This universal illumination of the houses on one night of the year

suggests that the festival may have been a commemoration not merely

of the dead Osiris but of the dead in general, in other words, that

it may have been a night of All Souls. For it is a widespread belief

that the souls of the dead revisit their old homes on one night of

the year; and on that solemn occasion people prepare for the

reception of the ghosts by laying out food for them to eat, and

lighting lamps to guide them on their dark road from and to the

grave. Herodotus, who briefly describes the festival, omits to

mention its date, but we can determine it with some probability from

other sources. Thus Plutarch tells us that Osiris was murdered on

the seventeenth of the month Athyr, and that the Egyptians

accordingly observed mournful rites for four days from the

seventeenth of Athyr. Now in the Alexandrian calendar, which

Plutarch used, these four days corresponded to the thirteenth,

fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth of November, and this date

answers exactly to the other indications given by Plutarch, who says

that at the time of the festival the Nile was sinking, the north

winds dying away, the nights lengthening, and the leaves falling

from the trees. During these four days a gilt cow swathed in a black

pall was exhibited as an image of Isis. This, no doubt, was the

image mentioned by Herodotus in his account of the festival. On the

nineteenth day of the month the people went down to the sea, the

priests carrying a shrine which contained a golden casket. Into this

casket they poured fresh water, and thereupon the spectators raised

a shout that Osiris was found. After that they took some vegetable

mould, moistened it with water, mixed it with precious spices and

incense, and moulded the paste into a small moon-shaped image, which

was then robed and ornamented. Thus it appears that the purpose of

the ceremonies described by Plutarch was to represent dramatically,

first, the search for the dead body of Osiris, and, second, its

joyful discovery, followed by the resurrection of the dead god who

came to life again in the new image of vegetable mould and spices.

Lactantius tells us how on these occasions the priests, with their

shaven bodies, beat their breasts and lamented, imitating the

sorrowful search of Isis for her lost son Osiris, and how afterwards

their sorrow was turned to joy when the jackal-headed god Anubis, or

rather a mummer in his stead, produced a small boy, the living

representative of the god who was lost and was found. Thus

Lactantius regarded Osiris as the son instead of the husband of

Isis, and he makes no mention of the image of vegetable mould. It is

probable that the boy who figured in the sacred drama played the

part, not of Osiris, but of his son Horus; but as the death and

resurrection of the god were celebrated in many cities of Egypt, it

is also possible that in some places the part of the god come to

life was played by a living actor instead of by an image. Another

Christian writer describes how the Egyptians, with shorn heads,

annually lamented over a buried idol of Osiris, smiting their

breasts, slashing their shoulders, ripping open their old wounds,

until, after several days of mourning, they professed to find the

mangled remains of the god, at which they rejoiced. However the

details of the ceremony may have varied in different places, the

pretence of finding the god's body, and probably of restoring it to

life, was a great event in the festal year of the Egyptians. The

shouts of joy which greeted it are described or alluded to by many

ancient writers.

The funeral rites of Osiris, as they were observed at his great

festival in the sixteen provinces of Egypt, are described in a long

inscription of the Ptolemaic period, which is engraved on the walls

of the god's temple at Denderah, the Tentyra of the Greeks, a town

of Upper Egypt situated on the western bank of the Nile about forty

miles north of Thebes. Unfortunately, while the information thus

furnished is remarkably full and minute on many points, the

arrangement adopted in the inscription is so confused and the

expression often so obscure that a clear and consistent account of

the ceremonies as a whole can hardly be extracted from it. Moreover,

we learn from the document that the ceremonies varied somewhat in

the several cities, the ritual of Abydos, for example, differing

from that of Busiris. Without attempting to trace all the

particularities of local usage I shall briefly indicate what seem to

have been the leading features of the festival, so far as these can

be ascertained with tolerable certainty.

The rites lasted eighteen days, from the twelfth to the thirtieth of

the month Khoiak, and set forth the nature of Osiris in his triple

aspect as dead, dismembered, and finally reconstituted by the union

of his scattered limbs. In the first of these aspects he was called

Chent-Ament (Khenti-Amenti), in the second Osiris-Sep, and in the

third Sokari (Seker). Small images of the god were moulded of sand

or vegetable earth and corn, to which incense was sometimes added;

his face was painted yellow and his cheek-bones green. These images

were cast in a mould of pure gold, which represented the god in the

form of a mummy, with the white crown of Egypt on his head. The

festival opened on the twelfth day of Khoiak with a ceremony of

ploughing and sowing. Two black cows were yoked to the plough, which

was made of tamarisk wood, while the share was of black copper. A

boy scattered the seed. One end of the field was sown with barley,

the other with spelt, and the middle with flax. During the operation

the chief celebrant recited the ritual chapter of "the sowing of the

fields." At Busiris on the twentieth of Khoiak sand and barley were

put in the god's "garden," which appears to have been a sort of

large flower-pot. This was done in the presence of the cow-goddess

Shenty, represented seemingly by the image of a cow made of gilt

sycamore wood with a headless human image in its inside. "Then fresh

inundation water was poured out of a golden vase over both the

goddess and the 'garden,' and the barley was allowed to grow as the

emblem of the resurrection of the god after his burial in the earth,

'for the growth of the garden is the growth of the divine

substance.'" On the twenty-second of Khoiak, at the eighth hour, the

images of Osiris, attended by thirty-four images of deities,

performed a mysterious voyage in thirty-four tiny boats made of

papyrus, which were illuminated by three hundred and sixty-five

lights. On the twenty-fourth of Khoiak, after sunset, the effigy of

Osiris in a coffin of mulberry wood was laid in the grave, and at

the ninth hour of the night the effigy which had been made and

deposited the year before was removed and placed upon boughs of

sycamore. Lastly, on the thirtieth day of Khoiak they repaired to

the holy sepulchre, a subterranean chamber over which appears to

have grown a clump of Persea-trees. Entering the vault by the

western door, they laid the coffined effigy of the dead god

reverently on a bed of sand in the chamber. So they left him to his

rest, and departed from the sepulchre by the eastern door. Thus

ended the ceremonies in the month of Khoiak.

In the foregoing account of the festival, drawn from the great

inscription of Denderah, the burial of Osiris figures prominently,

while his resurrection is implied rather than expressed. This defect

of the document, however, is amply compensated by a remarkable

series of bas-reliefs which accompany and illustrate the

inscription. These exhibit in a series of scenes the dead god lying

swathed as a mummy on his bier, then gradually raising himself up

higher and higher, until at last he has entirely quitted the bier

and is seen erect between the guardian wings of the faithful Isis,

who stands behind him, while a male figure holds up before his eyes

the _crux ansata,_ the Egyptian symbol of life. The resurrection of

the god could hardly be portrayed more graphically. Even more

instructive, however, is another representation of the same event in

a chamber dedicated to Osiris in the great temple of Isis at Philae.

Here we see the dead body of Osiris with stalks of corn springing

from it, while a priest waters the stalks from a pitcher which he

holds in his hand. The accompanying inscription sets forth that

"this is the form of him whom one may not name, Osiris of the

mysteries, who springs from the returning waters." Taken together,

the picture and the words seem to leave no doubt that Osiris was

here conceived and represented as a personification of the corn

which springs from the fields after they have been fertilised by the

inundation. This, according to the inscription, was the kernel of

the mysteries, the innermost secret revealed to the initiated. So in

the rites of Demeter at Eleusis a reaped ear of corn was exhibited

to the worshippers as the central mystery of their religion. We can

now fully understand why at the great festival of sowing in the

month of Khoiak the priests used to bury effigies of Osiris made of

earth and corn. When these effigies were taken up again at the end

of a year or of a shorter interval, the corn would be found to have

sprouted from the body of Osiris, and this sprouting of the grain

would be hailed as an omen, or rather as the cause, of the growth of

the crops. The corn-god produced the corn from himself: he gave his

own body to feed the people: he died that they might live.

And from the death and resurrection of their great god the Egyptians

drew not only their support and sustenance in this life, but also

their hope of a life eternal beyond the grave. This hope is

indicated in the clearest manner by the very remarkable effigies of

Osiris which have come to light in Egyptian cemeteries. Thus in the

Valley of the Kings at Thebes there was found the tomb of a royal

fan-bearer who lived about 1500 B.C. Among the rich contents of the

tomb there was a bier on which rested a mattress of reeds covered

with three layers of linen. On the upper side of the linen was

painted a life-size figure of Osiris; and the interior of the

figure, which was waterproof, contained a mixture of vegetable

mould, barley, and a sticky fluid. The barley had sprouted and sent

out shoots two or three inches long. Again, in the cemetery at

Cynopolis "were numerous burials of Osiris figures. These were made

of grain wrapped up in cloth and roughly shaped like an Osiris, and

placed inside a bricked-up recess at the side of the tomb, sometimes

in small pottery coffins, sometimes in wooden coffins in the form of

a hawkmummy, sometimes without any coffins at all." These

corn-stuffed figures were bandaged like mummies with patches of

gilding here and there, as if in imitation of the golden mould in

which the similar figures of Osiris were cast at the festival of

sowing. Again, effigies of Osiris, with faces of green wax and their

interior full of grain, were found buried near the necropolis of

Thebes. Finally, we are told by Professor Erman that between the

legs of mummies "there sometimes lies a figure of Osiris made of

slime; it is filled with grains of corn, the sprouting of which is

intended to signify the resurrection of the god." We cannot doubt

that, just as the burial of corn-stuffed images of Osiris in the

earth at the festival of sowing was designed to quicken the seed, so

the burial of similar images in the grave was meant to quicken the

dead, in other words, to ensure their spiritual immortality.

XL. The Nature of Osiris

1. Osiris a Corn-god

THE FOREGOING survey of the myth and ritual of Osiris may suffice to

prove that in one of his aspects the god was a personification of

the corn, which may be said to die and come to life again every

year. Through all the pomp and glamour with which in later times the

priests had invested his worship, the conception of him as the

corn-god comes clearly out in the festival of his death and

resurrection, which was celebrated in the month of Khoiak and at a

later period in the month of Athyr. That festival appears to have

been essentially a festival of sowing, which properly fell at the

time when the husbandman actually committed the seed to the earth.

On that occasion an effigy of the corn-god, moulded of earth and

corn, was buried with funeral rites in the ground in order that,

dying there, he might come to life again with the new crops. The

ceremony was, in fact, a charm to ensure the growth of the corn by

sympathetic magic, and we may conjecture that as such it was

practised in a simple form by every Egyptian farmer on his fields

long before it was adopted and transfigured by the priests in the

stately ritual of the temple. In the modern, but doubtless ancient,

Arab custom of burying "the Old Man," namely, a sheaf of wheat, in

the harvest-field and praying that he may return from the dead, we

see the germ out of which the worship of the corn-god Osiris was

probably developed.

The details of his myth fit in well with this interpretation of the

god. He was said to be the offspring of Sky and Earth. What more

appropriate parentage could be invented for the corn which springs

from the ground that has been fertilised by the water of heaven? It

is true that the land of Egypt owed its fertility directly to the

Nile and not to showers; but the inhabitants must have known or

guessed that the great river in its turn was fed by the rains which

fell in the far interior. Again, the legend that Osiris was the

first to teach men the use of corn would be most naturally told of

the corn-god himself. Further, the story that his mangled remains

were scattered up and down the land and buried in different places

may be a mythical way of expressing either the sowing or the

winnowing of the grain. The latter interpretation is supported by

the tale that Isis placed the severed limbs of Osiris on a

corn-sieve. Or more probably the legend may be a reminiscence of a

custom of slaying a human victim, perhaps a representative of the

corn-spirit, and distributing his flesh or scattering his ashes over

the fields to fertilise them. In modern Europe the figure of Death

is sometimes torn in pieces, and the fragments are then buried in

the ground to make the crops grow well, and in other parts of the

world human victims are treated in the same way. With regard to the

ancient Egyptians we have it on the authority of Manetho that they

used to burn red-haired men and scatter their ashes with winnowing

fans, and it is highly significant that this barbarous sacrifice was

offered by the kings at the grave of Osiris. We may conjecture that

the victims represented Osiris himself, who was annually slain,

dismembered, and buried in their persons that he might quicken the

seed in the earth.

Possibly in prehistoric times the kings themselves played the part

of the god and were slain and dismembered in that character. Set as

well as Osiris is said to have been torn in pieces after a reign of

eighteen days, which was commemorated by an annual festival of the

same length. According to one story Romulus, the first king of Rome,

was cut in pieces by the senators, who buried the fragments of him

in the ground; and the traditional day of his death, the seventh of

July, was celebrated with certain curious rites, which were

apparently connected with the artificial fertilisation of the fig.

Again, Greek legend told how Pentheus, king of Thebes, and Lycurgus,

king of the Thracian Edonians, opposed the vine-god Dionysus, and

how the impious monarchs were rent in pieces, the one by the

frenzied Bacchanals, the other by horses. The Greek traditions may

well be distorted reminiscences of a custom of sacrificing human

beings, and especially divine kings, in the character of Dionysus, a

god who resembled Osiris in many points and was said like him to

have been torn limb from limb. We are told that in Chios men were

rent in pieces as a sacrifice to Dionysus; and since they died the

same death as their god, it is reasonable to suppose that they

personated him. The story that the Thracian Orpheus was similarly

torn limb from limb by the Bacchanals seems to indicate that he too

perished in the character of the god whose death he died. It is

significant that the Thracian Lycurgus, king of the Edonians, is

said to have been put to death in order that the ground, which had

ceased to be fruitful, might regain its fertility.

Further, we read of a Norwegian king, Halfdan the Black, whose body

was cut up and buried in different parts of his kingdom for the sake

of ensuring the fruitfulness of the earth. He is said to have been

drowned at the age of forty through the breaking of the ice in

spring. What followed his death is thus related by the old Norse

historian Snorri Sturluson: "He had been the most prosperous

(literally, blessed with abundance) of all kings. So greatly did men

value him that when the news came that he was dead and his body

removed to Hringariki and intended for burial there, the chief men

from Raumariki and Westfold and Heithmörk came and all requested

that they might take his body with them and bury it in their various

provinces; they thought that it would bring abundance to those who

obtained it. Eventually it was settled that the body was distributed

in four places. The head was laid in a barrow at Steinn in

Hringariki, and each party took away their own share and buried it.

All these barrows are called Halfdan's barrows." It should be

remembered that this Halfdan belonged to the family of the Ynglings,

who traced their descent from Frey, the great Scandinavian god of

fertility.

The natives of Kiwai, an island lying off the mouth of the Fly River

in British New Guinea, tell of a certain magician named Segera, who

had sago for his totem. When Segera was old and ill, he told the

people that he would soon die, but that, nevertheless, he would

cause their gardens to thrive. Accordingly, he instructed them that

when he was dead they should cut him up and place pieces of his

flesh in their gardens, but his head was to be buried in his own

garden. Of him it is said that he outlived the ordinary age, and

that no man knew his father, but that he made the sago good and no

one was hungry any more. Old men who were alive some years ago

affirmed that they had known Segera in their youth, and the general

opinion of the Kiwai people seems to be that Segera died not more

than two generations ago.

Taken all together, these legends point to a widespread practice of

dismembering the body of a king or magician and burying the pieces

in different parts of the country in order to ensure the fertility

of the ground and probably also the fecundity of man and beast.

To return to the human victims whose ashes the Egyptians scattered

with winnowing-fans, the red hair of these unfortunates was probably

significant. For in Egypt the oxen which were sacrificed had also to

be red; a single black or white hair found on the beast would have

disqualified it for the sacrifice. If, as I conjecture, these human

sacrifices were intended to promote the growth of the crops--and the

winnowing of their ashes seems to support this view--redhaired

victims were perhaps selected as best fitted to personate the spirit

of the ruddy grain. For when a god is represented by a living

person, it is natural that the human representative should be chosen

on the ground of his supposed resemblance to the divine original.

Hence the ancient Mexicans, conceiving the maize as a personal being

who went through the whole course of life between seed-time and

harvest, sacrificed new-born babes when the maize was sown, older

children when it had sprouted, and so on till it was fully ripe,

when they sacrificed old men. A name for Osiris was the "crop" or

"harvest"; and the ancients sometimes explained him as a

personification of the corn.

2. Osiris a Tree-spirit

BUT Osiris was more than a spirit of the corn; he was also a

tree-spirit, and this may perhaps have been his primitive character,

since the worship of trees is naturally older in the history of

religion than the worship of the cereals. The character of Osiris as

a tree-spirit was represented very graphically in a ceremony

described by Firmicus Maternus. A pine-tree having been cut down,

the centre was hollowed out, and with the wood thus excavated an

image of Osiris was made, which was then buried like a corpse in the

hollow of the tree. It is hard to imagine how the conception of a

tree as tenanted by a personal being could be more plainly

expressed. The image of Osiris thus made was kept for a year and

then burned, exactly as was done with the image of Attis which was

attached to the pine-tree. The ceremony of cutting the tree, as

described by Firmicus Maternus, appears to be alluded to by

Plutarch. It was probably the ritual counterpart of the mythical

discovery of the body of Osiris enclosed in the _erica_-tree. In the

hall of Osiris at Denderah the coffin containing the hawk-headed

mummy of the god is clearly depicted as enclosed within a tree,

apparently a conifer, the trunk and branches of which are seen above

and below the coffin. The scene thus corresponds closely both to the

myth and to the ceremony described by Firmicus Maternus.

It accords with the character of Osiris as a tree-spirit that his

worshippers were forbidden to injure fruit-trees, and with his

character as a god of vegetation in general that they were not

allowed to stop up wells of water, which are so important for the

irrigation of hot southern lands. According to one legend, he taught

men to train the vine to poles, to prune its superfluous foliage,

and to extract the juice of the grape. In the papyrus of Nebseni,

written about 1550 B.C., Osiris is depicted sitting in a shrine,

from the roof of which hang clusters of grapes; and in the papyrus

of the royal scribe Nekht we see the god enthroned in front of a

pool, from the banks of which a luxuriant vine, with many bunches of

grapes, grows towards the green face of the seated deity. The ivy

was sacred to him, and was called his plant because it is always

green.

3. Osiris a God of Fertility

AS A GOD of vegetation Osiris was naturally conceived as a god of

creative energy in general, since men at a certain stage of

evolution fail to distinguish between the reproductive powers of

animals and of plants. Hence a striking feature in his worship was

the coarse but expressive symbolism by which this aspect of his

nature was presented to the eye not merely of the initiated but of

the multitude. At his festival women used to go about the villages

singing songs in his praise and carrying obscene images of him which

they set in motion by means of strings. The custom was probably a

charm to ensure the growth of the crops. A similar image of him,

decked with all the fruits of the earth, is said to have stood in a

temple before a figure of Isis, and in the chambers dedicated to him

at Philae the dead god is portrayed lying on his bier in an attitude

which indicates in the plainest way that even in death his

generative virtue was not extinct but only suspended, ready to prove

a source of life and fertility to the world when the opportunity

should offer. Hymns addressed to Osiris contain allusions to this

important side of his nature. In one of them it is said that the

world waxes green in triumph through him; and another declares,

"Thou art the father and mother of mankind, they live on thy breath,

they subsist on the flesh of thy body." We may conjecture that in

this paternal aspect he was supposed, like other gods of fertility,

to bless men and women with offspring, and that the processions at

his festival were intended to promote this object as well as to

quicken the seed in the ground. It would be to misjudge ancient

religion to denounce as lewd and profligate the emblems and the

ceremonies which the Egyptians employed for the purpose of giving

effect to this conception of the divine power. The ends which they

proposed to themselves in these rites were natural and laudable;

only the means they adopted to compass them were mistaken. A similar

fallacy induced the Greeks to adopt a like symbolism in their

Dionysiac festivals, and the superficial but striking resemblance

thus produced between the two religions has perhaps more than

anything else misled enquirers, both ancient and modern, into

identifying worships which, though certainly akin in nature, are

perfectly distinct and independent in origin.

4. Osiris a God of the Dead

WE have seen that in one of his aspects Osiris was the ruler and

judge of the dead. To a people like the Egyptians, who not only

believed in a life beyond the grave but actually spent much of their

time, labour, and money in preparing for it, this office of the god

must have appeared hardly, if at all, less important than his

function of making the earth to bring forth its fruits in due

season. We may assume that in the faith of his worshippers the two

provinces of the god were intimately connected. In laying their dead

in the grave they committed them to his keeping who could raise them

from the dust to life eternal, even as he caused the seed to spring

from the ground. Of that faith the corn-stuffed effigies of Osiris

found in Egyptian tombs furnish an eloquent and un-equivocal

testimony. They were at once an emblem and an instrument of

resurrection. Thus from the sprouting of the grain the ancient

Egyptians drew an augury of human immortality. They are not the only

people who have built the same lofty hopes on the same slender

foundation.

A god who thus fed his people with his own broken body in this life,

and who held out to them a promise of a blissful eternity in a

better world hereafter, naturally reigned supreme in their

affections. We need not wonder, therefore, that in Egypt the worship

of the other gods was overshadowed by that of Osiris, and that while

they were revered each in his own district, he and his divine

partner Isis were adored in all.

XLI. Isis

THE ORIGINAL meaning of the goddess Isis is still more difficult to

determine than that of her brother and husband Osiris. Her

attributes and epithets were so numerous that in the hieroglyphics

she is called "the many-named," "the thousand-named," and in Greek

inscriptions "the myriad-named." Yet in her complex nature it is

perhaps still possible to detect the original nucleus round which by

a slow process of accretion the other elements gathered. For if her

brother and husband Osiris was in one of his aspects the corn-god,

as we have seen reason to believe, she must surely have been the

corn-goddess. There are at least some grounds for thinking so. For

if we may trust Diodorus Siculus, whose authority appears to have

been the Egyptian historian Manetho, the discovery of wheat and

barley was attributed to Isis, and at her festivals stalks of these

grains were carried in procession to commemorate the boon she had

conferred on men. A further detail is added by Augustine. He says

that Isis made the discovery of barley at the moment when she was

sacrificing to the common ancestors of her husband and herself, all

of whom had been kings, and that she showed the newly discovered

ears of barley to Osiris and his councillor Thoth or Mercury, as

Roman writers called him. That is why, adds Augustine, they identify

Isis with Ceres. Further, at harvest-time, when the Egyptian reapers

had cut the first stalks, they laid them down and beat their

breasts, wailing and calling upon Isis. The custom has been already

explained as a lamen for the corn-spirit slain under the sickle.

Amongst the epithets by which Isis is designated in the inscriptions

are "Creatress of green things," "Green goddess, whose green colour

is like unto the greenness of the earth," "Lady of Bread," "Lady of

Beer," "Lady of Abundance." According to Brugsch she is "not only

the creatress of the fresh verdure of vegetation which covers the

earth, but is actually the green corn-field itself, which is

personified as a goddess." This is confirmed by her epithet _Sochit_

or _Sochet,_ meaning "a corn-field," a sense which the word still

retains in Coptic. The Greeks conceived of Isis as a corn-goddess,

for they identified her with Demeter. In a Greek epigram she is

described as "she who has given birth to the fruits of the earth,"

and "the mother of the ears of corn"; and in a hymn composed in her

honour she speaks of herself as "queen of the wheat-field," and is

described as "charged with the care of the fruitful furrow's

wheat-rich path." Accordingly, Greek or Roman artists often

represented her with ears of corn on her head or in her hand.

Such, we may suppose, was Isis in the olden time, a rustic

Corn-Mother adored with uncouth rites by Egyptian swains. But the

homely features of the clownish goddess could hardly be traced in

the refined, the saintly form which, spiritualised by ages of

religious evolution, she presented to her worshippers of after days

as the true wife, the tender mother, the beneficent queen of nature,

encircled with the nimbus of moral purity, of immemorial and

mysterious sanctity. Thus chastened and transfigured she won many

hearts far beyond the boundaries of her native land. In that welter

of religions which accompanied the decline of national life in

antiquity her worship was one of the most popular at Rome and

throughout the empire. Some of the Roman emperors themselves were

openly addicted to it. And however the religion of Isis may, like

any other, have been often worn as a cloak by men and women of loose

life, her rites appear on the whole to have been honourably

distinguished by a dignity and composure, a solemnity and decorum,

well fitted to soothe the troubled mind, to ease the burdened heart.

They appealed therefore to gentle spirits, and above all to women,

whom the bloody and licentious rites of other Oriental goddesses

only shocked and repelled. We need not wonder, then, that in a

period of decadence, when traditional faiths were shaken, when

systems clashed, when men's minds were disquieted, when the fabric

of empire itself, once deemed eternal, began to show ominous rents

and fissures, the serene figure of Isis with her spiritual calm, her

gracious promise of immortality, should have appeared to many like a

star in a stormy sky, and should have roused in their breasts a

rapture of devotion not unlike that which was paid in the Middle

Ages to the Virgin Mary. Indeed her stately ritual, with its shaven

and tonsured priests, its matins and vespers, its tinkling music,

its baptism and aspersions of holy water, its solemn processions,

its jewelled images of the Mother of God, presented many points of

similarity to the pomps and ceremonies of Catholicism. The

resemblance need not be purely accidental. Ancient Egypt may have

contributed its share to the gorgeous symbolism of the Catholic

Church as well as to the pale abstractions of her theology.

Certainly in art the figure of Isis suckling the infant Horus is so

like that of the Madonna and child that it has sometimes received

the adoration of ignorant Christians. And to Isis in her later

character of patroness of mariners the Virgin Mary perhaps owes her

beautiful epithet of _Stella Maris,_ "Star of the Sea," under which

she is adored by tempest-tossed sailors. The attributes of a marine

deity may have been bestowed on Isis by the sea-faring Greeks of

Alexandria. They are quite foreign to her original character and to

the habits of the Egyptians, who had no love of the sea. On this

hypothesis Sirius, the bright star of Isis, which on July mornings

rises from the glassy waves of the eastern Mediterranean, a

harbinger of halcyon weather to mariners, was the true _Stella

Maris,_ "the Star of the Sea."

XLII. Osiris and the Sun

OSIRIS has been sometimes interpreted as the sun-god, and in modern

times this view has been held by so many distinguished writers that

it deserves a brief examination. If we enquire on what evidence

Osiris has been identified with the sun or the sun-god, it will be

found on analysis to be minute in quantity and dubious, where it is

not absolutely worthless, in quality. The diligent Jablonski, the

first modern scholar to collect and sift the testimony of classical

writers on Egyptian religion, says that it can be shown in many ways

that Osiris is the sun, and that he could produce a cloud of

witnesses to prove it, but that it is needless to do so, since no

learned man is ignorant of the fact. Of the ancient writers whom he

condescends to quote, the only two who expressly identify Osiris

with the sun are Diodorus and Macrobius. But little weight can be

attached to their evidence; for the statement of Diodorus is vague

and rhetorical, and the reasons which Macrobius, one of the fathers

of solar mythology, assigns for the identification are exceedingly

slight.

The ground upon which some modern writers seem chiefly to rely for

the identification of Osiris with the sun is that the story of his

death fits better with the solar phenomena than with any other in

nature. It may readily be admitted that the daily appearance and

disappearance of the sun might very naturally be expressed by a myth

of his death and resurrection; and writers who regard Osiris as the

sun are careful to indicate that it is the diurnal, and not the

annual, course of the sun to which they understand the myth to

apply. Thus Renouf, who identified Osiris with the sun, admitted

that the Egyptian sun could not with any show of reason be described

as dead in winter. But if his daily death was the theme of the

legend, why was it celebrated by an annual ceremony? This fact alone

seems fatal to the interpretation of the myth as descriptive of

sunset and sunrise. Again, though the sun may be said to die daily,

in what sense can he be said to be torn in pieces?

In the course of our enquiry it has, I trust, been made clear that

there is another natural phenomenon to which the conception of death

and resurrection is as applicable as to sunset and sunrise, and

which, as a matter of fact, has been so conceived and represented in

folk-custom. That phenomenon is the annual growth and decay of

vegetation. A strong reason for interpreting the death of Osiris as

the decay of vegetation rather than as the sunset is to be found in

the general, though not unanimous, voice of antiquity, which classed

together the worship and myths of Osiris, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus,

and Demeter, as religions of essentially the same type. The

consensus of ancient opinion on this subject seems too great to be

rejected as a mere fancy. So closely did the rites of Osiris

resemble those of Adonis at Byblus that some of the people of Byblus

themselves maintained that it was Osiris and not Adonis whose death

was mourned by them. Such a view could certainly not have been held

if the rituals of the two gods had not been so alike as to be almost

indistinguishable. Herodotus found the similarity between the rites

of Osiris and Dionysus so great, that he thought it impossible the

latter could have arisen independently; they must, he supposed, have

been recently borrowed, with slight alterations, by the Greeks from

the Egyptians. Again, Plutarch, a very keen student of comparative

religion, insists upon the detailed resemblance of the rites of

Osiris to those of Dionysus. We cannot reject the evidence of such

intelligent and trustworthy witnesses on plain matters of fact which

fell under their own cognizance. Their explanations of the worships

it is indeed possible to reject, for the meaning of religious cults

is often open to question; but resemblances of ritual are matters of

observation. Therefore, those who explain Osiris as the sun are

driven to the alternative of either dismissing as mistaken the

testimony of antiquity to the similarity of the rites of Osiris,

Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, and Demeter, or of interpreting all these

rites as sun-worship. No modern scholar has fairly faced and

accepted either side of this alternative. To accept the former would

be to affirm that we know the rites of these deities better than the

men who practised, or at least who witnessed them. To accept the

latter would involve a wrenching, clipping, mangling, and distorting

of myth and ritual from which even Macrobius shrank. On the other

hand, the view that the essence of all these rites was the mimic

death and revival of vegetation, explains them separately and

collectively in an easy and natural way, and harmonises with the

general testimony borne by the ancients to their substantial

similarity.

XLIII. Dionysus

IN THE PRECEDING chapters we saw that in antiquity the civilised

nations of Western Asia and Egypt pictured to themselves the changes

of the seasons, and particularly the annual growth and decay of

vegetation, as episodes in the life of gods, whose mournful death

and happy resurrection they celebrated with dramatic rites of

alternate lamentation and rejoicing. But if the celebration was in

form dramatic, it was in substance magical; that is to say, it was

intended, on the principles of sympathetic magic, to ensure the

vernal regeneration of plants and the multiplication of animals,

which had seemed to be menaced by the inroads of winter. In the

ancient world, however, such ideas and such rites were by no means

confined to the Oriental peoples of Babylon and Syria, of Phrygia

and Egypt; they were not a product peculiar to the religious

mysticism of the dreamy East, but were shared by the races of

livelier fancy and more mercurial temperament who inhabited the

shores and islands of the Aegean. We need not, with some enquirers

in ancient and modern times, suppose that these Western peoples

borrowed from the older civilisation of the Orient the conception of

the Dying and Reviving God, together with the solemn ritual, in

which that conception was dramatically set forth before the eyes of

the worshippers. More probably the resemblance which may be traced

in this respect between the religions of the East and West is no

more than what we commonly, though incorrectly, call a fortuitous

coincidence, the effect of similar causes acting alike on the

similar constitution of the human mind in different countries and

under different skies. The Greek had no need to journey into far

countries to learn the vicissitudes of the seasons, to mark the

fleeting beauty of the damask rose, the transient glory of the

golden corn, the passing splendour of the purple grapes. Year by

year in his own beautiful land he beheld, with natural regret, the

bright pomp of summer fading into the gloom and stagnation of

winter, and year by year he hailed with natural delight the outburst

of fresh life in spring. Accustomed to personify the forces of

nature, to tinge her cold abstractions with the warm hues of

imagination, to clothe her naked realities with the gorgeous drapery

of a mythic fancy, he fashioned for himself a train of gods and

goddesses, of spirits and elves, out of the shifting panorama of the

seasons, and followed the annual fluctuations of their fortunes with

alternate emotions of cheerfulness and dejection, of gladness and

sorrow, which found their natural expression in alternate rites of

rejoicing and lamentation, of revelry and mourning. A consideration

of some of the Greek divinities who thus died and rose again from

the dead may furnish us with a series of companion pictures to set

side by side with the sad figures of Adonis, Attis, and Osiris. We

begin with Dionysus.

The god Dionysus or Bacchus is best known to us as a personification

of the vine and of the exhilaration produced by the juice of the

grape. His ecstatic worship, characterised by wild dances, thrilling

music, and tipsy excess, appears to have originated among the rude

tribes of Thrace, who were notoriously addicted to drunkenness. Its

mystic doctrines and extravagant rites were essentially foreign to

the clear intelligence and sober temperament of the Greek race. Yet

appealing as it did to that love of mystery and that proneness to

revert to savagery which seem to be innate in most men, the religion

spread like wildfire through Greece until the god whom Homer hardly

deigned to notice had become the most popular figure of the

pantheon. The resemblance which his story and his ceremonies present

to those of Osiris have led some enquirers both in ancient and

modern times to hold that Dionysus was merely a disguised Osiris,

imported directly from Egypt into Greece. But the great

preponderance of evidence points to his Thracian origin, and the

similarity of the two worships is sufficiently explained by the

similarity of the ideas and customs on which they were founded.

While the vine with its clusters was the most characteristic

manifestation of Dionysus, he was also a god of trees in general.

Thus we are told that almost all the Greeks sacrificed to "Dionysus

of the tree." In Boeotia one of his titles was "Dionysus in the

tree." His image was often merely an upright post, without arms, but

draped in a mantle, with a bearded mask to represent the head, and

with leafy boughs projecting from the head or body to show the

nature of the deity. On a vase his rude effigy is depicted appearing

out of a low tree or bush. At Magnesia on the Maeander an image of

Dionysus is said to have been found in a plane-tree, which had been

broken by the wind. He was the patron of cultivated trees: prayers

were offered to him that he would make the trees grow; and he was

especially honoured by husbandmen, chiefly fruit-growers, who set up

an image of him, in the shape of a natural tree-stump, in their

orchards. He was said to have discovered all tree-fruits, amongst

which apples and figs are particularly mentioned; and he was

referred to as "well-fruited," "he of the green fruit," and "making

the fruit to grow." One of his titles was "teeming" or "bursting"

(as of sap or blossoms); and there was a Flowery Dionysus in Attica

and at Patrae in Achaia. The Athenians sacrificed to him for the

prosperity of the fruits of the land. Amongst the trees particularly

sacred to him, in addition to the vine, was the pine-tree. The

Delphic oracle commanded the Corinthians to worship a particular

pine-tree "equally with the god," so they made two images of

Dionysus out of it, with red faces and gilt bodies. In art a wand,

tipped with a pine-cone, is commonly carried by the god or his

worshippers. Again, the ivy and the fig-tree were especially

associated with him. In the Attic township of Acharnae there was a

Dionysus Ivy; at Lacedaemon there was a Fig Dionysus; and in Naxos,

where figs were called _meilicha,_ there was a Dionysus Meilichios,

the face of whose image was made of fig-wood.

Further, there are indications, few but significant, that Dionysus

was conceived as a deity of agriculture and the corn. He is spoken

of as himself doing the work of a husbandman: he is reported to have

been the first to yoke oxen to the plough, which before had been

dragged by hand alone; and some people found in this tradition the

clue to the bovine shape in which, as we shall see, the god was

often supposed to present himself to his worshippers. Thus guiding

the ploughshare and scattering the seed as he went, Dionysus is said

to have eased the labour of the husbandman. Further, we are told

that in the land of the Bisaltae, a Thracian tribe, there was a

great and fair sanctuary of Dionysus, where at his festival a bright

light shone forth at night as a token of an abundant harvest

vouchsafed by the diety; but if the crops were to fail that year,

the mystic light was not seen, darkness brooded over the sanctuary

as at other times. Moreover, among the emblems of Dionysus was the

winnowing-fan, that is the large open shovel-shaped basket, which

down to modern times has been used by farmers to separate the grain

from the chaff by tossing the corn in the air. This simple

agricultural instrument figured in the mystic rites of Dionysus;

indeed the god is traditionally said to have been placed at birth in

a winnowing-fan as in a cradle: in art he is represented as an

infant so cradled; and from these traditions and representations he

derived the epithet of _Liknites,_ that is, "He of the

Winnowing-fan."

Like other gods of vegetation Dionysus was believed to have died a

violent death, but to have been brought to life again; and his

sufferings, death, and resurrection were enacted in his sacred

rites. His tragic story is thus told by the poet Nonnus. Zeus in the

form of a serpent visited Persephone, and she bore him Zagreus, that

is, Dionysus, a horned infant. Scarcely was he born, when the babe

mounted the throne of his father Zeus and mimicked the great god by

brandishing the lightning in his tiny hand. But he did not occupy

the throne long; for the treacherous Titans, their faces whitened

with chalk, attacked him with knives while he was looking at himself

in a mirror. For a time he evaded their assaults by turning himself

into various shapes, assuming the likeness successively of Zeus and

Cronus, of a young man, of a lion, a horse, and a serpent. Finally,

in the form of a bull, he was cut to pieces by the murderous knives

of his enemies. His Cretan myth, as related by Firmicus Maternus,

ran thus. He was said to have been the bastard son of Jupiter, a

Cretan king. Going abroad, Jupiter transferred the throne and

sceptre to the youthful Dionysus, but, knowing that his wife Juno

cherished a jealous dislike of the child, he entrusted Dionysus to

the care of guards upon whose fidelity he believed he could rely.

Juno, however, bribed the guards, and amusing the child with rattles

and a cunningly-wrought looking glass lured him into an ambush,

where her satellites, the Titans, rushed upon him, cut him limb from

limb, boiled his body with various herbs, and ate it. But his sister

Minerva, who had shared in the deed, kept his heart and gave it to

Jupiter on his return, revealing to him the whole history of the

crime. In his rage, Jupiter put the Titans to death by torture, and,

to soothe his grief for the loss of his son, made an image in which

he enclosed the child's heart, and then built a temple in his

honour. In this version a Euhemeristic turn has been given to the

myth by representing Jupiter and Juno (Zeus and Hera) as a king and

queen of Crete. The guards referred to are the mythical Curetes who

danced a war-dance round the infant Dionysus, as they are said to

have done round the infant Zeus. Very noteworthy is the legend,

recorded both by Nonnus and Firmicus, that in his infancy Dionysus

occupied for a short time the throne of his father Zeus. So Proclus

tells us that "Dionysus was the last king of the gods appointed by

Zeus. For his father set him on the kingly throne, and placed in his

hand the sceptre, and made him king of all the gods of the world."

Such traditions point to a custom of temporarily investing the

king's son with the royal dignity as a preliminary to sacrificing

him instead of his father. Pomegranates were supposed to have sprung

from the blood of Dionysus, as anemones from the blood of Adonis and

violets from the blood of Attis: hence women refrained from eating

seeds of pomegranates at the festival of the Thesmophoria. According

to some, the severed limbs of Dionysus were pieced together, at the

command of Zeus, by Apollo, who buried them on Parnassus. The grave

of Dionysus was shown in the Delphic temple beside a golden statue

of Apollo. However, according to another account, the grave of

Dionysus was at Thebes, where he is said to have been torn in

pieces. Thus far the resurrection of the slain god is not mentioned,

but in other versions of the myth it is variously related. According

to one version, which represented Dionysus as a son of Zeus and

Demeter, his mother pieced together his mangled limbs and made him

young again. In others it is simply said that shortly after his

burial he rose from the dead and ascended up to heaven; or that Zeus

raised him up as he lay mortally wounded; or that Zeus swallowed the

heart of Dionysus and then begat him afresh by Semele, who in the

common legend figures as mother of Dionysus. Or, again, the heart

was pounded up and given in a potion to Semele, who thereby

conceived him.

Turning from the myth to the ritual, we find that the Cretans

celebrated a biennial festival at which the passion of Dionysus was

represented in every detail. All that he had done or suffered in his

last moments was enacted before the eyes of his worshippers, who

tore a live bull to pieces with their teeth and roamed the woods

with frantic shouts. In front of them was carried a casket supposed

to contain the sacred heart of Dionysus, and to the wild music of

flutes and cymbals they mimicked the rattles by which the infant god

had been lured to his doom. Where the resurrection formed part of

the myth, it also was acted at the rites, and it even appears that a

general doctrine of resurrection, or at least of immortality, was

inculcated on the worshippers; for Plutarch, writing to console his

wife on the death of their infant daughter, comforts her with the

thought of the immortality of the soul as taught by tradition and

revealed in the mysteries of Dionysus. A different form of the myth

of the death and resurrection of Dionysus is that he descended into

Hades to bring up his mother Semele from the dead. The local Argive

tradition was that he went down through the Alcyonian lake; and his

return from the lower world, in other words his resurrection, was

annually celebrated on the spot by the Argives, who summoned him

from the water by trumpet blasts, while they threw a lamb into the

lake as an offering to the warder of the dead. Whether this was a

spring festival does not appear, but the Lydians certainly

celebrated the advent of Dionysus in spring; the god was supposed to

bring the season with him. Deities of vegetation, who are believed

to pass a certain portion of each year underground, naturally come

to be regarded as gods of the lower world or of the dead. Both

Dionysus and Osiris were so conceived.

A feature in the mythical character of Dionysus, which at first

sight appears inconsistent with his nature as a deity of vegetation,

is that he was often conceived and represented in animal shape,

especially in the form, or at least with the horns, of a bull. Thus

he is spoken of as "cow-born," "bull," "bull-shaped," "bull-faced,"

"bull-browed," "bull-horned," "horn-bearing," "two-horned,"

"horned." He was believed to appear, at least occasionally, as a

bull. His images were often, as at Cyzicus, made in bull shape, or

with bull horns; and he was painted with horns. Types of the horned

Dionysus are found amongst the surviving monuments of antiquity. On

one statuette he appears clad in a bull's hide, the head, horns, and

hoofs hanging down behind. Again, he is represented as a child with

clusters of grapes round his brow, and a calf's head, with sprouting

horns, attached to the back of his head. On a red-figured vase the

god is portrayed as a calf-headed child seated on a woman's lap. The

people of Cynaetha held a festival of Dionysus in winter, when men,

who had greased their bodies with oil for the occasion, used to pick

out a bull from the herd and carry it to the sanctuary of the god.

Dionysus was supposed to inspire their choice of the particular

bull, which probably represented the deity himself; for at his

festivals he was believed to appear in bull form. The women of Elis

hailed him as a bull, and prayed him to come with his bull's foot.

They sang, "Come hither, Dionysus, to thy holy temple by the sea;

come with the Graces to thy temple, rushing with thy bull's foot, O

goodly bull, O goodly bull!" The Bacchanals of Thrace wore horns in

imitation of their god. According to the myth, it was in the shape

of a bull that he was torn to pieces by the Titans; and the Cretans,

when they acted the sufferings and death of Dionysus, tore a live

bull to pieces with their teeth. Indeed, the rending and devouring

of live bulls and calves appear to have been a regular feature of

the Dionysiac rites. When we consider the practice of portraying the

god as a bull or with some of the features of the animal, the belief

that he appeared in bull form to his worshippers at the sacred

rites, and the legend that in bull form he had been torn in pieces,

we cannot doubt that in rending and devouring a live bull at his

festival the worshippers of Dionysus believed themselves to be

killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood.

Another animal whose form Dionysus assumed was the goat. One of his

names was "Kid." At Athens and at Hermion he was worshipped under

the title of "the one of the Black Goatskin," and a legend ran that

on a certain occasion he had appeared clad in the skin from which he

took the title. In the wine-growing district of Phlius, where in

autumn the plain is still thickly mantled with the red and golden

foliage of the fading vines, there stood of old a bronze image of a

goat, which the husbandmen plastered with gold-leaf as a means of

protecting their vines against blight. The image probably

represented the vine-god himself. To save him from the wrath of

Hera, his father Zeus changed the youthful Dionysus into a kid; and

when the gods fled to Egypt to escape the fury of Typhon, Dionysus

was turned into a goat. Hence when his worshippers rent in pieces a

live goat and devoured it raw, they must have believed that they

were eating the body and blood of the god. The custom of tearing in

pieces the bodies of animals and of men and then devouring them raw

has been practised as a religious rite by savages in modern times.

We need not therefore dismiss as a fable the testimony of antiquity

to the observance of similar rites among the frenzied worshippers of

Bacchus.

The custom of killing a god in animal form, which we shall examine

more in detail further on, belongs to a very early stage of human

culture, and is apt in later times to be misunderstood. The advance

of thought tends to strip the old animal and plant gods of their

bestial and vegetable husk, and to leave their human attributes

(which are always the kernel of the conception) as the final and

sole residuum. In other words, animal and plant gods tend to become

purely anthropomorphic. When they have become wholly or nearly so,

the animals and plants which were at first the deities themselves,

still retain a vague and ill-understood connexion with the

anthropomorphic gods who have developed out of them. The origin of

the relationship between the deity and the animal or plant having

been forgotten, various stories are invented to explain it. These

explanations may follow one of two lines according as they are based

on the habitual or on the exceptional treatment of the sacred animal

or plant. The sacred animal was habitually spared, and only

exceptionally slain; and accordingly the myth might be devised to

explain either why it was spared or why it was killed. Devised for

the former purpose, the myth would tell of some service rendered to

the deity by the animal; devised for the latter purpose, the myth

would tell of some injury inflicted by the animal on the god. The

reason given for sacrificing goats to Dionysus exemplifies a myth of

the latter sort. They were sacrificed to him, it was said, because

they injured the vine. Now the goat, as we have seen, was originally

an embodiment of the god himself. But when the god had divested

himself of his animal character and had become essentially

anthropomorphic, the killing of the goat in his worship came to be

regarded no longer as a slaying of the deity himself, but as a

sacrifice offered to him; and since some reason had to be assigned

why the goat in particular should be sacrificed, it was alleged that

this was a punishment inflicted on the goat for injuring the vine,

the object of the god's especial care. Thus we have the strange

spectacle of a god sacrificed to himself on the ground that he is

his own enemy. And as the deity is supposed to partake of the victim

offered to him, it follows that, when the victim is the god's old

self, the god eats of his own flesh. Hence the goat-god Dionysus is

represented as eating raw goat's blood; and the bull-god Dionysus is

called "eater of bulls." On the analogy of these instances we may

conjecture that wherever a deity is described as the eater of a

particular animal, the animal in question was originally nothing but

the deity himself. Later on we shall find that some savages

propitiate dead bears and whales by offering them portions of their

own bodies.

All this, however, does not explain why a deity of vegetation should

appear in animal form. But the consideration of that point had

better be deferred till we have discussed the character and

attributes of Demeter. Meantime it remains to mention that in some

places, instead of an animal, a human being was torn in pieces at

the rites of Dionysus. This was the practice in Chios and Tenedos;

and at Potniae in Boeotia the tradition ran that it had been

formerly the custom to sacrifice to the goat-smiting Dionysus a

child, for whom a goat was afterwards substituted. At Orchomenus, as

we have seen, the human victim was taken from the women of an old

royal family. As the slain bull or goat represented the slain god,

so, we may suppose, the human victim also represented him.

The legends of the deaths of Pentheus and Lycurgus, two kings who

are said to have been torn to pieces, the one by Bacchanals, the

other by horses, for their opposition to the rites of Dionysus, may

be, as I have already suggested, distorted reminiscences of a custom

of sacrificing divine kings in the character of Dionysus and of

dispersing the fragments of their broken bodies over the fields for

the purpose of fertilising them. It is probably no mere coincidence

that Dionysus himself is said to have been torn in pieces at Thebes,

the very place where according to legend the same fate befell king

Pentheus at the hands of the frenzied votaries of the vine-god.

However, a tradition of human sacrifice may sometimes have been a

mere misinterpretation of a sacrificial ritual in which an animal

victim was treated as a human being. For example, at Tenedos the

new-born calf sacrificed to Dionysus was shod in buskins, and the

mother cow was tended like a woman in child-bed. At Rome a shegoat

was sacrificed to Vedijovis as if it were a human victim. Yet on the

other hand it is equally possible, and perhaps more probable, that

these curious rites were themselves mitigations of an older and

ruder custom of sacrificing human beings, and that the later

pretence of treating the sacrificial victims as if they were human

beings was merely part of a pious and merciful fraud, which palmed

off on the deity less precious victims than living men and women.

This interpretation is supported by many undoubted cases in which

animals have been substituted for human victims.

XLIV. Demeter and Persephone

DIONYSUS was not the only Greek deity whose tragic story and ritual

appear to reflect the decay and revival of vegetation. In another

form and with a different application the old tale reappears in the

myth of Demeter and Persephone. Substantially their myth is

identical with the Syrian one of Aphrodite (Astarte) and Adonis, the

Phrygian one of Cybele and Attis, and the Egyptian one of Isis and

Osiris. In the Greek fable, as in its Asiatic and Egyptian

counterparts, a goddess mourns the loss of a loved one, who

personifies the vegetation, more especially the corn, which dies in

winter to revive in spring; only whereas the Oriental imagination

figured the loved and lost one as a dead lover or a dead husband

lamented by his leman or his wife, Greek fancy embodied the same

idea in the tenderer and purer form of a dead daughter bewailed by

her sorrowing mother.

The oldest literary document which narrates the myth of Demeter and

Persephone is the beautiful Homeric _Hymn to Demeter,_ which critics

assign to the seventh century before our era. The object of the poem

is to explain the origin of the Eleusinian mysteries, and the

complete silence of the poet as to Athens and the Athenians, who in

after ages took conspicuous part in the festival, renders it

probable that the hymn was composed in the far off time when Eleusis

was still a petty independent state, and before the stately

procession of the Mysteries had begun to defile, in bright September

days, over the low chain of barren rocky hills which divides the

flat Eleusinian cornland from the more spacious olive-clad expanse

of the Athenian plain. Be that as it may, the hymn reveals to us the

conception which the writer entertained of the character and

functions of the two goddesses; their natural shapes stand out

sharply enough under the thin veil of poetical imagery. The youthful

Persephone, so runs the tale, was gathering roses and lilies,

crocuses and violets, hyacinths and narcissuses in a lush meadow,

when the earth gaped and Pluto, lord of the Dead, issuing from the

abyss carried her off on his golden car to be his bride and queen in

the gloomy subterranean world. Her sorrowing mother Demeter, with

her yellow tresses veiled in a dark mourning mantle, sought her over

land and sea, and learning from the Sun her daughter's fate she

withdrew in high dudgeon from the gods and took up her abode at

Eleusis, where she presented herself to the king's daughters in the

guise of an old woman, sitting sadly under the shadow of an olive

tree beside the Maiden's Well, to which the damsels had come to draw

water in bronze pitchers for their father's house. In her wrath at

her bereavement the goddess suffered not the seed to grow in the

earth but kept it hidden under ground, and she vowed that never

would she set foot on Olympus and never would she let the corn

sprout till her lost daughter should be restored to her. Vainly the

oxen dragged the ploughs to and fro in the fields; vainly the sower

dropped the barley seed in the brown furrows; nothing came up from

the parched and crumbling soil. Even the Rarian plain near Eleusis,

which was wont to wave with yellow harvests, lay bare and fallow.

Mankind would have perished of hunger and the gods would have been

robbed of the sacrifices which were their due, if Zeus in alarm had

not commanded Pluto to disgorge his prey, to restore his bride

Persephone to her mother Demeter. The grim lord of the Dead smiled

and obeyed, but before he sent back his queen to the upper air on a

golden car, he gave her the seed of a pomegranate to eat, which

ensured that she would return to him. But Zeus stipulated that

henceforth Persephone should spend two thirds of every year with her

mother and the gods in the upper world and one third of the year

with her husband in the nether world, from which she was to return

year by year when the earth was gay with spring flowers. Gladly the

daughter then returned to the sunshine, gladly her mother received

her and fell upon her neck; and in her joy at recovering the lost

one Demeter made the corn to sprout from the clods of the ploughed

fields and all the broad earth to be heavy with leaves and blossoms.

And straightway she went and showed this happy sight to the princes

of Eleusis, to Triptolemus, Eumolpus, Diocles, and to the king

Celeus himself, and moreover she revealed to them her sacred rites

and mysteries. Blessed, says the poet, is the mortal man who has

seen these things, but he who has had no share of them in life will

never be happy in death when he has descended into the darkness of

the grave. So the two goddesses departed to dwell in bliss with the

gods on Olympus; and the bard ends the hymn with a pious prayer to

Demeter and Persephone that they would be pleased to grant him a

livelihood in return for his song.

It has been generally recognised, and indeed it seems scarcely open

to doubt, that the main theme which the poet set before himself in

composing this hymn was to describe the traditional foundation of

the Eleusinian mysteries by the goddess Demeter. The whole poem

leads up to the transformation scene in which the bare leafless

expanse of the Eleusinian plain is suddenly turned, at the will of

the goddess, into a vast sheet of ruddy corn; the beneficent deity

takes the princes of Eleusis, shows them what she has done, teaches

them her mystic rites, and vanishes with her daughter to heaven. The

revelation of the mysteries is the triumphal close of the piece.

This conclusion is confirmed by a more minute examination of the

poem, which proves that the poet has given, not merely a general

account of the foundation of the mysteries, but also in more or less

veiled language mythical explanations of the origin of particular

rites which we have good reason to believe formed essential features

of the festival. Amongst the rites as to which the poet thus drops

significant hints are the preliminary fast of the candidates for

initiation, the torchlight procession, the all-night vigil, the

sitting of the candidates, veiled and in silence, on stools covered

with sheepskins, the use of scurrilous language, the breaking of

ribald jests, and the solemn communion with the divinity by

participation in a draught of barley-water from a holy chalice.

But there is yet another and a deeper secret of the mysteries which

the author of the poem appears to have divulged under cover of his

narrative. He tells us how, as soon as she had transformed the

barren brown expanse of the Eleusinian plain into a field of golden

grain, she gladdened the eyes of Triptolemus and the other

Eleusinian princes by showing them the growing or standing corn.

When we compare this part of the story with the statement of a

Christian writer of the second century, Hippolytus, that the very

heart of the mysteries consisted in showing to the initiated a

reaped ear of corn, we can hardly doubt that the poet of the hymn

was well acquainted with this solemn rite, and that he deliberately

intended to explain its origin in precisely the same way as he

explained other rites of the mysteries, namely by representing

Demeter as having set the example of performing the ceremony in her

own person. Thus myth and ritual mutually explain and confirm each

other. The poet of the seventh century before our era gives us the

myth--he could not without sacrilege have revealed the ritual: the

Christian father reveals the ritual, and his revelation accords

perfectly with the veiled hint of the old poet. On the whole, then,

we may, with many modern scholars, confidently accept the statement

of the learned Christian father Clement of Alexandria, that the myth

of Demeter and Persephone was acted as a sacred drama in the

mysteries of Eleusis.

But if the myth was acted as a part, perhaps as the principal part,

of the most famous and solemn religious rites of ancient Greece, we

have still to enquire, What was, after all, stripped of later

accretions, the original kernel of the myth which appears to later

ages surrounded and transfigured by an aureole of awe and mystery,

lit up by some of the most brilliant rays of Grecian literature and

art? If we follow the indications given by our oldest literary

authority on the subject, the author of the Homeric hymn to Demeter,

the riddle is not hard to read; the figures of the two goddesses,

the mother and the daughter, resolve themselves into

personifications of the corn. At least this appears to be fairly

certain for the daughter Persephone. The goddess who spends three

or, according to another version of the myth, six months of every

year with the dead under ground and the remainder of the year with

the living above ground; in whose absence the barley seed is hidden

in the earth and the fields lie bare and fallow; on whose return in

spring to the upper world the corn shoots up from the clods and the

earth is heavy with leaves and blossoms--this goddess can surely be

nothing else than a mythical embodiment of the vegetation, and

particularly of the corn, which is buried under the soil for some

months of every winter and comes to life again, as from the grave,

in the sprouting cornstalks and the opening flowers and foliage of

every spring. No other reasonable and probable explanation of

Persephone seems possible. And if the daughter goddess was a

personification of the young corn of the present year, may not the

mother goddess be a personification of the old corn of last year,

which has given birth to the new crops? The only alternative to this

view of Demeter would seem to be to suppose that she is a

personification of the earth, from whose broad bosom the corn and

all other plants spring up, and of which accordingly they may

appropriately enough be regarded as the daughters. This view of the

original nature of Demeter has indeed been taken by some writers,

both ancient and modern, and it is one which can be reasonably

maintained. But it appears to have been rejected by the author of

the Homeric hymn to Demeter, for he not only distinguishes Demeter

from the personified Earth but places the two in the sharpest

opposition to each other. He tells us that it was Earth who, in

accordance with the will of Zeus and to please Pluto, lured

Persephone to her doom by causing the narcissuses to grow which

tempted the young goddess to stray far beyond the reach of help in

the lush meadow. Thus Demeter of the hymn, far from being identical

with the Earth-goddess, must have regarded that divinity as her

worst enemy, since it was to her insidious wiles that she owed the

loss of her daughter. But if the Demeter of the hymn cannot have

been a personification of the earth, the only alternative apparently

is to conclude that she was a personification of the corn.

The conclusion is confirmed by the monuments; for in ancient art

Demeter and Persephone are alike characterised as goddesses of the

corn by the crowns of corn which they wear on their heads and by the

stalks of corn which they hold in their hands. Again, it was Demeter

who first revealed to the Athenians the secret of the corn and

diffused the beneficent discovery far and wide through the agency of

Triptolemus, whom she sent forth as an itinerant missionary to

communicate the boon to all mankind. On monuments of art, especially

in vase-paintings, he is constantly represented along with Demeter

in this capacity, holding corn-stalks in his hand and sitting in his

car, which is sometimes winged and sometimes drawn by dragons, and

from which he is said to have sowed the seed down on the whole world

as he sped through the air. In gratitude for the priceless boon many

Greek cities long continued to send the first-fruits of their barley

and wheat harvests as thank-offerings to the Two Goddesses, Demeter

and Persephone, at Eleusis, where subterranean granaries were built

to store the overflowing contributions. Theocritus tells how in the

island of Cos, in the sweet-scented summer time, the farmer brought

the first-fruits of the harvest to Demeter who had filled his

threshingfloor with barley, and whose rustic image held sheaves and

poppies in her hands. Many of the epithets bestowed by the ancients

on Demeter mark her intimate association with the corn in the

clearest manner.

How deeply implanted in the mind of the ancient Greeks was this

faith in Demeter as goddess of the corn may be judged by the

circumstance that the faith actually persisted among their Christian

descendants at her old sanctuary of Eleusis down to the beginning of

the nineteenth century. For when the English traveller Dodwell

revisited Eleusis, the inhabitants lamented to him the loss of a

colossal image of Demeter, which was carried off by Clarke in 1802

and presented to the University of Cambridge, where it still

remains. "In my first journey to Greece," says Dodwell, "this

protecting deity was in its full glory, situated in the centre of a

threshing-floor, amongst the ruins of her temple. The villagers were

impressed with a persuasion that their rich harvests were the effect

of her bounty, and since her removal, their abundance, as they

assured me, has disappeared." Thus we see the Corn Goddess Demeter

standing on the threshing-floor of Eleusis and dispensing corn to

her worshippers in the nineteenth century of the Christian era,

precisely as her image stood and dispensed corn to her worshippers

on the threshing-floor of Cos in the days of Theocritus. And just as

the people of Eleusis in the nineteenth century attributed the

diminution of their harvests to the loss of the image of Demeter, so

in antiquity the Sicilians, a corn-growing people devoted to the

worship of the two Corn Goddesses, lamented that the crops of many

towns had perished because the unscrupulous Roman governor Verres

had impiously carried off the image of Demeter from her famous

temple at Henna. Could we ask for a clearer proof that Demeter was

indeed the goddess of the corn than this belief, held by the Greeks

down to modern times, that the corn-crops depended on her presence

and bounty and perished when her image was removed?

On the whole, then, if, ignoring theories, we adhere to the evidence

of the ancients themselves in regard to the rites of Eleusis, we

shall probably incline to agree with the most learned of ancient

antiquaries, the Roman Varro, who, to quote Augustine's report of

his opinion, "interpreted the whole of the Eleusinian mysteries as

relating to the corn which Ceres (Demeter) had discovered, and to

Proserpine (Persephone), whom Pluto had carried off from her. And

Proserpine herself he said, signifies the fecundity of the seeds,

the failure of which at a certain time had caused the earth to mourn

for barrenness, and therefore had given rise to the opinion that the

daughter of Ceres, that is, fecundity itself, had been ravished by

Pluto and detained in the nether world; and when the dearth had been

publicly mourned and fecundity had returned once more, there was

gladness at the return of Proserpine and solemn rites were

instituted accordingly. After that he says," continues Augustine,

reporting Varro, "that many things were taught in her mysteries

which had no reference but to the discovery of the corn."

Thus far I have for the most part assumed an identity of nature

between Demeter and Persephone, the divine mother and daughter

personifying the corn in its double aspect of the seed-corn of last

year and the ripe ears of this, and this view of the substantial

unity of mother and daughter is borne out by their portraits in

Greek art, which are often so alike as to be indistinguishable. Such

a close resemblance between the artistic types of Demeter and

Persephone militates decidedly against the view that the two

goddesses are mythical embodiments of two things so different and so

easily distinguishable from each other as the earth and the

vegetation which springs from it. Had Greek artists accepted that

view of Demeter and Persephone, they could surely have devised types

of them which would have brought out the deep distinction between

the goddesses. And if Demeter did not personify the earth, can there

be any reasonable doubt that, like her daughter, she personified the

corn which was so commonly called by her name from the time of Homer

downwards? The essential identity of mother and daughter is

suggested, not only by the close resemblance of their artistic

types, but also by the official title of "the Two Goddesses" which

was regularly applied to them in the great sanctuary at Eleusis

without any specification of their individual attributes and titles,

as if their separate individualities had almost merged in a single

divine substance.

Surveying the evidence as a whole, we are fairly entitled to

conclude that in the mind of the ordinary Greek the two goddesses

were essentially personifications of the corn, and that in this germ

the whole efflorescence of their religion finds implicitly its

explanation. But to maintain this is not to deny that in the long

course of religious evolution high moral and spiritual conceptions

were grafted on this simple original stock and blossomed out into

fairer flowers than the bloom of the barley and the wheat. Above

all, the thought of the seed buried in the earth in order to spring

up to new and higher life readily suggested a comparison with human

destiny, and strengthened the hope that for man too the grave may be

but the beginning of a better and happier existence in some brighter

world unknown. This simple and natural reflection seems perfectly

sufficient to explain the association of the Corn Goddess at Eleusis

with the mystery of death and the hope of a blissful immortality.

For that the ancients regarded initiation in the Eleusinian

mysteries as a key to unlock the gates of Paradise appears to be

proved by the allusions which well-informed writers among them drop

to the happiness in store for the initiated hereafter. No doubt it

is easy for us to discern the flimsiness of the logical foundation

on which such high hopes were built. But drowning men clutch at

straws, and we need not wonder that the Greeks, like ourselves, with

death before them and a great love of life in their hearts, should

not have stopped to weigh with too nice a hand the arguments that

told for and against the prospect of human immortality. The

reasoning that satisfied Saint Paul and has brought comfort to

untold thousands of sorrowing Christians, standing by the deathbed

or the open grave of their loved ones, was good enough to pass

muster with ancient pagans, when they too bowed their heads under

the burden of grief, and, with the taper of life burning low in the

socket, looked forward into the darkness of the unknown. Therefore

we do no indignity to the myth of Demeter and Persephone--one of the

few myths in which the sunshine and clarity of the Greek genius are

crossed by the shadow and mystery of death--when we trace its origin

to some of the most familiar, yet eternally affecting aspects of

nature, to the melancholy gloom and decay of autumn and to the

freshness, the brightness, and the verdure of spring.

XLV. The Corn-Mother and the Corn-Maiden in Northern Europe

IT has been argued by W. Mannhardt that the first part of Demeter's

name is derived from an alleged Cretan word _deai,_ "barley," and

that accordingly Demeter means neither more nor less than

"Barley-mother" or "Corn-mother"; for the root of the word seems to

have been applied to different kinds of grain by different branches

of the Aryans. As Crete appears to have been one of the most ancient

seats of the worship of Demeter, it would not be surprising if her

name were of Cretan origin. But the etymology is open to serious

objections, and it is safer therefore to lay no stress on it. Be

that as it may, we have found independent reasons for identifying

Demeter as the Corn-mother, and of the two species of corn

associated with her in Greek religion, namely barley and wheat, the

barley has perhaps the better claim to be her original element; for

not only would it seem to have been the staple food of the Greeks in

the Homeric age, but there are grounds for believing that it is one

of the oldest, if not the very oldest, cereal cultivated by the

Aryan race. Certainly the use of barley in the religious ritual of

the ancient Hindoos as well as of the ancient Greeks furnishes a

strong argument in favour of the great antiquity of its cultivation,

which is known to have been practised by the lake-dwellers of the

Stone Age in Europe.

Analogies to the Corn-mother or Barley-mother of ancient Greece have

been collected in great abundance by W. Mannhardt from the folk-lore

of modern Europe. The following may serve as specimens.

In Germany the corn is very commonly personified under the name of

the Corn-mother. Thus in spring, when the corn waves in the wind,

the peasants say, "There comes the Corn-mother," or "The Corn-mother

is running over the field," or "The Corn-mother is going through the

corn." When children wish to go into the fields to pull the blue

corn-flowers or the red poppies, they are told not to do so, because

the Corn-mother is sitting in the corn and will catch them. Or again

she is called, according to the crop, the Rye-mother or the

Pea-mother, and children are warned against straying in the rye or

among the peas by threats of the Rye-mother or the Pea-mother. Again

the Corn-mother is believed to make the crop grow. Thus in the

neighbourhood of Magdeburg it is sometimes said, "It will be a good

year for flax; the Flax-mother has been seen." In a village of

Styria it is said that the Corn-mother, in the shape of a female

puppet made out of the last sheaf of corn and dressed in white, may

be seen at mid-night in the corn-fields, which she fertilises by

passing through them; but if she is angry with a farmer, she withers

up all his corn.

Further, the Corn-mother plays an important part in harvest customs.

She is believed to be present in the handful of corn which is left

standing last on the field; and with the cutting of this last

handful she is caught, or driven away, or killed. In the first of

these cases, the last sheaf is carried joyfully home and honoured as

a divine being. It is placed in the barn, and at threshing the

corn-spirit appears again. In the Hanoverian district of Hadeln the

reapers stand round the last sheaf and beat it with sticks in order

to drive the Corn-mother out of it. They call to each other, "There

she is! hit her! Take care she doesn't catch you!" The beating goes

on till the grain is completely threshed out; then the Corn-mother

is believed to be driven away. In the neighbourhood of Danzig the

person who cuts the last ears of corn makes them into a doll, which

is called the Corn-mother or the Old Woman and is brought home on

the last waggon. In some parts of Holstein the last sheaf is dressed

in woman's clothes and called the Corn-mother. It is carried home on

the last waggon, and then thoroughly drenched with water. The

drenching with water is doubtless a rain-charm. In the district of

Bruck in Styria the last sheaf, called the Corn-mother, is made up

into the shape of a woman by the oldest married woman in the

village, of an age from fifty to fifty-five years. The finest ears

are plucked out of it and made into a wreath, which, twined with

flowers, is carried on her head by the prettiest girl of the village

to the farmer or squire, while the Corn-mother is laid down in the

barn to keep off the mice. In other villages of the same district

the Corn-mother, at the close of harvest, is carried by two lads at

the top of a pole. They march behind the girl who wears the wreath

to the squire's house, and while he receives the wreath and hangs it

up in the hall, the Corn-mother is placed on the top of a pile of

wood, where she is the centre of the harvest supper and dance.

Afterwards she is hung up in the barn and remains there till the

threshing is over. The man who gives the last stroke at threshing is

called the son of the Corn-mother; he is tied up in the Corn-mother,

beaten, and carried through the village. The wreath is dedicated in

church on the following Sunday; and on Easter Eve the grain is

rubbed out of it by a seven-year-old girl and scattered amongst the

young corn. At Christmas the straw of the wreath is placed in the

manger to make the cattle thrive. Here the fertilising power of the

Corn-mother is plainly brought out by scattering the seed taken from

her body (for the wreath is made out of the Corn-mother) among the

new corn; and her influence over animal life is indicated by placing

the straw in the manger. Amongst the Slavs also the last sheaf is

known as the Rye-mother, the Wheat-mother, the Oats-mother, the

Barley-mother, and so on, according to the crop. In the district of

Tarnow, Galicia, the wreath made out of the last stalks is called

the Wheat-mother, Rye-mother, or Pea-mother. It is placed on a

girl's head and kept till spring, when some of the grain is mixed

with the seed-corn. Here again the fertilising power of the

Corn-mother is indicated. In France, also, in the neighbourhood of

Auxerre, the last sheaf goes by the name of the Mother of the Wheat,

Mother of the Barley, Mother of the Rye, or Mother of the Oats. They

leave it standing in the field till the last waggon is about to wend

homewards. Then they make a puppet out of it, dress it with clothes

belonging to the farmer, and adorn it with a crown and a blue or

white scarf. A branch of a tree is stuck in the breast of the

puppet, which is now called the Ceres. At the dance in the evening

the Ceres is set in the middle of the floor, and the reaper who

reaped fastest dances round it with the prettiest girl for his

partner. After the dance a pyre is made. All the girls, each wearing

a wreath, strip the puppet, pull it to pieces, and place it on the

pyre, along with the flowers with which it was adorned. Then the

girl who was the first to finish reaping sets fire to the pile, and

all pray that Ceres may give a fruitful year. Here, as Mannhardt

observes, the old custom has remained intact, though the name Ceres

is a bit of schoolmaster's learning. In Upper Brittany the last

sheaf is always made into human shape; but if the farmer is a

married man, it is made double and consists of a little corn-puppet

placed inside of a large one. This is called the Mother-sheaf. It is

delivered to the farmer's wife, who unties it and gives drink-money

in return.

Sometimes the last sheaf is called, not the Corn-mother, but the

Harvest-mother or the Great Mother. In the province of Osnabrück,

Hanover, it is called the Harvest-mother; it is made up in female

form, and then the reapers dance about with it. In some parts of

Westphalia the last sheaf at the rye-harvest is made especially

heavy by fastening stones in it. They bring it home on the last

waggon and call it the Great Mother, though they do not fashion it

into any special shape. In the district of Erfurt a very heavy

sheaf, not necessarily the last, is called the Great Mother, and is

carried on the last waggon to the barn, where all hands lift it down

amid a fire of jokes.

Sometimes again the last sheaf is called the Grandmother, and is

adorned with flowers, ribbons, and a woman's apron. In East Prussia,

at the rye or wheat harvest, the reapers call out to the woman who

binds the last sheaf, "You are getting the Old Grandmother." In the

neighbourhood of Magdeburg the men and women servants strive who

shall get the last sheaf, called the Grandmother. Whoever gets it

will be married in the next year, but his or her spouse will be old;

if a girl gets it, she will marry a widower; if a man gets it, he

will marry an old crone. In Silesia the Grandmother--a huge bundle

made up of three or four sheaves by the person who tied the last

sheaf--was formerly fashioned into a rude likeness of the human

form. In the neighbourhood of Belfast the last sheaf sometimes goes

by the name of the Granny. It is not cut in the usual way, but all

the reapers throw their sickles at it and try to bring it down. It

is plaited and kept till the (next?) autumn. Whoever gets it will

marry in the course of the year.

Often the last sheaf is called the Old Woman or the Old Man. In

Germany it is frequently shaped and dressed as a woman, and the

person who cuts it or binds it is said to "get the Old Woman." At

Altisheim, in Swabia, when all the corn of a farm has been cut

except a single strip, all the reapers stand in a row before the

strip; each cuts his share rapidly, and he who gives the last cut

"has the Old Woman." When the sheaves are being set up in heaps, the

person who gets hold of the Old Woman, which is the largest and

thickest of all the sheaves, is jeered at by the rest, who call out

to him, "He has the Old Woman and must keep her." The woman who

binds the last sheaf is sometimes herself called the Old Woman, and

it is said that she will be married in the next year. In Neusaass,

West Prussia, both the last sheaf--which is dressed up in jacket,

hat, and ribbons--and the woman who binds it are called the Old

Woman. Together they are brought home on the last waggon and are

drenched with water. In various parts of North Germany the last

sheaf at harvest is made up into a human effigy and called "the Old

Man"; and the woman who bound it is said "to have the Old Man."

In West Prussia, when the last rye is being raked together, the

women and girls hurry with the work, for none of them likes to be

the last and to get "the Old Man," that is, a puppet made out of the

last sheaf, which must be carried before the other reapers by the

person who was the last to finish. In Silesia the last sheaf is

called the Old Woman or the Old Man and is the theme of many jests;

it is made unusually large and is sometimes weighted with a stone.

Among the Wends the man or woman who binds the last sheaf at wheat

harvest is said to "have the Old Man." A puppet is made out of the

wheaten straw and ears in the likeness of a man and decked with

flowers. The person who bound the last sheaf must carry the Old Man

home, while the rest laugh and jeer at him. The puppet is hung up in

the farmhouse and remains till a new Old Man is made at the next

harvest.

In some of these customs, as Mannhardt has remarked, the person who

is called by the same name as the last sheaf and sits beside it on

the last waggon is obviously identified with it; he or she

represents the corn-spirit which has been caught in the last sheaf;

in other words, the corn-spirit is represented in duplicate, by a

human being and by a sheaf. The identification of the person with

the sheaf is made still clearer by the custom of wrapping up in the

last sheaf the person who cuts or binds it. Thus at Hermsdorf in

Silesia it used to be the regular practice to tie up in the last

sheaf the woman who had bound it. At Weiden, in Bavaria, it is the

cutter, not the binder, of the last sheaf who is tied up in it. Here

the person wrapt up in the corn represents the corn-spirit, exactly

as a person wrapt in branches or leaves represents the tree-spirit.

The last sheaf, designated as the Old Woman, is often distinguished

from the other sheaves by its size and weight. Thus in some villages

of West Prussia the Old Woman is made twice as long and thick as a

common sheaf, and a stone is fastened in the middle of it. Sometimes

it is made so heavy that a man can barely lift it. At Alt-Pillau, in

Samland, eight or nine sheaves are often tied together to make the

Old Woman, and the man who sets it up grumbles at its weight. At

Itzgrund, in Saxe-Coburg, the last sheaf, called the Old Woman, is

made large with the express intention of thereby securing a good

crop next year. Thus the custom of making the last sheaf unusually

large or heavy is a charm, working by sympathetic magic, to ensure a

large and heavy crop at the following harvest.

In Scotland, when the last corn was cut after Hallowmas, the female

figure made out of it was sometimes called the Carlin or Carline,

that is, the Old Woman. But if cut before Hallowmas, it was called

the Maiden; if cut after sunset, it was called the Witch, being

supposed to bring bad luck. Among the Highlanders of Scotland the

last corn cut at harvest is known either as the Old Wife

(_Cailleach_) or as the Maiden; on the whole the former name seems

to prevail in the western and the latter in the central and eastern

districts. Of the Maiden we shall speak presently; here we are

dealing with the Old Wife. The following general account of the

custom is given by a careful and well-informed enquirer, the Rev. J.

G. Campbell, minister of the remote Hebridean island of Tiree: "The

Harvest Old Wife (_a Cailleach_).--In harvest, there was a struggle

to escape from being the last done with the shearing, and when

tillage in common existed, instances were known of a ridge being

left unshorn (no person would claim it) because of it being behind

the rest. The fear entertained was that of having the 'famine of the

farm' (_gort a bhaile_), in the shape of an imaginary old woman

(_cailleach_), to feed till next harvest. Much emulation and

amusement arose from the fear of this old woman. . . . The first

done made a doll of some blades of corn, which was called the 'old

wife,' and sent it to his nearest neighbour. He in turn, when ready,

passed it to another still less expeditious, and the person it last

remained with had 'the old woman' to keep for that year."

In the island of Islay the last corn cut goes by the name of the Old

Wife (_Cailleach_), and when she has done her duty at harvest she is

hung up on the wall and stays there till the time comes to plough

the fields for the next year's crop. Then she is taken down, and on

the first day when the men go to plough she is divided among them by

the mistress of the house. They take her in their pockets and give

her to the horses to eat when they reach the field. This is supposed

to secure good luck for the next harvest, and is understood to be

the proper end of the Old Wife.

Usages of the same sort are reported from Wales. Thus in North

Pembrokeshire a tuft of the last corn cut, from six to twelve inches

long, is plaited and goes by the name of the Hag (_wrach_); and

quaint old customs used to be practised with it within the memory of

many persons still alive. Great was the excitement among the reapers

when the last patch of standing corn was reached. All in turn threw

their sickles at it, and the one who succeeded in cutting it

received a jug of home-brewed ale. The Hag (_wrach_) was then

hurriedly made and taken to a neighbouring farm, where the reapers

were still busy at their work. This was generally done by the

ploughman; but he had to be very careful not to be observed by his

neighbours, for if they saw him coming and had the least suspicion

of his errand they would soon make him retrace his steps. Creeping

stealthily up behind a fence he waited till the foreman of his

neighbour's reapers was just opposite him and within easy reach.

Then he suddenly threw the Hag over the fence and, if possible, upon

the foreman's sickle. On that he took to his heels and made off as

fast as he could run, and he was a lucky man if he escaped without

being caught or cut by the flying sickles which the infuriated

reapers hurled after him. In other cases the Hag was brought home to

the farmhouse by one of the reapers. He did his best to bring it

home dry and without being observed; but he was apt to be roughly

handled by the people of the house, if they suspected his errand.

Sometimes they stripped him of most of his clothes, sometimes they

would drench him with water which had been carefully stored in

buckets and pans for the purpose. If, however, he succeeded in

bringing the Hag in dry and unobserved, the master of the house had

to pay him a small fine; or sometimes a jug of beer "from the cask

next to the wall," which seems to have commonly held the best beer,

would be demanded by the bearer. The Hag was then carefully hung on

a nail in the hall or elsewhere and kept there all the year. The

custom of bringing in the Hag (_wrach_) into the house and hanging

it up still exists in some farms of North Pembrokeshire, but the

ancient ceremonies which have just been described are now

discontinued.

In County Antrim, down to some years ago, when the sickle was

finally expelled by the reaping machine, the few stalks of corn left

standing last on the field were plaited together; then the reapers,

blindfolded, threw their sickles at the plaited corn, and whoever

happened to cut it through took it home with him and put it over his

door. This bunch of corn was called the Carley--probably the same

word as Carlin.

Similar customs are observed by Slavonic peoples. Thus in Poland the

last sheaf is commonly called the Baba, that is, the Old Woman. "In

the last sheaf," it is said, "sits the Baba." The sheaf itself is

also called the Baba, and is sometimes composed of twelve smaller

sheaves lashed together. In some parts of Bohemia the Baba, made out

of the last sheaf, has the figure of a woman with a great straw hat.

It is carried home on the last harvest-waggon and delivered, along

with a garland, to the farmer by two girls. In binding the sheaves

the women strive not to be last, for she who binds the last sheaf

will have a child next year. Sometimes the harvesters call out to

the woman who binds the last sheaf, "She has the Baba," or "She is

the Baba." In the district of Cracow, when a man binds the last

sheaf, they say, "The Grandfather is sitting in it"; when a woman

binds it, they say, "The Baba is sitting in it," and the woman

herself is wrapt up in the sheaf, so that only her head projects out

of it. Thus encased in the sheaf, she is carried on the last

harvest-waggon to the house, where she is drenched with water by the

whole family. She remains in the sheaf till the dance is over, and

for a year she retains the name of Baba.

In Lithuania the name for the last sheaf is Boba (Old Woman),

answering to the Polish name Baba. The Boba is said to sit in the

corn which is left standing last. The person who binds the last

sheaf or digs the last potato is the subject of much banter, and

receives and long retains the name of the Old Rye-woman or the Old

Potato-woman. The last sheaf--the Boba--is made into the form of a

woman, carried solemnly through the village on the last

harvest-waggon, and drenched with water at the farmer's house; then

every one dances with it.

In Russia also the last sheaf is often shaped and dressed as a

woman, and carried with dance and song to the farmhouse. Out of the

last sheaf the Bulgarians make a doll which they call the Corn-queen

or Corn-mother; it is dressed in a woman's shirt, carried round the

village, and then thrown into the river in order to secure plenty of

rain and dew for the next year's crop. Or it is burned and the ashes

strew on the fields, doubtless to fertilise them. The name Queen, as

applied to the last sheaf, has its analogies in Central and Northern

Europe. Thus, in the Salzburg district of Austria, at the end of the

harvest a great procession takes place, in which a Queen of the

Corn-ears (_Ährenkönigin_) is drawn along in a little carriage by

young fellows. The custom of the Harvest Queen appears to have been

common in England. Milton must have been familiar with it, for in

_Paradise Lost_ he says:

"Adam the while

Waiting desirous her return, had wove

Of choicest flow'rs a garland to adorn

Her tresses, and her rural labours crown,

As reapers oft are wont their harvest-queen."

Often customs of this sort are practised, not on the harvest-field

but on the threshing-floor. The spirit of the corn, fleeing before

the reapers as they cut down the ripe grain, quits the reaped corn

and takes refuge in the barn, where it appears in the last sheaf

threshed, either to perish under the blows of the flail or to flee

thence to the still unthreshed corn of a neighbouring farm. Thus the

last corn to be threshed is called the Mother-Corn or the Old Woman.

Sometimes the person who gives the last stroke with the flail is

called the Old Woman, and is wrapt in the straw of the last sheaf,

or has a bundle of straw fastened on his back. Whether wrapt in the

straw or carrying it on his back, he is carted through the village

amid general laughter. In some districts of Bavaria, Thüringen, and

elsewhere, the man who threshes the last sheaf is said to have the

Old Woman or the Old Corn-woman; he is tied up in straw, carried or

carted about the village, and set down at last on the dunghill, or

taken to the threshing-floor of a neighbouring farmer who has not

finished his threshing. In Poland the man who gives the last stroke

at threshing is called Baba (Old Woman); he is wrapt in corn and

wheeled through the village. Sometimes in Lithuania the last sheaf

is not threshed, but is fashioned into female shape and carried to

the barn of a neighbour who has not finished his threshing.

In some parts of Sweden, when a stranger woman appears on the

threshing-floor, a flail is put round her body, stalks of corn are

wound round her neck, a crown of ears is placed on her head, and the

threshers call out, "Behold the Corn-woman." Here the stranger

woman, thus suddenly appearing, is taken to be the corn-spirit who

has just been expelled by the flails from the corn-stalks. In other

cases the farmer's wife represents the corn-spirit. Thus in the

Commune of Saligné (Vendée), the farmer's wife, along with the last

sheaf, is tied up in a sheet, placed on a litter, and carried to the

threshing machine, under which she is shoved. Then the woman is

drawn out and the sheaf is threshed by itself, but the woman is

tossed in the sheet, as if she were being winnowed. It would be

impossible to express more clearly the identification of the woman

with the corn than by this graphic imitation of threshing and

winnowing her.

In these customs the spirit of the ripe corn is regarded as old, or

at least as of mature age. Hence the names of Mother, Grandmother,

Old Woman, and so forth. But in other cases the corn-spirit is

conceived as young. Thus at Saldern, near Wolfenbuttel, when the rye

has been reaped, three sheaves are tied together with a rope so as

to make a puppet with the corn ears for a head. This puppet is

called the Maiden or the Corn-maiden. Sometimes the corn-spirit is

conceived as a child who is separated from its mother by the stroke

of the sickle. This last view appears in the Polish custom of

calling out to the man who cuts the last handful of corn, "You have

cut the navel-string." In some districts of West Prussia the figure

made out of the last sheaf is called the Bastard, and a boy is wrapt

up in it. The woman who binds the last sheaf and represents the

Corn-mother is told that she is about to be brought to bed; she

cries like a woman in travail, and an old woman in the character of

grandmother acts as midwife. At last a cry is raised that the child

is born; whereupon the boy who is tied up in the sheaf whimpers and

squalls like an infant. The grandmother wraps a sack, in imitation

of swaddling bands, round the pretended baby, who is carried

joyfully to the barn, lest he should catch cold in the open air. In

other parts of North Germany the last sheaf, or the puppet made out

of it, is called the Child, the Harvest-Child, and so on, and they

call out to the woman who binds the last sheaf, "you are getting the

child."

In some parts of Scotland, as well as in the north of England, the

last handful of corn cut on the harvest-field was called the _kirn,_

and the person who carried it off was said "to win the kirn." It was

then dressed up like a child's doll and went by the name of the

kirn-baby, the kirn-doll, or the Maiden. In Berwickshire down to

about the middle of the nineteenth century there was an eager

competition among the reapers to cut the last bunch of standing

corn. They gathered round it at a little distance and threw their

sickles in turn at it, and the man who succeeded in cutting it

through gave it to the girl he preferred. She made the corn so cut

into a kirn-dolly and dressed it, and the doll was then taken to the

farmhouse and hung up there till the next harvest, when its place

was taken by the new kirn-dolly. At Spottiswoode in Berwickshire the

reaping of the last corn at harvest was called "cutting the Queen"

almost as often as "cutting the kirn." The mode of cutting it was

not by throwing sickles. One of the reapers consented to be

blindfolded, and having been given a sickle in his hand and turned

twice or thrice about by his fellows, he was bidden to go and cut

the kirn. His groping about and making wild strokes in the air with

his sickle excited much hilarity. When he had tired himself out in

vain and given up the task as hopeless, another reaper was

blindfolded and pursued the quest, and so on, one after the other,

till at last the kirn was cut. The successful reaper was tossed up

in the air with three cheers by his brother harvesters. To decorate

the room in which the kirn-supper was held at Spottiswoode as well

as the granary, where the dancing took place, two women made

kirn-dollies or Queens every year; and many of these rustic effigies

of the corn-spirit might be seen hanging up together.

In some parts of the Highlands of Scotland the last handful of corn

that is cut by the reapers on any particular farm is called the

Maiden, or in Gaelic _Maidhdeanbuain,_ literally, "the shorn

Maiden." Superstitions attach to the winning of the Maiden. If it is

got by a young person, they think it an omen that he or she will be

married before another harvest. For that or other reasons there is a

strife between the reapers as to who shall get the Maiden, and they

resort to various stratagems for the purpose of securing it. One of

them, for example, will often leave a handful of corn uncut and

cover it up with earth to hide it from the other reapers, till all

the rest of the corn on the field is cut down. Several may try to

play the same trick, and the one who is coolest and holds out

longest obtains the coveted distinction. When it has been cut, the

Maiden is dressed with ribbons into a sort of doll and affixed to a

wall of the farmhouse. In the north of Scotland the Maiden is

carefully preserved till Yule morning, when it is divided among the

cattle "to make them thrive all the year round." In the

neighbourhood of Balquhidder, Perthshire, the last handful of corn

is cut by the youngest girl on the field, and is made into the rude

form of a female doll, clad in a paper dress, and decked with

ribbons. It is called the Maiden, and is kept in the farmhouse,

generally above the chimney, for a good while, sometimes till the

Maiden of the next year is brought in. The writer of this book

witnessed the ceremony of cutting the Maiden at Balquhidder in

September 1888. A lady friend informed me that as a young girl she

cut the Maiden several times at the request of the reapers in the

neighbourhood of Perth. The name of the Maiden was given to the last

handful of standing corn; a reaper held the top of the bunch while

she cut it. Afterwards the bunch was plaited, decked with ribbons,

and hung up in a conspicuous place on the wall of the kitchen till

the next Maiden was brought in. The harvest-supper in this

neighbourhood was also called the Maiden; the reapers danced at it.

On some farms on the Gareloch, in Dumbartonshire, about the year

1830, the last handful of standing corn was called the Maiden. It

was divided in two, plaited, and then cut with the sickle by a girl,

who, it was thought, would be lucky and would soon be married. When

it was cut the reapers gathered together and threw their sickles in

the air. The Maiden was dressed with ribbons and hung in the kitchen

near the roof, where it was kept for several years with the date

attached. Sometimes five or six Maidens might be seen hanging at

once on hooks. The harvest-supper was called the Kirn. In other

farms on the Gareloch the last handful of corn was called the

Maidenhead or the Head; it was neatly plaited, sometimes decked with

ribbons, and hung in the kitchen for a year, when the grain was

given to the poultry.

In Aberdeenshire "the last sheaf cut, or 'Maiden,' is carried home

in merry procession by the harvesters. It is then presented to the

mistress of the house, who dresses it up to be preserved till the

first mare foals. The Maiden is then taken down and presented to the

mare as its first food. The neglect of this would have untoward

effects upon the foal, and disastrous consequences upon farm

operations generally for the season." In the north-east of

Aberdeenshire the last sheaf is commonly called the _clyack_ sheaf.

It used to be cut by the youngest girl present and was dressed as a

woman. Being brought home in triumph, it was kept till Christmas

morning, and then given to a mare in foal, if there was one on the

farm, or, if there was not, to the oldest cow in calf. Elsewhere the

sheaf was divided between all the cows and their calves or between

all the horses and the cattle of the farm. In Fifeshire the last

handful of corn, known as the Maiden, is cut by a young girl and

made into the rude figure of a doll, tied with ribbons, by which it

is hung on the wall of the farm-kitchen till the next spring. The

custom of cutting the Maiden at harvest was also observed in

Inverness-shire and Sutherlandshire.

A somewhat maturer but still youthful age is assigned to the

corn-spirit by the appellations of Bride, Oats-bride, and

Wheat-bride, which in Germany are sometimes bestowed both on the

last sheaf and on the woman who binds it. At wheat-harvest near

Müglitz, in Moravia, a small portion of the wheat is left standing

after all the rest has been reaped. This remnant is then cut, amid

the rejoicing of the reapers, by a young girl who wears a wreath of

wheaten ears on her head and goes by the name of the Wheat-bride. It

is supposed that she will be a real bride that same year. Near

Roslin and Stonehaven, in Scotland, the last handful of corn cut

"got the name of 'the bride,' and she was placed over the _bress_ or

chimney-piece; she had a ribbon tied below her numerous _ears,_ and

another round her waist."

Sometimes the idea implied by the name of Bride is worked out more

fully by representing the productive powers of vegetation as bride

and bridegroom. Thus in the Vorharz an Oats-man and an Oats-woman,

swathed in straw, dance at the harvest feast. In South Saxony an

Oats-bridegroom and an Oats-bride figure together at the harvest

celebration. The Oats-bridegroom is a man completely wrapt in

oats-straw; the Oats-bride is a man dressed in woman's clothes, but

not wrapt in straw. They are drawn in a waggon to the ale-house,

where the dance takes place. At the beginning of the dance the

dancers pluck the bunches of oats one by one from the

Oats-bridegroom, while he struggles to keep them, till at last he is

completely stript of them and stands bare, exposed to the laughter

and jests of the company. In Austrian Silesia the ceremony of "the

Wheat-bride" is celebrated by the young people at the end of the

harvest. The woman who bound the last sheaf plays the part of the

Wheat-bride, wearing the harvest-crown of wheat ears and flowers on

her head. Thus adorned, standing beside her Bridegroom in a waggon

and attended by bridesmaids, she is drawn by a pair of oxen, in full

imitation of a marriage procession, to the tavern, where the dancing

is kept up till morning. Somewhat later in the season the wedding of

the Oats-bride is celebrated with the like rustic pomp. About

Neisse, in Silesia, an Oats-king and an Oats-queen, dressed up

quaintly as a bridal pair, are seated on a harrow and drawn by oxen

into the village.

In these last instances the corn-spirit is personified in double

form as male and female. But sometimes the spirit appears in a

double female form as both old and young, corresponding exactly to

the Greek Demeter and Persephone, if my interpretation of these

goddesses is right. We have seen that in Scotland, especially among

the Gaelic-speaking population, the last corn cut is sometimes

called the Old Wife and sometimes the Maiden. Now there are parts of

Scotland in which both an Old Wife (_Cailleach_) and a Maiden are

cut at harvest. The accounts of this custom are not quite clear and

consistent, but the general rule seems to be that, where both a

Maiden and an Old Wife (_Cailleach_) are fashioned out of the reaped

corn at harvest, the Maiden is made out of the last stalks left

standing, and is kept by the farmer on whose land it was cut; while

the Old Wife is made out of other stalks, sometimes out of the first

stalks cut, and is regularly passed on to a laggard farmer who

happens to be still reaping after his brisker neighbour has cut all

his corn. Thus while each farmer keeps his own Maiden, as the

embodiment of the young and fruitful spirit of the corn, he passes

on the Old Wife as soon as he can to a neighbour, and so the old

lady may make the round of all the farms in the district before she

finds a place in which to lay her venerable head. The farmer with

whom she finally takes up her abode is of course the one who has

been the last of all the countryside to finish reaping his crops,

and thus the distinction of entertaining her is rather an invidious

one. He is thought to be doomed to poverty or to be under the

obligation of "providing for the dearth of the township" in the

ensuing season. Similarly we saw that in Pembrokeshire, where the

last corn cut is called, not the Maiden, but the Hag, she is passed

on hastily to a neighbour who is still at work in his fields and who

receives his aged visitor with anything but a transport of joy. If

the Old Wife represents the corn-spirit of the past year, as she

probably does wherever she is contrasted with and opposed to a

Maiden, it is natural enough that her faded charms should have less

attractions for the husbandman than the buxom form of her daughter,

who may be expected to become in her turn the mother of the golden

grain when the revolving year has brought round another autumn. The

same desire to get rid of the effete Mother of the Corn by palming

her off on other people comes out clearly in some of the customs

observed at the close of threshing, particularly in the practice of

passing on a hideous straw puppet to a neighbour farmer who is still

threshing his corn.

The harvest customs just described are strikingly analogous to the

spring customs which we reviewed in an earlier part of this work.

(1) As in the spring customs the tree-spirit is represented both by

a tree and by a person, so in the harvest customs the corn-spirit is

represented both by the last sheaf and by the person who cuts or

binds or threshes it. The equivalence of the person to the sheaf is

shown by giving him or her the same name as the sheaf; by wrapping

him or her in it; and by the rule observed in some places, that when

the sheaf is called the Mother, it must be made up into human shape

by the oldest married woman, but that when it is called the Maiden,

it must be cut by the youngest girl. Here the age of the personal

representative of the corn-spirit corresponds with that of the

supposed age of the corn-spirit, just as the human victims offered

by the Mexicans to promote the growth of the maize varied with the

age of the maize. For in the Mexican, as in the European, custom the

human beings were probably representatives of the corn-spirit rather

than victims offered to it. (2) Again the same fertilising influence

which the tree-spirit is supposed to exert over vegetation, cattle,

and even women is ascribed to the corn-spirit. Thus, its supposed

influence on vegetation is shown by the practice of taking some of

the grain of the last sheaf (in which the corn-spirit is regularly

supposed to be present), and scattering it among the young corn in

spring or mixing it with the seed-corn. Its influence on animals is

shown by giving the last sheaf to a mare in foal, to a cow in calf,

and to horses at the first ploughing. Lastly, its influence on women

is indicated by the custom of delivering the Mother-sheaf, made into

the likeness of a pregnant woman, to the farmer's wife; by the

belief that the woman who binds the last sheaf will have a child

next year; perhaps, too, by the idea that the person who gets it

will soon be married.

Plainly, therefore, these spring and harvest customs are based on

the same ancient modes of thought, and form parts of the same

primitive heathendom, which was doubtless practised by our

forefathers long before the dawn of history. Amongst the marks of a

primitive ritual we may note the following:

1. No special class of persons is set apart for the performance of

the rites; in other words, there are no priests. The rites may be

performed by any one, as occasion demands.

2. No special places are set apart for the performance of the rites;

in other words, there are no temples. The rites may be performed

anywhere, as occasion demands.

3. Spirits, not gods, are recognised. (_a_) As distinguished from

gods, spirits are restricted in their operations to definite

departments of nature. Their names are general, not proper. Their

attributes are generic, rather than individual; in other words,

there is an indefinite number of spirits of each class, and the

individuals of a class are all much alike; they have no definitely

marked individuality; no accepted traditions are current as to their

origin, life, adventures, and character. (_b_) On the other hand

gods, as distinguished from spirits, are not restricted to definite

departments of nature. It is true that there is generally some one

department over which they preside as their special province; but

they are not rigorously confined to it; they can exert their power

for good or evil in many other spheres of nature and life. Again,

they bear individual or proper names, such as Demeter, Persephone,

Dionysus; and their individual characters and histories are fixed by

current myths and the representations of art.

4. The rites are magical rather than propitiatory. In other words,

the desired objects are attained, not by propitiating the favour of

divine beings through sacrifice, prayer, and praise, but by

ceremonies which, as I have already explained, are believed to

influence the course of nature directly through a physical sympathy

or resemblance between the rite and the effect which it is the

intention of the rite to produce.

Judged by these tests, the spring and harvest customs of our

European peasantry deserve to rank as primitive. For no special

class of persons and no special places are set exclusively apart for

their performance; they may be performed by any one, master or man,

mistress or maid, boy or girl; they are practised, not in temples or

churches, but in the woods and meadows, beside brooks, in barns, on

harvest fields and cottage floors. The supernatural beings whose

existence is taken for granted in them are spirits rather than

deities: their functions are limited to certain well-defined

departments of nature: their names are general like the

Barley-mother, the Old Woman, the Maiden, not proper names like

Demeter, Persephone, Dionysus. Their generic attributes are known,

but their individual histories and characters are not the subject of

myths. For they exist in classes rather than as individuals, and the

members of each class are indistinguishable. For example, every farm

has its Corn-mother, or its Old Woman, or its Maiden; but every

Corn-mother is much like every other Corn-mother, and so with the

Old Women and Maidens. Lastly, in these harvests, as in the spring

customs, the ritual is magical rather than propitiatory. This is

shown by throwing the Corn-mother into the river in order to secure

rain and dew for the crops; by making the Old Woman heavy in order

to get a heavy crop next year; by strewing grain from the last sheaf

amongst the young crops in spring; and by giving the last sheaf to

the cattle to make them thrive.

XLVI. The Corn-Mother in Many Lands

1. The Corn-mother in America

EUROPEAN peoples, ancient and modern, have not been singular in

personifying the corn as a mother goddess. The same simple idea has

suggested itself to other agricultural races in distant parts of the

world, and has been applied by them to other indigenous cereals than

barley and wheat. If Europe has its Wheat-mother and its

Barley-mother, America has its Maize-mother and the East Indies

their Rice-mother. These personifications I will now illustrate,

beginning with the American personification of the maize.

We have seen that among European peoples it is a common custom to

keep the plaited corn-stalks of the last sheaf, or the puppet which

is formed out of them, in the farm-house from harvest to harvest.

The intention no doubt is, or rather originally was, by preserving

the representative of the corn-spirit to maintain the spirit itself

in life and activity throughout the year, in order that the corn may

grow and the crops be good. This interpretation of the custom is at

all events rendered highly probable by a similar custom observed by

the ancient Peruvians, and thus described by the old Spanish

historian Acosta: "They take a certain portion of the most fruitful

of the maize that grows in their farms, the which they put in a

certain granary which they do call _Pirua,_ with certain ceremonies,

watching three nights; they put this maize in the richest garments

they have, and being thus wrapped and dressed, they worship this

_Pirua,_ and hold it in great veneration, saying it is the mother of

the maize of their inheritances, and that by this means the maize

augments and is preserved. In this month [the sixth month, answering

to May] they make a particular sacrifice, and the witches demand of

this _Pirua_ if it hath strength sufficient to continue until the

next year; and if it answers no, then they carry this maize to the

farm to burn, whence they brought it, according to every man's

power; then they make another _Pirua,_ with the same ceremonies,

saying that they renew it, to the end the seed of maize may not

perish, and if it answers that it hath force sufficient to last

longer, they leave it until the next year. This foolish vanity

continueth to this day, and it is very common amongst the Indians to

have these _Piruas._"