(M214) Thus the view that Balder’s life was in the mistletoe is entirely
in harmony with primitive modes of thought. It may indeed sound like a
contradiction that, if his life was in the mistletoe, he should
nevertheless have been killed by a blow from the plant. But when a
person’s life is conceived as embodied in a particular object, with the
existence of which his own existence is inseparably bound up, and the
destruction of which involves his own, the object in question may be
regarded and spoken of indifferently as his life or his death, as happens
in the fairy tales. Hence if a man’s death is in an object, it is
perfectly natural that he should be killed by a blow from it. In the fairy
tales Koshchei the Deathless is killed by a blow from the egg or the stone
in which his life or death is secreted;(675) the ogres burst when a
certain grain of sand—doubtless containing their life or death—is carried
over their heads;(676) the magician dies when the stone in which his life
or death is contained is put under his pillow;(677) and the Tartar hero is
warned that he may be killed by the golden arrow or golden sword in which
his soul has been stowed away.(678)
(M215) The idea that the life of the oak was in the mistletoe was probably
suggested, as I have said, by the observation that in winter the mistletoe
growing on the oak remains green while the oak itself is leafless. But the
position of the plant—growing not from the ground but from the trunk or
branches of the tree—might confirm this idea. Primitive man might think
that, like himself, the oak-spirit had sought to deposit his life in some
safe place, and for this purpose had pitched on the mistletoe, which,
being in a sense neither on earth nor in heaven, might be supposed to be
fairly out of harm’s way. In the first chapter we saw that primitive man
seeks to preserve the life of his human divinities by keeping them poised
between earth and heaven, as the place where they are least likely to be
assailed by the dangers that encompass the life of man on earth. We can
therefore understand why it has been a rule both of ancient and of modern
folk-medicine that the mistletoe should not be allowed to touch the
ground; were it to touch the ground, its healing virtue would be
gone.(679) This may be a survival of the old superstition that the plant
in which the life of the sacred tree was concentrated should not be
exposed to the risk incurred by contact with the earth. In an Indian
legend, which offers a parallel to the Balder myth, Indra swore to the
demon Namuci that he would slay him neither by day nor by night, neither
with staff nor with bow, neither with the palm of the hand nor with the
fist, neither with the wet nor with the dry. But he killed him in the
morning twilight by sprinkling over him the foam of the sea.(680) The foam
of the sea is just such an object as a savage might choose to put his life
in, because it occupies that sort of intermediate or nondescript position
between earth and sky or sea and sky in which primitive man sees safety.
It is therefore not surprising that the foam of the river should be the
totem of a clan in India.(681)
(M216) Again, the view that the mistletoe owes its mystic character partly
to its not growing on the ground is confirmed by a parallel superstition
about the mountain-ash or rowan-tree. In Jutland a rowan that is found
growing out of the top of another tree is esteemed “exceedingly effective
against witchcraft: since it does not grow on the ground witches have no
power over it; if it is to have its full effect it must be cut on
Ascension Day.”(682) Hence it is placed over doors to prevent the ingress
of witches.(683) In Sweden and Norway, also, magical properties are
ascribed to a “flying-rowan” (_flögrönn_), that is to a rowan which is
found growing not in the ordinary fashion on the ground but on another
tree, or on a roof, or in a cleft of the rock, where it has sprouted from
seed scattered by birds. They say that a man who is out in the dark should
have a bit of “flying-rowan” with him to chew; else he runs a risk of
being bewitched and of being unable to stir from the spot.(684) A
Norwegian story relates how once on a time a Troll so bewitched some men
who were ploughing in a field that they could not drive a straight furrow;
only one of the ploughmen was able to resist the enchantment because by
good luck his plough was made out of a “flying-rowan.”(685) In Sweden,
too, the “flying-rowan” is used to make the divining rod, which discovers
hidden treasures. This useful art has nowadays unfortunately been almost
forgotten, but three hundred years ago it was in full bloom, as we gather
from the following contemporary account. “If in the woods or elsewhere, on
old walls or on high mountains or rocks you perceive a rowan-tree (_runn_)
which has sprung from a seed that a bird has dropped from its bill, you
must either knock or break off that rod or tree in the twilight between
the third day and the night after Ladyday. But you must take care that
neither iron nor steel touches it and that in carrying it home you do not
let it fall on the ground. Then place it under the roof on a spot under
which you have laid various metals, and you will soon be surprised to see
how that rod under the roof gradually bends in the direction of the
metals. When your rod has sat there in the same spot for fourteen days or
more, you take a knife or an awl, which has been stroked with a magnet,
and with it you slit the bark on all sides, and pour or drop the blood of
a cock (best of all the blood from the comb of a cock which is all of one
colour) on the said slits in the bark; and when the blood has dried, the
rod is ready and will give public proof of the efficacy of its marvellous
properties.”(686) Just as in Scandinavia the parasitic rowan is deemed a
countercharm to sorcery, so in Germany the parasitic mistletoe is still
commonly considered a protection against witchcraft, and in Sweden, as we
saw, the mistletoe which is gathered on Midsummer Eve is attached to the
ceiling of the house, the horse’s stall or the cow’s crib, in the belief
that this renders the Troll powerless to injure man or beast.(687)
(M217) The view that the mistletoe was not merely the instrument of
Balder’s death, but that it contained his life, is countenanced by the
analogy of a Scottish superstition. Tradition ran that the fate of the
Hays of Errol, an estate in Perthshire, near the Firth of Tay, was bound
up with the mistletoe that grew on a certain great oak. A member of the
Hay family has recorded the old belief as follows: “Among the low country
families the badges are now almost generally forgotten; but it appears by
an ancient MS. and the tradition of a few old people in Perthshire, that
the badge of the Hays was the mistletoe. There was formerly in the
neighbourhood of Errol, and not far from the Falcon stone, a vast oak of
an unknown age, and upon which grew a profusion of the plant: many charms
and legends were considered to be connected with the tree, and the
duration of the family of Hay was said to be united with its existence. It
was believed that a sprig of the mistletoe cut by a Hay on Allhallowmas
eve, with a new dirk, and after surrounding the tree three times sunwise,
and pronouncing a certain spell, was a sure charm against all glamour or
witchery, and an infallible guard in the day of battle. A spray gathered
in the same manner was placed in the cradle of infants, and thought to
defend them from being changed for elf-bairns by the fairies. Finally, it
was affirmed, that when the root of the oak had perished, ‘the grass
should grow in the hearth of Errol, and a raven should sit in the falcon’s
nest.’ The two most unlucky deeds which could be done by one of the name
of Hay were, to kill a white falcon, and to cut down a limb from the oak
of Errol. When the old tree was destroyed I could never learn. The estate
has been some time sold out of the family of Hay, and of course it is said
that the fatal oak was cut down a short time before.”(688) The old
superstition is recorded in verses which are traditionally ascribed to
Thomas the Rhymer:—
“_While the mistletoe bats on Errol’s aik,_
_And that aik stands fast,_
_The Hays shall flourish, and their good grey hawk_
_Shall nocht flinch before the blast._
_But when the root of the aik decays,_
_And the mistletoe dwines on its withered breast,_
_The grass shall grow on Errol’s hearthstane,_
_And the corbie roup in the falcon’s nest._”(689)
(M218) The idea that the fate of a family, as distinct from the lives of
its members, is bound up with a particular plant or tree, is no doubt
comparatively modern. The older view may have been that the lives of all
the Hays were in this particular mistletoe, just as in the Indian story
the lives of all the ogres are in a lemon; to break a twig of the
mistletoe would then have been to kill one of the Hays. Similarly in the
island of Rum, whose bold mountains the voyager from Oban to Skye observes
to seaward, it was thought that if one of the family of Lachlin shot a
deer on the mountain of Finchra, he would die suddenly or contract a
distemper which would soon prove fatal.(690) Probably the life of the
Lachlins was bound up with the deer on Finchra, as the life of the Hays
was bound up with the mistletoe on Errol’s oak, and the life of the
Dalhousie family with the Edgewell Tree.
(M219) It is not a new opinion that the Golden Bough was the
mistletoe.(691) True, Virgil does not identify but only compares it with
mistletoe. But this may be only a poetical device to cast a mystic glamour
over the humble plant. Or, more probably, his description was based on a
popular superstition that at certain times the mistletoe blazed out into a
supernatural golden glory. The poet tells how two doves, guiding Aeneas to
the gloomy vale in whose depth grew the Golden Bough, alighted upon a
tree, “whence shone a flickering gleam of gold. As in the woods in winter
cold the mistletoe—a plant not native to its tree—is green with fresh
leaves and twines its yellow berries about the boles; such seemed upon the
shady holm-oak the leafy gold, so rustled in the gentle breeze the golden
leaf.”(692) Here Virgil definitely describes the Golden Bough as growing
on a holm-oak, and compares it with the mistletoe. The inference is almost
inevitable that the Golden Bough was nothing but the mistletoe seen
through the haze of poetry or of popular superstition.
(M220) Now grounds have been shewn for believing that the priest of the
Arician grove—the King of the Wood—personified the tree on which grew the
Golden Bough.(693) Hence if that tree was the oak, the King of the Wood
must have been a personification of the oak-spirit. It is, therefore, easy
to understand why, before he could be slain, it was necessary to break the
Golden Bough. As an oak-spirit, his life or death was in the mistletoe on
the oak, and so long as the mistletoe remained intact, he, like Balder,
could not die. To slay him, therefore, it was necessary to break the
mistletoe, and probably, as in the case of Balder, to throw it at him. And
to complete the parallel, it is only necessary to suppose that the King of
the Wood was formerly burned, dead or alive, at the midsummer fire
festival which, as we have seen, was annually celebrated in the Arician
grove.(694) The perpetual fire which burned in the grove, like the
perpetual fire which burned in the temple of Vesta at Rome and under the
oak at Romove,(695) was probably fed with the sacred oak-wood; and thus it
would be in a great fire of oak that the King of the Wood formerly met his
end. At a later time, as I have suggested, his annual tenure of office was
lengthened or shortened, as the case might be, by the rule which allowed
him to live so long as he could prove his divine right by the strong hand.
But he only escaped the fire to fall by the sword.
(M221) Thus it seems that at a remote age in the heart of Italy, beside
the sweet Lake of Nemi, the same fiery tragedy was annually enacted which
Italian merchants and soldiers were afterwards to witness among their rude
kindred, the Celts of Gaul, and which, if the Roman eagles had ever
swooped on Norway, might have been found repeated with little difference
among the barbarous Aryans of the North. The rite was probably an
essential feature in the ancient Aryan worship of the oak.(696)
(M222) It only remains to ask, Why was the mistletoe called the Golden
Bough?(697) The whitish-yellow of the mistletoe berries is hardly enough
to account for the name, for Virgil says that the bough was altogether
golden, stem as well as leaves.(698) Perhaps the name may be derived from
the rich golden yellow which a bough of mistletoe assumes when it has been
cut and kept for some months; the bright tint is not confined to the
leaves, but spreads to the stalks as well, so that the whole branch
appears to be indeed a Golden Bough. Breton peasants hang up great bunches
of mistletoe in front of their cottages, and in the month of June these
bunches are conspicuous for the bright golden tinge of their foliage.(699)
In some parts of Brittany, especially about Morbihan, branches of
mistletoe are hung over the doors of stables and byres to protect the
horses and cattle,(700) probably against witchcraft.
(M223) The yellow colour of the withered bough may partly explain why the
mistletoe has been sometimes supposed to possess the property of
disclosing treasures in the earth;(701) for on the principles of
homoeopathic magic there is a natural affinity between a yellow bough and
yellow gold. This suggestion is confirmed by the analogy of the marvellous
properties popularly ascribed to the mythical fern-seed or fern-bloom. We
saw that fern-seed is popularly supposed to bloom like gold or fire on
Midsummer Eve.(702) Thus in Bohemia it is said that “on St. John’s Day
fern-seed blooms with golden blossoms that gleam like fire.”(703) Now it
is a property of this mythical fern-seed that whoever has it, or will
ascend a mountain holding it in his hand on Midsummer Eve, will discover a
vein of gold or will see the treasures of the earth shining with a bluish
flame.(704) In Russia they say that if you succeed in catching the
wondrous bloom of the fern at midnight on Midsummer Eve, you have only to
throw it up into the air, and it will fall like a star on the very spot
where a treasure lies hidden.(705) In Brittany treasure-seekers gather
fern-seed at midnight on Midsummer Eve, and keep it till Palm Sunday of
the following year; then they strew the seed on ground where they think a
treasure is concealed.(706) Tyrolese peasants imagine that hidden
treasures can be seen glowing like flame on Midsummer Eve, and that
fern-seed, gathered at this mystic season, with the usual precautions,
will help to bring the buried gold to the surface.(707) In the Swiss
canton of Freiburg people used to watch beside a fern on St. John’s night
in the hope of winning a treasure, which the devil himself sometimes
brought to them.(708) In Bohemia they say that he who procures the golden
bloom of the fern at this season has thereby the key to all hidden
treasures; and that if maidens will spread a cloth under the fast-fading
bloom, red gold will drop into it.(709) And in the Tyrol and Bohemia if
you place fern-seed among money, the money will never decrease, however
much of it you spend.(710) Sometimes the fern-seed is supposed to bloom on
Christmas night, and whoever catches it will become very rich.(711) In
Styria they say that by gathering fern-seed on Christmas night you can
force the devil to bring you a bag of money.(712) In Swabia likewise you
can, by taking the proper precautions, compel Satan himself to fetch you a
packet of fern-seed on Christmas night. But for four weeks previously, and
during the whole of the Advent season, you must be very careful never to
pray, never to go to church, and never to use holy water; you must busy
yourself all day long with devilish thoughts, and cherish an ardent wish
that the devil would help you to get money. Thus prepared you take your
stand, between eleven and twelve on Christmas night, at the meeting of two
roads, over both of which corpses have been carried to the churchyard.
Here many people meet you, some of them dead and buried long ago, it may
be your parents or grandparents, or old friends and acquaintances, and
they stop and greet you, and ask, “What are you doing here?” And tiny
little goblins hop and dance about and try to make you laugh. But if you
smile or utter a single word, the devil will tear you to shreds and
tatters on the spot. If, however, you stand glum and silent and solemn,
there will come, after all the ghostly train has passed by, a man dressed
as a hunter, and that is the devil. He will hand you a paper cornet full
of fern-seed, which you must keep and carry about with you as long as you
live. It will give you the power of doing as much work at your trade in a
day as twenty or thirty ordinary men could do in the same time. So you
will grow very rich. But few people have the courage to go through with
the ordeal. The people of Rotenburg tell of a weaver of their town, who
lived some two hundred and fifty years ago and performed prodigies of
weaving by a simple application of fern-seed which he had been so
fortunate as to obtain, no doubt from the devil, though that is not
expressly alleged by tradition. Rich in the possession of this treasure,
the lazy rascal worked only on Saturdays and spent all the rest of the
week playing and drinking; yet in one day he wove far more cloth than any
other skilled weaver who sat at his loom from morning to night every day
of the week. Naturally he kept his own counsel, and nobody might ever have
known how he did it, if it had not been for what, humanly speaking, you
might call an accident, though for my part I cannot but regard it as the
manifest finger of Providence. One day—it was the octave of a festival—the
fellow had woven a web no less than a hundred ells long, and his mistress
resolved to deliver it to her customer the same evening. So she put the
cloth in a basket and away she trudged with it. Her way led her past a
church, and as she passed the sacred edifice, she heard the tinkle of the
holy bell which announced the elevation of the Host. Being a good woman
she put her basket down, knelt beside it, and there, with the shadows
gathering round her, committed herself to the care of God and his good
angels and received, along with the kneeling congregation in the lighted
church, the evening benediction, which kept her and them from all the
perils and dangers of the night. Then rising refreshed she took up her
basket. But what was her astonishment on looking into it to find the whole
web reduced to a heap of yarn! The blessed words of the priest at the
altar had undone the cursed spell of the Enemy of Mankind.(713)
(M224) Thus, on the principle of like by like, fern-seed is supposed to
discover gold because it is itself golden; and for a similar reason it
enriches its possessor with an unfailing supply of gold. But while the
fern-seed is described as golden, it is equally described as glowing and
fiery.(714) Hence, when we consider that two great days for gathering the
fabulous seed are Midsummer Eve and Christmas—that is, the two solstices
(for Christmas is nothing but an old heathen celebration of the winter
solstice)—we are led to regard the fiery aspect of the fern-seed as
primary, and its golden aspect as secondary and derivative. Fern-seed, in
fact, would seem to be an emanation of the sun’s fire at the two
turning-points of its course, the summer and winter solstices. This view
is confirmed by a German story in which a hunter is said to have procured
fern-seed by shooting at the sun on Midsummer Day at noon; three drops of
blood fell down, which he caught in a white cloth, and these blood-drops
were the fern-seed.(715) Here the blood is clearly the blood of the sun,
from which the fern-seed is thus directly derived. Thus it may be taken as
probable that fern-seed is golden, because it is believed to be an
emanation of the sun’s golden fire.
(M225) Now, like fern-seed, the mistletoe is gathered either at Midsummer
or Christmas(716)—that is, at the summer and winter solstices—and, like
fern-seed, it is supposed to possess the power of revealing treasures in
the earth. On Midsummer Eve people in Sweden make divining-rods of
mistletoe, or of four different kinds of wood one of which must be
mistletoe. The treasure-seeker places the rod on the ground after
sun-down, and when it rests directly over treasure, the rod begins to move
as if it were alive.(717) Now, if the mistletoe discovers gold, it must be
in its character of the Golden Bough; and if it is gathered at the
solstices, must not the Golden Bough, like the golden fern-seed, be an
emanation of the sun’s fire? The question cannot be answered with a simple
affirmative. We have seen that the old Aryans perhaps kindled the
solstitial and other ceremonial fires in part as sun-charms, that is, with
the intention of supplying the sun with fresh fire; and as these fires
were usually made by the friction or combustion of oak-wood,(718) it may
have appeared to the ancient Aryan that the sun was periodically recruited
from the fire which resided in the sacred oak. In other words, the oak may
have seemed to him the original storehouse or reservoir of the fire which
was from time to time drawn out to feed the sun. But if the life of the
oak was conceived to be in the mistletoe, the mistletoe must on that view
have contained the seed or germ of the fire which was elicited by friction
from the wood of the oak. Thus, instead of saying that the mistletoe was
an emanation of the sun’s fire, it might be more correct to say that the
sun’s fire was regarded as an emanation of the mistletoe. No wonder, then,
that the mistletoe shone with a golden splendour, and was called the
Golden Bough. Probably, however, like fern-seed, it was thought to assume
its golden aspect only at those stated times, especially midsummer, when
fire was drawn from the oak to light up the sun.(719) At Pulverbatch, in
Shropshire, it was believed within living memory that the oak-tree blooms
on Midsummer Eve and the blossom withers before daylight. A maiden who
wishes to know her lot in marriage should spread a white cloth under the
tree at night, and in the morning she will find a little dust, which is
all that remains of the flower. She should place the pinch of dust under
her pillow, and then her future husband will appear to her in her
dreams.(720) This fleeting bloom of the oak, if I am right, was probably
the mistletoe in its character of the Golden Bough. The conjecture is
confirmed by the observation that in Wales a real sprig of mistletoe
gathered on Midsummer Eve is similarly placed under the pillow to induce
prophetic dreams;(721) and further the mode of catching the imaginary
bloom of the oak in a white cloth is exactly that which was employed by
the Druids to catch the real mistletoe when it dropped from the bough of
the oak, severed by the golden sickle.(722) As Shropshire borders on
Wales, the belief that the oak blooms on Midsummer Eve may be Welsh in its
immediate origin, though probably the belief is a fragment of the
primitive Aryan creed. In some parts of Italy, as we saw,(723) peasants
still go out on Midsummer morning to search the oak-trees for the “oil of
St. John,” which, like the mistletoe, heals all wounds, and is, perhaps,
the mistletoe itself in its glorified aspect. Thus it is easy to
understand how a title like the Golden Bough, so little descriptive of its
usual appearance on the tree, should have been applied to the seemingly
insignificant parasite. Further, we can perhaps see why in antiquity
mistletoe was believed to possess the remarkable property of extinguishing
fire,(724) and why in Sweden it is still kept in houses as a safeguard
against conflagration.(725) Its fiery nature marks it out, on homoeopathic
principles, as the best possible cure or preventive of injury by fire.
(M226) These considerations may partially explain why Virgil makes Aeneas
carry a glorified bough of mistletoe with him on his descent into the
gloomy subterranean world. The poet describes how at the very gates of
hell there stretched a vast and gloomy wood, and how the hero, following
the flight of two doves that lured him on, wandered into the depths of the
immemorial forest till he saw afar off through the shadows of the trees
the flickering light of the Golden Bough illuminating the matted boughs
overhead.(726) If the mistletoe, as a yellow withered bough in the sad
autumn woods, was conceived to contain the seed of fire, what better
companion could a forlorn wanderer in the nether shades take with him than
a bough that would be a lamp to his feet as well as a rod and staff to his
hands? Armed with it he might boldly confront the dreadful spectres that
would cross his path on his adventurous journey. Hence when Aeneas,
emerging from the forest, comes to the banks of Styx, winding slow with
sluggish stream through the infernal marsh, and the surly ferryman refuses
him passage in his boat, he has but to draw the Golden Bough from his
bosom and hold it up, and straightway the blusterer quails at the sight
and meekly receives the hero into his crazy bark, which sinks deep in the
water under the unusual weight of the living man.(727) Even in recent
times, as we have seen, mistletoe has been deemed a protection against
witches and trolls,(728) and the ancients may well have credited it with
the same magical virtue. And if the parasite can, as some of our peasants
believe, open all locks,(729) why should it not have served as an “open
Sesame” in the hands of Aeneas to unlock the gates of death? There is some
reason to suppose that when Orpheus in like manner descended alive to hell
to rescue the soul of his dead wife Eurydice from the shades, he carried
with him a willow bough to serve as a passport on his journey to and from
the land of the dead; for in the great frescoes representing the nether
world, with which the master hand of Polygnotus adorned the walls of a
loggia at Delphi, Orpheus was depicted sitting pensively under a willow,
holding his lyre, now silent and useless, in his left hand, while with his
right he grasped the drooping boughs of the tree.(730) If the willow in
the picture had indeed the significance which an ingenious scholar has
attributed to it,(731) the painter meant to represent the dead musician
dreaming wistfully of the time when the willow had carried him safe back
across the Stygian ferry to that bright world of love and music which he
was now to see no more. Again, on an ancient sarcophagus, which exhibits
in sculptured relief the parting of Adonis from Aphrodite, the hapless
youth, reclining in the lap of his leman, holds a branch, which has been
taken to signify that he, too, by the help of the mystic bough, might yet
be brought back from the gates of death to life and love.(732)
(M227) Now, too, we can conjecture why Virbius at Nemi came to be
confounded with the sun.(733) If Virbius was, as I have tried to shew, a
tree-spirit, he must have been the spirit of the oak on which grew the
Golden Bough; for tradition represented him as the first of the Kings of
the Wood. As an oak-spirit he must have been supposed periodically to
rekindle the sun’s fire, and might therefore easily be confounded with the
sun itself. Similarly we can explain why Balder, an oak-spirit, was
described as “so fair of face and so shining that a light went forth from
him,”(734) and why he should have been so often taken to be the sun. And
in general we may say that in primitive society, when the only known way
of making fire is by the friction of wood, the savage must necessarily
conceive of fire as a property stored away, like sap or juice, in trees,
from which he has laboriously to extract it. The Senal Indians of
California “profess to believe that the whole world was once a globe of
fire, whence that element passed up into the trees, and now comes out
whenever two pieces of wood are rubbed together.”(735) Similarly the Maidu
Indians of California hold that “the earth was primarily a globe of molten
matter, and from that the principle of fire ascended through the roots
into the trunk and branches of trees, whence the Indians can extract it by
means of their drill.”(736) In Namoluk, one of the Caroline Islands, they
say that the art of making fire was taught men by the gods. Olofaet, the
cunning master of flames, gave fire to the bird _mwi_ and bade him carry
it to earth in his bill. So the bird flew from tree to tree and stored
away the slumbering force of the fire in the wood, from which men can
elicit it by friction.(737) In the ancient Vedic hymns of India the
fire-god Agni “is spoken of as born in wood, as the embryo of plants, or
as distributed in plants. He is also said to have entered into all plants
or to strive after them. When he is called the embryo of trees or of trees
as well as plants, there may be a side-glance at the fire produced in
forests by the friction of the boughs of trees.”(738) In some Australian
languages the words for wood and fire are said to be the same.(739)
(M228) A tree which has been struck by lightning is naturally regarded by
the savage as charged with a double or triple portion of fire; for has he
not seen the mighty flash enter into the trunk with his own eyes? Hence
perhaps we may explain some of the many superstitious beliefs concerning
trees that have been struck by lightning. Thus in the opinion of the
Cherokee Indians “mysterious properties attach to the wood of a tree which
has been struck by lightning, especially when the tree itself still lives,
and such wood enters largely into the secret compounds of the conjurers.
An ordinary person of the laity will not touch it, for fear of having
cracks come upon his hands and feet, nor is it burned for fuel, for fear
that lye made from the ashes will cause consumption. In preparing
ballplayers for the contest, the medicine-man sometimes burns splinters of
it to coal, which he gives to the players to paint themselves with, in
order that they may be able to strike their opponents with all the force
of a thunderbolt. Bark or wood from a tree struck by lightning, but still
green, is beaten up and put into the water in which seeds are soaked
before planting, to insure a good crop, but, on the other hand, any
lightning-struck wood thrown into the field will cause the crop to wither,
and it is believed to have a bad effect even to go into the field
immediately after having been near such a tree.”(740) Apparently the
Cherokees imagine that when wood struck by lightning is soaked in water
the fierce heat of the slumbering fire in its veins is tempered to a
genial warmth, which promotes the growth of the crops; but that when the
force of the fire has not been thus diluted it blasts the growing corn.
When the Thompson Indians of British Columbia wished to set fire to the
houses of their enemies, they shot at them arrows which were either made
from a tree that had been struck by lightning or had splinters of such
wood attached to them.(741) They seem to have thought that wood struck by
lightning was so charged with fire that it would ignite whatever it
struck, the mere concussion sufficing to explode it like gunpowder. Yet
curiously enough these Indians supposed that if they burned the wood of
trees that had been struck by lightning, the weather would immediately
turn cold.(742) Perhaps they conceived such trees as reservoirs of heat,
and imagined that by using them up they would exhaust the supply and thus
lower the temperature of the atmosphere.(743) Wendish peasants of Saxony
similarly refuse to burn in their stoves the wood of trees that have been
struck by lightning; but the reason they give for their refusal is
different. They say that with such fuel the house would be burnt
down.(744) No doubt they think that the electric flash, inherent in the
wood, would send such a roaring flame up the chimney that nothing could
stand before it. In like manner the Thonga of South Africa will not use
such wood as fuel nor warm themselves at a fire which has been kindled
with it; but what danger they apprehend from the wood we are not
told.(745) On the contrary, when lightning sets fire to a tree, the
Winamwanga of Northern Rhodesia put out all the fires in the village and
plaster the fireplaces afresh, while the head men convey the
lightning-kindled fire to the chief, who prays over it. The chief then
sends out the new fire to all his villages, and the villagers reward his
messengers for the boon. This shews that they look upon fire kindled by
lightning with reverence, and the reverence is intelligible, for they
speak of thunder and lightning as God himself coming down to earth.(746)
Similarly the Maidu Indians of California believe that a Great Man created
the world and all its inhabitants, and that lightning is nothing but the
Great Man himself descending swiftly out of heaven and rending the trees
with his flaming arm.(747)
(M229) It is a plausible theory that the reverence which the ancient
peoples of Europe paid to the oak, and the connexion which they traced
between the tree and their sky-god,(748) were derived from the much
greater frequency with which the oak appears to be struck by lightning
than any other tree of our European forests. Some remarkable statistics
have been adduced in support of this view by Mr. W. Warde Fowler.(749)
Observations, annually made in the forests of Lippe-Detmold for seventeen
years, yielded the result that while the woods were mainly stocked with
beech and only to a small extent with oak and Scotch pine, yet far more
oaks and Scotch pines were struck by lightning than beeches, the number of
stricken Scotch pines exceeding the number of stricken beeches in the
proportion of thirty-seven to one, and the number of stricken oaks
exceeding the number of stricken beeches in the proportion of no less than
sixty to one. Similar results have been obtained from observations made in
French and Bavarian forests.(750) In short, it would seem from statistics
compiled by scientific observers, who have no mythological theories to
maintain, that the oak suffers from the stroke of lightning far oftener
than any other forest tree in Europe. However we may explain it, whether
by the easier passage of electricity through oakwood than through any
other timber,(751) or in some other way, the fact itself may well have
attracted the notice of our rude forefathers, who dwelt in the vast
forests which then covered a large part of Europe; and they might
naturally account for it in their simple religious way by supposing that
the great sky-god, whom they worshipped and whose awful voice they heard
in the roll of thunder, loved the oak above all the trees of the wood and
often descended into it from the murky cloud in a flash of lightning,
leaving a token of his presence or of his passage in the riven and
blackened trunk and the blasted foliage. Such trees would thenceforth be
encircled by a nimbus of glory as the visible seats of the thundering
sky-god. Certain it is that, like some savages, both Greeks and Romans
identified their great god of the sky and of the oak with the lightning
flash which struck the ground; and they regularly enclosed such a stricken
spot and treated it thereafter as sacred.(752) It is not rash to suppose
that the ancestors of the Celts and Germans in the forests of Central
Europe paid a like respect for like reasons to a blasted oak.
(M230) This explanation of the Aryan reverence for the oak and of the
association of the tree with the great god of the thunder and the sky, was
suggested or implied long ago by Jacob Grimm,(753) and has been of late
powerfully reinforced by Mr. W. Warde Fowler.(754) It appears to be
simpler and more probable than the explanation which I formerly adopted,
namely, that the oak was worshipped primarily for the many benefits which
our rude forefathers derived from the tree, particularly for the fire
which they drew by friction from its wood; and that the connexion of the
oak with the sky was an after-thought based on the belief that the flash
of lightning was nothing but the spark which the sky-god up aloft elicited
by rubbing two pieces of oak wood against each other, just as his savage
worshipper kindled fire in the forest on earth.(755) On that theory the
god of the thunder and the sky was derived from the original god of the
oak; on the present theory, which I now prefer, the god of the sky and the
thunder was the great original deity of our Aryan ancestors, and his
association with the oak was merely an inference based on the frequency
with which the oak was seen to be struck by lightning. If the Aryans, as
some think, roamed the wide steppes of Russia or Central Asia with their
flocks and herds before they plunged into the gloom of the European
forests, they may have worshipped the god of the blue or cloudy firmament
and the flashing thunderbolt long before they thought of associating him
with the blasted oaks in their new home.(756)
(M231) Perhaps the new theory has the further advantage of throwing light
on the special sanctity ascribed to mistletoe which grows on an oak. The
mere rarity of such a growth on an oak hardly suffices to explain the
extent and the persistence of the superstition. A hint of its real origin
is possibly furnished by the statement of Pliny that the Druids worshipped
the plant because they believed it to have fallen from heaven and to be a
token that the tree on which it grew was chosen by the god himself.(757)
Can they have thought that the mistletoe dropped on the oak in a flash of
lightning? The conjecture is confirmed by the name thunder-besom which is
applied to mistletoe in the Swiss canton of Aargau,(758) for the epithet
clearly implies a close connexion between the parasite and the thunder;
indeed “thunder-besom” is a popular name in Germany for any bushy
nest-like excrescence growing on a branch, because such a parasitic growth
is actually believed by the ignorant to be a product of lightning.(759) If
there is any truth in this conjecture, the real reason why the Druids
worshipped a mistletoe-bearing oak above all other trees of the forest was
a belief that every such oak had not only been struck by lightning but
bore among its branches a visible emanation of the celestial fire; so that
in cutting the mistletoe with mystic rites they were securing for
themselves all the magical properties of a thunderbolt. If that was so, we
must apparently conclude that the mistletoe was deemed an emanation of the
lightning rather than, as I have thus far argued, of the midsummer sun.
Perhaps, indeed, we might combine the two seemingly divergent views by
supposing that in the old Aryan creed the mistletoe descended from the sun
on Midsummer Day in a flash of lightning. But such a combination is
artificial and unsupported, so far as I know, by any positive evidence.
Whether on mythical principles the two interpretations can really be
reconciled with each other or not, I will not presume to say; but even
should they prove to be discrepant, the inconsistency need not have
prevented our rude forefathers from embracing both of them at the same
time with an equal fervour of conviction; for like the great majority of
mankind the savage is above being hidebound by the trammels of a pedantic
logic. In attempting to track his devious thought through the jungle of
crass ignorance and blind fear, we must always remember that we are
treading enchanted ground, and must beware of taking for solid realities
the cloudy shapes that cross our path or hover and gibber at us through
the gloom. We can never completely replace ourselves at the standpoint of
primitive man, see things with his eyes, and feel our hearts beat with the
emotions that stirred his. All our theories concerning him and his ways
must therefore fall far short of certainty; the utmost we can aspire to in
such matters is a reasonable degree of probability.
(M232) To conclude these enquiries we may say that if Balder was indeed,
as I have conjectured, a personification of a mistletoe-bearing oak, his
death by a blow of the mistletoe might on the new theory be explained as a
death by a stroke of lightning. So long as the mistletoe, in which the
flame of the lightning smouldered, was suffered to remain among the
boughs, so long no harm could befall the good and kindly god of the oak,
who kept his life stowed away for safety between earth and heaven in the
mysterious parasite; but when once that seat of his life, or of his death,
was torn from the branch and hurled at the trunk, the tree fell—the god
died—smitten by a thunderbolt.(760)
(M233) And what we have said of Balder in the oak forests of Scandinavia
may perhaps, with all due diffidence in a question so obscure and
uncertain, be applied to the priest of Diana, the King of the Wood, at
Aricia in the oak forests of Italy. He may have personated in flesh and
blood the great Italian god of the sky, Jupiter,(761) who had kindly come
down from heaven in the lightning flash to dwell among men in the
mistletoe—the thunder-besom—the Golden Bough—growing on the sacred oak
beside the still waters of the lake of Nemi. If that was so, we need not
wonder that the priest guarded with drawn sword the mystic bough which
contained the god’s life and his own. The goddess whom he served and
married was herself, if I am right, no other than the Queen of Heaven, the
true wife of the sky-god. For she, too, loved the solitude of the woods
and the lonely hills, and sailing overhead on clear nights in the likeness
of the silver moon she looked down with pleasure on her own fair image
reflected on the calm, the burnished surface of the lake, Diana’s Mirror.