CHAPTER IV—THE GOLDEN BOUGH.

“Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.”—FAUST.

§ 1.—Between heaven and earth.

At the outset of this book two questions were proposed for answer; Why had

the priest of Nemi (Aricia) to slay his predecessor? And why, before doing

so, had he to pluck the Golden Bough? Of these two questions the first has

now been answered. The priest of Nemi, if I am right, embodied in himself

the spirit, primarily, of the woods and, secondarily, of vegetable life in

general. Hence, according as he was well or ill, the woods, the flowers,

and the fields were believed to flourish or fade; and if he were to die of

sickness or old age, the plant world, it was supposed, would

simultaneously perish. Therefore it was necessary that this priest of the

woodlands, this sylvan deity incarnate in a man, should be put to death

while he was still in the full bloom of his divine manhood, in order that

his sacred life, transmitted in unabated force to his successor, might

renew its youth, and thus by successive transmissions through a perpetual

line of vigorous incarnations might remain eternally fresh and young, a

pledge and security that the buds and blossoms of spring, the verdure of

summer woods, and the mellow glories of autumn would never fail.

But we have still to ask, What was the Golden Bough? and why had each

candidate for the Arician priesthood to pluck it before he could slay the

priest? These questions I will now try to answer.

It will be well to begin by noticing two of those rules or taboos by

which, as we have seen, the life of divine kings or priests is regulated.

The first of the rules to which I desire to call the reader’s attention is

that the divine personage may not touch the ground with his foot. This

rule was observed by the Mikado of Japan and by the supreme pontiff of the

Zapotecs in Mexico. The latter “profaned his sanctity if he so much as

touched the ground with his foot.”(603) For the Mikado to touch the ground

with his foot was a shameful degradation; indeed, in the sixteenth

century, it was enough to deprive him of his office. Outside his palace he

was carried on men’s shoulders; within it he walked on exquisitely wrought

mats.(604) The king and queen of Tahiti might not touch the ground

anywhere but within their hereditary domains; for the ground on which they

trod became sacred. In travelling from place to place they were carried on

the shoulders of sacred men. They were always accompanied by several pairs

of these sacred men; and when it became necessary to change their bearers,

the king and queen vaulted on to the shoulders of their new bearers

without letting their feet touch the ground.(605) It was an evil omen if

the king of Dosuma touched the ground, and he had to perform an expiatory

ceremony.(606) The king of Persia was never seen on foot outside his

palace.(607)

The second rule to be here noted is that the sun may not shine upon the

divine person. This rule was observed both by the Mikado and by the

pontiff of the Zapotecs. The latter “was looked upon as a god whom the

earth was not worthy to hold, nor the sun to shine upon.”(608) The

Japanese would not allow that the Mikado “should expose his sacred person

to the open air, and the sun is not thought worthy to shine on his

head.”(609) The heir to the throne of Bogota in Colombia, South America,

had to undergo a severe training from the age of sixteen; he lived in

complete retirement in a temple, where he might not see the sun nor eat

salt nor converse with a woman.(610) The heir to the kingdom of Sogamoso

in Colombia, before succeeding to the crown, had to fast for seven years

in the temple, being shut up in the dark and not allowed to see the sun or

light.(611) The prince who was to become Inca of Peru had to fast for a

month without seeing light.(612)

Now it is remarkable that these two rules—not to touch the ground and not

to see the sun—are observed either separately or conjointly by girls at

puberty in many parts of the world. Thus amongst the negroes of Loango

girls at puberty are confined in separate huts, and they may not touch the

ground with any part of their bare body.(613) Amongst the Zulus and

kindred tribes of South Africa, when the first signs of puberty show

themselves “while a girl is walking, gathering wood, or working in the

field, she runs to the river and hides herself among the reeds for the day

so as not to be seen by men. She covers her head carefully with her

blanket that the sun may not shine on it and shrivel her up into a

withered skeleton, assured result from exposure to the sun’s beams. After

dark she returns to her home and is secluded” in a hut for some time.(614)

In New Ireland girls are confined for four or five years in small cages,

being kept in the dark and not allowed to set foot on the ground. The

custom has been thus described by an eye-witness. “I heard from a teacher

about some strange custom connected with some of the young girls here, so

I asked the chief to take me to the house where they were. The house was

about twenty-five feet in length, and stood in a reed and bamboo

enclosure, across the entrance to which a bundle of dried grass was

suspended to show that it was strictly ‘_tabu_’. Inside the house were

three conical structures about seven or eight feet in height, and about

ten or twelve feet in circumference at the bottom, and for about four feet

from the ground, at which point they tapered off to a point at the top.

These cages were made of the broad leaves of the pandanus-tree, sewn quite

close together so that no light, and little or no air could enter. On one

side of each is an opening which is closed by a double door of plaited

cocoa-nut tree and pandanus-tree leaves. About three feet from the ground

there is a stage of bamboos which forms the floor. In each of these cages

we were told there was a young woman confined, each of whom had to remain

for at least four or five years, without ever being allowed to go outside

the house. I could scarcely credit the story when I heard it; the whole

thing seemed too horrible to be true. I spoke to the chief, and told him

that I wished to see the inside of the cages, and also to see the girls

that I might make them a present of a few beads. He told me that it was

‘_tabu_,’ forbidden for any men but their own relations to look at them;

but I suppose the promised beads acted as an inducement, and so he sent

away for some old lady who had charge, and who alone is allowed to open

the doors.... She had to undo the door when the chief told her to do so,

and then the girls peeped out at us, and, when told to do so, they held

out their hands for the beads. I, however, purposely sat at some distance

away and merely held out the beads to them, as I wished to draw them quite

outside, that I might inspect the inside of the cages. This desire of mine

gave rise to another difficulty, as these girls were not allowed to put

their feet to the ground all the time they were confined in these places.

However, they wished to get the beads, and so the old lady had to go

outside and collect a lot of pieces of wood and bamboo, which she placed

on the ground, and then going to one of the girls, she helped her down and

held her hand as she stepped from one piece of wood to another until she

came near enough to get the beads I held out to her. I then went to

inspect the inside of the cage out of which she had come, but could

scarcely put my head inside of it, the atmosphere was so hot and stifling.

It was clean and contained nothing but a few short lengths of bamboo for

holding water. There was only room for the girl to sit or lie down in a

crouched position on the bamboo platform, and when the doors are shut it

must be nearly or quite dark inside. The girls are never allowed to come

out except once a day to bathe in a dish or wooden bowl placed close to

each cage. They say that they perspire profusely. They are placed in these

stifling cages when quite young, and must remain there until they are

young women, when they are taken out and have each a great marriage feast

provided for them.”(615)

In some parts of New Guinea “daughters of chiefs, when they are about

twelve or thirteen years of age, are kept indoors for two or three years,

never being allowed, under any pretence, to descend from the house, and

the house is so shaded that the sun cannot shine on them.”(616) Among the

Ot Danoms of Borneo girls at the age of eight or ten years are shut up in

a little room or cell of the house and cut off from all intercourse with

the world for a long time. The cell, like the rest of the house, is raised

on piles above the ground, and is lit by a single small window opening on

a lonely place, so that the girl is in almost total darkness. She may not

leave the room on any pretext whatever, not even for the most necessary

purposes. None of her family may see her all the time she is shut up, but

a single slave woman is appointed to wait on her. During her lonely

confinement, which often lasts seven years, the girl occupies herself in

weaving mats or with other handiwork. Her bodily growth is stunted by the

long want of exercise, and when, on attaining womanhood, she is brought

out, her complexion is pale and wax-like. She is now shown the sun, the

earth, the water, the trees, and the flowers, as if she were newly born.

Then a great feast is made, a slave is killed, and the girl is smeared

with his blood.(617) In Ceram girls at puberty were formerly shut up by

themselves in a hut which was kept dark.(618)

Amongst the Aht Indians of Vancouver Island, when girls reach puberty they

are placed in a sort of gallery in the house “and are there surrounded

completely with mats, so that neither the sun nor any fire can be seen. In

this cage they remain for several days. Water is given them, but no food.

The longer a girl remains in this retirement the greater honour is it to

the parents; but she is disgraced for life if it is known that she has

seen fire or the sun during this initiatory ordeal.”(619) Amongst the

Thlinkeet or Kolosh Indians of Alaska, when a girl shows signs of

womanhood she is shut up in a little hut or cage, which is completely

blocked up with the exception of a small air-hole. In this dark and filthy

abode she had formerly to remain a year, without fire, exercise, or

associates. Her food was put in at the small window; she had to drink out

of the wing-bone of a white-headed eagle. The time has now been reduced,

at least in some places, to six months. The girl has to wear a sort of hat

with long flaps, that her gaze may not pollute the sky; for she is thought

unfit for the sun to shine upon.(620) Amongst the Koniags, an Esquimaux

people of Alaska, girls at puberty were placed in small huts in which they

had to remain on their hands and knees for six months; then the hut was

enlarged enough to let them kneel upright, and they had to remain in this

posture for six months more.(621)

When symptoms of puberty appeared on a girl for the first time, the

Indians of the Rio de la Plata used to sew her up in her hammock as if she

were dead, leaving only a small hole for her mouth to allow her to

breathe. In this state she continued so long as the symptoms lasted.(622)

In similar circumstances the Chiriguanos of Bolivia hoisted the girl in

her hammock to the roof, where she stayed for a month; the second month

the hammock was let half way down from the roof; and in the third month

old women, armed with sticks, entered the hut and ran about striking

everything they met, saying they were hunting the snake that had wounded

the girl. This they did till one of the women gave out that she had killed

the snake.(623) Amongst some of the Brazilian Indians, when a girl

attained to puberty, her hair was burned or shaved off close to the head.

Then she was placed on a flat stone and cut with the tooth of an animal

from the shoulders all down the back, till she ran with blood. Then the

ashes of a wild gourd were rubbed into the wounds; the girl was bound hand

and foot, and hung in a hammock, being enveloped in it so closely that no

one could see her. Here she had to stay for three days without eating or

drinking. When the three days were over, she stepped out of the hammock

upon the flat stone, for her feet might not touch the ground. If she had a

call of nature, a female relation took the girl on her back and carried

her out, taking with her a live coal to prevent evil influences from

entering the girl’s body. Being replaced in her hammock she was now

allowed to get some flour, boiled roots, and water, but might not taste

salt or flesh. Thus she continued to the end of the first monthly period,

at the expiry of which she was gashed on the breast and belly as well as

all down the back. During the second month she still stayed in her

hammock, but her rule of abstinence was less rigid, and she was allowed to

spin. The third month she was blackened with a certain pigment and began

to go about as usual.(624)

Amongst the Macusis of British Guiana, when a girl shows the first signs

of puberty, she is hung in a hammock at the highest point of the hut. For

the first few days she may not leave the hammock by day, but at night she

must come down, light a fire, and spend the night beside it, else she

would break out in sores on her neck, throat, etc. So long as the symptoms

are at their height, she must fast rigorously. When they have abated, she

may come down and take up her abode in a little compartment that is made

for her in the darkest corner of the hut. In the morning she may cook her

food, but it must be at a separate fire and in a vessel of her own. In

about ten days the magician comes and undoes the spell by muttering charms

and breathing on her and on the more valuable of the things with which she

has come in contact. The pots and drinking vessels which she used are

broken and the fragments buried. After her first bath, the girl must

submit to be beaten by her mother with thin rods without uttering a cry.

At the end of the second period she is again beaten, but not afterwards.

She is now “clean,” and can mix again with people.(625) Other Indians of

Guiana, after keeping the girl in her hammock at the top of the hut for a

month, expose her to certain large ants, whose bite is very painful.(626)

The custom of stinging the girl with ants or beating her with rods is

intended, we may be sure, not as a punishment or a test of endurance, but

as a purification, the object being to drive away the malignant influences

with which a girl at such times is believed to be beset and enveloped.

Examples of purification, both by beating and by stinging with ants, have

already come before us.(627) Probably, beating or scourging as a religious

or ceremonial rite always originated with a similar intention. It was

meant to wipe off and drive away a dangerous contagion (whether

personified as demoniacal or not) which was supposed to be adhering

physically, though invisibly, to the body of the sufferer.(628) The pain

inflicted on the person beaten was no more the object of the beating than

it is of a surgical operation with us; it was a necessary accident, that

was all. In later times such customs were interpreted otherwise, and the

pain, from being an accident, became the prime object of the ceremony,

which was now regarded either as a test of endurance imposed upon persons

at critical epochs of life, or as a mortification of the flesh well

pleasing to the god. But asceticism, under any shape or form, is never

primitive. Amongst the Uaupes of Brazil a girl at puberty is secluded in

the house for a month, and allowed only a small quantity of bread and

water. Then she is taken out into the midst of her relations and friends,

each of whom gives her four or five blows with pieces of _sipo_ (an

elastic climber), till she falls senseless or dead. If she recovers, the

operation is repeated four times at intervals of six hours, and it is

considered an offence to the parents not to strike hard. Meantime, pots of

meats and fish have been made ready; the _sipos_ are dipped into them and

then given to the girl to lick, who is now considered a marriageable

woman.(629)

When a Hindoo maiden reaches maturity she is kept in a dark room for four

days, and is forbidden to see the sun. She is regarded as unclean; no one

is allowed to touch her. Her diet is restricted to boiled rice, milk,

sugar, curd, and tamarind without salt.(630) In Cambodia a girl at puberty

is put to bed under a mosquito curtain, where she should stay a hundred

days. Usually, however, four, five, ten, or twenty days are thought

enough; and even this, in a hot climate and under the close meshes of the

curtain, is sufficiently trying.(631) According to another account, a

Cambodian maiden at puberty is said to “enter into the shade.” During her

retirement, which, according to the rank and position of her family, may

last any time from a few days to several years, she has to observe a

number of rules, such as not to be seen by a strange man, not to eat flesh

or fish, and so on. She goes nowhere, not even to the pagoda. But this

state of retirement is discontinued during eclipses; at such times she

goes forth and pays her devotions to the monster who is supposed to cause

eclipses by catching the heavenly bodies between his teeth.(632) The fact

that her retirement is discontinued during an eclipse seems to show how

literally the injunction is interpreted which forbids maidens entering on

womanhood to look upon the sun.

A superstition so widely diffused as this might be expected to leave

traces in legends and folk-tales. And it has done so. In a modern Greek

folk-tale the Fates predict that in her fifteenth year a princess must be

careful not to let the sun shine on her, for if this were to happen she

would be turned into a lizard.(633) A Tyrolese story tells how it was the

doom of a lovely maiden to be transported into the belly of a whale if

ever a sunbeam fell on her.(634) In another modern Greek tale the Sun

bestows a daughter upon a childless woman on condition of taking the child

back to himself when she is twelve years old. So, when the child was

twelve, the mother closed the doors and windows, and stopped up all the

chinks and crannies, to prevent the Sun from coming to fetch away her

daughter. But she forgot to stop up the key-hole, and a sunbeam streamed

through it and carried off the girl.(635) In a Sicilian story a seer

foretells that a king will have a daughter who, in her fourteenth year,

will conceive a child by the Sun. So, when the child was born, the king

shut her up in a lonely tower which had no window, lest a sunbeam should

fall on her. When she was nearly fourteen years old, it happened that her

parents sent her a piece of roasted kid, in which she found a sharp bone.

With this bone she scraped a hole in the wall, and a sunbeam shot through

the hole and impregnated her.(636) The old Greek story of Danae, who was

confined by her father in a subterranean chamber or a brazen tower, but

impregnated by Zeus, who reached her in the shape of a shower of gold,

perhaps belongs to the same class of tales. It has its counterpart in the

legend which the Kirgis of Siberia tell of their ancestry. A certain Khan

had a fair daughter, whom he kept in a dark iron house, that no man might

see her. An old woman tended her; and when the girl was grown to

maidenhood she asked the old woman, “Where do you go so often?”—“My

child,” said the old dame, “there is a bright world. In that bright world

your father and mother live, and all sorts of people live there. That is

where I go.” The maiden said, “Good mother, I will tell nobody, but show

me that bright world.” So the old woman took the girl out of the iron

house. But when she saw the bright world, the girl tottered and fainted;

and the eye of God fell upon her, and she conceived. Her angry father put

her in a golden chest and sent her floating away (fairy gold can float in

fairyland) over the wide sea.(637) The shower of gold in the Greek story,

and the eye of God in the Kirgis legend, probably stand for sunlight and

the sun. The idea that women may be impregnated by the sun is not uncommon

in legends,(638) and there are even traces of it in marriage customs.(639)

The ground of this seclusion of girls at puberty lies in the deeply

engrained dread which primitive man universally entertains of menstruous

blood. Evidence of this has already been adduced,(640) but a few more

facts may here be added. Amongst the Australian blacks “the boys are told

from their infancy that, if they see the blood, they will early become

gray-headed, and their strength will fail prematurely.” Hence a woman

lives apart at these times; and if a young man or boy approaches her she

calls out, and he immediately makes a circuit to avoid her. The men go out

of their way to avoid even crossing the tracks made by women at such

times. Similarly the woman may not walk on any path frequented by men, nor

touch anything used by men; she may not eat fish, or go near water at all,

much less cross it; for if she did, the fish would be frightened, and the

fishers would have no luck; she may not even fetch water for the camp; it

is sufficient for her to say _Thama_ to ensure her husband fetching the

water himself. A severe beating, or even death, is the punishment

inflicted on an Australian woman who breaks these rules.(641) The Bushmen

think that, by a glance of a girl’s eye at the time when she ought to be

kept in strict retirement, men become fixed in whatever position they

happen to occupy, with whatever they were holding in their hands, and are

changed into trees which talk.(642) The Guayquiries of the Orinoco think

that, when a woman has her courses, everything upon which she steps will

die, and that if a man treads on the place where she has passed, his legs

will immediately swell up.(643) The Creek and kindred Indians of the

United States compelled women at menstruation to live in separate huts at

some distance from the village. There the women had to stay, at the risk

of being surprised and cut off by enemies. It was thought “a most horrid

and dangerous pollution” to go near the women at such times; and the

danger extended to enemies who, if they slew the women, had to cleanse

themselves from the pollution by means of certain sacred herbs and

roots.(644) Similarly, among the Chippeways and other Indians of the

Hudson Bay Territory, women at such seasons are excluded from the camp,

and take up their abode in huts of branches. They wear long hoods, which

effectually conceal the head and breast. They may not touch the household

furniture nor any objects used by men; for their touch “is supposed to

defile them, so that their subsequent use would be followed by certain

mischief or misfortune,” such as disease or death. They may not walk on

the common paths nor cross the tracks of animals. They “are never

permitted to walk on the ice of rivers or lakes, or near the part where

the men are hunting beaver, or where a fishing-net is set, for fear of

averting their success. They are also prohibited at those times from

partaking of the head of any animal, and even from walking in or crossing

the track where the head of a deer, moose, beaver, and many other animals

have lately been carried, either on a sledge or on the back. To be guilty

of a violation of this custom is considered as of the greatest importance;

because they firmly believe that it would be a means of preventing the

hunter from having an equal success in his future excursions.”(645) So the

Lapps forbid women at menstruation to walk on that part of the shore where

the fishers are in the habit of setting out their fish.(646)

Amongst the civilised nations of Europe the superstitions which have

prevailed on this subject are not less extravagant. In the oldest existing

cyclopaedia—the _Natural History_ of Pliny—the list of dangers apprehended

from menstruation is longer than any furnished by savages. According to

Pliny, the touch of a menstruous woman turned wine to vinegar, blighted

crops, killed seedlings, blasted gardens, brought down the fruit from

trees, dimmed mirrors, blunted razors, rusted iron and brass (especially

at the waning of the moon), killed bees, or at least drove them from their

hives, caused mares to miscarry, and so forth.(647) Similarly, in various

parts of Europe, it is still believed that if a woman in her courses

enters a brewery the beer will turn sour; if she touches beer, wine,

vinegar, or milk, it will go bad; if she makes jam, it will not keep; if

she mounts a mare, it will miscarry; if she touches buds, they will

wither; if she climbs a cherry-tree, it will die.(648)

Thus the object of secluding women at menstruation is to neutralise the

dangerous influences which are supposed to emanate from them at such

times. That the danger is believed to be especially great at the first

menstruation appears from the unusual precautions taken to isolate girls

at this crisis. Two of these precautions have been illustrated above,

namely, the rules that the girl may not touch the ground nor see the sun.

The general effect of these rules is to keep the girl suspended, so to

say, between heaven and earth. Whether enveloped in her hammock and slung

up to the roof, as in South America, or elevated above the ground in a

dark and narrow cage, as in New Ireland, she may be considered to be out

of the way of doing mischief, since, being shut off both from the earth

and from the sun, she can poison neither of these great sources of life by

her deadly contagion. In short, she is rendered harmless by being, in

electrical language, insulated. But the precautions thus taken to isolate

or insulate the girl are dictated by a regard for her own safety as well

as for the safety of others. For it is thought that the girl herself would

suffer if she were to neglect the prescribed regimen. Thus Zulu girls, as

we have seen, believe that they would shrivel to skeletons if the sun were

to shine on them at puberty, and in some Brazilian tribes the girls think

that a transgression of the rules would entail sores on the neck and

throat. In short, the girl is viewed as charged with a powerful force

which, if not kept within bounds, may prove the destruction both of the

girl herself and of all with whom she comes in contact. To repress this

force within the limits necessary for the safety of all concerned is the

object of the taboos in question.

The same explanation applies to the observance of the same rules by divine

kings and priests. The uncleanness, as it is called, of girls at puberty

and the sanctity of holy men do not, to the primitive mind, differ from

each other. They are only different manifestations of the same

supernatural energy which, like energy in general, is in itself neither

good nor bad, but becomes beneficent or maleficent according to its

application.(649) Accordingly, if, like girls at puberty, divine

personages may neither touch the ground nor see the sun, the reason is, on

the one hand, a fear lest their divinity might, at contact with earth or

heaven, discharge itself with fatal violence on either; and, on the other

hand, an apprehension, that the divine being, thus drained of his ethereal

virtue, might thereby be incapacitated for the future performance of those

supernatural functions, upon the proper discharge of which the safety of

the people and even of the world is believed to hang. Thus the rules in

question fall under the head of the taboos which we examined in the second

chapter; they are intended to preserve the life of the divine person and

with it the life of his subjects and worshippers. Nowhere, it is thought,

can his precious yet dangerous life be at once so safe and so harmless as

when it is neither in heaven nor in earth, but, as far as possible,

suspended between the two.(650)

§ 2.—Balder.

A god whose life might in a sense be said to be neither in heaven nor

earth but between the two, was the Norse Balder, the good and beautiful

god. The story of his death is as follows: Once on a time Balder dreamed

heavy dreams which seemed to forebode his death. Thereupon the gods held a

council and resolved to make him secure against every danger. So the

goddess Frigg took an oath from fire and water, iron and all metals,

stones and earth, from trees, sicknesses and poisons, and from all

four-footed beasts, birds, and creeping things, that they would not hurt

Balder. When this was done Balder was deemed invulnerable; so the gods

amused themselves by setting him in their midst, while some shot at him,

others hewed at him, and others threw stones at him. But whatever they

did, nothing could hurt him; and at this they were all glad. Only Loki,

the mischief-maker, was displeased, and he went in the guise of an old

woman to Frigg, who told him that the weapons of the gods could not wound

Balder, since she had made them all swear not to hurt him. Then Loki

asked, “Have all things sworn to spare Balder?” She answered, “East of

Walhalla grows a plant called mistletoe; it seemed to me too young to

swear.” So Loki went and pulled the mistletoe and took it to the assembly

of the gods. There he found the blind god Hödur standing at the outside of

the circle. Loki asked him, “Why do you not shoot at Balder?” Hödur

answered, “Because I do not see where he stands; besides I have no

weapon.” Then said Loki, “Do like the rest and show Balder honour, as they

all do. I will show you where he stands, and do you shoot at him with this

twig.” Hödur took the mistletoe and threw it at Balder, as Loki directed

him. The mistletoe struck Balder and pierced him through and through, and

he fell down dead. And that was the greatest misfortune that ever befel

gods and men. For a while the gods stood speechless, then they lifted up

their voices and wept bitterly. They took Balder’s body and brought it to

the sea-shore. There stood Balder’s ship; it was called Ringhorn, and was

the hugest of all ships. The gods wished to launch the ship and to burn

Balder’s body on it, but the ship would not stir. So they sent for a

giantess called Hyrrockin. She came riding on a wolf and gave the ship

such a push that fire flashed from the rollers and all the earth shook.

Then Balder’s body was taken and placed on the funeral pile upon his ship.

When his wife Nanna saw that, her heart burst for sorrow and she died. So

she was laid on the funeral pile with her husband, and fire was put to it.

Balder’s horse, too, with all its trappings, was burned on the pile.(651)

The circumstantiality of this story suggests that it belongs to the

extensive class of myths which are invented to explain ritual. For a myth

is never so graphic and precise in its details as when it is a simple

transcript of a ceremony which the author of the myth witnessed with his

eyes. At all events, if it can be made probable that rites like those

described in the Balder myth have been practised by Norsemen and by other

European peoples, we shall be justified in inferring that the ritual gave

birth to the myth, not the myth to the ritual. For while many cases can be

shown in which a myth has been invented to explain a rite, it would be

hard to point to a single case in which a myth has given rise to a rite.

Ritual may be the parent of myth, but can never be its child.(652)

The main incidents in the myth of Balder’s death are two; first, the

pulling of the mistletoe, and second, the death and burning of the god.

Now both these incidents appear to have formed parts of an annual ceremony

once observed by Celts and Norsemen, probably also by Germans and Slavs.

In most parts of Europe the peasants have been accustomed from time

immemorial to kindle bonfires on certain days of the year, and to dance

round them or leap over them. Customs of this kind can be traced back on

historical evidence to the Middle Ages,(653) and their analogy to similar

customs observed in antiquity goes with strong internal evidence to prove

that their origin must be sought in a period long prior to the spread of

Christianity. Indeed the earliest evidence of their observance in Northern

Europe is furnished by the attempts made by Christian synods in the eighth

century to put them down as heathenish rites.(654) Not uncommonly effigies

are burned in these fires, or a pretence is made of burning a living

person in them; and there are grounds for believing that anciently human

beings were actually burned on these occasions. A brief review of the

customs in question will bring out the traces of human sacrifice, and will

serve at the same time to throw light on their meaning.(655)

The seasons of the year at which these bonfires are most commonly lit are

spring and midsummer, but in some places they are kindled at Hallow E’en

(October 31st) and Christmas. In spring the first Sunday in Lent

(Quadragesima) and Easter Eve are the days on which in different places

the ceremony is observed. Thus in the Eifel Mountains, Rhenish Prussia, on

the first Sunday in Lent young people used to collect straw and brushwood

from house to house. These they carried to an eminence and piled them up

round a tall, slim, beech-tree, to which a piece of wood was fastened at

right angles to form a cross. The structure was known as the “hut” or

“castle.” Fire was set to it and the young people marched round the

blazing “castle” bareheaded, each carrying a lighted torch and praying

aloud. Sometimes a straw man was burned in the “hut.” People observed the

direction in which the smoke blew from the fire. If it blew towards the

corn-fields, it was a sign that the harvest would be abundant. On the same

day, in some parts of the Eifel, a great wheel was made of straw and

dragged by three horses to the top of a hill. Thither the village boys

marched at nightfall, set fire to the wheel, and sent it rolling down the

slope. Two lads followed it with levers to set it in motion again, in case

it should anywhere meet with a check.(656) About Echternach the same

ceremony is called “burning the witch.”(657) At Voralberg in the Tyrol on

the first Sunday in Lent a slender young fir-tree is surrounded with a

pile of straw and fire-wood. At the top of the tree is fastened a human

figure called the “witch”; it is made of old clothes and stuffed with

gunpowder. At night the whole is set on fire and boys and girls dance

round it, swinging torches and singing rhymes in which the words “corn in

the winnowing-basket, the plough in the earth” may be distinguished.(658)

In Swabia on the first Sunday in Lent a figure called the “witch” or the

“old wife” or “winter’s grandmother” is made up of clothes and fastened to

a pole. This is stuck in the middle of a pile of wood, to which fire is

applied. While the “witch” is burning the young people throw blazing discs

into the air. The discs are thin round pieces of wood, a few inches in

diameter, with notched edges to imitate the rays of the sun or stars. They

have a hole in the middle, by which they are attached to the end of a

wand. Before the disc is thrown it is set on fire, the wand is swung to

and fro, and the impetus thus communicated to the disc is augmented by

dashing the rod sharply against a sloping board. The burning disc is thus

thrown off, and mounting high into the air, describes a long curve before

it reaches the ground. A single lad may fling up forty or fifty of these

discs, one after the other. The object is to throw them as high as

possible. The wand by which they are hurled must, at least in some parts

of Swabia, be of hazel. Sometimes the lads also leap over the fire

brandishing blazing torches of pine-wood. The charred embers of the burned

“witch” and discs are taken home and planted in the flax-fields the same

night, in the belief that they will keep vermin from the fields.(659) In

the Rhön Mountains, Bavaria, on the first Sunday in Lent the people used

to march to the top of a hill or eminence. Children and lads carried

torches, brooms daubed with tar, and poles swathed in straw. A wheel,

wrapt in combustibles, was kindled and rolled down the hill; and the young

people rushed about the fields with their burning torches and brooms, till

at last they flung them in a heap, and standing round them, struck up a

hymn or a popular song. The object of running about the fields with the

blazing torches was to “drive away the wicked sower.” Or it was done in

honour of the Virgin, that she might preserve the fruits of the earth

throughout the year and bless them.(660)

It seems hardly possible to separate from these bonfires, kindled on the

first Sunday in Lent, the fires in which, about the same season, the

effigy called Death is burned as part of the ceremony of “carrying out

Death.” We have seen that at Spachendorf, Austrian Silesia, on the morning

of Rupert’s Day (Shrove Tuesday?) a straw-man, dressed in a fur coat and a

fur cap, is laid in a hole outside the village and there burned, and that

while it is blazing every one seeks to snatch a fragment of it, which he

fastens to a branch of the highest tree in his garden or buries in his

field, believing that this will make the crops to grow better. The

ceremony is known as the “burying of Death.”(661) Even when the straw-man

is not designated as Death, the meaning of the observance is probably the

same; for the name Death, as I have tried to show, does not express the

original intention of the ceremony. At Cobern in the Eifel Mountains the

lads make up a straw-man on Shrove Tuesday. The effigy is formally tried

and accused of having perpetrated all the thefts that have been committed

in the neighbourhood throughout the year. Being condemned to death, the

straw-man is led through the village, shot, and burned upon a pyre. They

dance round the blazing pile, and the last bride must leap over it.(662)

In Oldenburg on the evening of Shrove Tuesday people used to make long

bundles of straw, which they set on fire, and then ran about the fields

waving them, shrieking, and singing wild songs. Finally they burnt a

straw-man on the field.(663) In the district of Düsseldorf the straw-man

burned on Shrove Tuesday was made of an unthreshed sheaf of corn.(664) On

the first Monday after the spring equinox the urchins of Zurich drag a

straw-man on a little cart through the streets, while at the same time the

girls carry about a May-tree. When vespers ring, the straw-man is

burned.(665) In the district of Aachen on Ash Wednesday a man used to be

encased in peas-straw and taken to an appointed place. Here he slipped

quietly out of his straw casing, which was then burned, the children

thinking that it was the man who was being burned.(666) In the Val di

Ledro (Tyrol) on the last day of the Carnival a figure is made up of straw

and brushwood and then burned. The figure is called the Old Woman, and the

ceremony “burning the Old Woman.”(667)

Another occasion on which these fire-festivals are held is Easter Eve, the

Saturday before Easter Sunday. On that day it has been customary in

Catholic countries to extinguish all the lights in the churches, and then

to make a new fire, sometimes with flint and steel, sometimes with a

burning-glass. At this fire is lit the Easter candle, which is then used

to rekindle all the extinguished lights in the church. In many parts of

Germany a bonfire is also kindled, by means of the new fire, on some open

space near the church. It is consecrated, and the people bring sticks of

oak, walnut, and beech, which they char in the fire, and then take home

with them. Some of these charred sticks are thereupon burned at home in a

newly-kindled fire, with a prayer that God will preserve the homestead

from fire, lightning, and hail. Thus every house receives “new fire.” Some

of the sticks are placed in the fields, gardens, and meadows, with a

prayer that God will keep them from blight and hail. Such fields and

gardens are thought to thrive more than others; the corn and the plants

that grow in them are not beaten down by hail, nor devoured by mice,

vermin, and beetles, no witch harms them, and the ears of corn stand close

and full. The charred sticks are also applied to the plough. The ashes of

the Easter bonfire, together with the ashes of the consecrated

palm-branches, are mixed with the seed at sowing. A wooden figure called

Judas is sometimes burned in the consecrated bonfire.(668)

Sometimes instead of the consecrated bonfire a profane fire used to be

kindled on Easter Eve. In the afternoon the lads of the village collected

firewood and carried it to a corn-field or to the top of a hill. Here they

piled it together and fastened in the midst of it a pole with a

cross-piece, all wrapt in straw, so that it looked like a man with

outstretched arms. This figure was called the Easter-man, or the Judas. In

the evening the lads lit their lanterns at the new holy fire in the

church, and ran at full speed to the pile. The one who reached it first

set fire to it and to the effigy. No women or girls might be present,

though they were allowed to watch the scene from a distance. Great was the

joy while the effigy was burning. The ashes were collected and thrown at

sunrise into running water, or were scattered over the fields on Easter

Monday. At the same time the palm branches which had been consecrated on

Palm Sunday, and sticks which had been charred in the fire and consecrated

on Good Friday, were also stuck up in the fields. The object was to

preserve the fields from hail.(669) In Münsterland, these Easter fires are

always kindled upon certain definite hills, which are hence known as

Easter or Pascal Mountains. The whole community assembles about the fire.

Fathers of families form an inner circle round it. An outer circle is

formed by the young men and maidens, who, singing Easter hymns, march

round and round the fire in the direction of the sun, till the blaze dies

down. Then the girls jump over the fire in a line, one after the other,

each supported by two young men who hold her hands and run beside her.

When the fire has burned out, the whole assemblage marches in solemn

procession to the church, singing hymns. They march thrice round the

church, and then break up. In the twilight boys with blazing bundles of

straw run over the fields to make them fruitful.(670) In Holland, also,

Easter fires used to be kindled on the highest eminences, the people

danced round them, and leaped through the flames.(671) In Schaumburg, the

Easter bonfires may be seen blazing on all the mountains around for miles.

They are made with a tar barrel fastened to a pine-tree, which is wrapt in

straw. The people dance singing round them.(672) Easter bonfires are also

common in the Harz Mountains and in Brunswick, Hanover, and Westphalia.

They are generally lit upon particular heights and mountains which are

hence called Easter Mountains. In the Harz the fire is commonly made by

piling brushwood about a tree and setting it on fire, and blazing tar

barrels are often rolled down into the valley. In Osterode, every one

tries to snatch a brand from the bonfire and rushes about with it; the

better it burns, the more lucky it is. In Grund there are torch

races.(673) In the Altmark, the Easter bonfires are composed of tar

barrels, bee-hives, etc., piled round a pole. The young folk dance round

the fire; and when it has died out, the old folk come and collect the

ashes, which they preserve as a remedy for the ailments of bees. It is

also believed that as far as the blaze of the bonfire is visible, the corn

will grow well throughout the year, and no conflagration will break

out.(674) In some parts of Bavaria, bonfires were kindled at Easter upon

steep mountains, and burning arrows or discs of wood were shot high into

the air, as in the Swabian custom already described. Sometimes, instead of

the discs, an old waggon wheel was wrapt in straw, set on fire, and sent

rolling down the mountain. The lads who hurled the discs received painted

Easter eggs from the girls.(675) In some parts of Swabia the Easter fires

might not be kindled with iron or flint or steel; but only by the friction

of wood.(676) At Braunröde in the Harz Mountains it was the custom to burn

squirrels in the Easter bonfire.(677) In the Altmark, bones were burned in

it.(678)

In the central Highlands of Scotland bonfires, known as the Beltane fires,

were formerly kindled with great ceremony on the 1st of May, and the

traces of human sacrifices at them were particularly clear and

unequivocal. In the neighbourhood of Callander, in Perthshire, the custom

lasted down to the close of last century. The fires were lit by the people

of each hamlet on a hill or knoll round which their cattle were pasturing.

Hence various eminences in the Highlands are known as “the hill of the

fires,” just as in Germany some mountains take their name from the Easter

fires which are kindled upon them. On the morning of May Day the people

repaired to a hill or knoll and cut a round trench in the green sod,

leaving in the centre a platform of turf large enough to contain the whole

company. On this turf they seated themselves, and in the middle was placed

a pile of wood or other fuel, which of old they kindled with

_tein-eigin_—that is, forced fire or need-fire. The way of making the

need-fire was this: “The night before, all the fires in the country were

carefully extinguished, and next morning the materials for exciting this

sacred fire were prepared. The most primitive method seems to be that

which was used in the islands of Skye, Mull, and Tiree. A well-seasoned

plank of oak was procured, in the midst of which a hole was bored. A

wimble of the same timber was then applied, the end of which they fitted

to the hole. But in some parts of the mainland the machinery was

different. They used a frame of green wood, of a square form, in the

centre of which was an axle-tree. In some places three times three

persons, in others three times nine, were required for turning round, by

turns, the axle-tree or wimble. If any of them had been guilty of murder,

adultery, theft, or other atrocious crime, it was imagined either that the

fire would not kindle, or that it would be devoid of its usual virtue. So

soon as any sparks were emitted by means of the violent friction, they

applied a species of agaric which grows on old birch-trees, and is very

combustible. This fire had the appearance of being immediately derived

from heaven, and manifold were the virtues ascribed to it. They esteemed

it a preservative against witchcraft, and a sovereign remedy against

malignant diseases, both in the human species and in cattle; and by it the

strongest poisons were supposed to have their nature changed.” For many

years, however, before the close of last century, the Beltane fires were

kindled in the usual way. The fire being lit, the company prepared a

custard of eggs and milk, which they ate. Afterwards they amused

themselves a while by singing and dancing round the fire. Then “they knead

a cake of oatmeal, which is toasted at the embers against a stone. After

the custard is eaten up they divide the cake into so many portions, as

similar as possible to one another in size and shape, as there are persons

in the company. They daub one of these portions all over with charcoal

until it be perfectly black. They put all the bits of cake into a bonnet.

Every one, blindfold, draws out a portion. He who holds the bonnet is

entitled to the last bit. Whoever draws the black bit is the devoted

person who is to be sacrificed to _Baal_, whose favour they mean to

implore, in rendering the year productive of the sustenance of man and

beast.” The victim thus selected “was called _cailleach bealtine_—_i.e._

the Beltane _carline_, a term of great reproach. Upon his being known,

part of the company laid hold of him, and made a show of putting him into

the fire; but, the majority interposing, he was rescued. And in some

places they laid him flat on the ground, making as if they would quarter

him. Afterwards he was pelted with eggshells, and retained the odious

appellation during the whole year. And, while the feast was fresh in

people’s memory, they affected to speak of the _cailleach bealtine_ as

dead.” He had to leap thrice through the flames, and this concluded the

ceremony.(679)

Another account of the Beltane festival, written in the latter half of

last century, is as follows: “On the 1st of May the herdsmen of every

village hold their Beltien, a rural sacrifice. They cut a square trench on

the ground, leaving the turf in the middle; on that they make a fire of

wood, on which they dress a large caudle of eggs, butter, oatmeal, and

milk, and bring, besides the ingredients of the caudle, plenty of beer and

whisky; for each of the company must contribute something. The rites begin

with spilling some of the caudle on the ground, by way of libation; on

that every one takes a cake of oatmeal, upon which are raised nine square

knobs, each dedicated to some particular being, the supposed preserver of

their flocks and herds, or to some particular animal, the real destroyer

of them; each person then turns his face to the fire, breaks off a knob,

and, flinging it over his shoulder, says, ‘This I give to thee, preserve

thou my horses; this to thee, preserve thou my sheep; and so on.’ After

that they use the same ceremony to the noxious animals: ‘This I give to

thee, O fox! spare thou my lambs; this to thee, O hooded crow! this to

thee, O eagle!’ When the ceremony is over they dine on the caudle; and,

after the feast is finished, what is left is hid by two persons deputed

for that purpose; but on the next Sunday they reassemble, and finish the

reliques of the first entertainment.”(680) The 1st of May is a great

popular festival in the more midland and southern parts of Sweden. On the

preceding evening huge bonfires, which should be lighted by striking two

flints together, blaze on all the hills and knolls. Every large hamlet has

its own fire, round which the young people dance in a ring. The old folk

notice whether the flames incline to the north or to the south. In the

former case the spring will be cold and backward; in the latter mild and

genial.(681)

But the season at which these fire-festivals are most generally held all

over Europe is the summer solstice, that is, Midsummer Eve (23d June) or

Midsummer Day (24th June). According to a mediæval writer the three great

features of this festival were the bonfires, the procession with torches

round the fields, and the custom of rolling a wheel. The writer adds that

the smoke drives away harmful dragons which cause sickness, and he

explains the custom of rolling the wheel to mean that the sun has now

reached the highest point in the ecliptic, and begins thenceforward to

descend.(682) From his description, which is still applicable, we see that

the main features of the midsummer fire-festival are identical with those

which characterise the spring festivals. In Swabia lads and lasses, hand

in hand, leap over the midsummer bonfire, praying that the hemp may grow

three ells high, and they set fire to wheels of straw and send them

rolling down the hill.(683) In Lechrain bonfires are kindled on the

mountains on Midsummer Day; and besides the bonfire a tall beam, thickly

wrapt in straw, and surmounted by a cross-piece, is burned in many places.

Round this cross, as it burns, the lads dance; and when the flames have

subsided, the young people leap over the fire in pairs, a young man and a

young woman together. It is believed that the flax will grow that year as

high as they leap over the fire; and that if a charred billet be taken

from the fire and stuck in a flax field it will promote the growth of the

flax.(684) At Deffingen, as they jumped over the midsummer bonfire, they

cried out, “Flax, flax! may the flax this year grow seven ells high!”(685)

In Bohemia bonfires are kindled on many of the mountains on Midsummer Eve;

boys and girls, hand in hand, leap over them; cart-wheels smeared with

resin are ignited and sent rolling down the hill; and brooms covered with

tar and set on fire are swung about or thrown high into the air. The

handles of the brooms or embers from the fire are preserved and stuck in

gardens to protect the vegetables from caterpillars and gnats. Sometimes

the boys run down the hillside in troops, brandishing the blazing brooms

and shouting. The bonfire is sometimes made by stacking wood and branches

round the trunk of a tree and setting the whole on fire.(686)

In old farm-houses of the Surenthal and Winenthal a couple of holes or a

whole row of them may sometimes be seen facing each other in the

door-posts of the barn or stable. Sometimes the holes are smooth and

round; sometimes they are deeply burnt and blackened. The explanation of

them is this. About midsummer, but especially on Midsummer Day, two such

holes are bored opposite each other, into which the extremities of a

strong pole are fixed. The holes are then stuffed with tow steeped in

resin and oil; a rope is looped round the pole, and two young men, who

must be brothers or must have the same baptismal name, and must be of the

same age, pull the ends of the rope backwards and forwards so as to make

the pole revolve rapidly, till smoke and sparks issue from the two holes

in the door-posts. The sparks are caught and blown up with tinder, and

this is the new and pure fire, the appearance of which is greeted with

cries of joy. Heaps of combustible materials are now ignited with the new

fire, and blazing bundles are placed on boards and sent floating down the

brook. The boys light torches at the new fire and run to fumigate the

pastures. This is believed to drive away all the demons and witches that

molest the cattle. Finally the torches are thrown in a heap on the meadow

and allowed to burn out. On their way back the boys strew the ashes over

the fields: this is supposed to make them fertile. If a farmer has taken

possession of a new house, or if servants have changed masters, the boys

fumigate the new abode and are rewarded by the farmer with a supper.(687)

At Konz, on the Moselle, the midsummer fire-festival used to be celebrated

as follows. A quantity of straw, contributed jointly by every house, was

collected on the top of the Stromberg Hill. Here, towards evening, the men

and boys assembled, while the women and girls took up their position at a

certain well down below. On the top of the hill a huge wheel was

completely covered with a portion of the collected straw, the remainder of

which was made into torches. The mayor of Sierk, who always received a

basket of cherries for his services, gave the signal, the wheel was

ignited with a torch, and sent rolling down the hill amid shouts of joy.

All the men and boys swung their torches in the air, some of them remained

on the top of the hill, while others followed the fiery wheel on its

course down the hillside to the Moselle. As it passed the women and girls

at the well they raised cries of joy which were answered by the men on the

top of the hill. The inhabitants of the neighbouring villages also stood

on the banks of the river and mingled their voices with the general shout

of jubilation. The wheel was often extinguished before it reached the

water, but if it plunged blazing into the river the people expected an

abundant vintage, and the inhabitants of Konz had the right to exact a

waggon-load of white wine from the surrounding vineyards.(688)

In France the midsummer customs are similar. In Poitou a wheel enveloped

in straw is set on fire, and people run with it through the fields, which

are supposed to be fertilised thereby; also, the people leap thrice over

the fire, holding in their hands branches of nut-trees, which are

afterwards hung over the door of the cattle-stall. At Brest torches are

brandished, and hundreds of them flung up into the air together.(689) In

Britanny midsummer fires blaze on the hills, the people dance round them,

singing and leaping over the glowing embers. The bonfire is made by piling

wood round a pole which is surmounted by a nosegay or crown.(690)

Sometimes, instead of rolling fiery wheels, discs of wood are ignited in

the midsummer fires and thrown into the air in the manner already

described.(691) At Edersleben, near Sangerhausen, a high pole was planted

in the ground and a tar barrel was hung from it by a chain which reached

to the ground. The barrel was then set on fire and swung round the pole

amid shouts of joy.(692)

In our own country the custom of lighting bonfires at midsummer has

prevailed extensively. In the North of England these fires used to be lit

in the open streets. Young and old gathered round them; the former leaped

over the fires and engaged in games, while the old people looked on.

Sometimes the fires were kindled on the tops of high hills. The people

also carried firebrands about the fields.(693) In Herefordshire and

Somersetshire people used to make fires in the fields on Midsummer Eve “to

bless the apples.”(694) In Devonshire the custom of leaping over the

midsummer fires was also observed.(695) In Cornwall bonfires were lit on

Midsummer Eve and the people marched round them with lighted torches,

which they also carried from village to village. On Whiteborough, a large

tumulus near Launceston, a huge bonfire used to be kindled on Midsummer

Eve; a tall summer pole with a large bush at the top was fixed in the

centre of the bonfire.(696) At Darowen in Wales small bonfires were lit on

Midsummer Eve.(697) On the same day people in the Isle of Man used to

light fires to the windward of every field, so that the smoke might pass

over the corn; and they folded their cattle and carried blazing furze or

gorse round them several times.(698)

In Ireland, “on the Eves of St. John Baptist and St. Peter, they always

have in every town a bonfire late in the evening, and carry about bundles

of reeds fast tied and fired; these being dry, will last long, and flame

better than a torch, and be a pleasing divertive prospect to the distant

beholder; a stranger would go near to imagine the whole country was on

fire.”(699) Another writer says of the South of Ireland: “On Midsummer’s

Eve, every eminence, near which is a habitation, blazes with bonfires; and

round these they carry numerous torches, shouting and dancing.”(700) An

author who described Ireland in the first quarter of last century says:

“On the vigil of St. John the Baptist’s nativity, they make bonfires, and

run along the streets and fields with wisps of straw blazing on long poles

to purify the air, which they think infectious by believing all the

devils, spirits, ghosts, and hobgoblins fly abroad this night to hurt

mankind.”(701) Another writer states that he witnessed the festival in

Ireland in 1782: “Exactly at midnight the fires began to appear, and

taking advantage of going up to the leads of the house, which had a widely

extended view, I saw on a radius of thirty miles, all around, the fires

burning on every eminence which the country afforded. I had a further

satisfaction in learning, from undoubted authority, that the people

_danced __ round the fires_, and at the close went through these fires,

and made their sons and daughters, together with their cattle, pass

through the fire; and the whole was conducted with religious

solemnity.”(702) That the custom prevailed in full force as late as 1867

appears from a notice in the _Liverpool Mercury_, 29th June 1867, which

runs thus: “The old pagan fire-worship still survives in Ireland, though

nominally in honour of St. John. On Sunday night bonfires were observed

throughout nearly every county in the province of Leinster. In Kilkenny

fires blazed on every hillside at intervals of about a mile. There were

very many in the Queen’s county, also in Kildare and Wexford. The effect

in the rich sunset appeared to travellers very grand. The people assemble

and dance round the fires, the children jump through the flames, and in

former times live coals were carried into the corn-fields to prevent

blight.”(703)

In Scotland the traces of midsummer fires are few. In reference to the

parish of Mongahitter it is said: “The Midsummer Eve fire, a relic of

Druidism, was kindled in some parts of this country.”(704) Moresin states

that on St. Peter’s Day (29th June) the Scotch ran about with lighted

torches on mountains and high grounds;(705) and at Loudon in Ayrshire it

appears that down to the close of last century the custom still prevailed

for herdsmen and young people to kindle fires on high grounds on St.

Peter’s Day.(706) In the Perthshire Highlands on Midsummer Day the cowherd

used to go three times round the fold, according to the course of the sun,

with a burning torch in his hand. This was believed to purify the flocks

and herds and prevent diseases.(707)

In Slavonic countries also the midsummer festival is celebrated with

similar rites. In Russia fires are lighted and young people, crowned with

flowers, jump through them and drive their cattle through them. In Little

Russia a stake is driven into the ground on St. John’s Night, wrapt in

straw, and set on fire. As the flames rise the peasant women throw

birch-tree boughs into them, saying, “May my flax be as tall as this

bough!”(708) “In Ruthenia the bonfires are lighted by a flame procured

from wood by friction, the operation being performed by the elders of the

party, amid the respectful silence of the rest. But as soon as the fire is

‘churned,’ the bystanders break forth with joyous songs, and when the

bonfires are lit the young people take hands, and spring in couples

through the smoke, if not through the flames, and after that the cattle in

their turn are driven through it.”(709) In many parts of Prussia and

Lithuania great fires are kindled on the Eve of St. John (Midsummer Eve).

All the heights are ablaze with them, as far as the eye can see. The fires

are supposed to be a protection against thunder, hail, and cattle disease,

especially if next morning the cattle are driven over the places where the

fires burned.(710) In some parts of Masuren it is the custom on the

evening of Midsummer Day to put out all the fires in the village. Then an

oaken stake is driven into the ground, a wheel is fixed on it as on an

axle and is made to revolve rapidly, till the friction produces fire.

Every one takes home a light from the new fire and rekindles the fire on

the domestic hearth.(711) In Bohemia the cows used to be driven over the

midsummer fires to protect them from witchcraft.(712) In Servia on

Midsummer Eve herdsmen light torches of birch bark and march round the

sheepfolds and cattle-stalls; then they climb the hills and there allow

the torches to burn out.(713)

In Greece the women light fires on St. John’s Eve and jump over them

crying, “I leave my sins behind me.”(714) Italy must also have had its

midsummer bonfires, since at Orvieto they were specially excepted from the

prohibition directed against bonfires in general.(715) We have seen that

they are still lighted in Sardinia.(716) In Corsica on the Eve of St. John

the people set fire to the trunk of a tree or to a whole tree, and the

young men and maidens dance round the blaze, which is called

_fucaraja_.(717) Midsummer fires are, or were formerly, lighted in

Spain.(718) Even the Mohammedans of Algeria and Morocco are reported to

have kindled great midsummer bonfires of straw, into which they kept

throwing incense and spices the whole night, invoking the divine blessing

on their fruit-trees.(719)

It remains to show that the burning of effigies of human beings in the

midsummer fires was not uncommon. At Rottenburg in Würtemberg, down to the

beginning of the present century, a ceremony was observed on Midsummer Day

which was called “beheading the angel-man.” A stump was driven into the

ground, wrapt with straw, and fashioned into the rude likeness of a human

figure, with arms, head, and face. This was the angel-man; round about him

wood was piled up. The boys, armed with swords, assembled in crowds,

covered the figure completely over with flowers, and eagerly awaited the

signal. When the pile of wood was fired and the angel-man burst into a

blaze, the word was given and all the boys fell upon him with their swords

and hewed the burning figure in pieces. Then they leaped backwards and

forwards over the fire.(720) In some parts of the Tyrol a straw-man is

carted about the village on Midsummer Day and then burned. He is called

the _Lotter_, which has been corrupted into Luther.(721) In French

Flanders down to 1789 a straw figure representing a man was always burned

in the midsummer bonfire, and the figure of a woman was burned on St.

Peter’s Day, 29th June.(722) At Grätz on the 23d June the common people

used to make a puppet called the _Tatermann_, which they dragged to the

bleaching-ground, and pelted with burning besoms till it took fire.(723)

In some parts of Russia a figure of Kupalo is burned or thrown into a

stream on St. John’s Night.(724) The Russian custom of carrying the straw

effigy of Kupalo over the midsummer bonfire has been already

described.(725)

The best general explanation of these European fire-festivals seems to be

the one given by Mannhardt, namely, that they are sun-charms or magical

ceremonies intended to ensure a proper supply of sunshine for men,

animals, and plants. We have seen that savages resort to charms for making

sunshine,(726) and we need not wonder that primitive man in Europe has

done the same. Indeed, considering the cold and cloudy climate of Europe

during a considerable part of the year, it is natural that sun-charms

should have played a much more prominent part among the superstitious

practices of European peoples than among those of savages who live nearer

the equator. This view of the festivals in question is supported by

various considerations drawn partly from the rites themselves, partly from

the influence which they are believed to exert upon the weather and on

vegetation. For example, the custom of rolling a burning wheel down a

hillside, which is often observed on these occasions, seems a very natural

imitation of the sun’s course in the sky, and the imitation is especially

appropriate on Midsummer Day when the sun’s annual declension begins. Not

less graphic is the imitation of his apparent revolution by swinging a

burning tar-barrel round a pole.(727) The custom of throwing blazing

discs, shaped like suns, into the air is probably also a piece of

imitative magic. In these, as in so many cases, the magic force is

supposed to take effect through mimicry or sympathy; by imitating the

desired result you actually produce it; by counterfeiting the sun’s

progress through the heavens you really help the luminary to pursue his

celestial journey with punctuality and despatch. The name “fire of

heaven,” by which the midsummer fire is sometimes popularly known,(728)

clearly indicates a consciousness of the connection between the earthly

and the heavenly flame.

Again, the manner in which the fire appears to have been originally

kindled on these occasions favours the view that it was intended to be a

mock-sun. For, as various scholars have seen,(729) it is highly probable

that originally at these festivals fire was universally obtained by the

friction of two pieces of wood. We have seen that this is still the case

in some places both at the Easter and midsummer fires, and that it is

expressly stated to have been formerly the case at the Beltane fires.(730)

But what makes it almost certain that this was once the invariable mode of

kindling the fire at these periodic festivals is the analogy of the

need-fires. Need-fires are kindled, not at fixed periods, but on occasions

of special distress, particularly at the outbreak of a murrain, and the

cattle are driven through the need-fire, just as they are sometimes driven

through the midsummer fires.(731) Now, the need-fire has always been

produced by the friction of wood and sometimes by the revolution of a

wheel; in Mull, for example, it was made by turning an oaken wheel over

nine oaken spindles from east to west, that is, in the direction of the

sun. It is a plausible conjecture that the wheel employed to produce the

need-fire represents the sun;(732) and if the spring and midsummer fires

were originally produced in the same way, it would be a confirmation of

the view that they were originally sun-charms. In point of fact there is,

as Kuhn has pointed out,(733) some evidence to show that the midsummer

fire was originally thus produced. For at Obermedlingen in Swabia the

“fire of heaven,” as it was called, was made on St. Vitus’s Day (15th

June) by igniting a cart-wheel, which, smeared with pitch and plaited with

straw, was fastened on a pole twelve feet high, the top of the pole being

inserted in the nave of the wheel. This fire was made on the summit of the

mountain, and as the flame ascended, the people uttered a set form of

words, with eyes and arms directed heaven-ward.(734) Here the fact of a

wheel being fixed on the top of a pole and ignited makes it probable that

originally the fire was produced, as in the need-fire, by the revolution

of a wheel. The day on which the ceremony takes place (15th June) is near

midsummer; and we have seen that in Masuren fire is (or was) actually made

on Midsummer Day by turning a wheel rapidly about an oaken pole, though it

is not said that the new fire so produced is used to light a bonfire.

Once more, the influence which these bonfires are supposed to exert on the

weather and on vegetation, goes to show that they are sun-charms, since

the effects ascribed to them are identical with those of sunshine. Thus,

in Sweden the warmth or cold of the coming season is inferred from the

direction in which the flames of the bonfire are blown; if they blow to

the south, it will be warm, if to the north, cold. No doubt at present the

direction of the flames is regarded merely as an augury of the weather,

not as a mode of influencing it. But we may be pretty sure that this is

one of the cases in which magic has dwindled into divination. So in the

Eifel Mountains, when the smoke blows towards the corn-fields, this is an

omen that the harvest will be abundant. But doubtless the older view was,

not merely that the smoke and flames prognosticated, but that they

actually produced an abundant harvest, the heat of the flames acting like

sunshine on the corn. Indeed, this older view must still have been held by

people in the Isle of Man when they lit fires to windward of their fields

in order that the smoke might blow over them. Again, the idea that the

corn will grow well as far as the blaze of the bonfire is visible, is

certainly a remnant of the belief in the quickening and fertilising power

of the bonfires. The same belief reappears in the notion that embers taken

from the bonfires and inserted in the fields will promote the growth of

the crops, and again it plainly underlies the custom of mixing the ashes

of the bonfire with the seed-corn at sowing, or of scattering the ashes by

themselves over the field. The belief that the flax will grow as high as

the people leap over the bonfire belongs clearly to the same class of

ideas. Once more, we saw that at Konz, on the banks of the Moselle, if the

blazing wheel which was trundled down the hillside reached the river

without being extinguished, this was hailed as a proof that the vintage

would be abundant. So firmly was this belief held that the successful

performance of the ceremony entitled the villagers to levy a tax upon the

owners of the neighbouring vineyards. Here the unextinguished wheel meant

an unclouded sun, and this in turn meant an abundant vintage. So the

waggon-load of white wine which the villagers received from the vineyards

round about was in fact a payment for the sunshine which they had procured

for the grapes.

The interpretation of these fire-customs as charms for making sunshine is

confirmed by a parallel custom observed by the Hindoos of Southern India

at the Pongol or Feast of Ingathering. The festival is celebrated in the

early part of January, when, according to Hindoo astrologers, the sun

enters the tropic of Capricorn, and the chief event of the festival

coincides with the passage of the sun. For some days previously the boys

gather heaps of sticks, straw, dead leaves, and everything that will burn.

On the morning of the first day of the festival the heaps are fired. Every

street and lane has its bonfire. The young folk leap over the fire or pile

on fresh fuel. This fire is an offering to Sûrya, the sun-god, or to Agni,

the deity of fire; it “wakes him from his sleep, calling on him again to

gladden the earth with his light and heat.”(735) To say that the fires

awaken the sun-god from his sleep is only a metaphorical and perhaps

modernised expression of the belief that they actually help to rekindle

the sun’s light and heat.

The custom of leaping over the fire and driving cattle through it may be

intended, on the one hand, to secure for man and beast a share of the

vital energy of the sun, and, on the other hand, to purify them from all

evil influences; for to the primitive mind fire is the most powerful of

all purificatory agents. The latter idea is obviously uppermost in the

minds of Greek women when they leap over the midsummer fire, saying, “I

leave my sins behind me.” So in Yucatan at a New Year’s festival the

people used to light a huge bonfire and pass through it, in the belief

that this was a means of ridding themselves of their troubles.(736) The

custom of driving cattle through a fire is not confined to Europe. At

certain times the Hottentots make a fire of chips, dry branches, and green

twigs, so as to raise a great smoke. Through this fire they drive their

sheep, dragging them through by force, if necessary. If the sheep make

their escape without passing through the fire, it is reckoned a heavy

disgrace and a very bad omen. But if they pass readily through or over the

fire, the joy of the Hottentots is indescribable.(737)

The procession or race with burning torches, which so often forms a part

of these fire-festivals, appears to be simply a means of diffusing far and

wide the genial influence of the bonfire or of the sunshine which it

represents. Hence on these occasions lighted torches are very frequently

carried over the fields, sometimes with the avowed intention of

fertilising them;(738) and with the same intention live coals from the

bonfire are sometimes placed in the field “to prevent blight.” The custom

of trundling a burning wheel over the fields, which is practised for the

express purpose of fertilising them, embodies the same idea in a still

more graphic form; since in this way the mock-sun itself, not merely its

light and heat represented by torches, is made actually to pass over the

ground which is to receive its quickening and kindly influence. Again, the

custom of carrying lighted brands round the cattle is plainly equivalent

to driving the animals through the fire. It is quite possible that in

these customs the idea of the quickening power of fire may be combined

with the conception of it as a purgative agent for the expulsion or

destruction of evil beings. It is certainly sometimes interpreted in the

latter way by persons who practise the customs; and this purgative use of

fire comes out very prominently, as we have seen, in the general expulsion

of demons from towns and villages. But in the present class of cases this

aspect of it is perhaps secondary, if indeed it is more than a later

misinterpretation of the custom.

It remains to ask, What is the meaning of burning an effigy in these

bonfires? The effigies so burned, as was remarked above, can hardly be

separated from the effigies of Death which are burned or otherwise

destroyed in spring; and grounds have been already given for regarding the

so-called effigies of Death as really representations of the tree-spirit

or spirit of vegetation. Are the other effigies, which are burned in the

spring and midsummer bonfires, susceptible of the same explanation? It

would seem so. For just as the fragments of the so-called Death are stuck

in the fields to make the crops grow, so the charred embers of the figure

burned in the spring bonfires are sometimes placed in the fields in the

belief that they will keep vermin from the crop. Again, the rule that the

last married bride must leap over the fire in which the straw-man is

burned on Shrove Tuesday, is probably intended to make her fruitful. But,

as we have seen, the power of blessing women with offspring is a special

attribute of tree-spirits;(739) it is therefore a fair presumption that

the burning effigy over which the bride must leap is a representative of

the fertilising tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. This character of the

effigy, as representative of the spirit of vegetation, is almost

unmistakable when the effigy is composed of an unthreshed sheaf of corn or

is covered from head to foot with flowers.(740) Again, it is to be noted

that instead of an effigy living trees are sometimes burned both in the

spring and midsummer bonfires.(741) Now, considering the frequency with

which the tree-spirit is represented in human shape, it is hardly rash to

suppose that when sometimes a tree and sometimes an effigy is burned in

these fires, the effigy and the tree are regarded as equivalent to each

other, each being a representative of the tree-spirit. This, again, is

confirmed by observing, first, that sometimes the effigy which is to be

burned is carried about simultaneously with a May-tree, the former being

carried by the boys, the latter by the girls;(742) and, second, that the

effigy is sometimes tied to a living tree and burned with it.(743) In

these cases, we can scarcely doubt, the tree-spirit is represented, as we

have found it represented before, in duplicate, both by the tree and by

the effigy. That the true character of the effigy as a representative of

the beneficent spirit of vegetation should sometimes be forgotten, is

natural. The custom of burning a beneficent god is too foreign to later

modes of thought to escape misinterpretation. Naturally enough the people

who continued to burn his image came in time to identify it as the effigy

of persons, whom, on various grounds, they considered objectionable, such

as Judas Iscariot, Luther, and a witch.

The general reasons for killing a god or his representative have been

examined in the preceding chapter. But when the god happens to be a deity

of vegetation, there are special reasons why he should die by fire. For

light and heat are necessary to vegetable growth; and, on the principle of

sympathetic magic, by subjecting the personal representative of vegetation

to their influence, you secure a supply of these necessaries for trees and

crops. In other words, by burning the spirit of vegetation in a fire which

represents the sun, you make sure that, for a time at least, vegetation

shall have plenty of sun. It may be objected that, if the intention is

simply to secure enough sunshine for vegetation, this end would be better

attained, on the principles of sympathetic magic, by merely passing the

representative of vegetation through the fire instead of burning him. In

point of fact this is sometimes done. In Russia, as we have seen, the

straw figure of Kupalo is not burned in the midsummer fire, but merely

carried backwards and forwards across it.(744) But, for the reasons

already given, it is necessary that the god should die; so next day Kupalo

is stripped of her ornaments and thrown into a stream. In this Russian

custom, therefore, the passage of the image through the fire is a

sun-charm pure and simple; the killing of the god is a separate act, and

the mode of killing him—by drowning—is probably a rain-charm. But usually

people have not thought it necessary to draw this fine distinction; for

the various reasons already assigned, it is advantageous, they think, to

expose the god of vegetation to a considerable degree of heat, and it is

also advantageous to kill him, and they combine these advantages in a

rough-and-ready way by burning him.

Finally, we have to ask, were human beings formerly burned as

representatives of the tree-spirit or deity of vegetation? We have seen

reasons for believing that living persons have often acted as

representatives of the tree-spirit, and have suffered death as such. There

is no reason, therefore, why they should not have been burned, if any

special advantages were likely to be attained by putting them to death in

that way. The consideration of human suffering is not one which enters

into the calculations of primitive man. It would have been surprising if

it did, when we remember the record of Christian Europe. Now, in the

fire-festivals which we are discussing, the pretence of burning people is

sometimes carried so far that it seems reasonable to regard it as a

mitigated survival of an older custom of actually burning them. Thus in

Aachen, as we saw, the man clad in peas-straw acts so cleverly that the

children really believe he is being burned. And at the Beltane fires the

pretended victim was seized, and a show made of throwing him into the

fire, and for some time afterwards people affected to speak of him as

dead. In the following customs Mannhardt is probably right in recognising

traces of an old custom of burning a leaf-clad representative of the

spirit of vegetation. At Wolfeck, in Austria, on Midsummer Day, a boy

completely clad in green fir branches goes from house to house,

accompanied by a noisy crew, collecting wood for the bonfire. As he gets

the wood he sings—

“Forest trees I want,

No sour milk for me,

But beer and wine,

So can the wood-man be jolly and gay.”(745)

In some parts of Bavaria, also, the boys who go from house to house

collecting fuel for the midsummer bonfire envelop one of their number from

head to foot in green branches of firs, and lead him by a rope through the

whole village.(746) At Moosheim, in Würtemberg, the festival of St. John’s

Fire usually lasted for fourteen days, ending on the second Sunday after

Midsummer Day. On this last day the bonfire was left in charge of the

children, while the older people retired to a wood. Here they encased a

young fellow in leaves and twigs, who, thus disguised, went to the fire,

scattered it, and trod it out. All the people present fled at the sight of

him.(747)

But it seems possible to go farther than this. Of human sacrifices offered

on these occasions the most unequivocal traces, as we have seen, are those

which, about a hundred years ago, still lingered at the Beltane fires in

the Highlands of Scotland, that is, among a Celtic people who, situated in

a remote corner of Europe, enjoying practical independence, and almost

completely isolated from foreign influence, had till then conserved their

old heathenism better than any other people in the West of Europe. It is

significant, therefore, that human sacrifices by fire are known, on

unquestionable evidence, to have been systematically practised by the

Celts. The earliest description of these sacrifices is by Julius Caesar.

As conqueror of the hitherto independent Celts of Gaul, Caesar had ample

opportunity of observing the national Celtic religion and manners, while

these were still fresh and crisp from the native mint and had not yet been

fused in the melting-pot of Roman civilisation. With his own notes Caesar

appears to have incorporated the observations of a Greek explorer, by name

Posidonius, who travelled in Gaul about fifty years before Caesar carried

the Roman arms to the English Channel. The Greek geographer Strabo and the

historian Diodorus seem also to have derived their descriptions of the

Celtic sacrifices from the work of Posidonius, but independently of each

other and of Caesar, for each of the three derivative accounts contains

some details which are not to be found in either of the others. By

combining them, therefore, we can restore the original account of

Posidonius with some certainty, and thus obtain a picture of the

sacrifices offered by the Celts of Gaul at the close of the second century

B.C.(748) The following seem to have been the main outlines of the custom.

Condemned criminals were reserved by the Celts in order to be sacrificed

to the gods at a great festival which took place once in every five years.

The more there were of such victims, the greater was believed to be the

fertility of the land.(749) When there were not enough criminals to

furnish victims, captives taken in war were sacrificed to supply the

deficiency. When the time came the victims were sacrificed by the Druids

or priests. Some were shot down with arrows, some were impaled, and some

were burned alive in the following manner. Colossal images of wicker-work

or of wood and grass were constructed; these were filled with live men,

cattle, and animals of other kinds; fire was then applied to the images,

and they were burned with their living contents.

Such were the great festivals held once every five years. But besides

these quinquennial festivals, celebrated on so grand a scale and with,

apparently, so large an expenditure of human life, it seems reasonable to

suppose that festivals of the same sort, only on a lesser scale, were held

annually, and that from these annual festivals are lineally descended some

at least of the fire-festivals which, with their traces of human

sacrifices, are still celebrated year by year in many parts of Europe. The

gigantic images constructed of osiers or covered with grass in which the

Druids enclosed their victims remind us of the leafy framework in which

the human representative of the tree-spirit is still so often

encased.(750) Considering, therefore, that the fertility of the land was

apparently supposed to depend upon the due performance of these

sacrifices, Mannhardt is probably right in viewing the Celtic victims,

cased in osiers and grass, as representatives of the tree-spirit or spirit

of vegetation. These wicker giants of the Druids seem to have still their

representatives at the spring and midsummer festivals of modern Europe. At

Douay a procession takes place annually on the Sunday nearest to the 7th

of July. The great feature of the procession is a colossal figure made of

osiers, and called “the giant,” which is moved through the streets by

means of rollers and ropes worked by men who are enclosed within the

figure. The wooden head of the giant is said to have been carved and

painted by Rubens. The figure is armed as a knight with lance and sword,

helmet and shield. Behind him march his wife and his three children, all

constructed of osiers on the same principle, but on a smaller scale.(751)

At Dunkirk the giant is forty to fifty feet high, being made of

basket-work and canvas, properly painted and dressed. It contains a great

many living men within it, who move it about. Wicker giants of this sort

are common in the towns of Belgium and French Flanders; they are led about

at the Carnival in spring. The people, it is said, are much attached to

these grotesque figures, speak of them with patriotic enthusiasm, and

never weary of gazing at them.(752) In England artificial giants seem to

have been a standing feature of the midsummer festival. A writer of the

sixteenth century speaks of “Midsommer pageants in London, where, to make

the people wonder, are set forth great and uglie gyants, marching as if

they were alive, and armed at all points, but within they are stuffed full

of browne paper and tow, which the shrewd boyes, underpeeping, do

guilefully discover, and turne to a greate derision.”(753) The Mayor of

Chester in 1599 “altered many antient customs, as the shooting for the

sheriff’s breakfast; the going of the Giants at Midsommer, etc.”(754) In

these cases the giants only figure in the processions. But sometimes they

are burned in the spring or summer bonfires. Thus the people of the Rue

aux Ours in Paris used annually to make a great wicker-work figure,

dressed as a soldier, which they promenaded up and down the streets for

several days, and solemnly burned on the 3d of July, the crowd of

spectators singing _Salve Regina_. The burning fragments of the image were

scattered among the people, who eagerly scrambled for them. The custom was

abolished in 1743.(755) In Brie, Isle de France, a wicker-work giant,

eighteen feet high, was annually burned on Midsummer Eve.(756)

Again, the Druidical custom of burning live animals, enclosed in

wicker-work, has its counterpart at the spring and midsummer festivals. At

Luchon in the Pyrenees on Midsummer Eve “a hollow column, composed of

strong wicker-work, is raised to the height of about sixty feet in the

centre of the principal suburb, and interlaced with green foliage up to

the very top; while the most beautiful flowers and shrubs procurable are

artistically arranged in groups below, so as to form a sort of background

to the scene. The column is then filled with combustible materials, ready

for ignition. At an appointed hour—about 8 P.M.—a grand procession,

composed of the clergy, followed by young men and maidens in holiday

attire, pour forth from the town chanting hymns, and take up their

position around the column. Meanwhile, bonfires are lit, with beautiful

effect, in the surrounding hills. As many living serpents as could be

collected are now thrown into the column, which is set on fire at the base

by means of torches, armed with which about fifty boys and men dance

around with frantic gestures. The serpents, to avoid the flames, wriggle

their way to the top, whence they are seen lashing out laterally until

finally obliged to drop, their struggles for life giving rise to

enthusiastic delight among the surrounding spectators. This is a favourite

annual ceremony for the inhabitants of Luchon and its neighbourhood, and

local tradition assigns to it a heathen origin.”(757) In the midsummer

fires formerly kindled on the Place de Grève at Paris it was the custom to

burn a basket, barrel, or sack full of live cats; sometimes a fox was

burned. The people collected the embers and ashes of the fire and took

them home, believing that they brought good luck.(758) At Metz midsummer

fires were lighted on the Esplanade, and six cats were burned in

them.(759) In Russia a white cock was sometimes burned in the midsummer

bonfire;(760) in Meissen or Thüringen a horse’s head used to be thrown

into it.(761) Sometimes animals are burned in the spring bonfires. In the

Vosges cats were burned on Shrove Tuesday; in Elsass they were thrown into

the Easter bonfire.(762) We have seen that squirrels were sometimes burned

in the Easter fire.

If the men who were burned in wicker frames by the Druids represented the

spirit of vegetation, the animals burned along with them must have had the

same meaning. Amongst the animals burned by the Druids or in modern

bonfires have been, as we saw, cattle, cats, foxes, and cocks; and all of

these creatures are variously regarded by European peoples as embodiments

of the corn-spirit.(763) I am not aware of any certain evidence that in

Europe serpents have been regarded as representatives of the tree-spirit

or corn-spirit;(764) as victims at the midsummer festival in Luchon they

may have replaced animals which really had this representative character.

When the meaning of the custom was forgotten, utility and humanity might

unite in suggesting the substitution of noxious reptiles as victims in

room of harmless and useful animals.

Thus it appears that the sacrificial rites of the Celts of ancient Gaul

can be traced in the popular festivals of modern Europe. Naturally it is

in France, or rather in the wider area comprised within the limits of

ancient Gaul, that these rites have left the clearest traces in the

customs of burning giants of wicker-work and animals enclosed in

wicker-work or baskets. These customs, it will have been remarked, are

generally observed at or about midsummer. From this we may infer that the

original rites of which these are the degenerate successors were

solemnised at midsummer. This inference harmonises with the conclusion

suggested by a general survey of European folk-custom, that the midsummer

festival must on the whole have been the most widely diffused and the most

solemn of all the yearly festivals celebrated by the primitive Aryans in

Europe. And in its application to the Celts this general conclusion is

corroborated by the more or less perfect vestiges of midsummer

fire-festivals which we have found lingering in all those westernmost

promontories and islands which are the last strongholds of the Celtic race

in Europe—Britanny, Cornwall, Wales, the Isle of Man, Scotland, and

Ireland. In Scotland, it is true, the chief Celtic fire-festivals

certainly appear to have been held at Beltane (1st May) and Hallow E’en;

but this was exceptional.

To sum up: the combined evidence of ancient writers and of modern

folk-custom points to the conclusion that amongst the Celts of Gaul an

annual festival was celebrated at midsummer, at which living men,

representing the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation, were enclosed in

wicker-frames and burned. The whole rite was designed as a charm to make

the sun to shine and the crops to grow.

But another great feature of the Celtic midsummer festival appears to have

been the gathering of the sacred mistletoe by the Druids. The ceremony has

been thus described by Pliny in a passage which has often been quoted.

After enumerating the different kinds of mistletoe he proceeds: “In

treating of this subject, the admiration in which the mistletoe is held

throughout Gaul ought not to pass unnoticed. The Druids, for so they call

their wizards, esteem nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree

on which it grows, provided only that the tree is an oak. But apart from

this they choose oak-woods for their sacred groves and perform no sacred

rites without oak-leaves; so that the very name of Druids may be regarded

as a Greek appellation derived from their worship of the oak.(765) For

they believe that whatever grows on these trees is sent from heaven, and

is a sign that the tree has been chosen by the god himself. The mistletoe

is very rarely to be met with; but when it is found, they gather it with

solemn ceremony. This they do especially in the sixth month (the

beginnings of their months and years are determined by the moon) and after

the tree has passed the thirtieth year of its age, because by that time it

has plenty of vigour, though it has not attained half its full size. After

due preparations have been made for a sacrifice and a feast under the

tree, they hail it as the universal healer and bring to the spot two white

bulls, whose horns have never been bound before. A priest clad in a white

robe climbs the tree and with a golden(766) sickle cuts the mistletoe,

which is caught in a white cloth. Then they sacrifice the victims, praying

that God may make his own gift to prosper with those upon whom he has

bestowed it. They believe that a potion prepared from mistletoe will make

barren animals to bring forth, and that the plant is a remedy against all

poison.”(767)

In saying that the Druids cut the mistletoe in the sixth month Pliny must

have had in his mind the Roman calendar, in which the sixth month was

June. Now, if the cutting of the mistletoe took place in June, we may be

almost certain that the day which witnessed the ceremony was Midsummer

Eve. For in many places Midsummer Eve, a day redolent of a thousand

decaying fancies of yore, is still the time for culling certain magic

plants, whose evanescent virtue can be secured at this mystic season

alone. For example, on Midsummer Eve the fern is believed to burst into a

wondrous bloom, like fire or burnished gold. Whoever catches this bloom,

which very quickly fades and falls off, can make himself invisible, can

understand the language of animals, and so forth. But he must not touch it

with his hand; he must spread a white cloth under the fern, and the magic

bloom (or seed) will fall into it.(768) Again, St. John’s wort (_Hypericum

perforatum_), a herb which is believed to heal all kinds of wounds and to

drive away witches and demons, is gathered on Midsummer Eve (Eve of St.

John), and is worn as an amulet or hung over doors and windows on that

day.(769) Again, mugwort (_Artemisia vulgaris_) is believed to possess

magic qualities provided it be gathered on St. John’s Eve. Hence in France

it is called the herb of St. John. People weave themselves a girdle of the

plant, believing that it will protect them against ghosts, magic,

misfortune, and disease, throughout the year. Or they weave garlands of it

on St. John’s Eve, and look through them at the midsummer bonfire or put

them on their heads. Whoever does this will suffer no aches in his eyes or

head that year. Sometimes the plant is thrown into the midsummer

bonfire.(770) The superstitious association of fern-seed, St. John’s wort,

and mugwort with Midsummer Eve is widely diffused over Europe. The

following associations seem to be more local. In England the orpine

(_Sedum telephium_) is popularly called Midsummer Men, because it has been

customary to gather it on Midsummer Eve for the purpose of using it to

ascertain the fate of lovers;(771) and in England sprigs of red sage are

sometimes gathered on Midsummer Eve for the same purpose.(772) In Bohemia

poachers fancy they can make themselves invulnerable by means of fir-cones

gathered before sunrise on St. John’s Day.(773) Again, in Bohemia wild

thyme gathered on Midsummer Day is used to fumigate the trees on Christmas

Eve, in order that they may grow well.(774) In Germany and Bohemia a plant

called St. John’s Flower or St. John’s Blood (_Hieracium pilosella_) is

gathered on Midsummer Eve. It should be rooted up with a gold coin. The

plant is supposed to bring luck and to be especially good for sick

cattle.(775)

These facts by themselves would suffice to raise a strong presumption

that, if the Druids cut the mistletoe in June, as we learn from Pliny that

they did, the day on which they cut it could have been no other than

Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Day. This presumption is converted into

practical certainty when we find it to be still a rule of folk-lore that

the mistletoe should be cut on Midsummer Eve.(776) Further, the peasants

of Piedmont and Lombardy still go out on Midsummer morning to search the

oak-leaves for the “oil of St. John,” which is supposed to heal all wounds

made with cutting instruments.(777) Originally no doubt the “oil of St.

John” was simply the mistletoe, or a decoction made from it. For in

Holstein the mistletoe, especially oak-mistletoe, is still regarded as a

panacea for green wounds;(778) and if, as is alleged, “all-healer” is an

epithet of the mistletoe in the modern Celtic speech of Britanny, Wales,

Ireland, and Scotland,(779) this can be nothing but a survival of the name

by which, as we have seen, the Druids addressed the oak, or rather,

perhaps, the mistletoe.

Thus it appears that the two main features of the Balder myth—the pulling

of the mistletoe and the burning of the god—were reproduced in the great

midsummer festival of the Celts. But in Scandinavia itself, the home of

Balder, both these features of his myth can still be traced in the popular

celebration of midsummer. For in Sweden on Midsummer Eve mistletoe is

“diligently sought after, they believing it to be, in a high degree,

possessed of mystic qualities; and that if a sprig of it be attached to

the ceiling of the dwelling-house, the horse’s stall, or the cow’s crib,

the ‘Troll’ will then be powerless to injure either man or beast.”(780)

And in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark huge bonfires are kindled on hills and

eminences on Midsummer Eve.(781) It does not appear, indeed, that any

effigy is burned in these bonfires; but the burning of an effigy is a

feature which might easily drop out after its meaning was forgotten. And

the name of Balder’s bale-fires (_Balder’s Bălar_), by which these

midsummer fires were formerly known in Sweden,(782) puts their connection

with Balder beyond the reach of doubt, and makes it certain that in former

times either a living representative or an effigy of Balder must have been

annually burned in them. Midsummer was the season sacred to Balder, and

the fact that the Swedish poet Tegner, in his _Frithiofssaga_, places the

burning of Balder at midsummer(783) may perhaps be allowed as evidence of

a Swedish tradition to that effect. From this double coincidence of the

Balder myth, on the one hand with the midsummer festival of Celtic Gaul

and on the other with the midsummer festival in Scandinavia, we may safely

conclude that the myth is not a myth pure and simple, that is, a mere

description of physical phenomena in imagery borrowed from human life; it

must undoubtedly be a ritualistic myth, that is a myth based on actual

observation of religious ceremonies and purporting to explain them. Now,

the standing explanation which myth gives of ritual is that the ritual in

question is a periodic commemoration of some remarkable transaction in the

past, the actors in which may have been either gods or men. Such an

explanation the Balder myth would seem to offer of the annual

fire-festivals which, as we saw, must have played so prominent a part in

the primitive religion of the Aryan race in Europe. Balder must have been

the Norse representative of the being who was burnt in effigy or in the

person of a living man at the fire-festivals in question. But if, as I

have tried to show, the being so burnt was the tree-spirit or spirit of

vegetation, it follows that Balder also must have been a tree-spirit or

spirit of vegetation.

But it is desirable to determine, if we can, the particular kind of tree

or trees, of which a personal representative was burned at the

fire-festivals. For we may be quite sure that it was not as a

representative of vegetation in general that the victim suffered death.

The conception of vegetation in general is too abstract to be primitive.

Most probably the victim at first represented a particular kind of sacred

tree. Now of all European trees none has such claims as the oak to be

considered as pre-eminently the sacred tree of the Aryans. Its worship is

attested for all the great branches of the Aryan stock in Europe. We have

seen that it was not only the sacred tree, but the principal object of

worship of both Celts and Slavs.(784) According to Grimm, the oak ranked

first among the holy trees of the Germans, and was indeed their chief god.

It is certainly known to have been adored by them in the age of

heathendom, and traces of its worship have survived in various parts of

Germany almost to the present day.(785) Amongst the ancient Italians,

according to Preller, the oak was sacred above all other trees.(786) The

image of Jupiter on the Capitol at Rome seems to have been originally

nothing but a natural oak-tree.(787) At Dodona, perhaps the oldest of all

Greek sanctuaries, Zeus was worshipped as immanent in the sacred oak, and

the rustling of its leaves in the wind was his voice.(788) If, then, the

great god of both Greeks and Romans was represented in some of his oldest

shrines under the form of an oak, and if the oak was the principal object

of worship of Celts, Germans, and Slavs, we may certainly conclude that

this tree was one of the chief, if not the very chief divinity of the

Aryans before the dispersion; and that their primitive home must have lain

in a land which was clothed with forests of oak.(789)

Now, considering the primitive character and remarkable similarity of the

fire-festivals observed by all the branches of the Aryan race in Europe,

we may infer that these festivals form part of the common stock of

religious observances which the various peoples carried with them in their

wanderings from their original home. But, if I am right, an essential

feature of those primitive fire-festivals was the burning of a man who

represented the tree-spirit. In view, then, of the place occupied by the

oak in the religion of the Aryans, the presumption is that the tree so

represented at the fire-festivals must originally have been the oak. So

far as the Celts and Slavs are concerned, this conclusion will perhaps

hardly be contested. But both for them and for the Germans it is confirmed

by a remarkable piece of religious conservatism. The most primitive method

known to man of producing fire is by rubbing two pieces of wood against

each other till they ignite; and we have seen that this method is still

used in Europe for kindling sacred fires such as the need-fire, and that

most probably it was formerly resorted to at all the fire-festivals under

discussion. Now it is sometimes prescribed that the need-fire, or other

sacred fire, must be made by the friction of a particular kind of wood;

and wherever the kind of wood is prescribed, whether among Celts, Germans,

or Slavs, that wood is always the oak. Thus we have seen that amongst the

Slavs of Masuren the new fire for the village is made on Midsummer Day by

causing a wheel to revolve rapidly round an axle of oak till the axle

takes fire.(790) When the perpetual fire which the ancient Slavs used to

maintain chanced to go out, it was rekindled by the friction of a piece of

oak-wood, which had been previously heated by being struck with a gray

(not a red) stone.(791) In Germany the need-fire was regularly kindled by

the friction of oak-wood;(792) and in the Highlands of Scotland, both the

Beltane and the need-fires were lighted by similar means.(793) Now, if the

sacred fire was regularly kindled by the friction of oak-wood, we may

infer that originally the fire was also fed with the same material. In

point of fact, the perpetual fire which burned under the sacred oak at the

great Slavonian sanctuary of Romove was fed with oak-wood;(794) and that

oak-wood was formerly the fuel burned in the midsummer fires may perhaps

be inferred from the circumstance that in many mountain districts of

Germany peasants are still in the habit of making up their cottage fire on

Midsummer Day with a heavy block of oak-wood. The block is so arranged

that it smoulders slowly and is not finally reduced to charcoal till the

expiry of a year. Then upon next Midsummer Day the charred embers of the

old log are removed to make room for the new one, and are mixed with the

seed-corn or scattered about the garden. This is believed to promote the

growth of the crops and to preserve them from blight and vermin.(795) It

may be remembered that at the Boeotian festival of the Daedala, the

analogy of which to the spring and midsummer festivals of modern Europe

has been already pointed out, the great feature was the felling and

burning of an oak.(796) The general conclusion is, that at those periodic

or occasional ceremonies, of which the object was to cause the sun to

shine, and the fruits of the earth to grow, the ancient Aryans both

kindled and fed the fire with the sacred oak-wood.

But if at these solemn rites the fire was regularly made of oak-wood, it

follows that the man who was burned in it as a personification of the

tree-spirit could have represented no tree but the oak. The sacred oak was

thus burned in duplicate; the wood of the tree was consumed in the fire,

and along with it was consumed a living man as a personification of the

oak-spirit. The conclusion thus drawn for the European Aryans in general

is confirmed in its special application to the Celts and Scandinavians by

the relation in which, amongst these peoples, the mistletoe stood to the

burning of the victim in the midsummer fire. We have seen that among Celts

and Scandinavians it has been customary to gather the mistletoe at

midsummer. But so far as appears on the face of this custom, there is

nothing to connect it with the midsummer fires in which human victims or

effigies of them were burned. Even if the fire, as seems probable, was

originally always made with oak-wood, why should it have been necessary to

pull the mistletoe? The last link between the midsummer customs of

gathering the mistletoe and lighting the bonfires is supplied by Balder’s

myth, which certainly cannot be disjoined from the customs in question.

The myth shows that a vital connection must once have been believed to

subsist between the mistletoe and the human representative of the oak who

was burned in the fire. According to the myth, Balder could be killed by

nothing in heaven or earth except the mistletoe; and so long as the

mistletoe remained on the oak, he was not only immortal, but invulnerable.

Now, as soon as we see that Balder was the oak, the origin of the myth

becomes plain. The mistletoe was viewed as the seat of life of the oak,

and so long as it was uninjured nothing could kill or even wound the oak.

The conception of the mistletoe as the seat of life of the oak would

naturally be suggested to primitive people by the observation that while

the oak is deciduous, the mistletoe which grows on it is evergreen. In

winter the sight of its fresh foliage among the bare branches must have

been hailed by the worshippers of the tree as a sign that the divine life

which had ceased to animate the branches yet survived in the mistletoe, as

the heart of a sleeper still beats when his body is motionless. Hence when

the god had to be killed—when the sacred tree had to be burnt—it was

necessary to begin by breaking off the mistletoe. For so long as the

mistletoe remained intact, the oak (so people thought) was invulnerable;

all the blows of their knives and axes would glance harmless from its

surface. But once tear from the oak its sacred heart—the mistletoe—and the

tree nodded to its fall. And when in later times the spirit of the oak

came to be represented by a living man, it was logically necessary to

suppose that, like the tree he personated, he could neither be killed nor

wounded so long as the mistletoe remained uninjured. The pulling of the

mistletoe was thus at once the signal and the cause of his death.

But since the idea of a being whose life is thus, in a sense, outside

itself, must be strange to many readers, and has, indeed, not yet been

recognised in its full bearing on primitive superstition, it will be worth

while to devote a couple of sections to the subject. The result will be to

show that, in assuming this idea as the explanation of the relation of

Balder to the mistletoe, I assume a principle which is deeply engraved on

the mind of primitive man.

§ 3.—The external soul in folk-tales.

In a former chapter we saw that, in the opinion of primitive people, the

soul may temporarily absent itself from the body without causing death.

Such temporary absences of the soul are often believed to involve

considerable risk, since the wandering soul is liable to a variety of

mishaps at the hands of enemies, and so forth. But there is another aspect

to this power of externalising the soul. If only the safety of the soul

can be ensured during its absence from the body, there is no reason why

the soul should not continue absent for an indefinite time; indeed a man

may, on a pure calculation of personal safety, desire that his soul should

never return to his body. Unable to conceive of life abstractly as a

“permanent possibility of sensation” or a “continuous adjustment of

internal arrangements to external relations,” the savage thinks of it as a

concrete material thing of a definite bulk, capable of being seen and

handled, kept in a box or jar, and liable to be bruised, fractured, or

smashed in pieces. It is not needful that the life, so conceived, should

be in the man; it may be absent from his body and still continue to

animate him, by virtue of a sort of sympathy or “action at a distance.” So

long as this object which he calls his life or soul remains unharmed, the

man is well; if it is injured, he suffers; if it is destroyed, he dies.

Or, to put it otherwise, when a man is ill or dies, the fact is explained

by saying that the material object called his life or soul, whether it be

in his body or out of it, has either sustained injury or been destroyed.

But there may be circumstances in which, if the life or soul remains in

the man, it stands a greater chance of sustaining injury than if it were

stowed away in some safe and secret place. Accordingly, in such

circumstances, primitive man takes his soul out of his body and deposits

it for security in some safe place, intending to replace it in his body

when the danger is past. Or if he should discover some place of absolute

security, he may be content to leave his soul there permanently. The

advantage of this is that, so long as the soul remains unharmed in the

place where he has deposited it, the man himself is immortal; nothing can

kill his body, since his life is not in it.

Evidence of this primitive belief is furnished by a class of folk-tales of

which the Norse story of “The giant who had no heart in his body” is

perhaps the best-known example. Stories of this kind are widely diffused

over the world, and from their number and the variety of incident and of

details in which the leading idea is embodied, we may infer that the

conception of an external soul is one which has had a powerful hold on the

minds of men at an early stage of history. For folk-tales are a faithful

reflection of the world as it appeared to the primitive mind; and we may

be sure that any idea which commonly occurs in them, however absurd it may

seem to us, must once have been an ordinary article of belief. This

assurance, so far as it concerns the supposed power of externalising the

soul for a longer or shorter time, is amply corroborated by a comparison

of the folk-tales in question with the actual beliefs and practices of

savages. To this we shall return after some specimens of the tales have

been given. The specimens will be selected with a view of illustrating

both the characteristic features and the wide diffusion of this class of

tales.

In the first place, the story of the external soul is told, in various

forms, by all Aryan peoples from Hindustan to the Hebrides. A very common

form of it is this: A warlock, giant, or other fairyland being is

invulnerable and immortal because he keeps his soul hidden far away in

some secret place; but a fair princess, whom he holds enthralled in his

enchanted castle, wiles his secret from him and reveals it to the hero,

who seeks out the warlock’s soul, heart, life, or death (as it is

variously called), and, by destroying it, simultaneously kills the

warlock. Thus a Hindoo story tells how a magician called Punchkin held a

queen captive for twelve years, and would fain marry her, but she would

not have him. At last the queen’s son came to rescue her, and the two

plotted together to kill Punchkin. So the queen spoke the magician fair,

and pretended that she had at last made up her mind to marry him. “ ‘And

do tell me,’ she said, ‘are you quite immortal? Can death never touch you?

And are you too great an enchanter ever to feel human suffering?’ ... ‘It

is true,’ he said, ‘that I am not as others. Far, far away—hundreds of

thousands of miles from this—there lies a desolate country covered with

thick jungle. In the midst of the jungle grows a circle of palm-trees, and

in the centre of the circle stand six chattees full of water, piled one

above another; below the sixth chattee is a small cage, which contains a

little green parrot—on the life of the parrot depends my life—and if the

parrot is killed I must die. It is, however,’ he added, ‘impossible that

the parrot should sustain any injury, both on account of the

inaccessibility of the country, and because, by my appointment, many

thousand genii surround the palm-trees, and kill all who approach the

place.’ ” But the queen’s young son overcame all difficulties, and got

possession of the parrot. He brought it to the door of the magician’s

palace, and began playing with it. Punchkin, the magician, saw him, and,

coming out, tried to persuade the boy to give him the parrot. “ ‘Give me

my parrot!’ cried Punchkin. Then the boy took hold of the parrot and tore

off one of his wings; and as he did so the magician’s right arm fell off.

Punchkin then stretched out his left arm, crying, ‘Give me my parrot!’ The

prince pulled off the parrot’s second wing, and the magician’s left arm

tumbled off. ‘Give me my parrot!’ cried he, and fell on his knees. The

prince pulled off the parrot’s right leg, the magician’s right leg fell

off; the prince pulled off the parrot’s left leg, down fell the magician’s

left. Nothing remained of him except the lifeless body and the head; but

still he rolled his eyes, and cried, ‘Give me my parrot!’ ‘Take your

parrot, then,’ cried the boy; and with that he wrung the bird’s neck, and

threw it at the magician; and, as he did so, Punchkin’s head twisted

round, and, with a fearful groan, he died!”(797) In another Hindoo tale an

ogre is asked by his daughter, “ ‘Papa, where do you keep your soul?’

‘Sixteen miles away from this place,’ said he, ‘is a tree. Round the tree

are tigers, and bears, and scorpions, and snakes; on the top of the tree

is a very great fat snake; on his head is a little cage; in the cage is a

bird; and my soul is in that bird.’ ” The end of the ogre is like that of

the magician in the previous tale. As the bird’s wings and legs are torn

off, the ogre’s arms and legs drop off; and when its neck is wrung he

falls down dead.(798)

In another Hindoo story a princess called Sodewa Bai is born with a golden

necklace about her neck, and the astrologer told her parents, “This is no

common child; the necklace of gold about her neck contains your daughter’s

soul; let it, therefore, be guarded with the utmost care; for if it were

taken off and worn by another person, she would die.” So her mother caused

it to be firmly fastened round the child’s neck, and, as soon as the child

was old enough to understand, she told her its value, and warned her never

to let it be taken off. In course of time Sodewa Bai was married to a

prince who had another wife living. The first wife, jealous of her young

rival, persuaded a negress to steal from Sodewa Bai the golden necklace

which contained her soul. The negress did so, and, as soon as she put the

necklace round her own neck, Sodewa Bai died. All day long the negress

used to wear the necklace; but late at night, on going to bed, she would

take it off and put it by till morning; and whenever she took it off,

Sodewa Bai’s soul returned to her and she lived. But when morning came,

and the negress put on the necklace, Sodewa Bai died again. At last the

prince discovered the treachery of his elder wife and restored the golden

necklace to Sodewa Bai.(799) In another Hindoo story a holy mendicant

tells a queen that she will bear a son, adding, “As enemies will try to

take away the life of your son, I may as well tell you that the life of

the boy will be bound up in the life of a big _boal_-fish which is in your

tank in front of the palace. In the heart of the fish is a small box of

wood, in the box is a necklace of gold, that necklace is the life of your

son.” The boy was born and received the name of Dalim. His mother was the

Suo or younger queen. But the Duo or elder queen hated the child, and

learning the secret of his life, she caused the _boal_-fish, with which

his life was bound up, to be caught. Dalim was playing near the tank at

the time, but “the moment the _boal_-fish was caught in the net, that

moment Dalim felt unwell; and when the fish was brought up to land, Dalim

fell down on the ground, and made as if he was about to breathe his last.

He was immediately taken into his mother’s room, and the king was

astonished on hearing of the sudden illness of his son and heir. The fish

was by the order of the physician taken into the room of the Duo queen,

and as it lay on the floor striking its fins on the ground, Dalim in his

mother’s room was given up for lost. When the fish was cut open, a casket

was found in it; and in the casket lay a necklace of gold. The moment the

necklace was worn by the queen, that very moment Dalim died in his

mother’s room.” The queen used to put off the necklace every night, and

whenever she did so, the boy came to life again. But every morning when

the queen put on the necklace, he died again.(800)

In a Cashmeer story a lad visits an old ogress, pretending to be her

grandson, the son of her daughter who had married a king. So the old

ogress took him into her confidence and showed him seven cocks, a

spinning-wheel, a pigeon, and a starling. “These seven cocks,” said she,

“contain the lives of your seven uncles, who are away for a few days. Only

as long as the cocks live can your uncles hope to live; no power can hurt

them as long as the seven cocks are safe and sound. The spinning-wheel

contains my life; if it is broken, I too shall be broken, and must die;

but otherwise I shall live on for ever. The pigeon contains your

grandfather’s life, and the starling your mother’s; as long as these live,

nothing can harm your grandfather or your mother.” So the lad killed the

seven cocks and the pigeon and the starling, and smashed the

spinning-wheel; and at the moment he did so the ogres and ogresses

perished.(801) In another story from Cashmeer an ogre cannot die unless a

particular pillar in the verandah of his palace be broken. Learning the

secret, a prince struck the pillar again and again till it was broken in

pieces. And it was as if each stroke had fallen on the ogre, for he howled

lamentably and shook like an aspen every time the prince hit the pillar,

until at last, when the pillar fell down, the ogre also fell down and gave

up the ghost.(802) In another Cashmeer tale an ogre is represented as

laughing very heartily at the idea that he might possibly die. He said

that “he should never die. No power could oppose him; no years could age

him; he should remain ever strong and ever young, for the thing wherein

his life dwelt was most difficult to obtain.” It was in a queen bee, which

was in a honeycomb on a tree. But the bees in the honeycomb were many and

fierce, and it was only at the greatest risk that any one could catch the

queen. But the hero achieved the enterprise and crushed the queen bee; and

immediately the ogre fell stone dead to the ground, so that the whole land

trembled with the shock.(803) In some Bengalee tales the life of a whole

tribe of ogres is described as concentrated in two bees. The secret was

thus revealed by an old ogress to a captive princess who pretended to fear

lest the ogress should die. “Know, foolish girl,” said the ogress, “that

we ogres never die. We are not naturally immortal, but our life depends on

a secret which no human being can unravel. Let me tell you what it is that

you may be comforted. You know yonder tank; there is in the middle of it a

crystal pillar, on the top of which in deep water are two bees. If any

human being can dive into the water and bring up the two bees from the

pillar in one breath, and destroy them so that not a drop of their blood

falls to the ground, then we ogres shall certainly die; but if a single

drop of blood falls to the ground, then from it will start up a thousand

ogres. But what human being will find out this secret, or, finding it,

will be able to achieve the feat? You need not, therefore, darling, be

sad; I am practically immortal.” As usual, the princess reveals the secret

to the hero, who kills the bees, and that same moment all the ogres drop

down dead, each on the spot where he happened to be standing.(804) In

another Bengalee story it is said that all the ogres dwell in Ceylon, and

that all their lives are in a single lemon. A boy cuts the lemon in

pieces, and all the ogres die.(805)

In a Siamese or Cambodian story, probably derived from India, we are told

that Thossakan or Ravana, the King of Ceylon, was able by magic art to

take his soul out of his body and leave it in a box at home, while he went

to the wars. Thus he was invulnerable in battle. When he was about to give

battle to Rama, he deposited his soul with a hermit called Fire-eye, who

was to keep it safe for him. So in the fight Rama was astounded to see

that his arrows struck the king without wounding him. But one of Rama’s

allies, knowing the secret of the king’s invulnerability, transformed

himself by magic into the likeness of the king, and going to the hermit

asked back his soul. On receiving it he soared up into the air and flew to

Rama, brandishing the box and squeezing it so hard that all the breath

left the King of Ceylon’s body, and he died.(806) In a Bengalee story a

prince going into a far country planted with his own hands a tree in the

courtyard of his father’s palace, and said to his parents, “This tree is

my life. When you see the tree green and fresh, then know that it is well

with me; when you see the tree fade in some parts, then know that I am in

an ill case; and when you see the whole tree fade, then know that I am

dead and gone.”(807) In another Indian tale a prince, setting forth on his

travels, left behind him a barley plant with instructions that it should

be carefully tended and watched, for if it flourished, he would be alive

and well, but if it drooped, then some mischance was about to happen to

him. And so it fell out. For the prince was beheaded, and as his head

rolled off, the barley plant snapped in two and the ear of barley fell to

the ground.(808) In the legend of the origin of Gilgit there figures a

fairy king whose soul is in the snows and who can only perish by

fire.(809)

In Greek tales, ancient and modern, the idea of an external soul is not

uncommon. When Meleager was seven days old, the Fates appeared to his

mother and told her that Meleager would die when the brand which was

blazing on the hearth had burnt down. So his mother snatched the brand

from the fire and kept it in a box. But in after years, being enraged at

her son for slaying her brothers, she burnt the brand in the fire and

Meleager at once expired.(810) Again, Nisus King of Megara, had a purple

or golden hair on the middle of his head, and it was fated that whenever

the hair was pulled out the king should die. When Megara was besieged by

the Cretans, the king’s daughter Scylla fell in love with Minos, their

King, and pulled out the fatal hair from her father’s head. So he

died.(811) Similarly Poseidon made Pterelaus immortal by giving him a

golden hair on his head. But when Taphos, the home of Pterelaus, was

besieged by Amphitryon, the daughter of Pterelaus fell in love with

Amphitryon and killed her father by plucking out the golden hair with

which his life was bound up.(812) In a modern Greek folk-tale a man’s

strength lies in three golden hairs on his head. When his mother pulls

them out, he grows weak and timid and is slain by his enemies.(813) In

another modern Greek story the life of an enchanter is bound up with three

doves which are in the belly of a wild boar. When the first dove is

killed, the magician grows sick, when the second is killed, he grows very

sick, and when the third is killed, he dies.(814) In another Greek story

of the same sort an ogre’s strength is in three singing birds which are in

a wild boar. The hero kills two of the birds, and then coming to the

ogre’s house finds him lying on the ground in great pain. He shows the

third bird to the ogre, who begs that the hero will either let it fly away

or give it to him to eat. But the hero wrings the bird’s neck and the ogre

dies on the spot.(815) In a variant of the latter story the monster’s

strength is in two doves, and when the hero kills one of them, the monster

cries out, “Ah, woe is me! Half my life is gone. Something must have

happened to one of the doves.” When the second dove is killed, he

dies.(816) In another Greek story the incidents of the three golden hairs

and the three doves are artificially combined. A monster has three golden

hairs on his head which open the door of a chamber in which are three

doves; when the first dove is killed, the monster grows sick, when the

second is killed, he grows worse, and when the third is killed, he

dies.(817) In another Greek tale an old man’s strength is in a ten-headed

serpent. When the serpent’s heads are being cut off, he feels unwell, and

when the last head is struck off, he expires.(818) In another Greek story

a dervish tells a queen that she will have three sons, that at the birth

of each she must plant a pumpkin in the garden, and that in the fruit

borne by the pumpkins will reside the strength of the children. In due

time the infants are born and the pumpkins planted. As the children grow

up the pumpkins grow with them. One morning the eldest son feels sick, and

on going into the garden they find that the largest pumpkin is gone. Next

night the second son keeps watch in a summer-house in the garden. At

midnight a negro appears and cuts the second pumpkin. At once the boy’s

strength goes out of him and he is unable to pursue the negro. The

youngest son, however, succeeds in slaying the negro and recovering the

lost pumpkins.(819)

Ancient Italian legend furnishes a close parallel to the Greek story of

Meleager. Silvia, the young wife of Septimius Marcellus, had a child by

the god Mars. The god gave her a spear, with which he said that the fate

of the child would be bound up. When the boy grew up he quarrelled with

his maternal uncles and slew them. So in revenge his mother burned the

spear on which his life depended.(820) In one of the stories of the

_Pentamerone_ a certain queen has a twin brother, a dragon. The

astrologers declared at her birth that she would live just as long as the

dragon and no longer, the death of the one involving the death of the

other. If the dragon were killed, the only way to restore the queen to

life would be to smear her temples, breast, pulses, and nostrils with the

blood of the dragon.(821) In a modern Roman version of “Aladdin and the

Wonderful Lamp,” the magician tells the princess whom he holds captive in

a floating rock in mid-ocean that he will never die. The princess reports

this to the prince her husband, who has come to rescue her. The prince

replies, “It is impossible but that there should be some one thing or

other that is fatal to him; ask him what that one fatal thing is.” So the

princess asked the magician and he told her that in the wood was a hydra

with seven heads; in the middle head of the hydra was a leveret, in the

head of the leveret was a bird, in the bird’s head was a precious stone,

and if this stone were put under his pillow he would die. The prince

procured the stone and the princess laid it under the magician’s pillow.

No sooner did the enchanter lay his head on the pillow than he gave three

terrible yells, turned himself round and round three times, and died.(822)

Stories of the same sort are current among Slavonic peoples. Thus in a

Russian tale a warlock called Koshchei the Deathless is asked where his

death is. “My death,” he answered, “is in such and such a place. There

stands an oak, and under the oak is a casket, and in the casket is a hare,

and in the hare is a duck, and in the duck is an egg, and in the egg is my

death.” A prince obtained the egg and squeezed it, whereupon Koshchei the

Deathless bent double. But when the prince shivered the egg in pieces, the

warlock died.(823) “In one of the descriptions of Koshchei’s death, he is

said to be killed by a blow on the forehead inflicted by the mysterious

egg—that last link in the magic chain by which his life is darkly bound.

In another version of the same story, but told of a snake, the fatal blow

is struck by a small stone found in the yolk of an egg, which is inside a

duck, which is inside a hare, which is inside a stone, which is on an

island.”(824) In another variant the prince shifts the fatal egg from one

hand to the other, and as he does so Koshchei rushes wildly from side to

side of the room. At last the prince smashes the egg, and Koshchei drops

dead.(825) In another Russian story the death of an enchantress is in a

blue rose-tree in a blue forest. Prince Ivan uproots the rose-tree,

whereupon the enchantress straightway sickens. He brings the rose-tree to

her house and finds her at the point of death. Then he throws it into the

cellar, crying, “Behold her death!” and at once the whole building shakes,

“and becomes an island, on which are people who had been sitting in Hell,

and who offer up thanks to Prince Ivan.”(826) In another Russian story a

prince is grievously tormented by a witch who has got hold of his heart,

and keeps it seething in a magic cauldron.(827) In a Bohemian tale a

warlock’s strength lies in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a stag,

which is under a tree. A seer finds the egg and sucks it. Then the warlock

grows as weak as a child, “for all his strength had passed into the

seer.”(828) In a Serbian story a fabulous being called True Steel

declares, “Far away from this place there is a very high mountain, in the

mountain there is a fox, in the fox there is a heart, in the heart there

is a bird, and in this bird is my strength.” The fox is caught and killed

and its heart is taken out. Out of the fox’s heart is taken the bird,

which is then burnt, and that very moment True Steel falls dead.(829) In a

South Slavonian story a dragon tells an old woman, “My strength is a long

way off, and you cannot go thither. Far in another empire under the

emperor’s city is a lake, in that lake is a dragon, and in the dragon a

boar, and in the boar a pigeon, and in that is my strength.”(830)

Amongst peoples of the Teutonic stock stories of the external soul are not

wanting. In a tale told by the Saxons of Transylvania it is said that a

young man shot at a witch again and again. The bullets went clean through

her but did her no harm, and she only laughed and mocked at him. “Silly

earthworm,” she cried, “shoot as much as you like. It does me no harm. For

know that my life resides not in me but far, far away. In a mountain is a

pond, on the pond swims a duck, in the duck is an egg, in the egg burns a

light, that light is my life. If you could put out that light, my life

would be at an end. But that can never, never be.” However, the young man

got hold of the egg, smashed it, and put out the light, and with it the

witch’s life went out also.(831) In a German story a cannibal called

Soulless keeps his soul in a box, which stands on a rock in the middle of

the Red Sea. A soldier gets possession of the box and goes with it to

Soulless, who begs the soldier to give him back his soul. But the soldier

opens the box, takes out the soul, and flings it backward over his head.

At the same moment the cannibal drops down stone dead.(832) In an

Oldenburg story a king has three sons and a daughter, and for each child

there grows a flower in the king’s garden. Each of the flowers is a life

flower; it blooms and flourishes while the child lives, but when the child

dies it withers away.(833) In another German story an old warlock lives

with a damsel all alone in the midst of a vast and gloomy wood. She fears

that being old he may die and leave her alone in the forest. But he

reassures her. “Dear child,” he said, “I cannot die, and I have no heart

in my breast.” But she importuned him to tell her where his heart was. So

he said, “Far, far from here in an unknown and lonesome land stands a

great church. The church is well secured with iron doors, and round about

it flows a broad deep moat. In the church flies a bird and in the bird is

my heart. So long as that bird lives, I live. It cannot die of itself, and

no one can catch it; therefore I cannot die, and you need have no

anxiety.” However, the young man, whose bride the damsel was to have been

before the warlock spirited her away, contrived to reach the church and

catch the bird. He brought it to the damsel, who stowed him and it away

under the warlock’s bed. Soon the old warlock came home. He was ailing,

and said so. The girl wept and said, “Alas, daddy is dying; he has a heart

in his breast after all.” “Child,” replied the warlock, “hold your tongue.

I _can’t_ die. It will soon pass over.” At that the young man under the

bed gave the bird a gentle squeeze; and as he did so, the old warlock felt

very unwell and sat down. Then the young man gripped the bird tighter, and

the warlock fell senseless from his chair. “Now squeeze him dead,” cried

the damsel. Her lover obeyed, and when the bird was dead, the old warlock

also lay dead on the floor.(834)

In the Norse tale of “the giant who had no heart in his body,” the giant

tells the captive princess, “Far, far away in a lake lies an island, on

that island stands a church, in that church is a well, in that well swims

a duck, in that duck there is an egg, and in that egg there lies my

heart.” The hero of the tale obtains the egg and squeezes it, at which the

giant screams piteously and begs for his life. But the hero breaks the egg

in pieces and the giant at once bursts.(835) In another Norse story a

hill-ogre tells the captive princess that she will never be able to return

home unless she finds the grain of sand which lies under the ninth tongue

of the ninth head of a certain dragon; but if that grain of sand were to

come over the rock in which the ogres live, they would all burst “and the

rock itself would become a gilded palace, and the lake green meadows.” The

hero finds the grain of sand and takes it to the top of the high rock in

which the ogres live. So all the ogres burst and the rest falls out as one

of the ogres had foretold.(836) In an Icelandic parallel to the story of

Meleager, the spae-wives or sybils come and foretell the high destiny of

the infant Gestr as he lies in his cradle. Two candles were burning beside

the child, and the youngest of the spae-wives, conceiving herself

slighted, cried out, “I foretell that the child shall live no longer than

this candle burns.” Whereupon the chief sybil put out the candle and gave

it to Gestr’s mother to keep, charging her not to light it again until her

son should wish to die. Gestr lived three hundred years; then he kindled

the candle and expired.(837)

In a Celtic tale a giant says, “There is a great flagstone under the

threshold. There is a wether under the flag. There is a duck in the

wether’s belly, and an egg in the belly of the duck, and it is in the egg

that my soul is.” The egg is crushed, and the giant falls down dead.(838)

In another Celtic tale, a sea beast has carried off a king’s daughter, and

an old smith declares that there is no way of killing the beast but one.

“In the island that is in the midst of the loch is Eillid Chaisthion—the

white-footed hind, of the slenderest legs, and the swiftest step, and,

though she should be caught, there would spring a hoodie out of her, and

though the hoodie should be caught, there would spring a trout out of her,

but there is an egg in the mouth of the trout, and the soul of the beast

is in the egg, and if the egg breaks, the beast is dead.” As usual the egg

is broken and the beast dies.(839) In a Breton story there figures a giant

whom neither fire nor water nor steel can harm. He tells a princess whom

he has just married, “I am immortal, and no one can hurt me, unless he

crushes on my breast an egg which is in a pigeon, which is in the belly of

a hare; this hare is in the belly of a wolf, and this wolf is in the belly

of my brother, who dwells a thousand leagues from here. So I am quite easy

on that score.” A soldier gets the egg and crushes it on the breast of the

giant, who immediately expires.(840) In another Breton tale a giant is

called Body-without-Soul because his life does not reside in his body. It

resides in an egg, the egg is in a dove, the dove is in a hare, the hare

is in a wolf, and the wolf is in an iron chest at the bottom of the sea.

The hero kills the animals one after another, and at the death of each

animal the giant grows weaker, as if he had lost a limb. When at last the

hero comes to the giant’s castle bearing the egg in his hand, he finds

Body-without-Soul stretched on his bed at the point of death. So he dashes

the egg against the giant’s forehead, the egg breaks, and the giant

straightway dies.(841)

The notion of an external soul has now been traced in folk-tales told by

Aryan peoples from India to Brittany and the Hebrides. We have still to

show that the same idea occurs commonly in the popular stories of

non-Aryan peoples. In the first place it appears in the ancient Egyptian

story of “The Two Brothers.” This story was written down in the reign of

Rameses II, about 1300 years B.C. It is therefore older than our present

redaction of Homer, and far older than the Bible. The outline of the

story, so far as it concerns us here, is as follows: Once upon a time

there were two brethren; the name of the elder was Anupu and the name of

the younger was Bitiu. Now Anupu had a house and a wife, and his younger

brother dwelt with him as his servant. It was Anupu who made the garments,

and every morning when it grew light he drove the kine afield. As he

walked behind them they used to say to him, “The grass is good in such and

such a place,” and he heard what they said and led them to the good

pasture that they desired. So his kine grew very sleek and multiplied

greatly. One day when the two brothers were at work in the field the elder

brother said to the younger, “Run and fetch seed from the village.” So the

younger brother ran and said to the wife of his elder brother, “Give me

seed that I may run to the field, for my brother sent me saying, tarry

not.” She said, “Go to the barn and take as much as you desire.” He went

and filled a jar full of wheat and barley, and came forth bearing it on

his shoulders. When the woman saw him her heart went out to him, and she

laid hold of him and said, “Come, let us rest an hour together.” But he

said, “Thou art to me as a mother, and my brother is to me as a father.”

So he would not hearken to her, but took the load on his back and went

away to the field. In the evening, when the elder brother was returning

from the field, his wife feared for what she had said. So she took soot

and made herself as one who has been beaten. And when her husband came

home, she said, “When thy younger brother came to fetch seed, he said to

me, Come, let us rest an hour together. But I would not, and he beat me.”

Then the elder brother became like a panther of the south; he sharpened

his knife and stood behind the door of the cow-house. And when the sun set

and the younger brother came laden with all the herbs of the field, as was

his wont every day, the cow that walked in front of the herd said to him,

“Behold, thy elder brother stands with a knife to kill thee. Flee before

him.” When he heard what the cow said, he looked under the door of the

cow-house and saw the feet of his elder brother standing behind the door,

his knife in his hand. So he fled and his brother pursued him with the

knife. But the younger brother cried for help to the Sun, and the Sun

heard him and caused a great water to spring up between him and his elder

brother, and the water was full of crocodiles. The two brothers stood, the

one on the one side of the water and the other on the other, and the

younger brother told the elder brother all that had befallen. So the elder

brother repented him of what he had done and he wept aloud. But he could

not come at the farther bank by reason of the crocodiles. His younger

brother called to him and said, “Go home and tend the cattle thyself. For

I will dwell no more in the place where thou art. I will go to the Valley

of the Acacia. But this is what thou shalt do for me. Thou shalt come and

care for me, if evil befalls me, for I will enchant my heart and place it

on the top of the flower of the Acacia; and if they cut the Acacia and my

heart falls to the ground, thou shalt come and seek it, and when thou hast

found it thou shalt lay it in a vessel of fresh water. Then I shall come

to life again. But this is the sign that evil has befallen me; the pot of

beer in thine hand shall bubble.” So he went away to the Valley of the

Acacia, but his brother returned home with dust on his head and slew his

wife and cast her to the dogs.