THE FIRE-FESTIVALS hitherto described are all celebrated

periodically at certain stated times of the year. But besides these

regularly recurring celebrations the peasants in many parts of

Europe have been wont from time immemorial to resort to a ritual of

fire at irregular intervals in seasons of distress and calamity,

above all when their cattle were attacked by epidemic disease. No

account of the popular European fire-festivals would be complete

without some notice of these remarkable rites, which have all the

greater claim on our attention because they may perhaps be regarded

as the source and origin of all the other fire-festivals; certainly

they must date from a very remote antiquity. The general name by

which they are known among the Teutonic peoples is need-fire.

Sometimes the need-fire was known as "wild fire," to distinguish it

no doubt from the tame fire produced by more ordinary methods. Among

Slavonic peoples it is called "living fire."

The history of the custom can be traced from the early Middle Ages,

when it was denounced by the Church as a heathen superstition, down

to the first half of the nineteenth century, when it was still

occasionally practised in various parts of Germany, England,

Scotland, and Ireland. Among Slavonic peoples it appears to have

lingered even longer. The usual occasion for performing the rite was

an outbreak of plague or cattle-disease, for which the need-fire was

believed to be an infallible remedy. The animals which were

subjected to it included cows, pigs, horses, and sometimes geese. As

a necessary preliminary to the kindling of the need-fire all other

fires and lights in the neighbourhood were extinguished, so that not

so much as a spark remained alight; for so long as even a

night-light burned in a house, it was imagined that the need-fire

could not kindle. Sometimes it was deemed enough to put out all the

fires in the village; but sometimes the extinction extended to

neighbouring villages or to a whole parish. In some parts of the

Highlands of Scotland the rule was that all householders who dwelt

within the two nearest running streams should put out their lights

and fires on the day appointed. Usually the need-fire was made in

the open air, but in some parts of Serbia it was kindled in a dark

room; sometimes the place was a cross-way or a hollow in a road. In

the Highlands of Scotland the proper places for performing the rite

seem to have been knolls or small islands in rivers.

The regular method of producing the need-fire was by the friction of

two pieces of wood; it might not be struck by flint and steel. Very

exceptionally among some South Slavs we read of a practice of

kindling a need-fire by striking a piece of iron on an anvil. Where

the wood to be employed is specified, it is generally said to be

oak; but on the Lower Rhine the fire was kindled by the friction of

oak-wood or fir-wood. In Slavonic countries we hear of poplar, pear,

and cornel wood being used for the purpose. Often the material is

simply described as two pieces of dry wood. Sometimes nine different

kinds of wood were deemed necessary, but rather perhaps to be burned

in the bonfire than to be rubbed together for the production of the

need-fire. The particular mode of kindling the need-fire varied in

different districts; a very common one was this. Two poles were

driven into the ground about a foot and a half from each other. Each

pole had in the side facing the other a socket into which a smooth

cross-piece or roller was fitted. The sockets were stuffed with

linen, and the two ends of the roller were rammed tightly into the

sockets. To make it more inflammable the roller was often coated

with tar. A rope was then wound round the roller, and the free ends

at both sides were gripped by two or more persons, who by pulling

the rope to and fro caused the roller to revolve rapidly, till

through the friction the linen in the sockets took fire. The sparks

were immediately caught in tow or oakum and waved about in a circle

until they burst into a bright glow, when straw was applied to it,

and the blazing straw used to kindle the fuel that had been stacked

to make the bonfire. Often a wheel, sometimes a cart-wheel or even a

spinning-wheel, formed part of the mechanism; in Aberdeenshire it

was called "the muckle wheel"; in the island of Mull the wheel was

turned from east to west over nine spindles of oak-wood. Sometimes

we are merely told that two wooden planks were rubbed together.

Sometimes it was prescribed that the cart-wheel used for fire-making

and the axle on which it turned should both be new. Similarly it was

said that the rope which turned the roller should be new; if

possible it should be woven of strands taken from a gallows rope

with which people had been hanged, but this was a counsel of

perfection rather than a strict necessity.

Various rules were also laid down as to the kind of persons who

might or should make the need-fire. Sometimes it was said that the

two persons who pulled the rope which twirled the roller should

always be brothers or at least bear the same baptismal name;

sometimes it was deemed sufficient if they were both chaste young

men. In some villages of Brunswick people thought that if everybody

who lent a hand in kindling the need-fire did not bear the same

Christian name, they would labour in vain. In Silesia the tree

employed to produce the need-fire used to be felled by a pair of

twin brothers. In the western islands of Scotland the fire was

kindled by eighty-one married men, who rubbed two great planks

against each other, working in relays of nine; in North Uist the

nine times nine who made the fire were all first-begotten sons, but

we are not told whether they were married or single. Among the

Serbians the need-fire is sometimes kindled by a boy and girl

between eleven and fourteen years of age, who work stark naked in a

dark room; sometimes it is made by an old man and an old woman also

in the dark. In Bulgaria, too, the makers of need-fire strip

themselves of their clothes; in Caithness they divested themselves

of all kinds of metal. If after long rubbing of the wood no fire was

elicited they concluded that some fire must still be burning in the

village; so a strict search was made from house to house, any fire

that might be found was put out, and the negligent householder

punished or upbraided; indeed a heavy fine might be inflicted on

him.

When the need-fire was at last kindled, the bonfire was lit from it,

and as soon as the blaze had somewhat died down, the sick animals

were driven over the glowing embers, sometimes in a regular order of

precedence, first the pigs, next the cows, and last of all the

horses. Sometimes they were driven twice or thrice through the smoke

and flames, so that occasionally some of them were scorched to

death. As soon as all the beasts were through, the young folk would

rush wildly at the ashes and cinders, sprinkling and blackening each

other with them; those who were most blackened would march in

triumph behind the cattle into the village and would not wash

themselves for a long time. From the bonfire people carried live

embers home and used them to rekindle the fires in their houses.

These brands, after being extinguished in water, they sometimes put

in the mangers at which the cattle fed, and kept them there for a

while. Ashes from the need-fire were also strewed on the fields to

protect the crops against vermin; sometimes they were taken home to

be employed as remedies in sickness, being sprinkled on the ailing

part or mixed in water and drunk by the patient. In the western

islands of Scotland and on the adjoining mainland, as soon as the

fire on the domestic hearth had been rekindled from the need-fire a

pot full of water was set on it, and the water thus heated was

afterwards sprinkled upon the people infected with the plague or

upon the cattle that were tainted by the murrain. Special virtue was

attributed to the smoke of the bonfire; in Sweden fruit-trees and

nets were fumigated with it, in order that the trees might bear

fruit and the nets catch fish. In the Highlands of Scotland the

need-fire was accounted a sovereign remedy for witchcraft. In the

island of Mull, when the fire was kindled as a cure for the murrain,

we hear of the rite being accompanied by the sacrifice of a sick

heifer, which was cut in pieces and burnt. Slavonian and Bulgarian

peasants conceive cattle-plague as a foul fiend or vampyre which can

be kept at bay by interposing a barrier of fire between it and the

herds. A similar conception may perhaps have originally everywhere

underlain the use of the need-fire as a remedy for the murrain. It

appears that in some parts of Germany the people did not wait for an

outbreak of cattleplague, but, taking time by the forelock, kindled

a need-fire annually to prevent the calamity. Similarly in Poland

the peasants are said to kindle fires in the village streets every

year on St. Rochus's day and to drive the cattle thrice through them

in order to protect the beasts against the murrain. We have seen

that in the Hebrides the cattle were in like manner driven annually

round the Beltane fires for the same purpose. In some cantons of

Switzerland children still kindle a need-fire by the friction of

wood for the sake of dispelling a mist.

LXIII. The Interpretation of the Fire-Festivals

1. On the Fire-festivals in general

THE FOREGOING survey of the popular fire-festivals of Europe

suggests some general observations. In the first place we can hardly

help being struck by the resemblance which the ceremonies bear to

each other, at whatever time of the year and in whatever part of

Europe they are celebrated. The custom of kindling great bonfires,

leaping over them, and driving cattle through or round them would

seem to have been practically universal throughout Europe, and the

same may be said of the processions or races with blazing torches

round fields, orchards, pastures, or cattle-stalls. Less widespread

are the customs of hurling lighted discs into the air and trundling

a burning wheel down hill. The ceremonial of the Yule log is

distinguished from that of the other fire-festivals by the privacy

and domesticity which characterise it; but this distinction may well

be due simply to the rough weather of midwinter, which is apt not

only to render a public assembly in the open air disagreeable, but

also at any moment to defeat the object of the assembly by

extinguishing the all-important fire under a downpour of rain or a

fall of snow. Apart from these local or seasonal differences, the

general resemblance between the fire-festivals at all times of the

year and in all places is tolerably close. And as the ceremonies

themselves resemble each other, so do the benefits which the people

expect to reap from them. Whether applied in the form of bonfires

blazing at fixed points, or of torches carried about from place to

place, or of embers and ashes taken from the smouldering heap of

fuel, the fire is believed to promote the growth of the crops and

the welfare of man and beast, either positively by stimulating them,

or negatively by averting the dangers and calamities which threaten

them from such causes as thunder and lightning, conflagration,

blight, mildew, vermin, sterility, disease, and not least of all

witchcraft.

But we naturally ask, How did it come about that benefits so great

and manifold were supposed to be attained by means so simple? In

what way did people imagine that they could procure so many goods or

avoid so many ills by the application of fire and smoke, of embers

and ashes? Two different explanations of the fire-festivals have

been given by modern enquirers. On the one hand it has been held

that they are sun-charms or magical ceremonies intended, on the

principle of imitative magic, to ensure a needful supply of sunshine

for men, animals, and plants by kindling fires which mimic on earth

the great source of light and heat in the sky. This was the view of

Wilhelm Mannhardt. It may be called the solar theory. On the other

hand it has been maintained that the ceremonial fires have no

necessary reference to the sun but are simply purificatory in

intention, being designed to burn up and destroy all harmful

influences, whether these are conceived in a personal form as

witches, demons, and monsters, or in an impersonal form as a sort of

pervading taint or corruption of the air. This is the view of Dr.

Edward Westermarck and apparently of Professor Eugen Mogk. It may be

called the purificatory theory. Obviously the two theories postulate

two very different conceptions of the fire which plays the principal

part in the rites. On the one view, the fire, like sunshine in our

latitude, is a genial creative power which fosters the growth of

plants and the development of all that makes for health and

happiness; on the other view, the fire is a fierce destructive power

which blasts and consumes all the noxious elements, whether

spiritual or material, that menace the life of men, of animals, and

of plants. According to the one theory the fire is a stimulant,

according to the other it is a disinfectant; on the one view its

virtue is positive, on the other it is negative.

Yet the two explanations, different as they are in the character

which they attribute to the fire, are perhaps not wholly

irreconcilable. If we assume that the fires kindled at these

festivals were primarily intended to imitate the sun's light and

heat, may we not regard the purificatory and disinfecting qualities,

which popular opinion certainly appears to have ascribed to them, as

attributes derived directly from the purificatory and disinfecting

qualities of sunshine? In this way we might conclude that, while the

imitation of sunshine in these ceremonies was primary and original,

the purification attributed to them was secondary and derivative.

Such a conclusion, occupying an intermediate position between the

two opposing theories and recognising an element of truth in both of

them, was adopted by me in earlier editions of this work; but in the

meantime Dr. Westermarck has argued powerfully in favour of the

purificatory theory alone, and I am bound to say that his arguments

carry great weight, and that on a fuller review of the facts the

balance of evidence seems to me to incline decidedly in his favour.

However, the case is not so clear as to justify us in dismissing the

solar theory without discussion, and accordingly I propose to adduce

the considerations which tell for it before proceeding to notice

those which tell against it. A theory which had the support of so

learned and sagacious an investigator as W. Mannhardt is entitled to

a respectful hearing.

2. The Solar Theory of the Fire-festivals

IN AN EARLIER part of this work we saw that savages resort to charms

for making sunshine, and it would be no wonder if primitive man in

Europe did the same. Indeed, when we consider the cold and cloudy

climate of Europe during a great part of the year, we shall find it

natural that sun-charms should have played a much more prominent

part among the superstitious practices of European peoples than

among those of savages who live nearer the equator and who

consequently are apt to get in the course of nature more sunshine

than they want. This view of the festivals may be supported by

various arguments drawn partly from their dates, partly from the

nature of the rites, and partly from the influence which they are

believed to exert upon the weather and on vegetation.

First, in regard to the dates of the festivals it can be no mere

accident that two of the most important and widely spread of the

festivals are timed to coincide more or less exactly with the summer

and winter solstices, that is, with the two turning-points in the

sun's apparent course in the sky when he reaches respectively his

highest and his lowest elevation at noon. Indeed with respect to the

midwinter celebration of Christmas we are not left to conjecture; we

know from the express testimony of the ancients that it was

instituted by the church to supersede an old heathen festival of the

birth of the sun, which was apparently conceived to be born again on

the shortest day of the year, after which his light and heat were

seen to grow till they attained their full maturity at midsummer.

Therefore it is no very far-fetched conjecture to suppose that the

Yule log, which figures so prominently in the popular celebration of

Christmas, was originally designed to help the labouring sun of

midwinter to rekindle his seemingly expiring light.

Not only the date of some of the festivals but the manner of their

celebration suggests a conscious imitation of the sun. The custom of

rolling a burning wheel down a hill, which is often observed at

these ceremonies, might well pass for an imitation of the sun's

course in the sky, and the imitation would be especially appropriate

on Midsummer Day when the sun's annual declension begins. Indeed the

custom has been thus interpreted by some of those who have recorded

it. Not less graphic, it may be said, is the mimicry of his apparent

revolution by swinging a burning tar-barrel round a pole. Again, the

common practice of throwing fiery discs, sometimes expressly said to

be shaped like suns, into the air at the festivals may well be a

piece of imitative magic. In these, as in so many cases, the magic

force may be supposed to take effect through mimicry or sympathy: by

imitating the desired result you actually produce it: by

counterfeiting the sun's progress through the heavens you really

help the luminary to pursue his celestial journey with punctuality

and despatch. The name "fire of heaven," by which the midsummer fire

is sometimes popularly known, clearly implies a consciousness of a

connexion between the earthly and the heavenly flame.

Again, the manner in which the fire appears to have been originally

kindled on these occasions has been alleged in support of the view

that it was intended to be a mock-sun. As some scholars have

perceived, it is highly probable that at the periodic festivals in

former times fire was universally obtained by the friction of two

pieces of wood. It is still so procured in some places both at the

Easter and the Midsummer festivals, and it is expressly said to have

been formerly so procured at the Beltane celebration both in

Scotland and Wales. But what makes it nearly certain that this was

once the invariable mode of kindling the fire at these periodic

festivals is the analogy of the needfire, which has almost always

been produced by the friction of wood, and sometimes by the

revolution of a wheel. It is a plausible conjecture that the wheel

employed for this purpose represents the sun, and if the fires at

the regularly recurring celebrations were formerly produced in the

same way, it might be regarded as a confirmation of the view that

they were originally sun-charms. In point of fact there is, as Kuhn

has indicated, some evidence to show that the midsummer fire was

originally thus produced. We have seen that many Hungarian

swine-herds make fire on Midsummer Eve by rotating a wheel round a

wooden axle wrapt in hemp, and that they drive their pigs through

the fire thus made. At Obermedlingen, in Swabia, the "fire of

heaven," as it was called, was made on St. Vitus's Day (the

fifteenth of June) by igniting a cart-wheel, which, smeared with

pitch and plaited with straw, was fastened on a pole twelve feet

high, the top of the pole being inserted in the nave of the wheel.

This fire was made on the summit of a mountain, and as the flame

ascended, the people uttered a set form of words, with eyes and arms

directed heavenward. Here the fixing of a wheel on a pole and

igniting it suggests that originally the fire was produced, as in

the case of the need-fire, by the revolution of a wheel. The day on

which the ceremony takes place (the fifteenth of June) is near

midsummer; and we have seen that in Masuren fire is, or used to be,

actually made on Midsummer Day by turning a wheel rapidly about an

oaken pole, though it is not said that the new fire so obtained is

used to light a bonfire. However, we must bear in mind that in all

such cases the use of a wheel may be merely a mechanical device to

facilitate the operation of fire-making by increasing the friction;

it need not have any symbolical significance.

Further, the influence which these fires, whether periodic or

occasional, are supposed to exert on the weather and vegetation may

be cited in support of the view that they are sun-charms, since the

effects ascribed to them resemble those of sunshine. Thus, the

French belief that in a rainy June the lighting of the midsummer

bonfires will cause the rain to cease appears to assume that they

can disperse the dark clouds and make the sun to break out in

radiant glory, drying the wet earth and dripping trees. Similarly

the use of the need-fire by Swiss children on foggy days for the

purpose of clearing away the mist may very naturally be interpreted

as a sun-charm. In the Vosges Mountains the people believe that the

midsummer fires help to preserve the fruits of the earth and ensure

good crops. In Sweden the warmth or cold of the coming season is

inferred from the direction in which the flames of the May Day

bonfire are blown; if they blow to the south, it will be warm, if to

the north, cold. No doubt at present the direction of the flames is

regarded merely as an augury of the weather, not as a mode of

influencing it. But we may be pretty sure that this is one of the

cases in which magic has dwindled into divination. So in the Eifel

Mountains, when the smoke blows towards the corn-fields, this is an

omen that the harvest will be abundant. But the older view may have

been not merely that the smoke and flames prognosticated, but that

they actually produced an abundant harvest, the heat of the flames

acting like sunshine on the corn. Perhaps it was with this view that

people in the Isle of Man lit fires to windward of their fields in

order that the smoke might blow over them. So in South Africa, about

the month of April, the Matabeles light huge fires to the windward

of their gardens, "their idea being that the smoke, by passing over

the crops, will assist the ripening of them." Among the Zulus also

"medicine is burned on a fire placed to windward of the garden, the

fumigation which the plants in consequence receive being held to

improve the crop." Again, the idea of our European peasants that the

corn will grow well as far as the blaze of the bonfire is visible,

may be interpreted as a remnant of the belief in the quickening and

fertilising power of the bonfires. The same belief, it may be

argued, reappears in the notion that embers taken from the bonfires

and inserted in the fields will promote the growth of the crops, and

it may be thought to underlie the customs of sowing flax-seed in the

direction in which the flames blow, of mixing the ashes of the

bonfire with the seed-corn at sowing, of scattering the ashes by

themselves over the field to fertilise it, and of incorporating a

piece of the Yule log in the plough to make the seeds thrive. The

opinion that the flax or hemp will grow as high as the flames rise

or the people leap over them belongs clearly to the same class of

ideas. Again, at Konz, on the banks of the Moselle, if the blazing

wheel which was trundled down the hillside reached the river without

being extinguished, this was hailed as a proof that the vintage

would be abundant. So firmly was this belief held that the

successful performance of the ceremony entitled the villagers to

levy a tax upon the owners of the neighbouring vineyards. Here the

unextinguished wheel might be taken to represent an unclouded sun,

which in turn would portend an abundant vintage. So the waggon-load

of white wine which the villagers received from the vineyards round

about might pass for a payment for the sunshine which they had

procured for the grapes. Similarly in the Vale of Glamorgan a

blazing wheel used to be trundled down hill on Midsummer Day, and if

the fire were extinguished before the wheel reached the foot of the

hill, the people expected a bad harvest; whereas if the wheel kept

alight all the way down and continued to blaze for a long time, the

farmers looked forward to heavy crops that summer. Here, again, it

is natural to suppose that the rustic mind traced a direct connexion

between the fire of the wheel and the fire of the sun, on which the

crops are dependent.

But in popular belief the quickening and fertilising influence of

the bonfires is not limited to the vegetable world; it extends also

to animals. This plainly appears from the Irish custom of driving

barren cattle through the midsummer fires, from the French belief

that the Yule log steeped in water helps cows to calve, from the

French and Serbian notion that there will be as many chickens,

calves, lambs, and kids as there are sparks struck out of the Yule

log, from the French custom of putting the ashes of the bonfires in

the fowls' nests to make the hens lay eggs, and from the German

practice of mixing the ashes of the bonfires with the drink of

cattle in order to make the animals thrive. Further, there are clear

indications that even human fecundity is supposed to be promoted by

the genial heat of the fires. In Morocco the people think that

childless couples can obtain offspring by leaping over the midsummer

bonfire. It is an Irish belief that a girl who jumps thrice over the

midsummer bonfire will soon marry and become the mother of many

children; in Flanders women leap over the midsummer fires to ensure

an easy delivery; in various parts of France they think that if a

girl dances round nine fires she will be sure to marry within the

year, and in Bohemia they fancy that she will do so if she merely

sees nine of the bonfires. On the other hand, in Lechrain people say

that if a young man and woman, leaping over the midsummer fire

together, escape unsmirched, the young woman will not become a

mother within twelve months; the flames have not touched and

fertilised her. In parts of Switzerland and France the lighting of

the Yule log is accompanied by a prayer that the women may bear

children, the she-goats bring forth kids, and the ewes drop lambs.

The rule observed in some places that the bonfires should be kindled

by the person who was last married seems to belong to the same class

of ideas, whether it be that such a person is supposed to receive

from, or to impart to, the fire a generative and fertilising

influence. The common practice of lovers leaping over the fires hand

in hand may very well have originated in a notion that thereby their

marriage would be blessed with offspring; and the like motive would

explain the custom which obliges couples married within the year to

dance to the light of torches. And the scenes of profligacy which

appear to have marked the midsummer celebration among the

Esthonians, as they once marked the celebration of May Day among

ourselves, may have sprung, not from the mere licence of

holiday-makers, but from a crude notion that such orgies were

justified, if not required, by some mysterious bond which linked the

life of man to the courses of the heavens at this turning-point of

the year.

At the festivals which we are considering the custom of kindling

bonfires is commonly associated with a custom of carrying lighted

torches about the fields, the orchards, the pastures, the flocks and

the herds; and we can hardly doubt that the two customs are only two

different ways of attaining the same object, namely, the benefits

which are believed to flow from the fire, whether it be stationary

or portable. Accordingly if we accept the solar theory of the

bonfires, we seem bound to apply it also to the torches; we must

suppose that the practice of marching or running with blazing

torches about the country is simply a means of diffusing far and

wide the genial influence of the sunshine of which these flickering

flames are a feeble imitation. In favour of this view it may be said

that sometimes the torches are carried about the fields for the

express purpose of fertilising them, and with the same intention

live coals from the bonfires are sometimes placed in the fields to

prevent blight. On the eve of Twelfth Day in Normandy men, women,

and children run wildly through the fields and orchards with lighted

torches, which they wave about the branches and dash against the

trunks of the fruit-trees for the sake of burning the moss and

driving away the moles and field-mice. "They believe that the

ceremony fulfills the double object of exorcising the vermin whose

multiplication would be a real calamity, and of imparting fecundity

to the trees, the fields, and even the cattle"; and they imagine

that the more the ceremony is prolonged, the greater will be the

crop of fruit next autumn. In Bohemia they say that the corn will

grow as high as they fling the blazing besoms into the air. Nor are

such notions confined to Europe. In Corea, a few days before the New

Year festival, the eunuchs of the palace swing burning torches,

chanting invocations the while, and this is supposed to ensure

bountiful crops for the next season. The custom of trundling a

burning wheel over the fields, which used to be observed in Poitou

for the express purpose of fertilising them, may be thought to

embody the same idea in a still more graphic form; since in this way

the mock-sun itself, not merely its light and heat represented by

torches, is made actually to pass over the ground which is to

receive its quickening and kindly influence. Once more, the custom

of carrying lighted brands round cattle is plainly equivalent to

driving the animals through the bonfire; and if the bonfire is a

suncharm, the torches must be so also.

3. The Purificatory Theory of the Fire-festivals

THUS far we have considered what may be said for the theory that at

the European fire-festivals the fire is kindled as a charm to ensure

an abundant supply of sunshine for man and beast, for corn and

fruits. It remains to consider what may be said against this theory

and in favour of the view that in these rites fire is employed not

as a creative but as a cleansing agent, which purifies men, animals,

and plants by burning up and consuming the noxious elements, whether

material or spiritual, which menace all living things with disease

and death.

First, then, it is to be observed that the people who practise the

fire-customs appear never to allege the solar theory in explanation

of them, while on the contrary they do frequently and emphatically

put forward the purificatory theory. This is a strong argument in

favour of the purificatory and against the solar theory; for the

popular explanation of a popular custom is never to be rejected

except for grave cause. And in the present case there seems to be no

adequate reason for rejecting it. The conception of fire as a

destructive agent, which can be turned to account for the

consumption of evil things, is so simple and obvious that it could

hardly escape the minds even of the rude peasantry with whom these

festivals originated. On the other hand the conception of fire as an

emanation of the sun, or at all events as linked to it by a bond of

physical sympathy, is far less simple and obvious; and though the

use of fire as a charm to produce sunshine appears to be undeniable,

nevertheless in attempting to explain popular customs we should

never have recourse to a more recondite idea when a simpler one lies

to hand and is supported by the explicit testimony of the people

themselves. Now in the case of the fire-festivals the destructive

aspect of fire is one upon which the people dwell again and again;

and it is highly significant that the great evil against which the

fire is directed appears to be witchcraft. Again and again we are

told that the fires are intended to burn or repel the witches; and

the intention is sometimes graphically expressed by burning an

effigy of a witch in the fire. Hence, when we remember the great

hold which the dread of witchcraft has had on the popular European

mind in all ages, we may suspect that the primary intention of all

these fire-festivals was simply to destroy or at all events get rid

of the witches, who were regarded as the causes of nearly all the

misfortunes and calamities that befall men, their cattle, and their

crops.

This suspicion is confirmed when we examine the evils for which the

bonfires and torches were supposed to provide a remedy. Foremost,

perhaps, among these evils we may reckon the diseases of cattle; and

of all the ills that witches are believed to work there is probably

none which is so constantly insisted on as the harm they do to the

herds, particularly by stealing the milk from the cows. Now it is

significant that the need-fire, which may perhaps be regarded as the

parent of the periodic fire-festivals, is kindled above all as a

remedy for a murrain or other disease of cattle; and the

circumstance suggests, what on general grounds seems probable, that

the custom of kindling the need-fire goes back to a time when the

ancestors of the European peoples subsisted chiefly on the products

of their herds, and when agriculture as yet played a subordinate

part in their lives. Witches and wolves are the two great foes still

dreaded by the herdsman in many parts of Europe; and we need not

wonder that he should resort to fire as a powerful means of banning

them both. Among Slavonic peoples it appears that the foes whom the

need-fire is designed to combat are not so much living witches as

vampyres and other evil spirits, and the ceremony aims rather at

repelling these baleful beings than at actually consuming them in

the flames. But for our present purpose these distinctions are

immaterial. The important thing to observe is that among the Slavs

the need-fire, which is probably the original of all the ceremonial

fires now under consideration, is not a sun-charm, but clearly and

unmistakably nothing but a means of protecting man and beast against

the attacks of maleficent creatures, whom the peasant thinks to burn

or scare by the heat of the fire, just as he might burn or scare

wild animals.

Again, the bonfires are often supposed to protect the fields against

hail and the homestead against thunder and lightning. But both hail

and thunderstorms are frequently thought to be caused by witches;

hence the fire which bans the witches necessarily serves at the same

time as a talisman against hail, thunder, and lightning. Further,

brands taken from the bonfires are commonly kept in the houses to

guard them against conflagration; and though this may perhaps be

done on the principle of homoeopathic magic, one fire being thought

to act as a preventive of another, it is also possible that the

intention may be to keep witch-incendiaries at bay. Again, people

leap over the bonfires as a preventive of colic, and look at the

flames steadily in order to preserve their eyes in good health; and

both colic and sore eyes are in Germany, and probably elsewhere, set

down to the machinations of witches. Once more, to leap over the

midsummer fires or to circumambulate them is thought to prevent a

person from feeling pains in his back at reaping; and in Germany

such pains are called "witch-shots" and ascribed to witchcraft.

But if the bonfires and torches of the fire-festivals are to be

regarded primarily as weapons directed against witches and wizards,

it becomes probable that the same explanation applies not only to

the flaming discs which are hurled into the air, but also to the

burning wheels which are rolled down hill on these occasions; discs

and wheels, we may suppose, are alike intended to burn the witches

who hover invisible in the air or haunt unseen the fields, the

orchards, and the vineyards on the hillside. Certainly witches are

constantly thought to ride through the air on broomsticks or other

equally convenient vehicles; and if they do so, how can you get at

them so effectually as by hurling lighted missiles, whether discs,

torches, or besoms, after them as they flit past overhead in the

gloom? The South Slavonian peasant believes that witches ride in the

dark hail-clouds; so he shoots at the clouds to bring down the hags,

while he curses them, saying, "Curse, curse Herodias, thy mother is

a heathen, damned of God and fettered through the Redeemer's blood."

Also he brings out a pot of glowing charcoal on which he has thrown

holy oil, laurel leaves, and wormwood to make a smoke. The fumes are

supposed to ascend to the clouds and stupefy the witches, so that

they tumble down to earth. And in order that they may not fall soft,

but may hurt themselves very much, the yokel hastily brings out a

chair and tilts it bottom up so that the witch in falling may break

her legs on the legs of the chair. Worse than that, he cruelly lays

scythes, bill-hooks, and other formidable weapons edge upwards so as

to cut and mangle the poor wretches when they drop plump upon them

from the clouds.

On this view the fertility supposed to follow the application of

fire in the form of bonfires, torches, discs, rolling wheels, and so

forth, is not conceived as resulting directly from an increase of

solar heat which the fire has magically generated; it is merely an

indirect result obtained by freeing the reproductive powers of

plants and animals from the fatal obstruction of witchcraft. And

what is true of the reproduction of plants and animals may hold good

also of the fertility of the human sexes. The bonfires are supposed

to promote marriage and to procure offspring for childless couples.

This happy effect need not flow directly from any quickening or

fertilising energy in the fire; it may follow indirectly from the

power of the fire to remove those obstacles which the spells of

witches and wizards notoriously present to the union of man and

wife.

On the whole, then, the theory of the purificatory virtue of the

ceremonial fires appears more probable and more in accordance with

the evidence than the opposing theory of their connexion with the

sun.

LXIV. The Burning of Human Beings in the Fires

1. The Burning of Effigies in the Fires

WE have still to ask, What is the meaning of burning effigies in the

fire at these festivals? After the preceding investigation the

answer to the question seems obvious. As the fires are often alleged

to be kindled for the purpose of burning the witches, and as the

effigy burnt in them is sometimes called "the Witch," we might

naturally be disposed to conclude that all the effigies consumed in

the flames on these occasions represent witches or warlocks, and

that the custom of burning them is merely a substitute for burning

the wicked men and women themselves, since on the principle of

homoeopathic or imitative magic you practically destroy the witch

herself in destroying her effigy. On the whole this explanation of

the burning of straw figures in human shape at the festivals is

perhaps the most probable.

Yet it may be that this explanation does not apply to all the cases,

and that certain of them may admit and even require another

interpretation. For the effigies so burned, as I have already

remarked, can hardly be separated from the effigies of Death which

are burned or otherwise destroyed in spring; and grounds have been

already given for regarding the so-called effigies of Death as

really representatives of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation.

Are the other effigies, which are burned in the spring and midsummer

bonfires, susceptible of the same explanation? It would seem so. For

just as the fragments of the so-called Death are stuck in the fields

to make the crops grow, so the charred embers of the figure burned

in the spring bonfires are sometimes laid on the fields in the

belief that they will keep vermin from the crop. Again, the rule

that the last married bride must leap over the fire in which the

straw-man is burned on Shrove Tuesday, is probably intended to make

her fruitful. But, as we have seen, the power of blessing women with

offspring is a special attribute of tree-spirits; it is therefore a

fair presumption that the burning effigy over which the bride must

leap is a representative of the fertilising tree-spirit or spirit of

vegetation. This character of the effigy, as representative of the

spirit of vegetation, is almost unmistakable when the figure is

composed of an unthreshed sheaf of corn or is covered from head to

foot with flowers. Again, it is to be noted that, instead of a

puppet, trees, either living or felled, are sometimes burned both in

the spring and midsummer bonfires. Now, considering the frequency

with which the tree-spirit is represented in human shape, it is

hardly rash to suppose that when sometimes a tree and sometimes an

effigy is burned in these fires, the effigy and the tree are

regarded as equivalent to each other, each being a representative of

the tree-spirit. This, again, is confirmed by observing, first, that

sometimes the effigy which is to be burned is carried about

simultaneously with a May-tree, the former being carried by the

boys, the latter by the girls; and, second, that the effigy is

sometimes tied to a living tree and burned with it. In these cases,

we can scarcely doubt, the tree-spirit is represented, as we have

found it represented before, in duplicate, both by the tree and by

the effigy. That the true character of the effigy as a

representative of the beneficent spirit of vegetation should

sometimes be forgotten, is natural. The custom of burning a

beneficent god is too foreign to later modes of thought to escape

misinterpretation. Naturally enough the people who continued to burn

his image came in time to identify it as the effigy of persons,

whom, on various grounds, they regarded with aversion, such as Judas

Iscariot, Luther, and a witch.

The general reasons for killing a god or his representative have

been examined in a preceding chapter. But when the god happens to be

a deity of vegetation, there are special reasons why he should die

by fire. For light and heat are necessary to vegetable growth; and,

on the principle of sympathetic magic, by subjecting the personal

representative of vegetation to their influence, you secure a supply

of these necessaries for trees and crops. In other words, by burning

the spirit of vegetation in a fire which represents the sun, you

make sure that, for a time at least, vegetation shall have plenty of

sun. It may be objected that, if the intention is simply to secure

enough sunshine for vegetation, this end would be better attained,

on the principles of sympathetic magic, by merely passing the

representative of vegetation through the fire instead of burning

him. In point of fact this is sometimes done. In Russia, as we have

seen, the straw figure of Kupalo is not burned in the midsummer

fire, but merely carried backwards and forwards across it. But, for

the reasons already given, it is necessary that the god should die;

so next day Kupalo is stripped of her ornaments and thrown into a

stream. In this Russian custom the passage of the image through the

fire, if it is not simply a purification, may possibly be a

sun-charm; the killing of the god is a separate act, and the mode of

killing him--by drowning--is probably a rain-charm. But usually

people have not thought it necessary to draw this fine distinction;

for the various reasons already assigned, it is advantageous, they

think, to expose the god of vegetation to a considerable degree of

heat, and it is also advantageous to kill him, and they combine

these advantages in a rough-and-ready way by burning him.

2. The Burning of Men and Animals in the Fires

IN THE POPULAR customs connected with the fire-festivals of Europe

there are certain features which appear to point to a former

practice of human sacrifice. We have seen reasons for believing that

in Europe living persons have often acted as representatives of the

tree-spirit and corn-spirit and have suffered death as such. There

is no reason, therefore, why they should not have been burned, if

any special advantages were likely to be attained by putting them to

death in that way. The consideration of human suffering is not one

which enters into the calculations of primitive man. Now, in the

fire-festivals which we are discussing, the pretence of burning

people is sometimes carried so far that it seems reasonable to

regard it as a mitigated survival of an older custom of actually

burning them. Thus in Aachen, as we saw, the man clad in peas-straw

acts so cleverly that the children really believe he is being

burned. At Jumièges in Normandy the man clad all in green, who bore

the title of the Green Wolf, was pursued by his comrades, and when

they caught him they feigned to fling him upon the midsummer

bonfire. Similarly at the Beltane fires in Scotland the pretended

victim was seized, and a show made of throwing him into the flames,

and for some time afterwards people affected to speak of him as

dead. Again, in the Hallowe'en bonfires of Northeastern Scotland we

may perhaps detect a similar pretence in the custom observed by a

lad of lying down as close to the fire as possible and allowing the

other lads to leap over him. The titular king at Aix, who reigned

for a year and danced the first dance round the midsummer bonfire,

may perhaps in days of old have discharged the less agreeable duty

of serving as fuel for that fire which in later times he only

kindled. In the following customs Mannhardt is probably right in

recognising traces of an old custom of burning a leaf-clad

representative of the spirit of vegetation. At Wolfeck, in Austria,

on Midsummer Day, a boy completely clad in green fir branches goes

from house to house, accompanied by a noisy crew, collecting wood

for the bonfire. As he gets the wood he sings:

"Forest trees I want,

No sour milk for me,

But beer and wine,

So can the wood-man be jolly and gay."

In some parts of Bavaria, also, the boys who go from house to house

collecting fuel for the midsummer bonfire envelop one of their

number from head to foot in green branches of firs, and lead him by

a rope through the whole village. At Moosheim, in Wurtemberg, the

festival of St. John's Fire usually lasted for fourteen days, ending

on the second Sunday after Midsummer Day. On this last day the

bonfire was left in charge of the children, while the older people

retired to a wood. Here they encased a young fellow in leaves and

twigs, who, thus disguised, went to the fire, scattered it, and trod

it out. All the people present fled at the sight of him.

But it seems possible to go farther than this. Of human sacrifices

offered on these occasions the most unequivocal traces, as we have

seen, are those which, about a hundred years ago, still lingered at

the Beltane fires in the Highlands of Scotland, that is, among a

Celtic people who, situated in a remote corner of Europe and almost

completely isolated from foreign influence, had till then conserved

their old heathenism better perhaps than any other people in the

West of Europe. It is significant, therefore, that human sacrifices

by fire are known, on unquestionable evidence, to have been

systematically practised by the Celts. The earliest description of

these sacrifices has been bequeathed to us by Julius Caesar. As

conqueror of the hitherto independent Celts of Gaul, Caesar had

ample opportunity of observing the national Celtic religion and

manners, while these were still fresh and crisp from the native mint

and had not yet been fused in the melting-pot of Roman civilisation.

With his own notes Caesar appears to have incorporated the

observations of a Greek explorer, by name Posidonius, who travelled

in Gaul about fifty years before Caesar carried the Roman arms to

the English Channel. The Greek geographer Strabo and the historian

Diodorus seem also to have derived their descriptions of the Celtic

sacrifices from the work of Posidonius, but independently of each

other, and of Caesar, for each of the three derivative accounts

contain some details which are not to be found in either of the

others. By combining them, therefore, we can restore the original

account of Posidonius with some probability, and thus obtain a

picture of the sacrifices offered by the Celts of Gaul at the close

of the second century before our era. The following seem to have

been the main outlines of the custom. Condemned criminals were

reserved by the Celts in order to be sacrificed to the gods at a

great festival which took place once in every five years. The more

there were of such victims, the greater was believed to be the

fertility of the land. If there were not enough criminals to furnish

victims, captives taken in war were immolated to supply the

deficiency. When the time came the victims were sacrificed by the

Druids or priests. Some they shot down with arrows, some they

impaled, and some they burned alive in the following manner.

Colossal images of wicker-work or of wood and grass were

constructed; these were filled with live men, cattle, and animals of

other kinds; fire was then applied to the images, and they were

burned with their living contents.

Such were the great festivals held once every five years. But

besides these quinquennial festivals, celebrated on so grand a

scale, and with, apparently, so large an expenditure of human life,

it seems reasonable to suppose that festivals of the same sort, only

on a lesser scale, were held annually, and that from these annual

festivals are lineally descended some at least of the fire-festivals

which, with their traces of human sacrifices, are still celebrated

year by year in many parts of Europe. The gigantic images

constructed of osiers or covered with grass in which the Druids

enclosed their victims remind us of the leafy framework in which the

human representative of the tree-spirit is still so often encased.

Hence, seeing that the fertility of the land was apparently supposed

to depend upon the due performance of these sacrifices, Mannhardt

interpreted the Celtic victims, cased in osiers and grass, as

representatives of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation.

These wicker giants of the Druids seem to have had till lately, if

not down to the present time, their representatives at the spring

and midsummer festivals of modern Europe. At Douay, down at least to

the early part of the nineteenth century, a procession took place

annually on the Sunday nearest to the seventh of July. The great

feature of the procession was a colossal figure, some twenty or

thirty feet high, made of osiers, and called "the giant," which was

moved through the streets by means of rollers and ropes worked by

men who were enclosed within the effigy. The figure was armed as a

knight with lance and sword, helmet and shield. Behind him marched

his wife and his three children, all constructed of osiers on the

same principle, but on a smaller scale. At Dunkirk the procession of

the giants took place on Midsummer Day, the twenty-fourth of June.

The festival, which was known as the Follies of Dunkirk, attracted

multitudes of spectators. The giant was a huge figure of

wicker-work, occasionally as much as forty-five feet high, dressed

in a long blue robe with gold stripes, which reached to his feet,

concealing the dozen or more men who made it dance and bob its head

to the spectators. This colossal effigy went by the name of Papa

Reuss, and carried in its pocket a bouncing infant of Brobdingnagian

proportions. The rear was brought up by the daughter of the giant,

constructed, like her sire, of wicker-work, and little, if at all,

inferior to him in size. Most towns and even villages of Brabant and

Flanders have, or used to have, similar wicker giants which were

annually led about to the delight of the populace, who loved these

grotesque figures, spoke of them with patriotic enthusiasm, and

never wearied of gazing at them. At Antwerp the giant was so big

that no gate in the city was large enough to let him go through;

hence he could not visit his brother giants in neighbouring towns,

as the other Belgian giants used to do on solemn occasions.

In England artificial giants seem to have been a standing feature of

the midsummer festival. A writer of the sixteenth century speaks of

"Midsommer pageants in London, where to make the people wonder, are

set forth great and uglie gyants marching as if they were alive, and

armed at all points, but within they are stuffed full of browne

paper and tow, which the shrewd boyes, underpeering, do guilefully

discover, and turne to a greate derision." At Chester the annual

pageant on Midsummer Eve included the effigies of four giants, with

animals, hobby-horses, and other figures. At Coventry it appears

that the giant's wife figured beside the giant. At Burford, in

Oxfordshire, Midsummer Eve used to be celebrated with great jollity

by the carrying of a giant and a dragon up and down the town. The

last survivor of these perambulating English giants lingered at

Salisbury, where an antiquary found him mouldering to decay in the

neglected hall of the Tailors' Company about the year 1844. His

bodily framework was a lath and hoop, like the one which used to be

worn by Jack-in-the-Green on May Day.

In these cases the giants merely figured in the processions. But

sometimes they were burned in the summer bonfires. Thus the people

of the Rue aux Ours in Paris used annually to make a great

wicker-work figure, dressed as a soldier, which they promenaded up

and down the streets for several days, and solemnly burned on the

third of July, the crowd of spectators singing _Salve Regina._ A

personage who bore the title of king presided over the ceremony with

a lighted torch in his hand. The burning fragments of the image were

scattered among the people, who eagerly scrambled for them. The

custom was abolished in 1743. In Brie, Isle de France, a wicker-work

giant, eighteen feet high, was annually burned on Midsummer Eve.

Again, the Druidical custom of burning live animals, enclosed in

wicker-work, has its counterpart at the spring and midsummer

festivals. At Luchon in the Pyrenees on Midsummer Eve "a hollow

column, composed of strong wicker-work, is raised to the height of

about sixty feet in the centre of the principal suburb, and

interlaced with green foliage up to the very top; while the most

beautiful flowers and shrubs procurable are artistically arranged in

groups below, so as to form a sort of background to the scene. The

column is then filled with combustible materials, ready for

ignition. At an appointed hour--about 8 P.M.--a grand procession,

composed of the clergy, followed by young men and maidens in holiday

attire, pour forth from the town chanting hymns, and take up their

position around the column. Meanwhile, bonfires are lit, with

beautiful effect, in the surrounding hills. As many living serpents

as could be collected are now thrown into the column, which is set

on fire at the base by means of torches, armed with which about

fifty boys and men dance around with frantic gestures. The serpents,

to avoid the flames, wriggle their way to the top, whence they are

seen lashing out laterally until finally obliged to drop, their

struggles for life giving rise to enthusiastic delight among the

surrounding spectators. This is a favourite annual ceremony for the

inhabitants of Luchon and its neighbourhood, and local tradition

assigns it to a heathen origin." In the midsummer fires formerly

kindled on the Place de Grève at Paris it was the custom to burn a

basket, barrel, or sack full of live cats, which was hung from a

tall mast in the midst of the bonfire; sometimes a fox was burned.

The people collected the embers and ashes of the fire and took them

home, believing that they brought good luck. The French kings often

witnessed these spectacles and even lit the bonfire with their own

hands. In 1648 Louis the Fourteenth, crowned with a wreath of roses

and carrying a bunch of roses in his hand, kindled the fire, danced

at it and partook of the banquet afterwards in the town hall. But

this was the last occasion when a monarch presided at the midsummer

bonfire in Paris. At Metz midsummer fires were lighted with great

pomp on the esplanade, and a dozen cats, enclosed in wicker cages,

were burned alive in them, to the amusement of the people. Similarly

at Gap, in the department of the High Alps, cats used to be roasted

over the midsummer bonfire. In Russia a white cock was sometimes

burned in the midsummer bonfire; in Meissen or Thuringia a horse's

head used to be thrown into it. Sometimes animals are burned in the

spring bonfires. In the Vosges cats were burned on Shrove Tuesday;

in Alsace they were thrown into the Easter bonfire. In the

department of the Ardennes cats were flung into the bonfires kindled

on the first Sunday in Lent; sometimes, by a refinement of cruelty,

they were hung over the fire from the end of a pole and roasted

alive. "The cat, which represented the devil, could never suffer

enough." While the creatures were perishing in the flames, the

shepherds guarded their flocks and forced them to leap over the

fire, esteeming this an infallible means of preserving them from

disease and witchcraft. We have seen that squirrels were sometimes

burned in the Easter fire.

Thus it appears that the sacrificial rites of the Celts of ancient

Gaul can be traced in the popular festivals of modern Europe.

Naturally it is in France, or rather in the wider area comprised

within the limits of ancient Gaul, that these rites have left the

clearest traces in the customs of burning giants of wicker-work and

animals enclosed in wicker-work or baskets. These customs, it will

have been remarked, are generally observed at or about midsummer.

From this we may infer that the original rites of which these are

the degenerate successors were solemnised at midsummer. This

inference harmonises with the conclusion suggested by a general

survey of European folk-custom, that the midsummer festival must on

the whole have been the most widely diffused and the most solemn of

all the yearly festivals celebrated by the primitive Aryans in

Europe. At the same time we must bear in mind that among the British

Celts the chief fire-festivals of the year appear certainly to have

been those of Beltane (May Day) and Hallowe'en (the last day of

October); and this suggests a doubt whether the Celts of Gaul also

may not have celebrated their principal rites of fire, including

their burnt sacrifices of men and animals, at the beginning of May

or the beginning of November rather than at Midsummer.

We have still to ask, What is the meaning of such sacrifices? Why

were men and animals burnt to death at these festivals? If we are

right in interpreting the modern European fire-festivals as attempts

to break the power of witchcraft by burning or banning the witches

and warlocks, it seems to follow that we must explain the human

sacrifices of the Celts in the same manner; that is, we must suppose

that the men whom the Druids burnt in wicker-work images were

condemned to death on the ground that they were witches or wizards,

and that the mode of execution by fire was chosen because burning

alive is deemed the surest mode of getting rid of these noxious and

dangerous beings. The same explanation would apply to the cattle and

wild animals of many kinds which the Celts burned along with the

men. They, too, we may conjecture, were supposed to be either under

the spell of witchcraft or actually to be the witches and wizards,

who had transformed themselves into animals for the purpose of

prosecuting their infernal plots against the welfare of their

fellow-creatures. This conjecture is confirmed by the observation

that the victims most commonly burned in modern bonfires have been

cats, and that cats are precisely the animals into which, with the

possible exception of hares, witches were most usually supposed to

transform themselves. Again, we have seen that serpents and foxes

used sometimes to be burnt in the midsummer fires; and Welsh and

German witches are reported to have assumed the form both of foxes

and serpents. In short, when we remember the great variety of

animals whose forms witches can assume at pleasure, it seems easy on

this hypothesis to account for the variety of living creatures that

have been burnt at festivals both in ancient Gaul and modern Europe;

all these victims, we may surmise, were doomed to the flames, not

because they were animals, but because they were believed to be

witches who had taken the shape of animals for their nefarious

purposes. One advantage of explaining the ancient Celtic sacrifices

in this way is that it introduces, as it were, a harmony and

consistency into the treatment which Europe has meted out to witches

from the earliest times down to about two centuries ago, when the

growing influence of rationalism discredited the belief in

witchcraft and put a stop to the custom of burning witches. Be that

as it may, we can now perhaps understand why the Druids believed

that the more persons they sentenced to death, the greater would be

the fertility of the land. To a modern reader the connexion at first

sight may not be obvious between the activity of the hangman and the

productivity of the earth. But a little reflection may satisfy him

that when the criminals who perish at the stake or on the gallows

are witches, whose delight it is to blight the crops of the farmer

or to lay them low under storms of hail, the execution of these

wretches is really calculated to ensure an abundant harvest by

removing one of the principal causes which paralyse the efforts and

blast the hopes of the husbandman.

The Druidical sacrifices which we are considering were explained in

a different way by W. Mannhardt. He supposed that the men whom the

Druids burned in wicker-work images represented the spirits of

vegetation, and accordingly that the custom of burning them was a

magical ceremony intended to secure the necessary sunshine for the

crops. Similarly, he seems to have inclined to the view that the

animals which used to be burnt in the bonfires represented the

cornspirit, which, as we saw in an earlier part of this work, is

often supposed to assume the shape of an animal. This theory is no

doubt tenable, and the great authority of W. Mannhardt entitles it

to careful consideration. I adopted it in former editions of this

book; but on reconsideration it seems to me on the whole to be less

probable than the theory that the men and animals burnt in the fires

perished in the character of witches. This latter view is strongly

supported by the testimony of the people who celebrate the

fire-festivals, since a popular name for the custom of kindling the

fires is "burning the witches," effigies of witches are sometimes

consumed in the flames, and the fires, their embers, or their ashes

are supposed to furnish protection against witchcraft. On the other

hand there is little to show that the effigies or the animals burnt

in the fires are regarded by the people as representatives of the

vegetation-spirit, and that the bonfires are sun-charms. With regard

to serpents in particular, which used to be burnt in the midsummer

fire at Luchon, I am not aware of any certain evidence that in

Europe snakes have been regarded as embodiments of the tree-spirit

or corn-spirit, though in other parts of the world the conception

appears to be not unknown. Whereas the popular faith in the

transformation of witches into animals is so general and deeply

rooted, and the fear of these uncanny beings is so strong, that it

seems safer to suppose that the cats and other animals which were

burnt in the fire suffered death as embodiments of witches than that

they perished as representatives of vegetation-spirits.

LXV. Balder and the Mistletoe

THE READER may remember that the preceding account of the popular

fire-festivals of Europe was suggested by the myth of the Norse god

Balder, who is said to have been slain by a branch of mistletoe and

burnt in a great fire. We have now to enquire how far the customs

which have been passed in review help to shed light on the myth. In

this enquiry it may be convenient to begin with the mistletoe, the

instrument of Balder's death.

From time immemorial the mistletoe has been the object of

superstitious veneration in Europe. It was worshipped by the Druids,

as we learn from a famous passage of Pliny. After enumerating the

different kinds of mistletoe, he proceeds: "In treating of this

subject, the admiration in which the mistletoe is held throughout

Gaul ought not to pass unnoticed. The Druids, for so they call their

wizards, esteem nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree

on which it grows, provided only that the tree is an oak. But apart

from this they choose oak-woods for their sacred groves and perform

no sacred rites without oak-leaves; so that the very name of Druids

may be regarded as a Greek appellation derived from their worship of

the oak. For they believe that whatever grows on these trees is sent

from heaven, and is a sign that the tree has been chosen by the god

himself. The mistletoe is very rarely to be met with; but when it is

found, they gather it with solemn ceremony. This they do above all

on the sixth day of the moon, from whence they date the beginnings

of their months, of their years, and of their thirty years' cycle,

because by the sixth day the moon has plenty of vigour and has not

run half its course. After due preparations have been made for a

sacrifice and a feast under the tree, they hail it as the universal

healer and bring to the spot two white bulls, whose horns have never

been bound before. A priest clad in a white robe climbs the tree and

with a golden sickle cuts the mistletoe, which is caught in a white

cloth. Then they sacrifice the victims, praying that God may make

his own gift to prosper with those upon whom he has bestowed it.

They believe that a potion prepared from mistletoe will make barren

animals to bring forth, and that the plant is a remedy against all

poison."

In another passage Pliny tells us that in medicine the mistletoe

which grows on an oak was esteemed the most efficacious, and that

its efficacy was by some superstitious people supposed to be

increased if the plant was gathered on the first day of the moon

without the use of iron, and if when gathered it was not allowed to

touch the earth; oak-mistletoe thus obtained was deemed a cure for

epilepsy; carried about by women it assisted them to conceive; and

it healed ulcers most effectually, if only the sufferer chewed a

piece of the plant and laid another piece on the sore. Yet, again,

he says that mistletoe was supposed, like vinegar and an egg, to be

an excellent means of extinguishing a fire.

If in these latter passages Pliny refers, as he apparently does, to

the beliefs current among his contemporaries in Italy, it will

follow that the Druids and the Italians were to some extent agreed

as to the valuable properties possessed by mistletoe which grows on

an oak; both of them deemed it an effectual remedy for a number of

ailments, and both of them ascribed to it a quickening virtue, the

Druids believing that a potion prepared from mistletoe would

fertilise barren cattle, and the Italians holding that a piece of

mistletoe carried about by a woman would help her to conceive a

child. Further, both peoples thought that if the plant were to exert

its medicinal properties it must be gathered in a certain way and at

a certain time. It might not be cut with iron, hence the Druids cut

it with gold; and it might not touch the earth, hence the Druids

caught it in a white cloth. In choosing the time for gathering the

plant, both peoples were determined by observation of the moon; only

they differed as to the particular day of the moon, the Italians

preferring the first, and the Druids the sixth.

With these beliefs of the ancient Gauls and Italians as to the

wonderful medicinal properties of mistletoe we may compare the

similar beliefs of the modern Aino of Japan. We read that they,

"like many nations of the Northern origin, hold the mistletoe in

peculiar veneration. They look upon it as a medicine, good in almost

every disease, and it is sometimes taken in food and at others

separately as a decoction. The leaves are used in preference to the

berries, the latter being of too sticky a nature for general

purposes. . . . But many, too, suppose this plant to have the power

of making the gardens bear plentifully. When used for this purpose,

the leaves are cut up into fine pieces, and, after having been

prayed over, are sown with the millet and other seeds, a little also

being eaten with the food. Barren women have also been known to eat

the mistletoe, in order to be made to bear children. That mistletoe

which grows upon the willow is supposed to have the greatest

efficacy. This is because the willow is looked upon by them as being

an especially sacred tree."

Thus the Aino agree with the Druids in regarding mistletoe as a cure

for almost every disease, and they agree with the ancient Italians

that applied to women it helps them to bear children. Again, the

Druidical notion that the mistletoe was an "all-healer" or panacea

may be compared with a notion entertained by the Walos of

Senegambia. These people "have much veneration for a sort of

mistletoe, which they call _tob;_ they carry leaves of it on their

persons when they go to war as a preservative against wounds, just

as if the leaves were real talismans (_gris-gris_)." The French

writer who records this practice adds: "Is it not very curious that

the mistletoe should be in this part of Africa what it was in the

superstitions of the Gauls? This prejudice, common to the two

countries, may have the same origin; blacks and whites will

doubtless have seen, each of them for themselves, something

supernatural in a plant which grows and flourishes without having

roots in the earth. May they not have believed, in fact, that it was

a plant fallen from the sky, a gift of the divinity?"

This suggestion as to the origin of the superstition is strongly

confirmed by the Druidical belief, reported by Pliny, that whatever

grew on an oak was sent from heaven and was a sign that the tree had

been chosen by the god himself. Such a belief explains why the

Druids cut the mistletoe, not with a common knife, but with a golden

sickle, and why, when cut, it was not suffered to touch the earth;

probably they thought that the celestial plant would have been

profaned and its marvellous virtue lost by contact with the ground.

With the ritual observed by the Druids in cutting the mistletoe we

may compare the ritual which in Cambodia is prescribed in a similar

case. They say that when you see an orchid growing as a parasite on

a tamarind tree, you should dress in white, take a new earthenware

pot, then climb the tree at noon, break off the plant, put it in the

pot and let the pot fall to the ground. After that you make in the

pot a decoction which confers the gift of invulnerability. Thus just

as in Africa the leaves of one parasitic plant are supposed to

render the wearer invulnerable, so in Cambodia a decoction made from

another parasitic plant is considered to render the same service to

such as make use of it, whether by drinking or washing. We may

conjecture that in both places the notion of invulnerability is

suggested by the position of the plant, which, occupying a place of

comparative security above the ground, appears to promise to its

fortunate possessor a similar security from some of the ills that

beset the life of man on earth. We have already met with examples of

the store which the primitive mind sets on such vantage grounds.

Whatever may be the origin of these beliefs and practices concerning

the mistletoe, certain it is that some of them have their analogies

in the folk-lore of modern European peasants. For example, it is

laid down as a rule in various parts of Europe that mistletoe may

not be cut in the ordinary way but must be shot or knocked down with

stones from the tree on which it is growing. Thus, in the Swiss

canton of Aargau "all parasitic plants are esteemed in a certain

sense holy by the country folk, but most particularly so the

mistletoe growing on an oak. They ascribe great powers to it, but

shrink from cutting it off in the usual manner. Instead of that they

procure it in the following manner. When the sun is in Sagittarius

and the moon is on the wane, on the first, third, or fourth day

before the new moon, one ought to shoot down with an arrow the

mistletoe of an oak and to catch it with the left hand as it falls.

Such mistletoe is a remedy for every ailment of children." Here

among the Swiss peasants, as among the Druids of old, special virtue

is ascribed to mistletoe which grows on an oak: it may not be cut in

the usual way: it must be caught as it falls to the ground; and it

is esteemed a panacea for all diseases, at least of children. In

Sweden, also, it is a popular superstition that if mistletoe is to

possess its peculiar virtue, it must either be shot down out of the

oak or knocked down with stones. Similarly, "so late as the early

part of the nineteenth century, people in Wales believed that for

the mistletoe to have any power, it must be shot or struck down with

stones off the tree where it grew."

Again, in respect of the healing virtues of mistletoe the opinion of

modern peasants, and even of the learned, has to some extent agreed

with that of the ancients. The Druids appear to have called the

plant, or perhaps the oak on which it grew, the "all-healer"; and

"all-healer" is said to be still a name of the mistletoe in the

modern Celtic speech of Brittany, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. On

St. John's morning (Midsummer morning) peasants of Piedmont and

Lombardy go out to search the oak-leaves for the "oil of St. John,"

which is supposed to heal all wounds made with cutting instruments.

Originally, perhaps, the "oil of St. John" was simply the mistletoe,

or a decoction made from it. For in Holstein the mistletoe,

especially oak-mistletoe, is still regarded as a panacea for green

wounds and as a sure charm to secure success in hunting; and at

Lacaune, in the south of France, the old Druidical belief in the

mistletoe as an antidote to all poisons still survives among the

peasantry; they apply the plant to the stomach of the sufferer or

give him a decoction of it to drink. Again, the ancient belief that

mistletoe is a cure for epilepsy has survived in modern times not

only among the ignorant but among the learned. Thus in Sweden

persons afflicted with the falling sickness think they can ward off

attacks of the malady by carrying about with them a knife which has

a handle of oak mistletoe; and in Germany for a similar purpose

pieces of mistletoe used to be hung round the necks of children. In

the French province of Bourbonnais a popular remedy for epilepsy is

a decoction of mistletoe which has been gathered on an oak on St.

John's Day and boiled with rye-flour. So at Bottesford in

Lincolnshire a decoction of mistletoe is supposed to be a palliative

for this terrible disease. Indeed mistletoe was recommended as a

remedy for the falling sickness by high medical authorities in

England and Holland down to the eighteenth century.

However, the opinion of the medical profession as to the curative

virtues of mistletoe has undergone a radical alteration. Whereas the

Druids thought that mistletoe cured everything, modern doctors

appear to think that it cures nothing. If they are right, we must

conclude that the ancient and widespread faith in the medicinal

virtue of mistletoe is a pure superstition based on nothing better

than the fanciful inferences which ignorance has drawn from the

parasitic nature of the plant, its position high up on the branch of

a tree seeming to protect it from the dangers to which plants and

animals are subject on the surface of the ground. From this point of

view we can perhaps understand why mistletoe has so long and so

persistently been prescribed as a cure for the falling sickness. As

mistletoe cannot fall to the ground because it is rooted on the

branch of a tree high above the earth, it seems to follow as a

necessary consequence that an epileptic patient cannot possibly fall

down in a fit so long as he carries a piece of mistletoe in his

pocket or a decoction of mistletoe in his stomach. Such a train of

reasoning would probably be regarded even now as cogent by a large

portion of the human species.

Again the ancient Italian opinion that mistletoe extinguishes fire

appears to be shared by Swedish peasants, who hang up bunches of

oak-mistletoe on the ceilings of their rooms as a protection against

harm in general and conflagration in particular. A hint as to the

way in which mistletoe comes to be possessed of this property is

furnished by the epithet "thunder-bosom," which people of the Aargau

canton in Switzerland apply to the plant. For a thunder-besom is a

shaggy, bushy excrescence on branches of trees, which is popularly

believed to be produced by a flash of lightning; hence in Bohemia a

thunder-besom burnt in the fire protects the house against being

struck by a thunder-bolt. Being itself a product of lightning it

naturally serves, on homoeopathic principles, as a protection

against lightning, in fact as a kind of lightning-conductor. Hence

the fire which mistletoe in Sweden is designed especially to avert

from houses may be fire kindled by lightning; though no doubt the

plant is equally effective against conflagration in general.

Again, mistletoe acts as a master-key as well as a

lightning-conductor; for it is said to open all locks. But perhaps

the most precious of all the virtues of mistletoe is that it affords

efficient protection against sorcery and witchcraft. That, no doubt,

is the reason why in Austria a twig of mistletoe is laid on the

threshold as a preventive of nightmare; and it may be the reason why

in the north of England they say that if you wish your dairy to

thrive you should give your bunch of mistletoe to the first cow that

calves after New Year's Day, for it is well known that nothing is so

fatal to milk and butter as witchcraft. Similarly in Wales, for the

sake of ensuring good luck to the dairy, people used to give a

branch of mistletoe to the first cow that gave birth to a calf after

the first hour of the New Year; and in rural districts of Wales,

where mistletoe abounded, there was always a profusion of it in the

farmhouses. When mistletoe was scarce, Welsh farmers used to say,

"No mistletoe, no luck"; but if there was a fine crop of mistletoe,

they expected a fine crop of corn. In Sweden mistletoe is diligently

sought after on St. John's Eve, the people "believing it to be, in a

high degree, possessed of mystic qualities; and that if a sprig of

it be attached to the ceiling of the dwelling-house, the horse's

stall, or the cow's crib, the Troll will then be powerless to injure

either man or beast."

With regard to the time when the mistletoe should be gathered

opinions have varied. The Druids gathered it above all on the sixth

day of the moon, the ancient Italians apparently on the first day of

the moon. In modern times some have preferred the full moon of March

and others the waning moon of winter when the sun is in Sagittarius.

But the favourite time would seem to be Midsummer Eve or Midsummer

Day. We have seen that both in France and Sweden special virtues are

ascribed to mistletoe gathered at Midsummer. The rule in Sweden is

that "mistletoe must be cut on the night of Midsummer Eve when sun

and moon stand in the sign of their might." Again, in Wales it was

believed that a sprig of mistletoe gathered on St. John's Eve

(Midsummer Eve), or at any time before the berries appeared, would

induce dreams of omen, both good and bad, if it were placed under

the pillow of the sleeper. Thus mistletoe is one of the many plants

whose magical or medicinal virtues are believed to culminate with

the culmination of the sun on the longest day of the year. Hence it

seems reasonable to conjecture that in the eyes of the Druids, also,

who revered the plant so highly, the sacred mistletoe may have

acquired a double portion of its mystic qualities at the solstice in

June, and that accordingly they may have regularly cut it with

solemn ceremony on Midsummer Eve.

Be that as it may, certain it is that the mistletoe, the instrument

of Balder's death, has been regularly gathered for the sake of its

mystic qualities on Midsummer Eve in Scandinavia, Balder's home. The

plant is found commonly growing on pear-trees, oaks, and other trees

in thick damp woods throughout the more temperate parts of Sweden.

Thus one of the two main incidents of Balder's myth is reproduced in

the great midsummer festival of Scandinavia. But the other main

incident of the myth, the burning of Balder's body on a pyre, has

also its counterpart in the bonfires which still blaze, or blazed

till lately, in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden on Midsummer Eve. It

does not appear, indeed, that any effigy is burned in these

bonfires; but the burning of an effigy is a feature which might

easily drop out after its meaning was forgotten. And the name of

Balder's balefires (_Balder's Balar_), by which these midsummer

fires were formerly known in Sweden, puts their connexion with

Balder beyond the reach of doubt, and makes it probable that in

former times either a living representative or an effigy of Balder

was annually burned in them. Midsummer was the season sacred to

Balder, and the Swedish poet Tegner, in placing the burning of

Balder at midsummer, may very well have followed an old tradition

that the summer solstice was the time when the good god came to his

untimely end.

Thus it has been shown that the leading incidents of the Balder myth

have their counterparts in those fire-festivals of our European

peasantry which undoubtedly date from a time long prior to the

introduction of Christianity. The pretence of throwing the victim

chosen by lot into the Beltane fire, and the similar treatment of

the man, the future Green Wolf, at the midsummer bonfire in

Normandy, may naturally be interpreted as traces of an older custom

of actually burning human beings on these occasions; and the green

dress of the Green Wolf, coupled with the leafy envelope of the

young fellow who trod out the midsummer fire at Moosheim, seems to

hint that the persons who perished at these festivals did so in the

character of tree-spirits or deities of vegetation. From all this we

may reasonably infer that in the Balder myth on the one hand, and

the fire-festivals and custom of gathering mistletoe on the other

hand, we have, as it were, the two broken and dissevered halves of

an original whole. In other words, we may assume with some degree of

probability that the myth of Balder's death was not merely a myth,

that is, a description of physical phenomena in imagery borrowed

from human life, but that it was at the same time the story which

people told to explain why they annually burned a human

representative of the god and cut the mistletoe with solemn

ceremony. If I am right, the story of Balder's tragic end formed, so

to say, the text of the sacred drama which was acted year by year as

a magical rite to cause the sun to shine, trees to grow, crops to

thrive, and to guard man and beast from the baleful arts of fairies

and trolls, of witches and warlocks. The tale belonged, in short, to

that class of nature myths which are meant to be supplemented by

ritual; here, as so often, myth stood to magic in the relation of

theory to practice.

But if the victims--the human Balders--who died by fire, whether in

spring or at midsummer, were put to death as living embodiments of

tree-spirits or deities of vegetation, it would seem that Balder

himself must have been a tree-spirit or deity of vegetation. It

becomes desirable, therefore, to determine, if we can, the

particular kind of tree or trees, of which a personal representative

was burned at the fire-festivals. For we may be quite sure that it

was not as a representative of vegetation in general that the victim

suffered death. The idea of vegetation in general is too abstract to

be primitive. Most probably the victim at first represented a

particular kind of sacred tree. But of all European trees none has

such claims as the oak to be considered as pre-eminently the sacred

tree of the Aryans. We have seen that its worship is attested for

all the great branches of the Aryan stock in Europe; hence we may

certainly conclude that the tree was venerated by the Aryans in

common before the dispersion, and that their primitive home must

have lain in a land which was clothed with forests of oak.

Now, considering the primitive character and remarkable similarity

of the fire-festivals observed by all the branches of the Aryan race

in Europe, we may infer that these festivals form part of the common

stock of religious observances which the various peoples carried

with them in their wanderings from their old home. But, if I am

right, an essential feature of those primitive fire-festivals was

the burning of a man who represented the tree-spirit. In view, then,

of the place occupied by the oak in the religion of the Aryans, the

presumption is that the tree so represented at the fire-festivals

must originally have been the oak. So far as the Celts and

Lithuanians are concerned, this conclusion will perhaps hardly be

contested. But both for them and for the Germans it is confirmed by

a remarkable piece of religious conservatism. The most primitive

method known to man of producing fire is by rubbing two pieces of

wood against each other till they ignite; and we have seen that this

method is still used in Europe for kindling sacred fires such as the

need-fire, and that most probably it was formerly resorted to at all

the fire-festivals under discussion. Now it is sometimes required

that the need-fire, or other sacred fire, should be made by the

friction of a particular kind of wood; and when the kind of wood is

prescribed, whether among Celts, Germans, or Slavs, that wood

appears to be generally the oak. But if the sacred fire was

regularly kindled by the friction of oak-wood, we may infer that

originally the fire was also fed with the same material. In point of

fact, it appears that the perpetual fire of Vesta at Rome was fed

with oak-wood, and that oak-wood was the fuel consumed in the

perpetual fire which burned under the sacred oak at the great

Lithuanian sanctuary of Romove. Further, that oak-wood was formerly

the fuel burned in the midsummer fires may perhaps be inferred from

the custom, said to be still observed by peasants in many mountain

districts of Germany, of making up the cottage fire on Midsummer Day

with a heavy block of oak-wood. The block is so arranged that it

smoulders slowly and is not finally reduced to charcoal till the

expiry of a year. Then upon next Midsummer Day the charred embers of

the old log are removed to make room for the new one, and are mixed

with the seed-corn or scattered about the garden. This is believed

to guard the food cooked on the hearth from witchcraft, to preserve

the luck of the house, to promote the growth of the crops, and to

keep them from blight and vermin. Thus the custom is almost exactly

parallel to that of the Yule-log, which in parts of Germany, France,

England, Serbia, and other Slavonic lands was commonly of oak-wood.

The general conclusion is, that at those periodic or occasional

ceremonies the ancient Aryans both kindled and fed the fire with the

sacred oak-wood.

But if at these solemn rites the fire was regularly made of oakwood,

it follows that any man who was burned in it as a personification of

the tree-spirit could have represented no tree but the oak. The

sacred oak was thus burned in duplicate; the wood of the tree was

consumed in the fire, and along with it was consumed a living man as

a personification of the oak-spirit. The conclusion thus drawn for

the European Aryans in general is confirmed in its special

application to the Scandinavians by the relation in which amongst

them the mistletoe appears to have stood to the burning of the

victim in the midsummer fire. We have seen that among Scandinavians

it has been customary to gather the mistletoe at midsummer. But so

far as appears on the face of this custom, there is nothing to

connect it with the midsummer fires in which human victims or

effigies of them were burned. Even if the fire, as seems probable,

was originally always made with oak-wood, why should it have been

necessary to pull the mistletoe? The last link between the midsummer

customs of gathering the mistletoe and lighting the bonfires is

supplied by Balder's myth, which can hardly be disjoined from the

customs in question. The myth suggests that a vital connexion may

once have been believed to subsist between the mistletoe and the

human representative of the oak who was burned in the fire.

According to the myth, Balder could be killed by nothing in heaven

or earth except the mistletoe; and so long as the mistletoe remained

on the oak, he was not only immortal but invulnerable. Now, if we

suppose that Balder was the oak, the origin of the myth becomes

intelligible. The mistletoe was viewed as the seat of life of the

oak, and so long as it was uninjured nothing could kill or even

wound the oak. The conception of the mistletoe as the seat of life

of the oak would naturally be suggested to primitive people by the

observation that while the oak is deciduous, the mistletoe which

grows on it is evergreen. In winter the sight of its fresh foliage

among the bare branches must have been hailed by the worshippers of

the tree as a sign that the divine life which had ceased to animate

the branches yet survived in the mistletoe, as the heart of a

sleeper still beats when his body is motionless. Hence when the god

had to be killed--when the sacred tree had to be burnt--it was

necessary to begin by breaking off the mistletoe. For so long as the

mistletoe remained intact, the oak (so people might think) was

invulnerable; all the blows of their knives and axes would glance

harmless from its surface. But once tear from the oak its sacred

heart--the mistletoe--and the tree nodded to its fall. And when in

later times the spirit of the oak came to be represented by a living

man, it was logically necessary to suppose that, like the tree he

personated, he could neither be killed nor wounded so long as the

mistletoe remained uninjured. The pulling of the mistletoe was thus

at once the signal and the cause of his death.

On this view the invulnerable Balder is neither more nor less than a

personification of a mistletoe-bearing oak. The interpretation is

confirmed by what seems to have been an ancient Italian belief, that

the mistletoe can be destroyed neither by fire nor water; for if the

parasite is thus deemed indestructible, it might easily be supposed

to communicate its own indestructibility to the tree on which it

grows, so long as the two remain in conjunction. Or, to put the same

idea in mythical form, we might tell how the kindly god of the oak

had his life securely deposited in the imperishable mistletoe which

grew among the branches; how accordingly so long as the mistletoe

kept its place there, the deity himself remained invulnerable; and

how at last a cunning foe, let into the secret of the god's

invulnerability, tore the mistletoe from the oak, thereby killing

the oak-god and afterwards burning his body in a fire which could

have made no impression on him so long as the incombustible parasite

retained its seat among the boughs.

But since the idea of a being whose life is thus, in a sense,

outside himself, must be strange to many readers, and has, indeed,

not yet been recognised in its full bearing on primitive

superstition, it will be worth while to illustrate it by examples

drawn both from story and custom. The result will be to show that,

in assuming this idea as the explanation of Balder's relation to the

mistletoe, I assume a principle which is deeply engraved on the mind

of primitive man.

LXVI. The External Soul in Folk-Tales

IN A FORMER part of this work we saw that, in the opinion of

primitive people, the soul may temporarily absent itself from the

body without causing death. Such temporary absences of the soul are

often believed to involve considerable risk, since the wandering

soul is liable to a variety of mishaps at the hands of enemies, and

so forth. But there is another aspect to this power of disengaging

the soul from the body. If only the safety of the soul can be

ensured during its absence, there is no reason why the soul should

not continue absent for an indefinite time; indeed a man may, on a

pure calculation of personal safety, desire that his soul should

never return to his body. Unable to conceive of life abstractly as a

"permanent possibility of sensation" or a "continuous adjustment of

internal arrangements to external relations," the savage thinks of

it as a concrete material thing of a definite bulk, capable of being

seen and handled, kept in a box or jar, and liable to be bruised,

fractured, or smashed in pieces. It is not needful that the life, so

conceived, should be in the man; it may be absent from his body and

still continue to animate him by virtue of a sort of sympathy or

action at a distance. So long as this object which he calls his life

or soul remains unharmed, the man is well; if it is injured, he

suffers; if it is destroyed, he dies. Or, to put it otherwise, when

a man is ill or dies, the fact is explained by saying that the

material object called his life or soul, whether it be in his body

or out of it, has either sustained injury or been destroyed. But

there may be circumstances in which, if the life or soul remains in

the man, it stands a greater chance of sustaining injury than if it

were stowed away in some safe and secret place. Accordingly, in such

circumstances, primitive man takes his soul out of his body and

deposits it for security in some snug spot, intending to replace it

in his body when the danger is past. Or if he should discover some

place of absolute security, he may be content to leave his soul

there permanently. The advantage of this is that, so long as the

soul remains unharmed in the place where he has deposited it, the

man himself is immortal; nothing can kill his body, since his life

is not in it.

Evidence of this primitive belief is furnished by a class of

folk-tales of which the Norse story of "The giant who had no heart

in his body" is perhaps the best-known example. Stories of this kind

are widely diffused over the world, and from their number and the

variety of incident and of details in which the leading idea is

embodied, we may infer that the conception of an external soul is

one which has had a powerful hold on the minds of men at an early

stage of history. For folk-tales are a faithful reflection of the

world as it appeared to the primitive mind; and we may be sure that

any idea which commonly occurs in them, however absurd it may seem

to us, must once have been an ordinary article of belief. This

assurance, so far as it concerns the supposed power of disengaging

the soul from the body for a longer or shorter time, is amply

corroborated by a comparison of the folk-tales in question with the

actual beliefs and practices of savages. To this we shall return

after some specimens of the tales have been given. The specimens

will be selected with a view of illustrating both the characteristic

features and the wide diffusion of this class of tales.

In the first place, the story of the external soul is told, in

various forms, by all Aryan peoples from Hindoostan to the Hebrides.

A very common form of it is this: A warlock, giant, or other

fairyland being is invulnerable and immortal because he keeps his

soul hidden far away in some secret place; but a fair princess, whom

he holds enthralled in his enchanted castle, wiles his secret from

him and reveals it to the hero, who seeks out the warlock's soul,

heart, life, or death (as it is variously called), and by destroying

it, simultaneously kills the warlock. Thus a Hindoo story tells how

a magician called Punchkin held a queen captive for twelve years,

and would fain marry her, but she would not have him. At last the

queen's son came to rescue her, and the two plotted together to kill

Punchkin. So the queen spoke the magician fair, and pretended that

she had at last made up her mind to marry him. "And do tell me," she

said, "are you quite immortal? Can death never touch you? And are

you too great an enchanter ever to feel human suffering?" "It is

true," he said, "that I am not as others. Far, far away, hundreds of

thousands of miles from this, there lies a desolate country covered

with thick jungle. In the midst of the jungle grows a circle of palm

trees, and in the centre of the circle stand six chattees full of

water, piled one above another: below the sixth chattee is a small

cage, which contains a little green parrot;--on the life of the

parrot depends my life;--and if the parrot is killed I must die. It

is, however," he added, "impossible that the parrot should sustain

any injury, both on account of the inaccessibility of the country,

and because, by my appointment, many thousand genii surround the

palm trees, and kill all who approach the place." But the queen's

young son overcame all difficulties, and got possession of the

parrot. He brought it to the door of the magician's palace, and

began playing with it. Punchkin, the magician, saw him, and, coming

out, tried to persuade the boy to give him the parrot. "Give me my

parrot!" cried Punchkin. Then the boy took hold of the parrot and

tore off one of his wings; and as he did so the magician's right arm

fell off. Punchkin then stretched out his left arm, crying, "Give me

my parrot!" The prince pulled off the parrot's second wing, and the

magician's left arm tumbled off. "Give me my parrot!" cried he, and

fell on his knees. The prince pulled off the parrot's right leg, the

magician's right leg fell off; the prince pulled off the parrot's

left leg, down fell the magician's left. Nothing remained of him

except the trunk and the head; but still he rolled his eyes, and

cried, "Give me my parrot!" "Take your parrot, then," cried the boy;

and with that he wrung the bird's neck, and threw it at the

magician; and, as he did so, Punchkin's head twisted round, and,

with a fearful groan, he died! In another Hindoo tale an ogre is

asked by his daughter, "Papa, where do you keep your soul?" "Sixteen

miles away from this place," he said, "is a tree. Round the tree are

tigers, and bears, and scorpions, and snakes; on the top of the tree

is a very great fat snake; on his head is a little cage; in the cage

is a bird; and my soul is in that bird." The end of the ogre is like

that of the magician in the previous tale. As the bird's wings and

legs are torn off, the ogre's arms and legs drop off; and when its

neck is wrung he falls down dead. In a Bengalee story it is said

that all the ogres dwell in Ceylon, and that all their lives are in

a single lemon. A boy cuts the lemon in pieces, and all the ogres

die.

In a Siamese or Cambodian story, probably derived from India, we are

told that Thossakan or Ravana, the King of Ceylon, was able by magic

art to take his soul out of his body and leave it in a box at home,

while he went to the wars. Thus he was invulnerable in battle. When

he was about to give battle to Rama, he deposited his soul with a

hermit called Fire-eye, who was to keep it safe for him. So in the

fight Rama was astounded to see that his arrows struck the king

without wounding him. But one of Rama's allies, knowing the secret

of the king's invulnerability, transformed himself by magic into the

likeness of the king, and going to the hermit asked back his soul.

On receiving it he soared up into the air and flew to Rama,

brandishing the box and squeezing it so hard that all the breath

left the King of Ceylon's body, and he died. In a Bengalee story a

prince going into a far country planted with his own hands a tree in

the courtyard of his father's palace, and said to his parents, "This

tree is my life. When you see the tree green and fresh, then know

that it is well with me; when you see the tree fade in some parts,

then know that I am in an ill case; and when you see the whole tree

fade, then know that I am dead and gone." In another Indian tale a

prince, setting forth on his travels, left behind him a barley

plant, with instructions that it should be carefully tended and

watched; for if it flourished, he would be alive and well, but if it

drooped, then some mischance was about to happen to him. And so it

fell out. For the prince was beheaded, and as his head rolled off,

the barley plant snapped in two and the ear of barley fell to the

ground.

In Greek tales, ancient and modern, the idea of an external soul is

not uncommon. When Meleager was seven days old, the Fates appeared

to his mother and told her that Meleager would die when the brand

which was blazing on the hearth had burnt down. So his mother

snatched the brand from the fire and kept it in a box. But in

after-years, being enraged at her son for slaying her brothers, she

burnt the brand in the fire and Meleager expired in agonies, as if

flames were preying on his vitals. Again, Nisus King of Megara had a

purple or golden hair on the middle of his head, and it was fated

that whenever the hair was pulled out the king should die. When

Megara was besieged by the Cretans, the king's daughter Scylla fell

in love with Minos, their king, and pulled out the fatal hair from

her father's head. So he died. In a modern Greek folk-tale a man's

strength lies in three golden hairs on his head. When his mother

pulls them out, he grows weak and timid and is slain by his enemies.

In another modern Greek story the life of an enchanter is bound up

with three doves which are in the belly of a wild boar. When the

first dove is killed, the magician grows sick; when the second is

killed, he grows very sick; and when the third is killed, he dies.

In another Greek story of the same sort an ogre's strength is in

three singing birds which are in a wild boar. The hero kills two of

the birds, and then coming to the ogre's house finds him lying on

the ground in great pain. He shows the third bird to the ogre, who

begs that the hero will either let it fly away or give it to him to

eat. But the hero wrings the bird's neck, and the ogre dies on the

spot.

In a modern Roman version of "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," the

magician tells the princess, whom he holds captive in a floating

rock in mid-ocean, that he will never die. The princess reports this

to the prince her husband, who has come to rescue her. The prince

replies, "It is impossible but that there should be some one thing

or other that is fatal to him; ask him what that one fatal thing

is." So the princess asked the magician, and he told her that in the

wood was a hydra with seven heads; in the middle head of the hydra

was a leveret, in the head of the leveret was a bird, in the bird's

head was a precious stone, and if this stone were put under his

pillow he would die. The prince procured the stone, and the princess

laid it under the magician's pillow. No sooner did the enchanter lay

his head on the pillow than he gave three terrible yells, turned

himself round and round three times, and died.

Stories of the same sort are current among Slavonic peoples. Thus a

Russian story tells how a warlock called Koshchei the Deathless

carried off a princess and kept her prisoner in his golden castle.

However, a prince made up to her one day as she was walking alone

and disconsolate in the castle garden, and cheered by the prospect

of escaping with him she went to the warlock and coaxed him with

false and flattering words, saying, "My dearest friend, tell me, I

pray you, will you never die?" "Certainly not," says he. "Well,"

says she, "and where is your death? is it in your dwelling?" "To be

sure it is," says he, "it is in the broom under the threshold."

Thereupon the princess seized the broom and threw it on the fire,

but although the broom burned, the deathless Koshchei remained

alive; indeed not so much as a hair of him was singed. Balked in her

first attempt, the artful hussy pouted and said, "You do not love me

true, for you have not told me where your death is; yet I am not

angry, but love you with all my heart." With these fawning words she

besought the warlock to tell her truly where his death was. So he

laughed and said, "Why do you wish to know? Well then, out of love I

will tell you where it lies. In a certain field there stand three

green oaks, and under the roots of the largest oak is a worm, and if

ever this worm is found and crushed, that instant I shall die." When

the princess heard these words, she went straight to her lover and

told him all; and he searched till he found the oaks and dug up the

worm and crushed it. Then he hurried to the warlock's castle, but

only to learn from the princess that the warlock was still alive.

Then she fell to wheedling and coaxing Koshchei once more, and this

time, overcome by her wiles, he opened his heart to her and told her

the truth. "My death," said he, "is far from here and hard to find,

on the wide ocean. In that sea is an island, and on the island there

grows a green oak, and beneath the oak is an iron chest, and in the

chest is a small basket, and in the basket is a hare, and in the

hare is a duck, and in the duck is an egg; and he who finds the egg

and breaks it, kills me at the same time." The prince naturally

procured the fateful egg and with it in his hands he confronted the

deathless warlock. The monster would have killed him, but the prince

began to squeeze the egg. At that the warlock shrieked with pain,

and turning to the false princess, who stood by smirking and

smiling, "Was it not out of love for you," said he, "that I told you

where my death was? And is this the return you make to me?" With

that he grabbed at his sword, which hung from a peg on the wall; but

before he could reach it, the prince had crushed the egg, and sure

enough the deathless warlock found his death at the same moment. "In

one of the descriptions of Koshchei's death, he is said to be killed

by a blow on the forehead inflicted by the mysterious egg--that last

link in the magic chain by which his life is darkly bound. In

another version of the same story, but told of a snake, the fatal

blow is struck by a small stone found in the yolk of an egg, which

is inside a duck, which is inside a hare, which is inside a stone,

which is on an island."

Amongst peoples of the Teutonic stock stories of the external soul

are not wanting. In a tale told by the Saxons of Transylvania it is

said that a young man shot at a witch again and again. The bullets

went clean through her but did her no harm, and she only laughed and

mocked at him. "Silly earthworm," she cried, "shoot as much as you

like. It does me no harm. For know that my life resides not in me

but far, far away. In a mountain is a pond, on the pond swims a

duck, in the duck is an egg, in the egg burns a light, that light is

my life. If you could put out that light, my life would be at an

end. But that can never, never be." However, the young man got hold

of the egg, smashed it, and put out the light, and with it the

witch's life went out also. In a German story a cannibal called Body

without Soul or Soulless keeps his soul in a box, which stands on a

rock in the middle of the Red Sea. A soldier gets possession of the

box and goes with it to Soulless, who begs the soldier to give him

back his soul. But the soldier opens the box, takes out the soul,

and flings it backward over his head. At the same moment the

cannibal drops dead to the ground.

In another German story and old warlock lives with a damsel all

alone in the midst of a vast and gloomy wood. She fears that being

old he may die and leave her alone in the forest. But he reassures

her. "Dear child," he said, "I cannot die, and I have no heart in my

breast." But she importuned him to tell her where his heart was. So

he said, "Far, far from here in an unknown and lonesome land stands

a great church. The church is well secured with iron doors, and

round about it flows a broad deep moat. In the church flies a bird

and in the bird is my heart. So long as the bird lives, I live. It

cannot die of itself, and no one can catch it; therefore I cannot

die, and you need have no anxiety." However the young man, whose

bride the damsel was to have been before the warlock spirited her

away, contrived to reach the church and catch the bird. He brought

it to the damsel, who stowed him and it away under the warlock's

bed. Soon the old warlock came home. He was ailing, and said so. The

girl wept and said, "Alas, daddy is dying; he has a heart in his

breast after all." "Child," replied the warlock, "hold your tongue.

I _can't_ die. It will soon pass over." At that the young man under

the bed gave the bird a gentle squeeze; and as he did so, the old

warlock felt very unwell and sat down. Then the young man gripped

the bird tighter, and the warlock fell senseless from his chair.

"Now squeeze him dead," cried the damsel. Her lover obeyed, and when

the bird was dead, the old warlock also lay dead on the floor.

In the Norse tale of "the giant who had no heart in his body," the

giant tells the captive princess, "Far, far away in a lake lies an

island, on that island stands a church, in that church is a well, in

that well swims a duck, in that duck there is an egg, and in that

egg there lies my heart." The hero of the tale, with the help of

some animals to whom he had been kind, obtains the egg and squeezes

it, at which the giant screams piteously and begs for his life. But

the hero breaks the egg in pieces and the giant at once bursts. In

another Norse story a hill-ogre tells the captive princess that she

will never be able to return home unless she finds the grain of sand

which lies under the ninth tongue of the ninth head of a certain

dragon; but if that grain of sand were to come over the rock in

which the ogres live, they would all burst "and the rock itself

would become a gilded palace, and the lake green meadows." The hero

finds the grain of sand and takes it to the top of the high rock in

which the ogres live. So all the ogres burst and the rest falls out

as one of the ogres had foretold.

In a Celtic tale, recorded in the West Highlands of Scotland, a

giant is questioned by a captive queen as to where he keeps his

soul. At last, after deceiving her several times, he confides to her

the fatal secret: "There is a great flagstone under the threshold.

There is a wether under the flag. There is a duck in the wether's

belly, and an egg in the belly of the duck, and it is in the egg

that my soul is." On the morrow when the giant was gone, the queen

contrived to get possession of the egg and crushed it in her hands,

and at that very moment the giant, who was coming home in the dusk,

fell down dead. In another Celtic tale, a sea beast has carried off

a king's daughter, and an old smith declares that there is no way of

killing the beast but one. "In the island that is in the midst of

the loch is Eillid Chaisfhion--the white-footed hind, of the

slenderest legs, and the swiftest step, and though she should be

caught, there would spring a hoodie out of her, and though the

hoodie should be caught, there would spring a trout out of her, but

there is an egg in the mouth of the trout, and the soul of the beast

is in the egg, and if the egg breaks, the beast is dead." As usual

the egg is broken and the beast dies.

In an Irish story we read how a giant kept a beautiful damsel a

prisoner in his castle on the top of a hill, which was white with

the bones of the champions who had tried in vain to rescue the fair

captive. At last the hero, after hewing and slashing at the giant

all to no purpose, discovered that the only way to kill him was to

rub a mole on the giant's right breast with a certain egg, which was

in a duck, which was in a chest, which lay locked and bound at the

bottom of the sea. With the help of some obliging animals, the hero

made himself master of the precious egg and slew the giant by merely

striking it against the mole on his right breast. Similarly in a

Breton story there figures a giant whom neither fire nor water nor

steel can harm. He tells his seventh wife, whom he has just married

after murdering all her predecessors, "I am immortal, and no one can

hurt me unless he crushes on my breast an egg, which is in a pigeon,

which is in the belly of a hare; this hare is in the belly of a

wolf, and this wolf is in the belly of my brother, who dwells a

thousand leagues from here. So I am quite easy on that score." A

soldier contrived to obtain the egg and crush it on the breast of

the giant, who immediately expired. In another Breton tale the life

of a giant resides in an old box-tree which grows in his castle

garden; and to kill him it is necessary to sever the tap-root of the

tree at a single blow of an axe without injuring any of the lesser

roots. This task the hero, as usual, successfully accomplishes, and

at the same moment the giant drops dead.

The notion of an external soul has now been traced in folk-tales

told by Aryan peoples from India to Ireland. We have still to show

that the same idea occurs commonly in the popular stories of peoples

who do not belong to the Aryan stock. In the ancient Egyptian tale

of "The Two Brothers," which was written down in the reign of

Rameses II., about 1300 B.C., we read how one of the brothers

enchanted his heart and placed it in the flower of an acacia tree,

and how, when the flower was cut at the instigation of his wife, he

immediately fell down dead, but revived when his brother found the

lost heart in the berry of the acacia and threw it into a cup of

fresh water.

In the story of Seyf el-Mulook in the _Arabian Nights_ the jinnee

tells the captive daughter of the King of India, "When I was born,

the astrologers declared that the destruction of my soul would be

effected by the hand of one of the sons of the human kings. I

therefore took my soul, and put it into the crop of a sparrow, and I

imprisoned the sparrow in a little box, and put this into another

small box, and this I put within seven other small boxes, and I put

these within seven chests, and the chests I put into a coffer of

marble within the verge of this circumambient ocean; for this part

is remote from the countries of mankind, and none of mankind can

gain access to it." But Seyf el-Mulook got possession of the sparrow

and strangled it, and the jinnee fell upon the ground a heap of

black ashes. In a Kabyle story an ogre declares that his fate is far

away in an egg, which is in a pigeon, which is in a camel, which is

in the sea. The hero procures the egg and crushes it between his

hands, and the ogre dies. In a Magyar folk-tale, an old witch

detains a young prince called Ambrose in the bowels of the earth. At

last she confided to him that she kept a wild boar in a silken

meadow, and if it were killed, they would find a hare inside, and

inside the hare a pigeon, and inside the pigeon a small box, and

inside the box one black and one shining beetle: the shining beetle

held her life, and the black one held her power; if these two

beetles died, then her life would come to an end also. When the old

hag went out, Ambrose killed the wild boar, and took out the hare;

from the hare he took the pigeon, from the pigeon the box, and from

the box the two beetles; he killed the black beetle, but kept the

shining one alive. So the witch's power left her immediately, and

when she came home, she had to take to her bed. Having learned from

her how to escape from his prison to the upper air, Ambrose killed

the shining beetle, and the old hag's spirit left her at once. In a

Kalmuck tale we read how a certain khan challenged a wise man to

show his skill by stealing a precious stone on which the khan's life

depended. The sage contrived to purloin the talisman while the khan

and his guards slept; but not content with this he gave a further

proof of his dexterity by bonneting the slumbering potentate with a

bladder. This was too much for the khan. Next morning he informed

the sage that he could overlook everything else, but that the

indignity of being bonneted with a bladder was more than he could

bear; and he ordered his facetious friend to instant execution.

Pained at this exhibition of royal ingratitude, the sage dashed to

the ground the talisman which he still held in his hand; and at the

same instant blood flowed from the nostrils of the khan, and he gave

up the ghost.

In a Tartar poem two heroes named Ak Molot and Bulat engage in

mortal combat. Ak Molot pierces his foe through and through with an

arrow, grapples with him, and dashes him to the ground, but all in

vain, Bulat could not die. At last when the combat has lasted three

years, a friend of Ak Molot sees a golden casket hanging by a white

thread from the sky, and bethinks him that perhaps this casket

contains Bulat's soul. So he shot through the white thread with an

arrow, and down fell the casket. He opened it, and in the casket sat

ten white birds, and one of the birds was Bulat's soul. Bulat wept

when he saw that his soul was found in the casket. But one after the

other the birds were killed, and then Ak Molot easily slew his foe.

In another Tartar poem, two brothers going to fight two other

brothers take out their souls and hide them in the form of a white

herb with six stalks in a deep pit. But one of their foes sees them

doing so and digs up their souls, which he puts into a golden ram's

horn, and then sticks the ram's horn in his quiver. The two warriors

whose souls have thus been stolen know that they have no chance of

victory, and accordingly make peace with their enemies. In another

Tartar poem a terrible demon sets all the gods and heroes at

defiance. At last a valiant youth fights the demon, binds him hand

and foot, and slices him with his sword. But still the demon is not

slain. So the youth asked him, "Tell me, where is your soul hidden?

For if your soul had been hidden in your body, you must have been

dead long ago." The demon replied, "On the saddle of my horse is a

bag. In the bag is a serpent with twelve heads. In the serpent is my

soul. When you have killed the serpent, you have killed me also." So

the youth took the saddle-bag from the horse and killed the

twelve-headed serpent, whereupon the demon expired. In another

Tartar poem a hero called Kök Chan deposits with a maiden a golden

ring, in which is half his strength. Afterwards when Kök Chan is

wrestling long with a hero and cannot kill him, a woman drops into

his mouth the ring which contains half his strength. Thus inspired

with fresh force he slays his enemy.