(M60) The reader may remember that the preceding account of the popular
fire-festivals of Europe was suggested by the myth of the Norse god
Balder, who is said to have been slain by a branch of mistletoe and burnt
in a great fire. We have now to enquire how far the customs which have
been passed in review help to shed light on the myth. In this enquiry it
may be convenient to begin with the mistletoe, the instrument of Balder’s
death.
(M61) From time immemorial the mistletoe has been the object of
superstitious veneration in Europe. It was worshipped by the Druids, as we
learn from a famous passage of Pliny. After enumerating the different
kinds of mistletoe, he proceeds: “In treating of this subject, the
admiration in which the mistletoe is held throughout Gaul ought not to
pass unnoticed. The Druids, for so they call their wizards, esteem nothing
more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree on which it grows, provided
only that the tree is an oak. But apart from this they choose oak-woods
for their sacred groves and perform no sacred rites without oak-leaves; so
that the very name of Druids may be regarded as a Greek appellation
derived from their worship of the oak.(248) For they believe that whatever
grows on these trees is sent from heaven, and is a sign that the tree has
been chosen by the god himself. The mistletoe is very rarely to be met
with; but when it is found, they gather it with solemn ceremony. This they
do above all on the sixth day of the moon, from whence they date the
beginnings of their months, of their years, and of their thirty years’
cycle, because by the sixth day the moon has plenty of vigour and has not
run half its course. After due preparations have been made for a sacrifice
and a feast under the tree, they hail it as the universal healer and bring
to the spot two white bulls, whose horns have never been bound before. A
priest clad in a white robe climbs the tree and with a golden sickle cuts
the mistletoe, which is caught in a white cloth. Then they sacrifice the
victims, praying that God may make his own gift to prosper with those upon
whom he has bestowed it. They believe that a potion prepared from
mistletoe will make barren animals to bring forth, and that the plant is a
remedy against all poison. So much of men’s religion is commonly concerned
with trifles.”(249)
(M62) In another passage Pliny tells us that in medicine the mistletoe
which grows on an oak was esteemed the most efficacious, and that its
efficacy was by some superstitious people supposed to be increased if the
plant was gathered on the first day of the moon without the use of iron,
and if when gathered it was not allowed to touch the earth; oak-mistletoe
thus obtained was deemed a cure for epilepsy; carried about by women it
assisted them to conceive; and it healed ulcers most effectually, if only
the sufferer chewed a piece of the plant and laid another piece on the
sore.(250) Yet, again, he says that mistletoe was supposed, like vinegar
and an egg, to be an excellent means of extinguishing a fire.(251)
(M63) If in these latter passages Pliny refers, as he apparently does, to
the beliefs current among his contemporaries in Italy, it will follow that
the Druids and the Italians were to some extent agreed as to the valuable
properties possessed by mistletoe which grows on an oak; both of them
deemed it an effectual remedy for a number of ailments, and both of them
ascribed to it a quickening virtue, the Druids believing that a potion
prepared from mistletoe would fertilize barren cattle, and the Italians
holding that a piece of mistletoe carried about by a woman would help her
to conceive a child. Further, both peoples thought that if the plant were
to exert its medicinal properties it must be gathered in a certain way and
at a certain time. It might not be cut with iron, hence the Druids cut it
with gold; and it might not touch the earth, hence the Druids caught it in
a white cloth. In choosing the time for gathering the plant, both peoples
were determined by observation of the moon; only they differed as to the
particular day of the moon, the Italians preferring the first, and the
Druids the sixth.
(M64) With these beliefs of the ancient Gauls and Italians as to the
wonderful medicinal properties of mistletoe we may compare the similar
beliefs of the modern Ainos of Japan. We read that they, “like many
nations of the Northern origin, hold the mistletoe in peculiar veneration.
They look upon it as a medicine, good in almost every disease, and it is
sometimes taken in food and at others separately as a decoction. The
leaves are used in preference to the berries, the latter being of too
sticky a nature for general purposes.... But many, too, suppose this plant
to have the power of making the gardens bear plentifully. When used for
this purpose, the leaves are cut up into fine pieces, and, after having
been prayed over, are sown with the millet and other seeds, a little also
being eaten with the food. Barren women have also been known to eat the
mistletoe, in order to be made to bear children. That mistletoe which
grows upon the willow is supposed to have the greatest efficacy. This is
because the willow is looked upon by them as being an especially sacred
tree.”(252)
(M65) Thus the Ainos agree with the Druids in regarding mistletoe as a
cure for almost every disease, and they agree with the ancient Italians
that applied to women it helps them to bear children. A similar belief as
to the fertilizing influence of mistletoe, or of similar plants, upon
women is entertained by the natives of Mabuiag, an island in Torres
Straits. These savages imagine that twins can be produced “by the pregnant
woman touching or breaking a branch of a loranthaceous plant (_Viscum
sp._, probably _V. orientale_) parasitic on a tree, _mader_. The wood of
this tree is much esteemed for making digging sticks and as firewood, no
twin-producing properties are inherent in it, nor is it regarded as being
infected with the properties of its twin-producing parasite.”(253) Again,
the Druidical notion that the mistletoe was an “all-healer” or panacea may
be compared with a notion entertained by the Walos of Senegambia. These
people “have much veneration for a sort of mistletoe, which they call
_tob_; they carry leaves of it on their persons when they go to war as a
preservative against wounds, just as if the leaves were real talismans
(_gris-gris_).” The French writer who records this practice adds: “Is it
not very curious that the mistletoe should be in this part of Africa what
it was in the superstitions of the Gauls? This prejudice, common to the
two countries, may have the same origin; blacks and whites will doubtless
have seen, each of them for themselves, something supernatural in a plant
which grows and flourishes without having roots in the earth. May they not
have believed, in fact, that it was a plant fallen from the sky, a gift of
the divinity?”(254)
(M66) This suggestion as to the origin of the superstition is strongly
confirmed by the Druidical belief, reported by Pliny, that whatever grew
on an oak was sent from heaven and was a sign that the tree had been
chosen by the god himself.(255) Such a belief explains why the Druids cut
the mistletoe, not with a common knife, but with a golden sickle,(256) and
why, when cut, it was not suffered to touch the earth; probably they
thought that the celestial plant would have been profaned and its
marvellous virtue lost by contact with the ground. With the ritual
observed by the Druids in cutting the mistletoe we may compare the ritual
which in Cambodia is prescribed in a similar case. They say that when you
see an orchid growing as a parasite on a tamarind tree, you should dress
in white, take a new earthenware pot, then climb the tree at noon, break
off the plant, put it in the pot, and let the pot fall to the ground.
After that you make in the pot a decoction which confers the gift of
invulnerability.(257) Thus just as in Africa the leaves of one parasitic
plant are supposed to render the wearer invulnerable, so in Cambodia a
decoction made from another parasitic plant is considered to render the
same service to such as make use of it, whether by drinking or washing. We
may conjecture that in both places the notion of invulnerability is
suggested by the position of the plant, which, occupying a place of
comparative security above the ground, appears to promise to its fortunate
possessor a similar security from some of the ills that beset the life of
man on earth. We have already met with many examples of the store which
the primitive mind sets on such vantage grounds.(258)
(M67) Whatever may be the origin of these beliefs and practices concerning
the mistletoe, certain it is that some of them have their analogies in the
folk-lore of modern European peasants. For example, it is laid down as a
rule in various parts of Europe that mistletoe may not be cut in the
ordinary way but must be shot or knocked down with stones from the tree on
which it is growing. Thus, in the Swiss canton of Aargau “all parasitic
plants are esteemed in a certain sense holy by the country folk, but most
particularly so the mistletoe growing on an oak. They ascribe great powers
to it, but shrink from cutting it off in the usual manner. Instead of that
they procure it in the following manner. When the sun is in Sagittarius
and the moon is on the wane, on the first, third, or fourth day before the
new moon, one ought to shoot down with an arrow the mistletoe of an oak
and to catch it with the left hand as it falls. Such mistletoe is a remedy
for every ailment of children.”(259) Here among the Swiss peasants, as
among the Druids of old, special virtue is ascribed to mistletoe which
grows on an oak: it may not be cut in the usual way: it must be caught as
it falls to the ground; and it is esteemed a panacea for all diseases, at
least of children. In Sweden, also, it is a popular superstition that if
mistletoe is to possess its peculiar virtue, it must either be shot down
out of the oak or knocked down with stones.(260) Similarly, “so late as
the early part of the nineteenth century, people in Wales believed that
for the mistletoe to have any power, it must be shot or struck down with
stones off the tree where it grew.”(261)
(M68) Again, in respect of the healing virtues of mistletoe the opinion of
modern peasants, and even of the learned, has to some extent agreed with
that of the ancients. The Druids appear to have called the plant, or
perhaps the oak on which it grew, the “all-healer”;(262) and “all-healer”
is said to be still a name of the mistletoe in the modern Celtic speech of
Brittany, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland.(263) On St. John’s morning
(Midsummer morning) peasants of Piedmont and Lombardy go out to search the
oak-leaves for the “oil of St. John,” which is supposed to heal all wounds
made with cutting instruments.(264) Originally, perhaps, the “oil of St.
John” was simply the mistletoe, or a decoction made from it. For in
Holstein the mistletoe, especially oak-mistletoe, is still regarded as a
panacea for green wounds and as a sure charm to secure success in
hunting;(265) and at Lacaune, in the south of France, the old Druidical
belief in the mistletoe as an antidote to all poisons still survives among
the peasantry; they apply the plant to the stomach of the sufferer or give
him a decoction of it to drink.(266) Again, the ancient belief that
mistletoe is a cure for epilepsy has survived in modern times not only
among the ignorant but among the learned. Thus in Sweden persons afflicted
with the falling sickness think they can ward off attacks of the malady by
carrying about with them a knife which has a handle of oak mistletoe;(267)
and in Germany for a similar purpose pieces of mistletoe used to be hung
round the necks of children.(268) In the French province of Bourbonnais a
popular remedy for epilepsy is a decoction of mistletoe which has been
gathered on an oak on St. John’s Day and boiled with rye-flour.(269) So at
Bottesford in Lincolnshire a decoction of mistletoe is supposed to be a
palliative for this terrible disease.(270) Indeed mistletoe was
recommended as a remedy for the falling sickness by high medical
authorities in England and Holland down to the eighteenth century.(271) At
Kirton-in-Lindsey, in Lincolnshire, it is thought that St. Vitus’s dance
may be cured by the water in which mistletoe berries have been
boiled.(272) In the Scotch shires of Elgin and Moray, down to the second
half of the eighteenth century, at the full moon of March people used to
cut withes of mistletoe or ivy, make circles of them, keep them all the
year, and profess to cure hectics and other troubles by means of
them.(273) In Sweden, apparently, for other complaints a sprig of
mistletoe is hung round the patient’s neck or a ring of it is worn on his
finger.(274)
(M69) However, the opinion of the medical profession as to the curative
virtues of mistletoe has undergone a radical alteration. Whereas the
Druids thought that mistletoe cured everything, modern doctors appear to
think that it cures nothing.(275) If they are right, we must conclude that
the ancient and widespread faith in the medicinal virtue of mistletoe is a
pure superstition based on nothing better than the fanciful inferences
which ignorance has drawn from the parasitic nature of the plant, its
position high up on the branch of a tree seeming to protect it from the
dangers to which plants and animals are subject on the surface of the
ground. From this point of view we can perhaps understand why mistletoe
has so long and so persistently been prescribed as a cure for the falling
sickness. As mistletoe cannot fall to the ground because it is rooted on
the branch of a tree high above the earth, it seems to follow as a
necessary consequence that an epileptic patient cannot possibly fall down
in a fit so long as he carries a piece of mistletoe in his pocket or a
decoction of mistletoe in his stomach. Such a train of reasoning would
probably be regarded even now as cogent by a large portion of the human
species.
(M70) Again the ancient Italian opinion that mistletoe extinguishes fire
appears to be shared by Swedish peasants, who hang up bunches of
oak-mistletoe on the ceilings of their rooms as a protection against harm
in general and conflagration in particular.(276) A hint as to the way in
which mistletoe comes to be possessed of this property is furnished by the
epithet “thunder-besom,” which people of the Aargau canton in Switzerland
apply to the plant.(277) For a thunder-besom is a shaggy, bushy
excrescence on branches of trees, which is popularly believed to be
produced by a flash of lightning;(278) hence in Bohemia a thunder-besom
burnt in the fire protects the house against being struck by a
thunder-bolt.(279) Being itself a product of lightning it naturally
serves, on homoeopathic principles, as a protection against lightning, in
fact as a kind of lightning-conductor. Hence the fire which mistletoe in
Sweden is designed especially to avert from houses may be fire kindled by
lightning; though no doubt the plant is equally effective against
conflagration in general.
(M71) Again, mistletoe acts as a master-key as well as a
lightning-conductor; for it is said to open all locks.(280) However, in
the Tyrol it can only exert this power “under certain circumstances,”
which are not specified.(281) But perhaps the most precious of all the
virtues of mistletoe is that it affords efficient protection against
sorcery and witchcraft.(282) That, no doubt, is the reason why in Austria
a twig of mistletoe is laid on the threshold as a preventive of
nightmare;(283) and it may be the reason why in the north of England they
say that if you wish your dairy to thrive you should give your bunch of
mistletoe to the first cow that calves after New Year’s Day,(284) for it
is well known that nothing is so fatal to milk and butter as witchcraft.
Similarly in Wales, for the sake of ensuring good luck to the dairy,
people used to give a branch of mistletoe to the first cow that gave birth
to a calf after the first hour of the New Year; and in rural districts of
Wales, where mistletoe abounded, there was always a profusion of it in the
farmhouses. When mistletoe was scarce, Welsh farmers used to say, “No
mistletoe, no luck”; but if there was a fine crop of mistletoe, they
expected a fine crop of corn.(285) In Sweden mistletoe is diligently
sought after on St. John’s Eve, the people “believing it to be, in a high
degree, possessed of mystic qualities; and that if a sprig of it be
attached to the ceiling of the dwelling-house, the horse’s stall, or the
cow’s crib, the Troll will then be powerless to injure either man or
beast.”(286)
(M72) With regard to the time when the mistletoe should be gathered
opinions have varied. The Druids gathered it above all on the sixth day of
the moon, the ancient Italians apparently on the first day of the
moon.(287) In modern times some have preferred the full moon of March and
others the waning moon of winter when the sun is in Sagittarius.(288) But
the favourite time would seem to be Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Day. We
have seen that both in France and Sweden special virtues are ascribed to
mistletoe gathered at Midsummer.(289) The rule in Sweden is that
“mistletoe must be cut on the night of Midsummer Eve when sun and moon
stand in the sign of their might.”(290) Again, in Wales it was believed
that a sprig of mistletoe gathered on St. John’s Eve (Midsummer Eve), or
at any time before the berries appeared, would induce dreams of omen, both
good and bad, if it were placed under the pillow of the sleeper.(291) Thus
mistletoe is one of the many plants whose magical or medicinal virtues are
believed to culminate with the culmination of the sun on the longest day
of the year. Hence it seems reasonable to conjecture that in the eyes of
the Druids, also, who revered the plant so highly, the sacred mistletoe
may have acquired a double portion of its mystic qualities at the solstice
in June, and that accordingly they may have regularly cut it with solemn
ceremony on Midsummer Eve.
(M73) Be that as it may, certain it is that the mistletoe, the instrument
of Balder’s death, has been regularly gathered for the sake of its mystic
qualities on Midsummer Eve in Scandinavia, Balder’s home.(292) The plant
is found commonly growing on pear-trees, oaks, and other trees in thick
damp woods throughout the more temperate parts of Sweden.(293) Thus one of
the two main incidents of Balder’s myth is reproduced in the great
midsummer festival of Scandinavia. But the other main incident of the
myth, the burning of Balder’s body on a pyre, has also its counterpart in
the bonfires which still blaze, or blazed till lately, in Denmark, Norway,
and Sweden on Midsummer Eve.(294) It does not appear, indeed, that any
effigy is burned in these bonfires; but the burning of an effigy is a
feature which might easily drop out after its meaning was forgotten. And
the name of Balder’s balefires (_Balder’s Bălar_), by which these
midsummer fires were formerly known in Sweden,(295) puts their connexion
with Balder beyond the reach of doubt, and makes it probable that in
former times either a living representative or an effigy of Balder was
annually burned in them. Midsummer was the season sacred to Balder, and
the Swedish poet Tegner, in placing the burning of Balder at
midsummer,(296) may very well have followed an old tradition that the
summer solstice was the time when the good god came to his untimely end.
(M74) Thus it has been shewn that the leading incidents of the Balder myth
have their counterparts in those fire-festivals of our European peasantry
which undoubtedly date from a time long prior to the introduction of
Christianity. The pretence of throwing the victim chosen by lot into the
Beltane fire,(297) and the similar treatment of the man, the future Green
Wolf, at the midsummer bonfire in Normandy,(298) may naturally be
interpreted as traces of an older custom of actually burning human beings
on these occasions; and the green dress of the Green Wolf, coupled with
the leafy envelope of the young fellow who trod out the midsummer fire at
Moosheim,(299) seems to hint that the persons who perished at these
festivals did so in the character of tree-spirits or deities of
vegetation. From all this we may reasonably infer that in the Balder myth
on the one hand, and the fire-festivals and custom of gathering mistletoe
on the other hand, we have, as it were, the two broken and dissevered
halves of an original whole. In other words, we may assume with some
degree of probability that the myth of Balder’s death was not merely a
myth, that is, a description of physical phenomena in imagery borrowed
from human life, but that it was at the same time the story which people
told to explain why they annually burned a human representative of the god
and cut the mistletoe with solemn ceremony. If I am right, the story of
Balder’s tragic end formed, so to say, the text of the sacred drama which
was acted year by year as a magical rite to cause the sun to shine, trees
to grow, crops to thrive, and to guard man and beast from the baleful arts
of fairies and trolls, of witches and warlocks. The tale belonged, in
short, to that class of nature myths which are meant to be supplemented by
ritual; here, as so often, myth stood to magic in the relation of theory
to practice.
(M75) But if the victims—the human Balders—who died by fire, whether in
spring or at midsummer, were put to death as living embodiments of
tree-spirits or deities of vegetation, it would seem that Balder himself
must have been a tree-spirit or deity of vegetation. It becomes desirable,
therefore, to determine, if we can, the particular kind of tree or trees,
of which a personal representative was burned at the fire-festivals. For
we may be quite sure that it was not as a representative of vegetation in
general that the victim suffered death. The idea of vegetation in general
is too abstract to be primitive. Most probably the victim at first
represented a particular kind of sacred tree. Now of all European trees
none has such claims as the oak to be considered as pre-eminently the
sacred tree of the Aryans. Its worship is attested for all the great
branches of the Aryan stock in Europe. We have seen that it was not only
the sacred tree, but the principal object of worship of both Celts and
Lithuanians.(300) The roving Celts appear to have carried their worship of
the oak with them even to Asia; for in the heart of Asia Minor the
Galatian senate met in a place which bore the pure Celtic name of
Drynemetum or “temple of the oak.”(301) Among the Slavs the oak seems to
have been the sacred tree of the great god Perun.(302) According to Grimm,
the oak ranked first among the holy trees of the Germans. It is certainly
known to have been adored by them in the age of heathendom, and traces of
its worship have survived in various parts of Germany almost to the
present day.(303) Among the ancient Italians the oak was sacred above all
other trees.(304) The image of Jupiter on the Capitol at Rome seems to
have been originally nothing but a natural oak-tree.(305) At Dodona,
perhaps the oldest of all Greek sanctuaries, Zeus was worshipped as
immanent in the sacred oak, and the rustling of its leaves in the wind was
his voice.(306) If, then, the great god of both Greeks and Romans was
represented in some of his oldest shrines under the form of an oak, and if
the oak was the principal object of worship of Celts, Germans, and
Lithuanians, we may certainly conclude that this tree was venerated by the
Aryans in common before the dispersion; and that their primitive home must
have lain in a land which was clothed with forests of oak.(307)
(M76) Now, considering the primitive character and remarkable similarity
of the fire-festivals observed by all the branches of the Aryan race in
Europe, we may infer that these festivals form part of the common stock of
religious observances which the various peoples carried with them in their
wanderings from their old home. But, if I am right, an essential feature
of those primitive fire-festivals was the burning of a man who represented
the tree-spirit. In view, then, of the place occupied by the oak in the
religion of the Aryans, the presumption is that the tree so represented at
the fire-festivals must originally have been the oak. So far as the Celts
and Lithuanians are concerned, this conclusion will perhaps hardly be
contested. But both for them and for the Germans it is confirmed by a
remarkable piece of religious conservatism. The most primitive method
known to man of producing fire is by rubbing two pieces of wood against
each other till they ignite; and we have seen that this method is still
used in Europe for kindling sacred fires such as the need-fire, and that
most probably it was formerly resorted to at all the fire-festivals under
discussion. Now it is sometimes required that the need-fire, or other
sacred fire, should be made by the friction of a particular kind of wood;
and when the kind of wood is prescribed, whether among Celts, Germans, or
Slavs, that wood appears to be generally the oak.(308) Thus we have seen
that amongst the Slavs of Masuren the new fire for the village is made on
Midsummer Day by causing a wheel to revolve rapidly round an axle of oak
till the axle takes fire.(309) When the perpetual fire which the ancient
Slavs used to maintain chanced to go out, it was rekindled by the friction
of a piece of oak-wood, which had been previously heated by being struck
with a grey (not a red) stone.(310) In Germany and the Highlands of
Scotland the need-fire was regularly, and in Russia and among the South
Slavs it was sometimes, kindled by the friction of oak-wood;(311) and both
in Wales and the Highlands of Scotland the Beltane fires were lighted by
similar means.(312) Now, if the sacred fire was regularly kindled by the
friction of oak-wood, we may infer that originally the fire was also fed
with the same material. In point of fact, it appears that the perpetual
fire of Vesta at Rome was fed with oak-wood,(313) and that oak-wood was
the fuel consumed in the perpetual fire which burned under the sacred oak
at the great Lithuanian sanctuary of Romove.(314) Further, that oak-wood
was formerly the fuel burned in the midsummer fires may perhaps be
inferred from the custom, said to be still observed by peasants in many
mountain districts of Germany, of making up the cottage fire on Midsummer
Day with a heavy block of oak-wood. The block is so arranged that it
smoulders slowly and is not finally reduced to charcoal till the expiry of
a year. Then upon next Midsummer Day the charred embers of the old log are
removed to make room for the new one, and are mixed with the seed-corn or
scattered about the garden. This is believed to guard the food cooked on
the hearth from witchcraft, to preserve the luck of the house, to promote
the growth of the crops, and to preserve them from blight and vermin.(315)
Thus the custom is almost exactly parallel to that of the Yule-log, which
in parts of Germany, France, England, Servia, and other Slavonic lands was
commonly of oak-wood.(316) At the Boeotian festival of the Daedala, the
analogy of which to the spring and midsummer festivals of modern Europe
has been already pointed out, the great feature was the felling and
burning of an oak.(317) The general conclusion is, that at those periodic
or occasional ceremonies the ancient Aryans both kindled and fed the fire
with the sacred oak-wood.(318)
(M77) But if at these solemn rites the fire was regularly made of
oak-wood, it follows that any man who was burned in it as a
personification of the tree-spirit could have represented no tree but the
oak. The sacred oak was thus burned in duplicate; the wood of the tree was
consumed in the fire, and along with it was consumed a living man as a
personification of the oak-spirit. The conclusion thus drawn for the
European Aryans in general is confirmed in its special application to the
Scandinavians by the relation in which amongst them the mistletoe appears
to have stood to the burning of the victim in the midsummer fire. We have
seen that among Scandinavians it has been customary to gather the
mistletoe at midsummer. But so far as appears on the face of this custom,
there is nothing to connect it with the midsummer fires in which human
victims or effigies of them were burned. Even if the fire, as seems
probable, was originally always made with oak-wood, why should it have
been necessary to pull the mistletoe? The last link between the midsummer
customs of gathering the mistletoe and lighting the bonfires is supplied
by Balder’s myth, which can hardly be disjoined from the customs in
question. The myth suggests that a vital connexion may once have been
believed to subsist between the mistletoe and the human representative of
the oak who was burned in the fire. According to the myth, Balder could be
killed by nothing in heaven or earth except the mistletoe; and so long as
the mistletoe remained on the oak, he was not only immortal but
invulnerable. Now, if we suppose that Balder was the oak, the origin of
the myth becomes intelligible. The mistletoe was viewed as the seat of
life of the oak, and so long as it was uninjured nothing could kill or
even wound the oak. The conception of the mistletoe as the seat of life of
the oak would naturally be suggested to primitive people by the
observation that while the oak is deciduous, the mistletoe which grows on
it is evergreen. In winter the sight of its fresh foliage among the bare
branches must have been hailed by the worshippers of the tree as a sign
that the divine life which had ceased to animate the branches yet survived
in the mistletoe, as the heart of a sleeper still beats when his body is
motionless. Hence when the god had to be killed—when the sacred tree had
to be burnt—it was necessary to begin by breaking off the mistletoe. For
so long as the mistletoe remained intact, the oak (so people might think)
was invulnerable; all the blows of their knives and axes would glance
harmless from its surface. But once tear from the oak its sacred heart—the
mistletoe—and the tree nodded to its fall. And when in later times the
spirit of the oak came to be represented by a living man, it was logically
necessary to suppose that, like the tree he personated, he could neither
be killed nor wounded so long as the mistletoe remained uninjured. The
pulling of the mistletoe was thus at once the signal and the cause of his
death.
(M78) On this view the invulnerable Balder is neither more nor less than a
personification of a mistletoe-bearing oak. The interpretation is
confirmed by what seems to have been an ancient Italian belief, that the
mistletoe can be destroyed neither by fire nor water;(319) for if the
parasite is thus deemed indestructible, it might easily be supposed to
communicate its own indestructibility to the tree on which it grows, so
long as the two remain in conjunction. Or to put the same idea in mythical
form we might tell how the kindly god of the oak had his life securely
deposited in the imperishable mistletoe which grew among the branches; how
accordingly so long as the mistletoe kept its place there, the deity
himself remained invulnerable; and how at last a cunning foe, let into the
secret of the god’s invulnerability, tore the mistletoe from the oak,
thereby killing the oak-god and afterwards burning his body in a fire
which could have made no impression on him so long as the incombustible
parasite retained its seat among the boughs.
(M79) But since the idea of a being whose life is thus, in a sense,
outside himself, must be strange to many readers, and has, indeed, not yet
been recognized in its full bearing on primitive superstition, it will be
worth while to illustrate it by examples drawn both from story and custom.
The result will be to shew that, in assuming this idea as the explanation
of Balder’s relation to the mistletoe, I assume a principle which is
deeply engraved on the mind of primitive man.