§ 1. The Burning of Effigies in the Fires.
(M16) We have still to ask, What is the meaning of burning effigies in the
fire at these festivals? After the preceding investigation the answer to
the question seems obvious. As the fires are often alleged to be kindled
for the purpose of burning the witches, and as the effigy burnt in them is
sometimes called “the Witch,” we might naturally be disposed to conclude
that all the effigies consumed in the flames on these occasions represent
witches or warlocks, and that the custom of burning them is merely a
substitute for burning the wicked men and women themselves, since on the
principle of homoeopathic or imitative magic you practically destroy the
witch herself in destroying her effigy. On the whole this explanation of
the burning of straw figures in human shape at the festivals appears to be
the most probable.
(M17) Yet it may be that this explanation does not apply to all the cases,
and that certain of them may admit and even require another
interpretation, in favour of which I formerly argued as follows:—(45)
“It remains to ask, What is the meaning of burning an effigy in these
bonfires? The effigies so burned, as I have already remarked, can hardly
be separated from the effigies of Death which are burned or otherwise
destroyed in spring; and grounds have been already given for regarding the
so-called effigies of Death as really representatives of the tree-spirit
or spirit of vegetation.(46) Are the other effigies, which are burned in
the spring and midsummer bonfires, susceptible of the same explanation? It
would seem so. For just as the fragments of the so-called Death are stuck
in the fields to make the crops grow, so the charred embers of the figure
burned in the spring bonfires are sometimes laid on the fields in the
belief that they will keep vermin from the crop.(47) Again, the rule that
the last married bride must leap over the fire in which the straw-man is
burned on Shrove Tuesday, is probably intended to make her fruitful.(48)
But, as we have seen, the power of blessing women with offspring is a
special attribute of tree-spirits;(49) it is therefore a fair presumption
that the burning effigy over which the bride must leap is a representative
of the fertilizing tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. This character of
the effigy, as representative of the spirit of vegetation, is almost
unmistakable when the figure is composed of an unthreshed sheaf of corn or
is covered from head to foot with flowers.(50) Again, it is to be noted
that, instead of a puppet, trees, either living or felled, are sometimes
burned both in the spring and midsummer bonfires.(51) Now, considering the
frequency with which the tree-spirit is represented in human shape, it is
hardly rash to suppose that when sometimes a tree and sometimes an effigy
is burned in these fires, the effigy and the tree are regarded as
equivalent to each other, each being a representative of the tree-spirit.
This, again, is confirmed by observing, first, that sometimes the effigy
which is to be burned is carried about simultaneously with a May-tree, the
former being carried by the boys, the latter by the girls;(52) and,
second, that the effigy is sometimes tied to a living tree and burned with
it.(53) In these cases, we can scarcely doubt, the tree-spirit is
represented, as we have found it represented before, in duplicate, both by
the tree and by the effigy. That the true character of the effigy as a
representative of the beneficent spirit of vegetation should sometimes be
forgotten, is natural. The custom of burning a beneficent god is too
foreign to later modes of thought to escape misinterpretation. Naturally
enough the people who continued to burn his image came in time to identify
it as the effigy of persons, whom, on various grounds, they regarded with
aversion, such as Judas Iscariot, Luther, and a witch.
(M18) “The general reasons for killing a god or his representative have
been examined in the preceding chapter.(54) But when the god happens to be
a deity of vegetation, there are special reasons why he should die by
fire. For light and heat are necessary to vegetable growth; and, on the
principle of sympathetic magic, by subjecting the personal representative
of vegetation to their influence, you secure a supply of these necessaries
for trees and crops. In other words, by burning the spirit of vegetation
in a fire which represents the sun, you make sure that, for a time at
least, vegetation shall have plenty of sun. It may be objected that, if
the intention is simply to secure enough sunshine for vegetation, this end
would be better attained, on the principles of sympathetic magic, by
merely passing the representative of vegetation through the fire instead
of burning him. In point of fact this is sometimes done. In Russia, as we
have seen, the straw figure of Kupalo is not burned in the midsummer fire,
but merely carried backwards and forwards across it.(55) But, for the
reasons already given, it is necessary that the god should die; so next
day Kupalo is stripped of her ornaments and thrown into a stream. In this
Russian custom, therefore, the passage of the image through the fire is a
sun-charm pure and simple; the killing of the god is a separate act, and
the mode of killing him—by drowning—is probably a rain-charm. But usually
people have not thought it necessary to draw this fine distinction; for
the various reasons already assigned, it is advantageous, they think, to
expose the god of vegetation to a considerable degree of heat, and it is
also advantageous to kill him, and they combine these advantages in a
rough-and-ready way by burning him.”
(M19) On the foregoing argument, which I do not now find very cogent, I
would remark that we must distinguish the cases in which an effigy or an
image is burnt in the fire from the cases in which it is simply carried
through or over it. We have seen that in the Chinese festival of fire the
image of the god is carried thrice by bearers over the glowing furnace.
Here the motive for subjecting a god to the heat of the furnace must
surely be the same as the motive for subjecting his worshippers to the
same ordeal; and if the motive in the case of the worshippers is
purificatory, it is probably the same in the case of the deity. In other
words we may suppose that the image of a god is periodically carried over
a furnace in order to purify him from the taint of corruption, the spells
of magicians, or any other evil influences that might impair or impede his
divine energies. The same theory would explain the custom of obliging the
priest ceremonially to pass through the fire; the custom need not be a
mitigation of an older practice of burning him in the flames, it may only
be a purification designed to enable him the better to discharge his
sacred duties as representative of the deity in the coming year.
Similarly, when the rite is obligatory, not on the people as a whole, but
only on certain persons chosen for the purpose,(56) we may suppose that
these persons act as representatives of the entire community, which thus
passes through the fire by deputy and consequently participates in all the
benefits which are believed to accrue from the purificatory character of
the rite.(57) In both cases, therefore, if my interpretation of them is
correct, the passage over or through a fire is not a substitute for human
sacrifice; it is nothing but a stringent form of purification.
§ 2. The Burning of Men and Animals in the Fires.
(M20) Yet in the popular customs connected with the fire-festivals of
Europe there are certain features which appear to point to a former
practice of human sacrifice. We have seen reasons for believing that in
Europe living persons have often acted as representatives of the
tree-spirit and corn-spirit and have suffered death as such.(58) There is
no reason, therefore, why they should not have been burned, if any special
advantages were likely to be attained by putting them to death in that
way. The consideration of human suffering is not one which enters into the
calculations of primitive man. Now, in the fire-festivals which we are
discussing, the pretence of burning people is sometimes carried so far
that it seems reasonable to regard it as a mitigated survival of an older
custom of actually burning them. Thus in Aachen, as we saw, the man clad
in peas-straw acts so cleverly that the children really believe he is
being burned.(59) At Jumièges in Normandy the man clad all in green, who
bore the title of the Green Wolf, was pursued by his comrades, and when
they caught him they feigned to fling him upon the mid-summer bonfire.(60)
Similarly at the Beltane fires in Scotland the pretended victim was
seized, and a show made of throwing him into the flames, and for some time
afterwards people affected to speak of him as dead.(61) Again, in the
Hallowe’en bonfires of north-eastern Scotland we may perhaps detect a
similar pretence in the custom observed by a lad of lying down as close to
the fire as possible and allowing the other lads to leap over him.(62) The
titular king at Aix, who reigned for a year and danced the first dance
round the midsummer bonfire,(63) may perhaps in days of old have
discharged the less agreeable duty of serving as fuel for that fire which
in later times he only kindled. In the following customs Mannhardt is
probably right in recognizing traces of an old custom of burning a
leaf-clad representative of the spirit of vegetation. At Wolfeck, in
Austria, on Midsummer Day, a boy completely clad in green fir branches
goes from house to house, accompanied by a noisy crew, collecting wood for
the bonfire. As he gets the wood he sings—
“_Forest trees I want,_
_No sour milk for me,_
_But beer and wine,_
_So can the wood-man be jolly and gay._”(64)
In some parts of Bavaria, also, the boys who go from house to house
collecting fuel for the midsummer bonfire envelop one of their number from
head to foot in green branches of firs, and lead him by a rope through the
whole village.(65) At Moosheim, in Wurtemberg, the festival of St. John’s
Fire usually lasted for fourteen days, ending on the second Sunday after
Midsummer Day. On this last day the bonfire was left in charge of the
children, while the older people retired to a wood. Here they encased a
young fellow in leaves and twigs, who, thus disguised, went to the fire,
scattered it, and trod it out. All the people present fled at the sight of
him.(66)
(M21) In this connexion it is worth while to note that in pagan Europe the
water as well as the fire seems to have claimed its human victim on
Midsummer Day. Some German rivers, such as the Saale and the Spree, are
believed still to require their victim on that day; hence people are
careful not to bathe at this perilous season. Where the beautiful Neckar
flows, between vine-clad and wooded hills, under the majestic ruins of
Heidelberg castle, the spirit of the river seeks to drown three persons,
one on Midsummer Eve, one on Midsummer Day, and one on the day after. On
these nights, if you hear a shriek as of a drowning man or woman from the
water, beware of running to the rescue; for it is only the water-fairy
shrieking to lure you to your doom. Many a fisherman of the Elbe knows
better than to launch his boat and trust himself to the treacherous river
on Midsummer Day. And Samland fishermen will not go to sea at this season,
because they are aware that the sea is then hollow and demands a victim.
In the neighbourhood of the Lake of Constance the Swabian peasants say
that on St. John’s Day the Angel or St. John must have a swimmer and a
climber; hence no one will climb a tree or bathe even in a brook on that
day.(67) According to others, St. John will have three dead men on his
day; one of them must die by water, one by a fall, and one by lightning;
therefore old-fashioned people warn their children not to climb or bathe,
and are very careful themselves not to run into any kind of danger on
Midsummer Day.(68) So in some parts of Switzerland people are warned
against bathing on St. John’s Night, because the saint’s day demands its
victims. Thus in the Emmenthal they say, “This day will have three
persons; one must perish in the air, one in the fire, and the third in the
water.” At Schaffhausen the saying runs, “St. John the Baptist must have a
runner, must have a swimmer, must have a climber.” That is the reason why
you should not climb cherry-trees on the saint’s day, lest you should fall
down and break your valuable neck.(69) In Cologne the saint is more
exacting; on his day he requires no less than fourteen dead men; seven of
them must be swimmers and seven climbers.(70) Accordingly when we find
that, in one of the districts where a belief of this sort prevails, it
used to be customary to throw a person into the water on Midsummer Day, we
can hardly help concluding that this was only a modification of an older
custom of actually drowning a human being in the river at that time. In
Voigtland it was formerly the practice to set up a fine May tree, adorned
with all kinds of things, on St. John’s Day. The people danced round it,
and when the lads had fetched down the things with which it was tricked
out, the tree was thrown into the water. But before this was done, they
sought out somebody whom they treated in the same manner, and the victim
of this horseplay was called “the John.” The brawls and disorders, which
such a custom naturally provoked, led to the suppression of the whole
ceremony.(71)
(M22) At Rotenburg on the Neckar they throw a loaf of bread into the water
on St. John’s Day; were this offering not made, the river would grow angry
and take away a man.(72) Clearly, therefore, the loaf is regarded as a
substitute which the spirit of the river consents to accept instead of a
human victim. Elsewhere the water-sprite is content with flowers. Thus in
Bohemia people sometimes cast garlands into water on Midsummer Eve; and if
the water-sprite pulls one of them down, it is a sign that the person who
threw the garland in will die.(73) In the villages of Hesse the girl who
first comes to the well early on the morning of Midsummer Day, places on
the mouth of the well a gay garland composed of many sorts of flowers
which she has culled from the fields and meadows. Sometimes a number of
such garlands are twined together to form a crown, with which the well is
decked. At Fulda, in addition to the flowery decoration of the wells, the
neighbours choose a Lord of the Wells and announce his election by sending
him a great nosegay of flowers; his house, too, is decorated with green
boughs, and children walk in procession to it. He goes from house to house
collecting materials for a feast, of which the neighbours partake on the
following Sunday.(74) What the other duties of the Lord of the Wells may
be, we are not told. We may conjecture that in old days he had to see to
it that the spirits of the water received their dues from men and maidens
on that important day.
(M23) The belief that the spirits of the water exact a human life on
Midsummer Day may partly explain why that day is regarded by some people
as unlucky. At Neuburg, in Baden, people who meet on Midsummer Day bid
each other beware.(75) Sicilian mothers on that ominous day warn their
little sons not to go out of the house, or, if they do go out, not to
stray far, not to walk on solitary unfrequented paths, to avoid horses and
carriages and persons with firearms, and not to dare to swim; in short
they bid them be on their guard at every turn. The Sicilian writer who
tells us this adds: “This I know and sadly remember ever since the year
1848, when, not yet seven years old, I beheld in the dusk of the evening
on St. John’s Day some women of my acquaintance bringing back in their
arms my little brother, who had gone to play in a garden near our house,
and there had found his death, my poor Francesco! In their simplicity the
women who strove to console my inconsolable mother, driven distracted by
the dreadful blow, kept repeating that St. John must have his due, that on
that day he must be appeased. ‘Who knows,’ said they, ‘how many other
mothers are weeping now for other little sons forlorn!’ ”(76)
(M24) Yet curiously enough, though the water-spirits call for human
victims on Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Day, water in general is supposed at
that season to acquire certain wonderful medicinal virtues, so that he who
bathes in it then or drinks of it is not only healed of all his
infirmities but will be well and hearty throughout the year. Hence in many
parts of Europe, from Sweden in the north to Sicily in the south, and from
Ireland and Spain in the west to Esthonia in the east it used to be
customary for men, women, and children to bathe in crowds in rivers, the
sea, or springs on Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Day, hoping thus to fortify
themselves for the next twelve months. The usual time for taking the bath
was the night which intervenes between Midsummer Eve and Midsummer
Day;(77) but in Belgium the hour was noon on Midsummer Day. It was a
curious sight, we are told, to see the banks of a river lined with naked
children waiting for the first stroke of noon to plunge into the healing
water. The dip was supposed to have a remarkable effect in strengthening
the legs. People who were ashamed to bathe in public used to have cans of
water brought to their houses from the river at midday, and then performed
their ablutions in the privacy of their chambers. Nor did they throw away
the precious fluid; on the contrary they bottled it up and kept it as a
sort of elixir for use throughout the year. It was thought never to grow
foul and to be as blessed as holy water fetched from a church, which we
may well believe. Hence it served to guard the house against a
thunder-storm; when the clouds were heavy and threatening, all you had to
do was to take the palm branches (that is, the twigs of box-wood) which
were blessed on Palm Sunday, dip them in the midsummer water, and burn
them. That averted the tempest.(78) In the Swiss canton of Lucerne a bath
on Midsummer Eve is thought to be especially wholesome, though in other
parts of Switzerland, as we saw, bathing at that season is accounted
dangerous.(79)
(M25) Nor are such customs and beliefs confined to the Christian peoples
of Europe; they are shared also by the Mohammedan peoples of Morocco.
There, too, on Midsummer Day all water is thought to be endowed with such
marvellous virtue that it not only heals but prevents sickness for the
rest of the year; hence men, women, and children bathe in the sea, in
rivers, or in their houses at that time for the sake of their health. In
Fez and other places on this day people pour or squirt water over each
other in the streets or from the house-tops, so that the streets become
almost as muddy as after a fall of rain. More than that, in the Andjra
they bathe their animals also; horses, mules, donkeys, cattle, sheep, and
goats, all must participate in the miraculous benefits of midsummer
water.(80) The rite forms part of that old heathen celebration of
Midsummer which appears to have been common to the peoples on both sides
of the Mediterranean;(81) and as the aim of bathing in the midsummer water
is undoubtedly purification, it is reasonable to assign the same motive
for the custom of leaping over the midsummer bonfire. On the other hand
some people in Morocco, like some people in Europe, think that water on
Midsummer Day is unclean or dangerous. A Berber told Dr. Westermarck that
water is haunted on Midsummer Day, and that people therefore avoid bathing
in it and keep animals from drinking of it. And among the Beni Ahsen
persons who swim in the river on that day are careful, before plunging
into the water, to throw burning straw into it as an offering, in order
that the spirits may not harm them.(82) The parallelism between the rites
of water and fire at this season is certainly in favour of interpreting
both in the same way;(83) and the traces of human sacrifice which we have
detected in the rite of water may therefore be allowed to strengthen the
inference of a similar sacrifice in the rite of fire.
(M26) But it seems possible to go farther than this. Of human sacrifices
offered on these occasions the most unequivocal traces, as we have seen,
are those which, about a hundred years ago, still lingered at the Beltane
fires in the Highlands of Scotland, that is, among a Celtic people who,
situated in a remote corner of Europe and almost completely isolated from
foreign influence, had till then conserved their old heathenism better
perhaps than any other people in the West of Europe. It is significant,
therefore, that human sacrifices by fire are known, on unquestionable
evidence, to have been systematically practised by the Celts. The earliest
description of these sacrifices has been bequeathed to us by Julius
Caesar. As conqueror of the hitherto independent Celts of Gaul, Caesar had
ample opportunity of observing the national Celtic religion and manners,
while these were still fresh and crisp from the native mint and had not
yet been fused in the melting-pot of Roman civilization. With his own
notes Caesar appears to have incorporated the observations of a Greek
explorer, by name Posidonius, who travelled in Gaul about fifty years
before Caesar carried the Roman arms to the English Channel. The Greek
geographer Strabo and the historian Diodorus seem also to have derived
their descriptions of the Celtic sacrifices from the work of Posidonius,
but independently of each other, and of Caesar, for each of the three
derivative accounts contain some details which are not to be found in
either of the others. By combining them, therefore, we can restore the
original account of Posidonius with some probability, and thus obtain a
picture of the sacrifices offered by the Celts of Gaul at the close of the
second century before our era.(84) The following seem to have been the
main outlines of the custom. Condemned criminals were reserved by the
Celts in order to be sacrificed to the gods at a great festival which took
place once in every five years. The more there were of such victims, the
greater was believed to be the fertility of the land.(85) If there were
not enough criminals to furnish victims, captives taken in war were
immolated to supply the deficiency. When the time came the victims were
sacrificed by the Druids or priests. Some they shot down with arrows, some
they impaled, and some they burned alive in the following manner. Colossal
images of wicker-work or of wood and grass were constructed; these were
filled with live men, cattle, and animals of other kinds; fire was then
applied to the images, and they were burned with their living contents.
(M27) Such were the great festivals held once every five years. But
besides these quinquennial festivals, celebrated on so grand a scale, and
with, apparently, so large an expenditure of human life, it seems
reasonable to suppose that festivals of the same sort, only on a lesser
scale, were held annually, and that from these annual festivals are
lineally descended some at least of the fire-festivals which, with their
traces of human sacrifices, are still celebrated year by year in many
parts of Europe. The gigantic images constructed of osiers or covered with
grass in which the Druids enclosed their victims remind us of the leafy
framework in which the human representative of the tree-spirit is still so
often encased.(86) Hence, seeing that the fertility of the land was
apparently supposed to depend upon the due performance of these
sacrifices, Mannhardt interpreted the Celtic victims, cased in osiers and
grass, as representatives of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation.
(M28) These wicker giants of the Druids seem to have had till lately their
representatives at the spring and midsummer festivals of modern Europe. At
Douay, down to the early part of the nineteenth century, a procession took
place annually on the Sunday nearest to the seventh of July. The great
feature of the procession was a colossal figure, some twenty or thirty
feet high, made of osiers, and called “the giant,” which was moved through
the streets by means of rollers and ropes worked by men who were enclosed
within the effigy. The wooden head of the giant is said to have been
carved and painted by Rubens. The figure was armed as a knight with lance
and sword, helmet and shield. Behind him marched his wife and his three
children, all constructed of osiers on the same principle, but on a
smaller scale.(87) At Dunkirk the procession of the giants took place on
Midsummer Day, the twenty-fourth of June. The festival, which was known as
the Follies of Dunkirk, attracted such multitudes of spectators, that the
inns and private houses could not lodge them all, and many had to sleep in
cellars or in the streets. In 1755 an eye-witness estimated that the
number of onlookers was not less than forty thousand, without counting the
inhabitants of the town. The streets through which the procession took its
way were lined with double ranks of soldiers, and the houses crammed with
spectators from top to bottom. High mass was celebrated in the principal
church and then the procession got under weigh. First came the guilds or
brotherhoods, the members walking two and two with great waxen tapers,
lighted, in their hands. They were followed by the friars and the secular
priests, and then came the Abbot, magnificently attired, with the Host
borne before him by a venerable old man. When these were past, the real
“Follies of Dunkirk” began. They consisted of pageants of various sorts
wheeled through the streets in cars. These appear to have varied somewhat
from year to year; but if we may judge from the processions of 1755 and
1757, both of which have been described by eye-witnesses, a standing show
was a car decked with foliage and branches to imitate a wood, and carrying
a number of men dressed in leaves or in green scaly skins, who squirted
water on the people from pewter syringes. An English spectator has
compared these maskers to the Green Men of our own country on May Day.
Last of all came the giant and giantess. The giant was a huge figure of
wicker-work, occasionally as much as forty-five feet high, dressed in a
long blue robe with gold stripes, which reached to his feet, concealing
the dozen or more men who made it dance and bob its head to the
spectators. This colossal effigy went by the name of Papa Reuss, and
carried in its pocket a bouncing infant of Brobdingnagian proportions, who
kept bawling “Papa! papa!” in a voice of thunder, only pausing from time
to time to devour the victuals which were handed out to him from the
windows. The rear was brought up by the daughter of the giant,
constructed, like her sire, of wicker-work, and little, if at all,
inferior to him in size. She wore a rose-coloured robe, with a gold watch
as large as a warming pan at her side: her breast glittered with jewels:
her complexion was high, and her eyes and head turned with as easy a grace
as the men inside could contrive to impart to their motions. The
procession came to an end with the revolution of 1789, and has never been
revived. The giant himself indeed, who had won the affections of the
townspeople, survived his ancient glory for a little while and made shift
to appear in public a few times more at the Carnival and other festal
occasions; but his days were numbered, and within fifty years even his
memory had seemingly perished.(88)
(M29) Most towns and even villages of Brabant and Flanders have, or used
to have, similar wicker giants which were annually led about to the
delight of the populace, who loved these grotesque figures, spoke of them
with patriotic enthusiasm, and never wearied of gazing at them. The name
by which the giants went was Reuzes, and a special song called the Reuze
song was sung in the Flemish dialect while they were making their
triumphal progress through the streets. The most celebrated of these
monstrous effigies were those of Antwerp and Wetteren. At Ypres a whole
family of giants contributed to the public hilarity at the Carnival. At
Cassel and Hazebrouch, in the French department of Nord, the giants made
their annual appearance on Shrove Tuesday.(89) At Antwerp the giant was so
big that no gate in the city was large enough to let him go through; hence
he could not visit his brother giants in neighbouring towns, as the other
Belgian giants used to do on solemn occasions. He was designed in 1534 by
Peter van Aelst, painter to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and is still
preserved with other colossal figures in a large hall at Antwerp.(90) At
Ath, in the Belgian province of Hainaut, the popular procession of the
giants took place annually in August down to the year 1869 at least. For
three days the colossal effigies of Goliath and his wife, of Samson and an
Archer (_Tirant_), together with a two-headed eagle, were led about the
streets on the shoulders of twenty bearers concealed under the flowing
drapery of the giants, to the great delight of the townspeople and a crowd
of strangers who assembled to witness the pageant. The custom can be
traced back by documentary evidence to the middle of the fifteenth
century; but it appears that the practice of giving Goliath a wife dates
only from the year 1715. Their nuptials were solemnized every year on the
eve of the festival in the church of St. Julien, whither the two huge
figures were escorted by the magistrates in procession.(91)
(M30) In England artificial giants seem to have been a standing feature of
the midsummer festival. A writer of the sixteenth century speaks of
“Midsommer pageants in London, where to make the people wonder, are set
forth great and uglie gyants marching as if they were alive, and armed at
all points, but within they are stuffed full of browne paper and tow,
which the shrewd boyes, underpeering, do guilefully discover, and turne to
a greate derision.”(92) At Chester the annual pageant on Midsummer Eve
included the effigies of four giants, with animals, hobby-horses, and
other figures. An officious mayor of the town suppressed the giants in
1599, but they were restored by another mayor in 1601. Under the
Commonwealth the pageant was discontinued, and the giants and beasts were
destroyed; but after the restoration of Charles II. the old ceremony was
revived on the old date, new effigies being constructed to replace those
which had fallen victims to Roundhead bigotry. The accounts preserve a
record not only of the hoops, buckram, tinfoil, gold and silver leaf,
paint, glue, and paste which went to make up these gorgeous figures; they
also mention the arsenic which was mixed with the paste in order to
preserve the poor giants from being eaten alive by the rats.(93) At
Coventry the accounts of the Cappers’ and Drapers’ Companies in the
sixteenth century shed light on the giants which there also were carried
about the town at Midsummer; from some of the entries it appears that the
giant’s wife figured beside the giant.(94) At Burford, in Oxfordshire,
Midsummer Eve used to be celebrated with great jollity by the carrying of
a giant and a dragon up and down the town. The last survivor of these
perambulating English giants dragged out a miserable existence at
Salisbury, where an antiquary found him mouldering to decay in the
neglected hall of the Tailors’ Company about the year 1844. His bodily
framework was of lath and hoop like the one which used to be worn by
Jack-in-the-Green on May Day. The drapery, which concealed the bearer, was
of coloured chintz, bordered with red and purple, and trimmed with yellow
fringe. His head was modelled in paste-board and adorned with a gold-laced
cocked hat: his flowing locks were of tow; and in his big right hand he
brandished a branch of artificial laurel. In the days of his glory he
promenaded about the streets, dancing clumsily and attended by two men
grotesquely attired, who kept a watchful eye on his movements and checked
by the wooden sword and club which they carried any incipient tendency to
lose his balance and topple over in an undignified manner, which would
have exposed to the derision of the populace the mystery of his inner man.
The learned called him St. Christopher, the vulgar simply the giant.(95)
(M31) In these cases the giants only figure in the processions. But
sometimes they were burned in the summer bonfires. Thus the people of the
Rue aux Ours in Paris used annually to make a great wicker-work figure,
dressed as a soldier, which they promenaded up and down the streets for
several days, and solemnly burned on the third of July, the crowd of
spectators singing _Salve Regina_. A personage who bore the title of king
presided over the ceremony with a lighted torch in his hand. The burning
fragments of the image were scattered among the people, who eagerly
scrambled for them. The custom was abolished in 1743.(96) In Brie, Isle de
France, a wicker-work giant, eighteen feet high, was annually burned on
Midsummer Eve.(97)
(M32) Again, the Druidical custom of burning live animals, enclosed in
wicker-work, has its counterpart at the spring and midsummer festivals. At
Luchon in the Pyrenees on Midsummer Eve “a hollow column, composed of
strong wicker-work, is raised to the height of about sixty feet in the
centre of the principal suburb, and interlaced with green foliage up to
the very top; while the most beautiful flowers and shrubs procurable are
artistically arranged in groups below, so as to form a sort of background
to the scene. The column is then filled with combustible materials, ready
for ignition. At an appointed hour—about 8 P.M.—a grand procession,
composed of the clergy, followed by young men and maidens in holiday
attire, pour forth from the town chanting hymns, and take up their
position around the column. Meanwhile, bonfires are lit, with beautiful
effect, in the surrounding hills. As many living serpents as could be
collected are now thrown into the column, which is set on fire at the base
by means of torches, armed with which about fifty boys and men dance
around with frantic gestures. The serpents, to avoid the flames, wriggle
their way to the top, whence they are seen lashing out laterally until
finally obliged to drop, their struggles for life giving rise to
enthusiastic delight among the surrounding spectators. This is a favourite
annual ceremony for the inhabitants of Luchon and its neighbourhood, and
local tradition assigns it to a heathen origin.”(98) In the midsummer
fires formerly kindled on the Place de Grève at Paris it was the custom to
burn a basket, barrel, or sack full of live cats, which was hung from a
tall mast in the midst of the bonfire; sometimes a fox was burned. The
people collected the embers and ashes of the fire and took them home,
believing that they brought good luck. The French kings often witnessed
these spectacles and even lit the bonfire with their own hands. In 1648
Louis the Fourteenth, crowned with a wreath of roses and carrying a bunch
of roses in his hand, kindled the fire, danced at it and partook of the
banquet afterwards in the town hall. But this was the last occasion when a
monarch presided at the midsummer bonfire in Paris.(99) At Metz midsummer
fires were lighted with great pomp on the esplanade, and a dozen cats,
enclosed in wicker-cages, were burned alive in them, to the amusement of
the people.(100) Similarly at Gap, in the department of the High Alps,
cats used to be roasted over the midsummer bonfire.(101) In Russia a white
cock was sometimes burned in the midsummer bonfire;(102) in Meissen or
Thuringia a horse’s head used to be thrown into it.(103) Sometimes animals
are burned in the spring bonfires. In the Vosges cats were burned on
Shrove Tuesday; in Alsace they were thrown into the Easter bonfire.(104)
In the department of the Ardennes cats were flung into the bonfires
kindled on the first Sunday in Lent; sometimes, by a refinement of
cruelty, they were hung over the fire from the end of a pole and roasted
alive. “The cat, which represented the devil, could never suffer enough.”
While the creatures were perishing in the flames, the shepherds guarded
their flocks and forced them to leap over the fire, esteeming this an
infallible means of preserving them from disease and witchcraft.(105) We
have seen that squirrels were sometimes burned in the Easter fire.(106)
(M33) Thus it appears that the sacrificial rites of the Celts of ancient
Gaul can be traced in the popular festivals of modern Europe. Naturally it
is in France, or rather in the wider area comprised within the limits of
ancient Gaul, that these rites have left the clearest traces in the
customs of burning giants of wicker-work and animals enclosed in
wicker-work or baskets. These customs, it will have been remarked, are
generally observed at or about midsummer. From this we may infer that the
original rites of which these are the degenerate successors were
solemnized at midsummer. This inference harmonizes with the conclusion
suggested by a general survey of European folk-custom, that the midsummer
festival must on the whole have been the most widely diffused and the most
solemn of all the yearly festivals celebrated by the primitive Aryans in
Europe. At the same time we must bear in mind that among the British Celts
the chief fire-festivals of the year appear certainly to have been those
of Beltane (May Day) and Hallowe’en (the last day of October); and this
suggests a doubt whether the Celts of Gaul also may not have celebrated
their principal rites of fire, including their burnt sacrifices of men and
animals, at the beginning of May or the beginning of November rather than
at Midsummer.
(M34) We have still to ask, What is the meaning of such sacrifices? Why
were men and animals burnt to death at these festivals? If we are right in
interpreting the modern European fire-festivals as attempts to break the
power of witchcraft by burning or banning the witches and warlocks, it
seems to follow that we must explain the human sacrifices of the Celts in
the same manner; that is, we must suppose that the men whom the Druids
burnt in wicker-work images were condemned to death on the ground that
they were witches or wizards, and that the mode of execution by fire was
chosen because, as we have seen, burning alive is deemed the surest mode
of getting rid of these noxious and dangerous beings. The same explanation
would apply to the cattle and wild animals of many kinds which the Celts
burned along with the men.(107) They, too, we may conjecture, were
supposed to be either under the spell of witchcraft or actually to be the
witches and wizards, who had transformed themselves into animals for the
purpose of prosecuting their infernal plots against the welfare of their
fellow creatures. This conjecture is confirmed by the observation that the
victims most commonly burned in modern bonfires have been cats, and that
cats are precisely the animals into which, with the possible exception of
hares, witches were most usually supposed to transform themselves. Again,
we have seen that serpents and foxes used sometimes to be burnt in the
midsummer fires;(108) and Welsh and German witches are reported to have
assumed the form both of foxes and serpents.(109) In short, when we
remember the great variety of animals whose forms witches can assume at
pleasure,(110) it seems easy on this hypothesis to account for the variety
of living creatures that have been burnt at festivals both in ancient Gaul
and modern Europe; all these victims, we may surmise, were doomed to the
flames, not because they were animals, but because they were believed to
be witches who had taken the shape of animals for their nefarious
purposes. One advantage of explaining the ancient Celtic sacrifices in
this way is that it introduces, as it were, a harmony and consistency into
the treatment which Europe has meted out to witches from the earliest
times down to about two centuries ago, when the growing influence of
rationalism discredited the belief in witchcraft and put a stop to the
custom of burning witches. On this view the Christian Church in its
dealings with the black art merely carried out the traditional policy of
Druidism, and it might be a nice question to decide which of the two, in
pursuance of that policy, exterminated the larger number of innocent men
and women.(111) Be that as it may, we can now perhaps understand why the
Druids believed that the more persons they sentenced to death, the greater
would be the fertility of the land.(112) To a modern reader the connexion
at first sight may not be obvious between the activity of the hangman and
the productivity of the earth. But a little reflection may satisfy him
that when the criminals who perish at the stake or on the gallows are
witches, whose delight it is to blight the crops of the farmer or to lay
them low under storms of hail, the execution of these wretches is really
calculated to ensure an abundant harvest by removing one of the principal
causes which paralyze the efforts and blast the hopes of the husbandman.
(M35) The Druidical sacrifices which we are considering were explained in
a different way by W. Mannhardt. He supposed that the men whom the Druids
burned in wickerwork images represented the spirits of vegetation, and
accordingly that the custom of burning them was a magical ceremony
intended to secure the necessary sunshine for the crops. Similarly, he
seems to have inclined to the view that the animals which used to be burnt
in the bonfires represented the corn-spirit,(113) which, as we saw in an
earlier part of this work, is often supposed to assume the shape of an
animal.(114) This theory is no doubt tenable, and the great authority of
W. Mannhardt entitles it to careful consideration. I adopted it in former
editions of this book; but on reconsideration it seems to me on the whole
to be less probable than the theory that the men and animals burnt in the
fires perished in the character of witches. This latter view is strongly
supported by the testimony of the people who celebrate the fire-festivals,
since a popular name for the custom of kindling the fires is “burning the
witches,” effigies of witches are sometimes consumed in the flames, and
the fires, their embers, or their ashes are supposed to furnish protection
against witchcraft. On the other hand there is little to shew that the
effigies or the animals burnt in the fires are regarded by the people as
representatives of the vegetation-spirit, and that the bonfires are
sun-charms. With regard to serpents in particular, which used to be burnt
in the midsummer fire at Luchon, I am not aware of any certain evidence
that in Europe snakes have been regarded as embodiments of the tree-spirit
or corn-spirit,(115) though in other parts of the world the conception
appears to be not unknown.(116) Whereas the popular faith in the
transformation of witches into animals is so general and deeply rooted,
and the fear of these uncanny beings is so strong, that it seems safer to
suppose that the cats and other animals which were burnt in the fire
suffered death as embodiments of witches than that they perished as
representatives of vegetation-spirits.