_THE GHASTLY PRIEST_
The spirit of system, of finding master keys for all the locks of old
religion and mythology, has confessedly been apt to misguide students.
'Macrobius was the father,' says Mr. Frazer, 'of that large family of
mythologists who resolve all or most gods into the sun. According to
him Mercury was the sun, Mars was the sun, Janus was the sun, Saturn
was the sun, so was Jupiter, also Nemesis, likewise Pan, and so on
through a great part of the Pantheon. It was natural, therefore, that
he should identify Osiris with the sun....'[1]
Mythology has been of late emancipated from the universal dominion of
the sun, but only to fall under that of gods of vegetation, whether
of vegetable life at large, or of the corn spirit and the oak spirit
in particular. What Mr. Frazer says about Macrobius, Macrobius would
retort on Mr. Frazer, thus:
'According to him Mars was a god of vegetation, Saturn was a god of
vegetation (of sowing), so was Zeus, also Hera, and so on through a
great part of the Pantheon. It was natural, therefore, that he should
identify Osiris with a god of vegetation--and Mr. Frazer does so.'
Far be it from me to say that Mr. Frazer is wrong, when his gods are
gods of vegetation, or even that Macrobius is wrong, when his gods are
gods of the sun. It appears to me that when a god had obtained a firm
hold of public favour, the public might accept him as a god of this,
that, and the other aspect or phenomenon of nature.
Still, the new school of mythology does work the vegetable element
in mythology hard; nearly as hard as the solar element used to be
worked. Aphrodite, as the female mate of Adonis, gets mixed up with
plant life.[2] So does Attis with Cybele, so does Balder,[3] so does
Death,[4] so does Dionysus[5] with undoubted propriety; so does
Eabani, so does Gilgamesh, so does Haman, so does Hera,[6] so does
Iasion with Demeter,[7] so does Isis,[8] so does Jack-in-the-Green,
so does Kupalo,[9] so do Linus and Lityerses,[10] so does Mamurius
Veturius,[11] so does Merodach or Marduk (if he represents Eabani or
Gilgamesh), so does Mars,[12] so does Osiris,[13] so, I think, does
Semiramis,[14] so does Tammuz, so does Virbius,[15] so does Zeus,
probably;[16] so does a great multitude of cattle, cats, horses, bulls,
goats, cocks, with plenty of other beasts.
The solar mythologists did not spare heroes like Achilles; they, too,
were the sun. But the vegetable school, the Covent Garden school of
mythologists, mixes up real human beings with vegetation. Jesus Christ
derives his divinity, or some of it, as we have seen, from a long
array of criminals who were hanged partly as kings, partly as gods of
vegetation. I do not feel absolutely assured that Judas Iscariot, at
his annual burnings in effigy, escapes the universal doom any more than
the ugly deformed person who was whipped and killed in old Attica. But
an unexpected man to be a representative of a god of vegetation is the
priest of the grove of Diana near Aricia. He is known to all from the
familiar verse of Macaulay--
These trees in whose dark shadow
The ghastly priest doth reign,
The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain.
Why, Mr. Frazer asks, in effect, had the priest of the grove of Diana,
near Aricia, to slay his predecessor, subject, in turn, to death at
the hands of a new competitor for the office? First, let us ask what
we know about this ghastly priest. Let us begin with the evidence of
Virgil, in the Sixth Book of the 'Æneid' (line 136 and so onwards).
Virgil says nothing about the ghastly priest, or, in this place, about
Diana, or the grove near Aricia. Virgil, indeed, tells us much about
a bough of a tree, a golden branch, but, as to the singular priest,
nothing. But some four hundred years after Virgil's date (say 370 A.D.)
a commentator on Virgil, Servius, tries to illustrate the passage cited
from the 'Æneid.' He obviously knows nothing about Virgil's mystic
golden bough, but he tells us that, in his own time, 'public opinion'
(_publico, opinio_) placed the habitat of Virgil's bough in the grove
haunted by the ghastly priest, near Aricia. It is, in fact, not known
whether Virgil invented his bough, with its extraordinary attributes,
or took it from his rich store of antiquarian learning. It may have
been a folklore belief, like _Le Rameau d'Or_ of Madame d'Aulnoy's
fairy tale. Virgil's bough, as we shall see, has one folklore attribute
in common with a mystic sword in the Arthurian cycle of romances, and
in the Volsunga Saga. I think that Mr. Frazer has failed to comment
on this point. If I might hazard a guess as to Virgil's branch, it is
that, of old, suppliants approached gods or kings with boughs in their
hands. He who would approach Proserpine carried, in Virgil, a bough
of pure gold, which only the favoured and predestined suppliant could
obtain, as shall be shown.
In the four centuries between Virgil and Servius the meaning and
source of Virgil's branch of gold were forgotten. But people, and
Servius himself, knew of another bough, near Aricia, and located
(conjecturally?) Virgil's branch of gold in that district. Servius,
then, in his commentary on the 'Æneid,' after the manner of annotators
in all ages, talks much about the boughs of a certain tree in a certain
grove, concerning which Virgil makes no remark. Virgil, as we shall
see, was writing about a golden branch of very peculiar character.
Knowing, like the public opinion of his age, something about quite
other branches, and nothing about Virgil's branch, Servius tells us
that, in the grove of Diana at Aricia, there grew a tree from which
it was unlawful (_non licebat_) to break a bough. If any fugitive
slave, however, could break a branch from this tree, he might fight
the priest, taking his office if successful. In the opinion of
Servius the temple was founded by Orestes, to the barbaric Diana of
the Chersonese, whence he had fled after a homicide. _That_ Diana
received human sacrifices of all strangers who landed on her coasts.
The rite of human sacrifice was, in Italy, commuted, Servius thinks,
for the duel between the priest and the fugitive slave, Orestes having
himself been a fugitive. The process is, first a Greek wanderer on a
barbarous coast is in danger of being offered, as all outlanders were
offered, to the local goddess. This rite was a form of _xenelasia_, an
anti-immigrant statute. Compare China, the Transvaal, the agitation
against pauper immigrants. Having escaped being sacrificed, and having
killed the king in an unfriendly land, Orestes flies to Italy and
appeases the cruel Diana by erecting her fane at Aricia. But, instead
of sacrificing immigrants, he, or his successors, establish a duel
between the priest and any other fugitive slave. Why? For the priest of
the cruel Diana was not accustomed to be sacrificed, nor had he been
a fugitive slave. Servius then, not observing this, goes off into an
allegorising interpretation of _Virgil's_ branch, as worthless as all
such interpretations always are.
The story about Orestes appears to myself to be a late 'ætiological
myth,' a story invented to explain the slaying of the slayer--which it
does not do; in short, it is an hypothesis. The priesthood is open not
to men flying the blood feud like Orestes, but only to runaway slaves.
The custom introduced by Orestes was the sacrifice of outlanders, not
of priests. The story has a _doublette_ in Pausanias.[17] According to
Pausanias, Hippolytus was raised from the dead, and, in hatred of his
father, and being a fugitive, he went and reigned at the Arician grove
of the goddess.
For these reasons, apparently, Statius calls the Arician grove
'profugis regibus aptum,' a sanctuary of exiled princes, Orestes
and Hippolytus.[18] From Suetonius we learn that the ghastly priest
was styled _Rex Nemorensis,_ King of the Wood, and that the envious
Caligula, thinking the priest had held office long enough, set another
athlete to kill him.[19] The title of 'king,' borne by a priest,
suggests, of course, the sacrificial king at Borne. Also Mr. Frazer
adduces African kings of fire and water, credited with miraculous
powers over the elements. They kill nobody and nobody kills them. Then
we have Jack-in-the-Green = May-Tree = the Spirit of Vegetation = the
May _King_ and the _Queen_ of the May. 'These titles,' as Mannhardt
observes, 'imply that the spirit incorporate in vegetation is a ruler,
whose creative power extends far and wide.' Possibly so. Now, the
King of the Wood, the ghastly priest, lived in the grove of Diana, who
(among other things) has the attributes of a tree-spirit. 'May not,
then, the King of the Wood, in the Arician grove, have been, like the
King of the May ... an incarnation of the tree-spirit, or spirit of
vegetation?' Given a female tree-spirit, we should rather expect a
_Queen_ of the Wood; and we assuredly do not expect a priest of Diana
to represent the supreme Aryan god, nay to incarnate him. But this Mr.
Frazer thinks probable.[20] Again, 'since the King of the Wood could
only be assailed by him who had plucked the golden bough, his life was
safe from assault as long as the bough, or the tree on which it grew,
remained uninjured.'[21]
Here we remark the nimbleness of Mr. Frazer's method. In vol. i. 4
he had said: 'Tradition averred that the fatal branch' (in the grove
near Aricia) 'was that golden bough which, at the Sibyl's bidding,
Æneas plucked before he assayed the perilous journey to the world of
the dead.' But I have tried to show that, according to Servius, this
identification of two absolutely distinct boughs, neither similar nor
similarly situated, was the conjecture of 'public opinion' in an age
divided from Virgil's date by four hundred years.
In the space between vol. i. 4 and i. 231 the averment of tradition,
as Mr. Frazer calls it, the inference of the curious, as I suppose,
to the effect that Virgil's golden branch and the Arician branch were
identical, has become matter of fact for Mr. Frazer. 'Since the King
of the Wood could only be assailed by him who had plucked the Golden
Bough,' he says; with what follows.[22]
But who has told us anything about the breaking, by a fugitive slave,
near Aricia, of a _golden_ bough? Nobody, as far as I am aware, has
mentioned the circumstance. After an interval of four hundred years,
the golden bough of Virgil is only brought by Servius into connection
with the wood at Aricia, because Servius, and the public opinion of
his age, knew about a branch there, and did not know anything about
Virgil's branch of gold.
_That_ branch is a safe passport to Hades. It is sacred, not to a
tree-spirit named Diana, but to Infernal Juno, or Proserpine. It cannot
be broken by a fugitive slave, or anybody else; no, nor can it be cut
with edge of iron. None but he whom the Fates call can break it. It
yields at a touch of the predestined man, and another golden branch
grows instantly in its place.
_Ipse volens facilisque sequetur,_
_Si te fata vocant._
_Primo avulso non deficit alter_
_Aureus._
Virgil's bough thus answers to the magical sword set in a stone in
the Arthurian legends, in a tree trunk in the Volsunga Saga, as Mr.
H. S. O. Everard reminds me. All the knights may tug vainly at the
sword, but you can draw it lightly, _si te fata vocant_, if you are the
predestined king, if you are Arthur or Sigmund. When Æneas bears _this_
bough, Charon recognises the old familiar passport. Other living men,
in the strength of this talisman, have already entered the land of the
dead.
_Ille admirans venerabile donum_
_Fatalis virgæ, longo nunc tempore visum._
I have collected all these extraordinary attributes of Virgil's bough
(in origin, a suppliant's bough, perhaps), because, as far as I notice,
Mr. Frazer lays no stress on the many peculiarities which differentiate
Virgil's bough from any casual branch of the tree at Aricia, and
connect it with the mystic sword. The 'general reader' (who seldom
knows Latin) needs, I think, to be told precisely what Virgil's bough
was. Nothing can be more unlike a branch, any accessible branch, of
the Arician tree, than is Virgil's golden bough. It does not grow at
Aricia. It is golden. It is not connected with a tree-spirit, but is
dear to Proserpine. (I easily see, of course, that Proserpine may
be identified with a tree spirit.)[23] Virgil's branch is not to be
plucked by fugitive slaves. It is not a challenge, but a talismanic
passport to Hades, recognised by Charon, who has not seen a specimen
for ever so long. It is instantly succeeded, if plucked, by another
branch of gold, which the Arician twig is not. So I really do not
understand how Mr. Frazer can identify Virgil's golden bough with an
ordinary branch of a tree at Aricia, which anybody could break, though
only runaway slaves, strongly built, had an interest in so doing.
Still less do I think that Virgil meant to identify his branch of gold
with mistletoe. He does the reverse: in a poetic simile he compares
his bough to mistletoe. A poet does not compare a thing to itself![24]
Mr. Frazer cites the Welsh for mistletoe--_pren puraur_, tree _d'or
pur._ In places, also, mistletoe is used for divining rods, which may
be employed by gold-hunters. What wood is _not_ thus used?[25] Like
other magical plants, mistletoe is gathered at the solstices, when
fern-seed is fabled to flame. Must not the golden bough, like the
golden fern-seed, be an emanation of the sun's fire? The older solar
mythologists would have had not a doubt of it.[26]
I must admit, then, that I cannot, at present, accept the
identification of the branch of gold in Virgil with any branch you
please on a certain tree at Aricia. Nor am I aware of any historical
evidence that the grove there was an oak grove, or the tree an oak
tree, or that the branch to be plucked was a mistletoe bough, or that
any branch, for the purpose of the runaway slave, was not as good as
another.
That Virgil's branch of gold was mistletoe, that the tree at Aricia was
an oak, that the bough to be plucked by the person ambitious of being a
ghastly priest was mistletoe, seems (if I follow Mr. Frazer accurately)
to be rather needful to the success of the solution of his problem
which he finally propounds. He takes, on his road, the Eddaic myth of
Balder, which I do not regard as a very early myth; but on that point
there is great searching of hearts among Scandinavian specialists. 'No
one now,' writes a Scandinavian scholar to me, 'puts any of the Edda
poems earlier than 900 A.D., and most of them, if not all, are probably
later than that. We do not even know whether they were composed by
Christians or pagans, as the Icelanders never lost their interest in
the old mythology. It has never been sufficiently noticed that these
poems are not _religious_ in any sense; all that their poets cared for
was the story. That it will ever be possible to say where the stories
came from, I doubt very much: probably they represent the fusion of
several quite different veins of legends, heathen and Christian. The
Saga writers knew practically nothing about the old heathen worship,
and Balder may never have been worshipped at all, or, if he was, it is
rather hopeless to conjecture in what capacity.'
Such are the opinions of Mr. W. A. Craigie, whose writings on the
Celto-Scandinavian relations of the Northern mythological literature
are familiar to students. We return to Mr. Frazer's handling of the
Balder story.
Balder, says the Edda, dreamed of death. A goddess made everything
in nature swear not to hurt him, except a mistletoe plant, which she
thought too young to understand the nature of an oath! Loki learned
this, plucked the plant, and, when the gods were hurling things at
Balder, asked the blind Hödur to throw the mistletoe. It pierced and
slew Balder, and his funeral was of a kind which may, or may not,
have been used before the period of inhumation in 'howes' or barrows.
Balder's dead body was burned on board his ship, 'the hugest of all
ships.'[27] I had an impression that this was a not uncommon Viking
form of incremation, but Mr. Craigie thinks that it had quite gone out
before the historic period. In the legendary period he remembers but
one case, in Ynglinga Saga.[28] King Haki, being mortally wounded, had
his ship piled with the bodies and weapons of the slain; a funeral pyre
was erected on board and lit, and the body of Haki was borne forth to
sea in the flaming vessel. 'The thing was famous long after.' The story
may be borrowed from the Balder story or the Balder story from that of
King Haki.
In any case Balder was not sacrificed, but cremated, and the 'huge
ship,' of course, is a late Viking idea, an idea the reverse of
primitive. Mr. Frazer, however, goes on, apparently assuming that in
the original form of the myth Balder was sacrificed, to a theory about
certain religious or ritual fires, which survive in folklore. These
fires are lit by peasants at various seasons, but are best known at
midsummer, while a pretence of burning a man is made, and this at a
season when mistletoe is gathered as a magical healing herb, not as a
weapon of death. He seems to think that Balder was the spirit of the
oak, that human victims, representing the oak and Balder, were, of old,
periodically sacrificed, and that people deemed that the oak could not
be injured by axes before the mistletoe (in which, they thought, lay
its life) was plucked off. Unluckily, I see no evidence that people
ever did entertain this opinion--namely, that the oak was invulnerable
till the mistletoe was plucked.[29]
Mr. Frazer says: 'The mistletoe was viewed as the seat of the life
of the oak, and, so long as it was uninjured, nothing could kill or
even wound the oak.' He shows how this idea _might_ arise. 'The oak,
so people might think, was invulnerable,' so long as the mistletoe
remained intact.[30] But _did_ the people think so? Pliny says a great
deal about the Druidical gathering of mistletoe, which, on oaks, 'is
very rarely to be met with.' The Druids, I presume, never observed
that oaks in general, in fact by an overwhelming majority, lived very
well without having any seat of life (mistletoe) at all. Not noticing
this obvious fact, they reckoned, it would appear, that an oak with
mistletoe on it con Id not be cut till the mistletoe was removed.
Perhaps they never tried. Pliny does not say that when the Druid had
climbed the tree and removed the mistletoe, he next cut down the
tree.[31] It does seem desirable to prove that people thought the life
of an oak was in the mistletoe (which they might gather without hurting
the oak), before we begin to build another theory on our theory that
they did hold this opinion.[32]
This new theory Mr. Frazer goes forth to erect on the basis of the
first theory. The theory, in brief, comes to this: that as Balder was
the spirit of the oak, and was sacrificed (of which I see no proof),
so human beings, representing Balder and the oak, were sacrificed,
to reinvigorate vegetation. The mistletoe which slew Balder was the
soul-box of both Balder and of the oak, and of the human victims who
represented, yearly, the oak and Balder.
About all this much might be said. The killing of 'divine kings,'
Balder and others,[33] seems to me, as I have already said, in the
majority of cases, to be a mere rude form of superannuation. We do not
kill a commander-in-chief, or an old professor; we pension them off.
But it is not so easy to pension off a king. I think that most of the
cases cited mean superannuation, or dissatisfaction with the ruler, not
a magical ceremony to improve vegetation. Regicide is, or was, common.
Says Birrel (1560-1605): 'There has beine in this Kingdome of Scotland,
are hundereth and five Kings, of quhilk there was slaine fifty-sex,'
often succeeded by their slayers, like the ghastly priest. I am not
convinced that the ghastly priest represented vegetation, and endured
the duel ordeal as a commutation of yearly sacrifice, though there is
a kind of parallel in the case of the king of Calicut. But that modern
mummers are put to death, in a mock ceremony (as Mr. Frazer holds, to
quicken vegetation), is proved by much folklore evidence.[34]
If we admit (which I think far from inevitable) that the ghastly priest
was once a kind of May King, periodically slain, and was analogous to
Balder, and represented the life of an oak, we are next invited to
suppose that the tree at Aricia was also an oak, that the only branch
on it to be plucked by the would-be successor was mistletoe, and that
the mistletoe was the soul-box of the tree and of the ghastly priest,
who could more easily be killed when his life-box (the mistletoe) was
damaged.[35]
There is hardly a link in this chain of reasoning which to me seems
strong. I do not see that Balder, in the Edda, was sacrificed. I do
not see that the mistletoe was his soul-box. I conceive that the
use of so feeble a weapon to kill him is analogous to the slaying
of an invulnerable hero, in North American myth, by the weapon of a
bulrush: an example of the popular liking for weakness that overcomes
strength. I find no evidence that the mistletoe was ever thought to
be the soul-box of the oak; none to prove that the tree at Aricia was
an oak; nothing to show that the branch to be plucked was the branch
of gold in Virgil, and nothing to indicate that Virgil's branch was
the mistletoe. To reach Mr. Frazer's solution--that the ghastly priest
was an incarnate spirit of vegetation, slain, after the plucking of
mistletoe, in order that he might be succeeded by a stronger soul, more
apt to increase the life of vegetation--we have to cross at least six
'light bridges' of hypothesis, 'built to connect isolated facts.'[36]
To me these hypotheses seem more like the apparently solid spots in a
peat-bog, on which whoso alights is let into the morass. I feel like
Mr. Frazer's 'cautious inquirer,' who is 'brought up sharp on the edge
of some yawning chasm.'[37]
I ought to propose an hypothesis myself. In doing so I shall confine
myself (the limitation is not unscientific) to the known facts of the
problem. In the grove of Diana (a goddess of many various attributes)
was a priest of whom we know nothing but that he was (1) a fugitive
slave, (2) called King of the Grove, (3) might be slain and succeeded
by any other fugitive slave, (4) who broke a bough of the tree which
the priest's only known duty was to protect. These are all the
ascertained facts.
Why had the priest to be a runaway slave? Mr. Frazer says: 'He had to
be a runaway slave in memory of the flight of Orestes, the traditional
founder of the worship....'[38] But the _Greek_ story of Orestes,
and its _doublette_ as to Hippolytus, are only ætiological myths,
fanciful' reasons why,' attached to a _Latin_ usage. Neither Orestes
nor Hippolytus was a slave, like the ghastly priest. The story about
Orestes, a fugitive, arises out of the custom of Aricia, and does not
explain that custom. Mr. Frazer, I presume, admits this, but thinks
that the ghastly priest might perhaps, at one time, save himself by
being a runaway. But why a slave? If I might guess, I would venture
to suggest that the grove near Aricia may have been an asylum for
fugitives, as they say that Borne originally was. There are such
sanctuaries in Central Australia.
Here, fortunately, Mr. Frazer himself supplies me with the very
instances which my conjecture craves. He cites Mr. Turner's 'Samoa'
for trees which were sanctuaries for fugitives. These useful examples
are given, not in 'The Golden Bough,' but in an essay on 'The Origin of
Totemism.'[39]
'In Upolu, one of the Samoan islands, a certain god, Vave, had his
abode in an old tree, which served as an asylum for murderers and other
offenders who had incurred the penalty of death.'
I gather from Mr. Turner's 'Nineteen Years in Polynesia' (p. 285) that
the death penalty was that of the blood feud. In his 'Samoa,' Mr.
Turner writes concerning trees which were sanctuaries:
'If that tree was reached by the criminal, he was safe, and the avenger
of blood could pursue no farther, but wait investigation and trial. It
is said that the king of a division of Upolu, called Atua, once lived
at that spot. After he died the house fell into decay, but the tree was
fixed on as representing the departed king, and out of respect for his
memory it was made the substitute of a living and royal protector. It
was called _o le asi pulu tangata_, 'the asi tree, the refuge of men.'
This reminds me of what I once heard from a native of another island.
He said that at one time they had been ten years without a king, and
so anxious were they to have some protecting substitute that they
fixed upon a large O'a tree (_Bischoffia Javanica_), and made it the
representative of a king, and an asylum for the thief or the homicide
when pursued by the injured in hot haste for vengeance.[40]
There seem to have been three sanctuary trees: one inhabited by a god,
Vave; one respected in memory of a king; and one doing duty as a kind
of figure-head, or representative of a king.
If my guess that the tree in the Arician grove was once a sanctuary,
or asylum for fugitives, including fugitive slaves, is plausible,
I cannot, of course, conjecture as to the reason of its protective
sanctity. It may have been one of the three Samoan reasons (which none
of us could have guessed correctly), or any other motive may have taken
effect. A fugitive slave, of course, was not awaiting trial and chance
of acquittal. By custom he would be restored to his master's tender
mercies, or live on under the tree.
But an unlimited asylum of fugitive slaves was an inconvenient
neighbour to Aricia. Hence (it is physically conceivable, but I lay no
stress on it) the asylum was at last limited to one fugitive slave at
a time. It was not like the forest in the Indian fable, populated by
'millions of hermits,' who cannot have been very solitary anchorites.
Any fugitive slave who took sanctuary had to kill and dispossess the
prior occupant. There was only sanctuary for one at a time. More would
have been most inconvenient. In any case the one solitary duty of the
ghastly priest (as far as we know) was to act as _garde champêtre_ to
one certain tree. Why this one tree, we do not and cannot know. I am
averse to Sir Alfred Lyall's plan of suggesting singular solutions
arising out of some possible historical accident in the veiled past,
when the problem to be solved is a practice of wide diffusion. The
causes, in such cases of wide diffusion, cannot be regarded as mere
freaks or recurring accidents. But this affair of the tree and its
inviolate branches is isolated, unless we regard the tree as a taboo
or sanctuary tree, which it might be for many reasons, as in Samoa,
perhaps because it was the residence of a tree-spirit. At all events,
the priest's only known duty was to guard the tree.
Then, why had his would-be successor to break a bough before fighting?
Obviously as a challenge, and also as a warning. The priest in office
was to 'have a fair show;' some 'law' was to be given him. When he
found a branch broken, any branch, he was in the position of the
pirate captain on whom 'the black spot' was passed.[41] He was in the
situation of the king of the Eyeos, to whom a present of parrots'
eggs meant that it was 'time for him to go.'[42] If the bough was
mistletoe, and if the fugitive slave, like the Druids in Pliny,[43]
had to climb for it, then the ghastly priest 'had him at an avail.' It
was any odds on the priest, who could 'tree' his man or cut him down
as he descended. However, our authorities tell us about no bough in
particular, still less about mistletoe. Let me add that, if the bough
was mistletoe, the sacred tree would need to be changed every time (of
which we hear nothing), for it is not a case of
_Uno avulso non deficit alter_
with mistletoe.
The bough was broken, then, as a taunt, a challenge, and a warning.
'You can't keep your old tree, make room for a better man!' That is
the spirit of the business. The fugitive, utilised as a priest of the
grove, was slain when the better man appeared, not that a new soul
might keep the vegetation lively, but merely because the best man
attainable was needed to guard the taboo tree.
The sacred and priestly character of a runaway fighting slave does not,
to me, seem pronounced.[44] We know not that he ever sacrificed. Ladies
who wished to be mothers visited the shrine, indeed,[45] as this Diana
was a goddess like Lucina, presiding over birth. I do not deny that
the priest might have worked miracles for them (like the Indian forest
sages who do the miracle for childless rajahs). But his one known duty,
guarding the tree, was inconsistent with much attention to this branch
of his sacred calling. 'He prowled about with sword drawn, always on
the look out.'[46] That is all!
We have not, in this theory, to invent a single fact, or introduce a
single belief where we do not know that it existed. Sanctuaries or
asyla did exist, we have given examples of sanctuary trees, and the
tree was a sanctuary for just one runaway slave at a time: he could
not run to burg, as in our old and more merciful law. If he wanted the
billet of ghastly priest he had to fight for it:
Lads, you'll need to fight
Before you drive ta peasties.
Before fighting he had to get through the priest's guard and break a
branch of the tree which the priest protected, the act being a warning
as well as a challenge. This hypothesis introduces no unknown and
unproved facts, and colligates all the facts which are known. The title
of 'King of the Grove' may mean no more than the title of 'Cock of the
North;' or it may be a priestly title, not, even so, _necessarily_
implying that the runaway slave embodied the ruling spirit of the
vegetable department.
I have been favoured with objections to my guess. First, if I am right,
where is the sanction for the custom at which I conjecture? Well,
where is the sanction of the Samoan customs? They reposed (1) on the
residence of a god in a tree, (2) on respect for a king who had lived
near a tree, (3) on a legal fiction. The sanctuaries of the Arunta
_Ertnatulunga_ derive their sanction from hoards of _churinga_, sacred
objects of which, till recently, we knew nothing.[47] Obviously I
cannot say which of many conceivable and inconceivable primeval reasons
gave a sanction to the tree-asylum of Aricia. Once instituted, custom
did the rest. The tree was a sanctuary for one fugitive slave, and,
next, for another who could kill him.
Secondly, my guess is thought to disregard Mr. Frazer's many other
analogies from folklore. Which analogies? Where else do we find a
priestly fugitive slave, who held his sacred office by the _coir na
glaive_, the Eight of Sword? I am acquainted with no other example. As
I have shown already, the kings who are killed (admitting the Arician
fugitive to be a _rex_) are killed for a considerable variety of
reasons, and are never shown to be killed that a sturdier vehicle may
be provided for a vegetable deity; while the kings said to incarnate a
deity are never said to be killed for religious reasons. If the reverse
were the case, then the Arician fugitive, the ghastly priest, might
take the benefit of the analogies. I hope that my bald prosaic theory,
abjectly Philistine as it is, has the characteristics of a scientific
hypothesis. But, like my guess as to the real reason for the death of
the Sacæan victim, this attempt to explain the office of the ghastly
priest is but a conjecture. The affair is so singular that it may have
an isolated cause in some forgotten occurrence. I remember no other
classical instance of a priest whose duty was to be always watching
a single sacred tree, a thing requiring a vigilance of attention not
compatible with much other priestly work: a post so unenviable that
only a fugitive slave would be likely to care for the duties and
perquisites. Naturally he would not know that he was 'an incarnation
of the supreme Aryan god, whose life was in the mistletoe or golden
bough.' And, as he did not know, he would not be 'proud of the title.'
[1] _G. B_. ii. 147.
[2] _G. B_. iii. 166.
[3] _G. B_. iii. 346.
[4] _G. B_. ii. 95.
[5] _G. B_. ii. 160.
[6] _G. B_. i. 227.
[7] _G. B_. ii. 217.
[8] _G. B_. ii. 145.
[9] _G. B_. ii. 129.
[10] _G. B_. ii. 253; ii. 250.
[11] _G. B_. ii. 123.
[12] _G. B_. iii. 122.
[13] _G. B_. iii. 127.
[14] _G. B_. iii. 163.
[15] _G. B_. iii. 456.
[16] _G. B_. iii. 456, 457.
[17] Pausanias, ii. xxvii. 4.
[18] _Sylvæ_, iii. i. 55.
[19] _Caligula_, 35.
[20] _G. B_. iii. 457.
[21] _G. B_. i. 231.
[22] _G. B_. i. 231.
[23] Who, or what, can escape being a tree-spirit, if Zeus is one?
Mr. Frazer thinks that the savage must regard all trees used in
fire-making as sources of hidden fire. 'May not this,' he asks, 'have
been the origin of the name "the Bright or Shining One" (Zeus, Jove
[Dyaus]), by which the ancient Greeks and Italians designated their
supreme God? It is, at least, highly significant that, amongst both
Greeks and Italians, the oak should have been the tree of the supreme
God....'--iii. 457. Zeus, like Num, and countless others, was also a
sky god. The sky is bright and shining, an oak is the reverse. We do
not think that a savage would call an oak or a match-box 'bright,' even
if they do hold seeds of fire.
[24] _G. B_. iii. 449; _Æn_. vi. 203, _et seq._
[25] See Professor Barrett's two works on 'the so-called Divining Rod,'
in _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research._
[26] _G. B_. iii. 454.
[27] _G. B_. iii. 236-237.
[28] c. 27.
[29] Mr. Frazer notices that Pliny derived 'Druid' from Greek _drūs_,
oak. 'He did not know that the Celtic word for oak was the same,
_daur_, and that therefore Druid, in the sense of priest of the
oak, was genuine Celtic, not borrowed from the Greek.' With other
authorities Mr. Frazer cites J. Rhys's _Celtic Heathendom_, p. 221
_et seq._ Principal Rhys informs me that he is inclined to think
that 'Druid' is of the same origin as the Celtic word for oak. Mr.
Stokes seems to think otherwise, and to interpret _dru_ to be the
equivalent to 'true,' and to make the word Druid mean 'soothsayer,'
to which Principal Rhys sees phonetic objections. He himself sees the
difficulty, in both theories, that they make the word 'Druid' Aryan,
whereas the whole Druidical business may be non-Aryan and 'aboriginal,'
Pictish, or whatever we like to call it.
[30] _G. B_. iii. 350.
[31] _G. B_. iii. 327.
[32] The story of mistletoe as the 'life-token' of the Hays of Errol
(iii. 449) seems to rest on a scrap of recent verse, cut from a
newspaper of unknown name and date. I suspect that it is from the pen
(_circ_. 1822) of 'John Sobieski Stolberg Stuart,' _alias_ John Hay
Allan, author of other apocryphal rhymes on the Hays of Errol, and of
their genealogy.
[33] _G. B_. iii. 1-59.
[34] _G. B_. ii. 59-67.
[35] _G. B_. iii. 450.
[36] _G. B_. i. xv.
[37] _G. B_. i. xx.
[38] _G. B_. ii. 67.
[39] _Fortnightly Review_, April 1899, p. 652.
[40] Turner, _Samoa_, p. 64, _seq._
[41] See _Treasure Island._
[42] _G. B_. ii. 13.
[43] _G. B_. iii. 327.
[44] Compare i. 232.
[45] _G. B_. i. 5.
[46] Strabo, v. 3, 12.
[47] Spencer and Gillen, pp. 134-135.