CHAPTER III. 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.

§ 1.—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.(755) 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.”(756) A tribe in the Philippine Islands told the Spanish conquerors that the grave of the Creator was upon the top of Mount Cabunian.(757) 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.(758) The grave of Zeus, the great god of Greece, was shown to visitors in Crete as late as about the beginning of our era.(759) 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.”(760) 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.(761) Cronus was buried in Sicily,(762) and the graves of Hermes, Aphrodite, and Ares were shown in Hermopolis, Cyprus, and Thrace.(763)

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.(764) 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.”(765) 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.”(766) 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.(767) 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.(768) 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.”(769)

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.(770) 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.(771) 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.(772) 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.(773) 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 Zoolas 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.”(774)

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,(775) 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.”(776)

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.(777) 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.(778) 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.(779) 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.(780) 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.(781) 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.(782) 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.(783) 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.(784)

In the cases hitherto described, the divine king or priest is suffered by his people to retain office until some outward defect, some visible symptom of failing health or advancing age warns them that he is no longer equal to the discharge of his divine duties; but not until such symptoms have made their appearance is he put to death. Some peoples, however, appear to have thought it unsafe to wait for even the slightest symptom of decay and have preferred to kill the king while he was still in the full vigour of life. Accordingly, they have fixed a term beyond which he might not reign, and at the close of which he must die, the term fixed upon being short enough to exclude the probability of his degenerating physically in the interval. In some parts of Southern India the period fixed was twelve years. Thus, according to an old traveller, in the province of Quilacare “There is a Gentile house of prayer, in which there is an idol which they hold in great account, and every twelve years they celebrate a great feast to it, whither all the Gentiles go as to a jubilee. This temple possesses many lands and much revenue; it is a very great affair. This province has a king over it; who has not more than twelve years to reign from jubilee to jubilee. His manner of living is in this wise, that is to say, when the twelve years are completed, on the day of this feast there assemble together innumerable people, and much money is spent in giving food to Bramans. The king has a wooden scaffolding made, spread over with silken hangings; and on that day he goes to bathe at a tank with great ceremonies and sound of music, after that he comes to the idol and prays to it, and mounts on to the scaffolding, and there before all the people he takes some very sharp knives and begins to cut off his nose, and then his ears and his lips and all his members and as much flesh 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.”(785)

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 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.”(786)

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.(787) 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 he was 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.(788)

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.”(789) 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.”(790)

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.(791)

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.(792) 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 Brahman is apparently carefully watched during the whole year, and not allowed to go away.” The same or a similar custom is believed to obtain among the hill states about Kángrá.(793) 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.(794)

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.(795) 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;(796) in both cases the use of iron was probably forbidden on superstitious grounds.(797)

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.”(798) 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.(799) 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.”(800) 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.(801) 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.(802)

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.(803) The Indians of Florida sacrificed their first-born male children.(804) 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 soothsayers 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 soothsayers 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.”(805) The heathen Russians often sacrificed their first-born to the god Perun.(806)

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;(807) 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 chief’s last breath through a bamboo tube. When the chief has no son, his soul is caught in a bag, which is fastened to an image made to represent the deceased; the soul is then believed to pass into the image.(808) 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.(809) 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.(810) The Romans caught the breath of dying friends in their mouths, and so received into themselves the soul of the departed.(811) The same custom is said to be still practised in Lancashire.(812) 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.

§ 2.—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 Chitombé, 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.(813) 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.(814)

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.(815) 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.(816) 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.”(817)

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.(818) 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.(819)

But perhaps, for our purpose, the most instructive of these mimic executions is the following Bohemian one, which has been in part described already.(820) 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.(821)

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(822) 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.(823)

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;(824) 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.”(825) 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_)(826) 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.(827) 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.(828) 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 medicine-men sprinkled “medicine” on the gash, which soon healed up, and the man recovered.(829) 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.(830) 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.(831) 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.(832) 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.(833) Some of the Gonds of India formerly offered human sacrifices; they now sacrifice straw-men instead.(834) 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.”(835)

§ 3.—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.(836) A Bohemian form of the custom of “Burying the Carnival” has been already described.(837) 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_”).(838) 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 horseback and decked with ribbons, accompany the procession, which is headed by two girls crowned with evergreen and drawn in a waggon or sledge. A trial is held under a tree, at which lads disguised as soldiers pronounce sentence of death. The two old men try to rescue the straw-man and to fly with him, but to no purpose; he is caught by the two girls and handed over to the executioner, who hangs him on a tree. In vain the old men try to climb up the tree and take him down; they always tumble down, and at last in despair they throw themselves on the ground and weep and howl for the hanged man. An official then makes a speech in which he declares that the Carnival was condemned to death because he had done them harm, by wearing out their shoes and making them tired and sleepy.(839) 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.(840) 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.(841) In Rottweil the “Carnival Fool” is made drunk on Ash Wednesday and buried under straw amid loud lamentation.(842) 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.(843) 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.(844) 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.”(845) 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.(846) 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.(847) 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.(848)

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.”(849) 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.”(850) 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!”(851)

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, O holy Marketa, Give us a good year For wheat and for rye.”(852)

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.”(853)

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.”(854)

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.(855) 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.(856) 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.(857) 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;(858) and the village out of which Death has been driven is sometimes supposed to be protected against sickness and plague.(859) 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.(860) In Slavonia the figure of Death is cudgelled and then rent in two.(861) In Poland the effigy, made of hemp and straw, is flung into a pool or swamp with the words, “The devil take thee.”(862)

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.(863) 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.(864) 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 themselves in the streets on the morning of Mid-Lent.(865) 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.(866) 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.(867)

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.”(868)

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.”(869)

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.”(870)

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.(871) 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.(872)

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.(873) 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.”(874)

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 or Life, after Death had been thrown away or destroyed. But the transference of the shirt worn by the effigy of Death to the tree clearly indicates that the tree is a kind of revivification, in a new form, of the destroyed effigy.(875) 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.(876) 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.(877) 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.(878) 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.(879) Perhaps the sticks had been previously used to beat the Death,(880) 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.(881)

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;(882) 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.(883) 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.(884) 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.(885) 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;(886) 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;(887) and that sometimes it is hung on a little tree and so carried about by girls collecting money,(888) 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.(889) 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 sheafs of corn.(890) 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.(891)

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!’ ”(892)

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.”(893) 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.(894) 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.(895) 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.”(896) In Little Russia the figure of Yarilo was laid in a coffin and carried through the streets after sunset surrounded by drunken women, who kept repeating mournfully, “He is dead! he is dead!” The men lifted and shook the figure as if they were trying to recall the dead man to life. Then they said to the women, “Women, weep not. I know what is sweeter than honey.” But the women continued to lament and chant, as they do at funerals. “Of what was he guilty? He was so good. He will arise no more. O how shall we part from thee? What is life without thee? Arise, if only for a brief hour. But he rises not, he rises not.” At last the Yarilo was buried in a grave.(897)

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 Midsummer Day, after which the days begin to shorten, and the sun sets out on his downward journey—

“To the darksome hollows Where the frosts of winter lie.”

Such a turning-point of the year, when vegetation might be thought to share the incipient though still almost imperceptible decay of summer, might very well be chosen by primitive man as a fit moment for resorting to those magic 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.”(898) 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.(899)

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.(900)

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.(901) 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.(902)

§ 4.—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.”(903) 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;(904) and in some places his revival was celebrated on the following day.(905) 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.(906) 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.(907) 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.(908) 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.(909) Again, the red anemone(910) 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.”(911)

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.(912) From the similarity of these customs to each other and to the spring and midsummer customs of modern Europe we should naturally expect that they all admit of a common explanation. Hence, if the explanation 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.(913) 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,(914) 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 two-thirds. He might, indeed, be conceived as weakened in winter,(915) 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.(916)

The character of Thammuz or Adonis as a corn-spirit comes out plainly in an account of his festival given by an Arabic writer of the tenth century. In describing the rites and sacrifices observed at the different seasons of the year by the heathen Syrians of Harran, he says:—“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.”(917) 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.”(918)

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.(919) 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.(920)

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.(921) 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.(922) 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.(923) 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.(924) 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.(925) 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.”(926) 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.(927) 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)(928) 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.(929)

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.(930) 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.”(931) 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 cork-tree, fills it with earth, and sows a handful of wheat and barley in it. The pot being placed in the sun and often watered, the corn sprouts rapidly and has a good head by Midsummer Eve (St. John’s Eve, 23d June). The pot is then called _Erme_ or _Nenneri_. On St. John’s Day the young man and the girl, dressed in their best, accompanied by a long retinue and preceded by children gambolling and frolicking, move in procession to a church outside the village. Here they break the pot by throwing it against the door of the church. Then they sit down in a ring on the grass and eat eggs and herbs to the music of flutes. Wine is mixed in a cup and passed round, each one drinking as it passes. Then they join hands and sing “Sweethearts of St. John” (_Compare e comare di San Giovanni_) over and over again, the flutes playing the while. When they tire of singing, they stand up and dance gaily in a ring till evening. This is the general Sardinian custom. As practised at Ozieri it has some special features. In May the pots are made of cork-bark and planted with corn, as already described. Then on the Eve of St. John the window-sills are draped with rich cloths, on which the pots are placed, adorned with crimson and blue silk and ribbons of various colours. On each of the pots they used formerly to place a statuette or cloth doll dressed as a woman, or a Priapus-like figure made of paste; but this custom, rigorously forbidden by the Church, has fallen into disuse. The village swains go about in a troop to look at the pots and their decorations and to wait for the girls, who assemble on the public square to celebrate the festival. Here a great bonfire is kindled, round which they dance and make merry. Those who wish to be “Sweethearts of St. John” act as follows. The young man stands on one side of the bonfire and the girl on the other, and they, in a manner, join hands by each grasping one end of a long stick, which they pass three times backwards and forwards across the fire, thus thrusting their hands thrice rapidly into the flames. This seals their relationship to each other. Dancing and music go on till late at night.(932) 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.(933) 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,(934) 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.(935) 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 Pârvatî 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.(936) 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.(937) 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.(938) 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.(939) 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.(940) 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,(941) just as the gardens of Adonis were placed on the grave of the dead Adonis.(942) 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.

§ 5.—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.(943) 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.(944) 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.(945) After his death Attis is said to have been changed into a pine-tree.(946) The ceremonies observed at his festival are not very fully known, but their general order appears to have been as follows.(947) At the spring equinox (22d 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.(948) On the second day (23d March) the chief ceremony seems to have been a blowing of trumpets.(949) 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.(950) It was perhaps on this day or night that the mourning for Attis took place over an effigy, which was afterwards solemnly buried.(951) 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.(952) 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.(953)

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.(954) 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.(955) After being attached to the tree, the effigy was kept for a year and then burned.(956) We have seen that this was apparently sometimes done with the May-pole;(957) 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 epithets was “very fruitful;” he was addressed as the “reaped green (or yellow) ear of corn,” and the story of his sufferings, death, and resurrection was interpreted as the ripe grain wounded by the reaper, buried in the granary, and coming to life again when sown in the ground.(958) His worshippers abstained from eating seeds and the roots of vegetables,(959) 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.(960) It is therefore a reasonable conjecture that the high priest played the part of the legendary Attis at the annual festival.(961) We have seen that on the Day of Blood he drew blood from his arms, and this may have been an imitation of the self-inflicted death of Attis under the pine-tree. It is not inconsistent with this supposition that Attis was also represented at these ceremonies by an effigy; for we have already had cases in which the divine being is first represented by a living person and afterwards by an effigy, which is then burned or otherwise destroyed.(962) 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.”(963) We know from Strabo(964) 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.

§ 6.—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.(965) Osiris was the son of the earth-god Qeb (or Seb, as the name is sometimes transliterated).(966) 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.(967) 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 him 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.(968) 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,(969) from the 8th to the 12th of the month Athyr.(970) 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.”(971) 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 _Tatu_, _Tat_, or _Ded_ pillar.(972) 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.(973) 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.(974) 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.(975)

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.(976) 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.”(977) 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 may be 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.(978) 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.(979) 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.(980) 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.(981) 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 chosen 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 new-born babes when the maize was sown, older children when it had sprouted, and so on till it was fully ripe, when they sacrificed old men.(982) A name for Osiris was the “crop” or “harvest”;(983) and the ancients sometimes explained him as a personification of the corn.(984)

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.(985) 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.(986) 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(987) 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.(988) 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.(989) The sycamore and the tamarisk are also his trees. In inscriptions he is spoken of as residing in them;(990) and his mother Nut is frequently represented in a sycamore.(991) 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.(992) In inscriptions Osiris is referred to as “the one in the tree,” “the solitary one in the acacia,” etc.(993) On the monuments he sometimes appears as a mummy covered with a tree or with plants.(994) 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.(995)

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.”(996) Tiele confesses candidly that “it is now impossible to tell precisely to what natural phenomena the character of Isis at first referred.”(997) Mr. Renouf states that Isis was the Dawn,(998) 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.(999) 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.”(1000) 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.”(1001) This is confirmed by her epithet _Sochit_ or _Sochet_, meaning “a corn-field,” a sense which the word still retains in Coptic.(1002) It is in this character of a corn-goddess that the Greeks conceived Isis, for they identified her with Demeter.(1003) 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,”(1004) 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.”(1005)

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.(1006) 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:(1007) “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,(1008) 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.(1009) It was, therefore, nearly a matter of course that he should identify Osiris with the sun.(1010) But apart from the general principle, so frankly enunciated by Professor Maspero, that all the gods are the sun (“_Comme tous les dieux, Osiris est le soleil_”),(1011) 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,(1012) 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,(1013) and it is referred to by Firmicus Maternus.(1014)

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.’ ”(1015) 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(1016) 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.”(1017) 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.’ ”(1018) 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.”(1019) 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.”(1020) 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,(1021) 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.(1022) 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?(1023)

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.(1024) 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.(1025) 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.(1026) Again, Plutarch, a very intelligent student of comparative religion, insists upon the detailed resemblance of the rites of Osiris to those of Dionysus.(1027) 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.(1028) 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.

§ 7.—Dionysus.

The Greek god Dionysus or Bacchus(1029) 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.”(1030) In Boeotia one of his titles was “Dionysus in the tree.”(1031) 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.(1032) On a vase his rude effigy is depicted appearing out of a low tree or bush.(1033) He was the patron of cultivated trees;(1034) prayers were offered to him that he would make the trees grow;(1035) 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.(1036) He was said to have discovered all tree-fruits, amongst which apples and figs are particularly mentioned;(1037) and he was himself spoken of as doing a husbandman’s work.(1038) He was referred to as “well-fruited,” “he of the green fruit,” and “making the fruit to grow.”(1039) One of his titles was “teeming” or “bursting” (as of sap or blossoms);(1040) and there was a Flowery Dionysus in Attica and at Patrae in Achaea.(1041) Amongst the trees particularly sacred to him, in addition to the vine, was the pine-tree.(1042) 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.(1043) In art a wand, tipped with a pine-cone, is commonly carried by the god or his worshippers.(1044) Again, the ivy and the fig-tree were especially associated with him. In the Attic township of Acharnae there was a Dionysus Ivy;(1045) at Lacedaemon there was a Fig Dionysus; and in Naxos, where figs were called _meilicha_, there was a Dionysus Meilichios, the face of whose image was made of fig-wood.(1046)

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.(1047) 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.(1048) Pomegranates were supposed to have sprung from the blood of Dionysus,(1049) 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.(1050) The grave of Dionysus was shown in the Delphic temple beside a golden statue of Apollo.(1051) 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.(1052) In others it is simply said that shortly after his burial he rose from the dead and ascended up to heaven;(1053) or that Zeus raised him up as he lay mortally wounded;(1054) or that Zeus swallowed the heart of Dionysus and then begat him afresh by Semele,(1055) 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.(1056)

Turning from the myth to the ritual, we find that the Cretans celebrated a biennial(1057) festival at which the sufferings and death of Dionysus were represented in every detail.(1058) Where the resurrection formed part of the myth, it also was enacted at the rites,(1059) 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.(1060)

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.(1061) 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.(1062) 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.(1063) 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.(1064)

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.”(1065) He was believed to appear, at least occasionally, as a bull.(1066) His images were often, as at Cyzicus, made in bull shape,(1067) or with bull horns;(1068) and he was painted with horns.(1069) Types of the horned Dionysus are found amongst the surviving monuments of antiquity.(1070) On one statuette he appears clad in a bull’s hide, the head, horns, and hoofs hanging down behind.(1071) 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, O goodly bull, O goodly bull!”(1072) According to the myth, it was in the shape of a bull that he was torn to pieces by the Titans;(1073) and the Cretans, in representing the sufferings and death of Dionysus, tore a live bull to pieces with their teeth.(1074) Indeed, the rending and devouring of live bulls and calves appear to have been a regular feature of the Dionysiac rites.(1075) 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._”(1076) To save him from the wrath of Hera, his father Zeus changed him into a kid;(1077) and when the gods fled to Egypt to escape the fury of Typhon, Dionysus was turned into a goat.(1078) Hence when his worshippers rent in pieces a live goat and devoured it raw,(1079) 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.(1080) 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;(1081) and the bull-god Dionysus is called “eater of bulls.”(1082) 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.(1083)

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;(1084) 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.(1085) 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.(1086) 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.(1087)

§ 8.—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(1088) 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.(1089) Thus, as modern scholars have recognised,(1090) Demeter and Proserpine are merely a mythical reduplication of the same natural phenomenon. Proserpine, so ran the Greek myth,(1091) 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,(1092) 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.(1093)

With regard to the name Demeter, it has been plausibly argued by Mannhardt(1094) that the first part of the word is derived from _dēai_, a Cretan word for “barley”;(1095) 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.(1096) As Crete appears to have been one of the most ancient seats of the worship of Demeter,(1097) 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 folk-lore, 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.”(1098) 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.(1099) 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.(1100) 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.(1101) The Lithuanians say, “The Old Rye-woman sits in the corn.”(1102) 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.(1103) 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.(1104)

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.(1105) 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.(1106) 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.(1107) 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.(1108) 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.(1109) 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.(1110) 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 Westerhüsen 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.(1111) 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.(1112) 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.(1113) In Upper Britanny the last sheaf is always made into human shape; but if the farmer is a married man, it is made double and consists of a little corn-puppet placed inside of a large one. This is called the Mother-sheaf. It is delivered to the farmer’s wife, who unties it and gives drink-money in return.(1114)

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.(1115)

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.(1116) 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.(1117)

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.”(1118) 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.”(1119) 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.”(1120) 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.(1121) 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.(1122) 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.”(1123)

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.(1124) 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.(1125) At Weiden in Bavaria it is the cutter, not the binder, of the last sheaf who is tied up in it.(1126) 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.(1127)

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.(1128) Sometimes eight or nine sheaves are tied together to make the Old Woman, and the man who sets it up complains of its weight.(1129) 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.(1130) 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.(1131) Of the person who binds the last sheaf it is said, “She (or he) is the Old Rye-woman.”(1132)

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.(1133) 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(1134)—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.(1135) 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.(1136) The last sheaf is tied up with others into a large bundle, and a green branch is stuck on the top of it.(1137) 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.(1138) 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.(1139)

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.(1140) 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.(1141) 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.(1142)

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.(1143) 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 sycle 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.”(1144) 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.”(1145)

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.(1146) 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.(1147) 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.(1148) 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.(1149) 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.(1150) 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).(1151) 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.”(1152) 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.(1153) 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.(1154) 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.”(1155) 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.(1156) 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.(1157) 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.(1158) 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.”(1159) 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.(1160) 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.(1161) 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.(1162)

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,(1163) 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 versâ_; 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.(1164) 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.(1165) 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(1166) 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.(1167) 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.(1168) 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;(1169) by the belief that the woman who binds the last sheaf will have a child next year;(1170) perhaps, too, by the idea that the person who gets it will marry next year.(1171)

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,(1172) 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 Women 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;(1173) by making the Old Woman heavy in order to get a heavy crop next year;(1174) by strewing grain from the last sheaf amongst the young crops in spring;(1175) and giving the last sheaf to the cattle to make them thrive.(1176)

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.(1177) 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_.”(1178) 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.”(1179) 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 Zapotecs 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.(1180) 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 seed-time 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.”(1181)

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.”(1182) The same need of securing the soul of the rice, if the crop is to thrive, is keenly felt by the Karens of Burma. When a rice-field does not flourish, they suppose that the soul (_kelah_) of the rice is in some way detained from the rice. If the soul cannot be called back, the crop will fail. The following formula is used in recalling the _kelah_ (soul) of the rice: “O come, rice-_kelah_, come! Come to the field. Come to the rice. With seed of each gender, come. Come from the river Kho, come from the river Kaw; from the place where they meet, come. Come from the West, come from the East. From the throat of the bird, from the maw of the ape, from the throat of the elephant. Come from the sources of rivers and their mouths. Come from the country of the Shan and Burman. From the distant kingdoms come. From all granaries come. O rice-_kelah_, come to the rice.”(1183) Again, the European custom of representing the corn-spirit in the double form of bride and bridegroom(1184) 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-pëngantèn_, 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.(1185)

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,(1186) may be compared with the West Prussian custom of the mock birth of a child on the harvest field.(1187) In this Prussian custom the pretended mother represents the Corn-mother (_Žytniamatka_); the pretended child represents the Corn-baby, and the whole ceremony is a charm to ensure a crop next year.(1188) 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.(1189) 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.(1190) 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(1191) would thus be a mythical expression for the sowing of the seed; her reappearance in spring(1192) 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 rôle 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,(1193) 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,(1194) 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.(1195) 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.(1196) 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;(1197) 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,(1198) 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.

§ 9.—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.(1199) 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.(1200) 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.(1201) 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.(1202) 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.(1203)

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.(1204) According to one story Linus was brought up by a shepherd, but torn to pieces by his dogs.(1205) 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;(1206) at least Sappho seems to have regarded Adonis and Linus as equivalent.(1207)

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.(1208)

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.(1209) 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.(1210)

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,(1211) 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.(1212) 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.”(1213) 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.(1214)

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,(1215) 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.(1216) In other villages round Stettin, when the last harvest-waggon is being loaded, there is a regular race amongst the women, each striving not to be last. For she who places the last sheaf on the waggon is called the Old Man, and is completely swathed in corn-stalks; she is also decked with flowers, and flowers and a helmet of straw are placed on her head. In solemn procession she carries the harvest-crown to the squire, over whose head she holds it while she utters a string of good wishes. At the dance which follows, the Old Man has the right to choose his (or rather her) partner; it is an honour to dance with him.(1217) 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.(1218) 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.(1219) 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.(1220) At Brie, Isle de France, the farmer himself is tied up in the _first_ sheaf.(1221) 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.(1222) 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.(1223) At Nördlingen, Bavaria, the man who gives the last stroke at threshing is wrapt in straw and rolled on the threshing-floor.(1224) 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.(1225) 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.(1226)

“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.”(1227)

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 Jhámájí, 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.”(1228)

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.(1229) 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.(1230) 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.(1231) 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.(1232) In Wilkischken (district of Tilsit) the man who cuts the last corn goes by the name of “The killer of the Rye-woman.”(1233) In Lithuania, again, the corn-spirit is believed to be killed at threshing as well as at reaping. When only a single pile of corn remains to be threshed, all the threshers suddenly step back a few paces, as if at the word of command. Then they fall to work plying their flails with the utmost rapidity and vehemence, till they come to the last bundle. Upon this they fling themselves with almost frantic fury, straining every nerve, and raining blows on it till the word “Halt!” rings out sharply from the leader. The man whose flail is the last to fall after the command to stop has been given is immediately surrounded by all the rest, crying out that “He has struck the Old Rye-woman dead.” He has to expiate the deed by treating them to brandy; and, like the man who cuts the last corn, he is known as “The killer of the Old Rye-woman.”(1234) 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.”(1235) We have already had examples of burning the figure which represents the corn-spirit.(1236) 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.”(1237) 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.(1238) At Volders, in the Tyrol, husks of corn are stuck behind the neck of the man who gives the last stroke at threshing, and he is throttled with a straw garland. If he is tall, it is believed that the corn will be tall next year. Then he is tied on a bundle and flung into the river.(1239) 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.(1240) 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.(1241)

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.(1242) 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.(1243) 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.”(1244) “To have the key” is an expression used by harvesters elsewhere in the sense of to cut or bind or thresh the last sheaf;(1245) 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 clay 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.(1246) 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.(1247) 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.”(1248)

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.(1249)

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.(1250) 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!”(1251)

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.(1252) 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.”(1253) 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.(1254) 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.(1255) 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.(1256) 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.(1257) 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.(1258) 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.(1259)

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.(1260) 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.(1261) 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.”(1262) Another series of human sacrifices offered in Mexico to make the maize thrive has been already referred to.(1263) 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 tomahawk and shot him with arrows. According to one trader, the squaws then cut pieces of flesh from the victim’s body, with which they greased their hoes; but this was denied by another trader who had been present at the ceremony. Immediately after the sacrifice the people proceeded to plant their fields. A particular account has been preserved of the sacrifice of a Sioux girl by the Pawnees in April 1837 or 1838. The girl 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.(1264)

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.(1265) 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.(1266) A similar sacrifice is still annually offered at Benin, Guinea.(1267) 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.(1268)

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.(1269)

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.(1270) 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.(1271) 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.”(1272) The victims were often kept for years before they were sacrificed. Being regarded as consecrated beings, they were treated with extreme affection, mingled with deference, and were welcomed wherever they went. A Meriah youth, on attaining maturity, was generally given a wife, who was herself usually a Meriah or victim; and with her he received a portion of land and farm-stock. Their offspring were also victims. Human sacrifices were offered to the Earth Goddess by tribes, branches of tribes, or villages, both at periodical festivals and on extraordinary occasions. The periodical sacrifices were generally so arranged by tribes and divisions of tribes that each head of a family was enabled, at least once a year, to procure a shred of flesh for his fields, generally about the time when his chief crop was laid down.(1273)

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.(1274) 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.(1275) 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.”(1276)

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.(1277) 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.(1278) 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.(1279) 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.(1280) 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.(1281) 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.(1282) 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.(1283)

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.(1284) 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.(1285) In some places each man carried his portion of flesh to the stream which watered his fields, and there hung it on a pole.(1286) 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.(1287) Sometimes, however, the head and bones were buried, not burnt.(1288) 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.(1289)

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, intrinsic 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,”(1290) and Major Macpherson says, “A species of reverence, which it is not easy to distinguish from adoration, is paid to him.”(1291) 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.(1292) 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.(1293) 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;(1294) 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;(1295) 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.(1296) 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.(1297) 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.(1298) 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.(1299) Sometimes it is thought that the person who binds the last sheaf on the field will die in the course of next year.(1300) 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.(1301) 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,(1302) 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.”(1303) 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.(1304) Again, the representative of Attis appears to have been slain in spring; whereas Lityerses must have been slain in summer or autumn, according to the time of the harvest in Phrygia.(1305) 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 license of a harvest-home permitted them to play off on a passing stranger, a comrade, or even on their master himself.

I have dwelt on the Lityerses song at length because it affords so many points of comparison with European and savage folk-custom. The other harvest songs of Western Asia and Egypt, to which attention has been called above,(1306) may now be dismissed much more briefly. The similarity of the Bithynian Bormus(1307) 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.(1308) 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.(1309) 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.(1310) 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.(1311) 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.(1312) 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.(1313) 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.(1314) 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.(1315) 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.(1316) 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”(1317) 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.(1318) 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.(1319) Similarly the Romans sacrificed red-haired puppies in spring, in the belief that the crops would thus grow ripe and ruddy;(1320) and to this day in sowing wheat a Bavarian sower will sometimes wear a golden ring, that the corn may grow yellow.(1321) Again, the scattering of the Egyptian victim’s ashes is identical with the Marimo and Khond custom.(1322) 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.(1323) 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,(1324) 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.(1325) 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,(1326) 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,(1327) and sacrificed to the green Demeter in spring with mirth and gladness.(1328)

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.”(1329) 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_.’ ”(1330) 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.(1331) 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,(1332) 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.(1333) Near Trèves, the man who reaps the last standing corn “cuts the goat’s neck off.”(1334) At Faslane, on the Gareloch (Dumbartonshire), the last handful of standing corn was sometimes called the “head.”(1335) At Aurich, in East Friesland, the man who reaps the last corn “cuts the hare’s tail off.”(1336) In mowing down the last corner of a field French reapers sometimes call out, “We have the cat by the tail.”(1337) 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.(1338) 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.(1339) 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.(1340)

FOOTNOTES

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_, _B. K._, _A. W. F._, and _M. F._

2 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._

3 Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 756; Cato quoted by Priscian, see Peter’s _Historic. Roman. Fragmenta_, p. 52 (lat. ed.); Statius, _Sylv._ iii. 1, 56.

4 ξιφήρης οὖν ἐστιν ἀεί, περισκοπῶν τὰς ἐπιθέσεις, ἕτοιμος ἀμύνεσθαι, is Strabo’s description (v. 3, 12), who may have seen him “pacing there alone.”

5 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._”

_ 6 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.

7 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._”

8 Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 269; Propertius, iii. 24 (30), 9 _sq._ ed. Paley.

_ 9 Inscript. Lat._ ed. Orelli, No. 1455.

10 Statius, _l.c._; Gratius Faliscus, v. 483 sqq.

_ 11 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._

12 Festus, p. 145, ed. Müller; Schol. on Persius, vi. 56 _ap._ Jahn on Macrobius, i. 7, 35.

13 Virgil, _Aen._ vii. 761 _sqq._; Servius, _ad l._; Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 265 _sq._; _id. Met._ xv. 497 _sqq._; Pausanias, ii. 27.

14 Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ vii. 776.

_ 15 Inscript. Lat._ ed. Orelli, Nos. 2212, 4022. The inscription No. 1457 (Orelli) is said to be spurious.

16 See above, p. 4, note 1.

17 Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii.2 321 _sqq._

18 G. Gilbert, _Handbuch der griechischen Staatsalterthümer_, i. 241 _sq._

19 Gilbert, _op. cit._ ii. 323 _sq._

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

21 Demosthenes, _contra Neacr._ § 74, p. 1370. Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 63.

22 Xenophon, _Repub. Lac._ c. 15, cp. _id._ 13; Aristotle, _Pol._ iii. 14, 3.

23 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.

24 Grimm, _Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer_, p. 243.

25 See the _Lî-Kî_ (Legge’s translation), _passim_.

26 A. Leared, _Morocco and the Moors_, p. 272.

27 J. W. Thomas, “De jacht op het eiland Nias,” in _Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde_, xxvi. 277.

28 E. Aymonier, “Notes sur les coutumes et croyances superstitieuses des Cambodgiens,” in _Cochinchine Française, Excursions et Reconnaissances_, No. 16, p. 157.

29 Witzschel, _Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen_, p. 218, No. 36.

30 Van Hasselt, _Volksbeschrijving van Midden-Sumatra_, p. 323.

31 J. C. E. Tromp, “De Rambai en Sebroeang Dajaks,” _Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde_, xxv. 118.

32 E. Aymonier, _Notes sur le Laos_, p. 25 _sq._

33 J. Campbell, _Travels in South Africa_ (second journey), ii. 206; Barnabas Shaw, _Memorials of South Africa_, p. 66.

34 Casalis, _The Basutos_, p. 271 _sq._

35 Casalis, _The Basutos_, p. 272.

36 W. Mannhardt, _Antike Wald- und Feldkulte_, p. 342, _note_.

37 C. F. H. Campen “De Godsdienstbegrippen der Halmaherasche Alfoeren,” in _Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde_, xxvii. 447.

38 Riedel, _De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua_, p. 114.

39 R. Parkinson, _Im Bismarck Archipel_, p. 143.

40 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.

_ 41 Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xvi. 35. Cp. Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 98.

42 Labat, _Relation historique de l’Ethiopie occidentale_, ii. 180.

43 Turner, _Samoa_, p. 145.

_ 44 Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ xiv. 362.

_ 45 Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ _l.c._ Cp. Curr, _The Australian Race_, ii. 377.

46 Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, p. 184; Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_4 i. 494. Cp. San-Marte, _Die Arthur Sage_, pp. 105 sq., 153 sqq.

_ 47 The American Antiquarian_, viii. 339.

48 Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, p. 185 sq.

_ 49 Ib._ p. 187. So at the fountain of Sainte Anne, near Gevezé, in Brittany. Sébillot, _Traditions et Superstitions de la Haute Bretagne_, i. 72.

50 Lamberti, “Relation de la Colchide ou Mingrélie,” _Voyages au Nord_, vii. 174 (Amsterdam, 1725).

51 Le Brun, _Histoire critique des pratiques superstitieuses_ (Amsterdam, 1733), i. 245 sq.

52 Turner, _Samoa_, p. 345 _sq._

53 Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 329 _sqq._; 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.

54 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 331.

55 J. G. F. Riedel, “De Minahasa in 1825,” _Tijdschrift v. Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde_, xviii. 524.

56 J. Reinegg, _Beschreibung des Kaukasus_, ii. 114.

57 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 553; Gerard, _The Land beyond the Forest_, ii. 40.

_ 58 Panjab Notes and Queries_, iii. Nos. 173, 513.

59 Acosta, _History of the Indies_, bk. v. ch. 28.

60 A. L. van Hasselt, _Volksbeschrijving van Midden-Sumatra_, p. 320 _sq._

_ 61 South African Folk-lore Journal_, i. 34.

62 J. S. G. Gramberg, “Eene maand in de binnenlanden van Timor,” in _Verhandelingen van het Bataviansch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen_, xxxvi. 209.

63 Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 88.

64 Huc, _L’empire chinois_, i. 241.

65 Bérenger-Féraud, _Les peuplades de la Sénégambie_, p. 291.

_ 66 Colombia, being a geographical etc. account of that country_, i. 642 _sq._; A. Bastian, _Die Culturlander des alten Amerika_, ii. 216.

67 A. Kuhn, _Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen aus Westfalen_, ii. p. 80; Gerard, _The Land beyond the Forest_, ii. 13.

68 Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_, i. 520.

69 Brien, “Aperçu sur la province de Battambang,” in _Cochinchine française, Excursions et Reconnaissances_, No. 25, p. 6 _sq._

70 Biddulph, _Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh_, p. 95.

71 Gervasius von Tilburg, ed. Liebrecht, p. 41 _sq._

72 Giraldus Cambrensis, _Topography of Ireland_, ch. 7. Cp. Mannhardt, _A. W. F._ p. 341 _note_.

73 Callaway, _Religious System of the Amazulu_, p. 407 _sq._

74 Reclus, _Nouvelle Géographie Universelle_, xii. 100.

75 Rasmussen, _Additamenta ad historiam Arabum ante Islamismum_, p. 67 _sq._

_ 76 Reste arabischen Heidentumes_, p. 157.

77 Labat, _Relation historique de l’Ethiopie occidentale_, ii. 180.

78 S. Gason, “The Dieyerie tribe,” in _Native Tribes of S. Australia_, p. 276 _sqq._

79 W. Stanbridge, “On the Aborigines of Victoria,” in _Trans. Ethnol. Soc. of London_, i. 300.

80 Marcus Antoninus, v. 7; Petronius, 44; Tertullian, _Apolog._ 40; cp. _id._ 22 and 23.

81 Pausanias, viii. 38, 4.

82 Antigonus, _Histor. Mirab._ 15 (_Script. mirab. Graeci_, ed. Westermann, p. 65).

83 Apollodorus, _Bibl._ i. 9, 7; Virgil, _Aen._ vi. 585 _sqq._; Servius on Virgil, _l.c._

84 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._

85 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._

86 Diodorus, v. 55.

87 Peter Jones, _History of the Ojebway Indians_, p. 84.

88 Gumilla, _Histoire de l’Orénoque_, iii. 243 _sq._

89 Glaumont, “Usages, mœurs et coutumes des Néo-Calédoniens,” in _Revue d’ Ethnographie_, vi. 116.

90 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.

91 Codrington, in _Journ. Anthrop. Instit._ x. 278.

92 Above, p. 18.

93 Turner, _Samoa_, p. 346. See above, p. 16.

94 Bastian, _Die Völker des östlichen Asien_, iv. 174. The name of the place is Andahuayllas.

95 Th. Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, i. 250.

96 Schoolcraft, _The American Indians_, p. 97 _sqq._; Gill, _Myths and Songs of the South Pacific_, p. 61 _sq._; Turner, _Samoa_, p. 200 _sq._

97 Aeneas Sylvius, _Opera_ (Bâle, 1571), p. 418.

98 Brough Smyth, _Aborigines of Victoria_, ii. 334; Curr, _The Australian Race_, i. 50.

99 Fancourt, _History of Yucatan_, p. 118.

_ 100 South African Folk-lore Journal_, i. 34.

101 E. J. Eyre, _Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia_, ii. 365.

102 Curr, _The Australian Race_, iii. 145.

103 Gmelin, _Reise durch Sibirien_, ii. 510.

_ 104 Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_ (Washington), p. 241.

105 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.

106 W. Powell, _Wanderings in a Wild Country_, p. 169.

107 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.

108 Olaus Magnus, _Gentium Septentr. Hist._ iii. 15.

109 Scheffer, _Lapponia_, p. 144; Gordon Cumming, _In the Hebrides_, p. 254 _sq._; Train, _Account of the Isle of Man_, ii. 166.

110 C. Leemius, _De Lapponibus Finmarchiae etc. commentatio_, p. 454.

_ 111 Odyssey_, x. 19 _sqq._

112 E. Veckenstedt, _Die Mythen, Sagen, und Legenden der Zamaiten (Litauer)_, i. 153.

113 J. Chalmers, _Pioneering in New Guinea_, p. 177.

114 Rogers, _Social Life in Scotland_, iii. 220; Sir W. Scott, _Pirate_, note to ch. vii.; Shaks. _Macbeth_, Act i. Sc. 3, l. 11.

115 Dapper, _Description de l’Afrique_ (Amsterdam, 1686), p. 389.

116 A. Peter, _Volksthümliches aus Oesterreichisch Schlesien_, ii. 259.

_ 117 Arctic Papers for the Expedition of 1875_ (R. Geogr. Soc.), p. 274.

118 Azara, _Voyages dans l’Amérique Méridionale_, ii. 137.

119 Charlevoix, _Histoire du Paraguay_, i. 74.

120 W. A. Henry, “Bijdrage tot de Kennis der Bataklanden,” in _Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde_, xvii. 23 sq.

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

122 Harris, _Highlands of Ethiopia_, i. 352.

123 Brough Smyth, _Aborigines of Victoria_, i. 457 _sq._; cp. _id._ ii. 270; _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ xiii. p. 194 _note_.

124 Denzil C. J. Ibbetson, _Settlement Report of the Panipat Tahsil and Karnal Parganah of the Karnal District_, p. 154.

125 Stephen Powers, _Tribes of California_, p. 328.

126 Sébillot, _Coutumes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne_, p. 302 sq.

127 Mannhardt, _A. W. F._ p. 85.

128 Gill, _Myths and Songs of the South Pacific_, p. 35.

129 See for examples E. B. Tylor, _Primitive Culture_,2 ii. 131 _sqq._

130 Pausanias, ii. 24, 1. κάτοχος ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ γίνεται is the expression.

131 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.

132 Caldwell, “On demonolatry in Southern India,” _Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay_, i. 101 _sq._

133 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 à la recherche de La Perouse_, v. 443.

134 F. J. Mone, _Geschichte des Heidenthums im nördlichen Europa_, i. 188.

135 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.

136 Biddulph, _Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh_, p. 97.

137 Lucian, _Bis accus._, I; Tzetzes, _Schol. ad Lycophr._, 6.

138 Vambery, _Das Türkenvolk_, p. 158.

139 Plutarch, _De defect. oracul._ 46, 49.

140 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.

141 Moura, _Le Royaume du Cambodge_, i. 177 _sq._

142 Pausanias, x. 32, 6.

143 Vincendon-Dumoulin et Desgraz, _Iles Marquises_, pp. 226, 240 _sq._

144 Moerenhout, _Voyages aux Iles du Grand Océan_, i. 479; Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, iii. 94.

145 Tyerman and Bennet, _Journal of Voyages and Travels in the South Sea Islands, China, India, etc._, i. 524; cp. p. 529 _sq._

146 Tyerman and Bennet, _op. cit._ i. 529 _sq._

147 Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, iii. 108.

148 Turner, _Samoa_, pp. 37, 48, 57, 58, 59, 73.

149 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.

150 Kubary, “Die Religion der Pelauer,” in Bastian’s _Allerlei aus Volks- und Menschenkunde_, i. 30 _sqq._

151 F. Valentyn, _Oud en nieuw Oost-Indiën_, iii. 7 _sq._

152 Bastian, _Die Völker des östlichen Asien_, iv. 383.

153 Monier Williams, _Religious Life and Thought in India_, p. 259.

_ 154 The Laws of Manu_, vii. 8, trans. by G. Bühler.

155 Monier Williams, _op. cit._ p. 259 _sq._

156 Marshall, _Travels among the Todas_, pp. 136, 137; cp. pp. 141, 142; Metz, _Tribes of the Neilgherry Hills_, p. 19 _sqq._

157 Allen and Thomson, _Narrative of the Expedition to the River Niger in 1841_, i. 288.

158 G. Massaja, _I miei trentacinque anni di missione nell’ alta Etiopia_ (Rome and Milan, 1888), v. 53 _sq._

159 E. Aymonier, _Notes sur le Laos_, p. 141 _sq._

160 Robinson, _Descriptive Account of Assam_, p. 342 _sq._; _Asiatic Researches_, xv. 146.

161 Huc, _Souvenirs d’un Voyage dans la Tartarie et le Thibet_, i. 279 _sqq._ ed. 12mo.

162 Huc, _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.

163 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._

164 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.

165 “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.

166 Ogilby, _Africa_, p. 615; Dapper, _op. cit._ p. 400.

167 Dos Santos, “History of Eastern Ethiopia,” in Pinkerton, _Voyages and Travels_, xvi. 682, 687 _sq._

168 F. S. Arnot, _Garenganze; or, Seven Years’ Pioneer Mission Work in Central Africa_, London, N.D. (preface dated March 1889), p. 78.

169 MS. notes by E. Beardmore.

170 Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, ii. 439.

171 Labat, _Relation historique de l’Ethiopie Occidentale_, ii. 172-176.

172 Schol. on Apollonius Rhod. ii. 1248. καὶ Ἡρόδωρος ξένως περὶ τῶν δεσμῶν τοῦ Προμηθέως ταῦτα. Εἴναι γὰρ αὐτὸν Σκυθῶν βασιλέα φησί; καὶ μὴ δυνάμενον παρέχειν τοῖς ὑπηκόοις τὰ ἐπιτήδεια, διὰ τὸν καλούμενον Ἀετὸν ποταμὸν ἐπικλύζειν τὰ πεδία, δεθῆναι ὑπὸ τῶν Σκυθῶν.

173 H. Hecquard, _Reise an der Küste und in das Innere von West Afrika_, p. 78.

174 Bastian, _Die Deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste_, i. 354, ii. 230.

175 J. Leighton Wilson, _West Afrika_, p. 93 (German translation).

176 Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii. 5, 14.

177 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.

178 C. Russwurm, “Aberglaube in Russland,” in _Zeitschrift für Deutsche Mythologie und Sittenkunde_, iv. 162; Liebrecht, _op. cit._, p. 15.

179 Turner, _Samoa_, p. 304 _sq._

180 Plutarch, _Isis et Osiris_, 73.

181 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.)

182 Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_, ii. 146.

183 Dennys, _Folk-lore of China_, p. 125.

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

185 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._

186 Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii. 5, 14; Plutarch, _Isis et Osiris_, 73.

187 V. von Strauss und Carnen, _op. cit._ p. 470.

188 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._

189 Bastian, _Die Deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste_, ii. 230.

190 “Excursion de M. Brun-Rollet dans la région supérieure du Nil,” _Bulletin de la Société de Géographie_, Paris, 1852, pt. ii. p. 421 _sqq._

191 W. Munzinger, _Ostafrikanische Studien_, p. 474 (Schaffhausen, 1864).

192 J. Moura, _Le Royaume du Cambodge_, i. 432-436; Aymonier, “Notes sur les coutumes et croyances superstitieuses des Cambodgìens,” in _Cochinchine Française, Excursions et Reconnaissances_, No. 16, p. 172 _sq._; _id._, _Notes sur le Laos_, p. 60.

193 Caesar, _Bell. Gall._ vi. 25.

194 Elton, _Origins of English History_, pp. 3, 106 _sq._, 224.

195 W. Helbig, _Die Italiker in der Poebene_, p. 25 _sq._

196 H. Nissen, _Italische Landeskunde_, p. 431 _sqq._

197 Neumann und Partsch, _Physikalische Geographie von Griechenland_, p. 357 _sqq._

198 Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_,4 i. 53 _sqq._

199 The _locus classicus_ is Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. § 249 _sqq._

200 Grimm, _D. M._ i. 56 _sqq._

201 Adam of Bremen, _Descriptio Insul. Aquil._ p. 27.

202 “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._

203 Mathias Michov, “De Sarmatia Asiana atque Europea,” 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.

204 See Bötticher, _Der Baumkultus der Hellenen_.

205 Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xv. § 77; Tacitus, _Ann._ xiii. 58.

206 Plutarch, _Romulus_, 20.

207 J. L. Krapf, _Travels, Researches, and Missionary Labours during an Eighteen Years’ Residence in Eastern Africa_, p. 198.

208 Loubere, _Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam_, p. 126.

209 Hupe “Over de godsdienst, zeden, enz. der Dajakker’s” in _Tijdschrift voor Neêrland’s Indië_, 1846, dl. iii. 158.

210 Merolla, “Voyage to Congo,” in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, xvi. 236.

211 Monier Williams, _Religious Life and Thought in India_, p. 334 _sq._

212 Sir Henry M. Elliot and J. Beames, _Memoirs on the History etc. of the Races of the North Western Provinces of India_, i. 233.

_ 213 Die gestriegelte Rockenphilosophie_ (Chemnitz, 1759), p. 239 _sq._; U. Jahn, _Die deutsche Opfergebräuche bei Ackerbau und Viehzucht_, p. 214 _sqq._

214 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.

215 Van Hoëvell, _Ambon en meer bepaaldelijk de Oeliasers_, p. 62.

_ 216 The Indian Antiquary_, i. 170.

217 J. Aubrey, _Remaines of Gentilisme_, p. 247.

218 Peter Jones’s _History of the Ojebway Indians_, p. 104.

219 A. Peter, _Volksthümliches aus Österreichisch-Schlesien_, ii. 30.

220 Bastian, _Indonesien_, i. 154; cp. _id._, _Die Völker des estlichen Asien_, ii. 457 _sq._, iii. 251 _sq._, iv. 42 _sq._

221 Loubere, _Siam_, p. 126.

222 Turner, _Samoa_, p. 63.

223 Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 35 _sq._

_ 224 Native Tribes of South Australia_, p. 280.

225 Blumentritt, “Der Ahnencultus und die religiösen Anschauungen der Malaien des Philippinen-Archipels,” in _Mittheilungen der Wiener Geogr. Gesellschaft_, 1882, p. 165 _sq._

226 Landes, “Contes et légendes annamites,” No. 9, in _Cochinchine Française, Excursions et Reconnaissances_, No. 20, p. 310.

227 Kubary in Bastian’s _Allerlei aus Mensch-und Volkenkunde_, i. 52.

228 Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 25; Bastian, _Volkerstämme am Brahmaputra_, p. 37.

_ 229 Journal R. Asiatic Society_, vii. (1843) 29.

230 Bastian, _Indonesien_, i. 17.

231 Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, pp. 186, 188; cp. Bastian, _Volkerstämme am Brahmaputra_, p. 9.

232 Dalton, _op. cit._ p. 33; Bastian, _op. cit._ p. 16. Cp. W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, i. 125.

233 Van Hasselt, _Volksbeschrijving van Midden-Sumatra_, p. 156.

_ 234 Handbook of Folk-lore_, p. 19 (proof).

235 Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 83.

236 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-Literarischen Gesellschaft_, xiv. 82 _sqq._ (Mitau, 1868).

237 Simon Grünau, _Preussische Chronik_, ed. Perlbach (Leipzig 1876), p. 89; “Prisca antiquorum Prutenorum religio,” in _Respublica sive Status Regni Poloniae_ etc., p. 321.

238 B. Hagen, “Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Battareligion,” in _Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde_, xxviii. 530 _note_.

239 Bastian, _Die Völker des östlichen Asien_, i. 134.

240 Matthias Michov, in _Novus Orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum_, p. 457.

241 Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_,4, i. 497; cp. ii. 540, 541.

242 Max Buch, _Die Wotjaken_, p. 124.

243 Biddulph, _Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh_, p. 116.

244 Cato, _De agri cultura_, 139.

245 Henzen, _Acta fratrum arvalium_ (Berlin, 1874), p. 138.

246 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.

247 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.

248 Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 186.

249 Aymonier in _Excursions et Reconnaissances_, No. 16, p. 175 _sq._

250 See above, pp. 13, 21.

251 Above, p. 16.

252 Mannhardt, _B. K._ pp. 158, 159, 170, 197, 214, 351, 514.

253 Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 188.

254 Labat, _Voyage du Chevalier des Marchais en Guinée, Isles voisines, et à Cayenne_ (Paris, 1730), i. 338.

255 L. Lloyd, _Peasant Life in Sweden_, p. 266.

256 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 190 _sqq._

257 Mannhardt, _A. W. F._ p. 212 _sqq._

258 H. Low, _Sarawak_, p. 274.

259 T. H. Lewin, _Wild Races of South-eastern India_, p. 270.

260 J. Mackenzie, _Ten years north of the Orange River_, p. 385.

261 Rev. J. Macdonald, MS. notes.

262 Biddulph, _Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh_, p. 103 _sq._

263 Biddulph, _op. cit._ p. 106 _sq._

264 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.

265 Quoted by Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, i. 227, Bohn’s ed.

266 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 174.

267 Holzmayer, “Osiliana,” _Verhandlungen der Estnischen Gesell. zu Dorpat_, vii. 10 _sq._; Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 407 _sq._

268 Potocki, _Voyage dans les steps d’Astrakhan et du Caucase_ (Paris, 1829), i. 309.

269 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 163 _sqq._ To his authorities add, for Sardinia, R. Tennant, _Sardinia and its Resources_ (Rome and London, 1885), p. 185 _sq._

270 Radloff, _Proben der Volkslitteratur der nördlichen Türkischen Stämme_, v. 2.

271 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 51 _sq._

272 Merolla, “Voyage to Congo,” in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, xvi. 236 _sq._

273 Bötticher, _Der Baumkultus der Hellenen_, p. 30 _sq._

274 Quoted by Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, i. 246 (ed. Bohn).

275 Dyer, _British Popular Customs_, p. 254.

276 Borlase, cited by Brand, _op. cit._ i. 222.

277 Brand, _op. cit._ i. 212 _sq._

278 Dyer, _Popular British Customs_, p. 233.

279 Chambers, _Book of Days_, i. 578; Dyer, _op. cit._ p. 237 _sq._

280 Dyer, _op. cit._ p. 243.

281 E. Cortet, _Fêtes religieuses_, p. 167 _sqq._

_ 282 Revue des Traditions populaires_, ii. 200.

283 Ralston, _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 234 _sq._

284 A. Kuhn, _Märkische Sagen und Märchen_, p. 315.

285 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 162.

286 L. Lloyd, _Peasant Life in Sweden_, p. 235.

287 L. Lloyd, _op. cit._ p. 257 _sqq._

288 Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen_, p. 308 _sq._

289 Hone, _Every-day Book_, i. 547 _sqq._; Chambers, _Book of Days_, i. 571.

290 Quoted by Brand, _op. cit._ i. 237.

_ 291 Id._, _op. cit._ i. 235.

292 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 169 _sq._ _note_.

293 Hone, _Every-day Book_, ii. 597 _sq._

294 Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen_, p. 217; Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 566.

295 Birlinger, _Volksthümliches aus Schwaben_, ii. 74 _sq._; Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 566.

296 Aristophanes, _Plutus_, 1054; Mannhardt, _A. W. F._ p. 222 _sq._

297 Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen_, p. 86 _sqq._; Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 156.

298 Chambers, _Book of Days_, i. 573.

299 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 312.

300 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 313.

_ 301 Ib._ p. 314.

_ 302 Bavaria, Landes-und Volkskunde des Königreichs Bayern_, iii. 357; Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 312 _sq._

303 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 313 _sq._

304 Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 261.

305 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 315 _sq._

306 Ralston, _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 234.

307 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 318.

308 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 318; Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_,4 ii. 657.

309 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 320; Witzschel, _Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen_, p. 211.

310 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 322; Hone, _Every-day Book_, i. 583 _sqq._; Dyer, _British Popular Customs_, p. 230 _sq._

311 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 323.

_ 312 Ib._

313 Birlinger, _Volksthümliches aus Schwaben_, ii. 114 _sq._; Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 325.

314 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 341 _sq._

315 Kuhn und Schwartz, _Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche_, p. 380.

316 Kuhn und Schwartz, _op. cit._ p. 384; Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 342.

317 Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen_, p. 260 _sq._; Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 342 _sq._

318 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 347 _sq._; Witzschel, _Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen_, p. 203.

319 Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen_, p. 253 _sqq._

320 Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen_, p. 262; Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 353 _sq._

_ 321 B. K._ p. 355.

322 Above, p. 18.

323 Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen_, p. 93; Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 344.

324 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 343 _sq._

325 Dyer, _British Popular Customs_, p. 270 _sq._

326 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 344 _sq._; Cortet, _Fêtes religieuses_, p. 160 _sqq._; Monnier, _Traditions populaires comparées_, p. 282 _sqq._; Bérenger-Féraud, _Réminiscences populaires de la Provence_, p. 1 _sqq._

327 Above, p. 60.

328 Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen_, p. 265 _sq._; Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 422.

329 Monnier, _Traditions populaires comparées_, p. 304; Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 423.

330 Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, i. 233 _sq._ Bohn’s ed.; Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 424.

331 E. Sommer, _Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Sachsen und Thüringen_, p. 151 _sq._; Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 431 _sq._

332 This custom was told to Mannhardt by a French prisoner in the war of 1870-71, _B. K._ p. 434.

333 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 434 _sq._

_ 334 Ib._ p. 435.

335 Martin, “Description of the Western Islands of Scotland,” in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, iii. 613; Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 436.

_ 336 Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century_, from the MSS. of John Ramsay of Ochtertyre. Edited by Alex. Allardyce (Edinburgh, 1888), ii. 447.

337 Kuhn, _Märkische Sagen und Märchen_, p. 318 _sqq._; Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 437.

338 Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 438.

339 Monnier, _Traditions populaires comparées_, p. 283 _sq._; Cortet, _Fêtes religieuses_, p. 162 _sq._; Mannhardt, _B. K._ p. 439 _sq._

340 Above, pp. 69 _sqq._, 85.

341 See especially his _Antike Wald- und Feldkulte_.

342 Pausanias, ix. 3; Plutarch, _ap._ Eusebius, _Praepar. Evang._ iii. 1 _sq._

343 Above, p. 76 _sq._

344 Above, p. 79.

_ 345 B. K._ p. 177.

_ 346 B. K._ p. 177 _sq._

347 Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, i. 318, Bohn’s ed.; _B. K._ p. 178.

348 Hone, _Every-day Book_, ii. 595 _sq._; _B. K._ p. 178.

349 Pausanias, viii. 42.

350 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 _mukyl’c in_, the earth-wife, in order that she might influence him for good.”—Max Buch, _Die Wotjäken, eine ethnologische Studie_ (Stuttgart, 1882), p. 137.

351 At Cnossus in Crete, Diodorus, v. 72; at Samos, Lactantius, _Instit._ i. 17; at Athens, Photius, _sv._ ἱερὸν γάμον; _Etymolog. Magn._ _sv._ ἱερομνήμονες, p. 468. 52.

_ 352 Iliad_, xiv. 347 _sqq._

353 Demosthenes, _Neaer._ § 73 _sqq._ p. 1369 _sq._; Hesychius, _svv._ Διονύσου γάμος and γεραραί; _Etymol. Magn._ _sv._ γεραῖραι; Pollux, viii. 108; Aug. Mommsen, _Heortologie_, p. 357 _sqq._; Hermann, _Gottesdienstliche Alterthümer_,2 § 32. 15, § 58. 11 _sqq._

354 Above, p. 7.

355 Above, p. 94.

356 Above, p. 95 _sq._

357 Preller, _Griech. Mythol._3 i. 559.

358 Hyginus, _Astronomica_, i. 5.

359 Servius on Virgil, _Georg._ iii. 332, _nam, ut diximus, et omnis quercus Jovi est consecrata, et omnis lucus Dianae_.

360 Roscher’s _Lexikon d. Griech. u. Röm. Mythologie_, c. 1005.

361 See above, p. 4. For Diana in this character, see Roscher, _op. cit._ c. 1007.

362 Roscher, c. 1006 _sq._

363 Castren, _Finnische Mythologie_, p. 97.

364 Mathias Michov, “De Sarmatia Asiana atque Europea,” in _Novus Orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum_, p. 457.

365 Livy, i. 45; Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 4.

366 Virgil, _Aen._ viii. 600 _sq._, with Servius’s note.

367 Castren, _op. cit._ p. 97 _sq._

368 Above, p. 4 _sq._

369 Above, p. 66 _sq._

370 Above, p. 6.

371 Above, p. 71.

372 Castren, _Finnische Mythologie_, pp. 92, 95.

_ 373 Historic. Roman. Fragm._ ed. Peter, p. 52 (first ed.)

_ 374 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._

375 Kaempfer, “History of Japan,” in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, vii. 716 _sq._

376 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.

377 A. Bastian, _Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste_, i. 287 _sq._; cp. _id._, p. 353 _sq._

378 Labat, _Relation historique de l’Ethiopie Occidentale_, i. 254 _sqq._

379 Above, pp. 44, 49.

380 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._

381 Bastian, _Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste_, i. 355.

382 Dapper, _Description de l’Afrique_, p. 336.

383 P. 49 _sq._

_ 384 Bibl. Hist._ i. 70.

385 P. 6.

386 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._

387 P. 54.

388 P. 48.

389 Bastian, _Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste_, i. 354 _sq._; ii. 9, 11.

_ 390 Manners and Customs of the Japanese_, pp. 199 _sqq._ 355 _sqq._

391 Richard, “History of Tonquin,” in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, ix. 744 _sqq._

392 Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, iii. 99 _sqq._ ed. 1836.

393 Gill, _Myths and Songs of the South Pacific_, p. 293 _sqq._

394 Pp. 44, 113.

_ 395 Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, vii. 282.

_ 396 Relations des Jesuites_, 1634, p. 17; _id._, 1636, p. 104; _id._, 1639, p. 43 (Canadian reprint).

397 H. Rink, _Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo_, p. 36.

398 Gill, _Myths and Songs of the South Pacific_, p. 171.

399 H. Sundermann, “Die Insel Nias und die Mission daselbst,” in _Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift_, bd. xi. October 1884, p. 453.

400 B. F. Matthes, _Over de Bissoes of heidensche priesters en priesteressen der Boeginezen_, p. 24.

401 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.

402 Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, vi. 397 _sq._

_ 403 Panjab Notes and Queries_, ii. No. 665.

404 D’Orbigny, _L’Homme Américain_, ii. 241; _Transact. Ethnol. Soc. of London_, iii. 322 _sq._; Bastian, _Culturländer des alten Amerika_, i. 476.

405 B. F. Matthes, _Bijdragen tot de Ethnologie van Zuid-Celebes_, p. 54.

406 Zimmermann, _Die Inseln des Indischen und Stillen Meeres_, ii. 386 _sq._

407 Cp. the Greek ποτάομαι, ἀναπτερόω, etc.

408 G. A. Wilken, “Het animisme bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel,” in _De Indische Gids_, June 1884, p. 944.

409 Wilken, _l.c._

410 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._ _Koêrróe_ 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 _ápakoêrróe soemāñgá_.

411 Shway Yoe, _The Burman, his Life and Notions_, ii. 100.

412 J. L. Wilson, _West Afrika_, p. 162 _sq._ (German translation).

413 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_.

_ 414 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.

415 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.

416 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.

_ 417 Panjab Notes and Queries_, iii. No. 530.

418 Ralston, _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 117 _sq._

419 Bastian, _Die Seele und ihre Erscheinungwesen in der Ethnographie_, p. 36.

_ 420 Pantschatantra_, Benfey, p. 124 _sqq._

_ 421 Katha Sarit Ságara_, trans. Tawney, i. 21 _sq._

422 E. B. Cross, “On the Karens,” in _Journal of the American Oriental Society_, iv. 311.

423 A. R. M’Mahon, _The Karens of the Golden Chersonese_, p. 318.

424 F. Mason, “Physical Character of the Karens,” in _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_, 1866, pt. ii. p. 28 _sq._

425 C. J. S. F. Forbes, _British Burma_, p. 99 _sq._; Shway Yoe, _The Burman_, ii. 102; Bastian, _Die Völker des östlichen Asien_, ii. 389.

426 Riedel, _De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua_, p. 414.

427 Riedel, _op. cit._ p. 221 _sq._

428 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._

429 James Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 57 _sq._

430 W. W. Gill, _Myths and Songs of the South Pacific_, p. 171 _sq._

431 G. A. Wilken, “Het animisme,” in _De Indische Gids_, June 1884, p. 937.

432 Landes, “Contes et légendes annamites,” No. 76 in _Cochinchine Française, Excursions et Reconnaissances_, No. 23, p. 80.

433 Perelaer, _Ethnographische Beschrijving der Dajaks_, p. 26 _sq._

434 Fr. Valentyn, _Oud en nieuw Oost-Indien_, iii. 13 _sq._

435 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’s Indie_, 1843, dl. ii. 511 _sqq._

436 Bastian, _Die Seele_, p. 36 _sq._; J. G. Gmelin, _Reise durch Sibirien_, ii. 359 _sq._

437 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.

438 Riedel, “De Minahassa in 1825,” in _Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde_, xviii. 523.

439 N. Graafland, _De Minahassa_, i. 327 _sq._

440 G. Turner, _Samoa_, p. 142 _sq._

441 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.

442 Codrington, “Religious Beliefs and Practices in Melanesia,” in _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, x. 281.

443 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._

444 Riedel, _De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua_, p. 77 _sq._

_ 445 Ib._ p. 356 _sq._

446 Riedel, _op. cit._ p. 376.

447 Spenser St. John, _Life in the Forests of the Far East_, i. 189. Sometimes the souls resemble cotton seeds (_ib._) Cp. _id._ i. 183.

448 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.

449 Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, i. 250.

450 Gill, _Myths and Songs of the South Pacific_, p. 171; _id._, _Life in the Southern Isles_, p. 181 _sqq._

451 L. J. B. Bérenger-Féraud, _Les Peuplades de la Sénégambie_ (Paris, 1879), p. 277.

452 W. H. Bentley, _Life on the Congo_ (London, 1887), p. 71.

453 Bastian, _Allerlei aus Volks-und Menschenkunde_ (Berlin, 1888), i. 119.

_ 454 Relations des Jésuites_, 1637, p. 50.

455 Riedel, _De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua_, p. 78 _sq._

456 E. B. Cross, “On the Karens,” in _Journal of the American Oriental Society_, iv. 307.

457 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.

458 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 _Verhandlungen 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; E. B. 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.

459 Riedel, _De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua_, p. 440.

460 Bastian, _Die Völker des östlichen Asien_, v. 455.

461 Riedel, _op. cit._ p. 340.

462 Codrington, “Religious Beliefs and Practices in Melanesia,” in _Journ. Anthrop. Instit._ x. 281.

463 Riedel, _op. cit._ p. 61.

464 Gill, _Myths and Songs of the South Pacific_, p. 284 _sqq._

465 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._; E. Gerard, _The Land beyond the Forest_, i. 331.

466 Schol. on Aristophanes, _Ran._ 293.

467 [Aristotle] _Mirab. Auscult._ 145 (157); _Geoponica_, xv. 1. In the latter passage, for κατάγει ἑαυτήν 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. c. 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.

468 Pausanias, viii. 38, 6; Polybius, xvi. 12, 7; Plutarch, _Quaest. Graec._ 39.

469 B. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben der Neugriechen_, p. 196 _sq._

470 Ralston, _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 127.

471 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._

472 E. H. Mann, _Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands_, p. 94.

473 Williams, _Fiji_, i. 241.

474 James Chalmers, _Pioneering in New Guinea_ (London, 1887), p. 170.

475 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).

476 Callaway, _Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus_, p. 342.

477 Arbousset et Daumas, _Voyage d’exploration au Nord-est de la Colonie du Cap de Bonne-Espérance_, p. 12.

478 Codrington, “Religious Beliefs and Practices in Melanesia,” in _Journ. Anthrop. Instit._ x. 313.

_ 479 Fragmenta Philosoph. Graec._ ed. Mullach, i. 510; Artemidorus, _Onirocr._ ii. 7; _Laws of Manu_, iv. 38.

480 See above, p. 125 _sq._

481 Wattke, _Der deutsche Volksaberglaube_,2 § 726.

_ 482 Ib._

_ 483 Folk-lore Journal_, iii. 281; Dyer, _English Folk-lore_, p. 109; J. Napier, _Folk-lore, or Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland_, p. 60; Ellis, _History of Madagascar_, i. 238; _Revue d’Ethnographie_, v. 215.

_ 484 Punjab Notes and Queries_, ii. 906.

_ 485 Folk-lore Journal_, vi. 145 _sq._; _Panjab Notes and Queries_, ii., No. 378.

_ 486 Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ xv. 82 _sqq._

487 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.

488 A. Simson, “Notes on the Jivaros and Canelos Indians,” in _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ ix. 392.

489 J. Thomson, _Through Masai Land_, p. 86.

490 Maximilian Prinz zu Wied, _Reise in das Innere Nord-Amerika_, i. 417.

_ 491 Ib._ ii. 166.

492 “A far-off Greek Island,” _Blackwood’s Magazine_, February 1886, p. 235.

493 Ralston, _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 117.

494 James Napier, _Folk-lore: 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._

495 Turner, _Samoa_, p. 291 _sq._

496 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.

497 Pierre Bouche, _La Côte des Esclaves et le Dahomey_, p. 133.

498 C. A. L. M. Schwaner, _Borneo_, ii. 77.

_ 499 Ib._ ii. 167.

500 E. Aymonier, _Notes sur le Laos_, p. 196.

501 Rosenberg, _Der Malayische Archipel_, p. 198.

502 Capt. John Moresby, _Discoveries and Surveys in New Guinea_, p. 102 _sq._

503 R. I. Dodge, _Our Wild Indians_ (Hartford, Conn.; 1886), p. 119.

504 J. Crevaux, _Voyages dans l’Amérique du Sud_, p. 300.

505 Riedel, _De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua_, p. 78.

506 Perelaer, _Ethnographische Beschrijving der Dajaks_, pp. 44, 54, 252; Matthes, _Bijdragen tot de Ethnologie van Zuid-Celebes_, p. 49.

507 H. Grützner, “Ueber die Gebräuche der Basutho,” in _Verhandl. d. Berlin. Gesell. f. Anthropologie_, etc. 1877, p. 84 _sq._

508 Nieuwenhuisen en Rosenberg, “Verslag omtrent het eiland Nias,” in _Verhandel. v. h. Batav. Genootsch. v. Kunsten en Wetenschappen_, xxx. 26.

_ 509 Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay_, i. 35.

510 E. O’Donovan, _The Merv Oasis_ (London, 1882), ii. 58.

_ 511 Emin Pasha in Central Africa, being a Collection of his Letters and Journals_ (London, 1888), p. 107.

_ 512 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_.

513 J. A. Grant, _A Walk across Africa_, p. 104 _sq._

514 E. Shortland, _Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders_, p. 103.

515 N. von Miklucho-Maclay, “Ethnologische Bemerkungen über die Papuas der Maclay-Küste in Neu-Guinea,” in _Natuurkundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indie_, xxxvi. 317 _sq._

516 Brough Smyth, _Aborigines of Victoria_, i. 134.

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

518 John Campbell, _Travels in South Africa, being a Narrative of a Second Journey in the Interior of that Country_, ii. 205.

519 Ladislaus Magyar, _Reisen in Süd-Afrika_, p. 203.

_ 520 Asiatick Researches_, vi. 535 _sq._ ed. 4to (p. 537 _sq._ ed. 8vo).

521 C. J. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, p. 223.

522 François Valentyn, _Oud en nieuw Oost-Indiën_, iii. 16.

523 Turner, _Samoa_, p. 305 _sq._

524 De Plano 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. 82 _sq._

525 Paul Pogge, “Bericht über die Station Mukenge,” in _Mittheilungen der Afrikanischen Gesellschaft in Deutschland_, iv. (1883-1885) 182 _sq._

526 J. L. Krapf, _Travels, Researches, and Missionary Labours during an Eighteen Years’ Residence in Eastern Africa_, p. 252 _sq._

527 Dapper, _Description de l’Afrique_, p. 391.

528 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.

529 Bastian, _op. cit._ i. 268 _sq._

530 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.

531 Th. Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, i. 249.

532 J. Richardson, “Tanala Customs, Superstitions and Beliefs,” in _The Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar Magazine_, No. ii. p. 219.

533 Lieut. Cameron, _Across Africa_, ii. 71 (ed. 1877); _id._, in _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ vi. 173.

534 “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.

535 Proyart’s “History of Loango, Kakongo,” etc., in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, xvi. 584.

536 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.

537 Paul Pogge, _Im Reiche des Muato Jamwo_ (Berlin, 1880), p. 231.

538 Capt. James Cook, _Voyages_, v. 374 (ed. 1809).

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

540 Mohammed Ibn-Omar el Tounsy, _Voyage au 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._

541 Mohammed Ibn-Omar el Tounsy, _Voyage au Ouadây_ (Paris, 1851), p. 375.

542 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.

543 Turner, _Samoa_, p. 67 _sq._

544 Riedel, “Die Landschaft Dawan oder West-Timor,” in _Deutsche Geographische Blatter_, x. 230.

545 A. W. Howitt, “On some Australian Ceremonies of Initiation,” in _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ xiii. 456.

546 Compare μόνον οὐκ ἐπὶ τοῖς χείλεσι τὰς ψυχὰς 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.

547 See above, p. 112.

548 Bastian, _Die Loango-Küste_, i. 263. However, a case is recorded in which he marched out to war (_ib._ i. 268 _sq._)

549 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.”

550 Strabo, xvii. 2, 2, σέβονται δ᾽ ὠς θεούς τοὺς βασιλέας, κατακλείστους ὄντας καὶ οἰκουροὺς τὸ πλέον.

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

552 Heraclides Cumanus in Athenaeus, 517 B.C.

553 Ch. Dallet, _Histoire de l’Église 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.

554 Richard, “History of Tonquin,” in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, ix. 746.

555 Shway Yoe, _The Burman_, i. 308 _sq._

_ 556 Native Tribes of South Australia_, p. 63; Taplin, “Notes on the mixed races of Australia,” in _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ iv. 53.

557 Turner, _Samoa_, p. 320 _sq._

558 Dapper, _Description de l’Afrique_, p. 330.

559 Bosman’s “Guinea,” in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, xvi. 487.

560 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.

561 Kaempfer’s “History of Japan,” in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, vii. 717.

_ 562 Old New Zealand_, by a Pakeha Maori (London, 1884), p. 96 _sq._

563 W. Brown, _New Zealand and its Aborigines_ (London, 1845), p. 76. For more examples of the same kind see _ib._ p. 77 _sq._

564 E. Tregear, “The Maoris of New Zealand,” in _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ xix. 100.

_ 565 R. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui: or, New Zealand and its Inhabitants_,2 p. 164.

566 A. S. Thomson, _The Story of New Zealand_, i. 101 _sqq._; _Old New Zealand_, by a Pakeha Maori, pp. 94, 104 _sqq._

_ 567 Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ ix. 458.

568 W. Ridley, “Report on Australian Languages and Traditions,” in _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ ii. 268.

569 Alexander Mackenzie, _Voyages from Montreal through the Continent of North America_, cxxiii.

_ 570 Report of the International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska_ (Washington, 1885), p. 46.

571 “Customs of the New Caledonian Women,” in _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ vii. 206.

572 S. Hearne, _A Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort in Hudson’s Bay to the Northern Ocean_, p. 204 _sqq._

573 L. Alberti, _De Kaffers_ (Amsterdam, 1810), p. 76 _sq._; H. Lichtenstein, _Reisen im südlichen Afrika_, i. 427.

_ 574 Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner_ (London, 1830), p. 122.

575 On the nature of taboo, see especially W. Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, i. 142 _sqq._ 427 _sqq._

576 Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, iii. 102.

577 J. Moura, _Le Royaume du Cambodge_, i. 226.

578 Ch. Dallet, _Histoire de l’Église de Corée_, i. xxiv. _sq._; Griffis, _Corea, the Hermit Nation_, p. 219.

579 Macrobius, _Sat._ v. 19, 13; Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ i. 448; Joannes Lydus, _De mens._ i. 31.

_ 580 Acta Fratrum Arvalium_, ed. Henzen, pp. 128-135; Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii.2 (_Das Sacralwesen_), p. 459 _sq._

581 Callimachus, referred to by the Old Scholiast on Ovid, _Ibis._ See Callimachus, ed. Blomfield, p. 216; Lobeck, _Aglaophamus_, p. 686.

582 Plutarch, _Aristides_, 21. This passage I owe to Mr. W. Wyse.

583 Theophilus Hahn, _Tsuni-Goam, the Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi_, p. 22.

584 J. G. Bourke, _The Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona_, p. 178 _sq._

585 C. F. Gordon Cumming, _In the Hebrides_ (ed. 1883), p. 195.

586 James Logan, _The Scottish Gael_ (ed. Alex. Stewart), ii. 68 _sq._

587 C. F. Gordon Cumming, _In the Hebrides_, p. 226; E. J. Guthrie, _Old Scottish Customs_, p. 223.

588 1 Kings vi. 7; Exodus xx. 25.

589 Dionysius Halicarn. _Antiquit. Roman_, iii. 45, v. 24; Plutarch, _Numa_, 9; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxxvi. § 100.

_ 590 Acta Fratrum Arvalium_, ed. Henzen, p. 132; _Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, i. No. 603.

591 Pliny, _l.c._

_ 592 Indian Antiquary_, x. (1881) 364.

593 Frank Hatton, _North Borneo_ (1886), p. 233.

594 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-Literär. Gesellsch._ bd. xiv.)

595 E. J. Guthrie, _Old Scottish Customs_, p. 149; Ch. Rogers, _Social Life in Scotland_ (London, 1886), iii. 218.

596 A. Leared, _Morocco and the Moors_, p. 273.

597 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.

_ 598 Panjab Notes and Queries_, iii. No. 282.

599 Walter Gregor, _The Folk-lore of the North-East of Scotland_, p. 206.

600 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_.

601 Bastian, _Die Völker des ostlichen Asien_, i. 136.

602 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.

603 J. H. Gray, _China_, i. 288.

604 W. H. Dall, _Alaska and its Resources_, p. 146; _id._ in _American Naturalist_, xii. 7.

605 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._

606 B. F. Matthes, _Bijdragen tot de Ethnologie van Zuid-Celebes_, p. 136.

607 Tettau und Temme, _Die Volkssagen Ostpreussens, Litthauens und Westpreussens_, p. 285; Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_,4 iii. 454; cp. _id._ pp. 441, 469; Grohmann, _Aberglauben und Gebräuche aus Böhmen und Mähren_, p. 198.

608 Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 110; Aulus Gellius, x. 15, 12.

609 J. Kubary, _Die socialen Einrichtungen der Pelauer_ (Berlin, 1885), p. 126 _sq._

610 F. J. Wiedemann, _Aus dem inneren und äussern Leben der Ehsten_ (St. Petersburg, 1876), pp. 448, 478.

611 James Adair, _History of the American Indians_, pp. 134, 117.

612 E. Petitot, _Monographie des Dènè-Dindjié_, p. 76.

613 Leviticus xvii. 10-14. The Hebrew word translated “life” in the English version of verse 11 means also “soul” (marginal note in the Revised Version). Cp. Deuteronomy xii. 23-25.

614 Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ v. 79; cp. _id._ on _Aen._ iii. 67.

615 J. Wellhausen, _Reste Arabischen Heidentumes_, p. 217.

616 A. Goudswaard, _De Papoewa’s van de Geelvinksbaai_ (Schiedam, 1863), p. 77.

617 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.

618 De la Loubere, _A New Historical Account of the Kingdom of Siam_ (London, 1693), p. 104 _sq._

619 Pallegoix, _Description du Royaume Thai ou Siam_, i. 271, 365 _sq._

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

621 Col. H. Yule on Marco Polo, _l.c._

622 Baron’s “Description of the Kingdom of Tonqueen,” in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, ix. 691.

623 T. E. Bowdich, _Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee_ (London, 1873), p. 207.

624 Sibree, _Madagascar and its People_, p. 430.

625 C. T. Wilson and R. W. Felkin, _Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan_, i. 200.

626 Marco Polo, i. 399, Yule’s translation, 2d ed.

627 Sir Walter Scott, note 2 to _Peveril of the Peak_, ch. v.

_ 628 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_.

629 Collins, _Account of the English Colony of New South Wales_ (London, 1798), p. 580.

_ 630 Native Tribes of South Australia_, p. 224 _sq._; Angas, _Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand_, i. 110 _sq._

631 Above, p. 20.

632 B. F. Matthes, _Bijdragen tot de Ethnologie van Zuid-Celebes_, p. 53.

633 Lieut. Emery, in _Journal of the R. Geogr. Soc._ iii. 282.

634 Ch. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, p. 224.

635 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._

636 L. Linton Palmer, “A Visit to Easter Island,” in _Journ. R. Geogr. Soc._ xl. (1870) 171.

637 R. Taylor, _Te Ika a Maui; or, New Zealand and its Inhabitants_,2 p. 164 _sq._

638 Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 112; Aulus Gellius, x. 15, 13.

639 Above, p. 61 _sq._

640 Cp. W. Robertson Smith, _op. cit._ p. 213 _sq._

_ 641 Dialis cotidie feriatus est_, Aulus Gellius, x. 15, 16.

642 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.

643 Bernardino de Sahagun, _Histoire générale des choses de la Nouvelle-Espagne_, traduite par Jourdanet et Siméon (Paris, 1880), p. 46 _sq._

644 See above, p. 34 _sq._

645 P. 35.

646 E. M. Curr, _The Australian Race_ (Melbourne and London, 1887), iii. 179.

647 H. B. Guppy, _The Solomon Islands and their Natives_ (London, 1887), p. 41.

648 E. B. Cross, “On the Karens,” in _Journal of the American Oriental Society_, iv. (1854) 312.

649 Bastian, _Die Völker des östlichen Asien_, iii. 230.

650 For the reason see Shortland, _Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders_, pp. 112 _sq._, 292.

_ 651 Native Tribes of South Australia_, p. 186.

652 Mrs. James Smith, _The Booandik Tribe_, p. 5.

653 Riedel, _De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua_, p. 450.

654 Riedel, _op. cit._ p. 139; cp. _id._ p. 209.

655 E. Dannert, “Customs of the Ovaherero at the Birth of a Child.” in (South African) _Folk-lore Journal_, ii. 63.

656 F. J. Wiedemann, _Aus dem innern und äussern Leben der Ehsten_, p. 475.

657 E. B. Cross, “On the Karens,” in _Journal of the American Oriental Society_, iv. 311 _sq._

658 Bastian, _Die Völker des östlichen Asien_, ii. 256, iii. 71, 230, 235 _sq._

659 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.

660 J. Moura, _Le Royaume du Cambodge_, i. 178, 388.

661 Duarte Barbosa, _Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar in the beginning of the Sixteenth Century_ (Hakluyt Society, 1866), p. 197.

662 David Porter, _Journal of a Cruise made to the Pacific Ocean in the U.S. Frigate Essex_ (New York, 1822), ii. 65.

663 Vincendon-Dumoulin et Desgraz, _Iles Marquises_, p. 262.

664 Langsdorff, _Reise um die Welt_, i. 115 _sq._

665 Capt. James Cook, _Voyages_, v. 427 (ed. 1809).

666 Jules Remy, _Ka Mooolelo Hawaii, Histoire de L’Archipel Havaiien_ (Paris and Leipzig, 1862), p. 159.

667 Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, iii. 102.

668 James Wilson, _A Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean_ (London, 1799). p. 354 _sq._

669 R. Taylor, _Te Ika a Maui: or, New Zealand and its Inhabitants_, p. 165.

670 “Customs of the New Caledonian 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.

671 R. Taylor, _l.c._

672 E. Shortland, _The Southern Districts of New Zealand_, p. 293; _id._, _Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders_, p. 107, _sq._

673 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.

674 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.

675 Agathias i. 3; Grimm, _Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer_, p. 239 _sqq._

676 G. M. Dawson, “On the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands,” in _Geological Survey of Canada, Report of Progress for 1878-79_, p. 123 B.

677 P. N. Wilken, “Bijdragen tot de kennis van de zeden en gewoonten der Alfoeren in de Minahassa,” in _Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelingvenootschap_, vii. (1863) p. 126.

678 Riedel, _De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua_, p. 137.

679 Riedel, _op. cit._ p. 292 _sq._

680 Diodorus Siculus, i. 18.

681 W. Robertson Smith, _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_, p. 152 _sq._

682 Valerius Flaccus, _Argonaut_, i. 378 _sq._:—

“_Tectus et Eurytion servato colla capillo,_ _ Quem pater Aonias reducem tondebit ad aras._”

683 Homer, _Iliad_, xxiii. 141 _sqq._

684 D. Porter, _Journal of a Cruise made to the Pacific Ocean_, ii. 120.

685 Paulus Diaconus, _Hist. Langobard._ iii. 7.

686 Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, iv. 387.

687 Numbers vi. 5.

688 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, _Beitrage zur deutschen Mythologie_, i. 208 (No. 45), 209 (No. 53); Knoop, _Volkssagen, Erzählungen_, etc. _aus dem östlichen Hinterpommern_, p. 157 (No. 23); E. Veckenstedt, _Wendische Sagen, Märchen und abergläubische Gebräuche_, p. 445; J. Haltrieh, _Zur Volkskunde der Siebenbürger Sachsen_, p. 313; E. Krause, “Abergläubische Kuren u. sonstiger Aberglaube in Berlin,” _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, xv. 84.

_ 689 Panjab Notes and Queries_, ii. No. 1092.

690 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).

691 Knoop, _l.c._

692 Wolf, _Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie_, i. 209 (No. 57).

693 R. Taylor, _New Zealand and its Inhabitants_, p. 206 _sqq._

694 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.

695 E. Shortland, _Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders_, p. 108 _sqq._; Taylor, _l.c._

696 J. Moura, _Le Royaume du Cambodge_, i. 226 _sq._

697 See above, p. 111.

698 Brough Smyth, _Aborigines of Victoria_, i. 468 _sq._

699 D. Porter, _Journal of a Cruise made to the Pacific Ocean_, ii. 188.

700 J. Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 36.

701 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.

702 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).

703 Zingerle, _op. cit._ No. 181.

704 Zingerle, _op. cit._ Nos. 176, 179.

705 A. Krause, _Die Tlinkit-Indianer_. (Jena, 1885), p. 300.

706 Petronius, _Sat._ 104.

707 Bastian, _Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste_, i. 231 _sq._; _id._, _Ein Besuch in San Salvador_, p. 117.

708 W. Stanbridge, “On the Aborigines of Victoria,” in _Transact. Ethnolog. Soc. of London_, i. 300.

709 François Pyrard, _Voyages to the East Indies, the Maldives, the Moluccas, and Brazil_. Translated by Albert Gray (Hakluyt Society, 1887), i. 110 _sq._

710 Shortland, _Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders_, p. 110.

711 Polack, _Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders_, i. 38 _sq._

712 James Wilson, _A Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean_, p. 355.

713 Aulus Gellius, x. 15, 15.

714 Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. 235; Festus, _s.v._ _capillatam vel capillarem arborem_.

715 Wuttke, _Der deutsche Volksaberglaube_,2 § 464.

716 W. Mannhardt, _Germanische Mythen_, p. 630.

717 W. Henderson, _Folk-lore of the Northern Counties_, p. 17.

718 Riedel, _De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua_, p. 74.

719 Riedel, _op. cit._ p. 265.

720 G. Heijmering “Zeden en gewoonten op het eiland Rottie,” in _Tijdschrift voor Neêrland’s Indie_ (1843), _dl._ ii. 634-637.

721 W. Dall, _Alaska and its Resources_, p. 54; F. Whymper, “The Natives of the Youkon River,” in _Transact. Ethnolog. Soc. of London_, vii. 174.

722 E. Meier, _Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben_, p. 509.

723 W. Mannhardt, _Germanische Mythen_, p. 630.

724 H. B. Guppy, _The Solomon Islands and their Natives_, p. 54.

725 Fargaard, xvii.

_ 726 Grihya-Sûtras_, translated by H. Oldenberg (Oxford, 1886), vol. i. p. 57.

727 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.

728 A. Steedman, _Wanderings and Adventures in the Interior of Southern Africa_ (London, 1835), i. 266.

_ 729 Emin Pasha in Central Africa, being a Collection of his Letters and Journals_ (London, 1888), p. 74.

730 J. L. Wilson, _West Afrika_, p. 159 (German trans.)

731 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.

732 Garcilasso de la Vega, _First part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas_, bk. ii. ch. 7 (vol. i. p. 127, Markham’s translation).

_ 733 Mélusine_, 1878, c. 583 _sq._

_ 734 The People of Turkey_, by a Consul’s daughter and wife, ii. 250.

735 Boecler-Kreutzwald, _Der Ehsten abergläubische Gebräuche, Weisen und Gewohnheiten_, p. 139; F. J. Wiedemann, _Aus dem innern und äussern Leben der Ehsten_, p. 491.

736 R. W. Felkin, “Notes on the For tribe of Central Africa,” in _Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_, xiii. (1884-86) p. 230.

737 Zingerle, _Sitten, Bräuche und Meinungen des Tiroler Volkes_,2 Nos. 176, 580; _Mélusine_, 1878, c. 79.

738 Musters, “On the Races of Patagonia,” in _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ i. 197; J. Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 36.

739 David Livingstone, _Narrative of Expedition to the Zambesi_, p. 46 _sq._

740 Zingerle, _op. cit._ Nos. 177, 179, 180.

741 M. Jahn, _Hexenwesen und Zauberei in Pommern_, p. 15; _Mélusine_, 1878, c. 79.

742 E. H. Meyer, _Indogermanische Mythen_, ii. _Achilleis_ (Berlin, 1887), p. 523.

743 Above, p. 201.

744 Above, pp. 167, 169 _sqq._

745 W. Ridley, “Report on Australian Languages and Traditions,” in _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ ii. 268.

746 See G. A. Wilken, _Ueber das Haaropfer und einige andere Trauergebräuche bei den Völkern Indonesiens_, p. 94 _sqq._; H. Ploss, Das Kind in Branch und Sitte der Völker2 i. 289 _sqq._

747 Above, p. 194.

748 Above, p. 157 _sq._

749 Monier Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India_, p. 375.

750 Above, p. 117.

751 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. 34 _sq._

752 Dapper, _Description de l’Afrique_, p. 336.

753 T. J. Hutchinson, _Impressions of Western Africa_ (London, 1858), p. 198.

754 G. Watt (quoting Col. W. J. M’Culloch), “The Aboriginal Tribes of Manipur,” in _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ xvi. 360.

755 Meiners, _Geschichte der Religionen_, i. 48.

756 R. I. Dodge, _Our Wild Indians_, p. 112.

757 Blumentritt, “Der Ahnencultus und die relig. Anschauungen der Malaien des Philippinen-Archipels,” in _Mittheilungen d. Wiener Geogr. Gesellschaft_, 1882, p. 198.

758 Theophilus Hahn, _Tsuni-Goam, the Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi_, pp. 56, 69.

759 Diodorus, iii. 61; Pomponius Mela, ii. 7, 112; Minucius Felix, _Octavius_, 21.

760 Plutarch, _Isis et Osiris_, 35; Philochorus, _Fragm._ 22, in Müller’s _Fragm. Hist. Graec._ i. p. 387.

761 Porphyry, _Vit. Pythag._ 16.

762 Philochorus, _Fr._ 184, in _Fragm. Hist. Graec._ ii. p. 414.

763 Lobeck, _Aglaophamus_, p. 574 _sq._

764 See above, p. 121 _sqq._

765 Gill, _Myths and Songs of the South Pacific_, p. 163.

766 Ch. Wilkes, _Narrative of the U. S. Exploring Expedition_ (London, 1845), iii. 96.

_ 767 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.

768 Turner, _Samoa_, p. 335.

769 Martin Flad, _A Short Description of the Falasha and Kamants in Abyssinia_, p. 19.

770 J. B. Labat, _Relation historique de l’Ethiopie Occidentale_, i. 260 _sq._; W. Winwood Reade, _Savage Africa_, p. 362.

771 Diodorus Siculus, iii. 6; Strabo, xvii. 2, 3.

_ 772 Emin Pasha in Central Africa, being a Collection of his Letters and Journals_ (London, 1888), p. 91.

773 P. Guillemé, “Credenze religiose dei Negri di Kibanga nell’ Alto Congo,” in _Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari_, vii. (1888) p. 231.

774 Nathaniel Isaacs, _Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa_, i. p. 295 _sq._, cp. pp. 232, 290 _sq._

775 Above, p. 45 _sq._

776 Dos Santos, “History of Eastern Ethiopia” (published at Paris in 1684), in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, xvi. 684.

777 Plutarch, _Agesilaus_, 3.

778 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.

779 G. Nachtigal, _Saharâ und Sûdân_ (Leipzig, 1889), iii. 225; Bastian, _Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste_, i. 220.

780 Strabo, xvii. 2, 3; Diodorus, iii. 7.

781 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_ (Paris) IVme Série, iv. (1852) p. 539 _sq._

782 R. W. Felkin, “Notes on the Waganda Tribe of Central Africa,” in _Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_, xiii. (1884-1886) p. 711.

_ 783 Narrative of events in Borneo and Celebes, from the Journals of James Brooke, Esq., Rajah of Sarawak._ By Captain R. Mundy, i. 134.

784 Simon Grunau, _Preussische Chronik_, herausgegeben von Dr. M. Perlbach (Leipzig, 1876), i. p. 97.

785 Barbosa, _A Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar in the beginning of the Sixteenth Century_ (Hakluyt Society, 1866), p. 172 _sq._

786 Alex. Hamilton, “A new Account of the East Indies,” in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, viii. 374.

787 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 ζωγάνης 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 ζωγάνας 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 ἐκρέμασαν should be translated “crucified” (or “impaled”), not “hung.” It is strange that this, the regular, sense of κρεμάννυμι, 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.”

788 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._

789 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.

790 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._

791 C. B. Klunzinger, _Bilder aus Ober-ägypten, der Wüste und dem Rothen Meere_, p. 180 _sq._

792 J. W. Boers, “Oud volksgebruik in het Rijk van Jambi,” in _Tijdschrift voor Neêrland’s Indië_, iii. (1840), dl. i. 372 _sqq._

_ 793 Panjab Notes and Queries_, i. 674.

794 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.

795 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._

796 Macrobius, _Saturn._ v. 19, 13.

797 See above, p. 172 _sqq._

798 Philo of Byblus, quoted by Eusebius, _Praepar. Evang._ i. 10, 29 _sq._

799 2 Kings iii. 27.

800 Porphyry, _De abstin._ ii. 56.

801 Diodorus, xx. 14.

802 Porphyry, _De abstin._ ii. 54.

803 Brough Smyth, _Aborigines of Victoria_, ii. 311.

804 Strachey, _Historie of travaille into Virginia Britannia_ (Hakluyt Society), p. 84.

805 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.

806 F. J. Mone, _Geschichte des Heidenthums im nördlichen Europa_, i. 119.

807 Above, p. 42 _sqq._

808 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.

809 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.

810 D. G. Brinton, _Myths of the New World_, p. 270 _sq._

811 Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ iv. 685; Cicero, _In Verr._ ii. 5, 45; K. F. Hermann, _Griech. Privatalterthümer_, ed. Blumner, p. 362 _note_ 1.

812 Harland and Wilkinson, _Lancashire Folk-lore_, p. 7 _sq._

813 Fr. Panzer, _Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie_, i. 235 _sq._; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 320 _sq._

814 E. Meier, _Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben_, pp. 409-419; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 349 _sq._

815 E. Sommer, _Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Sachsen und Thüringen_, p. 154 _sq._; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 335 _sq._

816 W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 336.

817 Reinsberg—Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen_, p. 61; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 336 _sq._

818 Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen_, p. 263; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 343.

819 Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen_, p. 269 _sq._

820 See above, p. 92 _sq._

821 Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen_, p. 264 _sq._; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 353 _sq._

822 See pp. 243, 246.

823 See p. 15 _sqq._

824 See p. 243.

825 Above, p. 4.

826 Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii.2 323 _sq._

827 See above, p. 6.

828 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._

829 J. G. Bourke, _Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona_, p. 196 _sq._

830 Euripides, _Iphig. in Taur._ 1458 _sqq._

831 Nieuwenhuisen en Rosenberg, “Verslag omtrent het eiland Nias,” in _Verhandelingen van het Batav. Genootsch. van Kunsten en Wetenschappen_, xxx. 43.

832 J. A. Dubois, Moeurs, _Institutions et Cérémonies des Peuples de l’Inde_, i. 151 _sq._

833 “The Rudhirádhyáyă, or sanguinary chapter,” translated from the _Calica Puran_ by W. C. Blaquiere, in _Asiatick Researches_, v. 376 (8vo. ed. London, 1807).

834 Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 281.

835 Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 258 _sq._

836 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_.

837 See p. 244.

838 E. Meier, _Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebraüche aus Schwaben_, p. 371.

839 J. Haltrich, _Zur Volkskunde der Siebenbürger Sachsen_ (Wien, 1885), p. 284 _sq._

840 Leoprechting, _Aus dem Lechrain_, p. 162 _sqq._; Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 411.

841 E. Meier, _Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben_ p. 374; cp. Birlinger, _Volksthümlichesaus Schwaben_, ii. 55.

842 E. Meier, _op. cit._ p. 372.

843 E. Meier, _op. cit._ p. 373.

844 E. Meier, _op. cit._ pp. 373, 374.

845 A. Kuhn, _Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen aus Westfalen_, ii. 130.

846 F. J. Wiedemann, _Aus dem inneren und äusseren Leben der Ehsten_, p. 353.

847 E. Meier, _op. cit._ p. 374.

848 H. Pröhle, _Harzbilder_, p. 54.

849 Aug. Witzschel, _Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen_, p. 193.

850 Witzschel, _op. cit._ p. 199.

851 Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_,4 ii. 642.

852 Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen_, p. 90 _sq._

853 Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _op. cit._ p. 91.

854 Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_,4 ii. 639 _sq._; Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 412.

855 Grimm, _op. cit._ ii. 644; K. Haupt, _Sagenbuch der Lausitz_, ii. 55.

856 Grimm, _op. cit._ ii. 640, 643.

857 Vernalecken, _Mythen und Bräuche des Volkes in Oesterreich_, p. 294 _sq._; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen_, p. 90.

858 Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_,4 ii. 640.

859 J. A. E. Köhler, _Volksbrauch, Aberglauben, Sagen und andre alte Ueberlieferungen im Voigtlande_, p. 171.

860 Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Das festliche Jahr_, p. 80.

861 Ralston, _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 211.

_ 862 Ib._ p. 210.

863 Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_,4 ii. 652; H. Usener, “Italische Mythen,” in _Rheinisches Museum_, N. F. xxx. (1875) p. 191 _sq._

864 G. Pitrè, _Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane_ (Palermo, 1881), p. 207 _sq._

_ 865 Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari_, iv. (1885) p. 294 _sq._

866 H. Usener, _op. cit._ p. 193.

867 Vincenzo Dorsa, _La tradizione greco-latina negli usi e nelle credenze popolari della Calabria citeriore_ (Cosenza, 1884), p. 43 _sq._

868 Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_,4 ii. 652; H. Usener, “Italische Mythen,” in _Rheinisches Museum_, N. F. xxx. 1875, p. 191 _sq._

869 Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen_, p. 89 _sq._; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 156. This custom has been already referred to. See p. 82.

870 Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Das festliche Jahr_, p. 82; Philo vom Walde, _Schlesien in Sage und Brauch_ (N.D. preface dated 1883), p. 122.

871 Witzschel, _Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen_, p. 192 _sq._

872 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.

873 Grimm, _op. cit._ ii. 644; K. Haupt, _op. cit._ ii. 55.

874 E. Gerard, _The Land beyond the Forest_, ii. 47-49.

875 This is also the view taken of the custom by Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 419.

876 Vernalecken, _Mythen und Bräuche des Volkes in Oesterreich_, p. 293 _sq._

877 Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Das festliche Jahr_, p. 82.

878 Philo vom Walde, _Schlesien in Sage und Brauch_, p. 122.

879 Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_,4 ii. 640 _sq._

880 See above, p. 260.

881 K. Schwenk, _Die Mythologie der Slawen_, p. 217 _sq._

882 Above, p. 263.

883 See above, pp. 83, 263.

884 Above, p. 263, and Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_,4 ii. 644; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen_, p. 87 _sq._

885 Above, p. 263.

886 See above, p. 266 _sqq._

887 Above, pp. 257, 259, 265; and Grimm, _D. M._4 ii. 643.

888 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.

889 Above, p. 243.

890 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._

891 W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 417-421.

892 Ralston, _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 221.

893 Ralston, _op. cit._ p. 241.

894 Ralston, _op. cit._ p. 243 _sq._; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 414.

895 W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 414 _sq._; Ralston, _op. cit._ p. 244.

896 Ralston, _op. cit._ p. 245; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 416.

897 W. Mannhardt, _l.c._; Ralston, _l.c._

898 Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_,4 ii. 644.

899 J. G. von Hahn, _Albanesische Studien_, i. 160.

900 Captain R. C. Temple, in _Indian Antiquary_, xi. (1882) p. 297 _sq._

901 See above, p. 94 _sqq._

902 Above, p. 70 _sqq._

903 Baudissin, _Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte_, i. 299; W. Mannhardt, _Antike Wald- und Feldkulte_, p. 274.

904 Plutarch, _Alcibiades_, 18; Zenobius, _Centur._ i. 49; Theocritus, xv. 132 _sq._; Eustathius on Homer, _Od._ xi. 590.

905 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_.

906 Theocritus, xv.

907 W. Mannhardt, _op. cit._ p. 277.

908 Lucian, _De dea Syria_, 6. The words ἐς τὸν ἠέρα πέμπουσι imply that the ascension was supposed to take place in the presence, if not before the eyes, of the worshipping crowds.

909 Lucian, _op. cit._ 8. The discoloration of the river and the sea was observed by Maundrell on 17/27th March 1696/1697. See his “Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem,” in Bohn’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.

910 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.

911 W. Robertson Smith, “Ctesias and the Semíramis legend,” in _English Historical Review_, April 1887, following Lagarde.

912 In the Alexandrian ceremony, however, it appears to have been the image of Adonis only which was thrown into the sea.

913 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.

914 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.

915 Thus, after the autumnal 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.

916 Schol. on Theocritus, iii. 48, ὁ Ἄδωνις, ἤγουν ὁ σῖτος ὁ σπειρόμενος, ἒξ μῆνας ἐν τῇ γῇ ποιεῖ ἀπὸ τῆς σπορᾶς, καὶ ἒξ μῆνας ἔχει αὐτὸν ἡ Ἀφροδίτη, τουτέστιν ἡ εὐκρασία τοῦ ἀέρος. καὶ ἐκτότε λαμβάνουσιν αὐτὸν οἱ ἄνθρωποι. Jerome on Ezech. c. viii. 14. _Eadem gentilitas hujuscemodi fabulas 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 ὡραίους καρπούς. Etymolog. Magn. Ἄδωνις κύριον; δύναται καὶ ὁ καρπὸς εἶναι ἄδωνις; οἷον ἀδώνειος καρπός, ἀρέσκων. Eusebius, _Praepar. Evang._ iii. 11, 9, Ἄδωνις τῆς τῶν τελείων καρπῶν ἐκτομῆς σύμβολον.

917 D. Chwolsohn, _Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus_, ii. 27; _id._, _Ueber Tammûz und die Menschenverehrung bei den alten Babyloniern_, p. 38.

918 The comparison is due to Felix Liebrecht (_Zur Volkskunde_, p. 259).

919 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.

920 Plutarch, _Alcibiades_, 18; _id._, _Nicias_, 13. The date of the sailing of the fleet is given by Thucydides, vi. 30, θέρους μεσοῦντος ἤδη.

921 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.

922 See above, p. 16.

923 W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 214; W. Schmidt, _Das Jahr und seine Tage in Meinung und Brauch der Romänen Siebenbürgens_, p. 18 _sq._

924 G. A. Heinrich, _Agrarische Sitten und Gebräuche unter den Sachsen Siebenbürgens_ (Hermanstadt, 1880), p. 24; Wsissocki, _Sitten und Brauch der Siebenbürger Sachsen_ (Hamburg, 1888), p. 32.

925 Matthäus Praetorius, _Deliciae Prussicae_, 55; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 214 _sq._ _note_.

926 Praetorius, _op. cit._, 60; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 215, _note_.

927 A. H. Sayce, _Religion of the ancient Babylonians_ (Hibbert Lectures, 1887), p. 221 _sqq._; W. Mannhardt, _Antike Wald- und Feldkulte_, p. 275.

928 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.

929 A. H. Sayce, _op. cit._ p. 238.

930 Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 259.

931 Above, p. 67.

932 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.

933 See ch. i. p. 78 _sq._

934 P. 272.

935 L. Lloyd, _Peasant Life in Sweden_, p. 257.

936 W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 464; Leoprechting, _Aus dem Lechrain_, p. 183.

937 G. Pitrè, _Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane_, p. 296 _sq._

938 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._

939 Matthäus Praetorius, _Deliciae Prussicae_, herausgegeben von Dr. W. Pierson (Berlin, 1871), p. 56.

940 See p. 274 _sq._

941 G. Pitrè, _Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane_, p. 211. A similar custom is observed at Cosenza in Calabria. Vincenzo Dorsa, _La tradizione greco-latina_, etc., p. 50. For the Easter ceremonies in the Greek Church, see R. A. Arnold, _From the Levant_ (London, 1868), i. 251 _sqq._

942 κήπους ὡσίουν ἐπιταφίους Ἀδώνιδι, Eustathius on Homer, _Od._ xi. 590.

943 Hippolytus, _Refut. omn. haeres._ v. 9, p. 168, ed. Duncker and Schneidewin; Socrates, _Hist. Eccles._ iii. 23, §§ 51 _sqq._ p. 204.

944 That Attis was killed by a boar was stated by Hermesianax, an elegiac poet of the fourth century B.C. (Pausanias, vii. 17); cp. Schol. on Nicander, _Alex._ 8. 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.

945 Pausanias, vii. 17; Julian, _Orat._ v. 177 B.

946 Ovid, _Metam._ x. 103 _sqq._

947 On the festival see especially Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii.2 370 _sqq._; Daremberg et Saglio, _Dictionnaire des Antiquités grecques et romaines_, i. p. 1685 _sq._ (article “Cybèle”); W. Mannhardt, _Antike Wald- und Feldkulte_, p. 291 _sqq._; _id._, _Baumkultus_, p. 572 _sqq._

948 Julian, _Orat._ v. 168 c; Joannes Lydus, _De mensibus_, iv. 41; Arnobius, _Advers. nationes_, v. cc. 7, 16 _sq._; Firmicus Maternus, _De errore profan. relig._ 27.

949 Julian, _l.c._ and 169 C.

950 Trebellius Pollio, _Claudius_, 4; Tertullian, _Apologet_. 25. For other references, see Marquardt, _l.c._

951 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.

952 On the _Hilaria_ see Macrobius, _Saturn._ i. 21, 10; Julian, _Orat._ v. 168 D, 169 D; Damascius, _Vita Isidori_, in Photius, p. 345 A 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 τῶν ἱλαρίων καλουμένην ἐορτήν; ὅπερ ἑδήλου τὴν ἑξ ἄδου γεγονυῖαν ἡμῶν σωτερίαν. This last passage, compared with the formula in Firmicus Maternus, c. 22

θαρρεῖτε μύσται τοῦ θεοῦ σεσωμένου; ἔσται γὰρ ἠμῖν ἐκ πόνων σωτηρία,

makes it probable that the ceremony described by Firmicus, c. 22, is the resurrection of Attis.

953 Ovid, _Fast._ iv. 337 _sqq._; Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 3. For other references see Marquardt and Mannhardt, _ll. cc._

954 Pausanias, vii. 17; Arnobius, _Adv. nationes_, v. 6.; cp. Hippolytus, _Refut. omn. haeres._ v. 9, pp. 166, 168.

955 See above, p. 264 _sq._

956 Firmicus Maternus, 27.

957 Above, p. 81.

958 Hippolytus, _Ref. omn. haeres._ v. cc. 8, 9, pp. 162, 168; Firmicus Maternus, _De errore prof. relig._ 3.

959 Julian, _Orat._ v. 174 A B.

960 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).

961 The conjecture is that of Henzen in _Annal. d. Inst._ 1856, p. 110, referred to in Roscher, _l.c._

962 See pp. 84, 231.

963 Article “Phrygia,” in _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, ninth ed. xviii. 853.

964 xii. 5, 3.

965 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 aegyptisches Leben im Altertum_, p. 365 _sqq._

966 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._

967 Plutarch, _Isis et Osiris_, 13; Diodorus, i. 14; Tibullus, i. 7, 29 _sqq._

968 Plutarch, _Isis et Osiris_, 8.

969 So Brugsch, _op. cit._ p. 617. Plutarch, _op. cit._ 39, says four days, beginning with the 17th of the month Athyr.

970 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.

971 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.

972 Brugsch, _op. cit._ p. 617 _sq._; Erman, _Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum_, p. 377 _sq._

973 Erman, _l.c._; Wilkinson, _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_ (London, 1878), iii. 68, 82; Tiele, _History of the Egyptian Religion_, p. 46.

974 Plutarch, _Isis et Osiris_, 35. ὁμολογεῖ δὲ καὶ τὰ τιτανικὰ καὶ νὺξ τελεία τοῖς λεγομένοις Ὀσίριδος διασπασμοῖς καὶ ταῖς ἀναβιώσεσι καὶ παλιγγενεσίαις, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τὰ περὶ τὰς ταφάς.

975 Plutarch, _Isis et Osiris_, 39.

976 Tibullus, i. 7, 33 _sqq._

977 Brugsch, _op. cit._ p. 621.

978 Servius on Virgil, _Georg._ i. 166.

979 Above, p. 267.

980 Plutarch, _Isis et Osiris_, 73, cp. 33; Diodorus, i. 88.

981 Plutarch, _op. cit._ 31; Herodotus, ii. 38.

982 Herrera, quoted by Bastian, _Culturländer des alten Amerika_, ii. 639.

983 Lefébure, _Le mythe Osirien_ (Paris, 1874-75), p. 188.

984 Firmicus Maternus, _De errore profanarum religionum_, 2, § 6, _defensores eorum volunt addere physicam rationem, frugum semina Osirim dicentes esse; Isim terram, Tyfonem calorem: et quia maturatae fruges calore ad vitam hominum colliguntur et divisae a terrae consortia 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᾽ Αἰγυπτίος τὴν κάρπιμον παρίστησι δύναμιν, ἤν θρήνοις ἀπομειλίσσονται εἰς γῆν ἀφανιζομένην ἐν τῷ σπόρῳ. καὶ ὑφ᾽ ἡμῶν καταναλισκομένην εὶς τὰς τροφάς.

_ 985 Op. cit._ 27, § 1.

_ 986 Isis et Osiris_, 21, αινῶ δὲ τομὴν ξύλου καὶ σχίσιν λίνου καὶ χοὰς χεομένας. διὰ τὸ πολλὰ τῶν μυστικῶν ἀναμεμῖχθαι τούτοις. Again, c. 42, τὸ δὲ ξύλον ἐν ταῖς λεγομέναις; Ὀσίριδος ταφαῖς τέμνοντες κατασκευάζουσι λάρνακα μηνοειδὴ.

987 See above, p. 304.

988 Lefébure, _Le mythe Osirien_, pp. 194, 198, referring to Mariette, _Denderah_, iv. 66 and 72.

989 Lefébure, _op. cit._ pp. 195, 197.

990 Birch, in Wilkinson’s _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_ (London, 1878), iii. 84.

991 Wilkinson, _op. cit._ iii. 63 _sq._; Ed. Meyer, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, i. §§ 56, 60.

992 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 μυρίκης for μηθίδης, and this conjecture appears to be accepted by Wilkinson, _l.c._

993 Lefébure, _Le mythe Osirien_, p. 191.

994 Lefébure, _op. cit._ p. 188.

995 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.

996 Brugsch, _Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter_, p. 645.

997 C. P. Tiele, _History of Egyptian Religion_, p. 57.

_ 998 Hibbert Lectures_, 1879, p. 111.

999 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 μὲν ὁ Μανέθως, ἐπετετμημένως δὲ ὁ Διόδωρος, which seems to imply that Diodorus epitomised Manetho.

1000 Brugsch, _op. cit._ p. 647.

1001 Brugsch, _op. cit._ p. 649.

1002 Brugsch,_l.c._

1003 Herodotus, ii. 59, 156; Diodorus, i. 13, 25, 96; Apollodorus, ii. 1, 3; Tzetzes, _Schol. in Lycophron._ 212.

_ 1004 Antholog. Planud._ 264, 1.

_ 1005 Orphica_, ed. Abel, p. 295 _sqq._

1006 Jablonski, _Pantheon Aegyptiorum_ (Frankfurt, 1750), i. 125 _sq._

1007 i. 11.

1008 See p. 310, _note_.

1009 See the _Saturnalia_, bk. i.

_ 1010 Saturn._ i. 21, 11.

1011 Maspero, _Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient_4 (Paris, 1886), p. 35.

1012 Wilkinson, _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_ (London, 1878), iii. 353.

_ 1013 Isis et Osiris_, 52.

_ 1014 De errore profan. religionum_, 8.

1015 Lepsius, “Ueber den ersten aegyptischen Götterkreis und seine geschichtlich-mythologische Entstehung,” in _Abhandlungen der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin_, 1851, p. 194 _sq._

1016 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._

1017 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._

1018 Tiele, _History of the Egyptian Religion_, p. 44.

1019 Tiele, _op. cit._ p. 46.

_ 1020 Ib._ p. 45.

1021 Le Page Renouf, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1879, p. 111 _sqq._

_ 1022 Hibbert Lectures_, 1879, p. 113. Cp. Maspero, _Histoire ancienne_,4 p. 35; Ed. Meyer, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, i. §§ 55, 57.

1023 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 comest 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. 121 _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. et 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; 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.

1024 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; Διηγήματα, 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.

1025 Lucian, _De dea Syria_, 7.

1026 Herodotus, ii. 49.

1027 Plutarch, _Isis et Osiris_, 35.

1028 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.

1029 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._

1030 Plutarch, _Quaest. Conviv._ v. 3, Διονύσῳ δὲ δενδρίτῃ πάντες, ὡς ἔθος εἰπεῖν, Ἕλληνες θύουσιν.

1031 Hesychius, _s.v._ Ἔνδενδρος.

1032 See the pictures of his images, taken from ancient vases, in Bötticher, _Baumkultus der Hellenen_, plates 42, 43, 43A, 43B, 44; Daremberg et Saglio, _op. cit._ i. 361, 626.

1033 Daremberg et Saglio, _op. cit._ i. 626.

1034 Cornutus, _De natura deorum_, 30.

1035 Pindar, quoted by Plutarch, _Isis et Osiris_, 35.

1036 Maximus Tyrius, _Dissertat._ viii. 1.

1037 Athenaeus, iii. pp. 78 C, 82 D.

1038 Himerius, _Orat._ i. 10, Διόνυσος γεωργεῖ.

_ 1039 Orphica_, Hymn l. 4, liii. 8.

1040 Aelian, _Var. Hist._ iii. 41; Hesychius, _s.v._ Φλέω[ς]. Cp. Plutarch, _Quaest. Conviv._ v. 8, 3.

1041 Pausanias, i. 31, 4; _id._ vii. 21, 6 (2).

1042 Plutarch, _Quaest. Conviv._ v. 3.

1043 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.

1044 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.

1045 Pausanias, i. 31, 6 (3).

1046 Athenaeus, iii. p. 78 C.

1047 Firmicus Maternus, _De errore profanarum religionum_, 6.

1048 Clemens Alexandr., _Protrept._ ii. 17. Cp. Lobeck, _Aglaophamus_, p. 1111 _sqq._

1049 Clemens Alexandr., _Protrept._ ii. 19.

1050 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.

1051 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._

1052 Diodorus, iii. 62.

1053 Macrobius, _Comment. in Somn. Scip._ i. 12, 12; _Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini tres Romae nuper reperti_ (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.

1054 Himerius, _Orat._ ix. 4.

1055 Proclus, _Hymn to Minerva_, in Lobeck, _Aglaophamus_, p. 561; _Orphica_, ed. Abel, p. 235.

1056 Hyginus, _Fab._ 167.

1057 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.

1058 Firmicus Maternus, _De err. prof. relig._ 6.

_ 1059 Mythogr. Vatic._ ed. Bode, _l.c._

1060 Plutarch, _Consol. ad uxor._ 10. Cp. _id._, _Isis et Osiris_, 35; _id._, _De ei Delphico_, 9; _id._, _De esu carnium_, i. 7.

1061 Pausanias, ii. 31, 2, and 37, 5; Apollodorus, iii. 5, 3.

1062 Pausanias, ii. 37, 5 _sq._; Plutarch, _Isis et Osiris_, 35; _id._, _Quaest. Conviv._ iv. 6, 2.

1063 Himerius, _Orat._ iii. 6, xiv. 7.

1064 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.

1065 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.

1066 Euripides, _Bacchae_, 920 _sqq._, 1017.

1067 Plutarch, _Isis et Osiris_, 35; Athenaeus, _l.c._

1068 Diodorus, iii. 64, 2, iv. 4, 2; Cornutus, _De natura deorum_, 30.

1069 Diodorus, _l.c._; Tzetzes, _Schol. in Lycophr._ 209; Philostratus, _Imagines_, i. 14 (15).

1070 Müller-Wieseler, _Denkmäler der alten Kunst_, ii. pl. xxxiii.; Daremberg et Saglio, i. 619 _sq._, 631; Roscher, _Ausführl. Lexikon_, i. c. 1149 _sqq._

1071 Welcker, _Alte Denkmäler_, v. taf. 2.

1072 Plutarch, _Quaest. Graec._ 36; _id._, _Isis et Osiris_, 35.

1073 Nonnus, _Dionys._ vi. 205.

1074 Firmicus Maternus, _De errore profan. religionum_, 6.

1075 Euripides, _Bacchae_, 735 _sqq._; Schol. on Aristophanes, _Frogs_, 357.

1076 Hesychius, _s.v._ Ἔριφος ὁ Διόνυσος, on which there is a marginal gloss ὁ μικρὸς αἴξ, ὁ ἐν τῷ ἔαρι φαινόμενος, ἤγουν ὁ πρώϊμος; Stephanus Byzant. _s.v._ Ἀκρώρεια. The title Εἰραφιώτης 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.

1077 Apollodorus, iii. 4, 3.

1078 Ovid, _Metam._ v. 329; Antoninus Liberalis, 28; _Mythogr. Vatic._ ed. Bode, i. 86, p. 29.

1079 Arnobius, _Adv. nationes_, v. 19. Cp. Suidas, _s.v._ αἰγίζειν. As fawns appear to have been also torn in pieces at the rites of Dionysus (Photius, _s.v._ νεβρίζειν; Harpocration, _s.v._ νεβρίζων), 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).

1080 Varro, _De re rustica_ i. 2, 19; Virgil, _Georg._ ii. 380, and Servius, _ad I._, and on _Aen._ iii. 118; Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 353 _sqq._; _id._, Metam. xv. 114 _sq._; Cornutus, _De natura deorum_, 30.

1081 Euripides, _Bacchae_, 138 _sq._ ἀγρεύων αἷμα τραγοκτόνον, ὡμοφάγον χάριν.

1082 Schol. on Aristophanes, _Frogs_, 357.

1083 Hera αἱγοφάγος 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 ὁψοφάγος 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 αἱγόβολος, 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.

1084 Porphyry, _De abstin._ ii. 55.

1085 Pausanias, ix. 8, 2.

1086 Plutarch, _Quaest. Graec._ 38.

1087 Aelian, _Nat. An._ xii. 34. Cp. W. Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, i. 286 _sqq._

1088 It is to be remembered that on the Mediterranean coasts the harvest never falls so late as autumn.

1089 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.

1090 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._

1091 Homer, _Hymn to Demeter_; Apollodorus, i. 5; Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 425 _sqq._; _id._, _Metam._ v. 385 _sqq._

1092 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.

1093 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.

_ 1094 Mythol. Forschungen_, p. 292 _sqq._

_ 1095 Etymol. Magnum_, p. 264, 12 _sq._

1096 O. Schrader, _Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte_2 (Jena, 1890), pp. 409, 422; V. Hehn, _Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere in ihrem Uebergang aus Asien_,4 p. 54. Δηαί is doubtless equivalent etymologically to ζειαί, which is often taken to be spelt, but this seems uncertain.

1097 Hesiod, _Theog._ 971; Lenormant, in Daremberg et Saglio, i. pt. ii. p. 1029.

1098 W. Mannhardt, _Mythol. Forsch._ p. 296.

_ 1099 Ib._ p. 297.

_ 1100 Ib._ p. 297 _sq._

_ 1101 Ib._ p. 299.

_ 1102 Ib._ p. 300.

_ 1103 Ib._ p. 310.

1104 W. Mannhardt, _Mythol. Forsch._ p. 310 _sq._

_ 1105 Ib._ p. 316.

_ 1106 Ib._ p. 316.

_ 1107 Ib._ p. 316 _sq._

1108 See above, pp. 16 _sq._, 286 _sq._

1109 W. Mannhardt, _op. cit._ p. 317.

_ 1110 Ib._ p. 317 _sq._

_ 1111 Ib._ p. 318.

1112 W. Mannhardt, _Mythol. Forsch._ p. 318.

_ 1113 Ib._ p. 318 _sq._

1114 Sébillot, _Coutumes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne_, p. 306.

1115 W. Mannhardt, _M. F._ p. 319.

_ 1116 Ib._ p. 320.

1117 Mannhardt, _Mythol. Forsch._ p. 321.

_ 1118 Ib._ pp. 321, 323, 325 _sq._

_ 1119 Ib._ p. 323; Panzer, _Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie_, ii. p. 219, No. 403.

1120 W. Mannhardt, _op. cit._ p. 325.

_ 1121 Ib._ p. 323.

_ 1122 Ib._

_ 1123 Ib._ p. 323 _sq._

1124 W. Mannhardt, _op. cit._ p. 324.

_ 1125 Ib._ p. 320.

_ 1126 Ib._ p. 325.

1127 See abbove, p. 83 _sqq._

1128 W. Mannhardt, _op. cit._ p. 324.

_ 1129 Ib._ p. 324 _sq._

_ 1130 Ib._ p. 325.

1131 W. Mannhardt, _op. cit._ p. 327.

_ 1132 Ib._ p. 328.

1133 Jamieson, _Dictionary of the Scottish Language_, _s.v._ “Maiden”; W. Mannhardt, _Mythol. Forschungen_, p. 326.

1134 Communicated by my friend Prof. W. Ridgeway, of Queen’s College, Cork.

1135 W. Mannhardt, _op. cit._ p. 328.

_ 1136 Ib._

_ 1137 Ib._ p. 328 _sq._

_ 1138 Ib._ p. 329.

_ 1139 Ib._ p. 330.

1140 W. Mannhardt, _op. cit._ p. 330.

_ 1141 Ib._ p. 331.

_ 1142 Ib._ p. 331.

_ 1143 Ib._ p. 332.

1144 Hutchinson, _History of Northumberland_, ii. _ad finem_, 17, quoted by Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, ii. 20, Bohn’s ed.

1145 Quoted by Brand, _op. cit._ ii. 22.

1146 W. Mannhardt, _Mythol. Forsch._ p. 333 _sq._

_ 1147 Ib._ p. 334.

_ 1148 Ib._ p. 334.

1149 W. Mannhardt, _op. cit._ p. 336.

_ 1150 Ib._ p. 336.

_ 1151 Ib._ p. 336; _Baumkultus_, p. 612.

1152 W. Mannhardt, _Die Korndämonen_, p. 28.

1153 W. Mannhardt, _l.c._

_ 1154 Ib._; Henderson, _Folk-lore of the Northern Counties_, p. 87; Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, ii. 20, Bohn’s ed.; Chambers’s _Book of Days_, ii. 377 _sq._ Cp. _Folk-lore Journal_, vii. 50.

1155 Brand, _op. cit._ ii. 21 _sq._

_ 1156 Folk-lore Journal_, vi. 268 _sq._

1157 From information supplied by Archie Leitch, gardener, Rowmore, Garelochhead.

1158 Communicated by Mr. Macfarlane of Faslane, Gareloch.

1159 Jamieson, _Dictionary of the Scottish Language_, _s.v._ “Maiden.”

1160 W. Gregor, in _Revue des Traditions populaires_, iii. 533 (485 B); _id._, _Folk-lore 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.”

1161 W. Mannhardt, _Die Korndämonen_, p. 30; _Folk-lore Journal_, vii. 50.

1162 W. Mannhardt, _l.c._; Sommer, _Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Sachsen und Thüringen_, p. 160 _sq._

1163 See above, p. 83 _sqq._

1164 Above, pp. 333, 344.

1165 Above, p. 307.

1166 Above, p. 67 _sqq._

1167 Above, pp. 334, 335.

1168 Above, pp. 334, 345.

1169 See above, p. 335 _sq._

1170 Above, p. 340; cp. Kuhn, _Westfälische Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen_, ii. No. 516.

1171 Above, pp. 336, 337, 345.

1172 See above, p. 9 _sqq._

1173 Above, p. 341.

1174 Above, p. 338.

1175 Above, p. 334, cp. 335.

1176 Above, pp. 334, 345.

1177 Above, p. 344 _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. _Folk-lore Journal_, vii. 50, 53 _sq._ Cp. Kuhn, _Westfälische Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen_, ii. Nos. 501, 517.

1178 Acosta, _Hist. of the Indies_, v. c. 28, vol. ii. p. 374 (Hakluyt Society, 1880).

1179 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.

1180 Brasseur de Bourbourg, _Histoire des Nations civilisées du Mexique_, iii. 40 _sqq._

1181 H. M. Elliot, _Supplemental Glossary of Terms used in the North Western Provinces_, edited by J. Beames, i. 254.

1182 Spenser St. John, _Life in the Forests of the Far East_,2 i. 187, 192 _sqq._

1183 E. B. Cross, “On the Karens,” in _Journal of the American Oriental Society_, iv. 309.

1184 See above, p. 346.

1185 Veth, _Java_, i. 524-526.

1186 Homer, _Od._ v. 125 _sqq._; Hesiod, _Theog._ 969 _sqq._

1187 See above, p. 343 _sq._

1188 It is possible that a ceremony performed in a Cyprian worship of Ariadne may have been of this nature. Plutarch, _Theseus_, 20, ἐν δὴ τῇ θυσίᾳ τοῦ Γορπιαίου μηνὸς ἱσταμένου δευτέρα κατακλινόμενον τινα τῶν νεανίσκων φθέγγεσθαι καὶ ποιεῖν ἄπερ ὠδινοῦσαι γυναῖκες. We have already seen grounds for regarding Ariadne as a goddess or spirit of vegetation (above, p. 104). 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.

1189 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._

1190 See above, p. 335 _sq._

1191 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.

1192 Homer, _Hymn to Demeter_, 401 _sqq._; Preller, _l.c._

1193 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; _Folk-lore Journal_, vi. 270.

1194 Above, p. 332 _sq._

1195 In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, she is represented as controlling the growth of the corn. See above, p. 331.

1196 See above, pp. 305 _sqq._, 309 _sqq._

1197 Pauly, _Real-Encyclopadie der class_. _Alterthumswiss._ v. 1011.

1198 Above, p. 105 _sq._

1199 Diodorus, i. 14, ἔτι γὰρ καὶ νῦν κατὰ τὸν θερισμόν τούς πρώτους ἀμηθέντας στάχυς θέντας τοὺς ἀνθρώπους κόπτεσθαι πλησίον τοῦ δράγματοσ κ.τ.λ. For θέντας we should perhaps read σύνθεντας, which is supported by the following δράγματος.

1200 Herodotus, ii. 79; Pollux, iv. 54; Pausanias, ix. 29; Athenaeus, 620 A.

1201 Brugsch, _Adonisklage und Linoslied_, p. 24.

1202 Above, p. 355.

1203 Ralston, _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 249 _sq._

1204 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.

1205 Conon, _l.c._

1206 W. Mannhardt, _A. W. F._ p. 281.

1207 Pausanias, _l.c._

1208 Pollux, iv. 54; Athenaeus, 619 F, 620 A; Hesychius, _svv._ Βῶρμον and Μαριανδυνὸς θρῆνος.

1209 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.

1210 Pollux, iv. 54.

1211 In this comparison I closely follow Mannhardt, _Myth. Forsch._ p. 18 _sqq._

1212 Cp. above, p. 340. On the other hand, the last sheaf is sometimes an object of desire and emulation. See p. 336. It is so at Balquhidder also, _Folk-lore Journal_, vi. 269; and it was formerly so on the Gareloch, Dumbartonshire, 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. 345).

1213 W. Mannhardt, _Myth. Forsch._ p. 19 _sq._

1214 W. Mannhardt, _Myth. Forsch._ p. 20; Panzer, _Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie_, ii. 217.

1215 Above, p. 346 _sq._

1216 W. Mannhardt, _Myth. Forsch._ p. 22.

1217 W. Mannhardt, _Myth. Forsch._ p. 22.

_ 1218 Ib._ p. 22 _sq._

_ 1219 Ib._ p. 23.

_ 1220 Ib._ p. 23 _sq._

_ 1221 Ib._ p. 24.

1222 W. Mannhardt, _Myth. Forsch._ p. 24.

_ 1223 Ib._ p. 24.

_ 1224 Ib._ p. 24 _sq._

_ 1225 Ib._ p. 25.

1226 Witzschel, _Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen_, p. 223.

1227 W. Mannhardt, _op. cit._ p. 25 _sq._

1228 C. A. Elliot, _Hoshangábád Settlement Report_, p. 178, quoted in _Panjab Notes and Queries_, iii. Nos. 8, 168.

1229 W. Mannhardt, _Myth. Forsch._ p. 31.

_ 1230 Ib._ p. 334.

1231 W. Mannhardt, _Myth. Forsch._ p. 330.

_ 1232 Ib._

_ 1233 Ib._ p. 331.

_ 1234 Ib._ p. 335.

_ 1235 Ib._ p. 335.

1236 Above, pp. 335, 341, 350.

1237 W. Mannhardt, _Korndäm._, p. 26.

1238 Above, p. 343.

1239 W. Mannhardt, _M. F._ p. 50.

_ 1240 Ib._ p. 50 _sq._

1241 See above, pp. 286 _sq._, 333, 337, 340, 341.

1242 W. Mannhardt, _op. cit._ p. 32 _sqq._ Cp. _Revue des Traditions populaires_, iii. 598.

1243 W. Mannhardt, _Mythol. Forsch._ p. 35 _sq._

_ 1244 Ib._ p. 36.

1245 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.

1246 W. Mannhardt, _op. cit._ p. 39.

1247 W. Mannhardt, _Myth. Forsch._ p. 39 _sq._

_ 1248 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._

1249 W. Mannhardt, _Myth. Forsch._ p. 41 _sq._

1250 W. Mannhardt, _op. cit._ p. 42.

_ 1251 Ib._ p. 42. See above, p. 343. 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._

1252 W. Mannhardt, _op. cit._ p. 47 _sq._

_ 1253 Ib._ 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, _Folk-lore of the North-East of Scotland_, p. 182. Here “the aul’ man” is probably the equivalent of the Old Man (_der Alte_) of Germany.

_ 1254 M. F._ p. 48.

_ 1255 Ib._ p. 48 _sq._

_ 1256 Ib._ p. 49.

_ 1257 Ib._ p. 49 _sq._; Wuttke, _Der deutsche Volksaberglaube_,2 § 400; Töppen, _Aberglaube aus Masuren_,2 p. 57.

1258 The explanation of the custom is Mannhardt’s. _M. F._ p. 49.

_ 1259 Odyssey_, xvii. 485 _sqq._ Cp. Plato, _Sophist_, 216 A.

1260 For throwing him into the water, see p. 374.

1261 Cieza de Leon, _Travels_, translated by Markham, p. 203 (Hakluyt Society, 1864).

1262 Brasseur de Bourbourg, _Histoire des Nations civilisées du Mexique_, i. 274; Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_, ii. 340.

1263 Bastian, _Die Culturländer des alten Amerika_, ii. 639 (quoting Herrara). See above, p. 307.

1264 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.

1265 Labat, _Relation historique de l’Ethiopie occidentale_, i. 380.

1266 John Adams, _Sketches taken during Ten Voyages in Africa between the years 1786 and 1800_, p. 25.

1267 P. Bouche, _La Côte des Esclaves_, p. 132.

1268 Arbousset et Daumas, _Voyage d’exploration au Nord-est de la Colonie du Cap de Bonne-Esperance_, p. 117 _sq._

_ 1269 Panjab Notes and Queries_, ii. No. 721.

1270 Major S. C. Macpherson, _Memorials of Service in India_, p. 113 _sq._; Major-General John Campbell, _Wild Tribes of Khondistan_, pp. 52-58, etc.

1271 J. Campbell, _op. cit._ p. 56.

1272 S. C. Macpherson, _op. cit._ p. 115 _sq._

_ 1273 Ib._ p. 113.

1274 S. C. Macpherson, _op. cit._ p. 117 _sq._; J. Campbell, p. 112.

1275 S. C. Macpherson, p. 118.

1276 J. Campbell, p. 54.

_ 1277 Ib._ pp. 55, 112.

1278 S. C. Macpherson, p. 119; J. Campbell, p. 113.

1279 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).

1280 J. Campbell, pp. 56, 58, 120.

1281 Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 288, quoting Colonel Campbell’s Report.

1282 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.

1283 S. C. Macpherson, p. 130.

1284 Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 288, referring to Colonel Campbell’s Report.

1285 S. C. Macpherson, p. 129. Cp. J. Campbell, pp. 55, 58, 113, 121, 187.

1286 J. Campbell, p. 182.

1287 S. C. Macpherson, p. 128; Dalton, _l.c._

1288 J. Campbell, pp. 55, 182.

1289 J. Campbell, p. 187.

1290 J. Campbell, p. 112.

1291 S. C. Macpherson, p. 118.

1292 Above, pp. 383, 384.

1293 Above, pp. 334, 335.

1294 Above, pp. 333, 344, 345.

1295 Above, p. 372.

1296 Above, p. 374.

1297 Above, pp. 286 _sq._, 337, 340, 374.

1298 Above, p. 374.

1299 W. Mannhardt, _Korndämonen_, p. 5.

1300 Pfannenschmid, _Germanische Erntefeste_, p. 98.

1301 Above, p. 376 _sq._

1302 Above, p. 235.

1303 Above, p. 299.

1304 Above, p. 68.

1305 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.

1306 Above, p. 364 _sq._

1307 Above, p. 365.

1308 Hesychius, _s.v._ Βῶρμον.

1309 Apollodorus, ii. 6, 3.

1310 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._

1311 Above, p. 282 _sqq._

1312 Above, p. 283 _sq._

1313 Above, pp. 381, 384, 389.

1314 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.”

1315 Above, p. 364.

1316 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.

1317 E. Meyer, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, i. § 57.

1318 Diodorus, i. 88; Plutarch, _Is. et Os._ 73; cp. _id._, 30, 33.

1319 Above, pp. 307, 383, 391.

1320 Festus, _s.v._ _Catularia_. Cp. _id._, _s.v._ _rutilae canes_; Columella, x. 343; Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 905 _sqq._; Pliny, _N. H._ xviii. § 14.

1321 Panzer, _Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie_, ii. 207, No. 362; _Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde des Königreichs Bayern_, iii. 343.

1322 Above, pp. 384, 389.

1323 Above, pp. 381, 383.

1324 Plutarch, _Is. et Os._ 18.

1325 Plutarch, _Is. et Os_. 22, 30, 31, 33, 73.

1326 Wilkinson, _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_ (ed. 1878), iii. 81.

1327 Pausanias, i. 22, 3, viii. 5, 8, viii. 42, 1

1328 Cornutus, _De nat. deor._ c. 28.

1329 Hone, _Every-day Book_, ii. c. 1170 _sq._

1330 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.

1331 Hone, _op. cit._ ii. 1172.

1332 Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, ii. 20 (Bohn’s ed.); Burne and Jackson, _op. cit._ p. 371.

1333 Burne and Jackson, _l.c._

1334 W. Mannhardt, _Myth. Forsch._ p. 185.

1335 See above, p. 345.

1336 W. Mannhardt, _Myth. Forsch._ p. 185.

_ 1337 Ib._

_ 1338 Revue des Traditions populaires_, ii. 500.

1339 Above, p. 343.

1340 U. Jahn, _Die deutschen Opfergebräuche bei Ackerbau und Viehzucht_, 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.