In this description of the custom there seems to be some error.

Probably it was the dressed-up bunch of maize, not the granary

(_Pirua_), which was worshipped by the Peruvians and regarded as the

Mother of the Maize. This is confirmed by what we know of the

Peruvian custom from another source. The Peruvians, we are told,

believed all useful plants to be animated by a divine being who

causes their growth. According to the particular plant, these divine

beings were called the Maize-mother (_Zara-mama_), the Quinoa-mother

(_Quinoa-mama_), the Coca-mother (_Coca-mama_), and the

Potato-mother (_Axo-mama_). Figures of these divine mothers were

made respectively of ears of maize and leaves of the quinoa and coca

plants; they were dressed in women's clothes and worshipped. Thus

the Maize-mother was represented by a puppet made of stalks of maize

dressed in full female attire; and the Indians believed that "as

mother, it had the power of producing and giving birth to much

maize." Probably, therefore, Acosta misunderstood his informant, and

the Mother of the Maize which he describes was not the granary

(_Pirua_), but the bunch of maize dressed in rich vestments. The

Peruvian Mother of the Maize, like the harvest-Maiden at

Balquhidder, was kept for a year in order that by her means the corn

might grow and multiply. But lest her strength might not suffice to

last till the next harvest, she was asked in the course of the year

how she felt, and if she answered that she felt weak, she was burned

and a fresh Mother of the Maize made, "to the end the seed of maize

may not perish." Here, it may be observed, we have a strong

confirmation of the explanation already given of the custom of

killing the god, both periodically and occasionally. The Mother of

the maize was allowed, as a rule, to live through a year, that being

the period during which her strength might reasonably be supposed to

last unimpaired; but on any symptom of her strength failing she was

put to death, and a fresh and vigorous Mother of the Maize took her

place, lest the maize which depended on her for its existence should

languish and decay.

2. The Rice-mother in the East Indies

IF THE READER still feels any doubts as to the meaning of the

harvest customs which have been practised within living memory by

European peasants, these doubts may perhaps be dispelled by

comparing the customs observed at the rice-harvest by the Malays and

Dyaks of the East Indies. For these Eastern peoples have not, like

our peasantry, advanced beyond the intellectual stage at which the

customs originated; their theory and their practice are still in

unison; for them the quaint rites which in Europe have long dwindled

into mere fossils, the pastime of clowns and the puzzle of the

learned, are still living realities of which they can render an

intelligible and truthful account. Hence a study of their beliefs

and usages concerning the rice may throw some light on the true

meaning of the ritual of the corn in ancient Greece and modern

Europe.

Now the whole of the ritual which the Malays and Dyaks observe in

connexion with the rice is founded on the simple conception of the

rice as animated by a soul like that which these people attribute to

mankind. They explain the phenomena of reproduction, growth, decay,

and death in the rice on the same principles on which they explain

the corresponding phenomena in human beings. They imagine that in

the fibres of the plant, as in the body of a man, there is a certain

vital element, which is so far independent of the plant that it may

for a time be completely separated from it without fatal effects,

though if its absence be prolonged beyond certain limits the plant

will wither and die. This vital yet separable element is what, for

the want of a better word, we must call the soul of a plant, just as

a similar vital and separable element is commonly supposed to

constitute the soul of man; and on this theory or myth of the

plant-soul is built the whole worship of the cereals, just as on the

theory or myth of the human soul is built the whole worship of the

dead,--a towering superstructure reared on a slender and precarious

foundation.

Believing the rice to be animated by a soul like that of a man, the

Indonesians naturally treat it with the deference and the

consideration which they show to their fellows. Thus they behave

towards the rice in bloom as they behave towards a pregnant woman;

they abstain from firing guns or making loud noises in the field,

lest they should so frighten the soul of the rice that it would

miscarry and bear no grain; and for the same reason they will not

talk of corpses or demons in the rice-fields. Moreover, they feed

the blooming rice with foods of various kinds which are believed to

be wholesome for women with child; but when the rice-ears are just

beginning to form, they are looked upon as infants, and women go

through the fields feeding them with rice-pap as if they were human

babes. In such natural and obvious comparisons of the breeding plant

to a breeding woman, and of the young grain to a young child, is to

be sought the origin of the kindred Greek conception of the

Corn-mother and the Corn-daughter, Demeter and Persephone. But if

the timorous feminine soul of the rice can be frightened into a

miscarriage even by loud noises, it is easy to imagine what her

feelings must be at harvest, when people are under the sad necessity

of cutting down the rice with the knife. At so critical a season

every precaution must be used to render the necessary surgical

operation of reaping as inconspicuous and as painless as possible.

For that reason the reaping of the seed-rice is done with knives of

a peculiar pattern, such that the blades are hidden in the reapers'

hands and do not frighten the rice-spirit till the very last moment,

when her head is swept off almost before she is aware; and from a

like delicate motive the reapers at work in the fields employ a

special form of speech, which the rice-spirit cannot be expected to

understand, so that she has no warning or inkling of what is going

forward till the heads of rice are safely deposited in the basket.

Among the Indonesian peoples who thus personify the rice we may take

the Kayans or Bahaus of Central Borneo as typical. In order to

secure and detain the volatile soul of the rice the Kayans resort to

a number of devices. Among the instruments employed for this purpose

are a miniature ladder, a spatula, and a basket containing hooks,

thorns, and cords. With the spatula the priestess strokes the soul

of the rice down the little ladder into the basket, where it is

naturally held fast by the hooks, the thorn, and the cord; and

having thus captured and imprisoned the soul she conveys it into the

rice-granary. Sometimes a bamboo box and a net are used for the same

purpose. And in order to ensure a good harvest for the following

year it is necessary not only to detain the soul of all the grains

of rice which are safely stored in the granary, but also to attract

and recover the soul of all the rice that has been lost through

falling to the earth or being eaten by deer, apes, and pigs. For

this purpose instruments of various sorts have been invented by the

priests. One, for example, is a bamboo vessel provided with four

hooks made from the wood of a fruit-tree, by means of which the

absent rice-soul may be hooked and drawn back into the vessel, which

is then hung up in the house. Sometimes two hands carved out of the

wood of a fruit-tree are used for the same purpose. And every time

that a Kayan housewife fetches rice from the granary for the use of

her household, she must propitiate the souls of the rice in the

granary, lest they should be angry at being robbed of their

substance.

The same need of securing the soul of the rice, if the crop is to

thrive, is keenly felt by the Karens of Burma. When a rice-field

does not flourish, they suppose that the soul (_kelah_) of the rice

is in some way detained from the rice. If the soul cannot be called

back, the crop will fail. The following formula is used in recalling

the _kelah_ (soul) of the rice: "O come, rice-_kelah,_ come! Come to

the field. Come to the rice. With seed of each gender, come. Come

from the river Kho, come from the river Kaw; from the place where

they meet, come. Come from the West, come from the East. From the

throat of the bird, from the maw of the ape, from the throat of the

elephant. Come from the sources of rivers and their mouths. Come

from the country of the Shan and Burman. From the distant kingdoms

come. From all granaries come. O rice-_kelah,_ come to the rice."

The Corn-mother of our European peasants has her match in the

Rice-mother of the Minangkabauers of Sumatra. The Minangkabauers

definitely attribute a soul to rice, and will sometimes assert that

rice pounded in the usual way tastes better than rice ground in a

mill, because in the mill the body of the rice was so bruised and

battered that the soul has fled from it. Like the Javanese they

think that the rice is under the special guardianship of a female

spirit called Saning Sari, who is conceived as so closely knit up

with the plant that the rice often goes by her name, as with the

Romans the corn might be called Ceres. In particular Saning Sari is

represented by certain stalks or grains called _indoea padi,_ that

is, literally, "Mother of Rice," a name that is often given to the

guardian spirit herself. This so-called Mother of Rice is the

occasion of a number of ceremonies observed at the planting and

harvesting of the rice as well as during its preservation in the

barn. When the seed of the rice is about to be sown in the nursery

or bedding-out ground, where under the wet system of cultivation it

is regularly allowed to sprout before being transplanted to the

fields, the best grains are picked out to form the Rice-mother.

These are then sown in the middle of the bed, and the common seed is

planted round about them. The state of the Rice-mother is supposed

to exert the greatest influence on the growth of the rice; if she

droops or pines away, the harvest will be bad in consequence. The

woman who sows the Rice-mother in the nursery lets her hair hang

loose and afterwards bathes, as a means of ensuring an abundant

harvest. When the time comes to transplant the rice from the nursery

to the field, the Rice-mother receives a special place either in the

middle or in a corner of the field, and a prayer or charm is uttered

as follows: "Saning Sari, may a measure of rice come from a stalk of

rice and a basketful from a root; may you be frightened neither by

lightning nor by passers-by! Sunshine make you glad; with the storm

may you be at peace; and may rain serve to wash your face!" While

the rice is growing, the particular plant which was thus treated as

the Rice-mother is lost sight of; but before harvest another

Rice-mother is found. When the crop is ripe for cutting, the oldest

woman of the family or a sorcerer goes out to look for her. The

first stalks seen to bend under a passing breeze are the

Rice-mother, and they are tied together but not cut until the

first-fruits of the field have been carried home to serve as a

festal meal for the family and their friends, nay even for the

domestic animals; since it is Saning Sari's pleasure that the beasts

also should partake of her good gifts. After the meal has been

eaten, the Rice-mother is fetched home by persons in gay attire, who

carry her very carefully under an umbrella in a neatly worked bag to

the barn, where a place in the middle is assigned to her. Every one

believes that she takes care of the rice in the barn and even

multiplies it not uncommonly.

When the Tomori of Central Celebes are about to plant the rice, they

bury in the field some betel as an offering to the spirits who cause

the rice to grow. The rice that is planted round this spot is the

last to be reaped at harvest. At the commencement of the reaping the

stalks of this patch of rice are tied together into a sheaf, which

is called "the Mother of the Rice" (_ineno pae_), and offerings in

the shape of rice, fowl's liver, eggs, and other things are laid

down before it. When all the rest of the rice in the field has been

reaped, "the Mother of the Rice" is cut down and carried with due

honour to the rice-barn, where it is laid on the floor, and all the

other sheaves are piled upon it. The Tomori, we are told, regard the

Mother of the Rice as a special offering made to the rice-spirit

Omonga, who dwells in the moon. If that spirit is not treated with

proper respect, for example if the people who fetch rice from the

barn are not decently clad, he is angry and punishes the offenders

by eating up twice as much rice in the barn as they have taken out

of it; some people have heard him smacking his lips in the barn, as

he devoured the rice. On the other hand the Toradjas of Central

Celebes, who also practice the custom of the Rice-mother at harvest,

regard her as the actual mother of the whole harvest, and therefore

keep her carefully, lest in her absence the garnered store of rice

should all melt away and disappear.

Again, just as in Scotland the old and the young spirit of the corn

are represented as an Old Wife (_Cailleach_) and a Maiden

respectively, so in the Malay Peninsula we find both the Rice-mother

and her child represented by different sheaves or bundles of ears on

the harvest-field. The ceremony of cutting and bringing home the

Soul of the Rice was witnessed by Mr. W. W. Skeat at Chodoi in

Selangor on the twenty-eighth of January 1897. The particular bunch

or sheaf which was to serve as the Mother of the Rice-soul had

previously been sought and identified by means of the markings or

shape of the ears. From this sheaf an aged sorceress, with much

solemnity, cut a little bundle of seven ears, anointed them with

oil, tied them round with parti-coloured thread, fumigated them with

incense, and having wrapt them in a white cloth deposited them in a

little oval-shaped basket. These seven ears were the infant Soul of

the Rice and the little basket was its cradle. It was carried home

to the farmer's house by another woman, who held up an umbrella to

screen the tender infant from the hot rays of the sun. Arrived at

the house the Rice-child was welcomed by the women of the family,

and laid, cradle and all, on a new sleepingmat with pillows at the

head. After that the farmer's wife was instructed to observe certain

rules of taboo for three days, the rules being in many respects

identical with those which have to be observed for three days after

the birth of a real child. Something of the same tender care which

is thus bestowed on the newly-born Rice-child is naturally extended

also to its parent, the sheaf from whose body it was taken. This

sheaf, which remains standing in the field after the Rice-soul has

been carried home and put to bed, is treated as a newly-made mother;

that is to say, young shoots of trees are pounded together and

scattered broadcast every evening for three successive days, and

when the three days are up you take the pulp of a coco-nut and what

are called "goat-flowers," mix them up, eat them with a little

sugar, and spit some of the mixture out among the rice. So after a

real birth the young shoots of the jack-fruit, the rose-apple,

certain kinds of banana, and the thin pulp of young coco-nuts are

mixed with dried fish, salt, acid, prawn-condiment, and the like

dainties to form a sort of salad, which is administered to mother

and child for three successive days. The last sheaf is reaped by the

farmer's wife, who carries it back to the house, where it is

threshed and mixed with the Rice-soul. The farmer then takes the

Rice-soul and its basket and deposits it, together with the product

of the last sheaf, in the big circular rice-bin used by the Malays.

Some grains from the Rice-soul are mixed with the seed which is to

be sown in the following year. In this Rice-mother and Rice-child of

the Malay Peninsula we may see the counterpart and in a sense the

prototype of the Demeter and Persephone of ancient Greece.

Once more, the European custom of representing the corn-spirit in

the double form of bride and bridegroom has its parallel in a

ceremony observed at the rice-harvest in Java. Before the reapers

begin to cut the rice, the priest or sorcerer picks out a number of

ears of rice, which are tied together, smeared with ointment, and

adorned with flowers. Thus decked out, the ears are called the

_padi-peengantèn,_ that is, the Rice-bride and the Rice-bridegroom;

their wedding feast is celebrated, and the cutting of the rice

begins immediately afterwards. Later on, when the rice is being got

in, a bridal chamber is partitioned off in the barn, and furnished

with a new mat, a lamp, and all kinds of toilet articles. Sheaves of

rice, to represent the wedding guests, are placed beside the

Rice-bride and the Rice-bridegroom. Not till this has been done may

the whole harvest be housed in the barn. And for the first forty

days after the rice has been housed, no one may enter the barn, for

fear of disturbing the newly-wedded pair.

In the islands of Bali and Lombok, when the time of harvest has

come, the owner of the field himself makes a beginning by cutting

"the principal rice" with his own hands and binding it into two

sheaves, each composed of one hundred and eight stalks with their

leaves attached to them. One of the sheaves represents a man and the

other a woman, and they are called "husband and wife." The male

sheaf is wound about with thread so that none of the leaves are

visible, whereas the female sheaf has its leaves bent over and tied

so as to resemble the roll of a woman's hair. Sometimes, for further

distinction, a necklace of rice-straw is tied round the female

sheaf. When the rice is brought home from the field, the two sheaves

representing the husband and wife are carried by a woman on her

head, and are the last of all to be deposited in the barn. There

they are laid to rest on a small erection or on a cushion of

rice-straw. The whole arrangement, we are informed, has for its

object to induce the rice to increase and multiply in the granary,

so that the owner may get more out of it than he put in. Hence when

the people of Bali bring the two sheaves, the husband and wife, into

the barn, they say, "Increase ye and multiply without ceasing." When

all the rice in the barn has been used up, the two sheaves

representing the husband and wife remain in the empty building till

they have gradually disappeared or been devoured by mice. The pinch

of hunger sometimes drives individuals to eat up the rice of these

two sheaves, but the wretches who do so are viewed with disgust by

their fellows and branded as pigs and dogs. Nobody would ever sell

these holy sheaves with the rest of their profane brethren.

The same notion of the propagation of the rice by a male and female

power finds expression amongst the Szis of Upper Burma. When the

paddy, that is, the rice with the husks still on it, has been dried

and piled in a heap for threshing, all the friends of the household

are invited to the threshing-floor, and food and drink are brought

out. The heap of paddy is divided and one half spread out for

threshing, while the other half is left piled up. On the pile food

and spirits are set, and one of the elders, addressing "the father

and mother of the paddy-plant," prays for plenteous harvests in

future, and begs that the seed may bear many fold. Then the whole

party eat, drink, and make merry. This ceremony at the

threshing-floor is the only occasion when these people invoke "the

father and mother of the paddy."

3. The Spirit of the Corn embodied in Human Beings

THUS the theory which recognises in the European Corn-mother,

Corn-maiden, and so forth, the embodiment in vegetable form of the

animating spirit of the crops is amply confirmed by the evidence of

peoples in other parts of the world, who, because they have lagged

behind the European races in mental development, retain for that

very reason a keener sense of the original motives for observing

those rustic rites which among ourselves have sunk to the level of

meaningless survivals. The reader may, however, remember that

according to Mannhardt, whose theory I am expounding, the spirit of

the corn manifests itself not merely in vegetable but also in human

form; the person who cuts the last sheaf or gives the last stroke at

threshing passes for a temporary embodiment of the corn-spirit, just

as much as the bunch of corn which he reaps or threshes. Now in the

parallels which have been hitherto adduced from the customs of

peoples outside Europe the spirit of the crops appears only in

vegetable form. It remains, therefore, to prove that other races

besides our European peasantry have conceived the spirit of the

crops as incorporate in or represented by living men and women. Such

a proof, I may remind the reader, is germane to the theme of this

book; for the more instances we discover of human beings

representing in themselves the life or animating spirit of plants,

the less difficulty will be felt at classing amongst them the King

of the Wood at Nemi.

The Mandans and Minnitarees of North America used to hold a festival

in spring which they called the corn-medicine festival of the women.

They thought that a certain Old Woman who Never Dies made the crops

to grow, and that, living somewhere in the south, she sent the

migratory waterfowl in spring as her tokens and representatives.

Each sort of bird represented a special kind of crop cultivated by

the Indians: the wild goose stood for the maize, the wild swan for

the gourds, and the wild duck for the beans. So when the feathered

messengers of the Old Woman began to arrive in spring the Indians

celebrated the corn-medicine festival of the women. Scaffolds were

set up, on which the people hung dried meat and other things by way

of offerings to the Old Woman; and on a certain day the old women of

the tribe, as representatives of the Old Woman who Never Dies,

assembled at the scaffolds each bearing in her hand an ear of maize

fastened to a stick. They first planted these sticks in the ground,

then danced round the scaffolds, and finally took up the sticks

again in their arms. Meanwhile old men beat drums and shook rattles

as a musical accompaniment to the performance of the old women.

Further, young women came and put dried flesh into the mouths of the

old women, for which they received in return a grain of the

consecrated maize to eat. Three or four grains of the holy corn were

also placed in the dishes of the young women, to be afterwards

carefully mixed with the seed-corn, which they were supposed to

fertilise. The dried flesh hung on the scaffold belonged to the old

women, because they represented the Old Woman who Never Dies. A

similar corn-medicine festival was held in autumn for the purpose of

attracting the herds of buffaloes and securing a supply of meat. At

that time every woman carried in her arms an uprooted plant of

maize. They gave the name of the Old Woman who Never Dies both to

the maize and to those birds which they regarded as symbols of the

fruits of the earth, and they prayed to them in autumn saying,

"Mother, have pity on us! send us not the bitter cold too soon, lest

we have not meat enough! let not all the game depart, that we may

have something for the winter!" In autumn, when the birds were

flying south, the Indians thought that they were going home to the

Old Woman and taking to her the offerings that had been hung up on

the scaffolds, especially the dried meat, which she ate. Here then

we have the spirit or divinity of the corn conceived as an Old Woman

and represented in bodily form by old women, who in their capacity

of representatives receive some at least of the offerings which are

intended for her.

In some parts of India the harvest-goddess Gauri is represented at

once by an unmarried girl and by a bundle of wild balsam plants,

which is made up into the figure of a woman and dressed as such with

mask, garments, and ornaments. Both the human and the vegetable

representative of the goddess are worshipped, and the intention of

the whole ceremony appears to be to ensure a good crop of rice.

4. The Double Personification of the Corn as Mother and Daughter

COMPARED with the Corn-mother of Germany and the Harvest-maiden of

Scotland, the Demeter and Persephone of Greece are late products of

religious growth. Yet as members of the Aryan family the Greeks must

at one time or another have observed harvest customs like those

which are still practised by Celts, Teutons, and Slavs, and which,

far beyond the limits of the Aryan world, have been practised by the

Indians of Peru and many peoples of the East Indies--a sufficient

proof that the ideas on which these customs rest are not confined to

any one race, but naturally suggest themselves to all untutored

peoples engaged in agriculture. It is probable, therefore, that

Demeter and Persephone, those stately and beautiful figures of Greek

mythology, grew out of the same simple beliefs and practices which

still prevail among our modern peasantry, and that they were

represented by rude dolls made out of the yellow sheaves on many a

harvest-field long before their breathing images were wrought in

bronze and marble by the master hands of Phidias and Praxiteles. A

reminiscence of that olden time--a scent, so to say, of the

harvest-field--lingered to the last in the title of the Maiden

(_Kore_) by which Persephone was commonly known. Thus if the

prototype of Demeter is the Corn-mother of Germany, the prototype of

Persephone is the Harvest-maiden which, autumn after autumn, is

still made from the last sheaf on the Braes of Balquhidder. Indeed,

if we knew more about the peasant-farmers of ancient Greece, we

should probably find that even in classical times they continued

annually to fashion their Corn-mothers (Demeters) and Maidens

(Persephones) out of the ripe corn on the harvest-fields. But

unfortunately the Demeter and Persephone whom we know were the

denizens of towns, the majestic inhabitants of lordly temples; it

was for such divinities alone that the refined writers of antiquity

had eyes; the uncouth rites performed by rustics amongst the corn

were beneath their notice. Even if they noticed them, they probably

never dreamed of any connexion between the puppet of corn-stalks on

the sunny stubble-field and the marble divinity in the shady

coolness of the temple. Still the writings even of these town-bred

and cultured persons afford us an occasional glimpse of a Demeter as

rude as the rudest that a remote German village can show. Thus the

story that Iasion begat a child Plutus ( "wealth," "abundance") by

Demeter on a thrice-ploughed field, may be compared with the West

Prussian custom of the mock birth of a child on the harvest-field.

In this Prussian custom the pretended mother represents the

Corn-mother (Zytniamatka_); the pretended child represents the

Corn-baby, and the whole ceremony is a charm to ensure a crop next

year. The custom and the legend alike point to an older practice of

performing, among the sprouting crops in spring or the stubble in

autumn, one of those real or mimic acts of procreation by which, as

we have seen, primitive man often seeks to infuse his own vigorous

life into the languid or decaying energies of nature. Another

glimpse of the savage under the civilised Demeter will be afforded

farther on, when we come to deal with another aspect of those

agricultural divinities.

The reader may have observed that in modern folk-customs the

corn-spirit is generally represented either by a Corn-mother (Old

Woman, etc.) or by a Maiden (Harvest-child, etc.), not both by a

Corn-mother and by a Maiden. Why then did the Greeks represent the

corn both as a mother and a daughter?

In the Breton custom the mother-sheaf--a large figure made out of

the last sheaf with a small corn-doll inside of it--clearly

represents both the Corn-mother and the Corn-daughter, the latter

still unborn. Again, in the Prussian custom just referred to, the

woman who plays the part of Corn-mother represents the ripe grain;

the child appears to represent next year's corn, which may be

regarded, naturally enough, as the child of this year's corn, since

it is from the seed of this year's harvest that next year's crop

will spring. Further, we have seen that among the Malays of the

Peninsula and sometimes among the Highlanders of Scotland the spirit

of the grain is represented in double female form, both as old and

young, by means of ears taken alike from the ripe crop: in Scotland

the old spirit of the corn appears as the Carline or _Cailleach,_

the young spirit as the Maiden; while among the Malays of the

Peninsula the two spirits of the rice are definitely related to each

other as mother and child. Judged by these analogies Demeter would

be the ripe crop of this year; Persephone would be the seed-corn

taken from it and sown in autumn, to reappear in spring. The descent

of Persephone into the lower world would thus be a mythical

expression for the sowing of the seed; her reappearance in spring

would signify the sprouting of the young corn. In this way the

Persephone of one year becomes the Demeter of the next, and this may

very well have been the original form of the myth. But when with the

advance of religious thought the corn came to be personified no

longer as a being that went through the whole cycle of birth,

growth, reproduction, and death within a year, but as an immortal

goddess, consistency required that one of the two personifications,

the mother or the daughter, should be sacrificed. However, the

double conception of the corn as mother and daughter may have been

too old and too deeply rooted in the popular mind to be eradicated

by logic, and so room had to be found in the reformed myth both for

mother and daughter. This was done by assigning to Persephone the

character of the corn sown in autumn and sprouting in spring, while

Demeter was left to play the somewhat vague part of the heavy mother

of the corn, who laments its annual disappearance underground, and

rejoices over its reappearance in spring. Thus instead of a regular

succession of divine beings, each living a year and then giving

birth to her successor, the reformed myth exhibits the conception of

two divine and immortal beings, one of whom annually disappears into

and reappears from the ground, while the other has little to do but

to weep and rejoice at the appropriate seasons.

This theory of the double personification of the corn in Greek myth

assumes that both personifications (Demeter and Persephone) are

original. But if we suppose that the Greek myth started with a

single personification, the aftergrowth of a second personification

may perhaps be explained as follows. On looking over the harvest

customs which have been passed under review, it may be noticed that

they involve two distinct conceptions of the corn-spirit. For

whereas in some of the customs the corn-spirit is treated as

immanent in the corn, in others it is regarded as external to it.

Thus when a particular sheaf is called by the name of the

corn-spirit, and is dressed in clothes and handled with reverence,

the spirit is clearly regarded as immanent in the corn. But when the

spirit is said to make the crops grow by passing through them, or to

blight the grain of those against whom she has a grudge, she is

apparently conceived as distinct from, though exercising power over,

the corn. Conceived in the latter mode the corn-spirit is in a fair

way to become a deity of the corn, if she has not become so already.

Of these two conceptions, that of the cornspirit as immanent in the

corn is doubtless the older, since the view of nature as animated by

indwelling spirits appears to have generally preceded the view of it

as controlled by external deities; to put it shortly, animism

precedes deism. In the harvest customs of our European peasantry the

corn-spirit seems to be conceived now as immanent in the corn and

now as external to it. In Greek mythology, on the other hand,

Demeter is viewed rather as the deity of the corn than as the spirit

immanent in it. The process of thought which leads to the change

from the one mode of conception to the other is anthropomorphism, or

the gradual investment of the immanent spirits with more and more of

the attributes of humanity. As men emerge from savagery the tendency

to humanise their divinities gains strength; and the more human

these become the wider is the breach which severs them from the

natural objects of which they were at first merely the animating

spirits or souls. But in the progress upwards from savagery men of

the same generation do not march abreast; and though the new

anthropomorphic gods may satisfy the religious wants of the more

developed intelligences, the backward members of the community will

cling by preference to the old animistic notions. Now when the

spirit of any natural object such as the corn has been invested with

human qualities, detached from the object, and converted into a

deity controlling it, the object itself is, by the withdrawal of its

spirit, left inanimate; it becomes, so to say, a spiritual vacuum.

But the popular fancy, intolerant of such a vacuum, in other words,

unable to conceive anything as inanimate, immediately creates a

fresh mythical being, with which it peoples the vacant object. Thus

the same natural object comes to be represented in mythology by two

distinct beings: first by the old spirit now separated from it and

raised to the rank of a deity; second, by the new spirit, freshly

created by the popular fancy to supply the place vacated by the old

spirit on its elevation to a higher sphere. In such cases the

problem for mythology is, having got two distinct personifications

of the same object, what to do with them? How are their relations to

each other to be adjusted, and room found for both in the

mythological system? When the old spirit or new deity is conceived

as creating or producing the object in question, the problem is

easily solved. Since the object is believed to be produced by the

old spirit, and animated by the new one, the latter, as the soul of

the object, must also owe its existence to the former; thus the old

spirit will stand to the new one as producer to produced, that is,

in mythology, as parent to child, and if both spirits are conceived

as female, their relation will be that of mother and daughter. In

this way, starting from a single personification of the corn as

female, mythic fancy might in time reach a double personification of

it as mother and daughter. It would be very rash to affirm that this

was the way in which the myth of Demeter and Persephone actually

took shape; but it seems a legitimate conjecture that the

reduplication of deities, of which Demeter and Persephone furnish an

example, may sometimes have arisen in the way indicated. For

example, among the pairs of deities dealt with in a former part of

this work, it has been shown that there are grounds for regarding

both Isis and her companion god Osiris as personifications of the

corn. On the hypothesis just suggested, Isis would be the old

corn-spirit, and Osiris would be the newer one, whose relationship

to the old spirit was variously explained as that of brother,

husband, and son; for of course mythology would always be free to

account for the coexistence of the two divinities in more ways than

one. It must not, however, be forgotten that this proposed

explanation of such pairs of deities as Demeter and Persephone or

Isis and Osiris is purely conjectural, and is only given for what it

is worth.

XLVII. Lityerses

1. Songs of the Corn Reapers

IN THE PRECEDING pages an attempt has been made to show that in the

Corn-mother and Harvest-maiden of Northern Europe we have the

prototypes of Demeter and Persephone. But an essential feature is

still wanting to complete the resemblance. A leading incident in the

Greek myth is the death and resurrection of Persephone; it is this

incident which, coupled with the nature of the goddess as a deity of

vegetation, links the myth with the cults of Adonis, Attis, Osiris,

and Dionysus; and it is in virtue of this incident that the myth

finds a place in our discussion of the Dying God. It remains,

therefore, to see whether the conception of the annual death and

resurrection of a god, which figures so prominently in these great

Greek and Oriental worships, has not also its origin or its analogy

in the rustic rites observed by reapers and vine-dressers amongst

the corn-shocks and the vines.

Our general ignorance of the popular superstitions and customs of

the ancients has already been confessed. But the obscurity which

thus hangs over the first beginnings of ancient religion is

fortunately dissipated to some extent in the present case. The

worships of Osiris, Adonis, and Attis had their respective seats, as

we have seen, in Egypt, Syria, and Phrygia; and in each of these

countries certain harvest and vintage customs are known to have been

observed, the resemblance of which to each other and to the national

rites struck the ancients themselves, and, compared with the harvest

customs of modern peasants and barbarians, seems to throw some light

on the origin of the rites in question.

It has been already mentioned, on the authority of Diodorus, that in

ancient Egypt the reapers were wont to lament over the first sheaf

cut, invoking Isis as the goddess to whom they owed the discovery of

corn. To the plaintive song or cry sung or uttered by Egyptian

reapers the Greeks gave the name of Maneros, and explained the name

by a story that Maneros, the only son of the first Egyptian king,

invented agriculture, and, dying an untimely death, was thus

lamented by the people. It appears, however, that the name Maneros

is due to a misunderstanding of the formula _maa-ne-hra,_ "Come to

the house," which has been discovered in various Egyptian writings,

for example in the dirge of Isis in the Book of the Dead. Hence we

may suppose that the cry _maa-ne-hra_ was chanted by the reapers

over the cut corn as a dirge for the death of the corn-spirit (Isis

or Osiris) and a prayer for its return. As the cry was raised over

the first ears reaped, it would seem that the corn-spirit was

believed by the Egyptians to be present in the first corn cut and to

die under the sickle. We have seen that in the Malay Peninsula and

Java the first ears of rice are taken to represent either the Soul

of the Rice or the Rice-bride and the Rice-bridegroom. In parts of

Russia the first sheaf is treated much in the same way that the last

sheaf is treated elsewhere. It is reaped by the mistress herself,

taken home and set in the place of honour near the holy pictures;

afterwards it is threshed separately, and some of its grain is mixed

with the next year's seed-corn. In Aberdeenshire, while the last

corn cut was generally used to make the _clyack_ sheaf, it was

sometimes, though rarely, the first corn cut that was dressed up as

a woman and carried home with ceremony.

In Phoenicia and Western Asia a plaintive song, like that chanted by

the Egyptian corn-reapers, was sung at the vintage and probably (to

judge by analogy) also at harvest. This Phoenician song was called

by the Greeks Linus or Ailinus and explained, like Maneros, as a

lament for the death of a youth named Linus. According to one story

Linus was brought up by a shepherd, but torn to pieces by his dogs.

But, like Maneros, the name Linus or Ailinus appears to have

originated in a verbal misunderstanding, and to be nothing more than

the cry _ai lanu,_ that is "Woe to us," which the Phoenicians

probably uttered in mourning for Adonis; at least Sappho seems to

have regarded Adonis and Linus as equivalent.

In Bithynia a like mournful ditty, called Bormus or Borimus, was

chanted by Mariandynian reapers. Bormus was said to have been a

handsome youth, the son of King Upias or of a wealthy and

distinguished man. One summer day, watching the reapers at work in

his fields, he went to fetch them a drink of water and was never

heard of more. So the reapers sought for him, calling him in

plaintive strains, which they continued to chant at harvest ever

afterwards.

2. Killing the Corn-spirit

IN PHRYGIA the corresponding song, sung by harvesters both at

reaping and at threshing, was called Lityerses. According to one

story, Lityerses was a bastard son of Midas, King of Phrygia, and

dwelt at Celaenae. He used to reap the corn, and had an enormous

appetite. When a stranger happened to enter the corn-field or to

pass by it, Lityerses gave him plenty to eat and drink, then took

him to the corn-fields on the banks of the Maeander and compelled

him to reap along with him. Lastly, it was his custom to wrap the

stranger in a sheaf, cut off his head with a sickle, and carry away

his body, swathed in the corn-stalks. But at last Hercules undertook

to reap with him, cut off his head with the sickle, and threw his

body into the river. As Hercules is reported to have slain Lityerses

in the same way that Lityerses slew others, we may infer that

Lityerses used to throw the bodies of his victims into the river.

According to another version of the story, Lityerses, a son of

Midas, was wont to challenge people to a reaping match with him, and

if he vanquished them he used to thrash them; but one day he met

with a stronger reaper, who slew him.

There are some grounds for supposing that in these stories of

Lityerses we have the description of a Phrygian harvest custom in

accordance with which certain persons, especially strangers passing

the harvest field, were regularly regarded as embodiments of the

corn-spirit, and as such were seized by the reapers, wrapt in

sheaves, and beheaded, their bodies, bound up in the corn-stalks,

being after-wards thrown into water as a rain-charm. The grounds for

this supposition are, first, the resemblance of the Lityerses story

to the harvest customs of European peasantry, and, second, the

frequency of human sacrifices offered by savage races to promote the

fertility of the fields. We will examine these grounds successively,

beginning with the former.

In comparing the story with the harvest customs of Europe, three

points deserve special attention, namely: I. the reaping match and

the binding of persons in the sheaves; II. the killing of the

corn-spirit or his representatives; III. the treatment of visitors

to the harvest field or of strangers passing it.

I. In regard to the first head, we have seen that in modern Europe

the person who cuts or binds or threshes the last sheaf is often

exposed to rough treatment at the hands of his fellow-labourers. For

example, he is bound up in the last sheaf, and, thus encased, is

carried or carted about, beaten, drenched with water, thrown on a

dunghill, and so forth. Or, if he is spared this horse-play, he is

at least the subject of ridicule or is thought to be destined to

suffer some misfortune in the course of the year. Hence the

harvesters are naturally reluctant to give the last cut at reaping

or the last stroke at threshing or to bind the last sheaf, and

towards the close of the work this reluctance produces an emulation

among the labourers, each striving to finish his task as fast as

possible, in order that he may escape the invidious distinction of

being last. For example, in the Mittelmark district of Prussia, when

the rye has been reaped, and the last sheaves are about to be tied

up, the binders stand in two rows facing each other, every woman

with her sheaf and her straw rope before her. At a given signal they

all tie up their sheaves, and the one who is the last to finish is

ridiculed by the rest. Not only so, but her sheaf is made up into

human shape and called the Old Man, and she must carry it home to

the farmyard, where the harvesters dance in a circle round her and

it. Then they take the Old Man to the farmer and deliver it to him

with the words, "We bring the Old Man to the Master. He may keep him

till he gets a new one." After that the Old Man is set up against a

tree, where he remains for a long time, the butt of many jests. At

Aschbach in Bavaria, when the reaping is nearly finished, the

reapers say, "Now, we will drive out the Old Man." Each of them sets

himself to reap a patch of corn as fast as he can; he who cuts the

last handful or the last stalk is greeted by the rest with an

exulting cry, "You have the Old Man." Sometimes a black mask is

fastened on the reaper's face and he is dressed in woman's clothes;

or if the reaper is a woman, she is dressed in man's clothes. A

dance follows. At the supper the Old Man gets twice as large a

portion of the food as the others. The proceedings are similar at

threshing; the person who gives the last stroke is said to have the

Old Man. At the supper given to the threshers he has to eat out of

the cream-ladle and to drink a great deal. Moreover, he is quizzed

and teased in all sorts of ways till he frees himself from further

annoyance by treating the others to brandy or beer.

These examples illustrate the contests in reaping, threshing, and

binding which take place amongst the harvesters, from their

unwillingness to suffer the ridicule and discomfort incurred by the

one who happens to finish his work last. It will be remembered that

the person who is last at reaping, binding, or threshing, is

regarded as the representative of the corn-spirit, and this idea is

more fully expressed by binding him or her in corn-stalks. The

latter custom has been already illustrated, but a few more instances

may be added. At Kloxin, near Stettin, the harvesters call out to

the woman who binds the last sheaf, "You have the Old Man, and must

keep him." As late as the first half of the nineteenth century the

custom was to tie up the woman herself in pease-straw, and bring her

with music to the farmhouse, where the harvesters danced with her

till the pease-straw fell off. In other villages round Stettin, when

the last harvest-waggon is being loaded, there is a regular race

amongst the women, each striving not to be last. For she who places

the last sheaf on the waggon is called the Old Man, and is

completely swathed in corn-stalks; she is also decked with flowers,

and flowers and a helmet of straw are placed on her head. In solemn

procession she carries the harvest-crown to the squire, over whose

head she holds it while she utters a string of good wishes. At the

dance which follows, the Old Man has the right to choose his, or

rather her, partner; it is an honour to dance with him. At Gommern,

near Magdeburg, the reaper who cuts the last ears of corn is often

wrapt up in corn-stalks so completely that it is hard to see whether

there is a man in the bundle or not. Thus wrapt up he is taken by

another stalwart reaper on his back, and carried round the field

amidst the joyous cries of the harvesters. At Neuhausen, near

Merseburg, the person who binds the last sheaf is wrapt in ears of

oats and saluted as the Oatsman, whereupon the others dance round

him. At Brie, Isle de France, the farmer himself is tied up in the

_first_ sheaf. At Dingelstedt, in the district of Erfurt, down to

the first half of the nineteenth century it was the custom to tie up

a man in the last sheaf. He was called the Old Man, and was brought

home on the last waggon, amid huzzas and music. On reaching the

farmyard he was rolled round the barn and drenched with water. At

Nördlingen in Bavaria the man who gives the last stroke at threshing

is wrapt in straw and rolled on the threshing-floor. In some parts

of Oberpfalz, Bavaria, he is said to "get the Old Man," is wrapt in

straw, and carried to a neighbour who has not yet finished his

threshing. In Silesia the woman who binds the last sheaf has to

submit to a good deal of horse-play. She is pushed, knocked down,

and tied up in the sheaf, after which she is called the corn-puppet

(_Kornpopel_).

"In all these cases the idea is that the spirit of the corn--the Old

Man of vegetation--is driven out of the corn last cut or last

threshed, and lives in the barn during the winter. At sowing-time he

goes out again to the fields to resume his activity as animating

force among the sprouting corn."

II. Passing to the second point of comparison between the Lityerses

story and European harvest customs, we have now to see that in the

latter the corn-spirit is often believed to be killed at reaping or

threshing. In the Romsdal and other parts of Norway, when the

haymaking is over, the people say that "the Old Hay-man has been

killed." In some parts of Bavaria the man who gives the last stroke

at threshing is said to have killed the Corn-man, the Oats-man, or

the Wheat-man, according to the crop. In the Canton of Tillot, in

Lorraine, at threshing the last corn the men keep time with their

flails, calling out as they thresh, "We are killing the Old Woman!

We are killing the Old Woman!" If there is an old woman in the house

she is warned to save herself, or she will be struck dead. Near

Ragnit, in Lithuania, the last handful of corn is left standing by

itself, with the words, "The Old Woman (_Boba_) is sitting in

there." Then a young reaper whets his scythe and, with a strong

sweep, cuts down the handful. It is now said of him that "he has cut

off the Boba's head"; and he receives a gratuity from the farmer and

a jugful of water over his head from the farmer's wife. According to

another account, every Lithuanian reaper makes haste to finish his

task; for the Old Rye-woman lives in the last stalks, and whoever

cuts the last stalks kills the Old Rye-woman, and by killing her he

brings trouble on himself. In Wilkischken, in the district of

Tilsit, the man who cuts the last corn goes by the name of "the

killer of the Rye-woman." In Lithuania, again, the corn-spirit is

believed to be killed at threshing as well as at reaping. When only

a single pile of corn remains to be threshed, all the threshers

suddenly step back a few paces, as if at the word of command. Then

they fall to work, plying their flails with the utmost rapidity and

vehemence, till they come to the last bundle. Upon this they fling

themselves with almost frantic fury, straining every nerve, and

raining blows on it till the word "Halt!" rings out sharply from the

leader. The man whose flail is the last to fall after the command to

stop has been given is immediately surrounded by all the rest,

crying out that "he has struck the Old Rye-woman dead." He has to

expiate the deed by treating them to brandy; and, like the man who

cuts the last corn, he is known as "the killer of the Old

Rye-woman." Sometimes in Lithuania the slain corn-spirit was

represented by a puppet. Thus a female figure was made out of

corn-stalks, dressed in clothes, and placed on the threshing-floor,

under the heap of corn which was to be threshed last. Whoever

thereafter gave the last stroke at threshing "struck the Old Woman

dead." We have already met with examples of burning the figure which

represents the corn-spirit. In the East Riding of Yorkshire a custom

called "burning the Old Witch" is observed on the last day of

harvest. A small sheaf of corn is burnt on the field in a fire of

stubble; peas are parched at the fire and eaten with a liberal

allowance of ale; and the lads and lasses romp about the flames and

amuse themselves by blackening each other's faces. Sometimes, again,

the corn-spirit is represented by a man, who lies down under the

last corn; it is threshed upon his body, and the people say that

"the Old Man is being beaten to death." We saw that sometimes the

farmer's wife is thrust, together with the last sheaf, under the

threshing-machine, as if to thresh her, and that afterwards a

pretence is made of winnowing her. At Volders, in the Tyrol, husks

of corn are stuck behind the neck of the man who gives the last

stroke at threshing, and he is throttled with a straw garland. If he

is tall, it is believed that the corn will be tall next year. Then

he is tied on a bundle and flung into the river. In Carinthia, the

thresher who gave the last stroke, and the person who untied the

last sheaf on the threshing-floor, are bound hand and foot with

straw bands, and crowns of straw are placed on their heads. Then

they are tied, face to face, on a sledge, dragged through the

village, and flung into a brook. The custom of throwing the

representative of the corn-spirit into a stream, like that of

drenching him with water, is, as usual, a rain-charm.

III. Thus far the representatives of the corn-spirit have generally

been the man or woman who cuts, binds, or threshes the last corn. We

now come to the cases in which the corn-spirit is represented either

by a stranger passing the harvest-field (as in the Lityerses tale),

or by a visitor entering it for the first time. All over Germany it

is customary for the reapers or threshers to lay hold of passing

strangers and bind them with a rope made of corn-stalks, till they

pay a forfeit; and when the farmer himself or one of his guests

enters the field or the threshing-floor for the first time, he is

treated in the same way. Sometimes the rope is only tied round his

arm or his feet or his neck. But sometimes he is regularly swathed

in corn. Thus at Solör in Norway, whoever enters the field, be he

the master or a stranger, is tied up in a sheaf and must pay a

ransom. In the neighbourhood of Soest, when the farmer visits the

flax-pullers for the first time, he is completely enveloped in flax.

Passers-by are also surrounded by the women, tied up in flax, and

compelled to stand brandy. At Nördlingen strangers are caught with

straw ropes and tied up in a sheaf till they pay a forfeit. Among

the Germans of Haselberg, in West Bohemia, as soon as a farmer had

given the last corn to be threshed on the threshing-floor, he was

swathed in it and had to redeem himself by a present of cakes. In

the canton of Putanges, in Normandy, a pretence of tying up the

owner of the land in the last sheaf of wheat is still practised, or

at least was still practised some quarter of a century ago. The task

falls to the women alone. They throw themselves on the proprietor,

seize him by the arms, the legs, and the body, throw him to the

ground, and stretch him on the last sheaf. Then a show is made of

binding him, and the conditions to be observed at the harvest-supper

are dictated to him. When he has accepted them, he is released and

allowed to get up. At Brie, Isle de France, when any one who does

not belong to the farm passes by the harvest-field, the reapers give

chase. If they catch him, they bind him in a sheaf and bite him, one

after the other, in the forehead, crying, "You shall carry the key

of the field." "To have the key" is an expression used by harvesters

elsewhere in the sense of to cut or bind or thresh the last sheaf;

hence, it is equivalent to the phrases "You have the Old Man," "You

are the Old Man," which are addressed to the cutter, binder, or

thresher of the last sheaf. Therefore, when a stranger, as at Brie,

is tied up in a sheaf and told that he will "carry the key of the

field," it is as much as to say that he is the Old Man, that is, an

embodiment of the corn-spirit. In hop-picking, if a well-dressed

stranger passes the hop-yard, he is seized by the women, tumbled

into the bin, covered with leaves, and not released till he has paid

a fine.

Thus, like the ancient Lityerses, modern European reapers have been

wont to lay hold of a passing stranger and tie him up in a sheaf. It

is not to be expected that they should complete the parallel by

cutting off his head; but if they do not take such a strong step,

their language and gestures are at least indicative of a desire to

do so. For instance, in Mecklenburg on the first day of reaping, if

the master or mistress or a stranger enters the field, or merely

passes by it, all the mowers face towards him and sharpen their

scythes, clashing their whet-stones against them in unison, as if

they were making ready to mow. Then the woman who leads the mowers

steps up to him and ties a band round his left arm. He must ransom

himself by payment of a forfeit. Near Ratzeburg, when the master or

other person of mark enters the field or passes by it, all the

harvesters stop work and march towards him in a body, the men with

their scythes in front. On meeting him they form up in line, men and

women. The men stick the poles of their scythes in the ground, as

they do in whetting them; then they take off their caps and hang

them on the scythes, while their leader stands forward and makes a

speech. When he has done, they all whet their scythes in measured

time very loudly, after which they put on their caps. Two of the

women binders then come forward; one of them ties the master or

stranger (as the case may be) with corn-ears or with a silken band;

the other delivers a rhyming address. The following are specimens of

the speeches made by the reaper on these occasions. In some parts of

Pomerania every passer-by is stopped, his way being barred with a

corn-rope. The reapers form a circle round him and sharpen their

scythes, while their leader says:

"The men are ready,

The scythes are bent,

The corn is great and small,

The gentleman must be mowed."

Then the process of whetting the scythes is repeated. At Ramin, in

the district of Stettin, the stranger, standing encircled by the

reapers, is thus addressed:

"We'll stroke the gentleman

With our naked sword,

Wherewith we shear meadows and fields.

We shear princes and lords.

Labourers are often athirst;

If the gentleman will stand beer and brandy

The joke will soon be over.

But, if our prayer he does not like,

The sword has a right to strike."

On the threshing-floor strangers are also regarded as embodiments of

the corn-spirit, and are treated accordingly. At Wiedingharde in

Schleswig when a stranger comes to the threshing-floor he is asked,

"Shall I teach you the flail-dance?" If he says yes, they put the

arms of the threshing-flail round his neck as if he were a sheaf of

corn, and press them together so tight that he is nearly choked. In

some parishes of Wermland (Sweden), when a stranger enters the

threshing-floor where the threshers are at work, they say that "they

will teach him the threshing-song." Then they put a flail round his

neck and a straw rope about his body. Also, as we have seen, if a

stranger woman enters the threshing-floor, the threshers put a flail

round her body and a wreath of corn-stalks round her neck, and call

out, "See the Corn-woman! See! that is how the Corn-maiden looks!"

Thus in these harvest-customs of modern Europe the person who cuts,

binds, or threshes the last corn is treated as an embodiment of the

corn-spirit by being wrapt up in sheaves, killed in mimicry by

agricultural implements, and thrown into the water. These

coincidences with the Lityerses story seem to prove that the latter

is a genuine description of an old Phrygian harvest-custom. But

since in the modern parallels the killing of the personal

representative of the corn-spirit is necessarily omitted or at most

enacted only in mimicry, it is desirable to show that in rude

society human beings have been commonly killed as an agricultural

ceremony to promote the fertility of the fields. The following

examples will make this plain.

3. Human Sacrifices for the Crops

THE INDIANS of Guayaquil, in Ecuador, used to sacrifice human blood

and the hearts of men when they sowed their fields. The people of

Cañar (now Cuenca in Ecuador) used to sacrifice a hundred children

annually at harvest. The kings of Quito, the Incas of Peru, and for

a long time the Spaniards were unable to suppress the bloody rite.

At a Mexican harvest-festival, when the first-fruits of the season

were offered to the sun, a criminal was placed between two immense

stones, balanced opposite each other, and was crushed by them as

they fell together. His remains were buried, and a feast and dance

followed. This sacrifice was known as "the meeting of the stones."

We have seen that the ancient Mexicans also sacrificed human beings

at all the various stages in the growth of the maize, the age of the

victims corresponding to the age of the corn; for they sacrificed

new-born babes at sowing, older children when the grain had

sprouted, and so on till it was fully ripe, when they sacrificed old

men. No doubt the correspondence between the ages of the victims and

the state of the corn was supposed to enhance the efficacy of the

sacrifice.

The Pawnees annually sacrificed a human victim in spring when they

sowed their fields. The sacrifice was believed to have been enjoined

on them by the Morning Star, or by a certain bird which the Morning

Star had sent to them as its messenger. The bird was stuffed and

preserved as a powerful talisman. They thought that an omission of

this sacrifice would be followed by the total failure of the crops

of maize, beans, and pumpkins. The victim was a captive of either

sex. He was clad in the gayest and most costly attire, was fattened

on the choicest food, and carefully kept in ignorance of his doom.

When he was fat enough, they bound him to a cross in the presence of

the multitude, danced a solemn dance, then cleft his head with a

tomahawk and shot him with arrows. According to one trader, the

squaws then cut pieces of flesh from the victim's body, with which

they greased their hoes; but this was denied by another trader who

had been present at the ceremony. Immediately after the sacrifice

the people proceeded to plant their fields. A particular account has

been preserved of the sacrifice of a Sioux girl by the Pawnees in

April 1837 or 1838. The girl was fourteen or fifteen years old and

had been kept for six months and well treated. Two days before the

sacrifice she was led from wigwam to wigwam, accompanied by the

whole council of chiefs and warriors. At each lodge she received a

small billet of wood and a little paint, which she handed to the

warrior next to her. In this way she called at every wigwam,

receiving at each the same present of wood and paint. On the

twenty-second of April she was taken out to be sacrificed, attended

by the warriors, each of whom carried two pieces of wood which he

had received from her hands. Her body having been painted half red

and half black, she was attached to a sort of gibbet and roasted for

some time over a slow fire, then shot to death with arrows. The

chief sacrificer next tore out her heart and devoured it. While her

flesh was still warm it was cut in small pieces from the bones, put

in little baskets, and taken to a neighbouring corn-field. There the

head chief took a piece of the flesh from a basket and squeezed a

drop of blood upon the newly-deposited grains of corn. His example

was followed by the rest, till all the seed had been sprinkled with

the blood; it was then covered up with earth. According to one

account the body of the victim was reduced to a kind of paste, which

was rubbed or sprinkled not only on the maize but also on the

potatoes, the beans, and other seeds to fertilise them. By this

sacrifice they hoped to obtain plentiful crops.

A West African queen used to sacrifice a man and woman in the month

of March. They were killed with spades and hoes, and their bodies

buried in the middle of a field which had just been tilled. At Lagos

in Guinea it was the custom annually to impale a young girl alive

soon after the spring equinox in order to secure good crops. Along

with her were sacrificed sheep and goats, which, with yams, heads of

maize, and plantains, were hung on stakes on each side of her. The

victims were bred up for the purpose in the king's seraglio, and

their minds had been so powerfully wrought upon by the fetish men

that they went cheerfully to their fate. A similar sacrifice used to

be annually offered at Benin, in Guinea. The Marimos, a Bechuana

tribe, sacrifice a human being for the crops. The victim chosen is

generally a short, stout man. He is seized by violence or

intoxicated and taken to the fields, where he is killed amongst the

wheat to serve as "seed" (so they phrase it). After his blood has

coagulated in the sun, it is burned along with the frontal bone, the

flesh attached to it, and the brain; the ashes are then scattered

over the ground to fertilise it. The rest of the body is eaten.

The Bagobos of Mindanao, one of the Philippine Islands, offer a

human sacrifice before they sow their rice. The victim is a slave,

who is hewn to pieces in the forest. The natives of Bontoc in the

interior of Luzon, one of the Philippine Islands, are passionate

head-hunters. Their principal seasons for head-hunting are the times

of planting and reaping the rice. In order that the crop may turn

out well, every farm must get at least one human head at planting

and one at sowing. The head-hunters go out in twos or threes, lie in

wait for the victim, whether man or woman, cut off his or her head,

hands, and feet, and bring them back in haste to the village, where

they are received with great rejoicings. The skulls are at first

exposed on the branches of two or three dead trees which stand in an

open space of every village surrounded by large stones which serve

as seats. The people then dance round them and feast and get drunk.

When the flesh has decayed from the head, the man who cut it off

takes it home and preserves it as a relic, while his companions do

the same with the hands and the feet. Similar customs are observed

by the Apoyaos, another tribe in the interior of Luzon.

Among the Lhota Naga, one of the many savage tribes who inhabit the

deep rugged labyrinthine glens which wind into the mountains from

the rich valley of Brahmapootra, it used to be a common custom to

chop off the heads, hands, and feet of people they met with, and

then to stick up the severed extremities in their fields to ensure a

good crop of grain. They bore no ill-will whatever to the persons

upon whom they operated in this unceremonious fashion. Once they

flayed a boy alive, carved him in pieces, and distributed the flesh

among all the villagers, who put it into their corn-bins to avert

bad luck and ensure plentiful crops of grain. The Gonds of India, a

Dravidian race, kidnapped Brahman boys, and kept them as victims to

be sacrificed on various occasions. At sowing and reaping, after a

triumphal procession, one of the lads was slain by being punctured

with a poisoned arrow. His blood was then sprinkled over the

ploughed field or the ripe crop, and his flesh was devoured. The

Oraons or Uraons of Chota Nagpur worship a goddess called Anna

Kuari, who can give good crops and make a man rich, but to induce

her to do so it is necessary to offer human sacrifices. In spite of

the vigilance of the British Government these sacrifices are said to

be still secretly perpetrated. The victims are poor waifs and strays

whose disappearance attracts no notice. April and May are the months

when the catchpoles are out on the prowl. At that time strangers

will not go about the country alone, and parents will not let their

children enter the jungle or herd the cattle. When a catchpole has

found a victim, he cuts his throat and carries away the upper part

of the ring finger and the nose. The goddess takes up her abode in

the house of any man who has offered her a sacrifice, and from that

time his fields yield a double harvest. The form she assumes in the

house is that of a small child. When the householder brings in his

unhusked rice, he takes the goddess and rolls her over the heap to

double its size. But she soon grows restless and can only be

pacified with the blood of fresh human victims.

But the best known case of human sacrifices, systematically offered

to ensure good crops, is supplied by the Khonds or Kandhs, another

Dravidian race in Bengal. Our knowledge of them is derived from the

accounts written by British officers who, about the middle of the

nineteenth century, were engaged in putting them down. The

sacrifices were offered to the Earth Goddess, Tari Pennu or Bera

Pennu, and were believed to ensure good crops and immunity from all

disease and accidents. In particular, they were considered necessary

in the cultivation of turmeric, the Khonds arguing that the turmeric

could not have a deep red colour without the shedding of blood. The

victim or Meriah, as he was called, was acceptable to the goddess

only if he had been purchased, or had been born a victim--that is,

the son of a victim father, or had been devoted as a child by his

father or guardian. Khonds in distress often sold their children for

victims, "considering the beatification of their souls certain, and

their death, for the benefit of mankind, the most honourable

possible." A man of the Panua tribe was once seen to load a Khond

with curses, and finally to spit in his face, because the Khond had

sold for a victim his own child, whom the Panua had wished to marry.

A party of Khonds, who saw this, immediately pressed forward to

comfort the seller of his child, saying, "Your child has died that

all the world may live, and the Earth Goddess herself will wipe that

spittle from your face." The victims were often kept for years

before they were sacrificed. Being regarded as consecrated beings,

they were treated with extreme affection, mingled with deference,

and were welcomed wherever they went. A Meriah youth, on attaining

maturity, was generally given a wife, who was herself usually a

Meriah or victim; and with her he received a portion of land and

farm-stock. Their offspring were also victims. Human sacrifices were

offered to the Earth Goddess by tribes, branches of tribes, or

villages, both at periodical festivals and on extraordinary

occasions. The periodical sacrifices were generally so arranged by

tribes and divisions of tribes that each head of a family was

enabled, at least once a year, to procure a shred of flesh for his

fields, generally about the time when his chief crop was laid down.

The mode of performing these tribal sacrifices was as follows. Ten

or twelve days before the sacrifice, the victim was devoted by

cutting off his hair, which, until then, had been kept unshorn.

Crowds of men and women assembled to witness the sacrifice; none

might be excluded, since the sacrifice was declared to be for all

mankind. It was preceded by several days of wild revelry and gross

debauchery. On the day before the sacrifice the victim, dressed in a

new garment, was led forth from the village in solemn procession,

with music and dancing, to the Meriah grove, a clump of high forest

trees standing a little way from the village and untouched by the

axe. There they tied him to a post, which was sometimes placed

between two plants of the sankissar shrub. He was then anointed with

oil, ghee, and turmeric, and adorned with flowers; and "a species of

reverence, which it is not easy to distinguish from adoration," was

paid to him throughout the day. A great struggle now arose to obtain

the smallest relic from his person; a particle of the turmeric paste

with which he was smeared, or a drop of his spittle, was esteemed of

sovereign virtue, especially by the women. The crowd danced round

the post to music, and addressing the earth, said, "O God, we offer

this sacrifice to you; give us good crops, seasons, and health";

then speaking to the victim they said, "We bought you with a price,

and did not seize you; now we sacrifice you according to custom, and

no sin rests with us."

On the last morning the orgies, which had been scarcely interrupted

during the night, were resumed, and continued till noon, when they

ceased, and the assembly proceeded to consummate the sacrifice. The

victim was again anointed with oil, and each person touched the

anointed part, and wiped the oil on his own head. In some places

they took the victim in procession round the village, from door to

door, where some plucked hair from his head, and others begged for a

drop of his spittle, with which they anointed their heads. As the

victim might not be bound nor make any show of resistance, the bones

of his arms and, if necessary, his legs were broken; but often this

precaution was rendered unnecessary by stupefying him with opium.

The mode of putting him to death varied in different places. One of

the commonest modes seems to have been strangulation, or squeezing

to death. The branch of a green tree was cleft several feet down the

middle; the victim's neck (in other places, his chest) was inserted

in the cleft, which the priest, aided by his assistants, strove with

all his force to close. Then he wounded the victim slightly with his

axe, whereupon the crowd rushed at the wretch and hewed the flesh

from the bones, leaving the head and bowels untouched. Sometimes he

was cut up alive. In Chinna Kimedy he was dragged along the fields,

surrounded by the crowd, who, avoiding his head and intestines,

hacked the flesh from his body with their knives till he died.

Another very common mode of sacrifice in the same district was to

fasten the victim to the proboscis of a wooden elephant, which

revolved on a stout post, and, as it whirled round, the crowd cut

the flesh from the victim while life remained. In some villages

Major Campbell found as many as fourteen of these wooden elephants,

which had been used at sacrifices. In one district the victim was

put to death slowly by fire. A low stage was formed, sloping on

either side like a roof; upon it they laid the victim, his limbs

wound round with cords to confine his struggles. Fires were then

lighted and hot brands applied, to make him roll up and down the

slopes of the stage as long as possible; for the more tears he shed

the more abundant would be the supply of rain. Next day the body was

cut to pieces.

The flesh cut from the victim was instantly taken home by the

persons who had been deputed by each village to bring it. To secure

its rapid arrival, it was sometimes forwarded by relays of men, and

conveyed with postal fleetness fifty or sixty miles. In each village

all who stayed at home fasted rigidly until the flesh arrived. The

bearer deposited it in the place of public assembly, where it was

received by the priest and the heads of families. The priest divided

it into two portions, one of which he offered to the Earth Goddess

by burying it in a hole in the ground with his back turned, and

without looking. Then each man added a little earth to bury it, and

the priest poured water on the spot from a hill gourd. The other

portion of flesh he divided into as many shares as there were heads

of houses present. Each head of a house rolled his shred of flesh in

leaves, and buried it in his favourite field, placing it in the

earth behind his back without looking. In some places each man

carried his portion of flesh to the stream which watered his fields,

and there hung it on a pole. For three days thereafter no house was

swept; and, in one district, strict silence was observed, no fire

might be given out, no wood cut, and no strangers received. The

remains of the human victim (namely, the head, bowels, and bones)

were watched by strong parties the night after the sacrifice; and

next morning they were burned, along with a whole sheep, on a

funeral pile. The ashes were scattered over the fields, laid as

paste over the houses and granaries, or mixed with the new corn to

preserve it from insects. Sometimes, however, the head and bones

were buried, not burnt. After the suppression of the human

sacrifices, inferior victims were substituted in some places; for

instance, in the capital of Chinna Kimedy a goat took the place of

the human victim. Others sacrifice a buffalo. They tie it to a

wooden post in a sacred grove, dance wildly round it with brandished

knives, then, falling on the living animal, hack it to shreds and

tatters in a few minutes, fighting and struggling with each other

for every particle of flesh. As soon as a man has secured a piece he

makes off with it at full speed to bury it in his fields, according

to ancient custom, before the sun has set, and as some of them have

far to go they must run very fast. All the women throw clods of

earth at the rapidly retreating figures of the men, some of them

taking very good aim. Soon the sacred grove, so lately a scene of

tumult, is silent and deserted except for a few people who remain to

guard all that is left of the buffalo, to wit, the head, the bones,

and the stomach, which are burned with ceremony at the foot of the

stake.

In these Khond sacrifices the Meriahs are represented by our

authorities as victims offered to propitiate the Earth Goddess. But

from the treatment of the victims both before and after death it

appears that the custom cannot be explained as merely a propitiatory

sacrifice. A part of the flesh certainly was offered to the Earth

Goddess, but the rest was buried by each householder in his fields,

and the ashes of the other parts of the body were scattered over the

fields, laid as paste on the granaries, or mixed with the new corn.

These latter customs imply that to the body of the Meriah there was

ascribed a direct or intrinsic power of making the crops to grow,

quite independent of the indirect efficacy which it might have as an

offering to secure the good-will of the deity. In other words, the

flesh and ashes of the victim were believed to be endowed with a

magical or physical power of fertilising the land. The same

intrinsic power was ascribed to the blood and tears of the Meriah,

his blood causing the redness of the turmeric and his tears

producing rain; for it can hardly be doubted that, originally at

least, the tears were supposed to bring down the rain, not merely to

prognosticate it. Similarly the custom of pouring water on the

buried flesh of the Meriah was no doubt a rain-charm. Again, magical

power as an attribute of the Meriah appears in the sovereign virtue

believed to reside in anything that came from his person, as his

hair or spittle. The ascription of such power to the Meriah

indicates that he was much more than a mere man sacrificed to

propitiate a deity. Once more, the extreme reverence paid him points

to the same conclusion. Major Campbell speaks of the Meriah as

"being regarded as something more than mortal," and Major Macpherson

says, "A species of reverence, which it is not easy to distinguish

from adoration, is paid to him." In short, the Meriah seems to have

been regarded as divine. As such, he may originally have represented

the Earth Goddess or, perhaps, a deity of vegetation; though in

later times he came to be regarded rather as a victim offered to a

deity than as himself an incarnate god. This later view of the

Meriah as a victim rather than a divinity may perhaps have received

undue emphasis from the European writers who have described the

Khond religion. Habituated to the later idea of sacrifice as an

offering made to a god for the purpose of conciliating his favour,

European observers are apt to interpret all religious slaughter in

this sense, and to suppose that wherever such slaughter takes place,

there must necessarily be a deity to whom the carnage is believed by

the slayers to be acceptable. Thus their preconceived ideas may

unconsciously colour and warp their descriptions of savage rites.

The same custom of killing the representative of a god, of which

strong traces appear in the Khond sacrifices, may perhaps be

detected in some of the other human sacrifices described above. Thus

the ashes of the slaughtered Marimo were scattered over the fields;

the blood of the Brahman lad was put on the crop and field; the

flesh of the slain Naga was stowed in the corn-bin; and the blood of

the Sioux girl was allowed to trickle on the seed. Again, the

identification of the victim with the corn, in other words, the view

that he is an embodiment or spirit of the corn, is brought out in

the pains which seem to be taken to secure a physical correspondence

between him and the natural object which he embodies or represents.

Thus the Mexicans killed young victims for the young corn and old

ones for the ripe corn; the Marimos sacrifice, as "seed," a short,

fat man, the shortness of his stature corresponding to that of the

young corn, his fatness to the condition which it is desired that

the crops may attain; and the Pawnees fattened their victims

probably with the same view. Again, the identification of the victim

with the corn comes out in the African custom of killing him with

spades and hoes, and the Mexican custom of grinding him, like corn,

between two stones.

One more point in these savage customs deserves to be noted. The

Pawnee chief devoured the heart of the Sioux girl, and the Marimos

and Gonds ate the victim's flesh. If, as we suppose, the victim was

regarded as divine, it follows that in eating his flesh his

worshippers believed themselves to be partaking of the body of their

god.

4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives

THE BARBAROUS rites just described offer analogies to the harvest

customs of Europe. Thus the fertilising virtue ascribed to the

corn-spirit is shown equally in the savage custom of mixing the

victim's blood or ashes with the seed-corn and the European custom

of mixing the grain from the last sheaf with the young corn in

spring. Again, the identification of the person with the corn

appears alike in the savage custom of adapting the age and stature

of the victim to the age and stature, whether actual or expected, of

the crop; in the Scotch and Styrian rules that when the corn-spirit

is conceived as the Maiden the last corn shall be cut by a young

maiden, but when it is conceived as the Corn-mother it shall be cut

by an old woman; in the warning given to old women in Lorraine to

save themselves when the Old Woman is being killed, that is, when

the last corn is being threshed; and in the Tyrolese expectation

that if the man who gives the last stroke at threshing is tall, the

next year's corn will be tall also. Further, the same identification

is implied in the savage custom of killing the representative of the

corn-spirit with hoes or spades or by grinding him between stones,

and in the European custom of pretending to kill him with the scythe

or the flail. Once more the Khond custom of pouring water on the

buried flesh of the victim is parallel to the European customs of

pouring water on the personal representative of the corn-spirit or

plunging him into a stream. Both the Khond and the European customs

are rain-charms.

To return now to the Lityerses story. It has been shown that in rude

society human beings have been commonly killed to promote the growth

of the crops. There is therefore no improbability in the supposition

that they may once have been killed for a like purpose in Phrygia

and Europe; and when Phrygian legend and European folk-custom,

closely agreeing with each other, point to the conclusion that men

were so slain, we are bound, provisionally at least, to accept the

conclusion. Further, both the Lityerses story and European

harvest-customs agree in indicating that the victim was put to death

as a representative of the corn-spirit, and this indication is in

harmony with the view which some savages appear to take of the

victim slain to make the crops flourish. On the whole, then, we may

fairly suppose that both in Phrygia and in Europe the representative

of the corn-spirit was annually killed upon the harvest-field.

Grounds have been already shown for believing that similarly in

Europe the representative of the tree-spirit was annually slain. The

proofs of these two remarkable and closely analogous customs are

entirely independent of each other. Their coincidence seems to

furnish fresh presumption in favour of both.

To the question, How was the representative of the corn-spirit

chosen? one answer has been already given. Both the Lityerses story

and European folk-custom show that passing strangers were regarded

as manifestations of the corn-spirit escaping from the cut or

threshed corn, and as such were seized and slain. But this is not

the only answer which the evidence suggests. According to the

Phrygian legend the victims of Lityerses were not simply passing

strangers, but persons whom he had vanquished in a reaping contest

and afterwards wrapt up in corn-sheaves and beheaded. This suggests

that the representative of the corn-spirit may have been selected by

means of a competition on the harvest-field, in which the vanquished

competitor was compelled to accept the fatal honour. The supposition

is countenanced by European harvest-customs. We have seen that in

Europe there is sometimes a contest amongst the reapers to avoid

being last, and that the person who is vanquished in this

competition, that is, who cuts the last corn, is often roughly

handled. It is true we have not found that a pretence is made of

killing him; but on the other hand we have found that a pretence is

made of killing the man who gives the last stroke at threshing, that

is, who is vanquished in the threshing contest. Now, since it is in

the character of representative of the corn-spirit that the thresher

of the last corn is slain in mimicry, and since the same

representative character attaches (as we have seen) to the cutter

and binder as well as to the thresher of the last corn, and since

the same repugnance is evinced by harvesters to be last in any one

of these labours, we may conjecture that a pretence has been

commonly made of killing the reaper and binder as well as the

thresher of the last corn, and that in ancient times this killing

was actually carried out. This conjecture is corroborated by the

common superstition that whoever cuts the last corn must die soon.

Sometimes it is thought that the person who binds the last sheaf on

the field will die in the course of next year. The reason for fixing

on the reaper, binder, or thresher of the last corn as the

representative of the corn-spirit may be this. The corn-spirit is

supposed to lurk as long as he can in the corn, retreating before

the reapers, the binders, and the threshers at their work. But when

he is forcibly expelled from his refuge in the last corn cut or the

last sheaf bound or the last grain threshed, he necessarily assumes

some other form than that of the corn-stalks, which had hitherto

been his garment or body. And what form can the expelled corn-spirit

assume more naturally than that of the person who stands nearest to

the corn from which he (the corn-spirit) has just been expelled? But

the person in question is necessarily the reaper, binder, or

thresher of the last corn. He or she, therefore, is seized and

treated as the corn-spirit himself.

Thus the person who was killed on the harvest-field as the

representative of the corn-spirit may have been either a passing

stranger or the harvester who was last at reaping, binding, or

threshing. But there is a third possibility, to which ancient legend

and modern folk-custom alike point. Lityerses not only put strangers

to death; he was himself slain, and apparently in the same way as he

had slain others, namely, by being wrapt in a corn-sheaf, beheaded,

and cast into the river; and it is implied that this happened to

Lityerses on his own land. Similarly in modern harvest-customs the

pretence of killing appears to be carried out quite as often on the

person of the master (farmer or squire) as on that of strangers. Now

when we remember that Lityerses was said to have been a son of the

King of Phrygia, and that in one account he is himself called a

king, and when we combine with this the tradition that he was put to

death, apparently as a representative of the corn-spirit, we are led

to conjecture that we have here another trace of the custom of

annually slaying one of those divine or priestly kings who are known

to have held ghostly sway in many parts of Western Asia and

particularly in Phrygia. The custom appears, as we have seen, to

have been so far modified in places that the king's son was slain in

the king's stead. Of the custom thus modified the story of Lityerses

would be, in one version at least, a reminiscence.

Turning now to the relation of the Phrygian Lityerses to the

Phrygian Attis, it may be remembered that at Pessinus--the seat of a

priestly kingship--the high-priest appears to have been annually

slain in the character of Attis, a god of vegetation, and that Attis

was described by an ancient authority as "a reaped ear of corn."

Thus Attis, as an embodiment of the corn-spirit, annually slain in

the person of his representative, might be thought to be ultimately

identical with Lityerses, the latter being simply the rustic

prototype out of which the state religion of Attis was developed. It

may have been so; but, on the other hand, the analogy of European

folk-custom warns us that amongst the same people two distinct

deities of vegetation may have their separate personal

representatives, both of whom are slain in the character of gods at

different times of the year. For in Europe, as we have seen, it

appears that one man was commonly slain in the character of the

tree-spirit in spring, and another in the character of the

corn-spirit in autumn. It may have been so in Phrygia also. Attis

was especially a tree-god, and his connexion with corn may have been

only such an extension of the power of a tree-spirit as is indicated

in customs like the Harvest-May. Again, the representative of Attis

appears to have been slain in spring; whereas Lityerses must have

been slain in summer or autumn, according to the time of the harvest

in Phrygia. On the whole, then, while we are not justified in

regarding Lityerses as the prototype of Attis, the two may be

regarded as parallel products of the same religious idea, and may

have stood to each other as in Europe the Old Man of harvest stands

to the Wild Man, the Leaf Man, and so forth, of spring. Both were

spirits or deities of vegetation, and the personal representatives

of both were annually slain. But whereas the Attis worship became

elevated into the dignity of a state religion and spread to Italy,

the rites of Lityerses seem never to have passed the limits of their

native Phrygia, and always retained their character of rustic

ceremonies performed by peasants on the harvest-field. At most a few

villages may have clubbed together, as amongst the Khonds, to

procure a human victim to be slain as representative of the

corn-spirit for their common benefit. Such victims may have been

drawn from the families of priestly kings or kinglets, which would

account for the legendary character of Lityerses as the son of a

Phrygian king or as himself a king. When villages did not so club

together, each village or farm may have procured its own

representative of the corn-spirit by dooming to death either a

passing stranger or the harvester who cut, bound, or threshed the

last sheaf. Perhaps in the olden time the practice of head-hunting

as a means of promoting the growth of the corn may have been as

common among the rude inhabitants of Europe and Western Asia as it

still is, or was till lately, among the primitive agricultural

tribes of Assam, Burma, the Philippine Islands, and the Indian

Archipelago. It is hardly necessary to add that in Phrygia, as in

Europe, the old barbarous custom of killing a man on the

harvest-field or the threshing-floor had doubtless passed into a

mere pretence long before the classical era, and was probably

regarded by the reapers and threshers themselves as no more than a

rough jest which the license of a harvest-home permitted them to

play off on a passing stranger, a comrade, or even on their master

himself.

I have dwelt on the Lityerses song at length because it affords so

many points of comparison with European and savage folk-custom. The

other harvest songs of Western Asia and Egypt, to which attention

has been called above, may now be dismissed much more briefly. The

similarity of the Bithynian Bormus to the Phrygian Lityerses helps

to bear out the interpretation which has been given of the latter.

Bormus, whose death or rather disappearance was annually mourned by

the reapers in a plaintive song, was, like Lityerses, a king's son

or at least the son of a wealthy and distinguished man. The reapers

whom he watched were at work on his own fields, and he disappeared

in going to fetch water for them; according to one version of the

story he was carried off by the nymphs, doubtless the nymphs of the

spring or pool or river whither he went to draw water. Viewed in the

light of the Lityerses story and of European folk-custom, this

disappearance of Bormus may be a reminiscence of the custom of

binding the farmer himself in a corn-sheaf and throwing him into the

water. The mournful strain which the reapers sang was probably a

lamentation over the death of the corn-spirit, slain either in the

cut corn or in the person of a human representative; and the call

which they addressed to him may have been a prayer that he might

return in fresh vigour next year.

The Phoenician Linus song was sung at the vintage, at least in the

west of Asia Minor, as we learn from Homer; and this, combined with

the legend of Syleus, suggests that in ancient times passing

strangers were handled by vintagers and vine-diggers in much the

same way as they are said to have been handled by the reaper

Lityerses. The Lydian Syleus, so ran the legend, compelled

passers-by to dig for him in his vineyard, till Hercules came and

killed him and dug up his vines by the roots. This seems to be the

outline of a legend like that of Lityerses; but neither ancient

writers nor modern folk-custom enable us to fill in the details.

But, further, the Linus song was probably sung also by Phoenician

reapers, for Herodotus compares it to the Maneros song, which, as we

have seen, was a lament raised by Egyptian reapers over the cut

corn. Further, Linus was identified with Adonis, and Adonis has some

claims to be regarded as especially a corn-deity. Thus the Linus

lament, as sung at harvest, would be identical with the Adonis

lament; each would be the lamentation raised by reapers over the

dead spirit of the corn. But whereas Adonis, like Attis, grew into a

stately figure of mythology, adored and mourned in splendid cities

far beyond the limits of his Phoenician home, Linus appears to have

remained a simple ditty sung by reapers and vintagers among the

corn-sheaves and the vines. The analogy of Lityerses and of

folk-custom, both European and savage, suggests that in Phoenicia

the slain corn-spirit--the dead Adonis--may formerly have been

represented by a human victim; and this suggestion is possibly

supported by the Harran legend that Tammuz (Adonis) was slain by his

cruel lord, who ground his bones in a mill and scattered them to the

wind. For in Mexico, as we have seen, the human victim at harvest

was crushed between two stones; and both in Africa and India the

ashes or other remains of the victim were scattered over the fields.

But the Harran legend may be only a mythical way of expressing the

grinding of corn in the mill and the scattering of the seed. It

seems worth suggesting that the mock king who was annually killed at

the Babylonian festival of the Sacaea on the sixteenth day of the

month Lous may have represented Tammuz himself. For the historian

Berosus, who records the festival and its date, probably used the

Macedonian calendar, since he dedicated his history to Antiochus

Soter; and in his day the Macedonian month Lous appears to have

corresponded to the Babylonian month Tammuz. If this conjecture is

right, the view that the mock king at the Sacaea was slain in the

character of a god would be established.

There is a good deal more evidence that in Egypt the slain

corn-spirit--the dead Osiris--was represented by a human victim,

whom the reapers slew on the harvest-field, mourning his death in a

dirge, to which the Greeks, through a verbal misunderstanding, gave

the name of Maneros. For the legend of Busiris seems to preserve a

reminiscence of human sacrifices once offered by the Egyptians in

connexion with the worship of Osiris. Busiris was said to have been

an Egyptian king who sacrificed all strangers on the altar of Zeus.

The origin of the custom was traced to a dearth which afflicted the

land of Egypt for nine years. A Cyprian seer informed Busiris that

the dearth would cease if a man were annually sacrificed to Zeus. So

Busiris instituted the sacrifice. But when Hercules came to Egypt,

and was being dragged to the altar to be sacrificed, he burst his

bonds and slew Busiris and his son. Here then is a legend that in

Egypt a human victim was annually sacrificed to prevent the failure

of the crops, and a belief is implied that an omission of the

sacrifice would have entailed a recurrence of that infertility which

it was the object of the sacrifice to prevent. So the Pawnees, as we

have seen, believed that an omission of the human sacrifice at

planting would have been followed by a total failure of their crops.

The name Busiris was in reality the name of a city, _pe-Asar,_ "the

house of Osiris," the city being so called because it contained the

grave of Osiris. Indeed some high modern authorities believe that

Busiris was the original home of Osiris, from which his worship

spread to other parts of Egypt. The human sacrifices were said to

have been offered at his grave, and the victims were red-haired men,

whose ashes were scattered abroad by means of winnowing-fans. This

tradition of human sacrifices offered at the tomb of Osiris is

confirmed by the evidence of the monuments.

In the light of the foregoing discussion the Egyptian tradition of

Busiris admits of a consistent and fairly probable explanation.

Osiris, the corn-spirit, was annually represented at harvest by a

stranger, whose red hair made him a suitable representative of the

ripe corn. This man, in his representative character, was slain on

the harvest-field, and mourned by the reapers, who prayed at the

same time that the corn-spirit might revive and return

(_mââ-ne-rha,_ Maneros) with renewed vigour in the following year.

Finally, the victim, or some part of him, was burned, and the ashes

scattered by winnowing-fans over the fields to fertilise them. Here

the choice of the victim on the ground of his resemblance to the

corn which he was to represent agrees with the Mexican and African

customs already described. Similarly the woman who died in the

character of the Corn-mother at the Mexican midsummer sacrifice had

her face painted red and yellow in token of the colours of the corn,

and she wore a pasteboard mitre surmounted by waving plumes in

imitation of the tassel of the maize. On the other hand, at the

festival of the Goddess of the White Maize the Mexicans sacrificed

lepers. The Romans sacrificed red-haired puppies in spring to avert

the supposed blighting influence of the Dog-star, believing that the

crops would thus grow ripe and ruddy. The heathen of Harran offered

to the sun, moon, and planets human victims who were chosen on the

ground of their supposed resemblance to the heavenly bodies to which

they were sacrificed; for example, the priests, clothed in red and

smeared with blood, offered a red-haired, red-cheeked man to "the

red planet Mars" in a temple which was painted red and draped with

red hangings. These and the like cases of assimilating the victim to

the god, or to the natural phenomenon which he represents, are based

ultimately on the principle of homoeopathic or imitative magic, the

notion being that the object aimed at will be most readily attained

by means of a sacrifice which resembles the effect that it is

designed to bring about.

The story that the fragments of Osiris's body were scattered up and

down the land, and buried by Isis on the spots where they lay, may

very well be a reminiscence of a custom, like that observed by the

Khonds, of dividing the human victim in pieces and burying the

pieces, often at intervals of many miles from each other, in the

fields.

Thus, if I am right, the key to the mysteries of Osiris is furnished

by the melancholy cry of the Egyptian reapers, which down to Roman

times could be heard year after year sounding across the fields,

announcing the death of the corn-spirit, the rustic prototype of

Osiris. Similar cries, as we have seen, were also heard on all the

harvest-fields of Western Asia. By the ancients they are spoken of

as songs; but to judge from the analysis of the names Linus and

Maneros, they probably consisted only of a few words uttered in a

prolonged musical note which could be heard at a great distance.

Such sonorous and long-drawn cries, raised by a number of strong

voices in concert, must have had a striking effect, and could hardly

fail to arrest the attention of any wayfarer who happened to be

within hearing. The sounds, repeated again and again, could probably

be distinguished with tolerable ease even at a distance; but to a

Greek traveller in Asia or Egypt the foreign words would commonly

convey no meaning, and he might take them, not unnaturally, for the

name of some one (Maneros, Linus, Lityerses, Bormus) upon whom the

reapers were calling. And if his journey led him through more

countries than one, as Bithynia and Phrygia, or Phoenicia and Egypt,

while the corn was being reaped, he would have an opportunity of

comparing the various harvest cries of the different peoples. Thus

we can readily understand why these harvest cries were so often

noted and compared with each other by the Greeks. Whereas, if they

had been regular songs, they could not have been heard at such

distances, and therefore could not have attracted the attention of

so many travellers; and, moreover, even if the wayfarer were within

hearing of them, he could not so easily have picked out the words.

Down to recent times Devonshire reapers uttered cries of the same

sort, and performed on the field a ceremony exactly analogous to

that in which, if I am not mistaken, the rites of Osiris originated.

The cry and the ceremony are thus described by an observer who wrote

in the first half of the nineteenth century. "After the wheat is all

cut, on most farms in the north of Devon, the harvest people have a

custom of 'crying the neck.' I believe that this practice is seldom

omitted on any large farm in that part of the country. It is done in

this way. An old man, or some one else well acquainted with the

ceremonies used on the occasion (when the labourers are reaping the

last field of wheat), goes round to the shocks and sheaves, and

picks out a little bundle of all the best ears he can find; this

bundle he ties up very neat and trim, and plats and arranges the

straws very tastefully. This is called 'the neck' of wheat, or

wheaten-ears. After the field is cut out, and the pitcher once more

circulated, the reapers, binders, and the women stand round in a

circle. The person with 'the neck' stands in the centre, grasping it

with both hands. He first stoops and holds it near the ground, and

all the men forming the ring take off their hats, stooping and

holding them with both hands towards the ground. They then all begin

at once in a very prolonged and harmonious tone to cry 'The neck!'

at the same time slowly raising themselves upright, and elevating

their arms and hats above their heads; the person with 'the neck'

also raising it on high. This is done three times. They then change

their cry to 'Wee yen!'--'Way yen!'--which they sound in the same

prolonged and slow manner as before, with singular harmony and

effect, three times. This last cry is accompanied by the same

movements of the body and arms as in crying 'the neck.' . . . After

having thus repeated 'the neck' three times, and 'wee yen,' or 'way

yen' as often, they all burst out into a kind of loud and joyous

laugh, flinging up their hats and caps into the air, capering about

and perhaps kissing the girls. One of them then gets 'the neck' and

runs as hard as he can down to the farmhouse, where the dairymaid,

or one of the young female domestics, stands at the door prepared

with a pail of water. If he who holds 'the neck' can manage to get

into the house, in any way unseen, or openly, by any other way than

the door at which the girl stands with the pail of water, then he

may lawfully kiss her; but, if otherwise, he is regularly soused

with the contents of the bucket. On a fine still autumn evening the

'crying of the neck' has a wonderful effect at a distance, far finer

than that of the Turkish muezzin, which Lord Byron eulogises so

much, and which he says is preferable to all the bells of

Christendom. I have once or twice heard upwards of twenty men cry

it, and sometimes joined by an equal number of female voices. About

three years back, on some high grounds, where our people were

harvesting, I heard six or seven 'necks' cried in one night,

although I know that some of them were four miles off. They are

heard through the quiet evening air at a considerable distance

sometimes." Again, Mrs. Bray tells how, travelling in Devonshire,

"she saw a party of reapers standing in a circle on a rising ground,

holding their sickles aloft. One in the middle held up some ears of

corn tied together with flowers, and the party shouted three times

(what she writes as) 'Arnack, arnack, arnack, we _haven,_ we

_haven,_ we _haven._' They went home, accompanied by women and

children carrying boughs of flowers, shouting and singing. The

manservant who attended Mrs. Bray said 'it was only the people

making their games, as they always did, _to the spirit of

harvest._'" Here, as Miss Burne remarks, "'arnack, we haven!' is

obviously in the Devon dialect, 'a neck (or nack)! we have un!'"

Another account of this old custom, written at Truro in 1839, runs

thus: "Now, when all the corn was cut at Heligan, the farming men

and maidens come in front of the house, and bring with them a small

sheaf of corn, the last that has been cut, and this is adorned with

ribbons and flowers, and one part is tied quite tight, so as to look

like a neck. Then they cry out 'Our (my) side, my side,' as loud as

they can; then the dairymaid gives the neck to the head farming-man.

He takes it, and says, very loudly three times, 'I have him, I have

him, I have him.' Then another farming-man shouts very loudly, 'What

have ye? what have ye? what have ye?' Then the first says, 'A neck,

a neck, a neck.' And when he has said this, all the people make a

very great shouting. This they do three times, and after one famous

shout go away and eat supper, and dance, and sing songs." According

to another account, "all went out to the field when the last corn

was cut, the 'neck' was tied with ribbons and plaited, and they

danced round it, and carried it to the great kitchen, where

by-and-by the supper was. The words were as given in the previous

account, and 'Hip, hip, hack, heck, I have 'ee, I have 'ee, I have

'ee.' It was hung up in the hall." Another account relates that one

of the men rushed from the field with the last sheaf, while the rest

pursued him with vessels of water, which they tried to throw over

the sheaf before it could be brought into the barn.

In the foregoing customs a particular bunch of ears, generally the

last left standing, is conceived as the neck of the corn-spirit, who

is consequently beheaded when the bunch is cut down. Similarly in

Shropshire the name "neck," or "the gander's neck," used to be

commonly given to the last handful of ears left standing in the

middle of the field when all the rest of the corn was cut. It was

plaited together, and the reapers, standing ten or twenty paces off,

threw their sickles at it. Whoever cut it through was said to have

cut off the gander's neck. The "neck" was taken to the farmer's

wife, who was supposed to keep it in the house for good luck till

the next harvest came round. Near Trèves, the man who reaps the last

standing corn "cuts the goat's neck off." At Faslane, on the

Gareloch (Dumbartonshire), the last handful of standing corn was

sometimes called the "head." At Aurich, in East Friesland, the man

who reaps the last corn "cuts the hare's tail off." In mowing down

the last corner of a field French reapers sometimes call out, "We

have the cat by the tail." In Bresse (Bourgogne) the last sheaf

represented the fox. Beside it a score of ears were left standing to

form the tail, and each reaper, going back some paces, threw his

sickle at it. He who succeeded in severing it "cut off the fox's

tail," and a cry of "_You cou cou!_" was raised in his honour. These

examples leave no room to doubt the meaning of the Devonshire and

Cornish expression "the neck," as applied to the last sheaf. The

corn-spirit is conceived in human or animal form, and the last

standing corn is part of its body--its neck, its head, or its tail.

Sometimes, as we have seen, the last corn is regarded as the

navel-string. Lastly, the Devonshire custom of drenching with water

the person who brings in "the neck" is a raincharm, such as we have

had many examples of. Its parallel in the mysteries of Osiris was

the custom of pouring water on the image of Osiris or on the person

who represented him.

XLVIII. The Corn-Spirit as an Animal

1. Animal Embodiments of the Corn-spirit

IN SOME of the examples which I have cited to establish the meaning

of the term "neck" as applied to the last sheaf, the corn-spirit

appears in animal form as a gander, a goat, a hare, a cat, and a

fox. This introduces us to a new aspect of the corn-spirit, which we

must now examine. By doing so we shall not only have fresh examples

of killing the god, but may hope also to clear up some points which

remain obscure in the myths and worship of Adonis, Attis, Osiris,

Dionysus, Demeter, and Virbius.

Amongst the many animals whose forms the corn-spirit is supposed to

take are the wolf, dog, hare, fox, cock, goose, quail, cat, goat,

cow (ox, bull), pig, and horse. In one or other of these shapes the

corn-spirit is often believed to be present in the corn, and to be

caught or killed in the last sheaf. As the corn is being cut the

animal flees before the reapers, and if a reaper is taken ill on the

field, he is supposed to have stumbled unwittingly on the

corn-spirit, who has thus punished the profane intruder. It is said

"the Rye-wolf has got hold of him," "the Harvest-goat has given him

a push." The person who cuts the last corn or binds the last sheaf

gets the name of the animal, as the Rye-wolf, the Rye-sow, the

Oats-goat, and so forth, and retains the name sometimes for a year.

Also the animal is frequently represented by a puppet made out of

the last sheaf or of wood, flowers, and so on, which is carried home

amid rejoicings on the last harvest-waggon. Even where the last

sheaf is not made up in animal shape, it is often called the

Rye-wolf, the Hare, Goat, and so forth. Generally each kind of crop

is supposed to have its special animal, which is caught in the last

sheaf, and called the Rye-wolf, the Barley-wolf, the Oats-wolf, the

Pea-wolf, or the Potato-wolf, according to the crop; but sometimes

the figure of the animal is only made up once for all at getting in

the last crop of the whole harvest. Sometimes the creature is

believed to be killed by the last stroke of the sickle or scythe.

But oftener it is thought to live so long as there is corn still

unthreshed, and to be caught in the last sheaf threshed. Hence the

man who gives the last stroke with the flail is told that he has got

the Corn-sow, the Threshing-dog, or the like. When the threshing is

finished, a puppet is made in the form of the animal, and this is

carried by the thresher of the last sheaf to a neighbouring farm,

where the threshing is still going on. This again shows that the

corn-spirit is believed to live wherever the corn is still being

threshed. Sometimes the thresher of the last sheaf himself

represents the animal; and if the people of the next farm, who are

still threshing, catch him, they treat him like the animal he

represents, by shutting him up in the pig-sty, calling him with the

cries commonly addressed to pigs, and so forth. These general

statements will now be illustrated by examples.

2. The Corn-spirit as a Wolf or a Dog

WE begin with the corn-spirit conceived as a wolf or a dog. This

conception is common in France, Germany, and Slavonic countries.

Thus, when the wind sets the corn in wave-like motion the peasants

often say, "The Wolf is going over, or through, the corn," "the

Rye-wolf is rushing over the field," "the Wolf is in the corn," "the

mad Dog is in the corn," "the big Dog is there." When children wish

to go into the corn-fields to pluck ears or gather the blue

corn-flowers, they are warned not to do so, for "the big Dog sits in

the corn," or "the Wolf sits in the corn, and will tear you in

pieces," "the Wolf will eat you." The wolf against whom the children

are warned is not a common wolf, for he is often spoken of as the

Corn-wolf, Rye-wolf, or the like; thus they say, "The Rye-wolf will

come and eat you up, children," "the Rye-wolf will carry you off,"

and so forth. Still he has all the outward appearance of a wolf. For

in the neighbourhood of Feilenhof (East Prussia), when a wolf was

seen running through a field, the peasants used to watch whether he

carried his tail in the air or dragged it on the ground. If he

dragged it on the ground, they went after him, and thanked him for

bringing them a blessing, and even set tit-bits before him. But if

he carried his tail high, they cursed him and tried to kill him.

Here the wolf is the corn-spirit whose fertilising power is in his

tail.

Both dog and wolf appear as embodiments of the corn-spirit in

harvest-customs. Thus in some parts of Silesia the person who cuts

or binds the last sheaf is called the Wheat-dog or the Peas-pug. But

it is in the harvest-customs of the north-east of France that the

idea of the Corn-dog comes out most clearly. Thus when a harvester,

through sickness, weariness, or laziness, cannot or will not keep up

with the reaper in front of him, they say, "The White Dog passed

near him," "he has the White Bitch," or "the White Bitch has bitten

him." In the Vosges the Harvest-May is called the "Dog of the

harvest," and the person who cuts the last handful of hay or wheat

is said to "kill the Dog." About Lons-le-Saulnier, in the Jura, the

last sheaf is called the Bitch. In the neighbourhood of Verdun the

regular expression for finishing the reaping is, "They are going to

kill the Dog"; and at Epinal they say, according to the crop, "We

will kill the Wheat-dog, or the Rye-dog, or the Potato-dog." In

Lorraine it is said of the man who cuts the last corn, "He is

killing the Dog of the harvest." At Dux, in the Tyrol, the man who

gives the last stroke at threshing is said to "strike down the Dog";

and at Ahnebergen, near Stade, he is called, according to the crop,

Corn-pug, Rye-pug, Wheat-pug.

So with the wolf. In Silesia, when the reapers gather round the last

patch of standing corn to reap it they are said to be about "to

catch the Wolf." In various parts of Mecklenburg, where the belief

in the Corn-wolf is particularly prevalent, every one fears to cut

the last corn, because they say that the Wolf is sitting in it;

hence every reaper exerts himself to the utmost in order not to be

the last, and every woman similarly fears to bind the last sheaf

because "the Wolf is in it." So both among the reapers and the

binders there is a competition not to be the last to finish. And in

Germany generally it appears to be a common saying that "the Wolf

sits in the last sheaf." In some places they call out to the reaper,

"Beware of the Wolf"; or they say, "He is chasing the Wolf out of

the corn." In Mecklenburg the last bunch of standing corn is itself

commonly called the Wolf, and the man who reaps it "has the Wolf,"

the animal being described as the Rye-wolf, the Wheat-wolf, the

Barley-wolf, and so on according to the particular crop. The reaper

of the last corn is himself called Wolf or the Rye-wolf, if the crop

is rye, and in many parts of Mecklenburg he has to support the

character by pretending to bite the other harvesters or by howling

like a wolf. The last sheaf of corn is also called the Wolf or the

Rye-wolf or the Oats-wolf according to the crop, and of the woman

who binds it they say, "The Wolf is biting her," "She has the Wolf,"

"She must fetch the Wolf" (out of the corn). Moreover, she herself

is called Wolf; they cry out to her, "Thou art the Wolf," and she

has to bear the name for a whole year; sometimes, according to the

crop, she is called the Rye-wolf or the Potato-wolf. In the island

of Rügen not only is the woman who binds the last sheaf called Wolf,

but when she comes home she bites the lady of the house and the

stewardess, for which she receives a large piece of meat. Yet nobody

likes to be the Wolf. The same woman may be Rye-wolf, Wheat-wolf,

and Oats-wolf, if she happens to bind the last sheaf of rye, wheat,

and oats. At Buir, in the district of Cologne, it was formerly the

custom to give to the last sheaf the shape of a wolf. It was kept in

the barn till all the corn was threshed. Then it was brought to the

farmer and he had to sprinkle it with beer or brandy. At

Brunshaupten in Mecklenburg the young woman who bound the last sheaf

of wheat used to take a handful of stalks out of it and make "the

Wheat-wolf" with them; it was the figure of a wolf about two feet

long and half a foot high, the legs of the animal being represented

by stiff stalks and its tail and mane by wheat-ears. This Wheat-wolf

she carried back at the head of the harvesters to the village, where

it was set up on a high place in the parlour of the farm and

remained there for a long time. In many places the sheaf called the

Wolf is made up in human form and dressed in clothes. This indicates

a confusion of ideas between the corn-spirit conceived in human and

in animal form. Generally the Wolf is brought home on the last

waggon with joyful cries. Hence the last waggon-load itself receives

the name of the Wolf.

Again, the Wolf is supposed to hide himself amongst the cut corn in

the granary, until he is driven out of the last bundle by the

strokes of the flail. Hence at Wanzleben, near Magdeburg, after the

threshing the peasants go in procession, leading by a chain a man

who is enveloped in the threshed-out straw and is called the Wolf.

He represents the corn-spirit who has been caught escaping from the

threshed corn. In the district of Treves it is believed that the

Corn-wolf is killed at threshing. The men thresh the last sheaf till

it is reduced to chopped straw. In this way they think that the

Corn-wolf, who was lurking in the last sheaf, has been certainly

killed.