CHAPTER XVI.

DECORATIONS AND OFFERINGS.

We have seen that the Indian method of venerating a well was to crown it with flowers, to cover it with _jalis_ or trellis work of flowers, to illumine it with ghee-lamps placed in niches specially made for the purpose and to strew the pavement with cocoanuts, betel-nuts, sugar and sweets and milk and ghee and to smear it with red lead. We have also noticed that floral decoration and garland-dressing is an act of simple reverence, being a survival of the earlier and more primitive practices and ceremonials. The other offerings, however, particularly cocoanut, and the practice of smearing the pavement with red lead point to beliefs associating spirits with water, and these are survivals of the ancient cult of human and animal sacrifices offered to the water-spirit. The cocoanut, resembling a human head, is accepted by the spirits, in lieu of a human being, similarly red lead does duty for the blood of animal victims. The Germans hoodwink the water-spirit with another curious substitute and that is a loaf of bread. It is the practice to throw a loaf into the water at Rotenburg on the Neckar. If this offering is not given, the river-spirit would take away a man. The practice of placing lamps inside the well also points to spirit-beliefs. The lights, it is hoped, would scare away evil spirits from the water.

There is enough anthropological evidence to show that at one time human sacrifices were offered in east and west alike to the spirits of fire, earth and water. Numerous authorities may be cited. The Indian practices are well known. For continental examples we may select only one from Sir James Frazer’s _Golden Bough_ concerning the practice of burning humans beings in the fires. The most unequivocal traces of human sacrifices offered on these occasions are those which, about a hundred years ago, still lingered at the Beltane fires in the Highlands of Scotland, that is, among a Celtic people who, situated in a remote corner of Europe and almost completely isolated from foreign influence, had till then conserved their old heathenism better than any other people in the west of Europe. “It is significant,” says Sir James Frazer, “that human sacrifices by fire are known, on unquestionable evidence, to have been systematically practised by the Celts. The earliest description of these sacrifices has been bequeathed to us by Julius Cæsar. As conqueror of the hitherto independent Celts of Gaul, Cæsar 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 civilization.... The following seem to have been the main outlines of the custom. Condemned criminals were reserved by the Celts in order to be sacrificed to the gods at a great festival which took place once in every five years. The more there were of such victims, the greater was believed to be the fertility of the land. If there were not enough criminals to furnish victims, captives taken in war were immolated to supply the deficiency. When the time came, the victims were sacrificed by the Druids or priests, some they shot down with arrows, some they impaled, and some they burned alive in the following manner. Colossal images of wicker-work or of wood and grass were constructed; these were filled with live men, cattle and animals of other kinds; fire was then applied to the images, and they were burned with their living contents. Such were the great festivals held once every five years. But besides these quinquennial festivals, celebrated on so grand a scale and with, apparently, so large an expenditure of human life, it seems reasonable to suppose that festivals of the same sort, only on a lesser scale, were held annually, and that from these annual festivals are lineally descended some at least of the fire-festivals which, with their traces of human sacrifices, are still celebrated year by year in many parts of Europe.”

Similarly, in pagan Europe water claimed its human victims on Midsummer Day. We have already seen that in England the spirits of the River Tees, the Skerne and the Ribble, the Spey and the Dee demand human victims. We have also seen how the river sprites in Germany transcend the rest of the spirits in Europe in their blood-thirstiness. We also learn from Tacitus that the ancient Germans offered human sacrifices. He tells us that the image of the goddess Nerthus, her vestments and chariot were washed in a certain lake, and that immediately afterwards the slaves who ministered to the goddess were swallowed by the lake. The statement may perhaps be understood to mean that the slaves were drowned as a sacrifice to the deity.

The next stage was that of animal sacrifices. It is well known that just as goats and buffaloes were sacrificed in India, so were bulls and calves offered to the deities in Europe. In Bombay cocks and goats are still offered to water. The wells on the continent, however, seldom receive animal offerings in these days. Only in one case, namely in the case of St. Tegla’s Well, which is resorted to for the cure of epilepsy, we find the patient offering a cock or a hen. The usual offerings at other wells are rags and ribbons, pins and needles, nails and shells, buttons and coins, and sometimes bread and cheese. It will, therefore, be news to many that in Great Britain the lamb was the votive offering for water. Sir Laurence Gomme refers to this offering in a chapter on ethnic elements in custom and ritual, in which he compares certain ceremonies prevalent in India and Greece and other parts of Europe and argues from the strong line of parallel between the Indian ceremonies and those still observed in Europe as survivals of a forgotten and unrecognised cult that ceremonies which are demonstrably non-Aryan in India, even in the presence of Aryan people, must in original have been non-Aryan in Europe, though the race from whom they have descended is not at present identified by ethnologists. One of the customs selected by him for comparison is the Whitsuntide custom in the parish of King’s Teignton, Devonshire. Here is a description of that custom:—

“A lamb is drawn about the parish on Whitsun Monday in a cart covered with garlands of lilac, laburnum, and other flowers, when persons are requested to give something towards the animal and attendant expenses; on Tuesday it is then killed and roasted whole in the middle of the village. The lamb is then sold in slices to the poor at a cheap rate.”

The origin of the custom is forgotten, but a tradition, supposed to trace back to heathen days, is to this effect: The village suffered from a dearth of water, when the inhabitants were advised by their priests to pray to the gods for water; whereupon the water sprang up spontaneously in a meadow about a third of a mile above the river, in an estate now called Rydon, amply sufficient to supply the wants of the place, and at present adequate, even in a dry summer, to work three mills. A lamb, it is said, has ever since that time been sacrificed as a votive thank-offering at Whitsuntide in the manner above mentioned.

The same ceremony, in a more primitive form, was observed at the village of Holne. On May-morning, before daybreak, the young men of the village used to assemble at a granite pillar in the centre of a field called the Ploy Field. They then proceeded to the moor, where they selected a ram lamb, and after running it down brought it in triumph to the Ploy Field, fastened it to the pillar, cut its throat, and then roasted it whole, skin, wool, etc. At Midday a struggle took place, at the risk of cut hands, for a slice, it being supposed to confer luck for the ensuing year on the fortunate devourer. As an act of gallantry the young men sometimes fought their way through the crowd to get a slice for the chosen amongst the young women, all of whom, in their best dresses, attended the Ram Feast as it was called.

In one of his odes Horace made a solemn promise that he would make a present of a very fine kid, some sweet wine and flowers to a noble fountain in his own Sabine Villa. We have seen that even to-day the Parsis offer goats and fowl to the spirits of the well. The process of reasoning is the same. The Gujarati Hindu, however, shrinks from such slaughter. Nevertheless, the gods have to be propitiated. He therefore offers acceptable substitutes for animal victims, such as cocoanuts and red lead. Betelnuts, sugar and milk and ghee likewise keep the spirits in good humour.

Offerings of coins to the well-spirits are common in the East as in the West. What can be the explanation? Is the coin offered as a price for the boon that one expects to derive from the healing powers of the wells? That at any rate is the idea prompting the man bitten by a rabid dog when he goes to a well inhabited by a Vâchharo, with two earthen cups filled with milk and with a pice in each, which he empties into the water. But quite a different and curious explanation of the offering is found in the _Folklore Notes of Gujarat_. “It is a belief among Hindus,” says one of the informants of the late Mr. Jackson, “that to give alms in secret confers a great boon on the donor. Some of the orthodox people, therefore, throw pice into wells, considering it to be a kind of secret charity.”