VILLAGE FESTIVALS
[_Bibliographical Note._--A systematic calendar of English
festival usages by a competent folk-lorist is much needed. J.
Brand, _Observations on Popular Antiquities_ (1777), based on
H. Bourne, _Antiquitates Vulgares_ (1725), and edited, first
by Sir Henry Ellis in 1813, 1841-2 and 1849, and then by W.
C. Hazlitt in 1870, is full of valuable material, but belongs
to the age of pre-scientific antiquarianism. R. T. Hampson,
_Medii Aevi Kalendarium_ (1841), is no less unsatisfactory. In
default of anything better, T. F. T. Dyer, _British Popular
Customs_ (1891), is a useful compilation from printed sources,
and P. H. Ditchfield, _Old English Customs_ (1896), a gossipy
account of contemporary survivals. These may be supplemented
from collections of more limited range, such as H. J. Feasey,
_Ancient English Holy Week Ceremonial_ (1897), and J. E. Vaux,
_Church Folk-Lore_ (1894); by treatises on local folk-lore, of
which W. Henderson, _Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern
Counties of England and the Borders_ (2nd ed. 1879), C. S. Burne
and G. F. Jackson, _Shropshire Folk-Lore_ (1883-5), and J. Rhys,
_Celtic Folk-Lore, Welsh and Manx_ (1901), are the best; and by
the various publications of the Folk-Lore Society, especially
the series of _County Folk-Lore_ (1895-9) and the successive
periodicals, _The Folk-Lore Record_ (1878-82), _Folk-Lore
Journal_ (1883-9), and _Folk-Lore_ (1890-1903). Popular accounts
of French _fêtes_ are given by E. Cortet, _Essai sur les Fêtes
religieuses_ (1867), and O. Havard, _Les Fêtes de nos Pères_
(1898). L. J. B. Bérenger-Féraud, _Superstitions et Survivances_
(1896), is more pretentious, but not really scholarly. C. Leber,
_Dissertations relatives à l’Histoire de France_ (1826-38), vol.
ix, contains interesting material of an historical character,
largely drawn from papers in the eighteenth-century periodical
_Le Mercure de France_. Amongst German books, J. Grimm,
_Teutonic Mythology_ (transl. J. S. Stallybrass, 1880-8), H.
Pfannenschmidt, _Germanische Erntefeste_ (1878), and U. Jahn,
_Die deutschen Opfergebräuche bei Ackerbau und Viehzucht_
(1884), are all excellent. Many of the books mentioned in the
bibliographical note to the last chapter remain useful for the
present and following ones; in particular J. G. Frazer, _The
Golden Bough_ (2nd ed. 1900), is, of course, invaluable. I have
only included in the above list such works of general range as I
have actually made most use of. Many others dealing with special
points are cited in the notes. A fuller guide to folk-lore
literature will be found in M. R. Cox, _Introduction to Folklore_
(2nd ed. 1897).]
The central fact of the agricultural festivals is the presence in the
village of the fertilization spirit in the visible and tangible form
of flowers and green foliage or of the fruits of the earth. Thus,
when the peasants do their ‘observaunce to a morn of May,’ great
boughs of hawthorn are cut before daybreak in the woods, and carried,
with other seasonable leafage and blossom, into the village street.
Lads plant branches before the doors of their mistresses. The folk
deck themselves, their houses, and the church in green. Some of them
are clad almost entirely in wreaths and tutties, and become walking
bushes, ‘Jacks i’ the green.’ The revel centres in dance and song
around a young tree set up in some open space of the village, or a
more permanent May-pole adorned for the occasion with fresh garlands.
A large garland, often with an anthropomorphic representation of the
fertilization spirit in the form of a doll, parades the streets, and is
accompanied by a ‘king’ or ‘queen,’ or a ‘king’ and ‘queen’ together.
Such a garland finds its place at all the seasonal feasts; but whereas
in spring and summer it is naturally made of the new vegetation, at
harvest it as naturally takes the form of a sheaf, often the last sheaf
cut, of the corn. Then it is known as the ‘harvest-May’ or the ‘neck,’
or if it is anthropomorphic in character, as the ‘kern-baby.’ Summer
and harvest garlands alike are not destroyed when the festival is over,
but remain hung up on the May-pole or the church or the barn-door
until the season for their annual renewing comes round. And sometimes
the grain of the ‘harvest-May’ is mingled in the spring with the
seed-corn[384].
The rationale of such customs is fairly simple. They depend upon a
notion of sympathetic magic carried on into the animistic stage of
belief. Their object is to secure the beneficent influence of the
fertilization spirit by bringing the persons or places to be benefited
into direct contact with the physical embodiment of that spirit. In the
burgeoning quick set up on the village green is the divine presence.
The worshipper clad in leaves and flowers has made himself a garment of
the god, and is therefore in a very special sense under his protection.
Thus efficacy in folk-belief of physical contact may be illustrated by
another set of practices in which recourse is had to the fertilization
spirit for the cure of disease. A child suffering from croup,
convulsions, rickets, or other ailment, is passed through a hole in
a split tree, or beneath a bramble rooted at both ends, or a strip of
turf partly raised from the ground. It is the actual touch of earth or
stem that works the healing[385].
May-pole or church may represent a focus of the cult at some specially
sacred tree or grove in the heathen village. But the ceremony, though
it centres at these, is not confined to them, for its whole purpose
is to distribute the benign influence over the entire community,
every field, fold, pasture, orchard close and homestead thereof. At
ploughing, the driving of the first furrow; at harvest, the homecoming
of the last wain, is attended with ritual. Probably all the primitive
festivals, and certainly that of high summer, included a lustration,
in which the image or tree which stood for the fertilization spirit
was borne in solemn procession from dwelling to dwelling and round
all the boundaries of the village. Tacitus records the progress of
the earth-goddess Nerthus amongst the German tribes about the mouth
of the Elbe, and the dipping of the goddess and the drowning of her
slaves in a lake at the term of the ceremony[386]. So too at Upsala in
Sweden the statue of Freyr went round when winter was at an end[387];
while Sozomenes tells how, when Ulfilas was preaching Christianity
to the Visigoths, Athanaric sent the image of his god abroad in
a wagon, and burnt the houses of all who refused to bow down and
sacrifice[388]. Such lustrations continue to be a prominent feature
of the folk survivals. They are preserved in a number of processional
customs in all parts of England; in the municipal ‘ridings,’ ‘shows,’
or ‘watches’ on St. George’s[389] or Midsummer[390] days; in the
‘Godiva’ procession at Coventry[391], the ‘Bezant’ procession at
Shaftesbury[392]. Hardly a rural merry-making or wake, indeed, is
without its procession; if it is only in the simple form of the _quête_
which the children consider themselves entitled to make, with their
May-garland, or on some other traditional pretext, at various seasons
of the calendar. Obviously in becoming mere _quêtes_, collections of
eggs, cakes and so forth, or even of small coins, as well as in falling
entirely into the hands of the children, the processions have to some
extent lost their original character. But the notion that the visit is
to bring good fortune, or the ‘May’ or the ‘summer’ to the household,
is not wholly forgotten in the rhymes used[393]. An interesting
version of the ceremony is the ‘furry’ or ‘faddy’ dance formerly used
at Helston wake; for in this the oak-decked dancers claimed the right
to pass in at one door and out at another through every house in the
village[394].
Room has been found for the summer lustrations in the scheme of the
Church. In Catholic countries the statue of the local saint is commonly
carried round the village, either annually on his feast-day or in times
of exceptional trouble[395]. The inter-relations of ecclesiastical
and folk-ritual in this respect are singularly illustrated by the
celebration of St. Ubaldo’s eve (May 15) at Gubbio in Umbria. The folk
procession of the _Ceri_ is a very complete variety of the summer
festival. After vespers the clergy also hold a procession in honour of
the saint. At a certain point the two companies meet. An interchange
of courtesies takes place. The priest elevates the host; the bearers
of the _Ceri_ bow them to the ground; and each procession passes on
its way[396]. In England the summer lustrations take an ecclesiastical
form in the Rogations or ‘bannering’ of ‘Gang-week,’ a ceremony
which itself appears to be based on very similar folk-customs of
southern Europe[397]. Since the Reformation the Rogations have come
to be regarded as little more than a ‘beating of the bounds.’ But the
declared intention of them was originally to call for a blessing upon
the fruits of the earth; and it is not difficult to trace folk-elements
in the ‘gospel oaks’ and ‘gospel wells’ at which station was made and
the gospel read, in the peeled willow wands borne by the boys who
accompany the procession, in the whipping or ‘bumping’ of the said boys
at the stations, and in the choice of ‘Gang-week’ for such agricultural
rites as ‘youling’ and ‘well-dressing[398].’
Some anthropomorphic representation of the fertilization spirit is a
common, though not an invariable element in the lustration. A doll is
set on the garland, or some popular ‘giant’ or other image is carried
round[399]. Nor is it surprising that at the early spring festival
which survives in Plough Monday, the plough itself, the central
instrument of the opening labour, figures. A variant of this custom may
be traced in certain maritime districts, where the functions of the
agricultural deities have been extended to include the oversight of
seafaring. Here it is not a plough but a boat or ship that makes its
rounds, when the fishing season is about to begin. Ship processions are
to be found in various parts of Germany[400]; at Minehead, Plymouth,
and Devonport in the west of England, and probably also at Hull in the
north[401].
The magical notions which, in part at least, explain the garland
customs of the agricultural festival, are still more strongly at
work in some of its subsidiary rites. These declare themselves, when
understood, to be of an essentially practical character, charms
designed to influence the weather, and to secure the proper alternation
of moisture and warmth which is needed alike for the growth and
ripening of the crops and for the welfare of the cattle. They are
probably even older than the garland-customs, for they do not imply
the animistic conception of a fertilization spirit immanent in leaf
and blossom; and they depend not only upon the ‘sympathetic’ principle
of influence by direct contact already illustrated, but also upon that
other principle of similarity distinguished by Dr. Frazer as the basis
of what he calls ‘mimetic’ magic. To the primitive mind the obvious
way of obtaining a result in nature is to make an imitation of it
on a small scale. To achieve rain, water must be splashed about, or
some other characteristic of a storm or shower must be reproduced. To
achieve sunshine, a fire must be lit, or some other representation of
the appearance and motion of the sun must be devised. Both rain-charms
and sun-charms are very clearly recognizable in the village ritual.
As rain-charms, conscious or unconscious, must be classified the many
festival customs in which bathing or sprinkling holds an important
place. The image or bough which represents the fertilization spirit
is solemnly dipped in or drenched with water. Here is the explanation
of the ceremonial bathing of the goddess Nerthus recorded by Tacitus.
It has its parallels in the dipping of the images of saints in the
feast-day processions of many Catholic villages, and in the buckets
of water sometimes thrown over May-pole or harvest-May. Nor is the
dipping or drenching confined to the fertilization spirit. In order
that the beneficent influences of the rite may be spread widely abroad,
water is thrown on the fields and on the plough, while the worshippers
themselves, or a representative chosen from among them, are sprinkled
or immersed. To this practice many survivals bear evidence; the virtues
persistently ascribed to dew gathered on May morning, the ceremonial
bathing of women annually or in times of drought with the expressed
purpose of bringing fruitfulness on man or beast or crop, the ‘ducking’
customs which play no inconsiderable part in the traditions of many a
rural merry-making. Naturally enough, the original sense of the rite
has been generally perverted. The ‘ducking’ has become either mere
horse-play or else a rough-and-ready form of punishment for offences,
real or imaginary, against the rustic code of conduct. The churl who
will not stop working or will not wear green on the feast-day must
be ‘ducked,’ and under the form of the ‘cucking-stool,’ the ceremony
has almost worked its way into formal jurisprudence as an appropriate
treatment for feminine offenders. So, too, it has been with the
‘ducking’ of the divinity. When the modern French peasant throws the
image of his saint into the water, he believes himself to be doing it,
not as a mimetic rain-charm, but as a punishment to compel a power
obdurate to prayer to grant through fear the required boon.
The rain-charms took place, doubtless, at such wells, springs, or
brooks as the lustral procession passed in its progress round the
village. It is also possible that there may have been, sometimes or
always, a well within the sacred grove itself and hard by the sacred
tree. The sanctity derived by such wells and streams from the use of
them in the cult of the fertilization spirit is probably what is really
intended by the water-worship so often ascribed to the heathen of
western Europe, and coupled closely with tree-worship in the Christian
discipline-books. The goddess of the tree was also the goddess of the
well. At the conversion her wells were taken over by the new religion.
They became holy wells, under the protection of the Virgin or one of
the saints. And they continued to be approached with the same rites as
of old, for the purpose of obtaining the ancient boons for which the
fertilization spirit had always been invoked. It will not be forgotten
that, besides the public cult of the fertilization spirit for the
welfare of the crops and herds, there was also a private cult, which
aimed at such more personal objects of desire as health, success in
love and marriage, and divination of the future. It is this private
cult that is most markedly preserved in modern holy well customs.
These may be briefly summarized as follows[402]. The wells are sought
for procuring a husband or children, for healing diseases, especially
eye-ailments or warts, and for omens, these too most often in relation
to wedlock. The worshipper bathes wholly or in part, or drinks the
water. Silence is often enjoined, or a motion _deasil_, that is, with
the sun’s course, round the well. Occasionally cakes are eaten, or
sugar and water drunk, or the well-water is splashed on a stone. Very
commonly rags or bits of wool or hair are laid under a pebble or hung
on a bush near the well, or pins, more rarely coins or even articles of
food, are thrown into it. The objects so left are not probably to be
regarded as offerings; the intention is rather to bring the worshipper,
through the medium of his hair or clothes, or some object belonging to
him, into direct contact with the divinity. The close connexion between
tree-and well-cult is shown by the use of the neighbouring bush on
which to hang the rags. And the practice of dropping pins into the
well is almost exactly paralleled by that of driving nails ‘for luck’
into a sacred tree or its later representative, a cross or saintly
image. The theory may be hazarded that originally the sacred well was
never found without the sacred tree beside it. This is by no means the
case now; but it must be remembered that a tree is much more perishable
than a well. The tree once gone, its part in the ceremony would drop
out, or be transferred to the well. But the original rite would include
them both. The visitant, for instance, would dip in the well, and then
creep under or through the tree, a double ritual which seems to survive
in the most curious of all the dramatic games of children, ‘Draw a Pail
of Water[403].’
The private cult of the fertilization spirit is not, of course, tied
to fixed seasons. Its occasion is determined by the needs of the
worshipper. But it is noteworthy that the efficacy of some holy wells
is greatest on particular days, such as Easter or the first three
Sundays in May. And in many places the wells, whether ordinarily
held ‘holy’ or not, take an important place in the ceremonies of the
village festival. The ‘gospel wells’ of the Rogation processions, and
the well to which the ‘Bezant’ procession goes at Shaftesbury are
cases in point; while in Derbyshire the ‘well-dressings’ correspond
to the ‘wakes,’ ‘rushbearings,’ and ‘Mayings’ of other districts.
Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday, as well as the Rogation days, are in a
measure Christian versions of the heathen agricultural feasts, and it
is not, therefore, surprising to find an extensive use of holy water
in ecclesiastical ritual, and a special rite of _Benedictio Fontium_
included amongst the Easter ceremonies[404]. But the Christian custom
has been moralized, and its avowed aim is purification rather than
prosperity.
The ordinary form of heat-charm was to build, in semblance of the sun,
the source of heat, a great fire[405]. Just as in the rain-charm the
worshippers must be literally sprinkled with water, so, in order that
they may receive the full benefits of the heat-charm, they must come
into direct physical contact with the fire, by standing in the smoke,
or even leaping through the flames, or by smearing their faces with the
charred ashes[406]. The cattle too must be driven through the fire, in
order that they may be fertile and free from pestilence throughout the
summer; and a whole series of observances had for their especial object
the distribution of the preserving influence over the farms. The fires
were built on high ground, that they might be visible far and wide. Or
they were built in a circle round the fields, or to windward, so that
the smoke might blow across the corn. Blazing arrows were shot in the
air, or blazing torches carried about. Ashes were sprinkled over the
fields, or mingled with the seed corn or the fodder in the stall[407].
Charred brands were buried or stuck upright in the furrows. Further, by
a simple symbolism, the shape and motion of the sun were mimicked with
circular rotating bodies. A fiery barrel or a fiery wheel was rolled
down the hill on the top of which the ceremony took place. The lighted
torches were whirled in the air, or replaced by lighted disks of wood,
flung on high. All these customs still linger in these islands or in
other parts of western Europe, and often the popular imagination finds
in their successful performance an omen for the fertility of the year.
On _a priori_ grounds one might have expected two agricultural
festivals during the summer; one in the earlier part of it, when
moisture was all-important, accompanied with rain-charms; the other
later on, when the crops were well grown and heat was required to
ripen them, accompanied with sun-charms. But the evidence is rather in
favour of a single original festival determined, in the dislocation
caused by a calendar, to different dates in different localities[408].
The Midsummer or St. John’s fires are perhaps the most widely spread
and best known of surviving heat-charms. But they can be paralleled
by others distributed all over the summer cycle of festivals, at
Easter[409] and on May-day, and in connexion with the ploughing
celebrations on Epiphany, Candlemas, Shrovetide, Quadragesima, and
St. Blaize’s day. It is indeed at Easter and Candlemas that the
_Benedictiones_, which are the ecclesiastical versions of the ceremony,
appear in the ritual-books[410]. On the other hand, although, perhaps
owing to the later notion of the solstice, the fires are greatly
prominent on St. John’s day, and are explained with considerable
ingenuity by the monkish writers[411], yet this day was never a
fire-festival and nothing else. Garland customs are common upon it, and
there is even evidence, though slight evidence, for rain-charms[412].
It is perhaps justifiable to infer that the crystallization of the
rain-and heat-charms, which doubtless were originally used only when
the actual condition of the weather made them necessary, into annual
festivals, took place after the exact rationale of them had been
lost, and they had both come to be looked upon, rather vaguely, as
weather-charms.
Apart from the festival-fires, a superstitious use of sun-charms
endured in England to an extraordinarily late date. This was in times
of drought and pestilence as a magical remedy against mortality amongst
the cattle. A fire was built, and, as on the festivals, the cattle were
made to pass through the smoke and flames[413]. On such occasions, and
often at the festival-fires themselves, it was held requisite that,
just as the water used in the rain-charms would be fresh water from
the spring, so the fire must be fresh fire. That is to say, it must
not be lit from any pre-existing fire, but must be made anew. And, so
conservative is cult, this must be done, not with the modern device
of matches, or even with flint and steel, but by the primitive method
of causing friction in dry work. Such fire is known as ‘need-fire’ or
‘forced fire,’ and is produced in various ways, by rubbing two pieces
of wood together, by turning a drill in a solid block, or by rapidly
rotating a wheel upon an axle. Often certain precautions are observed,
as that nine men must work at the job, or chaste boys; and often all
the hearth-fires in the village are first extinguished, to be rekindled
by the new flame[414].
The custom of rolling a burning wheel downhill from the festival-fire
amongst the vineyards has been noted. The wheel is, of course, by
no means an uncommon solar emblem[415]. Sometimes round bannocks or
hard-boiled eggs are similarly rolled downhill. The use of both of
these may be sacrificial in its nature. But the egg plays such a large
part in festival customs, especially at Easter, when it is reddened,
or gilt, or coloured yellow with furze or broom flowers, and popularly
regarded as a symbol of the Resurrection, that one is tempted to ask
whether it does not stand for the sun itself[416]. And are we to find
the sun in the ‘parish top[417],’ or in the ball with which, even in
cathedrals, ceremonial games were played[418]? If so, perhaps this
game of ball may be connected with the curious belief that if you get
up early enough on Easter morning you may see the sun dance[419].
In any case sun-charms, quite independent of the fires, may probably
be traced in the circular movements which so often appear invested
with a religious significance, and which sometimes form part of the
festivals[420]. It would be rash to regard such movements as the basis
of every circular dance or _ronde_ on such an occasion; a ring is too
obviously the form which a crowd of spectators round any object, sacred
or otherwise, must take. But there are many circumambulatory rites in
which stress is laid on the necessity for the motion to be _deasil_,
or with the right hand to the centre, in accordance with the course
of the sun, and not in the opposite direction, _cartuaitheail_ or
_withershins_[421]. And these, perhaps, may be legitimately considered
as of magical origin.
With the growth of animistic or spiritual religion, the mental
tendencies, out of which magical practices or charms arise, gradually
cease to be operative in the consciousness of the worshippers. The
charms themselves, however, are preserved by the conservative instinct
of cult. In part they survive as mere bits of traditional ritual, for
which no particular reason is given or demanded; in part also they
become material for that other instinct, itself no less inveterate
in the human mind, by which the relics of the past are constantly in
process of being re-explained and brought into new relations with
the present. The sprinkling with holy water, for instance, which was
originally of the nature of a rain-charm, comes to be regarded as a
rite symbolical of spiritual purification and regeneration. An even
more striking example of such transformation of intention is to be
found in the practice, hardly yet referred to in this account of the
agricultural festivals, of sacrifice. In the ordinary acceptation
of the term, sacrifice implies not merely an animistic, but an
anthropomorphic conception of the object of cult. The offering or
oblation with which man approaches his god is an extension of the
gift with which, as suppliant, he approaches his fellow men. But the
oblational aspect of sacrifice is not the only one. In his remarkable
book upon _The Religion of the Semites_, Professor Robertson Smith has
formulated another, which may be distinguished as ‘sacramental.’ In
this the sacrifice is regarded as the renewal of a special tie between
the god and his worshippers, analogous to the blood-bond which exists
amongst those worshippers themselves. The victim is not an offering
made to the god; on the contrary, the god himself is, or is present
in, the victim. It is his blood which is shed, and by means of the
sacrificial banquet and its subsidiary rites, his personality becomes,
as it were, incorporated in those of his clansmen[422]. It is not
necessary to determine here the general priority of the two types or
conceptions of sacrifice described. But, while it is probable that the
Kelts and Teutons of the time of the conversion consciously looked upon
sacrifice as an oblation, there is also reason to believe that, at an
earlier period, the notion of a sacrament had been the predominant
one. For the sacrificial ritual of these peoples, and especially that
used in the agricultural cult, so far as it can be traced, is only
explicable as an elaborate process of just that physical incorporation
of the deity in the worshippers and their belongings, which it was
the precise object of the sacramental sacrifice to bring about. It
will be clear that sacrifice, so regarded, enters precisely into that
category of ideas which has been defined as magical. It is but one more
example of that belief in the efficacy of direct contact which lies at
the root of sympathetic magic. As in the case of the garland customs,
this belief, originally pre-animistic, has endured into an animistic
stage of thought. Through the garland and the posies the worshipper
sought contact with the fertilization spirit in its phytomorphic form;
through sacrifice he approaches it in its theriomorphic form also.
The earliest sacrificial animals, then, were themselves regarded as
divine, and were naturally enough the food animals of the folk. The use
made by the Kelto-Teutonic peoples of oxen, sheep, goats, swine, deer,
geese, and fowls requires no explanation. A common victim was also
the horse, which the Germans seem, up to a late date, to have kept in
droves and used for food. The strong opposition of the Church to the
sacrificial use of horse-flesh may possibly account for the prejudice
against it as a food-stuff in modern Europe[423]. A similar prejudice,
however, in the case of the hare, an animal of great importance in folk
belief, already existed in the time of Caesar[424]. It is a little more
puzzling to find distinct traces of sacrificial customs in connexion
with animals, such as the dog, cat, wolf, fox, squirrel, owl, wren,
and so forth, which are not now food animals[425]. But they may once
have been such, or the explanation may lie in an extension of the
sacrificial practice after the first rationale of it was lost.
At every agricultural festival, then, animal sacrifice may be assumed
as an element. The analogy of the relation between the fertilization
spirit and his worshippers to the human blood bond makes it probable
that originally the rite was always a bloody one[426]. Some of
the blood was poured on the sacred tree. Some was sprinkled upon
the worshippers, or smeared over their faces, or solemnly drunk
by them[427]. Hides, horns, and entrails were also hung upon the
tree[428], or worn as festival trappings[429]. The flesh was, of
course, solemnly eaten in the sacrificial meal[430]. The crops, as
well as their cultivators, must benefit by the rites; and therefore
the fields, and doubtless also the cattle, had their sprinkling of
blood, while heads or pieces of flesh were buried in the furrows, or at
the threshold of the byre[431]. A fair notion of the whole proceeding
may be obtained from the account of the similar Indian worship of the
earth-goddess given in Appendix I. The intention of the ceremonies will
be obvious by a comparison with those already explained. The wearing
of the skins of the victims is precisely parallel to the wearing of
the green vegetation, the sprinkling with blood to the sprinkling
with lustral water, the burial in the fields of flesh and skulls to
the burial of brands from the festival-fire. In each case the belief
in the necessity of direct physical contact to convey the beneficent
influence is at the bottom of the practice. It need hardly be said
that of such physical contact the most complete example is in the
sacramental banquet itself.
It is entirely consistent with the view here taken of the primitive
nature of sacrifice, that the fertilization spirit was sacrificed at
the village festivals in its vegetable as well as in its animal form.
There were bread-offerings as well as meat-offerings[432]. Sacramental
cakes were prepared with curious rituals which attest their primitive
character. Like the _tcharnican_ or Beltane cakes, they were kneaded
and moulded by hand and not upon a board[433]; like the loaf in the
Anglo-Saxon charm, they were compounded of all sorts of grain in order
that they might be representative of every crop in the field[434].
At the harvest they would naturally be made, wholly or in part, of
the last sheaf cut. The use of them corresponded closely to that made
of the flesh of the sacrificial victim. Some were laid on a branch
of the sacred tree[435]; others flung into the sacred well or the
festival-fire; others again buried in the furrows, or crumbled up and
mingled with the seed-corn[436]. And like the flesh they were solemnly
eaten by the worshippers themselves at the sacrificial banquet. With
the sacrificial cake went the sacrificial draught, also made out of the
fruits of the earth, in the southern lands wine, but in the vineless
north ale, or cider, or that mead which Pytheas described the Britons
as brewing out of honey and wheat[437]. Of this, too, the trees and
crops received their share, while it filled the cup for those toasts
or _minnes_ to the dead and to Odin and Freyja their rulers, which
were afterwards transferred by Christian Germany to St. John and St.
Gertrude[438].
The animal and the cereal sacrifices seem plausible enough, but they do
not exhaust the problem. One has to face the fact that human sacrifice,
as Victor Hehn puts it, ‘peers uncannily forth from the dark past of
every Aryan race[439]. So far as the Kelts and Teutons go, there is
plenty of evidence to show, that up to the very moment of their contact
with Roman civilization, in some branches even up to the very moment
of their conversion to Christianity, it was not yet obsolete[440].
An explanation of it is therefore required, which shall fall in with
the general theory of agricultural sacrifice. The subject is very
difficult, but, on the whole, it seems probable that originally the
slaying of a human being at an annually recurring festival was not of
the nature of sacrifice at all. It is doubtful whether it was ever
sacrifice in the sacramental sense, and although in time it came to be
regarded as an oblation, this was not until the first meaning, both
of the sacrifice and of the human death, had been lost. The essential
facts bearing on the question have been gathered together by Dr. Frazer
in _The Golden Bough_. He brings out the point that the victim in a
human sacrifice was not originally merely a man, but a very important
man, none other than the king, the priest-king of the tribe. In many
communities, Aryan-speaking and other, it has been the principal
function of such a priest-king to die, annually or at longer intervals,
for the people. His place is taken, as a rule, by the tribesman who has
slain him[441]. Dr. Frazer’s own explanation of this custom is, that
the head of the tribe was looked upon as possessed of great magical
powers, as a big medicine man, and was in fact identified with the god
himself. And his periodical death, says Dr. Frazer, was necessary,
in order to renew the vitality of the god, who might decay and cease
to exist, were he not from time to time reincarnated by being slain
and passing into the body of his slayer and successor[442]. This is a
highly ingenious and fascinating theory, but unfortunately there are
several difficulties in the way of accepting it. In the first place
it is inconsistent with the explanation of the sacramental killing of
the god arrived at by Professor Robertson Smith. According to this
the sacrifice of the god is for the sake of his worshippers, that the
blood-bond with them may be renewed; and we have seen that this view
fits in admirably with the minor sacrificial rites, such as the eating
and burying of the flesh, as the wearing of the horns and hides. Dr.
Frazer, however, obliges us to hold that the god is also sacrificed
for his own sake, and leaves us in the position of propounding two
quite distinct and independent reasons for the same fact. Secondly,
there is no evidence, at least amongst Aryan-speaking peoples, for that
breaking down of the very real and obvious distinction between the god
and his chief worshipper or priest, which Dr. Frazer’s theory implies.
And thirdly, if the human victim were slain as being the god, surely
this slaughter should have replaced the slaughter of the animal victim
previously slain for the same reason, which it did not, and should have
been followed by a sacramental meal of a cannibal type, of which also,
in western Europe, there is but the slightest trace[443].
Probably, therefore, the alternative explanation of Dr. Frazer’s own
facts given by Dr. Jevons is preferable. According to this the death
of the human victim arises out of the circumstances of the animal
sacrifice. The slaying of the divine animal is an act approached by the
tribe with mingled feelings. It is necessary, in order to renew the
all-essential blood-bond between the god and his worshippers. And at
the same time it is an act of sacrilege; it is killing the god. There
is some hesitation amongst the assembled worshippers. Who will dare the
deed and face its consequences? ‘The clansman,’ says Dr. Jevons, ‘whose
religious conviction of the clan’s need of communion with the god was
deepest, would eventually and after long waiting be the one to strike,
and take upon himself the issue, for the sake of his fellow men.’ This
issue would be twofold. The slayer would be exalted in the eyes of
his fellows. He would naturally be the first to drink the shed blood
of the god. A double portion of the divine spirit would enter into
him. He would become, for a while, the leader, the priest-king, of the
community. At the same time he would incur blood-guiltiness. And in a
year’s time, when his sanctity was exhausted, the penalty would have to
be paid. His death would accompany the renewal of the bond by a fresh
sacrifice, implying in its turn the self-devotion of a fresh annual
king[444].
These theories belong to a region of somewhat shadowy conjecture. If
Dr. Jevons is right, it would seem to follow that, as has already been
suggested, the human death at an annual festival was not initially
sacrifice. It accompanied, but did not replace the sacramental
slaughter of a divine animal. But when the animal sacrifice had itself
changed its character, and was looked upon, no longer as an act of
communion with the god, but as an offering or bribe made to him,
then a new conception of the human death also was required. When the
animal ceased to be recognized as the god, the need of a punishment
for slaying it disappeared. But the human death could not be left
meaningless, and its meaning was assimilated to that of the animal
sacrifice itself. It also became an oblation, the greatest that could
be offered by the tribe to its protector and its judge. And no doubt
this was the conscious view taken of the matter by Kelts and Teutons at
the time when they appear in history. The human sacrifice was on the
same footing as the animal sacrifice, but it was a more binding, a more
potent, a more solemn appeal.
In whatever way human sacrifice originated, it was obviously destined,
with the advance of civilization, to undergo modification. Not only
would the growing moral sense of mankind learn to hold it a dark and
terrible thing, but also to go on killing the leading man of the tribe,
the king-priest, would have its obvious practical inconveniences. At
first, indeed, these would not be great. The king-priest would be
little more than a rain-maker, a _rex sacrorum_, and one man might
perform the ceremonial observances as well as another. But as time went
on, and the tribe settled down to a comparatively civilized life, the
serious functions of its leader would increase. He would become the
arbiter of justice, the adviser in debate; above all, when war grew
into importance, the captain in battle. And to spare and replace, year
by year, the wisest councillor and the bravest warrior would grow into
an intolerable burden. Under some such circumstances, one can hardly
doubt, a process of substitution set in. Somebody had to die for the
king. At first, perhaps, the substitute was an inferior member of the
king’s own house, or even an ordinary tribesman, chosen by lot. But
the process, once begun, was sure to continue, and presently it was
sufficient if a life of little value, that of a prisoner, a slave,
a criminal, a stranger within the gates, was sacrificed[445]. The
common belief in madness or imbecility as a sign of divine possession
may perhaps have contributed to make the village fool or natural
seem a particularly suitable victim. But to the very end of Teutonic
and Keltic heathenism, the sense that the substitute was, after all,
only a substitute can be traced. In times of great stress or danger,
indeed, the king might still be called upon to suffer in person[446].
And always a certain pretence that the victim was the king was kept
up. Even though a slave or criminal, he was for a few days preceding
the sacrifice treated royally. He was a temporary king, was richly
dressed and feasted, had a crown set on his head, and was permitted to
hold revel with his fellows. The farce was played out in the sight of
men and gods[447]. Ultimately, of course, the natural growth of the
sanctity of human life in a progressive people, or in an unprogressive
people the pressure of outside ideals[448], forbids the sacrifice of
a man at all. Perhaps the temporary king is still chosen, and even
some symbolic mimicked slaying of him takes place; but actually he does
not die. An animal takes his place upon the altar; or more strictly
speaking, an animal remains the last victim, as it had been the first,
and in myth is regarded as a substitute for the human victim which for
a time had shared its fate. Of such a myth the legends of Abraham and
Isaac and of Iphigeneia at Aulis are the classical examples.
There is another group of myths for which, although they lack this
element of a substituted victim, mythologists find an origin in
a reformation of religious sentiment leading to the abolition of
human sacrifice. The classical legend of Perseus and Andromeda, the
hagiological legend of St. George and the Dragon, the Teutonic legend
of Beowulf and Grendel, are only types of innumerable tales in which
the hero puts an end to the periodical death of a victim by slaying
the monster who has enforced and profited by it[449]. What is such a
story but the imaginative statement of the fact that such sacrifices
at one time were, and are not? It is, however, noticeable, that in the
majority of these stories, although not in all, the dragon or monster
slain has his dwelling in water, and this leads to the consideration
of yet another sophistication of the primitive notion of sacrifice.
According to this notion sacrifice was necessarily bloody; in the
shedding of blood and in the sacrament of blood partaken of by the
worshippers, lay the whole gist of the rite: a bloodless sacrifice
would have no _raison d’être_. On the other hand, the myths just
referred to seem to imply a bloodless sacrifice by drowning, and this
notion is confirmed by an occasional bit of ritual, and by the common
superstition which represents the spirits of certain lakes and rivers
as claiming a periodical victim in the shape of a drowned person[450].
Similarly there are traces of sacrifices, which must have been equally
bloodless, by fire. At the Beltane festival, for instance, one member
of the party is chosen by lot to be the ‘victim,’ is made to jump
over the flames and is spoken of in jest as ‘dead[451].’ Various
Roman writers, who apparently draw from the second-century B.C. Greek
explorer Posidonius, ascribe to the Druids of Gaul a custom of burning
human and other victims at quinquennial feasts in colossal images of
hollow wickerwork; and squirrels, cats, snakes and other creatures are
frequently burnt in modern festival-fires[452]. The constant practice,
indeed, of burning bones in such fires has given them the specific
name of bonfires, and it may be taken for granted that the bones are
only representatives of more complete victims. I would suggest that
such sacrifices by water and fire are really developments of the
water-and fire-charms described in the last chapter; and that just
as the original notion of sacrifice has been extended to give a new
significance to the death of a human being at a religious festival,
when the real reason for that death had been forgotten, so it has been
still further extended to cover the primitive water-and fire-charms
when they too had become meaningless. I mean that at a festival the
victims, like the image and the worshippers, were doubtless habitually
flung into water or passed through fire as part of the charm; and that,
at a time when sacrifice had grown into mere oblation and the shedding
of blood was therefore no longer essential, these rites were adapted
and given new life as alternative methods of effecting the sacrifice.
It is not surprising that there should be but few direct and evident
survivals of sacrifice in English village custom. For at the time
of the conversion the rite must have borne the whole brunt of the
missionary attack. The other elements of the festivals, the sacred
garlands, the water-and fire-charms, had already lost much of their
original significance. A judgement predisposed to toleration might
plausibly look upon them as custom rather than worship. It was
not so with sacrifice. This too had had its history, and in divers
ways changed its character. But it was still essentially a liturgy.
Oblation or sacrament, it could not possibly be dissociated from a
recognition of the divine nature of the power in whose honour it took
place. And therefore it must necessarily be renounced, as a condition
of acceptance in the Church at all, by the most weak-kneed convert.
What happened was precisely that to which Gregory the Great looked
forward. The sacrificial banquet, the great chines of flesh, and the
beakers of ale, cider, and mead, endured, but the central rite of
the old festival, the ceremonial slaying of the animal, vanished.
The exceptions, however, are not so rare as might at first sight be
thought, and naturally they are of singular interest. It has already
been pointed out that in times of stress and trouble, the thinly
veneered heathenism of the country folk long tended to break out, and
in particular that up to a very late date the primitive need-fire was
occasionally revived to meet the exigencies of a cattle-plague. Under
precisely similar circumstances, and sometimes in immediate connexion
with the need-fire, cattle have been known, even during the present
century, to be sacrificed[453]. Nor are such sporadic instances the
only ones that can be adduced. Here and there sacrifice, in a more or
less modified form, remains an incident in the village festival. The
alleged custom of annually sacrificing a sheep on May-day at Andreas
in the Isle of Man rests on slight evidence[454]; but there is a
fairly well authenticated example in the ‘ram feast’ formerly held on
the same day in the village of Holne in Devonshire. A ram was slain
at a granite pillar or ancient altar in the village ‘ploy-field,’
and a struggle took place for slices which were supposed to bring
luck[455]. Still more degenerate survivals are afforded by the
Whitsun feast at King’s Teignton, also in Devonshire[456], and by the
Whitsun ‘lamb feast’ at Kidlington[457], the Trinity ‘lamb ale’ at
Kirtlington[458], and the ‘Whit hunt’ in Wychwood Forest[459], all
three places lying close together in Oxfordshire. These five cases have
been carefully recorded and studied; but they do not stand alone; for
the folk-calendar affords numerous examples of days which are marked,
either universally or locally, by the ceremonial hunting or killing of
some wild or domestic animal, or by the consumption of a particular
dish which readily betrays its sacrificial origin[460]. The appearance
of animals in ecclesiastical processions in St. Paul’s cathedral[461]
and at Bury St. Edmunds[462] is especially significant; and it is
natural to find an origin for the old English sport of bull-baiting
rather in a survival of heathen ritual than in any reminiscence of the
Roman amphitheatre[463]. Even where sacrifice itself has vanished,
the minor rites which once accompanied it are still perpetuated in
the superstitions or the festival customs of the peasantry. The heads
and hides of horses or cattle, like the _exuviae_ of the sacrificial
victims, are worn or carried in dance, procession or _quête_[464].
The dead bodies of animals are suspended by shepherds or game-keepers
upon tree and barn-door, from immemorial habit or from some vague
suspicion of the luck they will bring. Although inquiry will perhaps
elicit the fallacious explanation that they are there _pour encourager
les autres_[465]. In the following chapters an attempt will be made
to show how widely sacrifice is represented in popular amusements
and _ludi_. Here it will be sufficient to call attention to two
personages who figure largely in innumerable village festivals. One
is the ‘hobby-horse,’ not yet, though Shakespeare will have it so,
‘forgot[466]’: the other the ‘fool’ or ‘squire,’ a buffoon with a
pendent cow’s tail, who is in many places _de rigueur_ in Maying or
rushbearing[467]. Both of these grotesques seem to be at bottom nothing
but worshippers careering in the skins of sacrificed animals.
The cereal or liquor sacrifice is of less importance. Sugar and
water, which may be conjectured to represent mead, is occasionally
drunk beside a sacred well, and in one instance, at least, bread and
cheese are thrown into the depths. Sometimes also a ploughman carries
bread and cheese in his pocket when he goes abroad to cut the first
furrow[468]. But the original rite is probably most nearly preserved in
the custom of ‘youling’ fruit-trees to secure a good crop. When this
is done, at Christmas or Ascension-tide, ale or cider is poured on the
roots of the trees, and a cake placed in a fork of the boughs. Here
and there a cake is also hung on the horn of an ox in the stall[469].
Doubtless the ‘feasten’ cake, of traditional shape and composition,
which pervades the country, is in its origin sacramental[470]. Commonly
enough, it represents an animal or human being, and in such cases it
may be held, while retaining its own character of a cereal sacrifice,
to be also a substitute for the animal or human sacrifice with which it
should by rights be associated[471].
An unauthenticated and somewhat incredible story has been brought from
Italy to the effect that the mountaineers of the Abruzzi are still
in the habit of offering up a human sacrifice in Holy week[472]. In
these islands a reminiscence of the observance is preserved in the
‘victim’ of the Beltane festival[473], and a transformation of it in
the whipping of lads when the bounds are beaten in the Rogations[474].
Some others, less obvious, will be suggested in the sequel. In any case
one ceremony which, as has been seen, grew out of human sacrifice, has
proved remarkably enduring. This is the election of the temporary king.
Originally chosen out of the lowest of the people for death, and fêted
as the equivalent or double of the real king-priest of the community,
he has survived the tragic event which gave him birth, and plays a
great part as the master of the ceremonies in many a village revel.
The English ‘May-king,’ or ‘summer-king,’ or ‘harvest-lord[475],’ or
‘mock-mayor[476],’ is a very familiar personage, and can be even more
abundantly paralleled from continental festivals[477]. To the May-king
in particular we shall return. But in concluding this chapter it is
worth while to point out and account for two variants of the custom
under consideration. In many cases, probably in the majority of cases
so far as the English May-day is concerned, the king is not a king,
but a queen. Often, indeed, the part is played by a lad in woman’s
clothes, but this seems only to emphasize the fact that the temporary
ruler is traditionally regarded as a female one[478]. It is probable
that we have here no modern development, but a primitive element
in the agricultural worship. Tacitus records the presence amongst
the Germans of a male priest ‘adorned as women use[479],’ while the
exchange of garments by the sexes is included amongst festival abuses
in the ecclesiastical discipline-books[480]. Occasionally, moreover,
the agricultural festivals, like those of the _Bona Dea_ at Rome, are
strictly feminine functions, from which all men are excluded[481].
Naturally I regard these facts as supporting my view of the origin of
the agricultural worship in a women’s cult, upon which the pastoral
cult of the men was afterwards engrafted. And finally, there are cases
in which not a king alone nor a queen alone is found, but a king and a
queen[482]. This also would be a reasonable outcome of the merging of
the two cults. Some districts know the May-queen as the May-bride, and
it is possible that a symbolical wedding of a priest and priestess may
have been one of the regular rites of the summer festivals. For this
there seem to be some parallels in Greek and Roman custom, while the
myth which represents the heaven as the fertilizing husband of the
fruitful earth is of hoar antiquity amongst the Aryan-speaking peoples.
The forces which make for the fertility of the fields were certainly
identified in worship with those which make for human fertility. The
waters of the sacred well or the blaze of the festival fire help the
growth of the crops; they also help women in their desire for a lover
and for motherhood. And it may be taken for granted that the summer
festivals knew from the beginning that element of sexual licence
which fourteen centuries of Christianity have not wholly been able to
banish[483].