

- Candlemas Day customs 1, 2, 3

- Canelos Indians, their belief of the soul in the portrait 1

- Cannibalism 1

- Capital offences 1, 2

- Carcassone, hunting the wren in 1

- Carib Indians 1;

- the belief in the plurality of souls 1

- Carinthia: ceremonies on St George’s Day in 1;

- ceremony at the installation of a prince of 1

- Carmona (Andalusia), custom in 1

- Carniola, custom of ‘sawing the old woman’ 1

- Carnival, ceremony of burying the 1, 2, 3

- Carnival (Shrovetide) Fool 1

- Carpathus Island: reluctance to have likenesses drawn on 1;

- transference of sickness on 1

- Carthaginian defeat by Agathocles 1

- Cashmeer, the external soul in stories from 1

- Cat: burnt as sacrifice 1;

- the corn spirit as a 1

- Caterpillars, method of freeing a garden from 1

- Cattle: driven through the fire 1, 2;

- and goats, trees and 1

- Cedar, the sacred tree of Gilgit 1

- Celebes: blood not spilt on the ground by the 1;

- custom at a birth in the 1;

- custom regarding infested persons 1;

- first-fruit offerings in the 1 ;

- and the soul 1;

- soul of bridegroom in flight 1;

- superstition regarding the knife 1.

- See also Minahassa of Celebes

- Celts: Celtic human sacrifices 1 ;

- Celtic stories, the external soul in 1 ;

- sacrificial rites of the 1 ;

- strongholds of the race in Europe 1

- Ceram Island: ceremony in epidemic 1;

- disease boats in 1 ;

- first-fruit offerings in 1;

- hair cutting superstition in 1, 2;

- initiation ceremony in 1 ;

- rain-making in 1;

- seclusion

- of girls in 1;

- superstition regarding the blood of women in 1

- Chaeronea (Boeotia), human scapegoat in 1

- Chambers Encyclopaedia xiii

- Chambéry: harvest custom in 1;

- threshing ceremony at 1

- Chedooba, ceremony on felling a tree in the island of 1

- Cheerake Indians 1

- Cheremiss, expulsion of Satan by the 1

- Cherokee Indians: opinions held regarding the properties of various foods among the 1;

- purification ceremony of the 1

- Chester, procession of mock giant at 1

- Chibchas, weather kings of the 1

- Chickasa Indians 1

- Children, sacrificed by their parents 1

- Chile, preservation of cut hair in 1

- Chili, sacred tree in India 1

- China: abstention from knives after a death in 1;

- cannibalism in 1 ;

- ceremony of driving away the devil by the Miaotse in 1;

- ceremony to welcome the return of spring in 1;

- emperor held responsible for drought, etc. 1;

- emperors of, offer public sacrifices 1;

- festival of the aboriginal tribes of 1;

- human scapegoat in 1 ;

- Marco Polo on punishment in Pekin 1;

- rain-charm in 1;

- special seat of Courage among the Chinese 1

- Chios, rites of Dionysus at 1

- Chippeway Indians, seclusion of women among the 1

- Chiriguanos, seclusion of girls by the 1

- Chitomé: Congolese supreme pontiff 1, 2 ;

- not allowed to die a natural death 1

- Chnum of Elephantine 1

- Chocktaw Indians 1, 2

- Cholera, driving away 1, 2, 3

- Chontal Indians, the nagual among the 1

- Christian, Captain, shooting of 1

- Christmas customs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

- Chrudim, ceremony of carrying out Death at 1

- Chuwash, the test of a suitable sacrificial victim 1

- Circassians, the pear-tree believed to be the protector of cattle by the 1

- Circumcision 1, 2

- Clan totems, naming after name of totem 1, 2, 3

- Clucking-Hen 1

- Coast Murring tribe in New South Wales 1, 2, 3

- Cobern, fire festival at 1

- Cobra Capella, sacrifice of the 1

- Cock, the corn-spirit as a 1

- Columbia River, Indians of the, and the salmon 1

- Comanche Indians, rain-charm used by the 1

- Compitalia, festival of the 1

- Congo: bark garments for pregnant women in 1;

- belief in the souls of trees 1 ;

- the Chitomé in the kingdom of 1, 2 ;

- initiatory rights in the valley of the 1 ;

- negroes and soul-selling 1

- Conitz (West Prussia), ‘steer running in the corn’ in 1

- Coorg rice-harvest ceremonies 1

- Corea: kings of, confined to their palaces 1 ;

- kings of, may not be touched 1;

- tigers’ bones valuable in 1

- Corn: double personification in Greek myth 1 ;

- drenched as a rain-charm 1;

- reaper, binder or thresher wrapt up in 1

- Corn-baby 1

- Corn-goat 1

- Corn-mother 1;

- prototype for Demeter 1

- Corn-queen 1

- Corn-spirit: as an animal 1;

- as a bull 1 ;

- as a cat 1;

- as a cock 1 ;

- as a goat 1 ;

- binding persons in sheaves as representatives of the 1 ;

- as a calf 1 ;

- as a cow 1;

- death of 1, 2 ;

- as the grandmother, etc. 1 ;

- as a horse or mare 1 ;

- how the representative is chosen 1 ;

- the ox as the embodiment of the 1 ;

- parallelism between the anthropomorphic and theriomorphic conceptions of the 1 ;

- as a pig 1 ;

- pretence of killing the, or its

- representative 1 ;

- represented by a human victim 1 ;

- represented by a stranger 1 ;

- suggested explanation of the embodiment of the, in animal form 1 ;

- as youthful 1

- Corn-wolf 1, 2

- Cornwall: May-day custom in 1;

- May-pole in 1;

- midsummer bonfires in 1, 2;

- reaping cries in 1

- Corsica, midsummer fires in 1

- Cough, cure for 1

- Court ceremonies 1

- Cow: the corn-spirit as a 1;

- man in cow’s hide 1;

- as a scapegoat 1

- Cracow, harvest customs in 1

- Crannon in Thessaly, rain-charm at 1

- Creek Indians 1, 2;

- festival of the first fruits

- among the 1 ;

- opinions held regarding the properties of various foods among the 1;

- seclusion of women by the 1

- Crete: festival of Dionysus in 1 ;

- marriage of Dionysus and Ariadne acted each Spring on 1;

- sacrifices in 1 ;

- worship of Demeter in 1

- Cripple Goat 1

- Croatia: beating in 1;

- custom of ‘sawing the old

- woman’ 1

- Crocodiles, spared from fear of the vengeance of other crocodiles 1

- Crops: ceremonies at the eating of the new 1, 2;

- human sacrifices for the 1 ;

- kings and priests punished for the failure of the 1 ;

- sacramental eating of the new 1

- Cross of the Horse 1

- Cross totems 1

- Crying the Neck 1

- Curka Coles of India, their belief that the tops of trees are inhabited 1

- Curse, ceremony of making the curse fly away 1

- Cybele (Phrygian Goddess) 1, 2

- Cyzicus: construction of the council chamber of 1 ;

- Dionysus as a Bull at 1

- Dacota Indians 1, 2;

- and the resurrection of the dog 1

- Daedala, Boeotian festival of 1, 2, 3, 4

- Dahomey, capital offence to see king eat in 1

- Dairi see Mikado

- Dalai Lama, mode of discovering 1

- Damaras of South Africa 1, 2;

- blood of cattle not shed by the 1;

- custom of the, after travel 1;

- superstition concerning childbirth 1

- Danae, old Greek story of 1

- Danger Islanders, soul snare used by the 1

- Danzig: burying of cut hair in 1;

- harvest ceremony 1;

- reaping custom 1

- Dards, rain-charm of the 1

- Darfur: the liver thought to be the seat of the soul in 1 ;

- the Sultans and their courtiers 1 ;

- veiling the Sultan of 1

- Darowen, midsummer bonfires at 1

- Dassera festival in Nepaul 1 note

- Dasuns of Borneo, superstitious attribution to novel things of the 1

- Dead Sunday

- (Todtensonntag) 1, 2

- Death: carrying out 1 ;

- ceremonies 1 ;

- ceremonies at the burying of 1 ;

- in the custom of ‘carrying out’ Death is probably a divine scapegoat 1 ;

- driving out 1, 2, 3, 4 ;

- effigy of 1 ;

- preference for a violent 1 ;

- and revival, mimicking 1 ;

- superstition concerning 1

- Debden, May Day custom in 1

- Deer, regard for 1

- Deffingen, midsummer fire ceremony in the 1

- Deities, replication of 1

- Delaware Indians 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

- Demeter: the Barley-mother 1;

- the Corn-mother 1 ;

- festivals of 1 ;

- legend of the Phigalian 1 ;

- as a pig 1 ;

- probable origin of 1 ;

- and Proserpine, myth of 1;

- prototypes of 1 ;

- representation of the Black 1 ;

- rites of, similar to those of Osiris 1 ;

- the Rye-mother 1

- Demons, the soul carried off by 1

- Denderah, tree of Osiris at 1

- Denmark: Christmas customs 1 ;

- harvest custom in 1;

- midsummer bonfires 1

- Descent, rules of 1

- Despiritualising the universe 1

- Devils: ceremonies for the expulsion of 1;

- ceremony at the expulsion of 1, 2, 3 ;

- ceremony of ‘driving away the devil’ 1;

- represented by men and expelled 1

- Devonshire: cure for cough 1;

- rain-charm 1;

- reaping cries 1

- Diana: Arician Grove said to be first consecrated to her by Manius Egerius 1;

- ceremonies at the festival of 1;

- mirror of 1;

- rule of the priesthood of 1;

- a tree goddess 1;

- worship at Nemi, leading features 1

- Dieri of South Australia 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

- Dieyerie of South Australia: rain making by the 1;

- tree superstition among the 1

- Dingelstedt (Erfurt), harvest custom at 1

- Dinkelsbühl (Bavaria), superstition concerning Corn-mother in 1

- Diodorus 1, 2, 3, 4

- Dionysus: as an animal 1, 2 ;

- association of, with Demeter and Proserpine 1;

- buried at Delphi 1;

- marriage of 1;

- myth of 1 ;

- pomegranates from the blood of 1;

- rites of 1, 2, 3;

- rites of, similar to those of Osiris 1 ;

- titles of 1, 2

- Diseases sent away in boats 1, 2

- Divine Animal, killing the 1

- Divine beasts 1, 2 ;

- care taken of kings as 1 ;

- dependence of nature upon kings as 1 ;

- kings and priests, burdensome observances placed upon 1 ;

- kings and priests, effects of these burdens 1 ;

- kings cease to govern as 1 ;

- persons as, seclusion of 1

- Divining rods made from mistletoe 1

- Dog: corn spirit as 1 ;

- flesh of the, eaten 1;

- resurrection of the 1;

- used as a scapegoat 1

- Domalde, King of Sweden, sacrificed 1

- Douai, annual procession at 1

- Dreams, festival of 1

- Dresden, threshing custom at 1

- Drinking and eating, precautions taken at 1

- Druids: customs of the 1 ;

- mistletoe, worshipped by the Celts and gathered by the 1, 2, 3 ;

- oak worship of the 1;

- sacrifices by the 1, 2

- Dublin, May Day custom in 1

- Duk-duk Association of New Britain 1

- Duke of York Island, fishing ceremony by the natives of 1

- Dunkirk, annual procession at 1

- Düsseldorf, burning the straw-man at 1

- Dust columns 1

- Dutch criminals, cutting the hair of, to enforce confession 1

- Dux (Tyrol), threshing custom in 1

- Dyaks of Borneo: abduction of the soul 1;

- and bad omens 1;

- belief in the souls of trees among the 1;

- custom in epidemic 1;

- first-fruit offerings by the 1;

- harvest custom 1, 2;

- may not eat venison 1;

- and the palm tree 1;

- restoration of the soul 1 ;

- Singhie tribe of 1 ;

- spare the crocodile 12

- Earth, the Golden Bough between heaven and earth 1

- Earth Goddess of the Khonds, human sacrifice to 1

- East Indian Islands, supposed cure for epilepsy in the 1

- Easter: customs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

- fires 1, 2

- Easter Island, blood of an animal not shed in 1

- Eating: animals to get their qualities 1 ;

- and drinking, precautions taken at 1 ;

- the god 1

- Echternach, ‘burning the witch’ in 1

- Edersleben, midsummer fire festival in 1

- Efugaos, cannibalism by the 1

- Egeria, nymph of the clear water 1

- Egypt: ancient kings did not drink wine 1;

- beasts responsible for the course of nature in Upper 1;

- bulls Apis and Mnevis worshipped 1 ;

- custom of burning red-haired men by the ancient Egyptians 1 ;

- Egyptian scapegoat 1;

- Egyptian type of sacrament 1 ;

- Egyptians and the pig 1, 2 ;

- external soul in Egyptian story 1 ;

- kings blamed for failure of crops 1 ;

- kings deified 1 ;

- life of kings of 1;

- pig totem in 1;

- religion of ancient Egypt 1 ;

- sacred cattle in 1 ;

- sacrifice of the ram in 1 ;

- temporary rulers in Upper 1

- Eifel mountains: fire festival in the 1, 2;

- harvest omens in the 1

- Eiresione of ancient Greece 1

- Eisenach, ceremony of bringing back summer in 1

- Elan, regard for the 1

- Elephant, ceremony at the killing of an 1

- Eleusis, mysteries of 1

- Eliot, T. S. 1, 2

- Elk, regard for the 1

- Ellice Island 1

- Ellwangen (Würtemberg), harvest ceremony in 1

- Emu Wren 1

- Encounter Bay tribe, their dread of women’s blood 1

- Encyclopaedia Britannica 1, 2, 3-4, 5, 6, 7

- England: burying the first cuttings of a child’s nails in Northumberland 1;

- corn-drenching in 1;

- cure for rupture in 1;

- English tradition concerning the killing of the wren 1;

- May-pole in 1 ;

- practice of covering up mirrors after a death 1;

- superstition regarding the water fairy in 1

- Entlebuch (Switzerland), human scapegoat in 1

- Entraigues, hunting the wren in 1

- Epidemic, ceremony in time of 1, 2, 3

- Epilepsy, supposed cure for 1

- Erfurt, harvest custom in 1

- Erzgebirge, Shrovetide custom in the 1

- Eskimos of Alaska 1, 2;

- Alaskan sable hunters 1;

- charm for lulling the wind 1 ;

- hunting the evil spirit at Point Barrow 1 ;

- reception of strangers 1;

- seclusion of girls among the Koniags 1;

- and the soul 1 ;

- and women 1

- Essex, hunting the wren in 1

- Estonia: belief concerning women’s blood 1;

- blood not tasted by the Esthonians 1;

- carrying out the effigy of Death 1 ;

- ceremony of the eating of the new corn 1;

- dread of the weevil by peasants in 1;

- preservation of the parings of nails by the Esthonians 1;

- reapers cutting first ears in 1;

- Rye-boar at Oesel Island 1;

- superstition regarding the welfare of cattle 1

- Ethiopian Kings and their courtiers 1

- Etruscans: ceremony at founding of cities by the 1;

- wizards of the 1

- Europe: covered with forests in prehistoric times 1;

- fire festivals in 1 ;

- rain-charm in, killing a frog 1

- Evils: ceremonies for the

- expulsion of 1;

- expulsion of 1;

- expulsion of, general observations on 1 ;

- periodic ceremonial for

- expulsion of 1;

- transference of 1 ;

- two kinds of expulsions of evils, the direct or immediate, and the indirect or mediate 1, 2

- Executions of royalty 1

- Exogamy: in Central Australia 1;

- of totemism 1 ;

- treatise on totemism and 1

- Fauns: the Fauns wood and corn-spirits 1, 2;

- representation of the 1

- Feast of Fire in Arizona 1

- Feilenhof (East Prussia), the wolf a corn-spirit in 1

- Feloupes of Senegambia, charm for rain-making 1

- Female descent, tables of 1

- Fern seed, midsummer 1

- Fernando Po 1 ;

- restrictions of the food of the King of 1

- Fever, cure for 1

- Fida, no one to drink out of the King’s glass in 1

- Field of Mars, chariot race on the 1

- Fiji: belief in two souls in 1;

- charm used for staying the sun in 1;

- eating in the presence of suspected persons avoided in 1;

- expulsion of devils in 1;

- first-fruit offerings on 1;

- gods of 1;

- initiatory rites in 1;

- self-immolation in old age in 1 ;

- soul extraction in 1

- Finisterre, harvest custom in 1

- Finland: cattle protected by wood god in 1;

- ceremony at the killing of a bear in 1;

- wind selling in 1

- Fire: festivals, human sacrifices offered at 1 ;

- festivals in Europe 1

- festivals in Europe, charms to make the sun shine 1 ;

- kings 1 ;

- sacred, made by the friction of wood 1 ;

- sacred, made with oak wood 1

- Fire-spirit, expulsion of the 1

- Firmicus Maternus 1, 2, 3

- First-fruits: festival of the 1 ;

- offerings of 1

- Firstborn sacrificed 1

- Fish: preaching to the 1;

- respect shown by savages to 1

- Fladda’s chapel and wind-making 1

- Flamen Dialis Virbialis 1;

- cuttings from the hair and nails buried 1;

- not allowed to walk under a trellised vine 1 ;

- restriction on the food of the 1;

- rules of life 1

- Flaminica, rules of life for the 1

- Flanders: Flemish cure for ague 1;

- midsummer bonfires in 1;

- procession with wicker giant in 1

- Flax-pullers, custom in Soest of the 1

- Florence, ‘sawing the old woman’ in 1

- Florida, sacrifice of the firstborn by the Indians of 1

- Fly totem 1

- Folk-custom, external soul in 1

- Folk-tales: external soul in 1 ;

- resurrection in 1

- Food: prejudice against certain 1 ;

- prohibition of 1 ;

- unconsumed, buried 1

- Forests, immensity of European primeval 1

- Fors of Central Africa, preservation of nail parings by the 1

- Forsaken bride/bridegroom, custom of 1

- Fortnightly Review 1, 2, 3, 4

- France: corn-drenching in 1;

- harvest customs in the north-east of 1 ;

- Harvest May of 1;

- May Queen common in 1;

- tradition concerning the

- wren in 1

- Franche Comté, harvest

- customs in 1

- Frankish Kings not allowed to cut their hair 1

- Frazer, James George: early influences on 1;

- irony in work of 1;

- primitive mind, lifelong study of the 1;

- roots in Scotland 1;

- on ‘Sabbath bells,’ the sound of 1;

- superstition in magic and religion, work on 1

- Freud, Sigmund 1

- Frickthal (Aargau), Whitsuntide Basket in 1

- Friedingen (Swabia), harvest custom in 1

- Friesland, harvest customs in East 1

- Frog-flayer 1

- Frye, Northrop 1

- Funeral custom 1

- Fürstenwalde, harvest ceremonies in 1

- Gablingen (Swabia), harvest customs in 1

- Galela of Halmahera,

- ceremony at the initiation of boys among the 1

- Galicia: harvest customs in 1;

- reaping custom in

- Tarnow district 1

- Gall-bladder, the special seat of courage among the Chinese 1

- Gallas of East Africa 1

- Gareloch, Dumbartonshire, harvest customs on some farms on the 1

- Garos, rain-charm used by the 1

- Geawe-gal tribe of New South Wales 1

- Geographical diffusion of totemism 1

- Georgia, rain-charm in 1

- Germany: beating as a good luck charm in 1;

- caterpillars in, making gardens free from 1;

- ceremony on felling a tree in 1;

- ‘cock sits in the last sheaf’ in North of 1;

- corn-drenching in 1;

- custom after a death in 1;

- external soul in stories of 1 ;

- harvest cries in 1;

- harvest custom in 1, 2, 3, 4;

- harvest custom in Ratzeburg 1;

- Harvest May of 1;

- May-tree in 1;

- midsummer bonfires in 1;

- oak log burned on Midsummer Day 1 ;

- oak the sacred tree in 1;

- rain-charm in 1;

- reaping custom in Mecklenburg 1;

- sacred groves common among ancients in 1;

- superstition concerning hair cutting in 1, 2;

- superstition regarding the knife in 1;

- whirlwind and peasants of 1;

- ‘Wolf sits in the last sheaf’ in 1

- Gervasius, rain spring mentioned by 1

- Ghosts: annual expulsion of ghosts of the dead 1 ;

- soul carried off by 1

- Giants: Norse story of giant with no heart 1, 2, 3;

- procession and burning of wicker 1

- Gibbon, Lewis Grassic (J. L. Mitchell) 1

- Gilgit: ceremony of felling a tree in 1;

- harvest custom at 1;

- sacred cedar of 1

- Gilyaks of East Siberia, sacrifice of the bear 1, 2

- Girls: explanation in fear of menstrual blood for seclusion of 1 ;

- forbidden to touch the ground or see the sun 1 ;

- secluded at puberty 1 ;

- traces in folk tales of the rule which forbids girls at puberty to see the sun 1

- Goa, dancing girls in 1

- Goajiros of Colombia 1

- Goats: and cattle, trees and 1 ;

- corn-spirit as a goat 1 ;

- Dionysus as a goat 1, 2 ;

- sacred 1, 2

- Gods: incarnate, slain 1 ;

- killing 1;

- killing in animal form 1 ;

- Mexico, killing in 1 ;

- mortality of 1 ;

- motives for killing 1

- God’s Mouth (Kirwaido), name of the supreme ruler of the old Prussians 1

- Gold Coast: sacrifices of the negroes of the 1;

- their superstition with regard to iron 1

- Golden Bough: an emanation of the sun’s fire 1;

- between heaven and earth 1 ;

- legend of the 1;

- mistletoe as the 1;

- representative of the tree-spirit 1;

- what was it 1 ;

- why was the mistletoe called the Golden Bough? 1

- Golden Bough, The, Turner’s picture of 1, 2, 3

- Golden Bough, The (Frazer, J.G.): dramatic opening of 1;

- impact and legacy of 1;

- as a justification for religion 1;

- modernist (and postmodernist) thought and 1;

- profound effect of 1;

- twentieth-century implications of 1;

- vast design of 1

- Goldis of East Siberia, sacrifice of the bear 1

- Gommern, harvest festival at 1

- Gonds of India 1, 2, 3;

- human sacrifices by the (and mock sacrifices) 1, 2;

- scapegoats among the 1

- Good Friday custom 1

- Gorilla, hunting the 1

- Gout transferred from a man to a tree 1

- Grand Lama: death and reappearance of the 1 ;

- and the shadow of Sankara 1

- Grandmother, a name given to the last sheaf 1

- Granny, a name given to the last sheaf near Belfast 1

- Grass King 1, 2

- Grätz, midsummer custom in 1

- Graves, Robert 1

- Greece: ceremony at the laying of a foundation stone in 1;

- eiresione of 1;

- external soul in Greek stories 1 ;

- festivals of the Greeks 1, 2, 3;

- human scapegoats in 1 ;

- midsummer fires in 1;

- noon shadow significant for Greeks 1 ;

- rain-making in 1;

- sacrificial ritual in 1;

- scapegoat in 1;

- tree-worship in 1, 2

- Green George 1, 2

- Grenoble: harvest custom in 1, 2;

- May Day in 1

- Grihya-Sûtras, provision in the, for the burning of cut hair 1

- Grossvargula, Whitsuntide custom in 1

- Ground: girls at puberty not allowed to touch the 1 ;

- sacred persons not allowed to touch the 1, 2 note;

- sacred things may not touch the 1 note

- Growth, maturity and decay of totems 1

- Grüneberg, harvest ceremony in 1

- Guanches of Teneriffe, rain-charm of the 1

- Guatemala, the nagual among the Pipil Indians of 1

- Guayquiries of the Orinoco: fear of women during menstruation by the 1;

- storms and the 1

- Guinea: annual expulsion of the devil by the negroes of 1 ;

- custom of wife dedication in 1 ;

- secreting of cut hair and nails in 1 ;

- time of licence in 1

- Gunn, Neil 1

- Guyenne, harvest ceremony in 1

- Hack-thorn, sacred 1

- Hadeln (Hanover), reaping custom in the district of 1

- Haidas of Queen Charlotte Islands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

- wind-charm of the 1

- Hair: burning after child-birth 1;

- burning of loose 1;

- cut hair deposited in a safe place 1 ;

- cut only during a storm 1;

- cutting as a disinfectant 1 ;

- cutting prohibited 1 ;

- magic use of cut hair 1 ;

- most sacred day of year appointed for hair cutting 1 ;

- strength supposed to be in the 1;

- superstition about cutting the hair and nails 1 ;

- superstition concerning the cutting of the 1, 2

- Hakea Flower totem 1, 2, 3

- Halae, ritual of Artemis at 1

- Halberstadt (Thüringen), human scapegoats in 1

- Halibut, festival in honour of the 1

- Halmahera, rain-making in 1, 2

- Hampstead, forest of 1

- Hanover, Easter fires in the 1

- Hare, corn-spirit as a 1

- Harran, ritual observed by the heathen Syrians of 1

- Harrison, Jane vii

- Harvest Child, name given to the last sheaf 1

- Harvest Cock, name given to the last sheaf 1

- Harvest cries 1

- Harvest customs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

- Harvest festival 1

- Harvest-Goat 1

- Harvest-Maiden 1;

- prototype for Proserpine 1

- Harvest-May 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

- Harvest omens 1

- Harvest Queen 1, 2

- Harvest songs and cries 1

- Harz mountains: Easter fires in the 1;

- Shrovetide custom in 1

- Hawaii: capital offences in 1;

- detention of the soul in 1;

- taboo on beard trimming in 1

- Head: ceremony at the washing of the 1;

- sanctity of the 1

- Headache, transference and cure for 1

- Headington, May Day custom at 1

- Heaven, the Golden Bough between heaven and earth 1

- Hebrides, representation of Spring in the 1

- Heligoland, disappearance of the herring from 1

- Herbrechtingen, threshing custom in 1

- Hercynian forest 1

- Hereford, sin eaters in 1

- Herefordshire, midsummer fires in 1

- Hermsdorf (Silesia), harvest custom in 1

- Herodotus 1, 2;

- story of the wind fighters of Psylli by 1

- Herring, disappearance from Heligoland 1

- Hertfordshire harvest custom 1

- Hervey Islands 1, 2

- Hessen: Ash Wednesday custom in 1;

- sowing-time customs in 1

- Hidasta Indians, belief in the plurality of souls

- among the 1

- Hierapolis, pigs sacred at 1

- Himalayas, scapegoats in the Western 1

- Hindoo Koosh: blood sucking the test of a diviner among the 1;

- expulsion of devils among the 1 ;

- smoke from the sacred tree inhaled by the sybil 1

- Hindus: cure for the murrain 1;

- custom of nail cutting by the 1;

- external soul in Hindu stories 1 ;

- festival at the eating of the new rice by the 1 ;

- festival of Ingathering 1;

- girls and puberty 1;

- substitution in marriage of 1;

- test of a suitable sacrificial victim 1;

- and yawning 1

- Hippolytus 1

- Holland: Easter fires in 1;

- Whitsuntide custom in 1

- Holstein: healing effects of the mistletoe in 1;

- reaping custom in 1

- Hornkampe, harvest custom in 1

- Horses: corn-spirit as 1 ;

- excluded from the Arician grove 1;

- sacrifice of 1;

- and Viribius 1

- Horus of Edfu 1

- Horus of the East 1

- Hos: first-fruit offerings of the 1;

- harvest festival among the 1 ;

- time of licence with the 1

- Hottentot: priests do not use iron 1;

- sheep driven through the fire by the 1;

- wind-charm 1

- How (Diospolis Parva), coffer of Osiris at 1

- Huitzilopochtli

- (Vitzilipuztli), dough image of the Mexican god, made and eaten 1

- Human sacrifices 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ;

- replaced by mock sacrifices 1 ;

- victim represents the corn-spirit 1

- Hume, David 1

- Hungary: external soul in

- Magyar folk-tales 1 ;

- harvest custom in 1;

- threshing custom in Arad 1;

- Whitsuntide custom in 1

- Hunger, expulsion of 1

- Hunting the wren 1

- Huron Indians 1, 2;

- driving away sickness

- among the 1 ; and

- fish bones 1;

- their idea of the soul 1

- Huskanaw, the name of an initiatory ceremony among the Indians of Virginia 1

- Hylae, sacred men inspired by the image of Apollo 1

- Ibo Kings, confined to their premises 1

- Icelandic stories, external soul in 1

- Iddah King, assertion that he is a god 1

- Ihlozi of the Zulus 1

- Ikula (Morning Star) tribe of the Australian Bight 1

- Incarnate gods 1

- Incarnation, temporary and permanent 1, 2

- Incas of Peru: ceremony for the expulsion of diseases, etc., by the 1 ;

- preservation of cut hair and nail parings of the 1;

- restrictions upon the prince who is to become Inca of Peru 1;

- revered as gods 1

- Indersdorf (Upper Bavaria), harvest custom in 1

- India: Calica Puran (Law-book) 1;

- Chili, sacred tree in 1;

- custom during cholera in central Provinces of 1;

- devil dancer drinks sacrificial blood in Southern 1;

- first-fruit offerings among

- the hill tribes of 1 ;

- harvest custom in the Central Provinces of 1;

- harvest festival of the Lhoosai in 1;

- human gods in 1 ;

- iron used as a charm in 1 ;

- legend of Indra and Namuchi 1;

- marriage of shrubs and trees in 1;

- purification after return of ambassadors 1;

- rain-charm in 1;

- Ralî Ka melâ in Kânagrâ 1;

- sin eating in 1 ;

- soul story from 1

- Indians of Alaska,

- preservation of cut hair by the 1

- Indians of Arizona offer human sacrifices 1

- Indians of Guiana, treatment of girls at puberty of the 1

- Indians of Guyaquil

- sacrifice human beings at seed time 1

- Indians of Peru and their fish gods 1

- Indians of Virginia, initiatory ceremony among the 1

- Individual totems 1

- Influenza 1

- Initiation ceremonies 1

- Initiatory rites, simulation of death and resurrection at 1

- Innuit of Alaska, custom after a death among the 1

- Inspiration (temporary incarnation): by blood drinking 1;

- divine knowledge of inspired men 1;

- inspired victims 1 ;

- by use of sacred tree 1

- Intichiuma ceremonies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

- Iowa Indians 1, 2

- Ireland: hunting the wren at Christmas in 1;

- May Day in the South-east of 1;

- midsummer fires in 1

- Iron: as a charm 1 ;

- superstitious aversion to 1

- Iron-Beard, Dr. 1, 2, 3

- Iroquois Indians 1, 2, 3;

- festival of dreams of the 1 ;

- sacrifice of the White Dog by the 1;

- scapegoat used by the 1 ;

- time of licence among the 1

- Isis: corn-goddess 1 ;

- as a cow 1;

- named the moon by the aboriginal inhabitants of Egypt 1

- Isle of Man: hunting the wren at Christmas in the 1 ;

- midsummer bonfires 1;

- weather omens in 1;

- wind selling in the 1

- Israelite attitude to the pig 1

- Issapoo, the cobra capella the guardian deity of the negroes of 1

- Istar (Astarte, Aphrodite), legend concerning goddess 1

- Italones, cannibalism by the 1

- Italy: custom of ‘sawing the old woman’ in 1 ;

- external soul in Italian stories 1 ;

- gardens of Adonis in 1 ;

- midsummer fires in 1; oak the sacred tree in 2 ;

- tree worship in ancient 1, 2

- Itonamas and the soul 1

- Itzgrund (Saxe-Coburg), harvest custom in 1

- Ivy girl of Kent 1

- Jack-in-the-Green 1, 2

- Jagannáthi Kumhár of Bengal 1

- Jambi (Sumatra), temporary kings in 1

- Japan: expulsion of evil spirits in 1;

- Islands of Yesso, Saghalien and the Kurile Islands, bear festival of the Ainos on 1

- Jarkino, belief in animate trees in 1

- Javanese: ceremony at rice harvest 1;

- and rice bloom 1;

- and the soul 1

- Jerome of Prague 1, 2

- Jerusalem, dancing damsels in 1

- Jewish: attitude to the pig 1 ;

- sacred practice 1;

- scapegoat 1

- Jeypur, scapegoat used in cases of smallpox in 1

- Jubilee celebrations in Calicut 1

- Jupiter: and June 1 ;

- represented by an oak on the Capitol at Rome 1

- Kabyl story of the ogre 1

- Kaffa, worship of human god in 1

- Kafirs of Natal: boys at circumcision 1;

- burying of cut hair and nails by 1;

- elephant hunters 1;

- New Year festival 1

- Kafirs of the Siah Posh, banishment of manslayers among the 1

- Kakian Association of Ceram 1

- Kakongo, king of: not allowed to touch certain European goods 1;

- not seen eating 1

- Kalamba, ceremonies on a visit to, by subject chiefs 1

- Kalang of Java 1, 2, 3

- Kalmucks, consecration of the white ram by the 1

- Kamant tribe do not allow a natural death 1

- Kamchatkans 1;

- belief in the resurrection of animals among the 1;

- excuse themselves before

- killing land or sea

- animals 1 ;

- respect the seal and sea lion 1

- Kamilaroi tribe of New South Wales 1, 2

- Kangaroo totem 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

- Kángrá: custom at, on the death of a Rajah 1;

- sin eaters in 1

- Karens: belief concerning the head 1;

- custom at rice sowing 1 ;

- dread of women’s blood by the 1;

- funeral customs of the 1 ;

- transference of the soul 1

- Karma tree 1

- Karoks of California and salmon catching 1

- Kasyas of Bengal 1, 2;

- expulsion of devils by the 1

- Katodis, ceremony before felling a tree by the 1

- Keisar (Makisar) Island 1, 2;

- ghosts on 1

- Kent, the Ivy girl in 1

- Keramin tribe in New South Wales, rain-making by the 1

- Key Islanders: expulsion of sickness by the 1;

- soul superstition among the 1

- Khonds (Kandhs) of Bengal: expulsion of devils by the 1;

- human sacrifices by the 1 ;

- rain-charm 1

- Kiabara tribe of Queensland 1, 2

- Kibanga, kings killed in 1

- Kildare, midsummer fires in 1

- Kilema, ceremony in, before a stranger is allowed to see the king

- Kilimanjaro Mount, believed to be tenanted by demons 1

- Kilkenny, midsummer fires in 1

- Killing the Divine Animal 1

- Kimbunda, cannibalism among the 1

- King Hop, the title of a temporary king 1

- King of the Calf 1

- King of May 1

- King of the May 1

- King of the Sacred Rites (Rex Sacrorum) 1

- King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis) 1;

- an incarnation of the tree-spirit 1 ;

- departmental nature of powers of 1 ;

- explanation for the name 1;

- a personification of the oak 1;

- probability that he was formerly slain annually 1 ;

- probably burned in a fire of oak wood 1;

- runaway slaves and the title 1;

- similarity to North European personages 1

- Kings: abdication of 1;

- in Calicut, killed at the expiry of twelve years (subsequently allowed to defend themselves) 1;

- confined to their palaces 1, 2;

- divine 1 ;

- divine, cease to govern 1 ;

- of fire 1 ;

- as gods 1;

- guarded against strangers 1;

- killed 1 ;

- killed annually 1 ;

- killed at expiry of fixed term 1;

- killed when

- they show signs of decay 1 ;

- at meals 1 ;

- of nature 1;

- punished for the failure of crops 1 ;

- of rain 1 ;

- sons sacrificed in times of great danger 1 ;

- supposed to control the weather 1;

- temporary 1;

- temporary but sometimes hereditary 1, 2;

- veiled 1;

- of water 1

- Kingsmill Islands, first-fruit offerings in the 1

- Kinship within the totem 1

- Kirn, the name of a harvest supper 1

- Klausenberg (Transylvania), harvest custom at 1

- Kloxin (near Stettin), harvest ceremony in 1

- Knight, Wilson 1

- Knives, reluctance to use, after a death 1, 2

- Kochs of Assam, first-fruit offerings by the 1

- Kohlerwinkel (Augsburg), harvest ceremony at 1

- Kolosh Indians, seclusion of girls among the 1

- Königgrätz (Bohemia), Whit-Monday king’s game in 1

- Königshain, driving out Death in 1

- Konkan, scapegoat used in Southern, in cases of cholera 1

- Konz (Moselle): harvest omen at 1 ;

- midsummer fire festival in 1

- Koossa Caffres 1

- Koshchei the Deathless, fairy tale of 1

- Kostroma, funeral of 1, 2

- Kostrubonko 1

- Kreutzburg (East Prussia), harvest ceremony 1

- Kublai Khan, execution of Nyan by 1

- Kukulu, the priest king 1

- Kumis, driving away smallpox by the 1

- Kupalo: funeral of 1 ;

- representation of 1

- Kupole’s festival 1

- Kurile Islands, bear festival of the Ainos on 1

- Kurnai in Victoria 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

- Kutchin Indians 1

- La Ciotat, hunting the wren in 1

- La Palisse, harvest custom in 1

- Lada, funeral of 1

- Lagos (Guinea), human sacrifices at 1

- Lakor Island 1;

- expulsion of diseases to sea from 1

- Lamas, Grand 1 ;

- the chief of the 1

- Lamb killed sacramentally by the Madi tribe of Central Africa 1

- Lamps, festival of (Diwali) 1

- Lang, Andrew 1

- Laos: belief in plurality of souls among the 1;

- precautions against strangers in 1 ;

- women worshippers in 1 Lapis manalis 2

- Lappland: ceremony at the sacrifice of an animal in 1 ;

- seclusion of women in 1;

- wind selling in 1

- Larch-tree, sacred 1

- Latin League 1

- Lazy Man (Latzmann) 1

- Leaf Man 1

- Lechrain: ‘Burial of the Carnival’ in 1;

- midsummer fires in 1

- Leipzig, carrying out the effigy of Death in 1

- Lent customs 1

- Leopard, ceremony at the killing of a 1

- Leper, custom at the cleansing of a 1

- Lerwick wind-sellers 1

- Leti Island 1;

- expulsion of diseases to sea from 1

- Leto, story of 1

- Leucadian scapegoat 1

- Lewis, wind-selling in the island of 1

- Lhoosai, harvest festival of the 1

- Libchowic, Mid-Lent custom in the neighbourhood of 1

- Licence, periods of 1

- Life of a person bound up with that of a plant 1

- Life plants 1

- Lille, harvest ceremonies at 1

- Linus: identified with Adonis 1;

- the name given to the Phoenician lament at vintage time 1 ;

- song of 1

- Lion: Arabic belief in the properties of the fat of the 1;

- ceremony at the killing of a 1

- Lithuania: ceremonies by the peasants at the eating of the new corn in 1 ;

- ceremony of threshing time in 1 ;

- customs after a funeral in 1;

- harvest custom in 1, 2;

- May customs in 1 ;

- midsummer fires in 1 ;

- sun worshippers in 1;

- superstition concerning the felling of sacred groves in 1;

- tree worshippers in 1

- Lityerses: harvest stories of 1 ;

- myths and legends of 1 ;

- name given to a song by the Phrygian reapers 1;

- relation of, to Attis 1 ;

- stories of compared with harvest customs of Europe 1

- Liver, thought to be the seat of the soul 1

- Liverpool Mercury 1

- Livonia, sacred grove in 1

- Llandebie, sin eating in 1

- Loango: a capital offence to see the king eat 1;

- food left by the king buried 1;

- food restrictions in 1 ;

- girls secluded at puberty in 1;

- the king confined to his palace after coronation 1;

- king of, deposed when the harvest fails 1;

- king of, revered by people in good times 1;

- supernaturally endowed kings of 1

- London, midsummer pageants in 1

- Longnor, harvest custom at 1

- Lost children, superstition concerning 1

- Loucheux Indians,

- abstinence from the sinew of the thigh by the 1

- Luchon, midsummer fire ceremony at 1

- Lumley, Sir John Savile, excavation of the site of the Diana Nemorensis by 1 note

- Lüneberg, harvest customs in 1, 2

- Lunéville, butchering the calf at 1

- Lusatia, ceremony of carrying out Death in 1, 2

- Luzon Island, first-fruit offerings on 1

- MacIntyre, Alasdair 1

- Macrobius 1, 2, 3

- Macusis of British Guiana, treatment of girls at the age of puberty by the 1

- Madagascar: blood of nobles may not be shed in 1;

- crocodile not killed in 1, 2;

- custom with newborn children in 1;

- first-fruit offerings by the Hovas of 1;

- power ascribed to the souls of the dead in 1;

- practice of covering up mirrors after a death 1;

- vehicle used by the Malagasy for the transference of ills 1 ;

- Zafimanelo eating in privacy in 1

- Madenassana Bushmen 1;

- the goat sacred to the 1

- Madi tribe, burying of the parings of the nails by the 1

- Magdeburg, Flax-mother in 1

- Magic: cut hair used in 1 ;

- sympathetic 1

- Maiden, a name given to the last handful of corn 1

- Maize (Mays), Mother of the 1

- Makololo, burning or burying of cut hair by the 1

- Malabar, reverence for the cow in 1

- Malays: do not touch a man’s head 1;

- external soul in a Malay poem 1 ;

- and the soul 1, 2

- Maldives, cuttings from the hair and nails buried by the natives of the 1

- Male descent, tables of 1

- Mamilian tower 1

- Mamurius Veturius or the old Mars 1

- Man: in a cow-skin 1;

- and his totem,

- relationship between 1;

- and his totem, relationship within totems and to men of other totems 1 ;

- men eaten to obtain their qualities 1 ;

- vastness of nature and feebleness of 1

- Man-gods: in the South Sea Islands 1, 2 ;

- two types of 1

- Mandan Indians: expulsion of devils by the 1;

- and their portraits 1

- Maneros, the name given to the lament of the Egyptian reapers at the cutting of the first sheaf 1

- Manetho 1, 2

- Mangaia: preference for killing before decrepitude among the people of 1;

- priests called gods in 1;

- spiritual and temporal government in 1;

- story of a warrior’s shadow 1

- Manganjas of East Africa 1, 2

- Mania 1

- ‘Manii, there are many in Africa,’ explanation of the proverb 1

- Manius Egerius, traditional founder of the Arician Grove, etc. 1, 2

- Maoris: ceremonies on entering strange territory 1;

- ceremony of hair cutting 1;

- custom at births in the 1;

- and dead bodies 1;

- fatal effects of taboo for 1 ;

- fear of the blood of women 1;

- first-fruit offerings by the 1;

- fishing custom 1;

- sacredness of the head among the 1

- Mare, corn-spirit as a 1

- Marimos of Bechuanaland, human sacrifices by the 1

- Marksuhl (Eisenach), sheaf as ‘Poor Old Woman’ at 1

- Marktl (Upper Bavaria), harvest ceremonies in the neighbourhood of 1

- Marquesas Islands:

- Marquesans and the soul 1;

- men deified in their lifetime in the 1;

- sacrilege of touching

- chief’s head in 1 ;

- shaving of the head in the 1

- Marriage, cross-dressing in 1

- Mars: chariot race in the

- Field of 1 ;

- the old 1 ;

- of the Woods (Mars Silvanus) 1

- Marseilles, human scapegoat in 1

- Massie, Allan 1

- Masuren, midsummer fire festival in 1

- May Bride 1, 2

- May Day carols 1, 2

- May Day customs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

- May-Doll (bough or tree), carried by children from house to house 1

- May King 1

- May-Poles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

- May Queen 1

- May-Trees 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

- Mayenne, May Day custom in 1

- M’Bengas of West Africa, life of a child supposed to be bound up with that of a tree by the 1

- Mecklenburg: harvest customs in 1;

- reaping custom in 1

- Meiningen: Ash Wednesday custom in 1;

- sowing time custom in 1

- Meissen, midsummer

- bonfires in 1

- Melanesia: bringing back the soul in 1;

- stones and a man’s shadow in 1;

- sunshine making in 1

- Meleager, story of 1, 2, 3

- Memphis, Osiris of 1

- Menstruation: primitive dread of blood from 1 ;

- seclusion of women at periods of 1

- Mentawej Islands, precautions against strangers in the 1

- Meroe, Ethiopian kings of, killed 1

- Metz, midsummer fires in 1

- Mexico: human sacrifice at harvest festival in 1;

- incarnate gods slain in 1 ;

- oath of kings at accession in 1;

- sacraments in ancient 1 ;

- sacrifice of newborn babes in 1

- Mice, charm for ridding lands from 1

- Mid-Lent customs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

- Midsummer: burning of effigies in the fires of 1 ;

- customs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

- European fire festivals at 1, 2 ;

- magic plants gathered on Eve of 1;

- omens 1;

- superstitions on Eve of 1

- Midsummer Bride 1

- Mikado (Dairi): cooking his food 1 ;

- cutting his hair and nails 1;

- description of life of the 1 ;

- effects of wearing his clothes without leave 1;

- not allowed to touch the ground 1

- Miklucho-Maclay, Baron, ceremony on his entering a village on the Maclay coast 1

- Milkmen worshipped by the Todas 1

- Minahassa of Celebes: blood drinking at festivals by the 1;

- custom at moving into new house of the 1 ;

- custom in time of sickness 1;

- driving away devils by the 1;

- rain-charm used by the 1

- Mind and nature 1

- Mingrelia, rain-getting in 1

- Minnetaree Indians 1;

- and the resurrection of the bison 1

- Mirabeau, hunting the wren at Christmas at 1

- Miris of Assam: tiger’s flesh eaten by the 1;

- tree superstition of the 1

- Mirrors, covering up of 1

- Mistletoe: divining rods made from, in Sweden 1;

- explanation for its ‘golden’ nomenclature 1 ;

- gathered at midsummer and Christmas 1;

- gathered on Midsummer Eve 1;

- the Golden Bough 1;

- healing powers of the 1;

- life of the oak in the 1 ;

- not allowed to touch the ground 1;

- protection against witchcraft 1 ;

- qualities of 1;

- viewed as the seat of life 1 ;

- worshipped by the Celts and gathered by the Druids 1, 2

- Mitchison, Naomi ix

- Mithraic mysteries 1

- M’Lennan, John Ferguson xiii, xvi

- Mnevis of Heliopolis 1

- Moa Island 1;

- expulsion of diseases to sea from 1

- Mock: executions 1 ;

- human sacrifices 1

- Mohegan Indians 1, 2

- Le Mole 1

- Moluccas: ceremony after a journey in the 1 ;

- clove trees in blossom, treatment in the 1;

- festivals in the 1;

- soul abduction in the 1

- Mondard (Straw man) 1

- Mongolia: external soul in a story from 1;

- saving the soul in 1;

- stuffing the skin of a sacrificed animal by the people of 1

- Monomotapa, precautions taken for the king of 1

- Monotheism 1

- Montalto, Mid Lent custon in 1

- Moosheim, fire festival at 1

- Moquis of Arizona 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

- belief in the transmigration of human souls into turtles held by the 1 ;

- clans of the 1;

- religious use of stone knives, etc. 1;

- Snake clan among the 1;

- totem clans of the 1

- Moresby, Captain, at Shepherd’s Isle 1

- Morocco: ants eaten in 1;

- diverting evil spirits in 1;

- iron a protection against demons in 1

- Mosquito Indians of central America 1

- Mother-cotton 1

- Mother of the Maize

- (Mays) 1

- Motumotu of New Guinea: soul believed to be in the reflection by the 1;

- theory of storms of the 1

- Mount Gambier tribe in South Australia 1, 2, 3, 4

- Mowat of New Guinea: boys beaten to make them grow in 1;

- chief of, supposed to have power of affecting crops etc. 1

- Mozcas, weather kings of the 1

- Muato Jamwo, a capital offence to see him eat 1

- Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), gathered on St

- John’s Eve 1

- Mühlbach, Transylvania 1

- Muir, Edwin ix

- Mundaris (Mundas) of Bengal 1;

- ceremony at the planting of the rice by the 1 ;

- harvest festival 1;

- sacred groves of the 1;

- superstition concerning the felling of sacred groves 1

- Munster, rain fountain in 1

- Münsterland, Easter fires in 1

- Murrain, cure for the 1

- Murrams of Manipur, restrictions of food among the 1

- Murray, Gilbert vii

- Muyscas, weather kings of the 1

- Nagual of the Indians of Honduras and Guatemala 1

- Nails: burying the first cuttings of a child’s 1;

- cutting the 1;

- cuttings preserved 1

- Namaquas, foods eaten and rejected by the 1

- Naming clans after name of totem 1, 2, 3

- Namvulu Vumu, King of the Rain and Storm at Bomma 1

- Nanumea, precautions against strangers in the Island 1

- Naples, custom of ‘sawing the old woman’ in 1

- Narcissus, story of 1

- Narrinyeri in South Australia 1, 2, 3, 4;

- and their totems 1

- Nass River Indians and the recall of the soul 1

- Nataranes of Paraguay 1

- Natchez Indians, harvest festival of the 1

- Native Tribes of Central Australia, The (Spencer, B.) 1, 2, 3

- Natural History (Pliny) 1

- Natural theology 1

- Nature: ancient religions and 1 ;

- dependence of, upon the divine king 1 ;

- despiritualising the universe 1 ;

- kings of 1;

- man’s reflections on nature of things 1, 2 ;

- mind and heterogeneous phenomena of 1 ;

- monotheism 1 ;

- natural theology 1 ;

- science and 1, 2 ;

- spiritualistic theory of natural phenomena 1, 2 ;

- worship of 1

- Nauders, sacred larch-tree at 1

- Navajo Indians 1

- Navarre, rain-making in 1

- Ndembo, Congolese practice of 1

- Need fires 1, 2

- Negro idea of the soul 1

- Nemi: lake of 1;

- priest of 1, 2, 3;

- tree within the sanctuary 1;

- unchanged 1

- Nerechta, Whitsuntide customs in 1

- Neuautz (Courland), custom at barley sowing in 1

- Neuhausen, harvest custom in 1

- Neusaass, harvest custom in 1

- New Britain: driving away evil in 1 ;

- expulsion of devils in 1;

- initiation ceremony in 1;

- rain-making in 1;

- wind-charm 1

- New Caledonia: charm for making sunshine in 1 ;

- rain-making in 1

- New fruits, etc., eaten sacramentally 1

- New Guinea: dubu (temple) in 1;

- seclusion of girls in 1

- New Hebrides: first-fruit offerings in the 1 ;

- origins of totemism in 1

- New Ireland, seclusion of girls in 1, 2

- New South Wales: ceremony of initiation in 1 ;

- first-born eaten in 1

- New Year’s Day customs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

- New Zealand: cannibalism in 1;

- clippings from the

- hair buried in 1;

- effects of sacred contagion in 1 ;

- gods incorporating the spirits of others 1;

- hair cutting in 1, 2;

- sacredness of blood in 1;

- superstition concerning the head 1 . See also Maoris

- Nias: exorcising the devil in 1;

- external soul in a story from 1;

- people of, and the soul 1, 2;

- precautions against

- strangers in 1 ;

- scapegoats in 1;

- slaves sacrificed at the funeral of a chief in 1;

- succession in 1

- Nicobar Islands: ceremony in cases of epidemic in the 1 ;

- expulsion of devils in the 1

- Nightjar 1

- Nisus, King of Megara 1

- Niue (Savage Island): collapse of the monarchy on 1;

- killing of strangers on 1;

- kings killed on 1

- Nootka Indians, ceremony at the killing of a bear by 1

- Nördlingen (Bavaria): forfeit for strangers at harvest in 1;

- threshing custom in 1

- Norse story of giant with no heart 1, 2, 3

- North American Indians 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

- abstinence from blood 1;

- attitude to resurrection of animals 1 ;

- attitude to strangers 1;

- belief in the resurrection of the buffalo in the western prairies 1;

- catching the soul of a burned corpse 1 ;

- ceremony at bear killing 1 ;

- cleansing after the slaying of enemies 1;

- Great Spirit as creator for 1;

- individual totems among 1 ;

- initiatory ceremony among the Naudowessies 1 ;

- initiatory ceremony among the Toukaway Indians of Texas 1;

- initiatory ceremony by the Indians of Nootka Sound 1 ;

- nail cutting among the 1;

- opinions held regarding the properties of various foods among the 1;

- origins of totemism

- among 1 ;

- regard for the bones of animals 1 ;

- respect for the elan, deer and elk 1 ;

- restrictions upon women at certain times 1;

- rules of descent among 1, 2 ;

- ‘Sinew which shrank,’ abstinence from the 1 ;

- social aspect of totemism among 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

- spare the rattlesnake 1

- Northamptonshire: cure for cough 1;

- May Day custom in 1

- Northumberland, History of (Hutchinson) 1

- Norway: cut hair and nails buried or burned in 1 ;

- harvest ceremony in Oefoten 1;

- harvest custom in Solör 1;

- midsummer bonfires in 1

- Nürnberg, ceremony of carrying out Death in 1

- Oak: chief sacred tree of the European Aryans 1 ;

- life in the mistletoe of the 1 ;

- sacred fires made of 1 ;

- slaying of human representative of the 1 ;

- store of solar fire 1;

- superstition concerning the tree 1 ;

- wood burnt on Midsummer Day 1 ;

- worship of the 1

- Oats-goat 1, 2

- Oats-wolf 1, 2

- Oberinntal (Tyrol),

- threshing custom in 1

- Obermedlingen (Swabia):

- midsummer fires in 1;

- threshing custom in 1

- Oberpfalz, threshing custom in 1

- October Horse, Roman sacrifice of the 1

- Oefoten (Norway), harvest ceremony in 1

- Offerings of first-fruits 1

- Oil of St John 1, 2

- Ojibway Indians 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

- seldom fell living trees 1;

- sunshine charm used by the 1

- Olaf, King of Sweden, sacrificed 1

- Old Corn-woman 1

- Old Man, a name given to the last sheaf 1, 2

- Old Woman, name given to the last sheaf 1, 2

- Oldenburg: custom with regard to clippings from the hair in 1 ;

- fire festival in 1;

- superstition regarding the reflection in 1

- Omaha Indians 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

- birth-names of the 1;

- taboos of the 1 ;

- death ceremonies of the 1;

- hair fashions of the 1;

- rain-making by the 1;

- totem clans of the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ;

- totems of the 1, 2;

- wind clan of the 1

- Omens, neutralising bad 1

- Onitsha (Guinea): ceremony of eating the new yams at 1;

- human scapegoats in 1 ;

- New Year festival in 1

- Opossum totem 1, 2

- Oraons of Bengal 1, 2, 3;

- ceremony at rice

- planting by the 1;

- festival of the 1

- Oraons of Chota Nagpur 1

- Orchomenus, human sacrifice at the rites of

- Dionysus in 1

- Oregon, belief in the recall of the soul by the Salish Indians of 1

- Orestes, the originator of the worship of Diana 1

- Origin of totemism 1, 2

- Orinoco: rain-charm 1;

- rain-charm, worship of toads 1;

- sunshine-charm 1

- Orissa: rice growing in 1;

- worshippers of the Queen of England in 1

- Orkney Islands,

- transference of sickness in the 1

- Orpine (Midsummer Men), gathered on Midsummer Eve 1

- Osage Indians 1, 2, 3

- Osiris: arguments for and against his being the sun-god 1 ;

- as a bull 1 ;

- a corn-spirit 1 ;

- Egyptian sacrifice of pigs to 1;

- a god of vegetation 1;

- grave of, at Philae 1;

- key to the mysteries of 1;

- on monuments 1;

- myth of 1 ;

- as a pig 1;

- probable origin of the cult of 1 ;

- representation of the dead body of, in the temple of Isis 1;

- represented by a human victim at one time 1 ;

- rites of, similar to those of Dionysus and Adonis 1 ;

- ritual of 1 ;

- a tree-spirit 1

- Osnabruck, harvest custom in 1

- Osterode, Easter fires in 1

- Ostiaks, ceremony by the, at the killing of a bear 1

- Ot Damons of Borneo: custom with regard to

- strangers by the 1;

- seclusion of girls among the 1

- Ottawa Indians 1, 2;

- do not burn fish bones 1

- Oude, sin eating in 1

- Outaouaks, Carp clan of the 1

- Ovambo of South-west Africa 1

- Owl 1

- Ox: as an embodiment of the corn-spirit 1 ;

- Osiris and the 1 ;

- ritual at the Athenian sacrifice of the 1, 2

- Ozieri, Gardens of Adonis at 1

- Pacific, human gods in the 1, 2

- Padams of Assam, superstition concerning lost children by the 1

- Palermo, ‘sawing the old woman’ in 1

- Palestinians and the pig 1

- Palm Sunday custom 1

- Pan: Lord of the Wood 1;

- representation of 1

- Panes, festival of the 1

- Papua: belief in a child’s life being bound up with that of a tree in 1;

- food eaten by the people of 1

- Paris: midsummer fires at 1;

- procession of mock giant in 1

- Parthian monarchs worshipped as deities 1

- Parvatî (Shiva) 1, 2, 3

- Patagonia, burning of loose hair in 1

- Patagonian Indians 1

- Pawnee Indians 1, 2;

- human sacrifices at sowing by the 1

- Payaguas, method of fighting the wind by the 1

- Pear-tree, the protector of cattle 1

- Pelew Island: ceremony on the killing of a man on 1;

- custom at tree-felling by the people of 1;

- god of 1

- Pembrokeshire, Twelfth Day custom in 1

- The Pentamerone 1

- Pepper Coast, high priest held responsible for the general welfare 1

- Permanent incarnation 1

- Persian kings not to be seen eating 1

- Peru: aboriginals of 1;

- ceremony for the expulsion of diseases, etc., by the Incas of 1 ;

- charm for staying the sun in 1;

- Condor clans in 1;

- expulsion of devils in 1;

- Indians and their fish gods in 1 ;

- Moxos of 1;

- preservation of the

- representative corn-spirit by the ancient Peruvians 1 ;

- rain-charm in 1;

- self-beating in 1;

- totemic standpoint in 1.

- See also Incas. See also Incas of Peru

- Philippine Islands: belief in the souls of trees in the 1 ;

- cannibalism in the 1

- Philo of Byblus 1

- Philosophy, primitive: defect of 1 ;

- rules of life of sacred men are the outcome 1

- Phoenician: history ‘full of sarcifices’ 1;

- lament at vintage time 1 ;

- Linus song 1

- Phrygia: mock human sacrifices in 1;

- reapers song in 1

- Physical causation, modern conception of 1

- Picardy, harvest custom in 1

- Pig: Attis and Adonis as pigs 1;

- corn-spirit as a 1 ;

- Demeter and Proserpine as pigs 1 ;

- Osiris as a 1;

- sacred 1

- Pilsen, Whitsuntide custom near 1

- Pine-tree sacred to

- Dionysus 1

- Pinsk, Whit Monday customs by Russian girls in 1

- Plas, Whitsuntide custom in the neighbourhood of 1

- Plato 1

- Pliny 1, 2, 3, 4

- Plutarch 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

- Po, excavations in the valley of the 1

- Poachers and fir-cones 1

- Poitou, midsummer fire festival in 1

- Poland: ceremony of carrying out Death in 1;

- Christmas custom in 1;

- harvest custom in 1, 2, 3, 4;

- iron ploughshares discarded in 1

- Polo, Marco 1

- Polydorus, story of 1

- Polynesia, totemism in 1

- Polynesians: and sacred contagion 1;

- superstition concerning the head, held by the 1

- Pomerania: cut hair buried in 1

- Pomos of California, expulsion of devils by the 1

- Pongol festival in South India 1

- Pont à Mousson, harvest ceremony at 1

- Poplar, burning on St Peter’s Day of a 1

- Portraits: life in 1 ;

- soul in 1

- Posidonius 1

- Potato-dog 1

- Potato-wolf 1, 2

- Potatoes, custom in Sutherland at the digging of new 1

- Potniae, rites of Dionysus at 1

- Pouilly, harvest ceremony at 1, 2

- Pouteoüatmi, Snow totems among the 1

- Preacher to the fish 1

- Priestly kings 1, 2

- Priests, Roman and Sabine, not shaved with iron

- razors 1

- Primitive Culture (Taylor, E.B.) 1

- Primitive man and the supernatural 1

- Primitive philosophy, rules of life are the outcome of 1

- Prophesying, drinking blood before 1

- Propitiation of the fish 1

- Proserpine: and Demeter, myth of 1;

- in the pig 1

- Prussia: ceremony at spring ploughing in 1 ;

- ceremony at the sowing of the winter corn by the Prussian Slavs 1;

- ceremony to ensure good flax crop in old Prussia 1;

- corn drenching in 1;

- custom after a funeral by the ancient Prussians 1;

- fire festival in Rhenish 1;

- gardens of Adonis in 1 ;

- harvest custom in 1, 2, 3 ;

- high trees worshipped by the

- ancient Prussians 1;

- midsummer fire festival in 1 ;

- reverence for the oak in 1;

- self-immolation of the supreme ruler of the ancient Prussians 1

- Psyche’s Task (Frazer, J.G.) 1

- Psychology, associationist 1

- Puberty: ceremonies at 1 ;

- girls forbidden to touch ground or see sun at 1 ;

- girls secluded at 1 ;

- reasons for the seclusion 1

- Pulverbatch (Shropshire), superstition at 1

- Punjaub: ceremony at the bursting of the cotton boles in the 1 ;

- festival of lamps (Diwali) 1 ;

- General Nicholson (Nikkal Sen) worshipped by sect in the 1

- Purification after travel 1

- Puy-de-Dôme, reaping custom at 1

- Pyrenees, customs in the 1

- Quauhtitlans, human sacrifices by the 1

- Queen of May 1, 2, 3

- Queen of the Sacred Rites 1

- Queensland, initiatory rites in 1

- Quich Indians of Central America 1

- Quilacare, self-immolation of the king of 1

- Quoja (West Africa) 1;

- initiatory rites in 1

- Ra, the sun-god 1

- Rain-charms 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8;

- kings of 1 ;

- making of 1

- Rajah, custom at the death of a 1

- Rajah Vijyanagram, aversion to iron of 1

- Ralî Ka melâ in Kânagrâ 1

- Ram: consecration of the white ram by the

- Kalmucks 1 ;

- Egyptian sacrifice of the 1 ;

- sacred 1

- Ramin (Stettin), harvest custom in 1

- Ramsay, George Gilbert 1

- Raskolkiks and mirrors 1

- Rattlesnake not killed 1

- Ratzeburg, harvest custom in 1

- Red Cock 1

- Red haired victims 1

- Reflection, the soul in the 1

- Religion: and magic, relation of 1 ;

- marks of a primitive 1;

- and Peruvian, Parthian and

- Egyptian sovereigns 1 ;

- totemism as a 1

- Resurrection: of animals 1 ;

- simulation of death and resurrection in initiatory rites 1 ;

- traces in folk tales of a belief in 1

- Rhetra, priest tastes the sacrificial blood at 1

- Rhön mountains, fire festivals in the 1

- Ricara Indians 1

- Rice-Bride (and Bridegroom) 1

- Rice harvest, ceremonies at the 1

- Rio de la Plata, seclusion of girls among the Indians of the 1

- Romans: catching the breath of dying friends 1;

- cure for fever of the 1 ;

- haircutting custom of the 1;

- tree-worship by the 1

- Rome: ceremony of driving out the old Mars from 1 ;

- horse sacrifice at 1

- Romove, sacred oak at 1, 2

- Rook Island: expulsion of evil in the island of 1;

- initiation festival 1

- Rosenheim, harvest custom in 1

- Roti, haircutting ceremony in the island of 1, 2

- Rottenburg (Würtemberg), midsummer ceremony in 1

- Rottweil, ‘Carnival Fool’ at 1

- Roumania: corn drenching in 1;

- custom after death in 1;

- rain-making in 1

- Rowan, effective against witchcraft 1

- Royal and priestly taboos 1, 2

- Royal blood, not spilt upon the ground 1

- Rügen Island, threshing custom on 1

- Ruhla, springtide custom in 1

- Rupture, cure for 1

- Russia: beating as a charm in 1 ;

- ceremony on the cutting of the first sheaf in 1;

- Easter custom in White Russia 1;

- Eastertide custom in Little Russia 1 ;

- external soul in Russian stories 1 ;

- first-born sacrificed by the heathen in 1;

- harvest custom in 1;

- midsummer custom in 1 ;

- midsummer customs in 1, 2;

- midsummer sacrifice in 1;

- rain-making by imitation near Dorpat in 1;

- rain-making practice in Kursk 1;

- reluctance to have silhouettes taken in 1;

- Whitsuntide customs in 1;

- wood-spirits (Ljeschi) in 1, 2

- Ruthenia, fire festival in 1

- Rye-boar 1

- Rye-dog 1

- Rye-goat 1

- Rye-wolf 1, 2

- Sabaea (Sheba), kings not allowed out of their palaces 1

- Sabarios, festival of 1

- Sables, superstition about killing 1

- Sacaea festival at Babylon 1

- Sacramental bread, traces at Aricia of the use of 1

- Sacramental character of the harvest supper, corn-spirit eaten in animal form 1

- Sacramental killing of animals, two types of 1

- Sacraments in ancient Mexico 1

- Sacred cattle in Egypt 1

- Sacred dancing bands and associations 1

- Sacred persons: not allowed to see the sun 1 note;

- not allowed to touch the ground 1, 2 note;

- source of danger 1;

- vessels of, not to be used by others 1

- Sacredness and

- uncleanness, not

- distinguished by primitive man 1

- Sacrifices, human 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

- Sacrificial King 1

- Saddle Island, the reflection and the soul on 1

- Saffron Walden, May Day custom in 1

- Sagar, influenza in 1

- Saghalien Island, bear festival of the Ainos on 1

- St John’s Blood (Hieracium pilosella), gathered on

- Midsummer Eve in

- Bohemia 1

- St John’s Day 1

- St John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum), gathered on Midsummer Eve 1

- Saligné (Vendée), harvest custom in 1

- Salii 1 note

- Salish Indians of Oregon 1

- Salmon-catching 1

- Salmoneus of Thessaly 1

- Salza district, Shrove

- Tuesday custom in the 1

- Salzwedel, Whitsuntide custom in 1

- Samoa: asylum for murderers in 1;

- bleeding trees in 1;

- butterfly and the people of 1;

- butterfly clan in 1;

- custom at childbirth in 1;

- first-fruit offerings on 1;

- god incarnate in animals in 1;

- gods in 1, 2, 3;

- recall of the soul among the people of 1 ;

- totem clans in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8;

- turtle not eaten by the people of 1

- Samogitians: birds and beasts of the wood held sacred by the 1;

- tree superstition among the 1

- Samorin Kings of Calicut 1, 2

- Samoyed story, the external soul in a 1

- Sankara and his shadow 1

- Santals of Bengal 1, 2;

- story of the soul by the 1

- Sardinia, Gardens of Adonis in 1

- Satyrs, representation of 1

- Savages: our debt to 1 ;

- and the soul 1, 2

- ‘Sawing the old woman’ 1

- Saxons: hair and vengeance, connection for 1;

- of Transylvania, charm for keeping sparrows from the corn used by the 1;

- Whitsuntide ceremonies of the 1 ;

- Whitsuntide custom in villages of the 1

- Scandinavian Christmas custom 1

- Scapegoat 1 ;

- animal employed as a 1, 2 ;

- divine animal 1, 2 ;

- divine man 1, 2 ;

- divinities used as 1 ;

- dog used as a 1 ;

- explanation for beating the 1 ;

- human 1 ;

- Tibetan ceremony of the 1 ;

- use in classical antiquity 1

- Schaffhausen, threshing custom in 1

- Schaumburg, Easter fires in 1

- Schleswig, rape-seed threshing in 1

- Schluckenau, Shrovetide custom in 1

- Schörzingen, ‘Carnival Fool’ at 1

- Science and nature 1, 2

- Scotland: Balquhidder harvest custom 1 ;

- Beltane fires in Callander 1 ;

- Beltane fires on Mull 1;

- Beltane fires on Skye 1;

- Beltane fires on Tiree 1;

- Burghead clavie 1;

- ceremony at the cutting of the last sheaf in Aberdeenshire 1;

- corn-drenching in 1;

- cowherd clothed in cow’s hide in the Highlands of 1;

- custom at the digging of new potatoes in Sutherland 1;

- Free Church in 1, 2;

- harvest custom in 1, 2 ;

- harvest festival in Skye 1 ;

- Hay family and the mistletoe 1 ;

- ‘head’, name given to last sheaf at Faslane 1;

- Hebrides, representation of Spring

- in the 1;

- iron as a charm in 1 ;

- Lachlin family and the deer 1;

- last sheaf as Maiden in 1;

- making of need-fires in Mull 1;

- midsummer fires in 1 ;

- New Year’s Day custom in Breadalbane 1;

- oak-wood kindling for Beltane and need-fires 1 ;

- practice of covering up mirrors after a death 1;

- reluctance to have likenesses taken in West of 1;

- representation of Spring in the Highlands of 1;

- wren is ‘lady of Heaven’s hen’ in 1

- Scythian kings put in bonds in times of scarcity 1

- Sea-lion, respect for the 1

- Seal, respect for the 1

- Self-immolation 1, 2

- Seminoles of Florida, death in childbirth among the 1

- Semites: child sacrifices by the 1;

- king’s son sacrificed 1;

- worship of Adonis 1

- Senegambia: clans

- descended from animals in 1;

- Foulahs spare the crocodile in 1;

- natives do not eat their totems in 1;

- origins of totemism in 1;

- Python clan in 1, 2;

- soul detention among the Sereres of 1 ;

- totems will not harm clansmen in 1

- Senjero, first-born sacrificed in 1

- Seriphos Island 1

- Servia: marriage custom in 1 ;

- rain-making in 1;

- soul of sleeping witch in 1;

- torch-light procession in 1

- Set (Typhon), Egyptian devil and enemy of Osiris 1

- Seven Oaks, May Day custom in 1

- Sex-totems 1 ;

- in Australia 1, 2

- Seyf-el-Mulook, story of 1

- Shadow, the soul and the 1

- Shamans of the Chukch, sacrifice their chief on account of pestilence 1

- Shans, expulsion of the fire-spirit by the 1

- Shark Point, the home of the priestly King Kukulu 1

- Sharp instruments supposed to wound spirits 1

- Shawnee Indians 1

- Sheaf, the last, various names given to, and ceremonies in connection with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

- Shepherd’s Isle, precautions taken against strangers in 1

- Shetland seamen and wind-buying 1

- Shropshire: harvest custom in 1;

- ‘Neck’ the name given to the last handful of corn in 1;

- sin-eating in 1

- Shrovetide Bear 1

- Shrovetide customs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

- Siam: external soul in

- Siamese story 1;

- human scapegoats in 1;

- misfortune in passing under women’s clothes 1;

- mock-kings and evil spirits in 1 ;

- mode of royal executions in 1;

- punishment of demons in 1;

- soul superstition in 1;

- superstition concerning the head 1;

- temporary king of 1

- Siberian sable hunters 1

- Sicily, Gardens of Adonis in 1, 2

- Silenus: both a wood-and a corn-spirit 1 ;

- representation of 1

- Silesia: bringing back summer in 1;

- ‘carrying out Death’ in 1;

- driving out Death in 1;

- harvest custom in 1, 2, 3;

- springtime custom in 1;

- Wheat-dog in 1

- Silvanus, both a wood-and a corn-spirit 1

- Sin-bearers 1

- Sin-eating 1

- ‘Sinew which shrank,’ abstinence from the 1

- Sins of the Father (Massie, Α.) 1

- Skye, harvest festival in 1

- Slaves sacrificed 1

- Slavonia: beating in 1;

- ‘carrying out Death’ in 1;

- custom of ‘sawing the old woman’ among the Slavs 1;

- external soul in Slavonic stories 1 ;

- midsummer fires in 1;

- perpetual fire of the Slavs 1 ;

- reaping custom among the Slavs 1, 2

- Slovenes of Oberkrain, Shrove Tuesday custom among the 1

- Small-pox: driving away 1;

- scapegoat used during outbreak of 1;

- scapegoat used for 1 Smith, Adam 2

- Smith, William Robertson 1, 2, 3

- Snake, communion with the 1

- Snake clans 1, 2 ;

- origins of totemism in Senegambia 1

- Snake tribe 1;

- ceremony performed with a dough snake by the 1

- Snowdon, lonely tarn of Dulyn on 1

- Social anthropology, scope of 1

- Social aspects of totemism 1

- Society Islands, first-fruit offerings on the 1

- Soest, custom of flax-pullers at 1

- Sofala, killing of kings of 1

- Sogamoso (Colombia), restrictions on the heir to the throne in 1

- Solör (Norway), harvest custom in 1

- Somersetshire, midsummer fires in 1

- Sommerberg, Whitsuntide custom in the neighbourhood of 1

- Sorcerers, soul extracted or detained by 1

- Soul: absent in sleep 1 ;

- in the blood 1 ;

- brought back in visible shape 1 ;

- carried off by ghosts 1 ;

- conceived as a bird 1;

- departure not always voluntary 1 ;

- of divine persons transmitted to successors 1 ;

- external, in folk custom 1 ;

- external soul in folk tales 1 ;

- extracted or detained by sorcerers 1 ;

- fishing for the 1;

- flight of the 1, 2;

- miniature of the body 1 ;

- perils of the 1;

- plurality of the 1 ;

- precautions to prevent its escape 1 ;

- recall of the 1 ;

- in the reflection 1 ;

- in the shadow 1 ;

- sleep and the 1 ;

- stolen by demons 1 ;

- thought to be in the portrait 1 ;

- transference of the 1;

- transmigration of the human soul to that of a turtle 1 ;

- of trees 1 ;

- wakening a man from sleep 1

- South American Indians: beating by the 1;

- foods eaten and avoided by the 1

- South Sea Islands, man-gods in the 1, 2

- So wing-time custom 1, 2

- Spachbrücken (Hesse), harvest ceremony 1

- Spachendorf (Austrian Silesia), fire festivals in 1

- Spain: custom of ‘sawing the old woman’ in 1, 2;

- midsummer fires in 1

- Spark, Muriel 1

- Sparrows and the corn 1

- Sparta, state sacrifices offered by the kings of 1

- Speke, John Hanning 1

- Spices, sprinkling the sick with 1

- Spirit of vegetation, in human shape 1

- Spirits: robbing the 1 ;

- sharp instruments supposed to wound 1 ;

- of vegetation, in human shape 1

- Spiritualistic theory of natural phenomena 1, 2

- Spitting as a protective charm 1

- Spring: ceremony in China welcoming the approach of 1;

- European fire festivals in 1 ;

- and harvest customs compared 1

- Storms, Motumotu theory of 1

- Strabo 1

- Strangers: precautions against the magic arts of 1 ;

- tied up in the sheaves by the reapers as representatives of the corn-spirit 1

- Straubing (Lower Bavaria), harvest ceremony 1

- Straw-bull 1

- Straw-goats 1

- Styria, harvest customs in 1

- Subtotems, splitting of totems and 1

- Subura, competing for the horse-head at 1, 2

- Sucla-Tirtha, expulsion of sins to the sea by the 1

- Suicide of Fijians at old age 1

- Sumatra: rain-charm in 1;

- reluctance to wound a tiger in 1;

- tree superstition in 1

- Summer: bringing back 1, 2 ;

- tree of 1, 2

- Sun: belief that the sun can impregnate women 1 ;

- catching the 1 ; charms

- for staying the sun 1;

- fires as sun charms 1 ;

- sacred person forbidden to see the 1 note;

- tabood persons may not see the 1 note;

- traces in folk tales of the rule which forbids girls at puberty to see the sun 1

- Suni Mohammedans, covering up of mirrors by the 1

- Sunshine-making 1

- Superb Warbler 1

- Surenthal, midsummer fire ceremony in the 1

- Surian attitude to the pig 1

- Surinam, totems of the bush negroes of 1

- Sutherland, cure for cough in 1

- Swabia: burying of cut hair in 1 ;

- burying the carnival in 1 ;

- ‘Carnival Fool’ in 1;

- Easter fires in 1;

- fire festival in 1 ;

- harvest custom in 1;

- Harvest May of 1;

- midsummer fires in 1;

- Whit Monday custom in 1

- Sweden: Christmas customs in 1 ;

- divining rods made from the mistletoe in 1;

- harvest superstition in 1;

- King Domalde sacrificed on

- account of famine 1;

- May Day fires in 1;

- May Eve customs in 1;

- midsummer bonfires in 1;

- midsummer ceremonies in 1 ;

- mistletoe superstition in 1;

- superstitious use of Yule straw in 1;

- weather omens in 1

- Swineherds, restrictions on, in Egypt 1

- Switzerland: harvest customs in 1, 2;

- threshing custom in 1

- Syleus, legend of 1

- Sympathetic eating, savage

- belief that a man acquires the character of the animal or man whose flesh he eats 1

- Sympathetic magic 1 Syria, caterpillars in 2

- Ta-ta-thi tribe of New South Wales 1, 2;

- rain-making by the 1 Tâ-uz, festival in honour of 2

- Taboos 1 ;

- fatal effects of 1 ;

- object of royal 1 ;

- observance of 1;

- royal and priestly taboos 1, 2 ;

- rules for regulation of lives of divine kings or priests 1, 2, 3 note;

- seclusion of tabooed persons 1

- Tabor, in Bohemia, ceremony of carrying out

- Death in 1

- Tahiti: abdication of kings of 1;

- bodies of King and Queen not allowed to be touched 1;

- burying of cut hair in 1;

- first-fruit offerings on 1 ;

- superstition concerning the head in 1, 2

- Tâif, hair cut on returning from a journey in 1

- Takilis (Carrier) Indians of North-West America, catching the soul of a burned corpse 1

- Tamaniu of the Bank Islanders 1

- Tana (New Hebrides), disposal of unconsumed food by the islanders of 1

- Tapir, superstition on killing in Guiana 1

- Tari Pennu (Bera Pennu), Earth Goddess of the Khonds 1

- Tartars: ceremony on a visit by a stranger to a Khan 1;

- external soul in poems of the 1, 2

- Tauric Diana 1

- Taylor, E. B. 1

- Tehuantepec, Isthmus of 1

- Telchines of Rhodes 1

- Temporary kings 1;

- sometimes hereditary 1, 2

- Tenedos, rites of Dionysus at 1

- Tenimber Island, first-fruit offerings on 1

- Territorial Rites (Spark, M.) 1

- Teton Indians 1

- Teutonic kings exercised the powers of high priests 1

- Tezcatlipoca, annual festival of the great god 1

- Thann, May Day customs in 1

- Thargelia, festival of the 1

- Thebes: rams sacred at 1;

- ritual at 1

- Thesmophoria (Autumn festival) 1

- Thlinket of Alaska 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

- festival to the halibut by the 1;

- seclusion of girls among the 1

- Thüringen: last sheaf shaped as cock in 1;

- Mid-Lent customs of carrying out death in 1;

- midsummer bonfires in 1;

- threshing custom in 1;

- Whitsuntide customs in 1, 2

- Tibet: New Year’s day custom in 1 ;

- scapegoat in 1

- Tiger: flesh eaten 1;

- reluctance to wound in Sumatra 1

- Tikopia Island, ceremony in cases of epidemic on 1

- Tillot, threshing custom in the Canton of 1

- Timor, West, custom of a speaker in 1

- Timorese rain charm 1

- Timorlaut Island: disease boats in 1 ;

- first-fruit offerings on 1;

- married men not allowed to cut their hair in 1

- Tjumba Island (East Indies), first-fruit offerings on 1

- Tobelorese of Halmahera, ceremony at the initiation of boys among the 1

- Todas of South India 1 ;

- buffalo held sacred by the 1;

- the dairy a sanctuary among the 1

- Tom-Cat 1

- Tona of the Zapotecs 1

- Tonga: ceremony in, with regard to sacred contagion 1;

- first-fruit offerings on 1 ;

- king of not seen eating 1

- Tongues of birds given to backward children to eat 1

- Tonquin: expulsion of evil spirits in 1 ;

- kings not allowed to be viewed in public 1;

- mode of royal executions in 1;

- monarchy in 1 ;

- selection of guardian spirits in 1;

- test of a suitable sacrificial victim in 1;

- time of licence in 1

- Toothache cure 1

- Torchlight processions 1, 2

- Torres Straits Islands, origins of totemism in 1

- Totem, an object (animal, plant, etc.) in which a man deposits his soul for safety 1

- Totem und Tabu (Freud, S.) 1

- Totemism 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ;

- birth ceremonies 1 ;

- ceremonies at puberty 1 ;

- cross totems 1 ;

- death ceremonies 1 ;

- descent, rules of 1 ;

- exogamy of 1 ;

- geographical diffusion of 1 ;

- growth, maturity and decay of totems 1 ;

- individual totems 1 ;

- initiation ceremonies 1 ;

- kinship within the totem 1 ;

- male and female descent, tables of 1 ;

- man and his totem, relationship between 1;

- man and his totem, relationship within totems and to men of other totems 1 ;

- mimic death and revival 1 ;

- naming clans after name of totem 1, 2, 3 ;

- novel features of Central Australian 1 ;

- origin of 1, 2;

- as a religion 1;

- sacred dancing bands and associations 1 ;

- sex totems 1, 2, 3 ;

- social aspects of 1 ;

- splitting of totems and subtotems 1 ;

- treatise on exogamy and 1

- Totemism and Exogamy (Frazer, J.G.) 1, 2, 3

- Totems: artificial 1 ;

- Bandicoot totem 1, 2;

- clan totems, naming after name of totem 1, 2, 3 ;

- colours as 1;

- cross totems 1 ;

- etymology of the word 1 ;

- Fly totem 1;

- growth, maturity and decay of 1 ;

- Hakea Flower totem 1, 2, 3;

- heavenly bodies as 1;

- inanimate objects as 1 ;

- individual totems 1 ;

- Kangaroo totem 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

- kinship within the totem 1 ;

- Opossum totem 1, 2;

- relationship between man and his totem 1;

- relationship within totems and to men of other totems 1 ;

- sex totems 1, 2, 3 ;

- three kinds of 1;

- Witchetty Grub totem 1, 2, 3, 4

- Touaregs of the Sahara, custom of veiling the face among the 1

- Toukaway Indians: initiatory ceremony among the 1

- Transmigration of divine spirit 1

- Transylvania: burying the carnival among the Saxons of 1 ;

- ‘carrying out’ Death in 1 ;

- corn-drenching in 1;

- custom for preserving the crops from insects, etc., in 1;

- external soul in stories of Saxons of 1 ;

- rain-charm in 1;

- Saxon reapers girding loins with first ears 1;

- shadow-traders in 1;

- story of a soul from 1

- Traunstein (Upper Bavaria), harvest custom in 1;

- Oats-goat in 1

- Travancore: ordeal by snakebite in 1;

- transference of sickness in 1

- Travel, purification after 1

- Tree-spirits: burnt in effigy 1 ;

- cause crops to grow 1 ;

- explanation for annual spring-time killing of the 1 ;

- give rain and sunshine 1 ;

- goat as an embodiment of the 1 ;

- humans burned as representatives of the 1 ;

- influence of, on women and cattle 1 ;

- killing the 1 ;

- represented by leaf-clad persons alone 1

- Tree worship: in antiquity 1;

- customs of 1

- Trees: bleeding 1;

- and cattle 1 ;

- inhabited by spirits 1 ;

- planted at the births of children 1 ;

- regarded as storehouses of the sun’s fire 1 ;

- souls of 1 ;

- souls of the dead believed to animate 1

- Trier, harvest custom in 1

- Tübingen, Shrove Tuesday custom in 1

- Tukaitawa and his shadow 1

- Turks: in Central Asia give backward children tongues of birds to eat 1;

- parings from the nails preserved by the 1

- Turner’s picture of the Golden Bough 1, 2, 3

- Turra tribe of South Australia 1

- Turtle: belief in the transmigration of human souls into 1 ;

- not eaten 1;

- sacrifice of the sacred 1

- Twelfth Day customs 1, 2

- Tycoons of Japan 1

- Typhon (Set), Egyptian devil and enemy of Osiris 1

- Tyrol: expulsion of witches in the 1;

- midsummer customs in the 1;

- witches said to make use of the hair cut in the 1

- Ualaroi, ceremony at initiatory rites in 1

- Uapes of Brazil, treatment of girls at the age of puberty in 1

- Udvarhely: ceremony with the last sheaf in 1, 2;

- harvest home in 1

- Uea, power ascribed to the souls of the dead in 1

- Uelzen (Hanover), harvest ceremony in 1

- Uganda: custom of burning the king’s brothers in 1;

- king of, and his courtiers 1

- Ugi: burying of cut hair in 1;

- dread of women’s blood in 1

- Uliase Island 1, 2;

- soul shadows in 1;

- sprinkling the sick with

- spices in 1

- Unyoro, kings killed in 1

- Upsala, sacred grove at 1

- Utch Kurgan (Turkistan),

- sin eating in 1

- Val di Ledro (Tyrol), fire

- festival in 1

- Varro 1

- Vaté, burying alive at 1

- Vegetation, spirit of: in

- human shape 1, 2 ;

- slain at midsummer 1, 2

- Veiling 1

- Veitch, John 1

- Venison not eaten 1

- Vermin, respect shown by

- primitive people for 1

- Vestal fire 1

- Vestal virgins, hair of 1

- Victoria, Queen worshipped

- by sect in Orissa 1

- Vine: sacred to Dionysus 1 ;

- walking under

- forbidden 1

- Vintage, Phoenician custom at 1

- Virbius: and the horse 1 ;

- legend of 1;

- possible explanation of his relation

- to the Arician Diana 1;

- reason why he was

- confounded with the sun 1

- Volders (Tyrol), threshing custom at 1

- Voralberg (Tyrol), fire festival at 1

- Vosges mountains: cat burning in the 1;

- May Day customs in the 1

- Wa-teita, reluctance to be photographed 1

- Wadai: Sultan must have

- no bodily defect 1;

- veiling of the Sultan of 1

- Waganda of Central Africa, worship by the 1

- Wakelburas of Queensland 1

- Walber in Bavaria 1, 2

- Wallachia, corn-drenching in 1

- Wanika of East Africa 1;

- believers in the souls of trees 1;

- do not shed the blood of animals 1

- Wanyoro, secretion of cut hair and nails by the 1

- Wanzleben, harvest custom in 1

- Ward, James 1, 2

- Warts, cure for 1

- Warua, eating and drinking, privacy in 1

- The Waste Land (Eliot, T.S.) 1

- Water, kings of 1

- Water fairy, English superstition regarding the 1

- Watubela Islands 1

- Weather kings 1

- Weather omens 1

- Weevils 1

- Weiden (Bavaria), harvest custom in 1

- Weingarten, ‘Carnival Fool’ at 1

- Welsh custom of sin eating 1

- Wends dancing round the oak-tree 1

- Wermland (Sweden):

- ceremony with regard to

- the last sheaf in 1;

- custom among the threshers in 1

- West African rain-makers 1

- Westerhüsen (Saxony), reaping custom in 1

- Westmeath, Description of (Piers, H.) 1

- Westphalia: Easter fires in the 1;

- Harvest-Cock in 1;

- harvest custom in 1, 2;

- Whitsuntide Bride in 1 ;

- Whitsuntide customs in 1

- Wetar Island 1, 2, 3;

- men injured by attacking their shadows in 1;

- opinion of the inhabitants as to their descent 1;

- superstition concerning the blood of women on 1

- Weverham in Cheshire, two May-poles at 1

- Wexford, midsummer fires in 1

- Wheat-bride, a name given to the binder of the last sheaf 1

- Wheat-dog, a name given to the binder of the last sheaf 1

- White dog, sacrifice of the 1

- The White Goddess (Graves, R.) 1

- White mice, spared 1

- Whitsuntide Basket in

- Frickthal (Aargau) 1

- Whitsuntide Bride 1

- Whitsuntide customs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

- Whitsuntide flower (Pinxterbloem) 1

- Whitsuntide King 1

- Whitsuntide Queen 1

- Wicker-giant, procession and burning of the 1

- Wiedingharde (Schleswig), threshing custom in 1

- Wiesent (Bavaria), harvest ceremony 1

- ‘Wild Man’ in Saxony and Thüringen 1, 2, 3, 4

- Wind: buying and selling 1;

- fighting the 1 ;

- wind-making 1

- Wine: abstention from 1;

- the blood of the vine 1

- Winenthal, midsummer fire ceremony in the 1

- Witchcraft, protection against 1

- Witches, expulsion of 1

- Witchetty Grub totem 1, 2, 3, 4

- Wolf, the corn-spirit as a 1

- Wolfeck, midsummer bonfire in 1

- Women: secluded for fear of menstrual blood 1 ;

- superstition concerning the blood of 1 ;

- and tree-spirits 1

- Wood-spirit (Metsik) in Estonia 1

- Worship of nature 1

- Worship of Nature, The (Frazer, J.G.) 1, 2

- Wotjaks of East Russia: driving out Satan by the 1 ;

- sacred groves of the 1

- Wotjobaluk and the bat 1

- Wotjoballuk tribe in Victoria, Australia 1, 2, 3, 4

- Wren: English tradition concerning the hunting of the 1;

- hunting the 1

- Wurmlingen: ‘Carnival Fool’ at 1;

- threshing custom in 1 ;

- Whit Monday custom in 1

- Würtemberg: midsummer

- custom in Ertingen 1;

- Palm Sunday in 1

- Yakut: charm for making wind 1;

- sacrifices 1

- Yarilo, funeral of 1, 2

- Yawning, Hindu custom when 1

- Yesso Island, Japan, bear festival of the Ainos on 1

- Yorkshire custom of the clergyman cutting the first corn 1

- Yoruba, precautions against strangers in 1

- Yucutan: charm for staying the sun 1;

- New Year’s festival 1

- Yuin tribe of New South Wales 1

- Yule Boar 1, 2, 3

- Yule Island 1

- Yule straw 1

- Zabern (Elsass): harvest custom in 1;

- May Day custom in 1

- Zacynthus, strength thought to be in the hair by the people of 1

- Zamolxis, legend of birth of 1

- Zaparo Indians, belief concerning the various properties of food 1

- Zapotecs of Mexico: harvest custom of the 1;

- high pontiff of the 1, 2, 3;

- Tona of the 1

- Zealand: custom at the madder harvest in 1 ;

- last sheaf as ‘Rye-beggar’ in 1

- Zend Avesta, directions by the, concerning the

- clippings of hair and nails 1

- Zeus: grave in Crete of 1;

- and Hera 1, 2 ;

- a man’s shadow lost on entering the sanctuary of 1;

- represented by an oak at Dodona 1

- Zulus: belief in the reflection as the soul 1;

- custom in time of disease 1;

- girls secluded at puberty 1, 2;

- the Ihlazi of the 1 ;

- kings put to death 1 ;

- rain-charm 1

- Zuni Indians of New

- Mexico 1 ;

- sacrifice of the turtle 1 ;

- totem clans 1

- Zurich, fire festival in 1

About the Author

THE GOLDEN BOUGH

James George Frazer was born on 1st January 1854, the son of a staunch Presbyterian and Free Churchman who was a pharmacist in Glasgow. Grazer studied at Glasgow University and then at Cambridge, where, after a brief foray into law, he became a fellow in Classics. He combined his classical studies with pioneering explorations of social anthropology, being among the first to write on such topics as totemism and exogamy. In 1889 he began work on what was to become an encyclopedic account of the primitive mind. First published in two volumes as The Golden Bough in 1890, it grew to twelve volumes by 1915, and exered an emormous influence upon the literaty and intellectual life of the first part of the twentieth century. Frezer received a knighthood in 1914 and died in 1941.

Cairns Craig was born in Kilmarnock and educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he is Directory of the Centre for the History of Ideas in Scotland. He has written widely on Scottish literature and culture and was Generel Editor of the four-volume History of Scottish Literature (1987-89). His books on Scottish subjects include Our of History: Marrative Paradigms in Scottish and English Culture (1996), and The Modern Scottish Novel: Narrative and the National Imagination (1991). He is a member of the editorial board for Canongate Classics.

Copyright

First published in Great Britain in 1890
by Macmillan and Co.

First published as a Canongate Classic in 2004,
by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE

This digital edition first published in 2009
by Canongate Books Ltd

Introduction copyright © Cairns Craig, 2004

The publishers gratefully acknowledge general subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council towards the Canongate Classics series and a specific grant towards the publication of this title

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84767 534 7

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