10. In Ashanti the harvest feast is in September. 'During its
continuance the grossest licence prevails; theft, intrigue, and
assault go unpunished, and both sexes abandon themselves to their
passions.'[10] By an extraordinary coincidence, which Mr. Frazer does
not quote, 'on the _fifth_ day' of the Ashanti harvest festival 'a
criminal is sacrificed,' says Sir A. B. Ellis, 'sent as a messenger to
the deceased kings.' Is the criminal attired as a mock-king?
I would venture to suggest, as a conclusion, that people indulge in
these lawless excesses not so much to improve the prospects of farming
as because they are 'full of devilry,' and that often they are full
of devilry because they have ended their labours and are full of meat
and drink. _Sine Bacche et Cerere friget Venus._ They therefore permit
themselves a regular debauch; ranks are reversed, slaves lord it over
their masters, laws are in abeyance; in Tonquin reviving law only takes
notice of treason and murder. In Borne, at the Saturnalia, and at Purim
among the Jews, however, a kind of Dickensite Christianicy prevailed
at the period of licence; also in Persia, at the period called
Purdaghân, which Hyde compares to the Sacæa and Purim: as does Lagarde,
in writing on Purim.[11]
The reader will have observed that at not one of these many periods
of licence, in widely severed regions and grades of civilisation, is
a mock-king put to death. Indeed, nobody is put to death, except in
Ashanti, and nobody is scourged. Thus, as I remarked before, the case
of the mock-king at the Babylonian Sacæa is isolated, as far as our
knowledge goes.