Chapter XVII. Types of Animal Sacrament.

§ 1. The Egyptian and the Aino Types of Sacrament.

§ 2. Processions with Sacred Animals.

§ 3. The Rites of Plough Monday.

Note: The Ceremony of the Horse at Rice-Harvest Among The Garos.

Index.

Footnotes

[Cover Art]

[Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter

at Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]

CHAPTER IX. ANCIENT DEITIES OF VEGETATION AS ANIMALS.

§ 1. Dionysus, the Goat and the Bull.

(M1) However we may explain it, the fact remains that in peasant folk-lore

the corn-spirit is very commonly conceived and represented in animal form.

May not this fact explain the relation in which certain animals stood to

the ancient deities of vegetation, Dionysus, Demeter, Adonis, Attis, and

Osiris?

(M2) To begin with Dionysus. We have seen that he was represented

sometimes as a goat and sometimes as a bull.(1) As a goat he can hardly be

separated from the minor divinities, the Pans, Satyrs, and Silenuses, all

of whom are closely associated with him and are represented more or less

completely in the form of goats. Thus, Pan was regularly portrayed in

sculpture and painting with the face and legs of a goat.(2) The Satyrs

were depicted with pointed goat-ears, and sometimes with sprouting horns

and short tails.(3) They were sometimes spoken of simply as goats;(4) and

in the drama their parts were played by men dressed in goatskins.(5)

Silenus is represented in art clad in a goatskin.(6) Further, the Fauns,

the Italian counterpart of the Greek Pans and Satyrs, are described as

being half goats, with goat-feet and goat-horns.(7) Again, all these minor

goat-formed divinities partake more or less clearly of the character of

woodland deities. Thus, Pan was called by the Arcadians the Lord of the

Wood.(8) The Silenuses associated with the tree-nymphs.(9) The Fauns are

expressly designated as woodland deities;(10) and their character as such

is still further brought out by their association, or even identification,

with Silvanus and the Silvanuses, who, as their name of itself indicates,

are spirits of the woods.(11) Lastly, the association of the Satyrs with

the Silenuses, Fauns, and Silvanuses,(12) proves that the Satyrs also were

woodland deities. These goat-formed spirits of the woods have their

counterparts in the folk-lore of Northern Europe. Thus, the Russian

wood-spirits, called _Ljeschie_ (from _ljes_, “wood”) are believed to

appear partly in human shape, but with the horns, ears, and legs of goats.

The _Ljeschi_ can alter his stature at pleasure; when he walks in the wood

he is as tall as the trees; when he walks in the meadows he is no higher

than the grass. Some of the _Ljeschie_ are spirits of the corn as well as

of the wood; before harvest they are as tall as the corn-stalks, but after

it they shrink to the height of the stubble.(13) This brings out—what we

have remarked before—the close connexion between tree-spirits and

corn-spirits, and shews how easily the former may melt into the latter.

Similarly the Fauns, though wood-spirits, were believed to foster the

growth of the crops.(14) We have already seen how often the corn-spirit is

represented in folk-custom as a goat.(15) On the whole, then, as Mannhardt

argues,(16) the Pans, Satyrs, and Fauns perhaps belong to a widely

diffused class of wood-spirits conceived in goat-form. The fondness of

goats for straying in woods and nibbling the bark of trees, to which

indeed they are most destructive, is an obvious and perhaps sufficient

reason why wood-spirits should so often be supposed to take the form of

goats. The inconsistency of a god of vegetation subsisting upon the

vegetation which he personifies is not one to strike the primitive mind.

Such inconsistencies arise when the deity, ceasing to be immanent in the

vegetation, comes to be regarded as its owner or lord; for the idea of

owning the vegetation naturally leads to that of subsisting on it. We have

already seen that the corn-spirit, originally conceived as immanent in the

corn, afterwards comes to be regarded as its owner, who lives on it and is

reduced to poverty and want by being deprived of it.(17)

(M3) Thus the representation of wood-spirits in the form of goats appears

to be both widespread and, to the primitive mind, natural. Therefore when

we find, as we have done, that Dionysus—a tree-god—is sometimes

represented in goat-form,(18) we can hardly avoid concluding that this

representation is simply a part of his proper character as a tree-god and

is not to be explained by the fusion of two distinct and independent

worships, in one of which he originally appeared as a tree-god and in the

other as a goat. If such a fusion took place in the case of Dionysus, it

must equally have taken place in the case of the Pans and Satyrs of

Greece, the Fauns of Italy, and the _Ljeschie_ of Russia. That such a

fusion of two wholly disconnected worships should have occurred once is

possible; that it should have occurred twice independently is improbable;

that it should have occurred thrice independently is so unlikely as to be

practically incredible.

(M4) Dionysus was also figured, as we have seen,(19) in the shape of a

bull. After what has gone before we are naturally led to expect that his

bull form must have been only another expression for his character as a

deity of vegetation, especially as the bull is a common embodiment of the

corn-spirit in Northern Europe;(20) and the close association of Dionysus

with Demeter and Persephone in the mysteries of Eleusis shews that he had

at least strong agricultural affinities. The other possible explanation of

the bull-shaped Dionysus would be that the conception of him as a bull was

originally entirely distinct from the conception of him as a deity of

vegetation, and that the fusion of the two conceptions was due to some

such circumstance as the union of two tribes, one of which had previously

worshipped a bull-god and the other a tree-god. This appears to be the

view taken by Mr. Andrew Lang, who suggests that the bull-formed Dionysus

“had either been developed out of, or had succeeded to, the worship of a

bull-totem.”(21) Of course this is possible. But it is not yet certain

that the Aryans ever had totemism.(22) On the other hand, it is quite

certain that many Aryan peoples have conceived deities of vegetation as

embodied in animal forms. Therefore when we find amongst an Aryan people

like the Greeks a deity of vegetation represented as an animal, the

presumption must be in favour of explaining this by a principle which is

certainly known to have influenced the Aryan race rather than by one which

is not certainly known to have done so. In the present state of our

knowledge, therefore, it is safer to regard the bull form of Dionysus as

being, like his goat form, an expression of his proper character as a

deity of vegetation.

(M5) The probability of this view will be somewhat increased if it can be

shewn that in other rites than those of Dionysus the ancients slew an ox

as a representative of the spirit of vegetation. This they appear to have

done in the Athenian sacrifice known as “the murder of the ox”

(_bouphonia_). It took place about the end of June or beginning of July,

that is, about the time when the threshing is nearly over in Attica.

According to tradition the sacrifice was instituted to procure a cessation

of drought and dearth which had afflicted the land. The ritual was as

follows. Barley mixed with wheat, or cakes made of them, were laid upon

the bronze altar of Zeus Polieus on the Acropolis. Oxen were driven round

the altar, and the ox which went up to the altar and ate the offering on

it was sacrificed. The axe and knife with which the beast was slain had

been previously wetted with water brought by maidens called

“water-carriers.” The weapons were then sharpened and handed to the

butchers, one of whom felled the ox with the axe and another cut its

throat with the knife. As soon as he had felled the ox, the former threw

the axe from him and fled; and the man who cut the beast’s throat

apparently imitated his example. Meantime the ox was skinned and all

present partook of its flesh. Then the hide was stuffed with straw and

sewed up; next the stuffed animal was set on its feet and yoked to a

plough as if it were ploughing. A trial then took place in an ancient

law-court presided over by the King (as he was called) to determine who

had murdered the ox. The maidens who had brought the water accused the men

who had sharpened the axe and knife; the men who had sharpened the axe and

knife blamed the men who had handed these implements to the butchers; the

men who had handed the implements to the butchers blamed the butchers; and

the butchers laid the blame on the axe and knife, which were accordingly

found guilty, condemned and cast into the sea.(23)

(M6) The name of this sacrifice,—“the _murder_ of the ox,”(24)—the pains

taken by each person who had a hand in the slaughter to lay the blame on

some one else, together with the formal trial and punishment of the axe or

knife or both, prove that the ox was here regarded not merely as a victim

offered to a god, but as itself a sacred creature, the slaughter of which

was sacrilege or murder. This is borne out by a statement of Varro that to

kill an ox was formerly a capital crime in Attica.(25) The mode of

selecting the victim suggests that the ox which tasted the corn was viewed

as the corn-deity taking possession of his own. This interpretation is

supported by the following custom. In Beauce, in the district of Orleans,

on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of April they make a straw-man called

“the great _mondard_.” For they say that the old _mondard_ is now dead and

it is necessary to make a new one. The straw-man is carried in solemn

procession up and down the village and at last is placed upon the oldest

apple-tree. There he remains till the apples are gathered, when he is

taken down and thrown into the water, or he is burned and his ashes cast

into water. But the person who plucks the first fruit from the tree

succeeds to the title of “the great _mondard_,”(26) Here the straw figure,

called “the great _mondard_” and placed on the oldest apple-tree in

spring, represents the spirit of the tree, who, dead in winter, revives

when the apple-blossoms appear on the boughs. Thus the person who plucks

the first fruit from the tree and thereby receives the name of “the great

_mondard_” must be regarded as a representative of the tree-spirit.

Primitive peoples are usually reluctant to taste the annual first-fruits

of any crop, until some ceremony has been performed which makes it safe

and pious for them to do so. The reason of this reluctance appears to be a

belief that the first-fruits either belong to or actually contain a

divinity. Therefore when a man or animal is seen boldly to appropriate the

sacred first-fruits, he or it is naturally regarded as the divinity

himself in human or animal form taking possession of his own. The time of

the Athenian sacrifice, which fell about the close of the threshing,

suggests that the wheat and barley laid upon the altar were a harvest

offering; and the sacramental character of the subsequent repast—all

partaking of the flesh of the divine animal—would make it parallel to the

harvest-suppers of modern Europe, in which, as we have seen, the flesh of

the animal who stands for the corn-spirit is eaten by the harvesters.

Again, the tradition that the sacrifice was instituted in order to put an

end to drought and famine is in favour of taking it as a harvest festival.

The resurrection of the corn-spirit, enacted by setting up the stuffed ox

and yoking it to the plough, may be compared with the resurrection of the

tree-spirit in the person of his representative, the Wild Man.(27)

(M7) Still more clearly, perhaps, does the identification of the

corn-spirit with an ox come out in the sacrificial ritual which the Greeks

of Magnesia on the Maeander observed in honour of Zeus Sosipolis, a god

whose title of Sosipolis (“Saviour of the City”) marks him as the

equivalent of Zeus Polieus (“Zeus of the City”). The details of the ritual

are happily preserved in an inscription, which records a decree of the

council and of the people for the regulation of the whole proceedings.

Every year at a festival in the month of Heraeon the magistrates bought

the finest bull that could be had for money, and at the new moon of the

month of Cronion, at the time when the sowing was about to begin, they and

the priests dedicated the animal to Zeus Sosipolis, while solemn prayers

were offered by the voice of a sacred herald for the welfare of the city,

of the land, and of the people, for peace and wealth, for the corn-crops

and all other fruits, and for the cattle. Thereafter the sacred animal was

kept throughout the winter, its keep being undertaken by a contractor, who

was bound by law to drive the bull to the market and there collect

contributions for its maintenance from all the hucksters and in particular

from the corn-chandlers; and a prospect was held out to such as

contributed that it would go well with them. Finally, after having been

thus maintained at the public cost for some months, the bull was led forth

with great pomp and sacrificed in the market-place on the twelfth day of

the month Artemision, which is believed to have been equivalent to the

Attic month of Thargelion and to the English month of May, the season when

the corn is reaped in the Greek lowlands. In the procession which attended

the animal to the place of sacrifice the senators, the priests, the

magistrates, the young people, and the victors in the games all bore a

part, and at the head of the procession were borne the images of the

Twelve Gods attired in festal array, while a fluteplayer, a piper, and a

harper discoursed solemn music.(28) Now in the bull, which was thus

dedicated at the time of sowing and kept at the cost of the pious, and

especially of corn-chandlers, to be finally sacrificed at harvest, it is

reasonable to see an embodiment of the corn-spirit. Regarded as such the

animal was consecrated when the seed was committed to the earth; it was

fed and kept all the time the corn was growing in order that by its

beneficent energies it might foster that growth; and at last, to complete

the parallel, when the corn was reaped the animal was slain, the cutting

of the stalks being regarded as the death of the corn-spirit.(29)

Similarly we have seen that in the harvest-fields and on the

threshing-floors of modern Europe the corn-spirit is often conceived in

the form of a bull, an ox, or a calf, which is supposed to be killed at

reaping or threshing; and, further, we saw that the conception is

sometimes carried out in practice by slaughtering a real ox or a real calf

on the harvest-field. Thus the parallelism between the ancient Greek and

the modern European idea of the corn-spirit embodied in the form of a bull

appears to be very close.

(M8) On the interpretation which I have adopted of the sacrifices offered

to Zeus Polieus and Zeus Sosipolis the corn-spirit is conceived as a male,

not as a female, as Zeus, not as Demeter or Persephone. In this there is

no inconsistency. At the stage of thought which the Greeks had reached

long before the dawn of history they supposed the processes of

reproduction in nature to be carried on by a male and a female principle

in conjunction; they did not believe, like some backward savages, that the

female principle alone suffices for that purpose, and that the aid of the

male principle is superfluous. Hence, as we have seen, they imagined that

the goddesses of the corn, the mother Demeter and the daughter Persephone,

had each her male partner with whom she united for the production of the

crops. The partner of Demeter was Zeus, the partner of Persephone was his

brother Pluto, the Subterranean Zeus, as he was called; and reasons have

been shewn for thinking that the marriage of one or other of these divine

pairs was solemnised at Eleusis as part of the Great Mysteries in order to

promote the growth of the corn.(30)

(M9) The ox appears as a representative of the corn-spirit in other parts

of the world. At Great Bassam, in Guinea, two oxen are slain annually to

procure a good harvest. If the sacrifice is to be effectual, it is

necessary that the oxen should weep. So all the women of the village sit

in front of the beasts, chanting, “The ox will weep; yes, he will weep!”

From time to time one of the women walks round the beasts, throwing manioc

meal or palm wine upon them, especially into their eyes. When tears roll

down from the eyes of the oxen, the people dance, singing, “The ox weeps!

the ox weeps!” Then two men seize the tails of the beasts and cut them off

at one blow. It is believed that a great misfortune will happen in the

course of the year if the tails are not severed at one blow. The oxen are

afterwards killed, and their flesh is eaten by the chiefs.(31) Here the

tears of the oxen, like those of the human victims amongst the Khonds and

the Aztecs,(32) are probably a rain-charm. We have already seen that the

virtue of the corn-spirit, embodied in animal form, is sometimes supposed

to reside in the tail, and that the last handful of corn is sometimes

conceived as the tail of the corn spirit.(33) In the Mithraic religion

this conception is graphically set forth in some of the numerous

sculptures which represent Mithras kneeling on the back of a bull and

plunging a knife into its flank; for on certain of these monuments the

tail of the bull ends in three stalks of corn, and in one of them

corn-stalks instead of blood are seen issuing from the wound inflicted by

the knife.(34) Such representations certainly suggest that the bull, whose

sacrifice appears to have formed a leading feature in the Mithraic ritual,

was conceived, in one at least of its aspects, as an incarnation of the

corn-spirit.

(M10) Still more clearly does the ox appear as a personification of the

corn-spirit in a ceremony which is observed in all the provinces and

districts of China to welcome the approach of spring. On the first day of

spring, usually on the third or fourth of February, which is also the

beginning of the Chinese New Year, the governor or prefect of the city

goes in procession to the east gate of the city, and sacrifices to the

Divine Husbandman, who is represented with a bull’s head on the body of a

man. A large effigy of an ox, cow, or buffalo has been prepared for the

occasion, and stands outside of the east gate, with agricultural

implements beside it. The figure is made of differently-coloured pieces of

paper pasted on a framework either by a blind man or according to the

directions of a necromancer. The colours of the paper prognosticate the

character of the coming year; if red prevails, there will be many fires;

if white, there will be floods and rain; and so with the other colours.

The mandarins walk slowly round the ox, beating it severely at each step

with rods of various hues. It is filled with five kinds of grain, which

pour forth when the effigy is broken by the blows of the rods. The paper

fragments are then set on fire, and a scramble takes place for the burning

fragments, because the people believe that whoever gets one of them is

sure to be fortunate throughout the year. A live buffalo is next killed,

and its flesh is divided among the mandarins. According to one account,

the effigy of the ox is made of clay, and, after being beaten by the

governor, is stoned by the people till they break it in pieces, “from

which they expect an abundant year.”(35) But the ceremony varies somewhat

in the different provinces. According to another account the effigy of the

cow, made of earthenware, with gilded horns, is borne in procession, and

is of such colossal dimensions that forty or fifty men can hardly carry

it. Behind this monstrous cow walks a boy with one foot shod and the other

bare, personifying the Genius of Industry. He beats the effigy with a rod,

as if to drive it forward. A great many little clay cows are afterwards

taken out of the large one and distributed among the people. Both the big

cow and the little ones are then broken in pieces, and the people take the

sherds home with them in order to grind them to powder and strew the

powder on their fields, for they think thus to secure a plentiful

harvest.(36) In the cities nearest to Weihaiwei, in northern China, the

ceremony of “the Beginning of Spring” is a moveable feast, which falls

usually in the first moon. The local magistrate and his attendants go in

procession to the eastern suburbs of the city to “meet the Spring.” A

great pasteboard effigy of an ox is carried in the procession, together

with another pasteboard image of a man called Mang-Shen, “who represents

either the typical ox-driver or ploughman or the god of Agriculture.” On

the return of the procession to the magistrate’s court, that dignitary

himself and his principal colleagues beat and prod the pasteboard ox with

wands, after which the effigy is burned along with the image of its

attendant. The colours and apparel of the two effigies correspond with the

forecasts of the Chinese almanack. Thus if the head of the ox is yellow,

the summer will be very hot; if it is green, the spring will be sickly; if

it is red, there will be a drought; if it is black, there will be much

rain; if it is white, there will be high winds. If Mang-Shen wears a hat,

the year will be dry; if he is bareheaded, it will be rainy; and so on

with the other articles of his apparel. Besides the pasteboard ox a

miniature ox made of clay is also supposed to be provided.(37) In Chinese

the ceremony is called indifferently “beating the ox” and “beating the

spring,” which seems to prove that the ox is identified with the vernal

energies of nature. We may suppose that originally the ox which figures in

the rite was a living animal, but ever since the beginning of our era,

when the custom first appears in history, it has been an effigy of

terra-cotta or pasteboard. To this day the Chinese calendar devotes a page

to a picture of “the ox of spring” with Mang, the tutelary genius of

spring, standing beside it and grasping a willow-bough, with which he is

about to beat the animal for the purpose of stimulating its reproductive

virtue.(38) In one form of this Chinese custom the corn-spirit appears to

be plainly represented by the corn-filled ox, whose fragments may

therefore be supposed to bring fertility with them. We may compare the

Silesian custom of burning the effigy of Death, scrambling for the burning

fragments, and burying them in the fields to secure a good crop, and the

Florentine custom of sawing the Old Woman and scrambling for the dried

fruits with which she was filled.(39) Both these customs, like their

Chinese counterpart, are observed in spring.

(M11)The practice of beating an earthenware or pasteboard image of an ox

in spring is not confined to China proper, but seems to be widely spread

in the east of Asia; for example, it has been recorded at Kashgar and in

Annam. Thus a French traveller has described how at Kashgar, on the third

of February 1892, a mandarin, clad in his finest robes and borne in a

magnificent palanquin, conducted solemnly through the streets the

pasteboard image of an ox, “a sacred animal devoted to the deity of spring

who gives life to the fields. It is thus carried to some distance outside

of the town on the eastern side. The official who acts as pontiff

ceremoniously offers food and libations to it in order to obtain a

fruitful year, and next day it is demolished by the lashes of a whip.”(40)

Again, in Annam, every year at the approach of spring the Department of

Rites publishes instructions to the provincial governors as to the manner

in which the festival of the inauguration of spring is to be celebrated.

Among the indispensable features of the festival are the figures of an ox

and its warder made of terra-cotta. The attitudes of the two and the

colours to be applied to them are carefully prescribed every year in the

Chinese calendar. Popular opinion attributes to the colour of the ox and

the accoutrement of its warder, who is called Mang Than, a certain

influence on the crops of the year: a green, yellow, and black buffalo

prognosticates an abundant harvest: a red or white buffalo foretells

wretched crops and great droughts or hurricanes. If Mang Than is

represented wearing a large hat, the year will be rainy; if on the other

hand he is bareheaded, long barren droughts are to be feared. Nay, the

public credulity goes so far as to draw good or evil omens from the

cheerfulness or ill humour which may be detected on the features of the

Warder of the Ox. Having been duly prepared in accordance with the

directions of the almanack, the ox and its warder are carried in

procession, followed by the mandarins and the people, to the altar of

Spring, which is usually to be found in every provincial capital. There

the provincial governor offers fruits, flowers, and incense to the Genius

of Spring (_Xuan Quan_), and gold and silver paper money are burnt on the

altar in profusion. Lastly the ox and his warder are buried in a spot

which has been indicated by a geomancer.(41) It is interesting to observe

that the three colours of the ox which are taken to prognosticate good

crops, to wit, green, yellow, and black, are precisely the colours which

the ancients attributed to Demeter, the goddess of the corn.(42)

(M12) The great importance which the Chinese attach to the performance of

rites for the fertility of the ground is proved by an ancient custom which

is, or was till lately, observed every year in spring. On an appointed day

the emperor himself, attended by the highest dignitaries of the state,

guides with his own hand the ox-drawn plough down several furrows and

scatters the seed in a sacred field, or “field of God,” as it is called,

the produce of which is afterwards examined from time to time with anxious

care by the Governor of Peking, who draws omens from the appearance of the

ears; it is a very happy omen if he should chance to find thirteen ears

growing on one stalk. To prepare himself for the celebration of this

solemn rite the emperor is expected to fast and remain continent for three

days previously, and the princes and mandarins who accompany him to the

field are bound to observe similar restrictions. The corn grown on the

holy field which has thus been ploughed by the imperial hands is collected

in yellow sacks and stored in a special granary to be used by the emperor

in certain solemn sacrifices which he offers to the god Chan Ti and to his

own ancestors. In the provinces of China the season of ploughing is

similarly inaugurated by the provincial governors as representatives of

the emperor.(43)

(M13) The sacred field, or “field of God,” in which the emperor of China

thus ceremonially opens the ploughing for the year, and of which the

produce is employed in sacrifice, reminds us of the Rarian plain at

Eleusis, in which a sacred ploughing similarly took place every year, and

of which the produce was in like manner devoted to sacrifice.(44) Further,

it recalls the little sacred rice-fields on which the Kayans of central

Borneo inaugurate the various operations of the agricultural year by

performing them in miniature.(45) As I have already pointed out, all such

consecrated enclosures were probably in origin what we may call spiritual

preserves, that is, patches of ground which men set apart for the

exclusive use of the corn-spirit to console him for the depredations they

committed on all the rest of his domains. Again, the rule of fasting and

continence observed by the Emperor of China and his august colleagues

before they put their hands to the plough resembles the similar customs of

abstinence practised by many savages as a preparation for engaging in the

various labours of the field.(46)

(M14) On the whole we may perhaps conclude that both as a goat and as a

bull Dionysus was essentially a god of vegetation. The Chinese and

European customs which I have cited(47) may perhaps shed light on the

custom of rending a live bull or goat at the rites of Dionysus. The animal

was torn in fragments, as the Khond victim was cut in pieces, in order

that the worshippers might each secure a portion of the life-giving and

fertilising influence of the god. The flesh was eaten raw as a sacrament,

and we may conjecture that some of it was taken home to be buried in the

fields, or otherwise employed so as to convey to the fruits of the earth

the quickening influence of the god of vegetation. The resurrection of

Dionysus, related in his myth, may have been enacted in his rites by

stuffing and setting up the slain ox, as was done at the Athenian

_bouphonia_.

§ 2. Demeter, the Pig and the Horse.

(M15) Passing next to the corn-goddess Demeter, and remembering that in

European folk-lore the pig is a common embodiment of the corn-spirit,(48)

we may now ask whether the pig, which was so closely associated with

Demeter, may not have been originally the goddess herself in animal form?

The pig was sacred to her;(49) in art she was portrayed carrying or

accompanied by a pig;(50) and the pig was regularly sacrificed in her

mysteries, the reason assigned being that the pig injures the corn and is

therefore an enemy of the goddess.(51) But after an animal has been

conceived as a god, or a god as an animal, it sometimes happens, as we

have seen, that the god sloughs off his animal form and becomes purely

anthropomorphic; and that then the animal, which at first had been slain

in the character of the god, comes to be viewed as a victim offered to the

god on the ground of its hostility to the deity; in short, the god is

sacrificed to himself on the ground that he is his own enemy. This

happened to Dionysus,(52) and it may have happened to Demeter also. And in

fact the rites of one of her festivals, the Thesmophoria, bear out the

view that originally the pig was an embodiment of the corn-goddess

herself, either Demeter or her daughter and double Persephone. The Attic

Thesmophoria was an autumn festival, celebrated by women alone in

October,(53) and appears to have represented with mourning rites the

descent of Persephone (or Demeter)(54) into the lower world, and with joy

her return from the dead.(55) Hence the name Descent or Ascent variously

applied to the first, and the name _Kalligeneia_ (fair-born) applied to

the third day of the festival. Now from an old scholium on Lucian(56) we

learn some details about the mode of celebrating the Thesmophoria, which

shed important light on the part of the festival called the Descent or the

Ascent. The scholiast tells us that it was customary at the Thesmophoria

to throw pigs, cakes of dough, and branches of pine-trees into “the chasms

of Demeter and Persephone,” which appear to have been sacred caverns or

vaults.(57) In these caverns or vaults there were said to be serpents,

which guarded the caverns and consumed most of the flesh of the pigs and

dough-cakes which were thrown in. Afterwards—apparently at the next annual

festival(58)—the decayed remains of the pigs, the cakes, and the

pine-branches were fetched by women called “drawers,” who, after observing

rules of ceremonial purity for three days, descended into the caverns,

and, frightening away the serpents by clapping their hands, brought up the

remains and placed them on the altar. Whoever got a piece of the decayed

flesh and cakes, and sowed it with the seed-corn in his field, was

believed to be sure of a good crop. With the feeding of the serpents in

the vaults by the women we may compare an ancient Italian ritual. At

Lanuvium a serpent lived in a sacred cave within a grove of Juno. On

certain appointed days a number of holy maidens, with their eyes bandaged,

entered the grove carrying cakes of barley in their hands. Led, as it was

believed, by the divine spirit, they walked straight to the serpent’s den

and offered him the cakes. If they were chaste, the serpent ate the cakes,

the parents of the girls rejoiced, and farmers prognosticated an abundant

harvest. But if the girls were unchaste, the serpent left the cakes

untasted, and ants came and crumbled the rejected viands and so removed

them bit by bit from the sacred grove, thereby purifying the hallowed spot

from the stain it had contracted by the presence of a defiled maiden.(59)

(M16) To explain the rude and ancient ritual of the Thesmophoria the

following legend was told. At the moment when Pluto carried off

Persephone, a swineherd called Eubuleus chanced to be herding his swine on

the spot, and his herd was engulfed in the chasm down which Pluto vanished

with Persephone. Accordingly at the Thesmophoria pigs were annually thrown

into caverns to commemorate the disappearance of the swine of

Eubuleus.(60) It follows from this that the casting of the pigs into the

vaults at the Thesmophoria formed part of the dramatic representation of

Persephone’s descent into the lower world; and as no image of Persephone

appears to have been thrown in, we may infer that the descent of the pigs

was not so much an accompaniment of her descent as the descent itself, in

short, that the pigs were Persephone. Afterwards when Persephone or

Demeter (for the two are equivalent) took on human form, a reason had to

be found for the custom of throwing pigs into caverns at her festival; and

this was done by saying that when Pluto carried off Persephone, there

happened to be some swine browsing near, which were swallowed up along

with her. The story is obviously a forced and awkward attempt to bridge

over the gulf between the old conception of the corn-spirit as a pig and

the new conception of her as an anthropomorphic goddess. A trace of the

older conception survived in the legend that when the sad mother was

searching for traces of the vanished Persephone, the footprints of the

lost one were obliterated by the footprints of a pig;(61) originally, we

may conjecture, the footprints of the pig were the footprints of

Persephone and of Demeter herself. A consciousness of the intimate

connexion of the pig with the corn lurks in the legend that the swineherd

Eubuleus was a brother of Triptolemus, to whom Demeter first imparted the

secret of the corn. Indeed, according to one version of the story,

Eubuleus himself received, jointly with his brother Triptolemus, the gift

of the corn from Demeter as a reward for revealing to her the fate of

Persephone.(62) Further, it is to be noted that at the Thesmophoria the

women appear to have eaten swine’s flesh.(63) The meal, if I am right,

must have been a solemn sacrament or communion, the worshippers partaking

of the body of the god.

(M17) As thus explained, the Thesmophoria has its analogies in the

folk-customs of Northern Europe which have been already described. Just as

at the Thesmophoria—an autumn festival in honour of the

corn-goddess—swine’s flesh was partly eaten, partly kept in caverns till

the following year, when it was taken up to be sown with the seed-corn in

the fields for the purpose of securing a good crop; so in the

neighbourhood of Grenoble the goat killed on the harvest-field is partly

eaten at the harvest-supper, partly pickled and kept till the next

harvest;(64) so at Pouilly the ox killed on the harvest-field is partly

eaten by the harvesters, partly pickled and kept till the first day of

sowing in spring,(65) probably to be then mixed with the seed, or eaten by

the ploughmen, or both; so at Udvarhely the feathers of the cock which is

killed in the last sheaf at harvest are kept till spring, and then sown

with the seed on the field;(66) so in Hesse and Meiningen the flesh of

pigs is eaten on Ash Wednesday or Candlemas, and the bones are kept till

sowing-time, when they are put into the field sown or mixed with the seed

in the bag;(67) so, lastly, the corn from the last sheaf is kept till

Christmas, made into the Yule Boar, and afterwards broken and mixed with

the seed-corn at sowing in spring.(68) Thus, to put it generally, the

corn-spirit is killed in animal form in autumn; part of his flesh is eaten

as a sacrament by his worshippers; and part of it is kept till next

sowing-time or harvest as a pledge and security for the continuance or

renewal of the corn-spirit’s energies. Whether in the interval between

autumn and spring he is conceived as dead, or whether, like the ox in the

_bouphonia_, he is supposed to come to life again immediately after being

killed, is not clear. At the Thesmophoria, according to Clement and

Pausanias, as emended by Lobeck,(69) the pigs were thrown in alive, and

were supposed to reappear at the festival of the following year. Here,

therefore, if we accept Lobeck’s emendations, the corn-spirit is conceived

as alive throughout the year; he lives and works under ground, but is

brought up each autumn to be renewed and then replaced in his subterranean

abode.(70)

(M18) If persons of fastidious taste should object that the Greeks never

could have conceived Demeter and Persephone to be embodied in the form of

pigs, it may be answered that in the cave of Phigalia in Arcadia the Black

Demeter was portrayed with the head and mane of a horse on the body of a

woman.(71) Between the portrait of a goddess as a pig, and the portrait of

her as a woman with a horse’s head, there is little to choose in respect

of barbarism. The legend told of the Phigalian Demeter indicates that the

horse was one of the animal forms assumed in ancient Greece, as in modern

Europe,(72) by the corn-spirit. It was said that in her search for her

daughter, Demeter assumed the form of a mare to escape the addresses of

Poseidon, and that, offended at his importunity, she withdrew in dudgeon

to a cave not far from Phigalia in the highlands of Western Arcadia. The

very cavern, now turned into a little Christian chapel with its holy

pictures, is still shewn to the curious traveller far down the side of

that profound ravine through which the brawling Neda winds under

overhanging woods to the sea. There, robed in black, she tarried so long

that the fruits of the earth were perishing, and mankind would have died

of famine if Pan had not soothed the angry goddess and persuaded her to

quit the cave. In memory of this event, the Phigalians set up an image of

the Black Demeter in the cave; it represented a woman dressed in a long

robe, with the head and mane of a horse.(73) The Black Demeter, in whose

absence the fruits of the earth perish, is plainly a mythical expression

for the bare wintry earth stripped of its summer mantle of green.

§ 3. Attis, Adonis, and the Pig.

(M19) Passing now to Attis and Adonis, we may note a few facts which seem

to shew that these deities of vegetation had also, like other deities of

the same class, their animal embodiments. The worshippers of Attis

abstained from eating the flesh of swine.(74) This appears to indicate

that the pig was regarded as an embodiment of Attis. And the legend that

Attis was killed by a boar(75) points in the same direction. For after the

examples of the goat Dionysus and the pig Demeter it may almost be laid

down as a rule that an animal which is said to have injured a god was

originally the god himself. Perhaps the cry of “Hyes Attes! Hyes

Attes!”(76) which was raised by the worshippers of Attis, may be neither

more nor less than “Pig Attis! Pig Attis!”—_hyes_ being possibly a

Phrygian form of the Greek _hȳs_, “a pig.”(77)

(M20) In regard to Adonis, his connexion with the boar was not always

explained by the story that he had been killed by the animal.(78)

According to another story, a boar rent with his tusk the bark of the tree

in which the infant Adonis was born.(79) According to yet another story,

he perished at the hands of Hephaestus on Mount Lebanon while he was

hunting wild boars.(80) These variations in the legend serve to shew that,

while the connexion of the boar with Adonis was certain, the reason of the

connexion was not understood, and that consequently different stories were

devised to explain it. Certainly the pig ranked as a sacred animal among

the Syrians. At the great religious metropolis of Hierapolis on the

Euphrates pigs were neither sacrificed nor eaten, and if a man touched a

pig he was unclean for the rest of the day. Some people said this was

because the pigs were unclean; others said it was because the pigs were

sacred.(81) This difference of opinion points to a hazy state of religious

thought in which the ideas of sanctity and uncleanness are not yet sharply

distinguished, both being blent in a sort of vaporous solution to which we

give the name of taboo. It is quite consistent with this that the pig

should have been held to be an embodiment of the divine Adonis, and the

analogies of Dionysus and Demeter make it probable that the story of the

hostility of the animal to the god was only a late misapprehension of the

old view of the god as embodied in a pig. The rule that pigs were not

sacrificed or eaten by worshippers of Attis and presumably of Adonis, does

not exclude the possibility that in these rituals the pig was slain on

solemn occasions as a representative of the god and consumed sacramentally

by the worshippers. Indeed, the sacramental killing and eating of an

animal implies that the animal is sacred, and that, as a general rule, it

is spared.(82)

(M21) The attitude of the Jews to the pig was as ambiguous as that of the

heathen Syrians towards the same animal. The Greeks could not decide

whether the Jews worshipped swine or abominated them.(83) On the one hand

they might not eat swine; but on the other hand they might not kill them.

And if the former rule speaks for the uncleanness, the latter speaks still

more strongly for the sanctity of the animal. For whereas both rules may,

and one rule must, be explained on the supposition that the pig was

sacred; neither rule must, and one rule cannot, be explained on the

supposition that the pig was unclean. If, therefore, we prefer the former

supposition, we must conclude that, originally at least, the pig was

revered rather than abhorred by the Israelites. We are confirmed in this

opinion by observing that down to the time of Isaiah some of the Jews used

to meet secretly in gardens to eat the flesh of swine and mice as a

religious rite.(84) Doubtless this was a very ancient ceremony, dating

from a time when both the pig and the mouse were venerated as divine, and

when their flesh was partaken of sacramentally on rare and solemn

occasions as the body and blood of gods. And in general it may be said

that all so-called unclean animals were originally sacred; the reason for

not eating them was that they were divine.

§ 4. Osiris, the Pig and the Bull.

(M22) In ancient Egypt, within historical times, the pig occupied the same

dubious position as in Syria and Palestine, though at first sight its

uncleanness is more prominent than its sanctity. The Egyptians are

generally said by Greek writers to have abhorred the pig as a foul and

loathsome animal.(85) If a man so much as touched a pig in passing, he

stepped into the river with all his clothes on, to wash off the taint.(86)

To drink pig’s milk was believed to cause leprosy to the drinker.(87)

Swineherds, though natives of Egypt, were forbidden to enter any temple,

and they were the only men who were thus excluded. No one would give his

daughter in marriage to a swineherd, or marry a swineherd’s daughter; the

swineherds married among themselves.(88) Yet once a year the Egyptians

sacrificed pigs to the moon and to Osiris, and not only sacrificed them,

but ate of their flesh, though on any other day of the year they would

neither sacrifice them nor taste of their flesh. Those who were too poor

to offer a pig on this day baked cakes of dough, and offered them

instead.(89) This can hardly be explained except by the supposition that

the pig was a sacred animal which was eaten sacramentally by his

worshippers once a year.

(M23) The view that in Egypt the pig was sacred is borne out by the very

facts which, to moderns, might seem to prove the contrary. Thus the

Egyptians thought, as we have seen, that to drink pig’s milk produced

leprosy. But exactly analogous views are held by savages about the animals

and plants which they deem most sacred. Thus in the island of Wetar

(between New Guinea and Celebes) people believe themselves to be variously

descended from wild pigs, serpents, crocodiles, turtles, dogs, and eels; a

man may not eat an animal of the kind from which he is descended; if he

does so, he will become a leper, and go mad.(90) Amongst the Omaha Indians

of North America men whose totem is the elk, believe that if they ate the

flesh of the male elk they would break out in boils and white spots in

different parts of their bodies.(91) In the same tribe men whose totem is

the red maize, think that if they ate red maize they would have running

sores all round their mouths.(92) The Bush negroes of Surinam, who

practise totemism, believe that if they ate the _capiaï_ (an animal like a

pig) it would give them leprosy;(93) perhaps the _capiaï_ is one of their

totems. The Syrians, in antiquity, who esteemed fish sacred, thought that

if they ate fish their bodies would break out in ulcers, and their feet

and stomach would swell up.(94) The Nyanja-speaking tribes of Central

Angoniland, in British Central Africa, believe that if a person eats his

totemic animal, his body will break out in spots. The cure for this

eruption of the skin is to bathe the body in a decoction made from the

bone of the animal, the eating of which caused the malady.(95) The Wagogo

of German East Africa imagine that the sin of eating the totemic animal is

visited not on the sinner himself but on his innocent kinsfolk. Thus when

they see a child with a scald head, they say at once that its father has

been eating his totem and that is why the poor child has scabs on its

pate.(96) Among the Wahehe, another tribe of German East Africa, a man who

suffers from scab or other skin disease will often set the trouble down to

his having unwittingly partaken of his totemic animal.(97) Similarly among

the Waheia, another tribe of the same region, if a man kills or eats the

totemic animal of his clan, he is supposed to suffer from an eruption of

the skin.(98) In like manner the Bantu tribes of Kavirondo, in Central

Africa, hold that the eating of the totem produces a severe cutaneous

eruption, which can however be cured by mixing an extract of certain herbs

with the fat of a black ox and rubbing the body of the sufferer all over

with the mixture.(99) The Chasas of Orissa believe that if they were to

injure their totemic animal, they would be attacked by leprosy and their

line would die out.(100) These examples prove that the eating of a sacred

animal is often believed to produce leprosy or other skin-diseases; so

far, therefore, they support the view that the pig must have been sacred

in Egypt, since the effect of drinking its milk was believed to be

leprosy. Such fancies may perhaps have been sometimes suggested by the

observation that the eating of semi-putrid flesh, to which some savages

are addicted, is apt to be followed by eruptions on the skin. Indeed, many

modern authorities attribute leprosy to this cause, particularly to the

eating of half rotten fish.(101) It seems not impossible that the

abhorrence which the Hebrews entertained of leprosy, and the pains which

they took to seclude lepers from the community, may have been based on

religious as well as on purely sanitary grounds; they may have imagined

that the disfigurement of the sufferers was a penalty which they had

incurred by some infraction of taboo. Certainly we read in the Old

Testament of cases of leprosy which the historian regarded as the direct

consequence of sin.(102)

(M24) Again, the rule that, after touching a pig, a man had to wash

himself and his clothes, also favours the view of the sanctity of the pig.

For it is a common belief that the effect of contact with a sacred object

must be removed, by washing or otherwise, before a man is free to mingle

with his fellows. Thus the Jews wash their hands after reading the sacred

scriptures. Before coming forth from the tabernacle after the

sin-offering, the high priest had to wash himself, and put off the

garments which he had worn in the holy place.(103) It was a rule of Greek

ritual that, in offering an expiatory sacrifice, the sacrificer should not

touch the sacrifice, and that, after the offering was made, he must wash

his body and his clothes in a river or spring before he could enter a city

or his own house.(104) The Parjas, a small tribe of the Central Provinces

in India, are divided into clans which have for their respective totems

the tiger, the tortoise, the goat, a big lizard, a dove, and so on. If a

man accidentally kills his totemic animal, “the earthen cooking-pots of

his household are thrown away, the clothes are washed, and the house is

purified with water in which the bark of the mango or _jamun_ tree

(_Eugenia jambolana_) has been steeped. This is in sign of mourning, as it

is thought that such an act will bring misfortune.”(105) If a Chadwar of

the Central Provinces who has the pig for his totem should even see a pig

killed by somebody else, he will throw away the household crockery and

clean the house as if on the death of a member of his family.(106) The

Polynesians felt strongly the need of ridding themselves of the sacred

contagion, if it may be so called, which they caught by touching sacred

objects. Various ceremonies were performed for the purpose of removing

this contagion. We have seen, for example, how in Tonga a man who happened

to touch a sacred chief, or anything personally belonging to him, had to

perform a certain ceremony before he could feed himself with his hands;

otherwise it was believed that he would swell up and die, or at least be

afflicted with scrofula or some other disease.(107) We have seen, too,

what fatal effects are supposed to follow, and do actually follow, from

contact with a sacred object in New Zealand.(108) In short, primitive man

believes that what is sacred is dangerous; it is pervaded by a sort of

electrical sanctity which communicates a shock to, even if it does not

kill, whatever comes in contact with it. Hence the savage is unwilling to

touch or even to see that which he deems peculiarly holy. Thus Bechuanas,

of the Crocodile clan, think it “hateful and unlucky” to meet or see a

crocodile; the sight is thought to cause inflammation of the eyes. Yet the

crocodile is their most sacred object; they call it their father, swear by

it, and celebrate it in their festivals.(109) The goat is the sacred

animal of the Madenassana Bushmen; yet “to look upon it would be to render

the man for the time impure, as well as to cause him undefined

uneasiness.”(110) The Elk clan, among the Omaha Indians, believe that even

to touch the male elk would be followed by an eruption of boils and white

spots on the body.(111) Members of the Reptile clan in the same tribe

think that if one of them touches or smells a snake, it will make his hair

white.(112) In Samoa people whose god was a butterfly believed that if

they caught a butterfly it would strike them dead.(113) Again, in Samoa

the reddish-seared leaves of the banana-tree were commonly used as plates

for handing food; but if any member of the Wild Pigeon family had used

banana leaves for this purpose, it was supposed that he would suffer from

rheumatic swellings or an eruption all over the body like

chicken-pox.(114) The Mori clan of the Bhils in Central India worship the

peacock as their totem and make offerings of grain to it; yet members of

the clan believe that were they even to set foot on the tracks of a

peacock they would afterwards suffer from some disease, and if a woman

sees a peacock she must veil her face and look away.(115) Thus the

primitive mind seems to conceive of holiness as a sort of dangerous virus,

which a prudent man will shun as far as possible, and of which, if he

should chance to be infected by it, he will carefully disinfect himself by

some form of ceremonial purification.

(M25) In the light of these parallels the beliefs and customs of the

Egyptians touching the pig are probably to be explained as based upon an

opinion of the extreme sanctity rather than of the extreme uncleanness of

the animal; or rather, to put it more correctly, they imply that the

animal was looked on, not simply as a filthy and disgusting creature, but

as a being endowed with high supernatural powers, and that as such it was

regarded with that primitive sentiment of religious awe and fear in which

the feelings of reverence and abhorrence are almost equally blended. The

ancients themselves seem to have been aware that there was another side to

the horror with which swine seemed to inspire the Egyptians. For the Greek

astronomer and mathematician Eudoxus, who resided fourteen months in Egypt

and conversed with the priests,(116) was of opinion that the Egyptians

spared the pig, not out of abhorrence, but from a regard to its utility in

agriculture; for, according to him, when the Nile had subsided, herds of

swine were turned loose over the fields to tread the seed down into the

moist earth.(117) But when a being is thus the object of mixed and

implicitly contradictory feelings, he may be said to occupy a position of

unstable equilibrium. In course of time one of the contradictory feelings

is likely to prevail over the other, and according as the feeling which

finally predominates is that of reverence or abhorrence, the being who is

the object of it will rise into a god or sink into a devil. The latter, on

the whole, was the fate of the pig in Egypt. For in historical times the

fear and horror of the pig seem certainly to have outweighed the reverence

and worship of which he may once have been the object, and of which, even

in his fallen state, he never quite lost trace. He came to be looked on as

an embodiment of Set or Typhon, the Egyptian devil and enemy of Osiris.

For it was in the shape of a black pig that Typhon injured the eye of the

god Horus, who burned him and instituted the sacrifice of the pig, the

sun-god Ra having declared the beast abominable.(118) Again, the story

that Typhon was hunting a boar when he discovered and mangled the body of

Osiris, and that this was the reason why pigs were sacrificed once a

year,(119) is clearly a modernised version of an older story that Osiris,

like Adonis and Attis, was slain or mangled by a boar, or by Typhon in the

form of a boar. Thus, the annual sacrifice of a pig to Osiris might

naturally be interpreted as vengeance inflicted on the hostile animal that

had slain or mangled the god. But, in the first place, when an animal is

thus killed as a solemn sacrifice once and once only in the year, it

generally or always means that the animal is divine, that he is spared and

respected the rest of the year as a god and slain, when he is slain, also

in the character of a god.(120) In the second place, the examples of

Dionysus and Demeter, if not of Attis and Adonis, have taught us that the

animal which is sacrificed to a god on the ground that he is the god’s

enemy may have been, and probably was, originally the god himself.

Therefore, the annual sacrifice of a pig to Osiris, coupled with the

alleged hostility of the animal to the god, tends to shew, first, that

originally the pig was a god, and, second, that he was Osiris. At a later

age, when Osiris became anthropomorphic and his original relation to the

pig had been forgotten, the animal was first distinguished from him, and

afterwards opposed as an enemy to him by mythologists who could think of

no reason for killing a beast in connexion with the worship of a god

except that the beast was the god’s enemy; or, as Plutarch puts it, not

that which is dear to the gods, but that which is the contrary, is fit to

be sacrificed.(121) At this later stage the havoc which a wild boar

notoriously makes amongst the corn would supply a plausible reason for

regarding him as the foe of the corn-spirit, though originally, if I am

right, the very freedom with which the boar ranged at will through the

corn led people to identify him with the corn-spirit, to whom he was

afterwards opposed as an enemy.

(M26) As the depredations committed by wild swine on the growing crops in

countries where these creatures abound are necessarily unfamiliar to most

English readers, it may be well to illustrate them by examples. Thus, for

instance, in Palestine the wild boar “is eagerly chased and destroyed on

account of the frightful ravages it makes among the crops. Not only does

it devour any fruits within reach, but in a single night a party of wild

boars will uproot a whole field, and destroy the husbandman’s hopes for

the year. The places they love to frequent are the reedy marshes and

thickets by rivers and lakes, and they swarm in the thickets all along the

banks of the Jordan from Jericho to the Lake of Gennesaret. From these

fastnesses, whence neither dog nor man can dislodge them, they make

nightly forays upon the corn-fields and root-crops of the villagers,

returning at daybreak to their coverts. About Jericho they are especially

destructive, and when the barley crop is ripening, the husbandmen have to

keep nightly watch to drive them away. Their presence can always be

detected by the crashing noise they make in forcing their way through the

thickets, when the men fire, guided by the sound.”(122) Wild pigs are the

special enemies of the crops in South Africa; the fences constructed by

the Zulus round their gardens are mainly designed to guard against the

devastating depredations of these brutes, though porcupines, baboons,

hippopotamuses, and elephants also make havoc of the ripe grain. Sometimes

small huts are erected on platforms in the gardens, and in these huts

watchers are set to scare away the nocturnal invaders.(123) So in British

Central Africa sentinels are posted day and night in huts raised on

platforms to protect the maize fields from the inroads of baboons and of

wild pigs, which are still more destructive than the baboons, for they

grub up the plants as well as devour the grain; and the watchers drum

continually on any metal they have at hand to keep the marauders at

bay.(124) In the island of Nias whole fields are sometimes trampled down

by these pests between sunset and sunrise. Often the stillness of the

serene equatorial night is broken by the strident cries of the watchers of

the fields; the sound goes echoing through the wooded valleys for a long

time, and here and there a dull grunting tells that the efforts of the

sentinels have not been in vain.(125) In Northern Luzon, of the Philippine

Archipelago, the rice-fields are similarly exposed to the depredations of

wild hogs, and watchers remain on guard day and night in outlooks,

sometimes in commodious structures of stone erected for the purpose, who

burn fires at night to frighten the animals away.(126) At the beginning of

their annual agricultural labours the Banars of Cambodia pray to Yang-Seri

that he would be pleased to give them plenty of rice and to prevent the

wild boars from eating it up.(127) In Gayo-land, a district of Sumatra,

the worst enemies of the rice crops are wild swine and field mice; the

whole of the harvest is sometimes destroyed by their inroads.(128) Among

the Kai of German New Guinea people who are engaged in the labour of the

fields will on no account eat pork. The reason is that pigs, both wild and

tame, are the most dangerous foes of the crops; therefore it seems clear

to the mind of the Kai that if a field labourer were to eat pork, the

flesh of the dead pig in his stomach would attract the living pigs into

the field.(129) Perhaps this superstition, based on the principle of

sympathetic magic, may explain the aversion to pork which was entertained

by some of the agricultural peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean in

antiquity.

(M27) To people thus familiarised with the ravages of wild boars among the

ripe crops the idea might naturally present itself that the animal is

either the enemy of the corn-god or perhaps the corn-god himself come in

person to enjoy his own despite all the efforts of mankind to keep him out

of his rights. Hence we can understand how an agricultural people like the

ancient Egyptians may have identified the wild boar either with their

corn-god Osiris or with his enemy Typhon. The view which identifies the

pig with Osiris derives not a little support from the sacrifice of pigs to

him on the very day on which, according to tradition, Osiris himself was

killed;(130) for thus the killing of the pig was the annual representation

of the killing of Osiris, just as the throwing of the pigs into the

caverns at the Thesmophoria was an annual representation of the descent of

Persephone into the lower world; and both customs are parallel to the

European practice of killing a goat, cock, and so forth, at harvest as a

representative of the corn-spirit.

(M28) Again, the theory that the pig, originally Osiris himself,

afterwards came to be regarded as an embodiment of his enemy Typhon, is

supported by the similar relation of red-haired men and red oxen to

Typhon. For in regard to the red-haired men who were burned and whose

ashes were scattered with winnowing-fans, we have seen fair grounds for

believing that originally, like the red-haired puppies killed at Rome in

spring, they were representatives of the corn-spirit himself, that is, of

Osiris, and were slain for the express purpose of making the corn turn red

or golden.(131) Yet at a later time these men were explained to be

representatives, not of Osiris, but of his enemy Typhon,(132) and the

killing of them was regarded as an act of vengeance inflicted on the enemy

of the god. Similarly, the red oxen sacrificed by the Egyptians were said

to be offered on the ground of their resemblance to Typhon;(133) though it

is more likely that originally they were slain on the ground of their

resemblance to the corn-spirit Osiris. We have seen that the ox is a

common representative of the corn-spirit and is slain as such on the

harvest-field.

(M29) Osiris was regularly identified with the bull Apis of Memphis and

the bull Mnevis of Heliopolis.(134) But it is hard to say whether these

bulls were embodiments of him as the corn-spirit, as the red oxen appear

to have been, or whether they were not in origin entirely distinct deities

who came to be fused with Osiris at a later time. The universality of the

worship of these two bulls(135) seems to put them on a different footing

from the ordinary sacred animals whose worships were purely local. Hence

if the latter were evolved from totems, as they may have been, some other

origin would have to be found for the worship of Apis and Mnevis. If these

bulls were not originally embodiments of the corn-god Osiris, they may

possibly be descendants of the sacred cattle worshipped by a pastoral

people.(136) If this were so, ancient Egypt would exhibit a stratification

of three great types of religion or superstition corresponding to three

great stages of society. Totemism, which may be roughly described as a

species of superstitious respect paid to wild animals and plants by many

tribes in the hunting stage of society, would be represented by the

worship of the local sacred animals; the worship of cattle, which belongs

to society in the pastoral stage, would be represented by the cults of

Apis and Mnevis; and the worship of cultivated plants, which is peculiar

to society in the agricultural stage, would be represented by the religion

of Osiris and Isis. The Egyptian reverence for cows, which were never

killed,(137) might belong either to the second or the third of these

stages. The consecration of cows to Isis, who was portrayed with cow’s

horns(138) and may have been supposed to be incarnate in the animals,

would indicate that they, like the red oxen, were embodiments of the

corn-spirit. However, this identification of Isis with the cow, like that

of Osiris with the bulls Apis and Mnevis, may be only an effect of

syncretism. But whatever the original relation of Apis to Osiris may have

been, there is one fact about the former which ought not to be passed over

in a disquisition on the custom of killing a god. Although the bull Apis

was worshipped as a god with much pomp and profound reverence, he was not

suffered to live beyond a certain length of time which was prescribed by

the sacred books, and on the expiry of which he was drowned in a holy

spring.(139) The limit, according to Plutarch, was twenty-five years;(140)

but it cannot always have been enforced, for the tombs of the Apis bulls

have been discovered in modern times, and from the inscriptions on them it

appears that in the twenty-second dynasty two of the holy steers lived

more than twenty-six years.(141)

(M30) To prevent misunderstandings it may be well to add that what I have

just said as to the stratification of three great types of religion or

superstition corresponding to three great types of society is not meant to

sketch, even in outline, the evolution of religion as a whole. I by no

means wish to suggest that the reverence for wild animals and plants, the

reverence for domestic cattle, and the reverence for cultivated plants are

the only forms of religion or superstition which prevail at the

corresponding stages of social development; all that I desire to convey is

that they are characteristic of these stages respectively. The elements

which make up any religious system are far too numerous and their

interaction far too complex to be adequately summed up in a few simple

formulas. To mention only a single factor of which I have taken no account

in indicating roughly a certain correspondence between the strata of

religion and of society, the fear of the spirits of the dead appears to

have been one of the most powerful factors, perhaps, indeed, the most

powerful of all, in shaping the course of religious evolution at every

stage of social development from the lowest to the highest; and for that

very reason it is not specially characteristic of any one form of society.

And the three types of religion or superstition which I have selected as

characteristic of three stages of society are far from being strictly

limited each to its corresponding step in the social ladder. For example,

although totemism, or a particular species of reverence paid by groups of

men to wild animals and plants, probably always originated in the hunting

stage of society, it has by no means been confined to that primitive phase

of human development but has often survived not only into the pastoral but

into the agricultural stage, as we may see for example by the case of many

tribes in Africa, India, and America; and it seems likely that a similar

overlapping of the various strata takes place in every instance. In short,

we cannot really dissect the history of mankind as it were with a knife

into a series of neat sections each sharply marked off from all the rest

by a texture and colour of its own; we may indeed do so theoretically for

the convenience of exposition, but practically the textures interlace, the

colours melt and run into each other by insensible gradations that defy

the edge of the finest instrument of analysis which we can apply to them.

It is a mere truism to say that the abstract generalisations of science

can never adequately comprehend all the particulars of concrete reality.

The facts of nature will always burst the narrow bonds of human theories.

(M31) Before quitting this part of our subject it may be well to

illustrate by one or two examples the reverence which primitive pastoral

tribes pay to their cattle, since, as I have just indicated, the worship

of sacred bulls by the ancient Egyptians, like the modern Hindoo worship

of cows, may very well have been directly derived from a similar respect

paid by their remote ancestors to their cattle. A good instance is

supplied by the Dinka, a large cattle-breeding tribe, or rather nation, of

the White Nile. “Every idea and thought of the Dinka,” says Schweinfurth,

“is how to acquire and maintain cattle: a kind of reverence would seem to

be paid to them; even their offal is considered of high importance; the

dung, which is burnt to ashes for sleeping in and for smearing their

persons, and the urine, which is used for washing and as a substitute for

salt, are their daily requisites. It must be owned that it is hard to

reconcile this latter usage with our ideas of cleanliness. A cow is never

slaughtered, but when sick it is segregated from the rest, and carefully

tended in the large huts built for the purpose. Only those that die

naturally or by an accident are used as food. All this, which exists among

most of the pastoral tribes of Africa, may perchance appear to be a

lingering remnant of an exploded cattle-worship; but I may draw attention

to the fact that the Dinka are by no means disinclined to partake of any

feast of their flesh, provided that the slaughtered animal was not their

own property. It is thus more the delight of actual possession, than any

superstitious estimate, that makes the cow to them an object of reverence.

Indescribable is the grief when either death or rapine has robbed a Dinka

of his cattle. He is prepared to redeem their loss by the heaviest

sacrifices, for they are dearer to him than wife or child. A dead cow is

not, however, wantonly buried; the negro is not sentimental enough for

that; such an occurrence is soon bruited abroad, and the neighbours

institute a carousal, which is quite an epoch in their monotonous life.

The bereaved owner himself is, however, too much afflicted at the loss to

be able to touch a morsel of the carcass of his departed beast. Not

unfrequently in their sorrow the Dinka remain for days silent and

abstracted, as though their trouble were too heavy for them to bear.”(142)

A rich Dinka will sometimes keep a favourite ox and treat it with such

marks of respect that an observer has compared the animal to the Apis of

the ancient Egyptians. “Here and there,” we are told, “beside the hut of a

wealthy negro is set up a great withered tree. From its boughs hang

vessels containing food and perhaps trophies of war; to its trunk is

fastened the great drum (_Noqara_), which summons to war or to the dance.

To this tree, separated from the rest of the cattle, is tethered a great

fat ox. It is of a white colour passing into a slaty grey on the shoulders

and legs: its long horns are artificially bent to opposite sides and

adorned with bunches of hair: the tuft of the tail is cut off. This is the

_makwi_, the Apis of the negro. His master, who has singled him out from

his youth for his colour and certain marks, has cherished and reared him

in order that he may one day be his pride in the eyes of the village. He

has gelded him, adorned him, trained him to walk at the head of the herd,

to dance, and to fight. His _makwi_ is always an object of his tenderest

attention; he never fails to bring him a bundle of the finest herbs; if he

can procure a bell, he hangs it round the animal’s neck; and at evening,

if he has milk or _meriṣa_ enough for guests, the drum is beaten to summon

the youth to come and dance round the deified ox.”(143)

(M32) Again, speaking of the Nuehr, another pastoral tribe of the Upper

Nile, a traveller tells us that “as among the Dinka, so among the

Nuehr-negroes the cattle enjoy a respect, indeed we may say a veneration,

which reminds us of the animal worship of the ancient Egyptians,

especially of that of the holy steer Apis, though the respect may be

grounded on the simple fact that cattle are the only possession of these

negroes. The largest and handsomest bull is the leader of the herd; he is

decked with bunches of hair and small bells, marked out from the rest in

every way, and regarded as the guardian genius of the herd as well as of

the family. His loss is the greatest misfortune that can befall his owner.

At night his master drives the animal round the herd, couched about the

smoky fire, and sings of his beauty and courage, while the bull signifies

his contentment by a complacent lowing. To him his master every morning

commits the herd, in order that he may guide them to the best pastures and

guard them from danger; in him he reveres his ideal of all that is

beautiful and strong; nay he designates him by the same name which he

applies to his own dim conception of a Supreme Being, _Nyeledit_, and to

the thunder.”(144)

§ 5. Virbius and the Horse.

(M33) We are now in a position to hazard a conjecture as to the meaning of

the tradition that Virbius, the first of the divine Kings of the Wood at

Aricia, had been killed in the character of Hippolytus by horses.(145)

Having found, first, that spirits of the corn are not infrequently

represented in the form of horses;(146) and, second, that the animal which

in later legends is said to have injured the god was sometimes originally

the god himself, we may conjecture that the horses by which Virbius or

Hippolytus was said to have been slain were really embodiments of him as a

deity of vegetation. The myth that he had been killed by horses was

probably invented to explain certain features in his worship, amongst

others the custom of excluding horses from his sacred grove. For myth

changes while custom remains constant; men continue to do what their

fathers did before them, though the reasons on which their fathers acted

have been long forgotten. The history of religion is a long attempt to

reconcile old custom with new reason, to find a sound theory for an absurd

practice. In the case before us we may be sure that the myth is more

modern than the custom and by no means represents the original reason for

excluding horses from the grove. From their exclusion it might be inferred

that horses could not be the sacred animals or embodiments of the god of

the grove. But the inference would be rash. The goat was at one time a

sacred animal or embodiment of Athena, as may be inferred from the

practice of representing the goddess clad in a goat-skin (_aegis_). Yet

the goat was neither sacrificed to her as a rule, nor allowed to enter her

great sanctuary, the Acropolis at Athens. The reason alleged for this was

that the goat injured the olive, the sacred tree of Athena.(147) So far,

therefore, the relation of the goat of Athena is parallel to the relation

of the horse to Virbius, both animals being excluded from the sanctuary on

the ground of injury done by them to the god. But from Varro we learn that

there was an exception to the rule which excluded the goat from the

Acropolis. Once a year, he says, the goat was driven on to the Acropolis

for a necessary sacrifice.(148) Now, as has been remarked before, when an

animal is sacrificed once and once only in the year, it is probably slain,

not as a victim offered to the god, but as a representative of the god

himself. Therefore we may infer that if a goat was sacrificed on the

Acropolis once a year, it was sacrificed in the character of Athena

herself;(149) and it may be conjectured that the skin of the sacrificed

animal was placed on the statue of the goddess and formed the _aegis_,

which would thus be renewed annually. Similarly at Thebes in Egypt rams

were sacred and were not sacrificed. But on one day in the year a ram was

killed, and its skin was placed on the statue of the god Ammon.(150) Now,

if we knew the ritual of the Arician grove better, we might find that the

rule of excluding horses from it, like the rule of excluding goats from

the Acropolis at Athens, was subject to an annual exception, a horse being

once a year taken into the grove and sacrificed as an embodiment of the

god Virbius.(151) By the usual misunderstanding the horse thus killed

would come in time to be regarded as an enemy offered up in sacrifice to

the god whom he had injured, like the pig which was sacrificed to Demeter

and Osiris or the goat which was sacrificed to Dionysus, and possibly to

Athena. It is so easy for a writer to record a rule without noticing an

exception that we need not wonder at finding the rule of the Arician grove

recorded without any mention of an exception such as I suppose. If we had

had only the statements of Athenaeus and Pliny, we should have known only

the rule which forbade the sacrifice of goats to Athena and excluded them

from the Acropolis, without being aware of the important exception which

the fortunate preservation of Varro’s work has revealed to us.

(M34) The conjecture that once a year a horse may have been sacrificed in

the Arician grove as a representative of the deity of the grove derives

some support from the similar sacrifice of a horse which took place once a

year at Rome. On the fifteenth of October in each year a chariot-race was

run on the Field of Mars. Stabbed with a spear, the right-hand horse of

the victorious team was then sacrificed to Mars for the purpose of

ensuring good crops, and its head was cut off and adorned with a string of

loaves. Thereupon the inhabitants of two wards—the Sacred Way and the

Subura—contended with each other who should get the head. If the people of

the Sacred Way got it, they fastened it to a wall of the king’s house; if

the people of the Subura got it, they fastened it to the Mamilian tower.

The horse’s tail was cut off and carried to the king’s house with such

speed that the blood dripped on the hearth of the house.(152) Further, it

appears that the blood of the horse was caught and preserved till the

twenty-first of April, when the Vestal virgins mixed it with the blood of

the unborn calves which had been sacrificed six days before. The mixture

was then distributed to shepherds, and used by them for fumigating their

flocks.(153)

(M35) In this ceremony the decoration of the horse’s head(154) with a

string of loaves, and the alleged object of the sacrifice, namely, to

procure a good harvest, seem to indicate that the horse was killed as one

of those animal representatives of the corn-spirit of which we have found

so many examples. The custom of cutting off the horse’s tail is like the

African custom of cutting off the tails of the oxen and sacrificing them

to obtain a good crop.(155) In both the Roman and the African custom the

animal apparently stands for the corn-spirit, and its fructifying power is

supposed to reside especially in its tail. The latter idea occurs, as we

have seen, in European folk-lore.(156) Again, the practice of fumigating

the cattle in spring with the blood of the horse may be compared with the

practice of giving the Old Wife, the Maiden, or the _clyack_ sheaf as

fodder to the horses in spring or the cattle at Christmas, and giving the

Yule Boar to the ploughing oxen or horses to eat in spring.(157) All these

usages aim at ensuring the blessing of the corn-spirit on the homestead

and its inmates and storing it up for another year.

(M36) The Roman sacrifice of the October horse, as it was called, carries

us back to the early days when the Subura, afterwards a low and squalid

quarter of the great metropolis, was still a separate village, whose

inhabitants engaged in a friendly contest on the harvest-field with their

neighbours of Rome, then a little rural town. The Field of Mars on which

the ceremony took place lay beside the Tiber, and formed part of the

king’s domain down to the abolition of the monarchy. For tradition ran

that at the time when the last of the kings was driven from Rome, the corn

stood ripe for the sickle on the crown lands beside the river; but no one

would eat the accursed grain and it was flung into the river in such heaps

that, the water being low with the summer heat, it formed the nucleus of

an island.(158) The horse sacrifice was thus an old autumn custom observed

upon the king’s corn-fields at the end of the harvest. The tail and blood

of the horse, as the chief parts of the corn-spirit’s representative, were

taken to the king’s house and kept there; just as in Germany the

harvest-cock is nailed on the gable or over the door of the farmhouse; and

as the last sheaf, in the form of the Maiden, is carried home and kept

over the fireplace in the Highlands of Scotland. Thus the blessing of the

corn-spirit was brought to the king’s house and hearth and, through them,

to the community of which he was the head. Similarly in the spring and

autumn customs of Northern Europe the Maypole is sometimes set up in front

of the house of the mayor or burgomaster, and the last sheaf at harvest is

brought to him as the head of the village. But while the tail and blood

fell to the king, the neighbouring village of the Subura, which no doubt

once had a similar ceremony of its own, was gratified by being allowed to

compete for the prize of the horse’s head. The Mamilian tower, to which

the Suburans nailed the horse’s head when they succeeded in carrying it

off, appears to have been a peel-tower or keep of the old Mamilian family,

the magnates of the village.(159) The ceremony thus performed on the

king’s fields and at his house on behalf of the whole town and of the

neighbouring village presupposes a time when each township performed a

similar ceremony on its own fields. In the rural districts of Latium the

villages may have continued to observe the custom, each on its own land,

long after the Roman hamlets had merged their separate harvest-homes in

the common celebration on the king’s lands. There is no intrinsic

improbability in the supposition that the sacred grove of Aricia, like the

Field of Mars at Rome, may have been the scene of a common harvest

celebration, at which a horse was sacrificed with the same rude rites on

behalf of the neighbouring villages. The horse would represent the

fructifying spirit both of the tree and of the corn, for the two ideas

melt into each other, as we see in customs like the Harvest-May.

(M37) However, it should be borne in mind that the evidence for thus

interpreting the relation of horses to Virbius is exceedingly slender, and

that the custom of excluding horses from the sacred Arician grove may have

been based on some other superstitious motive which entirely escapes us.

At the city of Ialysus in Rhodes there was a sanctuary of Alectrona, one

of the daughters of the Sun, into which no horse, ass, mule, or beast of

burden of any kind might enter. Any person who broke the law by

introducing one of these animals into the holy precinct, had to purify the

place by a sacrifice; and the same atonement had to be made by any man who

brought shoes or any portion of a pig within the sacred boundaries. And

whoever drove or suffered his sheep to stray into the precinct was obliged

to pay a fine of one obol for every sheep that set foot in it.(160) The

reasons for these prohibitions are quite unknown; and the taboo on horses

is particularly remarkable, since the Rhodians were in the habit of

offering a chariot and horses every year to the Sun, the father of

Alectrona,(161) doubtless in order that he might ride on them through the

sky. Did they think that it was not for the daughter of the Sun to meddle

with horses, which were the peculiar property of her father? The

conjecture may perhaps be supported by an analogy drawn from West Africa.

The Ewe negroes of the Slave Coast conceive the Rain-god Nyikplã as a man

who rides a horse, and who may be seen galloping on it through the sky in

the form of a shooting star. Hence in the town of Angla, where he

generally resides when he is at home, no person may appear on horseback in

the streets, that being apparently regarded as an impious usurpation of

the style of the deity. In former days even Europeans were forbidden to

ride on horseback in Angla; and missionaries who attempted to set the

local prejudice at defiance have been pelted with sticks and dirt by the

outraged natives.(162) Another deity who suffered not horses to enter his

sacred place was Rakelimalaza, a Malagasy god whose name signifies

“renowned, although diminutive.” His residence was a village situated on

the top of a hill about seven miles east of Tananarivo. But horses were

not the only animal or thing to which this fastidious being entertained a

rooted aversion. “Within the limits of the ground which is considered

sacred, and which embraces a wide circumference in the immediate vicinity

of the idol’s residence, it is strictly forbidden to bring, or to suffer

to come, certain animals and certain objects, which are carefully

specified by the keepers of the idol. Things thus forbidden are called

_fady_; a term of similar import with the well-known tabu of the South Sea

Islands. Every idol has its own particular _fady_. The things prohibited

by Rakelimalaza are, guns, gunpowder, pigs, onions, sifotra (a shell-fish

resembling a snail), sitry (a small animal resembling the young

crocodile), striped or spotted robes, anything of a black colour, goats,

horses, meat distributed at funerals or at the _tangena_, and cats and

owls. Its keepers are forbidden to enter any house where there is a

corpse; and in crossing a river they are not permitted to say, ‘Carry me,’

otherwise they place themselves in danger of being seized by the

crocodiles; and in war they must not talk, or they are in danger of being

shot.”(163) To attempt to discover the particular reasons for all these

numerous and varied taboos would obviously be futile; many of them may be

based on accidental circumstances which for us are lost past recovery. But

it may be worth while to observe that a variety of taboos was enforced at

other ancient Greek shrines besides the sanctuary of Alectrona at Ialysus.

For example, no person was allowed to enter the sanctuary of the Mistress

at Lycosura in Arcadia clad in black, purple, or flowered vestments, or

wearing shoes or a ring, or with his or her hair plaited or covered, or

carrying flowers in his hand;(164) and no pomegranates might be brought

into the sanctuary, though all other fruits of the orchard were free to

enter.(165) These instances may warn us against the danger of arguing too

confidently in favour of any one of the many possible reasons which may

have moved the old Latins to exclude horses from the sacred Arician grove.

The domain of primitive superstition, in spite of the encroachments of

science, is indeed still to a great extent a trackless wilderness, a

tangled maze, in the gloomy recesses of which the forlorn explorer may

wander for ever without a light and without a clue.

CHAPTER X. EATING THE GOD.

§ 1. The Sacrament of First-Fruits.

(M38) We have now seen that the corn-spirit is represented sometimes in

human, sometimes in animal form, and that in both cases he is killed in

the person of his representative and eaten sacramentally. To find examples

of actually killing the human representative of the corn-spirit we had

naturally to go to savage races; but the harvest-suppers of our European

peasants have furnished unmistakable examples of the sacramental eating of

animals as representatives of the corn-spirit. But further, as might have

been anticipated, the new corn is itself eaten sacramentally, that is, as

the body of the corn-spirit. In Wermland, Sweden, the farmer’s wife uses

the grain of the last sheaf to bake a loaf in the shape of a little girl;

this loaf is divided amongst the whole household and eaten by them.(166)

Here the loaf represents the corn-spirit conceived as a maiden; just as in

Scotland the corn-spirit is similarly conceived and represented by the

last sheaf made up in the form of a woman and bearing the name of the

Maiden. As usual, the corn-spirit is believed to reside in the last sheaf;

and to eat a loaf made from the last sheaf is, therefore, to eat the

corn-spirit itself. Similarly at La Palisse, in France, a man made of

dough is hung upon the fir-tree which is carried on the last

harvest-waggon. The tree and the dough-man are taken to the mayor’s house

and kept there till the vintage is over. Then the close of the harvest is

celebrated by a feast at which the mayor breaks the dough-man in pieces

and gives the pieces to the people to eat.(167)

(M39) In these examples the corn-spirit is represented and eaten in human

shape. In other cases, though the new corn is not baked in loaves of human

shape, still the solemn ceremonies with which it is eaten suffice to

indicate that it is partaken of sacramentally, that is, as the body of the

corn-spirit. For example, the following ceremonies used to be observed by

Lithuanian peasants at eating the new corn. About the time of the autumn

sowing, when all the corn had been got in and the threshing had begun,

each farmer held a festival called Sabarios, that is, “the mixing or

throwing together.” He took nine good handfuls of each kind of crop—wheat,

barley, oats, flax, beans, lentils, and the rest; and each handful he

divided into three parts. The twenty-seven portions of each grain were

then thrown on a heap and all mixed up together. The grain used had to be

that which was first threshed and winnowed and which had been set aside

and kept for this purpose. A part of the grain thus mixed was employed to

bake little loaves, one for each of the household; the rest was mixed with

more barley or oats and made into beer. The first beer brewed from this

mixture was for the drinking of the farmer, his wife, and children; the

second brew was for the servants. The beer being ready, the farmer chose

an evening when no stranger was expected. Then he knelt down before the

barrel of beer, drew a jugful of the liquor and poured it on the bung of

the barrel, saying, “O fruitful earth, make rye and barley and all kinds

of corn to flourish.” Next he took the jug to the parlour, where his wife

and children awaited him. On the floor of the parlour lay bound a black or

white or speckled (not a red) cock and a hen of the same colour and of the

same brood, which must have been hatched within the year. Then the farmer

knelt down, with the jug in his hand, and thanked God for the harvest and

prayed for a good crop next year. Next all lifted up their hands and said,

“O God, and thou, O earth, we give you this cock and hen as a free-will

offering.” With that the farmer killed the fowls with the blows of a

wooden spoon, for he might not cut their heads off. After the first prayer

and after killing each of the birds he poured out a third of the beer.

Then his wife boiled the fowls in a new pot which had never been used

before. After that, a bushel was set, bottom upwards, on the floor, and on

it were placed the little loaves mentioned above and the boiled fowls.

Next the new beer was fetched, together with a ladle and three mugs, none

of which was used except on this occasion. When the farmer had ladled the

beer into the mugs, the family knelt down round the bushel. The father

then uttered a prayer and drank off the three mugs of beer. The rest

followed his example. Then the loaves and the flesh of the fowls were

eaten, after which the beer went round again, till every one had emptied

each of the three mugs nine times. None of the food should remain over;

but if anything did happen to be left, it was consumed next morning with

the same ceremonies. The bones were given to the dog to eat; if he did not

eat them all up, the remains were buried under the dung in the

cattle-stall. This ceremony was observed at the beginning of December. On

the day on which it took place no bad word might be spoken.(168)

(M40) Such was the custom about two hundred years or more ago. At the

present day in Lithuania, when new potatoes or loaves made from the new

corn are being eaten, all the people at table pull each other’s hair.(169)

The meaning of this last custom is obscure, but a similar custom was

certainly observed by the heathen Lithuanians at their solemn

sacrifices.(170) Many of the Esthonians of the island of Oesel will not

eat bread baked of the new corn till they have first taken a bite at a

piece of iron.(171) The iron is here plainly a charm, intended to render

harmless the spirit that is in the corn.(172) In Sutherlandshire at the

present day, when the new potatoes are dug all the family must taste them,

otherwise “the spirits in them [the potatoes] take offence, and the

potatoes would not keep.”(173) In one part of Yorkshire it is still

customary for the clergyman to cut the first corn; and my informant

believes that the corn so cut is used to make the communion bread.(174) If

the latter part of the custom is correctly reported (and analogy is all in

its favour), it shews how the Christian communion has absorbed within

itself a sacrament which is doubtless far older than Christianity.

(M41) Among the heathen Cheremiss on the left bank of the Volga, when the

first bread baked from the new corn is to be eaten, the villagers assemble

in the house of the oldest inhabitant, the eastern door is opened, and all

pray with their faces towards it. Then the sorcerer or priest gives to

each of them a mug of beer, which they drain; next he cuts and hands to

every person a morsel of the loaf, which they partake of. Finally, the

young people go to the elders and bowing down to the earth before them

say, “We pray God that you may live, and that God may let us pray next

year for new corn.” The rest of the day is passed in mirth and dancing.

The whole ceremony, observes the writer who has described it, looks almost

like a caricature of the Eucharist.(175) According to another account,

each Cheremiss householder on this occasion, after bathing, places some of

each kind of grain, together with malt, cakes, and drink, in a vessel,

which he holds up to the sun, at the same time thanking the gods for the

good things which they have bestowed upon him.(176) But this part of the

ceremony is a sacrifice rather than a sacrament of the new corn.

(M42) The Aino or Ainu of Japan are said to distinguish various kinds of

millet as male and female respectively, and these kinds, taken together,

are called “the divine husband and wife cereal” (_Umurek haru kamui_).

“Therefore before millet is pounded and made into cakes for general

eating, the old men have a few made for themselves first to worship. When

they are ready they pray to them very earnestly and say:—‘O thou cereal

deity, we worship thee. Thou hast grown very well this year, and thy

flavour will be sweet. Thou art good. The goddess of fire will be glad,

and we also shall rejoice greatly. O thou god, O thou divine cereal, do

thou nourish the people. I now partake of thee. I worship thee and give

thee thanks.’ After having thus prayed, they, the worshippers, take a cake

and eat it, and from this time the people may all partake of the new

millet. And so with many gestures of homage and words of prayer this kind

of food is dedicated to the well-being of the Ainu. No doubt the cereal

offering is regarded as a tribute paid to god, but that god is no other

than the seed itself; and it is only a god in so far as it is beneficial

to the human body.”(177)

(M43) The natives of the Reef Islands in Melanesia describe as follows the

ceremonies which they observe at eating new fruits: “When the fruit of

trees that are eatable, such as bread-fruit, or _ninas_ (nuts) is nearly

ripe, about a month before the time that people eat it, they all go

together into the bush. They must all go together for this ‘holy eating,’

and when they return they all assemble in one place, and no one will be

absent; they sit down and cook bread-fruit. While it is being cooked no

one will eat beforehand, but they set it in order and cook it with

reverence, and with the belief that the spirit has granted that food to

them and they return thanks to him for it. When it is cooked a certain man

takes a bread-fruit and climbs up a tree, and all the people stand on the

ground and they all look up, and when he has reached the top they shout

out, and when they have shouted they call out, ‘This is the bread-fruit of

the whole land’; then he throws down the bread-fruit and they pick it up

and shout out again and give thanks, for they think that the spirit who

protects the fruit will hear. Their thoughts are thus also with regard to

the yam, there is no difference, it is all the same; they think that a

spirit gives them food, and the people assemble together and thank the

spirit. In every island they think that there is a spirit presiding over

food.”(178)

(M44) At Bourail, in New Caledonia, the eating of the first yams of the

season is a solemn ceremony. The women may take no part in it; indeed for

five days previously they may not even shew themselves on any pretext, and

must hide in the forest. But the men of other tribes are invited to share

in the festivity. On the day of the ceremony seven or eight yams are dug

up with the greatest precaution, wrapt in leaves, and carried before the

great wooden images, ten or twelve feet high, rudely carved in human form

and painted black, red, and white, which represent the ancestors of the

tribe. Special pots, only used on these occasions, are then disinterred by

boys, who cook the new yams in them, eat them, and afterwards bury the

pots in the places where they found them. Thereupon the chief or the

oldest man mounts a ladder and addresses the crowd in a long and voluble

harangue, telling them how their forefathers always respected the feast of

the first yams, and exhorting the young men of the tribe to do the same in

the time to come. After that, turning towards the ancestral images, he

prays them to give a good crop of yams every year to the people and their

descendants, adjuring them to remember how, while they were still on

earth, they always ate to their heart’s content, and beseeching them to

reflect that their sons and grandsons naturally desire to do the same.

When the orator has finished his discourse, and his hearers have signified

their approval of his eloquence by a loud grunt, the new yams are dressed

and eaten, each family cooking them in a pot of its own.(179)

(M45) At the close of the rice harvest in the East Indian island of Buru,

each clan (_fenna_) meets at a common sacramental meal, to which every

member of the clan is bound to contribute a little of the new rice. This

meal is called “eating the soul of the rice,” a name which clearly

indicates the sacramental character of the repast. Some of the rice is

also set apart and offered to the spirits.(180) Amongst the Alfoors of

Minahassa, in the north of Celebes, the priest sows the first rice-seed

and plucks the first ripe rice in each field. This rice he roasts and

grinds into meal, and gives some of it to each of the household.(181)

Shortly before the rice-harvest in Bolang Mongondo, another district of

Celebes, an offering is made of a small pig or a fowl. Then the priest

plucks a little rice, first on his own field and next on those of his

neighbours. All the rice thus plucked by him he dries along with his own,

and then gives it back to the respective owners, who have it ground and

boiled. When it is boiled the women take it back, with an egg, to the

priest, who offers the egg in sacrifice and returns the rice to the women.

Of this rice every member of the family, down to the youngest child, must

partake. After this ceremony every one is free to get in his rice.(182)

(M46) On the north coast of Ceram every owner of a rice-field begins

planting by making six holes in the middle of the field and depositing

rice-seed in them. When the crop is ripe, the rice which has sprouted from

these six holes must be the first to be reaped and the first to be eaten

by the owner at the common harvest-feast of the village. When all the

owners of the fields have thus partaken of the rice that was first planted

and first reaped in their fields, the other villagers may help themselves

to rice out of the pot. Not till this feast has been held may the owners

of rice-fields sell their rice.(183) Among the Kayans of Central Borneo,

who, as we have seen, believe rice to be animated by a soul,(184) before a

family partakes of the new rice at harvest, a priestess must touch the

face and breast of every person with a magical instrument (_kahe parei_)

consisting of the husk of a certain fruit adorned with strings of beads.

After this ceremony has been performed on every member of the family, he

or she eats a few grains of the new rice and drinks a little water. When

all have complied with this ritual, the feast begins.(185)

(M47) Amongst the Burghers or Badagas, a tribe of the Neilgherry Hills in

Southern India, the first handful of seed is sown and the first sheaf

reaped by a Curumbar—a man of a different tribe, the members of which the

Burghers regard as sorcerers. The grain contained in the first sheaf “is

that day reduced to meal, made into cakes, and, being offered as a

first-fruit oblation, is, together with the remainder of the sacrificed

animal, partaken of by the Burgher and the whole of his family, as the

meat of a federal offering and sacrifice.”(186) Amongst the Coorgs of

Southern India the man who is to cut the first sheaf of rice at harvest is

chosen by an astrologer. At sunset the whole household takes a hot bath

and then goes to the rice-field, where the chosen reaper cuts an armful of

rice with a new sickle, and distributes two or more stalks to all present.

Then all return to the threshing-floor. A bundle of leaves is adorned with

a stalk of rice and fastened to the post in the centre of the

threshing-floor. Enough of the new rice is now threshed, cleaned, and

ground to provide flour for the dough-cakes which each member of the

household is to eat. Then they go to the door of the house, where the

mistress washes the feet of the sheaf-cutter, and presents to him, and

after him to all the rest, a brass vessel full of milk, honey, and sugar,

from which each person takes a draught. Next the man who cut the sheaf

kneads a cake of rice-meal, plantains, milk, honey, seven new rice corns,

seven pieces of coco-nut, and so on. Every one receives a little of his

cake on an Ashvatha leaf, and eats it. The ceremony is then over and the

sheaf-cutter mixes with the company. When he was engaged in cutting the

rice no one might touch him.(187) Among the Hindoos of Southern India the

eating of the new rice is the occasion of a family festival called Pongol.

The new rice is boiled in a new pot on a fire which is kindled at noon on

the day when, according to Hindoo astrologers, the sun enters the tropic

of Capricorn. The boiling of the pot is watched with great anxiety by the

whole family, for as the milk boils, so will the coming year be. If the

milk boils rapidly, the year will be prosperous; but it will be the

reverse if the milk boils slowly. Some of the new boiled rice is offered

to the image of Gaṇeṣa; then every one partakes of it.(188) In some parts

of Northern India the festival of the new crop is known as _Navan_, that

is, “new grain.” When the crop is ripe, the owner takes the omens, goes to

the field, plucks five or six ears of barley in the spring crop and one of

the millets in the autumn harvest. This is brought home, parched, and

mixed with coarse sugar, butter, and curds. Some of it is thrown on the

fire in the name of the village gods and deceased ancestors; the rest is

eaten by the family.(189) At Gilgit, in the Hindoo Koosh, before

wheat-harvest begins, a member of every household gathers a handful of

ears of corn secretly at dusk. A few of the ears are hung up over the door

of the house, and the rest are roasted next morning, and eaten steeped in

milk. The day is spent in rejoicings, and next morning the harvest

begins.(190)

(M48) The Chams of Binh-Thuan, in Indo-China, may not reap the

rice-harvest until they have offered the first-fruits to Po-Nagar, the

goddess of agriculture, and have consumed them sacramentally. These

first-fruits are gathered from certain sacred fields called

_Hamou-Klêk-Laoa_ or “fields of secret tillage,” which are both sown and

reaped with peculiar ceremonies. Apparently the tilling of the earth is

considered a crime which must be perpetrated secretly and afterwards

atoned for. On a lucky day in June, at the first cock-crow, two men lead

the buffaloes and the plough to the sacred field, round which they draw

three furrows in profound silence and then retire. Afterwards at dawn the

owner of the land comes lounging by, as if by the merest chance. At sight

of the furrows he stops, pretends to be much surprised, and cries out,

“Who has been secretly ploughing my field this night?” Hastening home, he

kills a kid or some fowls, cooks the victuals, and prepares five quids of

betel, some candles, a flask of oil, and lustral water of three different

sorts. With these offerings and the plough drawn by the buffaloes, he

returns to the field, where he lights the candles and spreading out the

victuals worships Po-Nagar and the other deities, saying: “I know not who

has secretly ploughed my field this night. Pardon, ye gods, those who have

done this wrong. Accept these offerings. Bless us. Suffer us to proceed

with this work.” Then, speaking in the name of the deities, he gives the

reassuring answer, “All right. Plough away!” With the lustral water he

washes or sprinkles the buffaloes, the yoke, and the plough. The oil

serves to anoint the plough and to pour libations on the ground. The five

quids of betel are buried in the field. Thereupon the owner sows a handful

of rice on the three furrows that have been traced, and eats the victuals

with his people. After all these rites have been duly performed, he may

plough and sow his land as he likes. When the rice has grown high enough

in this “field of secret tillage” to hide pigeons, offerings of ducks,

eggs, and fowls are made to the deities; and fresh offerings, which

generally consist of five plates of rice, two boiled fowls, a bottle of

spirits, and five quids of betel, are made to Po-Nagar and the rest at the

time when the rice is in bloom. Finally, when the rice in “the field of

secret tillage” is ripe, it has to be reaped before any of the rest.

Offerings of food, such as boiled fowls, plates of rice, cakes, and so

forth, are spread out on the field; a candle is lit, and a priest or, in

his absence, the owner prays to the guardian deities to come and partake

of the food set before them. After that the owner of the land cuts three

stalks of rice with a sickle in the middle of the field, then he cuts

three handfuls at the side, and places the whole in a napkin. These are

the first-fruits offered to Po-Nagar, the goddess of agriculture. On being

taken home the rice from the three handfuls is husked, pounded in a

mortar, and presented to the goddess with these words: “Taste, O goddess,

these first-fruits which have just been reaped.” This rice is afterwards

eaten, while the straw and husks are burned. Having eaten the first-fruits

of the rice, the owner takes the three stalks cut in the middle of the

field, passes them through the smoke of the precious eagle-wood, and hangs

them up in his house, where they remain till the next sowing-time comes

round. The grain from these three stalks will form the seed of the three

furrows in “the field of secret tillage.” Not till these ceremonies have

been performed is the proprietor at liberty to reap the rest of that field

and all the others.(191)

(M49) The ceremony of eating the new yams at Onitsha, on the Niger, is

thus described: “Each headman brought out six yams, and cut down young

branches of palm-leaves and placed them before his gate, roasted three of

the yams, and got some kola-nuts and fish. After the yam is roasted, the

_Libia_, or country doctor, takes the yam, scrapes it into a sort of meal,

and divides it into halves; he then takes one piece, and places it on the

lips of the person who is going to eat the new yam. The eater then blows

up the steam from the hot yam, and afterwards pokes the whole into his

mouth, and says, ‘I thank God for being permitted to eat the new yam’; he

then begins to chew it heartily, with fish likewise.”(192)

(M50) Among the Ewe negroes of West Africa the eating of the new yams is

the greatest festival of the year; it usually falls at the beginning of

September, and its character is predominantly religious. We possess a

native account of the festival as it is celebrated by the tribe of the Hos

in Togoland. When the yams are ripe and ready to be dug up and brought

home, two days are devoted to cleansing the town of all ills, whether

spiritual or material, as a solemn preparation for the ensuing

celebration. When these rites of purification, which will be described in

a later part of this work, have been accomplished, then, in the words of

the native account, “the people make ready to eat the new yams. And the

manner of making ready consists in going to the fields and digging the

yams. However, they do not bring them home but lay them down somewhere on

the way. The reason why they do not bring them home is that the people

have not yet been on the place where they sacrifice to the deity. When

they wish to go thither, the way to the sacrificial place of Agbasia must

first be cleared of grass. Afterwards the people come with their drums,

which they beat loudly. When they are come to the place of sacrifice, they

first raise two great mounds of earth, and they bring to the place of

sacrifice palm wine, uncooked and cooked yams, and meal mixed with oil.

First of all the uncooked yams are cut in two through the middle, and then

this prayer is offered: ‘Agbasia, thou art he who has given the yams;

therefore here is thine own! We thank thee sincerely. May the eating of

the yams be a great joy, and may no quarrel intervene!’ Thereupon they lay

down on the ground yams mixed with oil and not mixed with oil. In doing so

they say to Agbasia, ‘He who eats not the white yams, to him belong the

yams mixed with oil; and he who eats not the yams mixed with oil, to him

belong the white yams.’ They do the same with the meal that is mixed with

oil and with the meal that is not mixed with oil. Thereby they say: ‘Here

we bring thee all that thou hast given us. Eat thereof what thou

pleasest!’ After that they pour palm wine into one pot and water into

another, and say, ‘When one has eaten, one drinks water.’ Thereby the

drums sound, songs are sung, and the priest says: ‘Our father Agbasia, we

pray thee, let us hear no more evil but good only! When women are with

child, let them bear twins and triplets, that we may increase and

multiply! When the time for sowing the yams comes again, make it to rain

upon them even more than hitherto, in order that we may come again and

thank thee more sincerely than hitherto!’ Thereupon the priest pours water

on one of the mounds, makes a paste with it, and calls the people thither.

Then he dips his finger in the slime and smears it on their brows,

temples, and breasts, saying, ‘This is the slime of Agbasia, wherewith I

smear you, that ye may remain in life.’ After that they disperse and go

home. Further, the prayers and offerings of the individual peasants on the

occasion of the yam festival are described as follows. “In the evening,

when the town is swept clean, the people go to the fields to fetch yams,

which, however, they may not yet bring into the town and therefore they

hide them in the forest. As soon as the high priest quits the town next

morning to go to the sacrificial place of his god, the women set out to

fetch the yams which they had deposited. Now they begin to cook. Many

people kill fowls or goats, and others buy fish for the festival. When the

yams are sodden, a little is broken off, mixed with oil, and laid,

together with uncooked yams, on the ground at the entrance to the

homestead. Thereby the house-father says: ‘That belongs to all those

(gods) who abide at the fence.’ He does the same under the door of the

house and says: ‘That belongs to all those (gods) who dwell with me.’ Then

he goes to the loom, and brings it its offering, and says: ‘That belongs

to all the “Artificers” who have helped me in weaving.’ After that he lays

all his charms on a mat spread in the house, and brings them also their

offering, and speaks with them.”

“Another account describes the priestly functions of the house-father

still more fully. Every house-father takes a raw piece of yam and goes

with it to his loom (_agbati_) and prays: ‘May the Artificers take this

yam and eat! When they practise their art, may it prosper!’ Again he takes

a raw yam and goes with it under the house-door and prays: ‘O my

guardian-spirit (_aklama_) and all ye gods who pay heed to this house,

come and eat yams! When I also eat of them, may I remain healthy and

nowhere feel pain! May my housemates all remain healthy!’ After he has

invoked their protection on his family, he takes a cooked yam, crumbles it

on a stone, and mixes it with red oil. With this mixture he goes again to

the loom and prays as before. But even that is not the end of the worship

of the Artificers. He again crumbles a cooked yam, but this time he does

not mix it with red oil; he goes to the entrance of the homestead and

prays again to the loom: ‘He among the Artificers who does not relish yams

mixed with oil, let him come and take the white yam and eat it!’ From

there he goes again under the house-door and prays: ‘He of my guardian

gods and he of the watchers of the house who likes not yams mixed with

oil, let him come and take the white yam from my hand and eat!’ From the

house-door he steps into the midst of the chamber and says: ‘He who

relishes not the yams mixed with oil, may eat the white; he who relishes

not the white may eat the red; and he who relishes not the red may eat the

uncooked!’ With this prayer he has completed his duties as house-priest.

Just as the weaver prays to his loom, so the hunter prays to his musket,

the smith to his hammer and anvil, and the carpenter to his plane and saw.

“Now, while the free people begin to cook the yams so soon as the priest

has left the town, the slaves of the Earth Gods, the _Trõkluwo_, must

first as children perform their duties to the priest of their gods. Each

of these children receives from his parents on the morning of the Yam

Festival two pieces of yam, which he brings to the priest of his god. The

priest cuts off a small piece of the yam and divides the piece again into

four pieces. The child kneels before him and lolls out his tongue. Holding

two of these pieces of yam in his hands, the priest utters a prayer over

the child and touches his tongue five times with the pieces of yam. Then

the child stretches his hands out, each of which the priest touches five

times with the same pieces of yam and prays as before. Then he touches

both feet of the child five times and prays for the third time. He takes

half of the cowry-shells which the child has brought, fastens them on a

string, and hangs it round the child’s neck. Thereby the child gets leave

to eat new yams.

“After all these preparations the yams are pounded into a mash, and every

one calls his brother, that he may eat with him. When the meal is over,

the people are called together to amuse themselves and to drink palm wine.

In the afternoon every one bathes, puts on a new garment, and girds

himself with a new loin-cloth.”(193)

(M51) The Ashantees celebrate the festival of the new yams early in

September; until it is over none of the people may taste of the new yams.

“The Yam Custom,” we are told, “is like the Saturnalia; neither theft,

intrigue, nor assault are punishable during the continuance, but the

grossest liberty prevails, and each sex abandons itself to its passions.”

An eye-witness has described the scene at Coomassie, the capital: “The

next morning the King ordered a large quantity of rum to be poured into

brass pans, in various parts of the town; the crowd pressing around, and

drinking like hogs; freemen and slaves, women and children, striking,

kicking, and trampling each other under foot, pushed head foremost into

the pans, and spilling much more than they drank. In less than an hour,

excepting the principal men, not a sober person was to be seen, parties of

four, reeling and rolling under the weight of another, whom they affected

to be carrying home; strings of women covered with red paint, hand in

hand, falling down like rows of cards; the commonest mechanics and slaves

furiously declaiming on state palavers; the most discordant music, the

most obscene songs, children of both sexes prostrate in insensibility. All

wore their handsomest cloths, which they trailed after them to a great

length, in a drunken emulation of extravagance and dirtiness.” About a

hundred persons, mostly culprits reserved for the purpose, used to be

sacrificed at this festival in Coomassie. All the chiefs killed several

slaves that their blood might flow into the hole from which the new yam

was taken. Such as could not afford to kill slaves took the head of a

slave who had already been sacrificed and placed it in the hole. About ten

days after these ceremonies the whole of the royal household ate new yams

for the first time in the market-place, the King himself being in

attendance. Next day he and his captains set off before sunrise to perform

their annual ablutions in the river Dah; almost all the inhabitants of the

capital followed him, so that the streets appeared to be deserted. The

following day the King, attended by his suite, washed in the marsh at the

south-east end of the town and laved the water not only over himself but

also over the chairs, stools, gold and silver plate, and the articles of

furniture which were set aside for his special use.(194) From another

account it appears that the King of Ashantee must eat the new yams before

any of his subjects was at liberty to do so.(195) Similarly in the West

African kingdom of Assinie, which forms part of the French possessions of

Senegal, the king must eat the new yams eight full days before the people

may taste them.(196)

(M52) A second festival of yams used to be celebrated at Coomassie in

December, when the king or a fetish priest consecrated the new yams before

they could be eaten by common folk. On one of the days of this December

celebration all the laws were suspended, and every man might do what

seemed good in his own eyes: he might even, contrary to custom, look at

the king’s wives, to the number of several hundreds, when they returned

with the king and his suite from washing in the fetish water of Tana. All

that day drinking went on, and the noise and uproar were prolonged far

into the night. Early in the morning a human victim was sacrificed: the

first man found near the gates of the palace was seized, butchered, and

cut in pieces, and the executioners danced with the bleeding fragments of

the victim in their hands or fastened round their necks. Before he ate of

the new yams the king washed himself in fetish water brought from distant

springs, and the chiefs performed similar ablutions.(197) In Benin the new

yams might not be eaten until the king had performed certain ceremonies,

among which one is said to have been a pretence of making a yam to grow in

a pot. Dancing, merrymaking, and farces or plays formed part of the

festival; the city was crowded with people, and they indulged in a regular

orgie.(198)

(M53) Among the Nandi of British East Africa, when the eleusine grain is

ripening in autumn, every woman who owns a cornfield goes out into it with

her daughters, and they all pluck some of the ripe grain. Each of the

women then fixes one grain in her necklace and chews another, which she

rubs on her forehead, throat, and breast. No mark of joy escapes them;

sorrowfully they cut a basketful of the new corn, and carrying it home

place it in the loft to dry. As the ceiling is of wickerwork, a good deal

of the grain drops through the crevices and falls into the fire, where it

explodes with a crackling noise. The people make no attempt to prevent

this waste; for they regard the crackling of the grain in the fire as a

sign that the souls of the dead are partaking of it. A few days later

porridge is made from the new grain and served up with milk at the evening

meal. All the members of the family take some of the porridge and dab it

on the walls and roofs of the huts; also they put a little in their mouths

and spit it out towards the east and on the outside of the huts. Then,

holding up some of the grain in his hand, the head of the family prays to

God for health and strength, and likewise for milk, and everybody present

repeats the words of the prayer after him.(199) Amongst the Baganda, when

the beans were ripe, a woman would call her eldest son to eat some of the

first which she cooked; if she neglected to do so, it was believed that

she would incur the displeasure of the gods and fall ill. After the meal

her husband jumped over her, and the beans might thereafter be eaten by

all.(200)

(M54) Amongst the Caffres of Natal and Zululand, no one may eat of the new

fruits till after a festival which marks the beginning of the Caffre year

and falls at the end of December or the beginning of January. All the

people assemble at the king’s kraal, where they feast and dance. Before

they separate the “dedication of the people” takes place. Various fruits

of the earth, as corn, mealies, and pumpkins, mixed with the flesh of a

sacrificed animal and with “medicine,” are boiled in great pots, and a

little of this food is placed in each man’s mouth by the king himself.

After thus partaking of the sanctified fruits, a man is himself sanctified

for the whole year, and may immediately get in his crops.(201) It is

believed that if any man were to partake of the new fruits before the

festival, he would die;(202) if he were detected, he would be put to

death, or at least all his cattle would be taken from him.(203) The

holiness of the new fruits is well marked by the rule that they must be

cooked in a special pot which is used only for this purpose, and on a new

fire kindled by a magician through the friction of two sticks which are

called “husband and wife.” These sticks are prepared by the sorcerers from

the wood of the _Uzwati_ tree and belong exclusively to the chief. The

“wife” is the shorter of the two. When the magician has kindled the new

fire on which the new fruits are to be cooked, he hands the fire-sticks

back to the chief, for no other hand may touch them; and they are then put

away till they are required next season. The sticks are regarded as in a

measure sacred, and no one, except the chief’s personal servant, may go to

the side of the hut where they are kept. No pot but the one used for the

preparation of this feast may be set on a fire made by the friction of the

“husband and wife.” When the feast is over, the fire is carefully

extinguished, and the pot is put away with the fire-sticks, where it

remains untouched for another year.(204)

(M55) A remarkable feature of the festival, as it is observed at the court

of the Zulu king, is a dance performed by the king himself in a mantle of

grass or, according to another account, of herbs and corn-leaves. This

mantle is afterwards burnt and its ashes are scattered and trodden into

the ground by cattle.(205) Further, it is worthy of notice that the

festival is described as a saturnalia, and we are told that “a great deal

of noise and dancing goes on, and people are not supposed to be

responsible for what they say or do.”(206) Thus, for example, among the

Pondos the festival includes a period of license, during the continuance

of which the chief abdicates his functions and any crime may be committed

with impunity. The description of the Pondo festival comprises so many

interesting features that I will reproduce it entire. “When a Pondo chief

is to hold the feast of first-fruits, some of his people procure a ripe

plant of the gourd family, pumpkin or calabash, from another tribe. This

is cooked; the inside cleaned out, and the rind made ready for use as a

vessel. It is then presented to the chief with much ceremony. The

first-fruits are now brought forward, and a sacrifice, generally a young

bull, is offered, after which the feast commences. The chief issues

certain orders for the conduct of the proceedings, tastes the fruits which

are served in the gourd-dish with which he has been presented, and then

abdicates all his functions while the festival lasts. The cattle from all

the neighbouring villages are collected in the vicinity, and now they are

brought together, and the bulls incited to fight to determine which is to

be king among them for the next year. The young people engage in games and

dances, feats of strength and running. After these are over the whole

community give themselves over to disorder, debauchery, and riot. In their

bull-fights and games they but did honour to the powers of nature, and

now, as they eat and drink, the same powers are honoured in another form

and by other rites. There is no one in authority to keep order, and every

man does what seems good in his own eyes. Should a man stab his neighbour

he escapes all punishment, and so too with all other crimes against the

person, property, and morality. People are even permitted to abuse the

chief to his face, an offence which at any other time would meet with

summary vengeance and an unceremonious dispatch to join the ancestors.

While the feast continues, a deafening noise is kept up by drumming,

shouting, hand-clapping, and every kind of instrument that can be made to

emit sound. Men advance to the chief and explain their origin, and also

the object they hold sacred, by imitating the sounds and movements of

their most sacred animal. This is the person’s totem. Others imitate the

gurgling made by an enemy when stabbed in the throat. Those who adopt this

latter emblem are known as ‘children of the spear.’ When the ceremonies,

revels, and mummeries are ended, the chief repairs to his accustomed

place, and sitting down there, by that act resumes his kingly functions.

He calls the bravest of his braves before him, who is immediately clothed

and decorated with skins of animals suggestive of courage and strategy. He

performs a dance amid the frenzied shouting of the multitude, after which

the chief declares the festival at an end and harvest commenced.”(207)

Another writer, speaking of the Zulu festival of first-fruits as it was

celebrated in the time of the ferocious despot Chaka, says that “at this

period the chiefs are allowed to converse unreservedly with the king,

speaking with great freedom, and in some measure to be dictatorial.”(208)

Again, another traveller, who visited the Zulus in the reign of King

Panda, tells us that “in spite of the practice of the most absolute

despotism there are three days in the year when the nation in its turn has

the right to call the king to a severe account for his acts. It is at the

general assembly of the warriors, when the maize is ripe, that the lively

discussions take place and the questions are put to which the king must

answer at once in a manner satisfactory to the people. I have then seen

simple warriors come leaping from the ranks, assume the style of fluent

and excessively energetic orators, and not only confront the fiery glare

of Panda, but even attack him before everybody, blame his acts, call them

infamous and base, compel him to vindicate his conduct, and then refute

his vindication by dissecting it and exposing its falsehood, finally

proceeding to haughty threats and winding up the harangue with a gesture

of contempt.”(209) Such liberties taken with the despotic Zulu kings seem

to point to a time when they too, like the Pondo chiefs, abdicated or were

deposed during the festival. Perhaps we may even go a step further. We

have seen that on this occasion the Zulu king dances in a mantle of grass

or of herbs and corn-leaves, which is afterwards burnt and the ashes

scattered and trodden into the ground. This custom seems clearly intended

to promote the fertility of the earth, and in earlier times the same end

may have been compassed by burning the king himself and dispersing his

ashes; for we have seen that a Bechuana tribe, of the same Bantu stock as

the Zulus, were wont to sacrifice a human victim for the good of the crops

and to scatter his ashes over the ground.(210) In this connexion it should

be borne in mind that we have found independent evidence of a custom of

putting the Zulu king to death whenever his bodily strength began to

fail.(211)

(M56) Among the Bechuanas it is a rule that before they partake of the new

crops they must purify themselves. The purification takes place at the

commencement of the new year on a day in January which is fixed by the

chief. It begins in the great kraal of the tribe, where all the adult

males assemble. Each of them takes in his hand leaves of a gourd called by

the natives _lerotse_ (described as something between a pumpkin and a

vegetable marrow); and having crushed the leaves he anoints with the

expressed juice his big toes and his navel; many people indeed apply the

juice to all the joints of their body, but the better-informed say that

this is a vulgar departure from ancient custom. After this ceremony in the

great kraal every man goes home to his own kraal, assembles all the

members of his family, men, women, and children, and smears them all with

the juice of the _lerotse_ leaves. Some of the leaves are also pounded,

mixed with milk in a large wooden dish, and given to the dogs to lap up.

Then the porridge plate of each member of the family is rubbed with the

_lerotse_ leaves. When this purification has been completed, but not

before, the people are free to eat of the new crops. On the night after

the purification every man was bound, as a matter of ritual, to sleep with

his chief wife. If she had been unfaithful to him during the past year, it

was incumbent on her to confess her sin before she fulfilled her part of

the ceremony. Having confessed she was purified by a medicine-man, who

fumigated her with the smoke produced by burning a bean plant. Thereupon

husband and wife cut each other slightly under the navel, and each of them

rubbed his or her blood, mixed with “medicine,” into the other’s wound.

That completed the purification of the woman, and the pair might now

proceed with the rest of the rite. Should a married man be from home at

the time when the annual purification ceremony is performed, he is thought

to be in a very sad plight; indeed his chances of surviving for another

year are supposed to be small. On his return home, he dare not enter his

own house, for he would pollute it, and if even his shadow were to fall on

one of his children, the child would die. He must wait till his wife comes

to him and brings him a calabash of water to drink, which is a sign that

she has waited for his return to perform the rite of purification

together. But if she does not bring the water, he knows that in his

absence she has performed the rite with some other man, and it becomes

necessary to purge her by means of fumigation and blood-letting, as

described before. But even when that purgation is completed, husband and

wife may not indulge in connubial intercourse for the rest of the year,

that is, until the next annual purification has taken place. The Bechuanas

think that “any breach of this rule will be punished with supernatural

penalties—the husband, wife, or child will die.”(212)

(M57) Among the Matabele, another Bantu tribe of South Africa, no one

might partake of the new fruits till the king had first tasted of them;

any one who was known to have broken the law was instantly put to death.

On this occasion the regiments assembled at Bulawayo, the capital, and

danced in a great semicircle before the king, who occasionally joined in

the dance. When he did so, the medicine-men and their satellites, armed

with thorn-bushes, rushed about among the dancers and incited them to

fresh efforts by a vigorous application of the thorns to the bodies of

such as seemed to flag. The king’s wives also sang and danced before him

in long lines, holding the marriage ring in their right hands and green

boughs in their left. On the third day of the festival hundreds of oxen

were sacrificed: the flesh and blood of the black or sacred cattle were

converted into charms; while the carcases of the rest were cut up and

distributed among the people, who feasted upon them. The fourth day was

specially set apart for the ceremony of the first-fruits. In the morning

all the people went down to the river to wash, and on their return a

witch-doctor or medicine-man took a dish of the new vegetables and corn,

mixed with charms, and scattered the contents by handfuls among the crowd,

who seized and ate them. After that the people were free to eat the new

crops. According to one account, this festival of first-fruits was held at

the first full moon which followed the summer solstice (the twenty-first

of December in the southern hemisphere); according to another account, it

took place a few days after the full moon of February, which marked the

beginning of the Matabele year.(213)

(M58) The Ovambo or, as they call themselves, the Ovakuanjama, of

South-West Africa, may not partake of the new fruits of the _omuongo_

tree, which ripen in February and from which an intoxicating beverage is

extracted, until certain ceremonies have been performed. Among other

things husband and wife mutually offer each other one of the fruits, make

white strokes with chalk each on the brow, cheeks, and nose of the other,

and accompany the action with the formal expression of good wishes. If

this ceremony, which seems to mark the beginning of the New Year, were

omitted, they believe that they would be attacked by a painful disease of

the knee-joints which would cripple them.(214)

(M59) The Bororo Indians of Brazil think that it would be certain death to

eat the new maize before it has been blessed by the medicine-man. The

ceremony of blessing it is as follows. The half-ripe husk is washed and

placed before the medicine-man, who by dancing and singing for several

hours, and by incessant smoking, works himself up into a state of ecstasy,

whereupon he bites into the husk, trembling in every limb and uttering

shrieks from time to time. A similar ceremony is performed whenever a

large animal or a large fish is killed. The Bororo are firmly persuaded

that were any man to touch unconsecrated maize or meat, before the

ceremony had been completed, he and his whole tribe would perish.(215)

(M60) Amongst the Creek Indians of North America, the _busk_ or festival

of first-fruits was the chief ceremony of the year.(216) It was held in

July or August, when the corn was ripe, and marked the end of the old year

and the beginning of the new one. Before it took place, none of the

Indians would eat or even handle any part of the new harvest. Sometimes

each town had its own busk; sometimes several towns united to hold one in

common. Before celebrating the busk, the people provided themselves with

new clothes and new household utensils and furniture; they collected their

old clothes and rubbish, together with all the remaining grain and other

old provisions, cast them together in one common heap, and consumed them

with fire.(217) As a preparation for the ceremony, all the fires in the

village were extinguished, and the ashes swept clean away. In particular,

the hearth or altar of the temple was dug up and the ashes carried out.

Then the chief priest put some roots of the button-snake plant, with some

green tobacco leaves and a little of the new fruits, at the bottom of the

fireplace, which he afterwards commanded to be covered up with white clay,

and wetted over with clean water. A thick arbour of green branches of

young trees was then made over the altar.(218) Meanwhile the women at home

were cleaning out their houses, renewing the old hearths, and scouring all

the cooking vessels that they might be ready to receive the new fire and

the new fruits.(219) The public or sacred square was carefully swept of

even the smallest crumbs of previous feasts, “for fear of polluting the

first-fruit offerings.” Also every vessel that had contained or had been

used about any food during the expiring year was removed from the temple

before sunset. Then all the men who were not known to have violated the

law of the first-fruit offering and that of marriage during the year were

summoned by a crier to enter the holy square and observe a solemn fast.

But the women (except six old ones), the children, and all who had not

attained the rank of warriors were forbidden to enter the square.

Sentinels were also posted at the corners of the square to keep out all

persons deemed impure and all animals. A strict fast was then observed for

two nights and a day, the devotees drinking a bitter decoction of

button-snake root “in order to vomit and purge their sinful bodies.” That

the people outside the square might also be purified, one of the old men

laid down a quantity of green tobacco at a corner of the square; this was

carried off by an old woman and distributed to the people without, who

chewed and swallowed it “in order to afflict their souls.” During this

general fast, the women, children, and men of weak constitution were

allowed to eat after mid-day, but not before. On the morning when the fast

ended, the women brought a quantity of the old year’s food to the outside

of the sacred square. These provisions were then fetched in and set before

the famished multitude, but all traces of them had to be removed before

noon. When the sun was declining from the meridian, all the people were

commanded by the voice of a crier to stay within doors, to do no bad act,

and to be sure to extinguish and throw away every spark of the old fire.

Universal silence now reigned. Then the high priest made the new fire by

the friction of two pieces of wood, and placed it on the altar under the

green arbour. This new fire was believed to atone for all past crimes

except murder. Next a basket of new fruits was brought; the high priest

took out a little of each sort of fruit, rubbed it with bear’s oil, and

offered it, together with some flesh, “to the bountiful holy spirit of

fire, as a first-fruit offering, and an annual oblation for sin.” He also

consecrated the sacred emetics (the button-snake root and the cassina or

black-drink) by pouring a little of them into the fire. The persons who

had remained outside now approached, without entering, the sacred square;

and the chief priest thereupon made a speech, exhorting the people to

observe their old rites and customs, announcing that the new divine fire

had purged away the sins of the past year, and earnestly warning the women

that, if any of them had not extinguished the old fire, or had contracted

any impurity, they must forthwith depart, “lest the divine fire should

spoil both them and the people.” Some of the new fire was then set down

outside the holy square; the women carried it home joyfully, and laid it

on their unpolluted hearths. When several towns had united to celebrate

the festival, the new fire might thus be carried for several miles. The

new fruits were then dressed on the new fires and eaten with bear’s oil,

which was deemed indispensable. At one point of the festival the men

rubbed the new corn between their hands, then on their faces and

breasts.(220) During the festival which followed, the warriors, dressed in

their wild martial array, their heads covered with white down and carrying

white feathers in their hands, danced round the sacred arbour, under which

burned the new fire. The ceremonies lasted eight days, during which the

strictest continence was practised. Towards the conclusion of the festival

the warriors fought a mock battle; then the men and women together, in

three circles, danced round the sacred fire. Lastly, all the people

smeared themselves with white clay and bathed in running water. They came

out of the water believing that no evil could now befall them for what

they had done amiss in the past. So they departed in joy and peace.

(M61) Ceremonies of the same general type are still annually observed by

the Yuchi Indians of Oklahoma, who belong to the Creek nation but speak a

different language. The rites are said to have been instituted by the Sun.

They are solemnised in the public square, and are timed so as to coincide

with the ripening of the corn, which usually takes place about the middle

or early part of July. Continence and abstinence from salt are prescribed

during their celebration, and all the men must fast for twelve hours

before they take the emetic. A sacred new fire is kindled by striking two

stones against each other, after which all the males are scarified or

scratched by an official on the arm or breast, so as to let blood flow and

drip on the ground of the public square. This bleeding of the men is said

to be symbolical of the origin of the Yuchi people; for the first Yuchi

sprang from some drops of blood which the mother of the Sun let fall on

earth at one of her monthly periods. Hence the Yuchi call themselves the

Children of the Sun. The solemn rite of scratching is followed by the no

less solemn rite of vomiting. This also was instituted by the Sun. He

taught the Indians to steep the button-snake root and the red root in

water and to drink the decoction, in order that they might vomit and so

purify their bodies against sickness during the ensuing year. They think

that if they did not thus purge themselves before eating the new corn,

they would fall sick. The chief of the town is charged with the solemn

duty of preparing the nauseous concoction, and he is assisted by four boys

who have been initiated into the mysteries. The pots containing the stuff

are decorated on the rim with a pattern representing the sun, and they

stand east of the fire near the middle of the public square. The order of

drinking is regulated by the rank of the drinkers. When the sun is about

the zenith, the four noblest come forward, face eastward, and gulp down

the vile but salutary potion; then they retire to their places and await

the usual results. When they feel the inward workings of the draught, they

step out of the square and discharge the contents of their stomachs in a

place set apart for the purpose. They are followed by another party of

four, and that by another, and so on, till all the men have thus purged

themselves. The rite is repeated several times. When it is over, they all

go to water and wash off the paint with which they were adorned; then

returning to their places in the square they feast on the new corn. After

a rest of some hours the men engage in ball play, not as a mere recreation

but as a matter of ritual. Sides are chosen; every player is equipped with

two rackets, and the aim of each side is to drive the ball through their

opponents’ goal, which consists of two uprights and a cross-piece. The two

goals stand east and west of each other. During the following night

dancing is kept up, and a general laxity, degenerating into debauchery,

prevails; but parents and elders wink at the excesses of the young folk.

Among the dances are some in which the dancers mimick the motions and

cries of their totemic animals, such as ducks, buzzards, rabbits, fish,

buffaloes, chickens, and owls.(221)

(M62) To this day, also, the remnant of the Seminole Indians of Florida, a

people of the same stock as the Creeks,(222) hold an annual purification

and festival called the Green Corn Dance, at which the new corn is eaten.

On the evening of the first day of the festival they quaff a nauseous

“Black Drink,” as it is called, which acts both as an emetic and a

purgative; they believe that he who does not drink of this liquor cannot

safely eat the new green corn, and besides that he will be sick at some

time in the year. While the liquor is being drunk, the dancing begins, and

the medicine-men join in it. Next day they eat of the green corn; the

following day they fast, probably from fear of polluting the sacred food

in their stomachs by contact with common food; but the third day they hold

a great feast.(223) Further, the Natchez Indians, another tribe of the

same stock, who used to inhabit a district on the lower course and eastern

bank of the Mississippi, ate the new corn sacramentally at a great

festival which has been fully described by Du Pratz, the French historian

of Louisiana. As his work is probably not easily accessible to many of my

readers, I shall perhaps consult their convenience by extracting his

description entire. The Natchez, he tells us, began their year in March

and divided it into thirteen moons. Their sixth moon, which answered to

our August, was the Mulberry Moon, and the seventh was the moon of Maize

or Great Corn. “This feast is beyond dispute the most solemn of all. It

principally consists in eating in common, and in a religious manner, of

new corn, which had been sown expressly with that design, with suitable

ceremonies. This corn is sown upon a spot of ground never before

cultivated; which ground is dressed and prepared by the warriors alone,

who also are the only persons that sow the corn, weed it, reap it, and

gather it. When this corn is near ripe, the warriors fix on a place proper

for the general feast, and close adjoining to that they form a round

granary, the bottom and sides of which are of cane; this they fill with

the corn, and when they have finished the harvest, and covered the

granary, they acquaint the Great Sun,(224) who appoints the day for the

general feast. Some days before the feast, they build huts for the Great

Sun, and for all the other families, round the granary, that of the Great

Sun being raised upon a mound of earth about two feet high. On the

feast-day the whole nation set out from their village at sun-rising,

leaving behind only the aged and infirm that are not able to travel, and a

few warriors, who are to carry the Great Sun on a litter upon their

shoulders. The seat of this litter is covered with several deer-skins, and

to its four sides are fastened four bars which cross each other, and are

supported by eight men, who at every hundred paces transfer their burden

to eight other men, and thus successively transport it to the place where

the feast is celebrated, which may be near two miles from the village.

About nine o’clock the Great Sun comes out of his hut dressed in the

ornaments of his dignity, and being placed in his litter, which has a

canopy at the head formed of flowers, he is carried in a few minutes to

the sacred granary, shouts of joy re-echoing on all sides. Before he

alights he makes the tour of the whole place deliberately, and when he

comes before the corn, he salutes it thrice with the words _hoo, hoo,

hoo_, lengthened and pronounced respectfully. The salutation is repeated

by the whole nation, who pronounce the word _hoo_ nine times distinctly,

and at the ninth time he alights and places himself on his throne.

(M63) “Immediately after they light a fire by rubbing two pieces of wood

violently against each other, and when everything is prepared for dressing

the corn, the chief of war, accompanied by the warriors belonging to each

family, presents himself before the throne, and addresses the Sun in these

words, ‘Speak, for I hear thee.’ The sovereign then rises up, bows towards

the four quarters of the world, and advancing to the granary, lifts his

eyes and hands to heaven, and says, ’Give us corn’: upon which the great

chief of war, the princes and princesses, and all the men, thank him

separately by pronouncing the word _hoo_. The corn is then distributed,

first to the female Suns, and then to all the women, who run with it to

their huts, and dress it with the utmost dispatch. When the corn is

dressed in all the huts, a plate of it is put into the hands of the Great

Sun, who presents it to the four quarters of the world, and then says to

the chief of war, ‘Eat’; upon this signal the warriors begin to eat in all

the huts; after them the boys of whatever age, excepting those who are on

the breast; and last of all the women. When the warriors have finished

their repast, they form themselves into two choirs before the huts, and

sing war songs for half an hour; after which the chief of war, and all the

warriors in succession, recount their brave exploits, and mention, in a

boasting manner, the number of enemies they have slain. The youths are

next allowed to harangue, and each tells in the best manner he can, not

what he has done, but what he intends to do; and if his discourse merits

approbation, he is answered by a general _hoo_; if not, the warriors hang

down their heads and are silent.

(M64) “This great solemnity is concluded with a general dance by

torch-light. Upwards of two hundred torches of dried canes, each of the

thickness of a child, are lighted round the place, where the men and women

often continue dancing till daylight; and the following is the disposition

of their dance. A man places himself on the ground with a pot covered with

a deer-skin, in the manner of a drum, to beat time to the dancers; round

him the women form themselves into a circle, not joining hands, but at

some distance from each other; and they are inclosed by the men in another

circle, who have in each hand a chichicois, or calabash, with a stick

thrust through it to serve for a handle. When the dance begins, the women

move round the men in the centre, from left to right, and the men

contrariwise from right to left, and they sometimes narrow and sometimes

widen their circles. In this manner the dance continues without

intermission the whole night, new performers successively taking the place

of those who are wearied and fatigued.

(M65) “Next morning no person is seen abroad before the Great Sun comes

out of his hut, which is generally about nine o’clock, and then upon a

signal made by the drum, the warriors make their appearance distinguished

into two troops, by the feathers which they wear on their heads. One of

these troops is headed by the Great Sun, and the other by the chief of

war, who begin a new diversion by tossing a ball of deer-skin stuffed with

Spanish beard from the one to the other. The warriors quickly take part in

the sport, and a violent contest ensues which of the two parties shall

drive the ball to the hut of the opposite chief. The diversion generally

lasts two hours, and the victors are allowed to wear the feathers of

superiority till the following year, or till the next time they play at

the ball. After this the warriors perform the war dance; and last of all

they go and bathe; an exercise which they are very fond of when they are

heated or fatigued.

“The rest of that day is employed as the preceding; for the feast holds as

long as any of the corn remains. When it is all eat up, the Great Sun is

carried back in his litter, and they all return to the village, after

which he sends the warriors to hunt both for themselves and him.”(225)

(M66) Even tribes which do not till the ground sometimes observe analogous

ceremonies when they gather the first wild fruits or dig the first roots

of the season. Thus among the Salish and Tinneh Indians of North-West

America, “before the young people eat the first berries or roots of the

season, they always addressed the fruit or plant, and begged for its

favour and aid. In some tribes regular First-fruit ceremonies were

annually held at the time of picking the wild fruit or gathering the

roots, and also among the salmon-eating tribes when the run of the

‘sockeye’ salmon began. These ceremonies were not so much thanksgivings,

as performances to ensure a plentiful crop or supply of the particular

object desired, for if they were not properly and reverently carried out

there was danger of giving offence to the ‘spirits’ of the objects, and

being deprived of them.” For example, these Indians are fond of the young

shoots or suckers of the wild raspberry, and they observe the following

ceremony at gathering the first of them in season. “When the shoots are

ready to pick, that is, when they are about six or eight inches above the

ground, the chief, or directing elder of the community, instructs his wife

or his daughters to pluck a small bundle of these and prepare them for

eating. This they do, using a new pot or kettle for cooking them in. In

the meantime all the settlement comes together to take part in the

ceremony. They stand in a great circle, the presiding chief, elder, or

medicine-man as the case may be, and his assistants being in their midst.

Whoever is conducting the ceremony now silently invokes the spirit of the

plants, the tenor of his prayer being that it will be propitious to them

and grant them a good supply of the suckers. While the invocation is being

made all in the circle must keep their eyes reverently closed, this being

an essential part in all such ceremonies, the non-observance of which

would anger the spirits and cause them to withhold the favours sought. To

ensure this being strictly done, the assisting elders are armed with long

wands with which they strike any person found opening his eyes during the

prayer. After this part of the ceremony is over the cooked suckers are

handed to the presiding officer in a newly carved dish, and a small

portion is given to each person present, who reverently and decorously

eats it. This brings the ceremony to a close. Later, when the berries of

this plant are ripe, a second and similar ceremony takes place.”(226)

(M67) The Thompson Indians of British Columbia cook and eat the sunflower

root (_Balsamorrhiza sagittata_, Nutt.), but they used to regard it as a

mysterious being, and observed a number of taboos in connexion with it;

for example, women who were engaged in digging or cooking the root must

practise continence, and no man might come near the oven where the women

were baking the root. When young people ate the first berries, roots, or

other products of the season, they addressed a prayer to the

Sunflower-Root as follows: “I inform thee that I intend to eat thee.

Mayest thou always help me to ascend, so that I may always be able to

reach the tops of mountains, and may I never be clumsy! I ask this from

thee, Sunflower-Root. Thou art the greatest of all in mystery.” To omit

this prayer would make the eater lazy and cause him to sleep long in the

morning. Again, when the first tobacco of the season was gathered and

smoked for the first time, the inhabitants of each lodge among the

Thompson Indians observed the following ceremony. An elderly man assembled

all the inmates, often outside the lodge and generally after sunset, and

caused all the adult men and women, who were in the habit of smoking, to

sit down in a circle, while he stood in the middle. Sometimes he made a

long speech to the people, but as a rule he simply said, “Be it known to

you that we will cut up the chief,” meaning by the chief the tobacco. So

saying he cut up some of the tobacco, and after mixing it with bear-berry

leaves he filled a large pipe, lighted it, and handed it to each person,

following the sun’s course. Everybody took one whiff, and holding up his

or her hands, the palms close together, blew the smoke downwards between

the fingers and over the breast; and as the smoke descended, he crossed

his hands on his breast, and rubbing his chest and shoulders with both

hands, as if he were rubbing the smoke in, he prayed: “Lengthen my breath,

chief, so that I may never be sick, and so that I may not die for a long

time to come.” By the chief he meant the tobacco. When every one had had

his whiff, the tobacco was cut up small and a piece given to each

person.(227)

(M68) These customs of the Thompson and other Indian tribes of North-West

America are instructive, because they clearly indicate the motive, or at

least one of the motives, which underlies the ceremonies observed at

eating the first fruits of the season. That motive in the case of these

Indians is simply a belief that the plant itself is animated by a

conscious and more or less powerful spirit, who must be propitiated before

the people can safely partake of the fruits or roots which are supposed to

be part of his body. Now if this is true of wild fruits and roots, we may

infer with some probability that it is also true of cultivated fruits and

roots, such as yams, and in particular that it holds good of the cereals,

such as wheat, barley, oats, rice, and maize. In all cases it seems

reasonable to infer that the scruples which savages manifest at eating the

first fruits of any crop, and the ceremonies which they observe before

they overcome their scruples, are due at least in large measure to a

notion that the plant or tree is animated by a spirit or even a deity,

whose leave must be obtained, or whose favour must be sought before it is

possible to partake with safety of the new crop. This indeed is plainly

affirmed of the Aino: they call the millet “the divine cereal,” “the

cereal deity,” and they pray to and worship him before they will eat of

the cakes made from the new millet.(228) And even where the indwelling

divinity of the first fruits is not expressly affirmed, it appears to be

implied both by the solemn preparations made for eating them and by the

danger supposed to be incurred by persons who venture to partake of them

without observing the prescribed ritual. In all such cases, accordingly,

we may not improperly describe the eating of the new fruits as a sacrament

or communion with a deity, or at all events with a powerful spirit.

(M69) Among the usages which point to this conclusion are the custom of

employing either new or specially reserved vessels to hold the new

fruits,(229) and the practice of purifying the persons of the communicants

and even the houses and streets of the whole town, before it is lawful to

engage in the solemn act of communion with the divinity.(230) Of all the

modes of purification adopted on these occasions none perhaps brings out

the sacramental virtue of the rite so clearly as the Creek and Seminole

practice of taking a purgative before swallowing the new corn. The

intention is thereby to prevent the sacred food from being polluted by

contact with common food in the stomach of the eater. For the same reason

Catholics partake of the Eucharist fasting; and among the pastoral Masai

of Eastern Africa the young warriors, who live on meat and milk

exclusively, are obliged to eat nothing but milk for so many days and then

nothing but meat for so many more, and before they pass from the one food

to the other they must make sure that none of the old food remains in

their stomachs; this they do by swallowing a very powerful purgative and

emetic.(231) Similarly, among the Suk, a tribe of British East Africa, no

one may partake of meat and milk on the same day, and if he has chewed raw

millet he is forbidden to drink milk for seven days.(232) Among the

Wataturu, another people of Eastern Africa akin to the Masai, a warrior

who had eaten antelope’s flesh might not drink of milk on the same

day.(233) Similarly among the Central Esquimaux the rules prohibiting

contact between venison and the flesh of marine animals are very strict.

The Esquimaux themselves say that the goddess Sedna dislikes the deer, and

therefore they may not bring that animal into contact with her favourites,

the sea beasts. Hence the meat of the whale, the seal, or the walrus may

not be eaten on the same day with venison. Both sorts of meat may not even

lie on the floor of the hut or behind the lamps at the same time. If a man

who has eaten venison in the morning happens to enter a hut in which the

flesh of seal is being cooked, he is allowed to eat venison on the bed,

but it must be wrapt up before being carried into the hut, and he must

take care to keep clear of the floor. Before changing from one food to the

other the Esquimaux must wash themselves.(234) Again, just as the

Esquimaux think that their goddess would be offended if venison met seal

or whale or walrus meat in the eater’s stomach, so the Melanesians of

Florida, one of the Solomon Islands, believe that if a man who has eaten

pork or fish or shell-fish or the flesh of a certain sort of cuscus were

to enter a garden immediately afterwards, the ghosts who preside over the

garden and cause the fruits to grow would be angry and the crop would

consequently suffer; but three or four days after partaking of such

victuals, when the food has quite left his stomach, he may enter the

garden without offence to the ghosts or injury to the crop.(235) In like

manner the ancient Greeks, of whose intellectual kinship with savages like

the Esquimaux and the Melanesians we have already met with many proofs,

laid it down as a rule that a man who had partaken of the black ram

offered to Pelops at Olympia might not enter into the temple of Zeus, and

that persons who had sacrificed to Telephus at Pergamus might not go up to

the temple of Aesculapius until they had washed themselves,(236) just as

the Esquimaux who have eaten venison must wash before they may partake of

seal or whale or walrus meat. Again, at Lindus in Rhodes there was a

sanctuary of some god or hero unknown into which no one who had partaken

of goat’s flesh or peas-pudding might enter for three days, and no one who

had eaten cheese might enter for one day.(237) The prescribed interval was

probably calculated to allow the obnoxious food to pass out of the body of

the eater before he entered into the presence of the deity, who for some

reason or other cherished an antipathy to these particular viands. At

Castabus in the Carian Chersonese there was a sanctuary of Hemithea, which

no one might approach who had either eaten pork or touched a pig.(238)

(M70) In some of the festivals which we have examined, as in the

Cheremiss, Buru, Cham, Ewe, and Creek ceremonies, the sacrament of

first-fruits is combined with a sacrifice or presentation of them to gods

or spirits,(239) and in course of time the sacrifice of first-fruits tends

to throw the sacrament into the shade, if not to supersede it. The mere

fact of offering the first-fruits to the gods or spirits comes now to be

thought a sufficient preparation for eating the new corn; the higher

powers having received their share, man is free to enjoy the rest. This

mode of viewing the new fruits implies that they are regarded no longer as

themselves instinct with divine life, but merely as a gift bestowed by the

gods upon man, who is bound to express his gratitude and homage to his

divine benefactors by returning to them a portion of their bounty. More

examples of the sacrifice, as distinct from sacrament, of first-fruits

will be given presently.(240)

§ 2. Eating the God among the Aztecs.