[Sidenote: Intercourse of the sexes practised in order to make trees

bear fruit.] The same means which are thus adopted to stimulate the

growth of the crops are naturally employed to ensure the fruitfulness of

trees. The work known as _The Agriculture of the Nabataeans_ contained

apparently a direction that the grafting of a tree upon another tree of

a different sort should be done by a damsel, who at the very moment of

inserting the graft in the bough should herself be subjected to

treatment which can only be regarded as a direct copy of the operation

she was performing on the tree.[357] In some parts of Amboyna, when the

state of the clove plantation indicates that the crop is likely to be

scanty, the men go naked to the plantations by night, and there seek to

fertilise the trees precisely as they would impregnate women, while at

the same time they call out for “More cloves!” This is supposed to make

the trees bear fruit more abundantly.[358] In Java when a palm tree is

to be tapped for wine, the man who proposes to relieve the tree of its

superfluous juices deems it necessary to approach the palm in the

character of a lover and a husband, as well as of a son. When he comes

upon a palm which he thinks suitable, he will not begin cutting at the

trunk until he has intimated as delicately as he can the reasons which

lead him to perform that surgical operation, and the ardent affection

which he cherishes for the tree. For this purpose he holds a dialogue

with the palm, in which he naturally speaks in the character of the tree

as well as in his own. “O mother _endang-reni_!” he begins, “for the

sake of you I have let myself be drenched by the rain and scorched by

the sun; long have I sought you! Now at last have I found you. How

ardently have I longed for you! Often before have you given me the

breast. Yet I still thirst. Therefore now I ask for four potfuls more.”

“Well, fair youth,” replies the tree, “I have always been here. What is

the reason that you have sought me?” “The reason I have sought you is

that I have heard you suffer from _incontinentia urinae_.” “So I do,”

says the tree. “Will you marry me?” says the man. “That I will,” says

the tree, “but first you must plight your troth and recite the usual

confession of faith.” On that the man takes a rattan leaf and wraps it

round the palm as a pledge of betrothal, after which he says the creed:

“There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.” The maidenly

and orthodox scruples of the tree having thus been satisfied, he

embraces it as his bride. At first he attaches only a small dish to the

trunk to receive the juices which exude from the cut in the bark; a

large dish might frighten the tree. In fastening the dish to the palm he

says, “_Bok-endang-reni!_ your child is languishing away for thirst. He

asks you for a drink.” The tree replies, “Let him slake his thirst!

Mother’s breasts are full to overflowing.”[359] We have already seen

that in some parts of Northern India a mock marriage between two actors

is performed in honour of a newly-planted orchard,[360] no doubt for the

purpose of making it bear fruit. In the Nicobar Islands a pregnant woman

is taken into the gardens in order to impart the blessing of fertility

to the plants.[361]

[Sidenote: In Uganda parents of twins are supposed to fertilise the

plantains.] The Baganda of Central Africa believe so strongly in the

intimate relation between the intercourse of the sexes and the fertility

of the ground that among them a barren wife is generally sent away

because she is supposed to prevent her husband’s garden from bearing

fruit. On the contrary, a couple who have given proof of extraordinary

fertility by becoming the parents of twins are believed by the Baganda

to be endowed with a corresponding power of increasing the fruitfulness

of the plantain-trees, which furnish them with their staple food. Some

little time after the birth of the twins a ceremony is performed, the

object of which clearly is to transmit the reproductive virtue of the

parents to the plantains. The mother lies down on her back in the thick

grass near the house and places a flower of the plantain between her

legs; then her husband comes and knocks the flower away with his genital

member. Further, the parents go through the country, performing dances

in the gardens of favoured friends, apparently for the purpose of

causing the plantain-trees to bear fruit more abundantly. The same

belief in the fertilising power of such parents probably explains why in

Uganda the father of twins is inviolable and may go into anybody’s

garden and take the produce at will. To distinguish him from the common

herd his hair is cut in a special way, and he wears little bells at his

ankles which tinkle as he walks. His sacred character is further

manifested by a rule which he must observe after the round of visits has

been paid, and the dances in the gardens are over. He has to remain at

home until the next time that the army goes forth to battle, and in the

interval he may neither dress his hair nor cut his finger-nails. When

war has been proclaimed, his whole body is shaved and his nails cut. The

clipped hair and nails he ties up in a ball, which he takes with him to

the war, along with the bark cloth which he wore at the dances. When he

has killed a foe, he crams the ball into the dead man’s mouth, ties the

bark-cloth round his neck, and leaves them there on the

battlefield.[362] Apparently the ceremony is intended to rid him of the

peculiar sanctity or state of taboo which he contracted by the birth of

twins, and to facilitate his return to ordinary life. For, to the mind

of the savage, as we shall see later on, sanctity has its dangers and

inconveniences, and the sacred man may often be glad to divest himself

of it by stripping himself of those separable parts of his person—the

hair and nails—to which the holy contagion is apt to cling.

[Sidenote: Relics of similar customs in Europe.] In various parts of

Europe customs have prevailed both at spring and harvest which are

clearly based on the same crude notion that the relation of the human

sexes to each other can be so used as to quicken the growth of plants.

For example, in the Ukraine on St. George’s Day (the twenty-third of

April) the priest in his robes, attended by his acolytes, goes out to

the fields of the village, where the crops are beginning to shew green

above the ground, and blesses them. After that the young married people

lie down in couples on the sown fields and roll several times over on

them, in the belief that this will promote the growth of the crops. In

some parts of Russia the priest himself is rolled by women over the

sprouting crop, and that without regard to the mud and holes which he

may encounter in his beneficent progress. If the shepherd resists or

remonstrates, his flock murmurs, “Little Father, you do not really wish

us well, you do not wish us to have corn, although you do wish to live

on our corn.”[363] In England it seems to have been customary for young

couples to roll down a slope together on May Day; on Greenwich-hill the

custom was practised at Easter and Whitsuntide,[364] as it was till

lately practised near Dublin on Whitmonday.[365] When we consider how

closely these seasons, especially May Day and Whitsuntide, are

associated with ceremonies for the revival of plant life in spring, we

shall scarcely doubt that the custom of rolling in couples at such times

had originally the same significance which it still has in Russia; and

when further we compare this particular custom with the practice of

representing the vernal powers of vegetation by a bridal pair, and

remember the traditions which even in our own country attach to May

Day,[366] we shall probably do no injustice to our forefathers if we

conclude that they once celebrated the return of spring with grosser

rites, of which the customs I have referred to are only a stunted

survival. Indeed, these rites in their grossest form are said to be

still observed in various parts of Holland at Whitsuntide.[367] In some

parts of Germany at harvest the men and women, who have reaped the corn,

roll together on the field.[368] This again is probably a mitigation of

an older and ruder custom designed to impart fertility to the fields by

methods like those resorted to by the Pipiles of Central America long

ago and by the cultivators of rice in Java at the present time. In Poso,

when the rice-crop is not thriving, the farmer’s wife sets bowls of rice

and betel in various parts of the field; then she lies down, draws her

petticoat over her head, and pretends to fall asleep. But one of her

children thereupon mimics the crowing of a cock, and at the sound she

gets up, “because a new day has dawned.” The intention of this ceremony,

which the natives could not or would not explain to the Dutch missionary

who reports it, may be to place the woman at the disposal of the god of

the field. We are expressly told that there is a special god of the

rice-fields named Puwe-wai, and that the ceremony in question is

performed in his honour.[369]

[Sidenote: Continence practised in order to make the crops grow.] To the

student who cares to track the devious course of the human mind in its

gropings after truth, it is of some interest to observe that the same

theoretical belief in the sympathetic influence of the sexes on

vegetation, which has led some peoples to indulge their passions as a

means of fertilising the earth, has led others to seek the same end by

directly opposite means. From the moment that they sowed the maize till

the time that they reaped it, the Indians of Nicaragua lived chastely,

keeping apart from their wives and sleeping in a separate place. They

ate no salt, and drank neither cocoa nor _chicha_, the fermented liquor

made from maize; in short the season was for them, as the Spanish

historians observe, a time of abstinence.[370] To this day some of the

Indian tribes of Central America practise continence for the purpose of

thereby promoting the growth of the crops. Thus we are told that before

sowing the maize the Kekchi Indians sleep apart from their wives, and

eat no flesh for five days, while among the Lanquineros and Cajaboneros

the period of abstinence from these carnal pleasures extends to thirteen

days.[371] So amongst some of the Germans of Transylvania it is a rule

that no man may sleep with his wife during the whole of the time that he

is engaged in sowing his fields.[372] The same rule is observed at

Kalotaszeg in Hungary; the people think that if the custom were not

observed the corn would be mildewed.[373] Similarly a Central Australian

headman of the Kaitish tribe strictly abstains from marital relations

with his wife all the time that he is performing magical ceremonies to

make the grass grow; for he believes that a breach of this rule would

prevent the grass seed from sprouting properly.[374] In some of the

Melanesian islands, when the yam vines are being trained, the men sleep

near the gardens and never approach their wives; should they enter the

garden after breaking this rule of continence the fruits of the garden

would be spoilt.[375] In the Motu tribe of New Guinea, when rain has

fallen plentifully and there is promise of a good crop of bananas, one

of the chief men becomes holy or taboo, and must live apart from his

wife and eat only certain kinds of food. He bids the young men beat the

drum and dance, “in order that by so doing there may be a large harvest.

If the dancing is not given, there will be an end to the good growth;

but if it is continued, all will go well. People come in from other

villages to assist, and will dance all night.”[376] In the Mekeo

district of British New Guinea, when a taboo has been put on the

coco-nuts and areca-nuts to promote their growth, some fourteen or

fifteen men act as watchmen to enforce the taboo. Every evening they go

round the village armed with clubs and wearing masks or so covered with

leaves that nobody would know them. All the time they are in office they

may not chew betel nor drink coco-nut water, lest the areca-nuts (which

are eaten with betel) and the coco-nuts should fail. Moreover, they may

not live with their wives; indeed, they may not even look at a woman,

and if they pass one they must keep their eyes on the ground.[377] Among

the Kabuis of Manipur, before the rice is sown and when it is reaped,

the strictest chastity has to be observed, especially by the religious

head of the village, who, besides always taking the omens on behalf of

the villagers, is the first to sow and the first to reap.[378] Some of

the tribes of Assam believe that so long as the crops remain ungarnered,

the slightest incontinence might ruin all.[379] In the incense-growing

region of Arabia in antiquity there were three families charged with the

special care of the incense-trees. They were called sacred, and at the

time when they cut the trees or gathered the incense they were forbidden

to pollute themselves with women or with the contact of the dead; the

observance of these rules of ceremonial purity was believed to increase

the supply of incense.[380] Apparently the incense itself was deemed

holy, for on being gathered it was deposited in the sanctuary of the

Sun, where the merchants inspected and purchased it.[381] With ancient

Greek husbandmen it was a maxim that olives should always be planted and

gathered by pure boys and virgins; the uncommon fruitfulness of the

olive-trees at Anazarbus in Cilicia was attributed to their being tended

by young and innocent children. In default of such workers, the

olive-gatherer had to swear that he had been faithful to his own wife;

for his fidelity was believed to ensure an abundant crop of fruit the

following year.[382]

[Sidenote: Illicit love supposed to blight the fruits of the earth.]

Again, the sympathetic relation supposed to exist between the commerce

of the sexes and the fertility of the earth manifests itself in the

belief that illicit love tends, directly or indirectly, to mar that

fertility and to blight the crops.[383] Such a belief prevails, for

example, among the Karens of Burma. They imagine that adultery or

fornication has a powerful influence to injure the harvest. Hence if the

crops have been bad for a year or two, and no rain falls, the villagers

set down the dearth to secret sins of this kind, and say that the God of

heaven and earth is angry with them on that account; and they all unite

in making an offering to appease him. Further, whenever adultery or

fornication is detected, the elders decide that the sinners must buy a

hog and kill it. Then the woman takes one foot of the hog, and the man

takes another, and they scrape out furrows in the ground with each foot,

and fill the furrows with the blood of the hog. Next they scratch the

ground with their hands and pray: “God of heaven and earth, God of the

mountains and hills, I have destroyed the productiveness of the country.

Do not be angry with me, do not hate me; but have mercy on me, and

compassionate me. Now I repair the mountains, now I heal the hills, and

the streams and the lands. May there be no failure of crops, may there

be no unsuccessful labours, or unfortunate efforts in my country. Let

them be dissipated to the foot of the horizon. Make thy paddy fruitful,

thy rice abundant. Make the vegetables to flourish. If we cultivate but

little, still grant that we may obtain a little.” After each has prayed

thus, they return to the house and say they have repaired the

earth.[384] The Battas of Sumatra think that if an unmarried woman is

big with child, it is necessary to give her in marriage at once, even to

a man of lower rank; for otherwise the people will be infested by

tigers, and the crops in the field will not yield an abundant return.

The crime of incest, in their opinion, would blast the whole harvest if

the wrong were not speedily repaired. Epidemics and other calamities

that affect the whole people are almost always traced by them to incest,

by which is to be understood any marriage that conflicts with their

customs.[385]

[Sidenote: Dyak belief that lewdness may cause bad weather and spoil the

crops.] Similar views are held by various tribes of Borneo. Thus when

the rain pours down steadily day after day and week after week, and the

crops are rotting in the fields, the Dyaks of Borneo come to the

conclusion that some one has been indulging in fleshly lusts; so the

elders lay their heads together and adjudicate on all cases of incest

and bigamy, and purify the earth with the blood of pigs, which appears

to possess in a high degree the valuable property of atoning for moral

guilt. For three days the villages are tabooed and all labour

discontinued; the inhabitants remain at home, and no strangers are

admitted. Not long ago the offenders, whose lewdness had thus brought

the whole country into danger, would have been punished with death or at

least slavery. A Dyak may not marry his first cousin unless he first

performs a special ceremony called _bergaput_ to avert evil consequences

from the land. The couple repair to the water-side, fill a small pitcher

with their personal ornaments, and sink it in the river; or instead of a

jar they fling a chopper and a plate into the water. A pig is then

sacrificed on the bank, and its carcase, drained of blood, is thrown in

after the jar. Next the pair are pushed into the water by their friends

and ordered to bathe together. Lastly, a joint of bamboo is filled with

pig’s blood, and the couple perambulate the country and the villages

round about, sprinkling the blood on the ground. After that they are

free to marry. This is done, we are told, for the sake of the whole

country, in order that the rice may not be blasted.[386] The Bahaus or

Kayans, a tribe in the interior of Borneo, [Sidenote: Kayan belief that

adultery or fornication spoils the harvest.] believe that adultery is

punished by the spirits, who visit the whole tribe with failure of the

crops and other misfortunes. Hence in order to avert these calamities

from the innocent members of the tribe, the two culprits, with all their

possessions, are put in quarantine on a gravel bank in the middle of the

river; then in order thoroughly to disinfect them, pigs and fowls are

killed, and with the blood priestesses smear the property of the guilty

pair. Finally the two are set on a raft, with sixteen eggs, and allowed

to drift down the stream. They may save themselves by swimming ashore,

but this is perhaps a mitigation of an older sentence of death by

drowning. Young people shower long grass-stalks, which stand for spears,

at the shamefaced and dripping couple.[387] The Blu-u Kayans of the same

region similarly imagine that an intrigue between an unmarried pair is

punished by the spirits with failure of the harvest, of the fishing, and

of the hunt. Hence the delinquents have to appease the wrath of the

spirits by sacrificing a pig and some rice.[388]

[Sidenote: Incest and seduction supposed to be a cause of bad weather

and failure of crops in Celebes.] Among the Macassars and Bugineese of

Southern Celebes incest is a capital crime. “In the Bugineese language

this misdeed is called _sâpa-tâna_, which, literally translated,

signifies that the _ground_ (_tâna_) which has been polluted with the

blood of such a person must above all be _shunned_ (_sâpa_). When we

remember how afraid of evil spirits a native is in passing even a spot

that has been stained with innocent blood, we can easily conceive what

passes in his mind at the thought of the blood of one who has been

guilty of such a crime. When the rivers dry up and the supply of fish

runs short, when the harvest and the produce of the gardens miscarry,

when edible fruits fail, and especially when sickness is rife among the

cattle and horses, as well as when civil strife breaks out and the

country suffers from any other widespread calamity, the native generally

thinks that earth and air have been sullied with the blood of persons

who have committed incest. The blood of such people should naturally not

be shed. Hence the punishment usually inflicted on them is that of

drowning. They are tied up in a sack and thrown into the sea. Yet they

get with them on their journey to eternity the necessary provisions,

consisting of a bag of rice, salt, dried fish, coco-nuts and so on, not

forgetting three quids of betel.”[389] Among the Tomori of Central

Celebes a person guilty of incest is throttled; no drop of his blood may

fall on the ground, for if it did, the rice would never grow again. The

union of uncle and niece is regarded by these people as incest, but it

can be expiated by an offering. A garment of the man and one of the

woman are laid on a copper vessel; the blood of a sacrificed animal,

either a goat or a fowl, is allowed to drip on the garments, and then

the vessel with its contents is suffered to float down the river.[390]

Among the Tolalaki, another tribe of Central Celebes, persons who have

defiled themselves with incest are shut up in a basket and drowned. No

drop of their blood may be spilt on the ground, for that would hinder

the earth from ever bearing fruit again.[391] When it rains in torrents,

the Galelareese of Halmahera say that brother and sister, or father and

daughter, or in short some near relations are having illicit relations

with each other, and that every human being must be informed of it, for

then only will the rain cease to descend. The superstition has

repeatedly caused blood relations to be accused, rightfully or

wrongfully, of incest. The people also regard other alarming natural

phenomena, for instance a violent earthquake or the eruption of a

volcano, as consequences of crimes of the same sort. Persons charged

with such offences are brought to Ternate; it is said that formerly they

were often drowned on the way or, on being haled thither, were condemned

to be thrown into the volcano.[392]

[Sidenote: Breaches of sexual morality supposed to prevent rain and so

to blight the fruits of the earth in Africa.] In some parts of Africa,

also, it is believed that breaches of sexual morality disturb the course

of nature, particularly by blighting the fruits of the earth. Thus the

negroes of Loango suppose that the intercourse of a man with an immature

girl is punished by God with drought and consequent famine, until the

culprits atone for their sin by dancing naked before the king and an

assembly of the people, who throw hot gravel and bits of glass at the

pair. For example, in the year 1898, it was discovered that a long

drought was caused by the misconduct of three girls, who were with child

before they had passed through what is called the paint-house, that is,

before they had been painted red and secluded for a time in token that

they had attained to the age of puberty. The people were very angry and

tried to punish or even kill the girls.[393] Amongst the Bavili of

Loango, it is believed that if a man breaks the marriage law by marrying

a woman of his mother’s clan, God will in like manner punish the crime

by withholding the rains in their due season.[394] Similar notions of

the blighting influence of sexual crime appear to be entertained by the

Nandi of British East Africa, for amongst them a girl who has been

gotten with child by a warrior, may never look inside of a granary for

fear of spoiling the corn.[395] Among the Basutos likewise “while the

corn is exposed to view, all defiled persons are carefully kept from it.

If the aid of a man in this state is necessary for carrying home the

harvest, he remains at some distance while the sacks are filled, and

only approaches to place them upon the draught oxen. He withdraws as

soon as the load is deposited at the dwelling, and under no pretext can

he assist in pouring the corn into the baskets in which it is

preserved.”[396] The nature of the defilement which thus disqualifies a

man for handling the corn is not mentioned, but probably it would

include unchastity. We may conjecture that it was for a similar reason

that the Basoga of Central Africa used to punish severely the seduction

of a virgin. “If a man was convicted of such a crime, and the woman’s

guilt was discovered, he and she were sent at night time to Kaluba’s

village, where they were tied to a tree. This tall spreading

incense-tree was thought to be under the protection of a spirit called

_Kakua Kambuzi_. Next morning the erring couple were discovered by

people in the surrounding plantations, who released them. They were then

allowed to settle near the tree of the protecting spirit.” This practice

of tying the culprits to a sacred tree may have been thought to atone

for their crime and so to ensure the fertility of the earth which they

had imperilled. The notion perhaps was to deliver the criminals into the

power of the offended tree-spirit; if they were found alive in the

morning, it was a sign that he had pardoned them. “Curiously enough, the

Basoga also held in great abhorrence anything like incest amongst

domestic animals—that is to say, they greatly disapproved of intercourse

between a bull calf and its mother-cow, or between a bull and a cow that

were known to be brother and sister. If this occurred, the bull and cow

were sent by night to a fetish tree and tied there. The next morning the

chief of the district appropriated the animals and turned them to his

own use.”[397] Following out the same train of thought, the Toradjas of

Central Celebes ingeniously employ [Sidenote: Incest of animals employed

as a rain-charm in Africa.] the incest of animals as a rain-charm. For

they believe that the anger of the gods at incest or bestiality

manifests itself in the form of violent storms, heavy rain, or long

drought. Accordingly they think that it is always in their power to

enrage the gods by committing incest and so to procure rain when it is

needed. However, they abstain from perpetrating the crime among

themselves, first, because it would be necessary to put the culprits to

death, and second, because the storms thus raised would be so furious

that they would do more harm than good. But they fancy that the incest,

real or simulated, of animals is a lighter offence, which by

discomposing, without exasperating, the higher powers will disturb the

balance of nature just enough to improve the weather. A ceremony of this

sort was witnessed by a missionary. Rain was wanted, and the headman of

the village had to see that it fell. He took his measures accordingly.

Attended by a crowd he carried a cock and a little sow to the river.

Here the animals were killed, laid side by side in an intimate embrace,

and wrapped tightly up in a piece of cotton. Then the headman engaged in

prayer. “O gods above and gods below,” said he, “if you have pity on us,

and will that we eat food this year, give rain. If you will not give

rain, well we have here buried a cock and a sow in an intimate embrace.”

By which he meant to say, “Be angry at this abomination which we have

committed, and manifest your anger in storms.”[398]

These examples suffice to prove that among many savage races breaches of

the marriage laws are thought to blast the fruits of the earth through

excessive rain or excessive drought. Similar notions of the disastrous

effects of sexual crimes may [Sidenote: Similar notions of the blighting

effect of sexual crime may be detected among the civilised races of

antiquity, for example, among the Jews.] be detected among some of the

civilised races of antiquity, who seem not to have limited the supposed

sterilising influence of such offences to the fruits of the earth, but

to have extended it also to women and cattle.[399] Thus among the

Hebrews we read how Job, passionately protesting his innocence before

God, declares that he is no adulterer; “For that,” says he, “were an

heinous crime; yea, it were an iniquity to be punished by the judges:

for it is a fire that consumeth unto Destruction, and would root out all

mine increase.”[400] In this passage the Hebrew word translated

“increase” commonly means “the produce of the earth;”[401] and if we

give the word its usual sense here, then Job affirms adultery to be

destructive of the fruits of the ground, which is just what many savages

still believe. This interpretation of his words is strongly confirmed by

two narratives in Genesis, where we read how Sarah, Abraham’s wife, was

taken into his harem by a king who did not know her to be the wife of

the patriarch, and how thereafter God visited the king and his household

with great plagues, especially by closing up the wombs of the king’s

wives and his maid-servants, so that they bore no children. It was not

till the king had discovered and confessed his sin, and Abraham had

prayed God to forgive him, that the king’s women again became

fruitful.[402] These narratives seem to imply that adultery, even when

it is committed in ignorance, is a cause of plague and especially of

sterility among women. Again, in Leviticus, after a long list of sexual

crimes, we read:[403] “Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things:

for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out from before

you: and the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof

upon it, and the land vomiteth out her inhabitants.” This passage

appears to imply that the land itself was somehow physically tainted by

sexual transgressions so that it could no longer support the

inhabitants.

[Sidenote: Blighting effect attributed to incest by the ancient Greeks

and Irish.] It would seem that the ancient Greeks and Romans entertained

similar notions as to the wasting effect of incest. According to

Sophocles the land of Thebes suffered from blight, from pestilence, and

from the sterility both of women and of cattle under the reign of

Oedipus, who had unwittingly slain his father and wedded his mother, and

the Delphic oracle declared that the only way to restore the prosperity

of the country was to banish the sinner from it, as if his mere presence

withered plants, animals, and women.[404] No doubt the poet and his

hearers set down these public calamities in great part to the guilt of

parricide, which rested on Oedipus; but they can hardly have failed to

lay much also of the evil at the door of his incest with his mother.

Again, in ancient Italy, under the Emperor Claudius, a Roman noble was

accused of incest with his sister. He committed suicide, his sister was

banished, and the emperor ordered that certain ancient ceremonies

traditionally derived from the laws of King Servius Tullius should be

performed, and that expiation should be made by the pontiffs at the

sacred grove of Diana,[405] probably the famous Arician grove, which has

furnished the starting-point of our enquiry. As Diana appears to have

been a goddess of fertility in general and of the fruitfulness of women

in particular, the atonement made at her sanctuary for incest may

perhaps be accepted as evidence that the Romans, like other peoples,

attributed to sexual immorality a tendency to blast the fruits both of

the earth and of the womb. This inference is strengthened by a precept

laid down by grave Roman writers that bakers, cooks, and butlers ought

to be strictly chaste and continent, because it was most important that

food and cups should be handled either by persons under the age of

puberty, or at all events by persons who indulged very sparingly in

sexual intercourse; for which reason if a baker, a cook, or a butler

broke this rule of continence it was his bounden duty to wash in a river

or other running water before he applied himself again to his

professional duties. But for all such duties the services of a boy or of

a virgin were preferred.[406] The Celts of ancient Ireland similarly

believed that incest blighted the fruits of the earth. According to

legend Munster was afflicted in the third century of our era with a

failure of the crops and other misfortunes. When the nobles enquired

into the matter, they were told that these calamities were the result of

an incest which the king had committed with his sister. In order to put

an end to the evil they demanded of the king his two sons, the fruit of

his unholy union, that they might consume them with fire and cast their

ashes into the running stream. However, one of the sons, Corc by name,

is said to have been purged of his inherited taint by being sent out of

Ireland to an island, where a Druid purified him every morning, by

putting him on the back of a white cow with red ears, and pouring water

over him, till one day the cow jumped into the sea and became a rock, no

doubt taking the sin of Corc’s father away with her. After that the boy

was brought back to Erin.[407]

[Sidenote: Belief in the blighting effect of incest may have helped to

institute the forbidden degrees.] Thus the belief that incest or sexual

crime in general has power to blast the fruits of the earth is

widespread and probably goes back to a very remote antiquity; it may

long have preceded the rise of agriculture. We may conjecture that in

its origin the belief was magical rather than religious; in other words,

that the blight was at first supposed to be a direct consequence of the

act itself rather than a punishment inflicted on the criminal by gods or

spirits. Conceived as an unnatural union of the sexes, incest might be

thought to subvert the regular processes of reproduction, and so to

prevent the earth from yielding its fruits and to hinder animals and men

from propagating their kinds. At a later time the anger of spiritual

beings would naturally be invoked in order to give a religious sanction

to the old taboo. If this was so, it is possible that something of the

horror which incest has excited among most, though by no means all,

races of men, sprang from this ancient superstition and has been

transmitted as an instinct in many nations long after the imaginary

ground of it had been forgotten. Certainly a course of conduct which was

supposed to endanger or destroy the general supply of food and therefore

to strike a blow at the very life of the whole people, could not but

present itself to the savage imagination as a crime of the blackest dye,

fraught with the most fatal consequences to the public weal. How far

such a superstition may in the beginning have operated to prevent the

union of near kin, in other words, to institute the system of prohibited

degrees which still prevails among the great majority of mankind, both

savage and civilised, is a question which deserves to be considered by

the historians of marriage.[408]

[Sidenote: Explanation of the seeming contradiction in the foregoing

customs.] If we ask why it is that similar beliefs should logically

lead, among different peoples, to such opposite modes of conduct as

strict chastity and more or less open debauchery, the reason, as it

presents itself to the primitive mind, is perhaps not very far to seek.

If rude man identifies himself, in a manner, with nature; if he fails to

distinguish the impulses and processes in himself from the methods which

nature adopts to ensure the reproduction of plants and animals, he may

leap to one of two conclusions. Either he may infer that by yielding to

his appetites he will thereby assist in the multiplication of plants and

animals; or he may imagine that the vigour which he refuses to expend in

reproducing his own kind, will form as it were a store of energy whereby

other creatures, whether vegetable or animal, will somehow benefit in

propagating their species. Thus from the same crude philosophy, the same

primitive notions of nature and life, the savage may derive by different

channels a rule either of profligacy or of asceticism.

[Sidenote: Indirect benefit of some of these superstitious customs.] To

readers bred in a religion which is saturated with the ascetic idealism

of the East, the explanation which I have given of the rule of

continence observed under certain circumstances by rude or savage

peoples may seem far-fetched [Sidenote: The ascetic view of chastity not

understood by the savage.] and improbable. They may think that moral

purity, which is so intimately associated in their minds with the

observance of such a rule, furnishes a sufficient explanation of it;

they may hold with Milton[409] that chastity in itself is a noble

virtue, and that the restraint which it imposes on one of the strongest

impulses of our animal nature marks out those who can submit to it as

men raised above the common herd, and therefore worthy to receive the

seal of the divine approbation. However natural this mode of thought may

seem to us, it is utterly foreign and indeed incomprehensible to the

savage. If he resists on occasion the sexual instinct, it is from no

high idealism, no ethereal aspiration after moral purity, but for the

sake of some ulterior yet perfectly definite and concrete object, to

gain which he is prepared to sacrifice the immediate gratification of

his senses. That this is or may be so, the examples I have cited are

amply sufficient to prove. They shew that where the instinct of

self-preservation, which manifests itself chiefly in the search for

food, conflicts or appears to conflict with the instinct which conduces

to the propagation of the species, the former instinct, as the primary

and more fundamental, is capable of over-mastering the latter. In short,

the savage is willing to restrain his sexual propensity for the sake of

food. Another object for the sake of which he consents to exercise the

same self-restraint is victory in war. Not only the warrior in the field

but his friends at home will often bridle their sensual appetites from a

belief that by so doing they will the more easily overcome their

enemies.[410] The fallacy of such a belief, like the belief that the

chastity of the sower conduces to the growth of the seed, is plain

enough to us; yet perhaps the self-restraint which these and the like

beliefs, vain and false as they are, have imposed on mankind, has not

been without its utility in bracing and strengthening the breed. For

strength of character in the race as in the individual consists mainly

in the power of sacrificing the present to the future, of disregarding

the immediate temptations of ephemeral pleasure for more distant and

lasting sources of satisfaction. The more the power is exercised the

higher and stronger becomes the character; till the height of heroism is

reached in men who renounce the pleasures of life and even life itself

for the sake of keeping or winning for others, perhaps in distant ages,

the blessings of freedom and truth.

Footnote 351:

See above, p. 67, and below, p. 104.

Footnote 352:

Brasseur de Bourbourg, _Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique et

de l’Amérique Centrale_ (Paris, 1857-1859), ii. 565; H. H. Bancroft,

_Native Races of the Pacific States_, ii. 719 _sq._, iii. 507; O.

Stoll, _Die Ethnologie der Indianerstämme von Guatemala_ (Leyden,

1889), p. 47.

Footnote 353:

P. J. de Arriaga, _Extirpacion de la idolatria del Piru_ (Lima, 1621),

pp. 36 _sq._

Footnote 354:

G. A. Wilken, “Het animisme bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel,”

_De Indische Gids_, June 1884, p. 958.

Footnote 355:

J. G. F. Riedel, _De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en

Papua_, pp. 337, 372-375, 410 _sq._; G. W. W. C. Baron van Hoëvell, in

_Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde_, xxxiii. (1890)

pp. 204 _sq._, 206 _sq._; _id._, in _Internationales Archiv für

Ethnographie_, viii. (1895) p. 134; J. A. Jacobsen, _Reisen in die

Inselwelt des Banda-Meeres_ (Berlin, 1896), pp. 123, 125; J. H. de

Vries, “Reis door eenige eilandgroepen der Residentie Amboina,”

_Tijdschrift van het konink_. _Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig

Genootschap_, Tweede Serie, xvii. (1900) pp. 594, 612, 615 _sq._ The

name of the festival is variously given as _porĕke_, _porĕka_,

_porka_, and _purka_. In the island of Timor the marriage of the

Sun-god with Mother Earth is deemed the source of all fertility and

growth. See J. S. G. Gramberg, “Eene maand in de Binnenlanden van

Timor,” _Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en

Wetenschappen_, xxxvi. 206 _sq._; H. Sondervan, “Timor en de

Timoreezen,” _Tijdschriftvan het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig

Genootschap_, Tweede Serie, dl. v. (1888), Afdeeling meer uitgebreide

artikelen, p. 397.

Footnote 356:

T. C. Hodson, “The Native Tribes of Manipur,” _Journal of the

Anthropological Institute_, xxxi. (1901) p. 307.

Footnote 357:

Maimonides, translated by D. Chwolsohn, _Die Ssabier und der

Ssabismus_, ii. 475. It is not quite clear whether the direction,

which Maimonides here attributes to the heathen of Harran, is taken by

him from the beginning of _The Agriculture of the Nabataeans_, which

he had referred to a few lines before. The first part of that work

appears to be lost, though other parts of it exist in manuscript at

Paris, Oxford, and elsewhere. See D. Chwolsohn, _op. cit._ i. 697

_sqq._ The book is an early Mohammedan forgery; but the superstitions

it describes may very well be genuine. See A. von Gutschmid, _Kleine

Schriften_, ii. 568-713.

Footnote 358:

G. W. W. C. Baron van Hoëvell, _Ambon en meer bepaaldelijk de

Oeliasers_ (Dordrecht, 1875), pp. 62 _sq._

Footnote 359:

J. Kreemer, “Tiang-dèrès” _Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche

Zendelinggenootschap_, xxvi. (1882), pp. 128-132. This and the

preceding custom have been already quoted by G. A. Wilken (“Het

animisme bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel,” _De Indische

Gids_, June 1884, pp. 962 _sq._; and _Handleiding voor de

vorgelijkende Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië_ (Leyden, 1893), p.

550).

Footnote 360:

Above, p. 26.

Footnote 361:

W. Svoboda, “Die Bewohner des Nikobaren-Archipels,” _Internationales

Archiv für Ethnographie_, v. (1892) pp. 193 _sq._ For other examples

of a fruitful woman making trees fruitful, see above, vol. i. pp. 140

_sq._

Footnote 362:

J. Roscoe, “Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,”

_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xxxii. (1902) pp. 32-35,

38, 80. The Peruvian custom described above (vol. i. p. 266) may in

like manner have been intended to promote the growth of beans through

the fertilising influence of the parents of twins. On the contrary

among the Bassari of Togo, in Western Africa, women who have given

birth to twins may not go near the farm at the seasons of sowing and

reaping, lest they should destroy the crop. Only after the birth of

another child does custom allow them to share again the labour of the

fields. See H. Klose, _Togo unter deutscher Flagge_ (Berlin, 1899), p.

510.

Footnote 363:

W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 480 _sq._; _id._, _Mythologische

Forschungen_ (Strasburg, 1884), p. 341.

Footnote 364:

J. Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, i. 181.

Footnote 365:

My informant is Prof. W. Ridgeway. The place was a field at the head

of the Dargle vale, near Enniskerry.

Footnote 366:

See above, p. 67.

Footnote 367:

G. W. W. C. Baron van Hoëvell, in _Internationales Archiv für

Ethnographie_, viii. (1895) p. 134 note. The custom seems to go by the

name of _dauwtroppen_ or “dew-treading.” As districts or places in

which the practice is still kept up the writer names South Holland,

Dordrecht, and Rotterdam.

Footnote 368:

L. Strackerjan, _Aberglaube und Sagen aus dem Herzogthum Oldenburg_

(Oldenburg, 1867), ii. p. 78, § 361; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p.

481; _id._, _Mythologische Forschungen_, p. 340. Compare Th. Siebs,

“Das Saterland,” _Zeitschrift für Volkskunde_, iii. (1893) p. 277.

Footnote 369:

A. C. Kruijt, “Een en ander aangaande het geestelijk en

maatschappelijk leven van den Poso-Alfoer,” _Mededeelingen van wege

het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap_, xxxix. (1895) p. 138, _ibid._

xl. (1896) pp. 16 _sq._

Footnote 370:

G. F. Oviedo y Valdes, _Histoire du Nicaragua_ (published in

Ternaux-Compans’ _Voyages, relations et mémoires originaux_, etc.),

Paris, 1840, pp. 228 _sq._; A. de Herrera, _General History of the

Vast Continent and Islands called America_ (Stevens’s translation,

London, 1725-26), iii. 298.

Footnote 371:

C. Sapper, “Die Gebräuche und religiösen Anschauungen der

Kekchi-Indianer,” _Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie_, viii.

(1895) p. 203. Abstinence from women for several days is also

practised before the sowing of beans and of chilis, but only by

Indians who do a large business in these commodities (_ibid._ p. 205).

Footnote 372:

A. Heinrich, _Agrarische Sitten und Gebräuche unter den Sachsen

Siebenbürgens_ (Hermannstadt, 1880), p. 7.

Footnote 373:

R. Temesvary, _Volksbräuche und Aberglauben in der Geburtshilfe und

der Pflege der Neugebornen in Ungarn_ (Leipsic, 1900), p. 16.

Footnote 374:

Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 293.

See above, vol. i. p. 88.

Footnote 375:

R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 134.

Footnote 376:

J. Chalmers, _Pioneering in New Guinea_ (London, 1887), p. 181. The

word which I have taken to mean “holy or taboo” is _helaga_. Mr.

Chalmers does not translate or explain it. Dr. C. G. Seligmann says

that the word “conveys something of the idea of ‘sacred,’ ‘set apart,’

‘charged with virtue’” (_The Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p.

101, note 2).

Footnote 377:

A. C. Haddon, _Head-hunters_ (London, 1901), pp. 270-272, 275 _sq._

Footnote 378:

T. C. Hodson, “The Native Tribes of Manipur,” _Journal of the

Anthropological Institute_, xxxi. (1901) p. 307.

Footnote 379:

T. C. Hodson, “The _genna_ amongst the Tribes of Assam,” _Journal of

the Anthropological Institute_, xxxvi. (1906) p. 94.

Footnote 380:

Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xii. 54; Solinus, xxxiii. 6 _sq._, p. 166, ed. Th.

Mommsen (first edition).

Footnote 381:

Theophrastus, _Histor. plant._ ix. 4. 5 _sq._

Footnote 382:

Palladius, _De re rustica_, i. 6. 14; _Geoponica_, ix. 3. 5 _sq._

Footnote 383:

With what follows compare _Psyche’s Task_, chapter iv. pp. 31 _sqq._,

where I have adduced the same evidence to some extent in the same

words.

Footnote 384:

F. Mason, “On dwellings, works of art, laws, etc., of the Karens,”

_Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_, xxxvii. (1868) Part ii.

pp. 147 _sq._ Compare A. R. M’Mahon, _The Karens of the Golden

Chersonese_ (London, 1876), pp. 334 _sq._

Footnote 385:

J. B. Neumann, “Het Pane- en Bila-stroomgebied op het eiland

Sumatra,” _Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig

Genootschap_, Tweede Serie, dl. iii. Afdeeling, meer uitgebreide

artikelen, No. 3 (1886), pp. 514 _sq._; M. Joustra, “Het leven, de

zeden en gewoonten der Bataks,” _Mededeelingen van wege het

Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap_, xlvi. (1902) p. 411.

Footnote 386:

H. Ling Roth, “Low’s natives of Borneo,” _Journal of the

Anthropological Institute_, xxi. (1892) pp. 113 _sq._, 133, xxii.

(1893) p. 24; _id._, _Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo_, i.

401. Compare Rev. J. Perham, “Petara, or Sea Dyak Gods,” _Journal of

the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society_, No. 8, December

1881, p. 150; H. Ling Roth, _Natives of Sarawak and British North

Borneo_, i. 180. According to Archdeacon Perham, “Every district

traversed by an adulterer is believed to be accursed of the gods until

the proper sacrifice has been offered.” In respectable Dyak families,

when an unmarried girl is found with child and the father is unknown,

they sacrifice a pig and sprinkle the doors with its blood to wash

away the sin (Spenser St. John, _Life in the Forests of the Far East_,

2nd Ed., i. 64). In Ceram a person convicted of unchastity has to

expiate his guilt by smearing every house in the village with the

blood of a pig and a fowl. See A. Bastian, _Indonesien_, i. (Berlin,

1884) p. 144.

Footnote 387:

A. W. Nieuwenhuis, _Quer durch Borneo_ (Leyden, 1904-1907), i. 367.

Footnote 388:

A. W. Nieuwenhuis, _Quer durch Borneo_, ii. 99; _id._, _In Centraal

Borneo_ (Leyden, 1900), ii. 278.

Footnote 389:

B. F. Matthes, “Over de _âdá’s_ of gewoonten der Makassaren en

Boegineezen,” _Verslagen en Mededeelingen der koninklijke Akademie van

Wetenschappen_, Afdeeling Letterkunde, Derde Reeks, II. (Amsterdam,

1885) p. 182. The similar Roman penalty for parricide (_Digest_,

xlviii. 9. 9; Valerius Maximus, i. 1. 13; J. E. B. Mayor’s note on

Juvenal _Sat._ viii. 214) may have been adopted for a similar reason.

But in that case the scourging which preceded the drowning can hardly

have been originally a part of the punishment.

Footnote 390:

A. C. Kruijt, “Eenige ethnografische aanteekeningen omtrent de

Toboengkoe en de Tomori,” _Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche

Zendelinggenootschap_, xliv. (1900) p. 235.

Footnote 391:

A. C. Kruijt, “Van Posso naar Mori,” _Mededeelingen van wege het

Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap_, xliv. (1900) p. 162.

Footnote 392:

M. J. van Baarda, “Fabelen, Verhalen en Overleveringen der

Galelareezen,” _Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van

Nederlandsch-Indië_, xlv. (1895) p. 514. In the Banggai Archipelago,

to the east of Celebes, earthquakes are explained as punishments

inflicted by evil spirits for indulgence in illicit love (F. S. A. de

Clercq, _Bijdragen tot de Kennis der Residentie Ternate_ (Leyden,

1890), p. 132).

Footnote 393:

O. Dapper, _Description de l’Afrique_ (Amsterdam, 1686), p. 326; R. E.

Dennett, _At the Back of the Black Man’s Mind_ (London, 1906), pp. 53,

67-71.

Footnote 394:

R. E. Dennett, _op. cit._ p. 52.

Footnote 395:

A. C. Hollis, _The Nandi, their Language and Folk-lore_ (Oxford,

1909), p. 76.

Footnote 396:

Rev. E. Casalis, _The Basutos_ (London, 1861), p. 252.

Footnote 397:

Sir Harry Johnston, _The Uganda Protectorate_ (London, 1902), ii. 718

_sq._

Footnote 398:

A. C. Kruijt, “Regen lokken en regen verdrijven bij de Toradja’s van

Midden Celebes,” _Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en

Volkenkunde_, xliv. (1901) p. 4.

Footnote 399:

Probably a similar extension of the superstition to animal life occurs

also among savages, though the authorities I have consulted do not

mention it. A trace, however, of such an extension appears in a belief

entertained by the Khasis of Assam, that if a man defies tribal custom

by marrying a woman of his own clan, the women of the tribe will die

in childbed and the people will suffer from other calamities. See

Colonel P. R. T. Gurdon, _The Khasis_ (London, 1907), pp. 94, 123.

Footnote 400:

Job xxxi. 11 _sq._ (Revised Version).

Footnote 401:

תבואה. See _Hebrew and English Lexicon_, by F. Brown, S. R. Driver,

and Ch. A. Briggs (Oxford, 1906), p. 100.

Footnote 402:

Genesis xii. 10-20, xx. 1-18.

Footnote 403:

Leviticus xviii. 24 _sq._

Footnote 404:

Sophocles, _Oedipus Tyrannus_, 22 _sqq._, 95 _sqq._

Footnote 405:

Tacitus, _Annals_, xii. 4 and 8.

Footnote 406:

Columella, _De re rustica_, xii. 2 _sq._, appealing to the authority

of M. Ambivius, Maenas Licinius, and C. Matius. See on this subject

below, p. 205.

Footnote 407:

G. Keating, _History of Ireland_, translated by J. O’Mahony (New York,

1857), pp. 337 _sq._; P. W. Joyce, _Social History of Ancient Ireland_

(London, 1903), ii. 512 _sq._; J. Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_ (London

and Edinburgh, 1888), pp. 308 _sq._

Footnote 408:

Compare _Totemism and Exogamy_, iv. 153 _sqq._

Footnote 409:

“Next (for hear me out now, readers) that I may tell ye whither my

younger feet wandered; I betook me among those lofty fables and

romances which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood

founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had in renown over all

Christendom. There I read it in the oath of every knight that he

should defend to the utmost expense of his best blood, or of his life,

if it so befell him, the honour and chastity of virgin or matron; from

whence even then I learned what a noble virtue chastity sure must be,

to the defence of which so many worthies, by such a dear adventure of

themselves, had sworn; and if I found in the story afterward any of

them by word or deed breaking that oath, I judged it the same fault of

the poet as that which is attributed to Homer, to have written

indecent things of the gods. Only this my mind gave me, that every

free and gentle spirit, without that oath, ought to be born a knight,

nor needed to expect the gilt spur or the laying of a sword upon his

shoulder to stir him up both by his counsel and his arm, to secure and

protect the weakness of any attempted chastity” (Milton, “Apology for

Smectymnuus,” _Complete Collection of the Historical, Political, and

Miscellaneous Works of John Milton_ (London, 1738), vol. i. p. 111).

Footnote 410:

For examples of chastity observed at home by the friends of the absent

warriors, see above, vol. i. pp. 128, 131, 133. Examples of chastity

observed by the warriors themselves in the field will be given in the

second part of this work. Meanwhile see _The Golden Bough_, 2nd Ed.,

i. 328, note 2.

CHAPTER XII

THE SACRED MARRIAGE

§ 1. Diana as a Goddess of Fertility

[Sidenote: Dramatic marriages of gods and goddesses as a charm to

promote vegetation.] In the last chapter we saw that according to a

widespread belief, which is not without a foundation in fact, plants

reproduce their kinds through the sexual union of male and female

elements, and that on the principle of homoeopathic or imitative magic

this reproduction can be stimulated by the real or mock marriage of men

and women, who masquerade for the time being as spirits of vegetation.

Such magical dramas have played a great part in the popular festivals of

Europe, and based as they are on a very crude conception of natural law,

it is clear that they must have been handed down from a remote

antiquity. We shall hardly, therefore, err in assuming that they date

from a time when the forefathers of the civilised nations of Europe were

still barbarians, herding their cattle and cultivating patches of corn

in the clearings of the vast forests, which then covered the greater

part of the continent, from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Ocean. But

if these old spells and enchantments for the growth of leaves and

blossoms, of grass and flowers and fruit, have lingered down to our own

time in the shape of pastoral plays and popular merry-makings, is it not

reasonable to suppose that they survived in less attenuated forms some

two thousand years ago among the civilised peoples of antiquity? Or, to

put it otherwise, is it not likely that in certain festivals of the

ancients we may be able to detect the equivalents of our May Day,

Whitsuntide, and Midsummer celebrations, with this difference, that in

those days the ceremonies had not yet dwindled into mere shows and

pageants, but were still religious or magical rites, in which the actors

consciously supported the high parts of gods and goddesses? Now in the

first chapter of this book we found reason to believe that the priest

who bore the title of King of the Wood at Nemi had for his mate the

goddess of the grove, Diana herself. May not he and she, as King and

Queen of the Wood, have been serious counterparts of the merry mummers

who play the King and Queen of May, the Whitsuntide Bridegroom and Bride

in modern Europe? and may not their union have been yearly celebrated in

a _theogamy_ or divine marriage? Such dramatic weddings of gods and

goddesses, as we shall see presently, were carried out as solemn

religious rites in many parts of the ancient world; hence there is no

intrinsic improbability in the supposition that the sacred grove at Nemi

may have been the scene of an annual ceremony of this sort. Direct

evidence that it was so there is none, but analogy pleads in favour of

the view, as I shall now endeavour to shew.

[Sidenote: Diana a goddess of the woodlands.] Diana was essentially a

goddess of the woodlands, as Ceres was a goddess of the corn and Bacchus

a god of the vine.[411] Her sanctuaries were commonly in groves, indeed

every grove was sacred to her,[412] and she is often associated with the

forest god Silvanus in dedications.[413] We must not [Sidenote: Sanctity

of holy groves in antiquity.] forget that to the ancients the sanctity

of a holy grove was very real and might not be violated with impunity.

For example, in Attica there was a sanctuary of Erithasean Apollo, and

it was enacted by law that any person caught in the act of cutting trees

in it, or carrying away timber, firewood, or fallen leaves, should be

punished with fifty stripes, if he was a slave, or with a fine of fifty

drachms, if he was a freeman. The culprit was denounced by the priest to

the king, that is, to the sacred official or minister of state who bore

the royal title.[414] Similarly it was the duty of the sacred men at

Andania, in Messenia, to scourge slaves and fine freemen who cut wood in

the grove of the Great Goddesses.[415] In Crete it was forbidden, under

pain of curses and fines, to fell timber, sow corn, and herd or fold

flocks within the precinct of Dictaean Zeus.[416] In Italy like customs

prevailed. Near Spoletium there was a sacred grove from which nothing

might be taken, and in which no wood might be cut except just so much as

was needed for the annual sacrifice. Any person who knowingly violated

the sanctity of the grove had to expiate his offence by sacrificing an

ox to Jupiter, and to pay besides a fine of three hundred pence.[417] In

his treatise on farming Cato directs that before thinning a grove the

Roman husbandman should offer a pig as an expiatory sacrifice to the god

or goddess of the place, and should entreat his or her favour for

himself, his children, and his household.[418] The _Fratres Arvales_ or

Brethren of the Tilled Fields were a Roman college of twelve priests,

who performed public religious rites for the purpose of making the crops

to grow, and they wore wreaths of ears of corn as a badge of their

office.[419] Their sacrifices were offered in the grove of the goddess

Dia, situated five miles down the Tiber from Rome. So hallowed was this

grove, which is known to have included laurels and holly-oaks, that

expiatory sacrifices of sows and lambs had to be offered when a rotten

bough fell to the ground, or when an old tree was laid low by a storm or

dragged down by a load of snow on its branches. And still more elaborate

expiation had to be made with the slaughter of sows, sheep, and bulls

when any of the sacred trees were struck by lightning and it was

necessary to dig them up by the roots, split them, burn them, and plant

others in their room.[420] At the annual festival of the Parilia, which

was intended to ensure the welfare of the flocks and herds, Roman

shepherds prayed to be forgiven if they had entered a hallowed grove, or

sat down under a sacred tree, or lopped a holy bough in order to feed a

sick sheep on the leaves.[421]

[Sidenote: Sense of the divinity of woods shared by polite Roman

writers.] Nor was this sense of the indwelling divinity of the woods

confined to the simple rustics who, tending their flocks in the

chequered shade, felt the presence of spirits in the solemn stillness of

the forest, heard their voices in the sough of the wind among the

branches, and saw their handiwork in the fresh green of spring and the

fading gold of autumn. The feeling was shared by the most cultivated

minds in the greatest age of Roman civilisation. Pliny says that “the

woods were formerly the temples of the deities, and even now simple

country folk dedicate a tall tree to a god with the ritual of the olden

time; and we adore sacred groves and the very silence that reigns in

them not less devoutly than images that gleam with gold and ivory.”[422]

Similarly Seneca writes: “If you come upon a grove of old trees that

have shot up above the common height and shut out the sight of the sky

by the gloom of their matted boughs, you feel there is a spirit in the

place, so lofty is the wood, so lone the spot, so wondrous the thick

unbroken shade.”[423]

[Sidenote: The breaking of the Golden Bough a rite of solemn

significance, not a mere piece of bravado.] Thus the ancients, like many

other people in various parts of the world, were deeply impressed with

the sanctity of holy groves, and regarded even the cutting of a bough in

them as a sacrilege which called for expiation. If therefore a candidate

for the priesthood of Diana at Nemi had to break a branch of a certain

tree in the sacred grove before he could fight the King of the Wood, we

may be sure that the act was a rite of solemn significance, and that to

treat it as a mere piece of bravado, a challenge to the priest to come

on and defend his domain, would be to commit the commonest of all errors

in dealing with the past, that, namely, of interpreting the customs of

other races and other generations by reference to modern European

standards. In order to understand an alien religion the first essential

is to divest ourselves, as well as we can, of our own familiar

prepossessions, and to place ourselves at the point of view of those

whose faith and practice we are studying. To do this at all is

difficult; to do it completely is perhaps impossible; yet the attempt

must be made if the enquiry is to progress instead of returning on

itself in a vicious circle.

[Sidenote: Diana not a mere goddess of trees, but, like Artemis, a

personification of the teeming life of nature, both animal and

vegetable.] But whatever her origin may have been, Diana was not always

a mere goddess of trees. Like her Greek sister Artemis, she appears to

have developed into a personification of the teeming life of nature,

both animal and vegetable. As mistress of the greenwood she would

naturally be thought to own the beasts, whether wild or tame, that

ranged through it, lurking for their prey in its gloomy depths, munching

the fresh leaves and shoots among the boughs, or cropping the herbage in

the open glades and dells. Thus she might come [Sidenote: A deity of the

woods is naturally the patron of the beasts in the woods, both game and

cattle.] to be the patron goddess both of hunters and herdsmen,[424]

just as Silvanus was the god not only of woods, but of cattle.[425]

Similarly in Finland the wild beasts of the forest were regarded as the

herds of the woodland God Tapio and of his stately and beautiful wife.

No man might slay one of these animals without the gracious permission

of their divine owners. Hence the hunter prayed to the sylvan deities,

and vowed rich offerings to them if they would drive the game across his

path. And cattle also seem to have enjoyed the protection of those

spirits of the woods, both when they were in their stalls and while they

strayed in the forest.[426] So in the belief of Russian peasants the

spirit Leschiy rules both the wood and all the creatures in it. The bear

is to him what the dog is to man; and the migrations of the squirrels,

the field-mice, and other denizens of the woods are carried out in

obedience to his behests. Success in the chase depends on his favour,

and to assure himself of the spirit’s help the huntsman lays an

offering, generally of bread and salt, on the trunk of a tree in the

forest. In White Russia every herdsman must present a cow to Leschiy in

summer, and in the Government of Archangel some herdsmen have won his

favour so far that he even feeds and tends their herds for them.[427]

Similarly the forest-god of the Lapps ruled over all the beasts of the

forest; they were viewed as his herds, and good or bad luck in hunting

depended on his will.[428] So, too, the Samagitians deemed the birds and

beasts of the woods sacred, doubtless because they were under the

protection of the sylvan god.[429] Before the Gayos of Sumatra hunt

deer, wild goats, or wild pigs with hounds in the woods, they deem it

necessary to obtain the leave of the unseen Lord of the forest. This is

done according to a prescribed form by a man who has special skill in

woodcraft. He lays down a quid of betel before a stake which is cut in a

particular way to represent the Lord of the Wood, and having done so he

prays to the spirit to signify his consent or refusal.[430]

[Sidenote: The crowning of hunting dogs on Diana’s day was probably a

purificatory ceremony to cleanse them from the guilt of having killed

game, the creatures of the goddess.] We have seen that at Diana’s

festival it was customary to crown hunting dogs, to leave wild beasts in

peace, and to perform a purificatory ceremony for the benefit of young

people.[431] Some light is thrown on the meaning of these customs by a

passage in Arrian’s treatise on hunting. He tells us that a good hound

is a boon conferred by one of the gods upon the huntsman, who ought to

testify his gratitude by sacrificing to the Huntress Artemis. Further,

Arrian goes on to say: “It is right that after a successful chase a man

should sacrifice and dedicate the first-fruits of his bag to the

goddess, in order to purify both the hounds and the hunters, in

accordance with old custom and usage.” He tells us that the Celts were

wont to form a treasury for the goddess Artemis, into which they paid a

fine of two obols for every hare they killed, a drachm for every fox,

and four drachms for every roe. Once a year, on the birthday of Artemis,

they opened the treasury, and with the accumulated fines purchased a

sacrificial victim, it might be a sheep, a goat, or a calf. Having slain

the animal and offered her share to the Huntress Artemis, they feasted,

both men and dogs; and they crowned the dogs on that day “in order to

signify,” says Arrian, “that the festival was for their benefit.”[432]

The Celts to whom Arrian, a native of Bithynia, here refers were

probably the Galatians of Asia Minor; but doubtless the custom he

describes was imported by these barbarians, along with their native

tongue[433] and the worship of the oak,[434] from their old home in

Central or Northern Europe. The Celtic divinity whom Arrian identifies

with Artemis may well have been really akin both to her and to the

Italian Diana. We know from other sources that the Celts revered a

woodland goddess of this type; thus Arduinna, goddess of the forest of

the Ardennes, was represented, like Artemis and Diana, with a bow and

quiver.[435] In any case the custom described by Arrian is good evidence

of a belief that the wild beasts belong to the goddess of the wilds, who

must be compensated for their destruction; and, taken with what he says

of the need of purifying the hounds after a successful chase, the Celtic

practice of crowning them at the annual festival of Artemis may have

been meant to purge them of the stain they had contracted by killing the

creatures of the goddess. The same explanation would naturally apply to

the same custom observed by the Italians at the festival of Diana.

[Sidenote: Cattle crowned to protect them from witchcraft.] But why, it

may be asked, should crowns or garlands cleanse dogs from the taint of

bloodshed? An answer to this question is indicated by the reason which

the South Slavonian peasant assigns for crowning the horns of his cows

with wreaths of flowers on St. George’s Day, the twenty-third of April.

He does it in order to guard the cattle against witchcraft; cows that

have no crowns are regarded as given over to the witches. In the evening

the chaplets are fastened to the door of the cattle-stall, and remain

there throughout the year. A herdsman who fails to crown his beasts is

scolded and sometimes beaten by his master.[436] The German and French

custom of crowning cattle on Midsummer Day[437] probably springs from

the same motive. For on Midsummer Eve, just as on Walpurgis Night,

witches are very busy holding their nocturnal assemblies and trying to

steal the milk and butter from the cows. To guard against them some

people at this season lay besoms crosswise before the doors of the

stalls. Others make fast the doors and stop up the chinks, lest the

witches should creep through them on their return from the revels. In

Swabia all the church bells used to be kept ringing from nine at night

till break of day on Midsummer morning to drive away the infernal rout

from honest folk’s houses. South Slavonian peasants are up betimes that

morning, gather the dew from the grass, and wash the cows with it; that

saves their milk from the hellish charms of the witches.[438]

[Sidenote: Similarly the crowning of hunting dogs may have been meant to

protect them against the angry spirits of the beasts they had killed.]

Now when we observe that garlands of flowers, like hawthorn and other

green boughs,[439] avail to ward off the unseen powers of mischief, we

may conjecture that the practice of crowning dogs at the festival of a

huntress goddess was intended to preserve the hounds from the angry and

dangerous spirits of the wild beasts which they had killed in the course

of the year. Fantastical as this explanation may sound to us, it is

perfectly in accordance with the ideas of the savage, who, as we shall

see later on, resorts to a multitude of curious expedients for disarming

the wrath of the animals whose life he has been obliged to take. Thus

conceived, the custom in question might still be termed a purification;

but its original purpose, like that of many other purificatory rites,

would be not so much to cleanse moral guilt, as to raise a physical

barrier against the assaults of malignant and mischievous spirits.[440]

[Sidenote: Conceived as the moon, Diana was also a goddess of crops and

of childbirth.] But Diana was not merely a patroness of wild beasts, a

mistress of woods and hills, of lonely glades and sounding rivers;

conceived as the moon, and especially, it would seem, as the yellow

harvest moon, she filled the farmer’s grange with goodly fruits, and

heard the prayers of women in travail.[441] In her sacred grove at Nemi,

as we have seen, she was especially worshipped as a goddess of

childbirth, who bestowed offspring on men and women.[442] Thus Diana,

like the Greek Artemis, with whom she was constantly identified, may be

described as a goddess of nature in general and of fertility in

particular.[443] We need not wonder, therefore, that in her sanctuary on

the Aventine she was represented by an image copied from the

many-breasted idol of the Ephesian Artemis, with all its crowded emblems

of exuberant fecundity.[444] Hence too we can understand why an ancient

Roman law, attributed to King Tullius Hostilius, prescribed that, when

incest had been committed, an expiatory sacrifice should be offered by

the pontiffs in the grove of Diana.[445] For we know that the crime of

incest is commonly supposed to cause a dearth;[446] hence it would be

meet that atonement for the offence should be made to the goddess of

fertility.

[Sidenote: As a goddess of fertility Diana had herself to be fertile,

and for that purpose needed a male partner.] Now on the principle that

the goddess of fertility must herself be fertile, it behoved Diana to

have a male partner. Her mate, if the testimony of Servius may be

trusted, was that Virbius who had his representative, or perhaps rather

his embodiment, in the King of the Wood at Nemi.[447] The aim of their

union would be to promote the fruitfulness of the earth, of animals, and

of mankind; and it might naturally be thought that this object would be

more surely attained if the sacred nuptials were celebrated every year,

the parts of the divine bride and bridegroom being played either by

their images or by living persons. No ancient writer mentions that this

was done in the grove at Nemi; but our knowledge of the Arician ritual

is so scanty that the want of information on this head can hardly count

as a fatal objection to the theory. That theory, in the absence of

direct evidence, must necessarily be based on the analogy of similar

customs practised elsewhere. Some modern examples of such customs, more

or less degenerate, were described in the last chapter. Here we shall

consider their ancient counterparts.

§ 2. The Marriage of the Gods

[Sidenote: Marriages of the gods in Babylonia and Assyria.] At Babylon

the imposing sanctuary of Bel rose like a pyramid above the city in a

series of eight towers or stories, planted one on the top of the other.

On the highest tower, reached by an ascent which wound about all the

rest, there stood a spacious temple, and in the temple a great bed,

magnificently draped and cushioned, with a golden table beside it. In

the temple no image was to be seen, and no human being passed the night

there, save a single woman, whom, according to the Chaldean priests, the

god chose from among all the women of Babylon. They said that the deity

himself came into the temple at night and slept in the great bed; and

the woman, as a consort of the god, might have no intercourse with

mortal man.[448] As Bel at Babylon was identified with Marduk, the chief

god of the city,[449] the woman who thus shared his bed was doubtless

one of the “wives of Marduk” mentioned in the code of Hammurabi.[450] At

Calah, which was for some time the capital of Assyria before it was

displaced by Nineveh,[451] the marriage of the god Nabu appears to have

been annually celebrated on the third of the month Iyyar or Airu, which

corresponded to May. For on that day his bed was consecrated in the

city, and the god entered his bedchamber, to return to his place on the

following day. The ceremonies attending the consecration of the couch

are minutely described in a liturgical text. After the appropriate

offerings had been presented, the officiating priestess purified the

feet of the divine image with a sprig of reed and a vessel of oil,

approached the bed thrice, kissed the feet of the image, then retired

and sat down. After that she burned cedar wood dipped in wine, set

before the image the heart of a sheep wrapped in a cloth, and offered

libations. Aromatic woods were consecrated and burnt, more libations and

offerings were made, tables were spread for various divinities, and the

ceremony ended with a prayer for the King. The god also went in

procession to a grove, riding in a chariot beside his charioteer.[452]

[Sidenote: Marriage of the god Ammon to the Queen of Egypt.] At Thebes

in Egypt a woman slept in the temple of Ammon as the consort of the god,

and, like the human wife of Bel at Babylon, she was said to have no

commerce with a man.[453] In Egyptian texts she is often mentioned as

“the divine consort,” and usually she was no less a personage than the

Queen of Egypt herself. For, according to the Egyptians, their monarchs

were actually begotten by the god Ammon, who assumed for the time being

the form of the reigning king, and in that disguise had intercourse with

the queen. The divine procreation is carved and painted in great detail

on the walls of two of the oldest temples in Egypt, those of Deir el

Bahari and Luxor; and the inscriptions attached to the paintings leave

no doubt as to the meaning of the scenes. The pictures at Deir el

Bahari, which represent the begetting and birth of Queen Hatshopsitou,

are the more ancient, and have been reproduced with but little change at

Luxor, where they represent the begetting and birth of King Amenophis

III. The nativity is depicted in about fifteen scenes, which may be

grouped in three acts: first, the carnal union of the god with the

queen; second, the birth; and third, the recognition of the infant by

the gods. The marriage of Ammon with the queen is announced by a

prologue in heaven; Ammon summons his assessors, the gods of Heliopolis,

reveals to them the future birth of a new Pharaoh, a royal princess, and

requests them to make ready the fluid of life and of strength, of which

they are masters. Then the god is seen approaching the queen’s

bedchamber; in front of him marches Thoth, with a roll of papyrus in his

hand, who, to prevent mistakes, recites the official names of the queen,

the spouse of the reigning king (Thothmes I. at Deir el Bahari, Thothmes

IV. at Luxor), the fairest of women. Then Thoth withdraws behind Ammon,

lifting his arm behind the god in order to renew his vital fluid at this

critical moment. Next, according to the inscription, the mystery of

incarnation takes place. Ammon lays aside his godhead and becomes flesh

in the likeness of the king, the human spouse of the queen. The

consummation of the divine union follows immediately. On a bed of state

the god and the queen appear seated opposite each other, with their legs

crossed. The queen receives from her husband the symbols of life and

strength, while two goddesses, Neit and Selkit, the patronesses of

matrimony, support the feet of the couple and guard them from harm. The

text which encloses the scene sets forth clearly the reality of this

mystic union of the human with the divine. “Thus saith Ammon-Ra, king of

the gods, lord of Karnak, he who rules over Thebes, when he took the

form of this male, the King of Upper and Nether Egypt, Thothmes I. (or

Thothmes IV.), giver of life. He found the queen then when she lay in

the glory of her palace. She awoke at the fragrance of the god, and

marvelled at it. Straightway his Majesty went towards her, took

possession of her, placed his heart in her, and shewed himself to her in

his divine form. And upon his coming she was uplifted at the sight of

his beauty, the love of the god ran through all her limbs, and the smell

of the god and his breath were full of the perfumes of Pounit. And thus

saith the royal spouse, the royal mother Ahmasi (or Moutemouaa), in

presence of the majesty of this glorious god, Ammon, lord of Karnak,

lord of Thebes, ‘Twice great are thy souls! It is noble to behold thy

countenance when thou joinest thyself to my majesty in all grace! Thy

dew impregnates all my limbs.’ Then, when the majesty of the god had

accomplished all his desire with her, Ammon, the lord of the two lands,

said to her: ‘_She who is joined to Ammon, the first of the nobles_,

verily, such shall be the name of the daughter who shall open thy womb,

since such is the course of the words that came forth from thy mouth.

She shall reign in righteousness in all the earth, for my soul is hers,

my heart is hers, my will is hers, my crown is hers, truly, that she may

rule over the two lands, that she may guide the souls of all living.’”

[Sidenote: Nativity of the divine Egyptian kings represented on the

monuments.] After the begetting of the divine child—for we must remember

that the kings and queens of Egypt were regarded as divinities in their

lifetime—another series of scenes represents the fashioning of its body

and its birth. The god Khnoumou, who in the beginning of time moulded

gods and men on his potter’s wheel, is seen seated at his wheel

modelling the future king or queen and their doubles—those spiritual

duplicates or external souls which were believed to hover invisible

about both men and gods all through life. In front of Khnoumou kneels

Hiqit, the frog-headed goddess, “the great magician”; she is holding out

to the newly-created figures the symbol of life, the _crux ansata_ ♀, in

order that they may breathe and live. Another scene represents the

birth. At Deir el Bahari the queen has already been delivered, and is

presenting her daughter to several goddesses, who have acted the part of

midwives. At Luxor the double of the royal infant is born first; the

goddesses who serve as nurses have him in their arms, and the midwives

are preparing to receive the real child. Behind the queen are the

goddesses who watch over childbirth, led by Isis and Nephthys; and all

around the spirits of the East, the West, the North, and the South are

presenting the symbol of life or uttering acclamations. In a corner the

grotesque god Bes and the female hippopotamus Api keep off all evil

influence and every malignant spirit.

[Sidenote: These representations probably copied from the life.] We

shall probably not err in assuming, with some eminent authorities, that

the ceremonies of the nativity of the Pharaohs, thus emblazoned on the

walls of Egyptian temples, were copied from the life; in other words,

that the carved and painted scenes represent a real drama, which was

acted by masked men and women whenever a queen of Egypt was brought to

bed. “Here, as everywhere else in Egypt,” says Professor Maspero,

“sculptor and painter did nothing but faithfully imitate reality. Theory

required that the assimilation of the kings to the gods should be

complete, so that every act of the royal life was, as it were, a tracing

of the corresponding act of the divine life. From the moment that the

king was Ammon, he wore the costume and badges of Ammon—the tall hat

with the long plumes, the cross of life, the greyhound-headed

sceptre—and thus arrayed he presented himself in the queen’s bedchamber

to consummate the marriage. The assistants also assumed the costume and

appearance of the divinities whom they incarnated; the men put on masks

of jackals, hawks, and crocodiles, while the women donned masks of cows

or frogs, according as they played the parts of Anubis, Khnoumou,

Sovkou, Hathor, or Hiqit; and I am disposed to believe that the doubles

of the new-born child were represented by as many puppets as were

required by the ceremonies. Some of the rites were complicated, and must

have tired excessively the mother and child who underwent them; but they

are nothing to those that have been observed in similar circumstances in

other lands. In general, we are bound to hold that all the pictures

traced on the walls of the temples, in which the person of the king is

concerned, correspond to a real action in which disguised personages

played the part of gods.”[454]

[Sidenote: Human wives of Ammon in the decline of Egypt.] In the decline

of Egypt from the eleventh century onward, the wives of Ammon at Thebes

were called on to play a conspicuous part in the government of the

country. The strong grip of the Pharaohs was relaxed and under their

feeble successors the empire crumbled away into a number of petty

independent states. In this dissolution of the central authority the

crafty high priests of Ammon at Thebes contrived to usurp regal powers

and to reign far and wide in the name of the deity, veiling their

rescripts under the guise of oracles of the god, who, with the help of a

little jugglery, complacently signified his assent to their wishes by

nodding his head or even by speech. But curiously enough under this

pretended theocracy the nominal ruler was not the priest himself, but

his wife, the earthly consort of Ammon. Thus Thebes became for a time a

ghostly principality governed ostensibly by a dynasty of female popes.

Their office was hereditary, passing by rights from mother to daughter.

But probably the entail was often broken by the policy or ambition of

the men who stood behind the scenes and worked the religious puppet-show

by hidden wires to the awe and astonishment of the gaping vulgar.

Certainly we know that on one occasion King Psammetichus First foisted

his own daughter into the Holy See by dedicating her to Ammon under a

hypocritical profession of gratitude for favours bestowed on him by the

deity. And the female pope had to submit to the dictation with the best

grace she could assume, protesting her affection for the adopted

daughter who had ousted her own daughter from the throne.[455]

[Sidenote: Human concubines of Ammon in Roman times.] At a later period,

when Egypt lay under the heel of Rome, the character of “the divine

consort” of Ammon at Thebes had greatly changed. For at the beginning of

our era the custom was to appoint a young and beautiful girl, the scion

of one of the noblest houses, to serve Ammon as his concubine. The

Greeks called these maidens Pallades, apparently after their own virgin

goddess Pallas; but the conduct of the girls was by no means maidenly,

for they led the loosest of lives till puberty. Then they were mourned

over and given in marriage.[456] Their graves were shown near

Thebes.[457] The reason why their services ended at puberty may have

been that as concubines of the god they might not bear children to

mortal fathers; hence it was deemed prudent to terminate their relations

with the divinity before they were of an age to become mothers. It was

an Egyptian doctrine that a mortal woman could conceive by a god, but

that a goddess could not conceive by a mortal man.[458] The certainty of

maternity and the uncertainty of paternity suggest an obvious and

probably sufficient ground for this theological distinction.

[Sidenote: Apollo and his prophetess at Patara.] Apollo was said to

spend the winter months at Patara in Lycia and the summer months in the

island of Delos, and accordingly he gave oracles for one half of the

year in the one place, and for the other half in the other.[459] So long

as he tarried at Patara, his prophetess was shut up with him in the

temple every night.[460] At Ephesus there was a college [Sidenote: The

Essenes of Artemis at Ephesus.] of sacred men called Essenes or King

Bees who held office for a year, during which they had to observe strict

chastity and other rules of ceremonial purity.[461] How many of them

there were at a time we do not know, but there must have been several,

for in Ephesian inscriptions they are regularly referred to in the

plural. They cannot have been bound to lifelong celibacy, for in one of

the inscriptions an Essen mentions his wife.[462] Possibly they were

deemed the annual husbands of Artemis, the great many-breasted goddess

of fertility at Ephesus, whose association with the bee is vouched for

by the figures of bees which appear commonly both on her statues and on

the coins of Ephesus.[463] If this conjecture is right, the King Bees

and their bee-goddess Artemis at Ephesus would be closely parallel to

the King of the Wood and his woodland-goddess Diana at Nemi, as these

latter are interpreted by me. The rule of chastity imposed on the King

Bees during their year of office would be easily explicable on this

hypothesis. As the temporary husbands of the goddess they would be

expected for the time being to have no intercourse with mortal women,

just as the human wives of Bel and Ammon were supposed to have no

commerce with mortal men.

[Sidenote: Marriage of Dionysus to the Queen at Athens.] At Athens the

god of the vine, Dionysus, was annually married to the Queen, and it

appears that the consummation of the divine union, as well as the

espousals, was enacted at the ceremony; but whether the part of the god

was played by a man or an image we do not know. Attic law required that

the Queen should be a burgess and should never have known any man but

her husband. She had to offer certain secret sacrifices on behalf of the

state, and was permitted to see what no foreign woman might ever behold,

and to enter where no other Athenian might set foot. She was assisted in

the discharge of her solemn functions by fourteen sacred women, one for

each of the altars of Dionysus. The old Dionysiac festival was held on

the twelfth day of the month Anthesterion, corresponding roughly to our

February, at the ancient sanctuary of Dionysus in the Marshes, which was

never opened throughout the year save on that one day. At this festival

the Queen exacted an oath of purity and chastity from the fourteen

sacred women at the altar. Possibly her marriage was celebrated on the

same day, though of that we have no positive evidence, and we learn from

Aristotle that the ceremony took place, not at the sanctuary in the

marshes, but in the old official residence of the King, known as the

Cattle-stall, which stood near the Prytaneum or Town-hall on the

north-eastern slope of the Acropolis.[464] But whatever the date of the

wedding, its object can hardly have been any other than that of ensuring

the fertility of the vines and other fruit-trees, of which Dionysus was

the god. Thus both in form and in meaning the ceremony would answer to

the nuptials of the King and Queen of May. Again, the story, dear to

poets and artists, of the forsaken and sleeping Ariadne, waked and

wedded by Dionysus, resembles so closely the little drama acted by

French peasants of the Alps on May Day,[465] that, considering the

character of Dionysus as a god of vegetation, we can hardly help

regarding it as the reflection of a spring ceremony like the French one.

In point of fact the [Sidenote: Dionysus and Ariadne.] marriage of

Dionysus and Ariadne was believed by Preller to have been acted every

spring in Crete.[466] His evidence, indeed, is inconclusive, but the

view itself is probable. If I am right in comparing the two, the chief

difference between the French and the Greek ceremonies appears to have

been that in the former the sleeper was a forsaken bridegroom, in the

latter a forsaken bride; and the group of stars in the sky, in which

fancy saw Ariadne’s wedding crown,[467] may have been only a translation

to heaven of the garland worn by the Greek girl who played the Queen of

May.

[Sidenote: Marriage of Zeus with Demeter at Eleusis.] If at Athens, and

probably elsewhere, the vine-god was married to a queen in order that

the vines might be loaded with clusters of grapes, there is reason to

think that a marriage of a different kind, intended to make the fields

wave with yellow corn, was annually celebrated not many miles off,

beyond the low hills that bound the plain of Athens on the west. In the

great mysteries solemnised at Eleusis in the month of September the

union of the sky-god Zeus with the corn-goddess Demeter appears to have

been represented by the union of the hierophant with the priestess of

Demeter, who acted the parts of god and goddess. But their intercourse

was only dramatic or symbolical, for the hierophant had temporarily

deprived himself of his virility by an application of hemlock. The

torches having been extinguished, the pair descended into a murky place,

while the throng of worshippers awaited in anxious suspense the result

of the mystic congress, on which they believed their own salvation to

depend. After a time the hierophant reappeared, and in a blaze of light

silently exhibited to the assembly a reaped ear of corn, the fruit of

the divine marriage. Then in a loud voice he proclaimed, “Queen Brimo

has brought forth a sacred boy Brimos,” by which he meant, “The Mighty

One has brought forth the Mighty.” The corn-mother in fact had given

birth to her child, the corn, and her travail-pangs were enacted in the

sacred drama.[468] This revelation of the reaped corn appears to have

been the crowning act of the mysteries. Thus through the glamour shed

round these rites by the poetry and philosophy of later ages there still

looms, like a distant landscape through a sunlit haze, a simple rustic

festival designed to cover the wide Eleusinian plain with a plenteous

harvest by wedding the goddess of the corn to the sky-god, who

fertilised the bare earth with genial showers.

[Sidenote: Marriage of Zeus and Hera at Plataea.] But Zeus was not

always the sky-god, nor did he always marry the corn-goddess. If in

antiquity a traveller, quitting Eleusis and passing through miles of

olive-groves and corn-fields, had climbed the pine-clad mountains of

Cithaeron and descended through the forest on their northern slope to

Plataea, he might have chanced to find the people of that little

Boeotian town celebrating a different marriage of the great god to a

different goddess. The ceremony is described by a Greek antiquary whose

note-book has fortunately preserved for us not a few rural customs of

ancient Greece, of which the knowledge would otherwise have perished.

Every few years the people of Plataea held a festival which they called

the Little Daedala. On the day of the festival they went out into an

ancient oak forest, the trees of which were of gigantic girth. There

they set some boiled meat on the ground, and watched the birds that

gathered round it. When a raven was observed to carry off a piece of the

meat and perch on an oak, the people followed it and cut down the tree.

With the wood of the tree they made an image, dressed it as a bride, and

placed it on a bullock-cart with a bridesmaid beside it. It seems then

to have been drawn to the banks of the river Asopus and back to the

town, attended by a piping and dancing crowd. After the festival the

image was put away and kept till the celebration of the Great Daedala,

which fell only once in sixty years, and was held by all the people of

Boeotia. On this occasion all the images, fourteen in number, that had

accumulated from the celebrations of the Little Daedala were dragged on

wains in procession to the river Asopus, and then to the top of Mount

Cithaeron. There an altar had been constructed of square blocks of wood

fitted together, with brushwood heaped over it. Animals were sacrificed

by being burned on the altar, and the altar itself, together with the

images, was consumed by the flames. The blaze, we are told, rose to a

prodigious height and was seen for many miles. To explain the origin of

the festival a story ran that once upon a time Hera had quarrelled with

Zeus and left him in high dudgeon. To lure her back Zeus gave out that

he was about to marry the nymph Plataea, daughter of the river Asopus.

He had a fine oak cut down, shaped and dressed as a bride, and conveyed

on a bullock-cart. Transported with rage and jealousy, Hera flew to the

cart, and tearing off the veil of the pretended bride, discovered the

deceit that had been practised on her. Her rage now turned to laughter,

and she became reconciled to her husband Zeus.[469]

[Sidenote: Resemblance of the Plataean ceremony to the spring and

midsummer festivals of modern Europe.] The resemblance of this festival

to some of the European spring and midsummer festivals is tolerably

close. We have seen that in Russia at Whitsuntide the villagers go out

into the wood, fell a birch-tree, dress it in woman’s clothes, and bring

it back to the village with dance and song. On the third day it is

thrown into the water.[470] Again, we have seen that in Bohemia on

Midsummer Eve the village lads fell a tall fir or pine-tree in the wood

and set it up on a height, where it is adorned with garlands, nosegays,

and ribbons, and afterwards burnt.[471] The reason for burning the tree

will appear afterwards; the custom itself is not uncommon in modern

Europe. In some parts of the Pyrenees a tall and slender tree is cut

down on May Day and kept till Midsummer Eve. It is then rolled to the

top of a hill, set up, and burned.[472] In Angoulême on St. Peter’s Day,

the twenty-ninth of June, a tall leafy poplar is set up in the

market-place and burned.[473] Near Launceston in Cornwall there is a

large tumulus known as Whiteborough, with a fosse round it. On this

tumulus “there was formerly a great bonfire on Midsummer Eve; a large

summer pole was fixed in the centre, round which the fuel was heaped up.

It had a large bush on the top of it. Round this were parties of

wrestlers contending for small prizes.” The rustics believed that giants

were buried in such mounds, and nothing would tempt them to disturb

their bones.[474] In Dublin on May-morning boys used to go out and cut a

May-bush, bring it back to town, and then burn it.[475]

[Sidenote: All such ceremonies were originally magical rites intended to

bring about the effects which they dramatically represented.] Probably

the Boeotian festival belonged to the same class of rites. It

represented the marriage of the powers of vegetation—the union of the

oak-god with the oak-goddess[476]—in spring or midsummer, just as the

same event is represented in modern Europe by a King and Queen or a Lord

and Lady of the May. In the Boeotian, as in the Russian, ceremony the

tree dressed as a woman stands for the English May-pole and May-queen in

one. All such ceremonies, it must be remembered, are not, or at least

were not originally, mere spectacular or dramatic exhibitions. They are

magical rites designed to produce the effect which they dramatically set

forth. If the revival of vegetation in spring is mimicked by the

awakening of a sleeper, the mimicry is intended actually to quicken the

growth of leaves and blossoms; if the marriage of the powers of

vegetation is simulated by a King and Queen of May, the idea is that the

powers thus personated will really be rendered more productive by the

ceremony. In short, all these spring and midsummer festivals fall under

the head of homoeopathic or imitative magic. The thing which people wish

to bring about they represent dramatically, and the very representation

is believed to effect, or at least to contribute to, the production of

the desired result. In the case of the Daedala the story of Hera’s

quarrel with Zeus and her sullen retirement may perhaps without

straining be interpreted as a mythical expression for a bad season and

the failure of the crops. The same disastrous effects were attributed to

the anger and seclusion of Demeter after the loss of her daughter

Proserpine.[477] Now the institution of a festival is often explained by

a mythical story, which relates how upon a particular occasion those

very calamities occurred which it is the real object of the festival to

avert; so that if we know the myth told to account for the historical

origin of the festival, we can often infer from it the real intention

with which the festival was celebrated. If, therefore, the origin of the

Daedala was explained by a story of a failure of crops and consequent

famine, we may infer that the real object of the festival was to prevent

the occurrence of such disasters; and, if I am right in my

interpretation of the festival, the object was supposed to be effected

by dramatically representing the marriage of the divinities most

concerned with the production of trees and plants. The marriage of Zeus

and Hera was acted at annual festivals in various parts of Greece,[478]

and it is at least a fair conjecture that the nature and intention of

these ceremonies were such as I have assigned to the Plataean festival

of the Daedala; in other words, that Zeus and Hera at these festivals

were the Greek equivalents of the Lord and Lady of the May. Homer’s

glowing picture of Zeus and Hera couched on fresh hyacinths and

crocuses,[479] like Milton’s description of the dalliance of Zephyr with

Aurora, “as he met her once a-Maying,” was perhaps painted from the

life.

[Sidenote: The god Frey and his human wife in Sweden.] The sacred

marriage of Zeus and Hera had, as was natural, its counterpart among the

northern kinsfolk of the Greeks. In Sweden every year a life-size image

of Frey, the god of fertility, both animal and vegetable, was drawn

about the country in a waggon attended by a beautiful girl who was

called the god’s wife. She acted also as his priestess in his great

temple at Upsala. Wherever the waggon came with the image of the god and

his blooming young bride, the people crowded to meet them and offered

sacrifices for a fruitful year. Once on a time a Norwegian exile named

Gunnar Helming gave himself out to be Frey in person, and rode about on

the sacred waggon dressed up in the god’s clothes. Everywhere the simple

folk welcomed him as the deity, and observed with wonder and delight

that a god walked about among men and ate and drank just like other

people. And when the months went by, and the god’s fair young wife was

seen to be with child, their joy waxed greatly, for they thought,

“Surely this is an omen of a fruitful season.” It happened that the

weather was then so mild, and the promise of a plenteous harvest so

fair, that no man ever remembered such a year before. But one night the

god departed in haste, with his wife and all the gold and silver and

fine raiment which he had got together; and though the Swedes made after

him, they could not catch him. He was over the hills and far away in

Norway.[480] Similar ceremonies appear to have been observed by the

[Sidenote: Similar customs in Gaul.] peasantry of Gaul in antiquity; for

Gregory of Tours, writing in the sixth century of our era, says that at

Autun the people used to carry about an image of a goddess in a waggon

drawn by oxen. The intention of the ceremony was to ensure the safety of

the crops and vines, and the rustics danced and sang in front of the

image.[481] The old historian identifies the goddess with Cybele, the

Great Mother goddess of Phrygia, and the identification would seem to be

correct. For we learn from another source that men wrought up to a pitch

of frenzy by the shrill music of flutes and the clash of cymbals,

sacrificed their virility to the goddess, dashing the severed portions

of themselves against her image.[482] Now this religious castration was

a marked feature of the Phrygian worship of Cybele, but it is alien to

Western modes of thought, although it still finds favour with a section

of the barbarous, fanatical, semi-Oriental peasantry of Russia.[483] But

whether of native or of Eastern origin the rites of the goddess of Autun

closely conformed to those of the great Phrygian goddess and appear to

have been, like them, a perverted form of the Sacred Marriage, which was

designed to fertilise the earth, and in which eunuchs, strange as it may

seem, personated the lovers of the goddess.[484]

[Sidenote: The custom of marrying gods to images or to living persons is

found also among uncivilised peoples.] Thus the custom of marrying gods

either to images or to human beings was widespread among the nations of

antiquity. The ideas on which such a custom is based are too crude to

allow us to doubt that the civilised Babylonians, Egyptians, and Greeks

inherited it from their barbarous or savage forefathers. This

presumption is strengthened when we find rites of a similar kind in

vogue among the lower races. Thus, for example, we are told that once

upon a [Sidenote: Custom of the Wotyaks.] time the Wotyaks of the Malmyz

district in Russia were distressed by a series of bad harvests. They did

not know what to do, but at last concluded that their powerful but

mischievous god Keremet must be angry at being unmarried. So a

deputation of elders visited the Wotyaks of Cura and came to an

understanding with them on the subject. Then they returned home, laid in

a large stock of brandy, and having made ready a gaily decked waggon and

horses, they drove in procession with bells ringing, as they do when

they are fetching home a bride, to the sacred grove at Cura. There they

ate and drank merrily all night, and next morning they cut a square

piece of turf in the grove and took it home with them. After this,

though it fared well with the people of Malmyz, it fared ill with the

people of Cura; for in Malmyz the bread was good, but in Cura it was

bad. Hence the men of Cura who had consented to the marriage were blamed

and roughly handled by their indignant fellow-villagers. “What they

meant by this marriage ceremony,” says the writer who reports it, “it is

not easy to imagine. Perhaps, as Bechterew thinks, they meant to marry

Keremet to the kindly and fruitful Mukylćin, the Earth-wife, in order

that she might influence him for good.”[485] This carrying of turf, like

a bride, in a waggon from a sacred grove resembles the Plataean custom

of carting an oak log as a bride from an ancient oak forest; and we have

seen ground for thinking that the Plataean ceremony, like its Wotyak

counterpart, was intended as a charm to secure fertility. When wells are

dug in Bengal, a wooden image of a god is made and married to the

goddess of water.[486]

[Sidenote: Custom of the Peruvian Indians.] Often the bride destined for

the god is not a log or a clod, but a living woman of flesh and blood.

The Indians of a village in Peru have been known to marry a beautiful

girl, about fourteen years of age, to a stone shaped like a human being,

which they regarded as a god (_huaca_). All the villagers took part in

the marriage ceremony, which lasted three days, and was attended with

much revelry. The girl thereafter remained a virgin and sacrificed to

the idol for the people. They shewed her the utmost reverence and deemed

her divine.[487] The Blackfoot Indians of North [Sidenote: Marriage of a

woman to the Sun among the Blackfoot Indians.] America used to worship

the Sun as their chief god, and they held a festival every year in his

honour. Four days before the new moon of August the tribe halted on its

march, and all hunting was suspended. Bodies of mounted men were on duty

day and night to carry out the orders of the high priest of the Sun. He

enjoined the people to fast and to take vapour baths during the four

days before the new moon. Moreover, with the help of his council, he

chose the Vestal who was to represent the Moon and to be married to the

Sun at the festival. She might be either a virgin or a woman who had had

but one husband. Any girl or woman found to have discharged the sacred

duties without fulfilling the prescribed conditions was put to death. On

the third day of preparation, after the last purification had been

observed, they built a round temple of the Sun. Posts were driven into

the ground in a circle; these were connected with cross-pieces, and the

whole was covered with leaves. In the middle stood the sacred pole,

supporting the roof. A bundle of many small branches of sacred wood,

wrapped in a splendid buffalo robe, crowned the summit of the temple.

The entrance was on the east, and within the sanctuary stood an altar on

which rested the head of a buffalo. Beside the altar was the place

reserved for the Vestal. Here, on a bed prepared for her, she slept “the

sleep of war,” as it was called. Her other duties consisted in

maintaining a sacred fire of fragrant herbs, in presenting a lighted

pipe to her husband the Sun, and in telling the high priest the dream

she dreamed during “the sleep of war.” On learning it the priest had it

proclaimed to the whole nation to the beat of drum.[488] Every year

about the middle of March, when the season for fishing with the drag-net

began, the [Sidenote: Marriage of girls to fishing nets among the Hurons

and Algonquins.] Algonquins and Hurons married their nets to two young

girls, aged six or seven. At the wedding feast the net was placed

between the two maidens, and was exhorted to take courage and catch many

fish. The reason for choosing the brides so young was to make sure that

they were virgins. The origin of the custom is said to have been this.

One year, when the fishing season came round, the Algonquins cast their

nets as usual, but took nothing. Surprised at their want of success,

they did not know what to make of it, till the soul or genius (_oki_) of

the net appeared to them in the likeness of a tall well-built man, who

said to them in a great passion, “I have lost my wife and I cannot find

one who has known no other man but me; that is why you do not succeed,

and why you never will succeed till you give me satisfaction on this

head.” So the Algonquins held a council and resolved to appease the

spirit of the net by marrying him to two such very young girls that he

could have no ground of complaint on that score for the future. They did

so, and the fishing turned out all that could be wished. The thing got

wind among their neighbours the Hurons, and they adopted the custom. A

share of the catch was always given to the families of the two girls who

acted as brides of the net for the year.[489]

[Sidenote: Sacred Marriage of the Sun-god and Earth-goddess among the

Oraons.] The Oraons of Bengal worship the Earth as a goddess, and

annually celebrate her marriage with the Sun-god Dharmē at the time when

the _sāl_ tree is in blossom. The ceremony is as follows. All bathe,

then the men repair to the sacred grove (_sarnā_), while the women

assemble at the house of the village priest. After sacrificing some

fowls to the Sun-god and the demon of the grove, the men eat and drink.

“The priest is then carried back to the village on the shoulders of a

strong man. Near the village the women meet the men and wash their feet.

With beating of drums and singing, dancing, and jumping, all proceed to

the priest’s house, which has been decorated with leaves and flowers.

Then the usual form of marriage is performed between the priest and his

wife, symbolizing the supposed union between Sun and Earth. After the

ceremony all eat and drink and make merry; they dance and sing obscene

songs, and finally indulge in the vilest orgies. The object is to move

the mother earth to become fruitful.”[490] Thus the Sacred Marriage of

the Sun and Earth, personated by the priest and his wife, is celebrated

as a charm to ensure the fertility of the ground; and for the same

purpose, on the principle of homoeopathic magic, the people indulge in a

licentious orgy. Among the Sulka of New Britain, at the village of

Kolvagat, a certain man has charge of two stone figures which are called

respectively “Our grandfather” (_ngur es_) and “Our grandmother” (_ngur

pei_). They are said to be kept in a house built specially for the

purpose. Fruits of the field are offered to them and left beside them to

rot. When their guardian puts the two figures with their faces turned

towards each other, the plantations are believed to flourish; but when

he sets them back to back, there is dearth and the people suffer from

eruptions on the skin.[491] This turning of the two images face to face

may be regarded as a simple form of Sacred Marriage between the two

divine powers represented by them, who are clearly supposed to control

the fertility of the plantations.

[Sidenote: Marriage of women to gods in India and Africa.] At the

village of Bas Doda, in the Gurgaon district of North-Western India, a

fair is held on the twenty-sixth of the month Chait and the two

following days. We are told that formerly girls of the Dhinwar class

used to be married to the god at these festivals, and that they always

died soon afterwards. Of late years the practice is said to have been

discontinued.[492] In Behar during the month of Sawan (August) crowds of

women, calling themselves Nagin or “wives of the snake,” go about for

two and a half days begging; during this time they may neither sleep

under a roof nor eat salt. Half the proceeds of their begging is given

to Brahmans, and the other half spent in salt and sweet-meats, which are

eaten by all the villagers.[493] Amongst the Ewe-speaking peoples of the

Slave Coast in West Africa human wives of gods are very common. In

Dahomey they swarm, and it has even been estimated that every fourth

woman is devoted to the service of some deity. The chief business of

these female votaries is prostitution. In every town there is at least

one seminary where the handsomest girls, between ten and twelve years of

age, are trained. They stay for three years, learning the chants and

dances peculiar to the worship of the gods, and prostituting themselves

to the priests and the inmates of the male seminaries. At the end of

their noviciate they become public harlots. But no disgrace attaches to

their profession, for it is believed that they are married to the god,

and that their excesses are caused and directed by him. Strictly

speaking, they should confine their favours to the male worshippers at

the temple, but in practice they bestow them indiscriminately. Children

born of such unions belong to the deity. As the wives of a god, these

sacred women may not marry. But they are not bound to the service of the

divinity for life. Some only bear his name and sacrifice to him on their

birthdays.[494] Amongst these polygamous West African gods the sacred

python seems to be particularly associated with the fertility of the

earth; for he is invoked in excessively wet, dry, and barren seasons,

and the time of year when young girls are sought out to be his brides is

when the millet is beginning to sprout.[495]

[Sidenote: Women married to water-gods.] It deserves to be remarked that

the supernatural being to whom women are married is often a god or

spirit of water. Thus Mukasa, the god of the Victoria Nyanza lake, who

was propitiated by the Baganda every time they undertook a long voyage,

had virgins provided for him to serve as his wives. Like the Vestals

they were bound to chastity, but unlike the Vestals they seem to have

been often unfaithful. The custom lasted until Mwanga was converted to

Christianity.[496] The Akikuyu of British East Africa worship the snake

of a certain river, and at intervals of several years they marry the

snake-god to women, but especially to young girls. For this purpose huts

are built by order of the medicine-men, who there consummate the sacred

marriage with the credulous female devotees. If the girls do not repair

to the huts of their own accord in sufficient numbers, they are seized

and dragged thither to the embraces of the deity. The offspring of these

mystic unions appears to be fathered on God (_Ngai_); certainly there

are children among the Akikuyu who pass for children of God.[497] In

Kengtung, one of the principal Shan states of Upper Burma, the spirit of

the Nawng Tung lake is regarded as very powerful, and is propitiated

with offerings in the eighth month (about July) of each year. A

remarkable feature of the worship of this spirit consists in the

dedication to him of four virgins in marriage. Custom requires that this

should be done once in every three years. It was actually done by the

late king or chief (Sawbwa) in 1893, but down to 1901 the rite had not

been performed by his successor. The following are the chief features of

the ceremony. The virgins who are to wed the spirit of the lake must be

of pure Hkön race. Orders are sent out for all the Hkön of the valley to

attend. From the unmarried women of suitable age, ten are selected.

These are as beautiful as may be, and must be without spot or blemish.

Four maidens out of the ten are chosen by lot, and carefully dressed in

new garments. A festival is held, usually at the house of the Chief

Minister, where the girls sit on a raised platform. Four old women,

thought to be possessed by spirits, enter and remain as long as the

feast lasts. During this time anything they may want, such as food,

betel, or cheroots, is handed to them by the four girls. Apparently the

old women pass for representatives of the spirit, and hence they are

waited on by the maidens destined to be his wives. Dotage, blindness, or

any great infirmity of age seems to be accounted possession by a spirit

for the purposes of this function. When the feast is over, the maidens

are formally presented to the spirit, along with the various sacrifices

and offerings. They are next taken to the chief’s residence, where

strings are tied round their wrists by the ministers and elders to guard

them against ill-luck. Usually they sleep a night or two at the palace,

after which they may return to their homes. There seems to be no

objection to their marrying afterwards. If nothing happens to any of the

four, it is believed that the spirit of the lake loves them but little;

but if one of them dies soon after the ceremony, it shews that she has

been accepted by him. The spirit is propitiated with the sacrifice of

pigs, fowls, and sometimes a buffalo.[498]

[Sidenote: Egyptian custom of drowning a girl as a sacrifice to the

Nile.] In this last custom the death of the woman is regarded as a sign

that the god has taken her to himself. Sometimes, apparently, it has not

been left to the discretion of the divine bridegroom to take or leave

his human bride; she was made over to him once for all in death. When

the Arabs conquered Egypt they learned that at the annual rise of the

Nile the Egyptians were wont to deck a young virgin in gay apparel and

throw her into the river as a sacrifice, in order to obtain a plentiful

inundation. The Arab general abolished the barbarous custom.[499] It is

said that under the Tang dynasty the Chinese used to marry a young girl

to the Yellow River once a year by drowning her in the water. For this

purpose the witches chose the fairest damsel they could find and

themselves superintended the fatal marriage. At last the local mandarin,

a man of sense and humanity, forbade the custom. But the witches

disregarded his edicts and made their preparations for the usual murder.

So when the day was come, the magistrate appeared on the scene with his

soldiers and had all the witches bound and thrown into the river to

drown, telling them that no doubt the god would be able to choose his

bride for himself from among them.[500] The princes of Koepang, a state

in the East Indian island of Timor, deemed themselves descended from

crocodiles; and on [Sidenote: Girls sacrificed as brides of crocodiles.]

the coronation of a new prince a solemn sacrifice was made to the

crocodiles in presence of the people. The offerings consisted of a pig

with red bristles and a young girl prettily dressed, perfumed, and

decked with flowers. She was taken down to the bank of the river and set

on a sacred stone in a cave. Then one of the prince’s guards summoned

the crocodiles. Soon one of the beasts appeared and dragged the girl

down into the water. The people thought that he married her, and that if

he did not find her a maid he would bring her back.[501] On festal

occasions in the same state a new-born girl was sometimes dedicated to a

crocodile, and then, with certain ceremonies of consecration, brought up

to be married to a priest.[502] It is said that once, when the

inhabitants of Cayeli in Buru—another East Indian island—were threatened

with destruction by a swarm of crocodiles, they ascribed the misfortune

to a passion which the prince of the crocodiles had conceived for a

certain girl. Accordingly, they compelled the damsel’s father to dress

her in bridal array and deliver her over to the clutches of her

crocodile lover.[503]

[Sidenote: Virgin sacrificed as a bride to a jinnee of the sea in the

Maldive Islands.] A usage of the same sort is reported to have prevailed

in the Maldive Islands before the conversion of the inhabitants to

Islam. The famous Arab traveller Ibn Batutah has described the custom

and the manner in which it came to an end. He was assured by several

trustworthy natives, whose names he gives, that when the people of the

islands were idolaters there appeared to them every month an evil spirit

among the jinn, who came from across the sea in the likeness of a ship

full of burning lamps. The wont of the inhabitants, as soon as they

perceived him, was to take a young virgin, and, having adorned her, to

lead her to a heathen temple that stood on the shore, with a window

looking out to sea. There they left the damsel for the night, and when

they came back in the morning they found her a maid no more, and dead.

Every month they drew lots, and he upon whom the lot fell gave up his

daughter to the jinnee of the sea. In time there came to them a Berber

named Abu ’lberecat, who knew the Coran by heart. He lodged in the house

of an old woman of the isle of Mahal. One day, visiting his hostess, he

found that she had gathered her family about her, and that the women

were weeping as if there were a funeral. On enquiring into the cause of

their distress, he learned that the lot had fallen on the old woman, and

that she had an only daughter, who must be slain by the evil jinnee. Abu

’lberecat said to the old dame, “I will go this night instead of thy

daughter.” Now he was quite beardless. So when the night was come they

took him, and after he had performed his ablutions, they put him in the

temple of idols. He set himself to recite the Coran; then the demon

appeared at the window, but the man went on with his recitation. No

sooner was the jinnee within hearing of the holy words than he dived

into the sea. When morning broke, the old woman and her family and the

people of the island came, according to their custom, to carry away the

girl and burn her body. They found the stranger repeating the Coran, and

took him to their king, whose name was Chenourazah, and made him relate

his adventure. The king was astonished at it. The Berber proposed to the

king that he should embrace Islam. Chenourazah said to him, “Tarry with

us till next month; if thou shalt do what thou hast done, and shalt

escape from the evil jinnee, I will be converted.” The stranger abode

with the idolaters, and God disposed the king’s heart to receive the

true faith. So before the month was out he became a Mussalman, he and

his wives and his children and the people of his court. And when the

next month began, the Berber was conducted to the temple of idols; but

the demon did not appear, and the Berber set himself to recite the Coran

till break of day. Then the Sultan and his subjects broke the idols and

demolished the temple. The people of the island embraced Islam and sent

messengers to the other isles, and their inhabitants were converted

likewise. But by reason of the demon many of the Maldive Islands were

depopulated before their conversion to Islam. When Ibn Batutah himself

landed in the country he knew nothing of these things. One night, as he

was going about his business, he heard of a sudden people saying in a

loud voice, “There is no God but God,” and “God is great.” He saw

children carrying copies of the Coran on their heads, and women beating

on basins and vessels of copper. He was astonished at what they did, and

he said, “What has happened?” They answered, “Dost thou not behold the

sea?” He looked towards the sea, and beheld in the darkness, as it were,

a great ship full of burning lamps and cressets. They said to him, “That

is the demon. It is his wont to shew himself once a month; but after we

have done that which thou hast seen, he returns to his place and does us

no manner of harm.”[504]

[Sidenote: The story based on the phosphorescence of the sea.] It

occurred to me that this myth of the demon lover may have been based on

some physical phenomenon, electrical, lunar, or otherwise, which is

periodically seen at night in the Maldive Islands. Accordingly I

consulted Professor J. Stanley Gardiner, our foremost authority on the

archipelago. His answer, which confirms my conjecture, runs thus: “A

peculiar phosphorescence, like the glow of a lamp hidden by a roughened

glass shade, is occasionally visible on lagoon shoals in the Maldives. I

imagine it to have been due to some single animal with a greater

phosphorescence than any at present known to us. A periodical appearance

at some phase of the moon due to reproduction is not improbable and has

parallels. The myth still exists in the Maldives, but in a rather

different form.” He adds that “a number of these animals might of course

appear on some shoal near Male,” the principal island of the group. To

the eyes of the ignorant and superstitious such a mysterious glow,

suddenly lighting up the sea in the dusk of the evening, might well

appear a phantom ship, hung with burning lamps, bearing down on the

devoted islands, and in the stillness of night the roar of the surf on

the barrier reef might sound in their ears like the voice of the demon

calling for his prey.[505]

§ 3. Sacrifices to Water-spirits

[Sidenote: Stories of the Perseus and Andromeda type.] Ibn Batutah’s

narrative of the demon lover and his mortal brides closely resembles a

well-known type of folk-tale, of which versions have been found from

Japan and Annam in the East to Senegambia, Scandinavia, and Scotland in

the West. The story varies in details from people to people, but as

commonly told it runs thus. A certain country is infested by a

many-headed serpent, dragon, or other monster, which would destroy the

whole people if a human victim, generally a virgin, were not delivered

up to him periodically. Many victims have perished, and at last it has

fallen to the lot of the king’s own daughter to be sacrificed. She is

exposed to the monster, but the hero of the tale, generally a young man

of humble birth, interposes in her behalf, slays the monster, and

receives the hand of the princess as his reward. In many of the tales

the monster, who is sometimes described as a serpent, inhabits the water

of a sea, a lake, or a fountain. In other versions he is a serpent or

dragon who takes possession of the springs of water, and only allows the

water to flow or the people to make use of it on condition of receiving

a human victim.[506]

[Sidenote: Water-spirits conceived as serpents or dragons.] It would

probably be a mistake to dismiss all these tales as pure inventions of

the story-teller. Rather we may suppose that they reflect a real custom

of sacrificing girls or women to be the wives of water-spirits, who are

very often conceived as great serpents or dragons. Elsewhere I have

cited many instances of this belief in serpent-shaped spirits of

water;[507] here it may be worth while to add a few more. Thus the

Warramunga of Central Australia perform elaborate ceremonies to appease

or coerce a gigantic, but purely mythical water-snake who is said to

have destroyed a number of people.[508] Some of the natives of western

Australia fear to approach large pools, supposing them to be inhabited

by a great serpent, who would kill them if they dared to drink or draw

water there by night.[509] The Indians of New Granada believed that when

the mother of all mankind, named Bachue, was grown old, she and her

husband plunged into the Lake of Iguague, where they were changed into

two enormous serpents, which still live in the lake and sometimes shew

themselves.[510] The Oyampi Indians of French Guiana imagine that each

waterfall has a guardian in the shape of a monstrous snake, who lies

hidden under the eddy of the cascade, but has sometimes been seen to

lift up its huge head. To see it is fatal. Canoe and Indians are then

dragged down to the bottom, where the monster swallows all the men, and

sometimes the canoe also. Hence the Oyampis never name a waterfall till

they have passed it, for fear that the snake at the bottom of the water

might hear its name and attack the rash intruders.[511] The Huichol

Indians of Mexico adore water. Springs are sacred, and the gods in them

are mothers or serpents, that rise with the clouds and descend as

fructifying rain.[512] The Tarahumares, another Indian tribe of Mexico,

think that every river, pool, and spring has its serpent, who causes the

water to come up out of the earth. All these water-serpents are easily

offended; hence the Tarahumares place their houses some little way from

the water, and will not sleep near it when they are on a journey.

Whenever they construct weirs to catch fish, they take care to offer

fish to the water-serpent of the river; and when they are away from home

and are making pinole, that is, toasted maize-meal, they drop the first

of the pinole into the water as an offering to the serpents, who would

otherwise try to seize them and chase them back to their own land.[513]

In Basutoland the rivers Ketane and Maletsunyane tumble, with a roar of

waters and a cloud of iridescent spray, into vast chasms hundreds of

feet deep. The Basutos fear to approach the foot of these huge falls,

for they think that a spirit in the shape of a gigantic snake haunts the

seething cauldron which receives the falling waters.[514]

[Sidenote: Sacrifices of human beings to water-spirits.] The perils of

the sea, of floods, of rapid rivers, of deep pools and lakes, naturally

account for the belief that water-spirits are fickle and dangerous

beings, who need to be appeased by sacrifices. Sometimes these

sacrifices consist of animals, such as horses and bulls,[515] but often

the victims are human beings. Thus at the mouth of the Bonny River there

is a dangerous bar on which vessels trading to the river have been lost.

This is bad for business, and accordingly the negroes used to sacrifice

a young man annually to the spirit of the bar. The handsomest youth was

chosen for the purpose, and for many months before the ceremony he

lodged with the king. The people regarded him as sacred or ju-ju, and

whatever he touched, even when he passed casually through the streets,

shared his sanctity and belonged to him. Hence whenever he appeared in

public the inhabitants fled before him, lest he should touch their

garments or anything they might be carrying. He was kept in ignorance of

the fate in store for him, and no one might inform him of it under pain

of death. On an appointed day he was taken out to the bar in a canoe and

induced to jump into the water. Then the rowers plied their paddles and

left him to drown. A similar ceremony used to be performed at the New

Calabar River, but the victim was a culprit. He was thrown into the

water to be devoured by the sharks, which are there the principal fetish

or ju-ju.[516] The chiefs of Duke Town, on the same coast of Guinea,

were wont to make an annual offering to the river. A young woman of a

light colour, or an albino, was chosen as the victim. On a set day they

decked her with finery, took her down to Parrot Island, and with much

ceremony plunged her in the stream. The fishermen of Efiat, at the mouth

of the river, are said still to observe the rite in order to ensure a

good catch of fish.[517] The King of Dahomey used to send from time to

time a man, dressed out with the insignia of office, to Whydah to be

drowned at the mouth of the river. The intention of the sacrifice was to

attract merchant ships.[518] When a fisherman has been carried off by a

crocodile, some of the natives on the banks of Lake Tanganyika take this

for a sign that the spirit deems himself slighted, since he is obliged

to come and find victims for himself instead of having them presented to

him. Hence the sorcerers generally decide that a second victim is

wanted; so, having chosen one, they bind him hand and foot and fling him

into the lake to feed the crocodiles.[519] The crater of the volcano

Tolucan in Mexico encloses two lakes of clear cold water, surrounded by

gloomy forests of pine. Here, in the eighteenth month of the Toltec

year, answering to February, children beautifully dressed and decked

with flowers and gay feathers used to be drowned as an offering to

Tlaloc, the god of the waters, who had a fine temple on the spot.[520]

The Chams of Annam have traditions of a time when living men were thrown

into the sea every year in order to propitiate the deities who looked

after the fishing, and when children of good family were drowned in the

water-channels in order that the rice-fields might be duly

irrigated.[521]

[Sidenote: Water-spirits conceived as beneficent beings who dispense

fertility.] This last instance brings out a more kindly aspect of the

water-spirits. If these beings are dreaded by the fisherman and the

mariner who tempt the angry sea, and by the huntsman who has to swim or

ford the rushing rivers, they are viewed in a different light by the

shepherd and the husbandman in hot and arid lands, where the pasture for

the cattle and the produce of the fields alike depend on the supply of

water, and where prolonged drought means starvation and death for man

and beast. To men in such circumstances the spirits of the waters are

beneficent beings, the dispensers of life and fertility, whether their

blessings descend as rain from heaven or well up as springs of bubbling

water in the parched desert. In the Semitic East, for example, where the

rainfall is precarious or confined to certain seasons, the face of the

earth is bare and withered for most of the year, except where it is kept

fresh by irrigation or by the percolation of underground water. Here,

accordingly, the local gods or Baalim had their seats originally in

spots of natural fertility, by fountains and the banks of rivers, in

groves and tangled thickets and green glades of mountain hollows and

deep watercourses. As lords of the springs and subterranean waters they

were supposed to be the sources of all the gifts of the land, the corn,

the wine and the oil, the wool and the flax, the vines and the

fig-trees.[522]

[Sidenote: Water-spirits conceived as bestowing offspring on women.]

Where water-spirits are thus conceived as the authors of fertility in

general, it is natural that they should be held to extend the sphere of

their operations to men and animals; in other words, that the power of

bestowing offspring on barren women and cattle should be ascribed to

them. This ascription comes out clearly in a custom observed by Syrian

women at the present day. Some of the channels of the Orontes are used

for irrigation, but at a certain season of the year the streams are

turned off and the dry bed of the channels is cleared of mud and any

other matter that might clog the flow of the water. The first night that

the water is turned on again, it is said to have the power of

procreation. Accordingly barren women take their places in the channel,

waiting for the embrace of the water-spirit in the rush of the

stream.[523] Again, a pool of water in a cave at Juneh enjoys the same

reputation. The people think a childless couple who bathe in the water

will have offspring.[524] In India many wells are supposed to cure

sterility, which is universally attributed to the agency of evil

spirits. The water of seven wells is collected on the night of the

Diwali or feast of lamps, and barren women bathe in it in order to

remove their reproach. There is a well in Orissa where the priests throw

betel-nuts into the mud. Childless women scramble for the nuts, and she

who finds them will be a happy mother before long. For the same reason,

after childbirth an Indian mother is taken to worship the village well.

She walks round it in the course of the sun and smears the platform with

red lead, which may be a substitute for blood. A Khandh priest will take

a childless woman to the meeting of two streams, where he makes an

offering to the god of births and sprinkles the woman with water in

order to rid her of the influence of the spirit who hinders

conception.[525] In the Punjaub a barren woman who desires to become a

mother will sometimes be let down into a well on a Sunday or Tuesday

night during the Diwali festival. After stripping herself of her clothes

and bathing in the water, she is drawn up again and performs the

_chaukpurna_ ceremony with incantations taught by a wizard. When this

ceremony has been performed, the well is supposed to run dry; its

quickening and fertilising virtue has been abstracted by the woman.[526]

The Indian sect of the Vallabhacharyas or Maharajas believe that bathing

in a sacred well is a remedy for barrenness in women.[527] In antiquity

the waters of Sinuessa in Campania were thought to bless childless wives

with offspring.[528] To this day Syrian women resort to hot springs in

order to obtain children from the saint or jinnee of the waters.[529] In

Scotland the same fertilising virtue used to be, and probably still is,

ascribed to certain springs. Wives who wished to become mothers formerly

resorted to the well of St. Fillan at Comrie, and to the wells of St.

Mary at Whitekirk and in the Isle of May.[530] In the Aran Islands, off

the coast of Galway, women desirous of children pray at St. Eany’s Well,

by the Angels’ Walk, and the men pray at the rag well by the church of

the Four Comely Ones at Onaght.[531] Child’s Well in Oxford was supposed

to have the virtue of making barren women to bring forth.[532] Near

Bingfield in Northumberland there is a copious sulphur spring known as

the Borewell. On the Sunday following the fourth day of July, that is

about Midsummer Day, according to the old style, great crowds of people

used to assemble at the well from all the surrounding hamlets and

villages. The scene was like a fair, stalls for the sale of refreshments

being brought and set up for the occasion. The neighbouring slopes were

terraced, and seats formed for the convenience of pilgrims and visitors.

Barren women prayed at the well that they might become mothers. If their

faith was strong enough, their prayers were heard within the year.[533]

[Sidenote: Love of river-spirits for women in Greek mythology.] In Greek

mythology similar ideas of the procreative power of water meet us in the

stories of the loves of rivers for women and in the legends which traced

the descent of heroes and heroines from river-gods.[534] In Sophocles’s

play of _The Trachinian Women_ Dejanira tells how she was wooed by the

river Achelous, who came to her father and claimed her hand, appearing

in the likeness now of a bull, now of a serpent, and now of a being with

the body of a man and the front of an ox, while streams of water flowed

from his shaggy beard. She relates, too, how glad she was when Hercules

presented himself and vanquished the river-god in single combat and took

her to wife.[535] The legend perhaps preserves a reminiscence of that

custom of providing a water-god with a human wife which has been

practised elsewhere. The motive of such a custom may have varied with

the particular conception which happened to prevail of the character of

the water-god. Where he was supposed to be a cruel and destructive

being, who drowned men and laid waste the country, a wife would be

offered simply to keep him in good humour, and so prevent him from doing

mischief. But where he was viewed as the procreative power on whom the

fertility of the earth and the fecundity of men and animals depended,

his marriage would be deemed necessary for the purpose of enabling him

to discharge his beneficent functions. This belief in the amorous

character of rivers comes out plainly in a custom which was observed at

Troy down to classical times. Maidens about to marry were wont to bathe

in the Scamander, saying as they did so, “Scamander, take my virginity.”

A similar custom appears to have been observed at the river Maeander,

and perhaps in other parts of the Greek world. Occasionally, it would

seem, young men took advantage of the practice to ravish the girls, and

the offspring of such a union was fathered on the river-god.[536] The

bath which a Greek bride and bridegroom regularly took before marriage

appears to have been intended to bless their union with offspring

through the fertilising influence of the water-nymphs.[537]

Thus it would appear that in many parts of the world a custom has

prevailed of sacrificing human beings to water-spirits, and that in not

a few cases the ceremony has taken the form of making over a woman to

the spirit to be his wife, in order either to pacify his fury or to give

play to his generative powers. Where the water-spirit was regarded as

female, young men might be presented to her for a similar purpose, and

this may be the reason why the victims sacrificed to water-spirits are

sometimes males. Among civilised peoples these customs survive for the

most part only in popular tales, of which the legend of Perseus and

Andromeda, with its mediaeval counterpart of St. George and the Dragon,

is the most familiar example. But occasionally they appear to have left

traces of themselves in ceremonies and pageants. Thus at Furth in

Bavaria a [Sidenote: Midsummer custom of slaying the dragon at Furth in

Bavaria.] drama called the Slaying of the Dragon used to be acted every

year about Midsummer, on the Sunday after Corpus Christi Day. Crowds of

spectators flocked from the neighbourhood to witness it. The scene of

the performance was the public square. On a platform stood or sat a

princess wearing a golden crown on her head, and as many silver

ornaments on her body as could be borrowed for the purpose. She was

attended by a maid of honour. Opposite her was stationed the dragon, a

dreadful monster of painted canvas stretched on a wooden skeleton and

moved by two men inside. From time to time the creature would rush with

gaping jaws into the dense crowd of spectators, who retreated hastily,

tumbling over each other in their anxiety to escape. Then a knight in

armour, attended by his men-at-arms, rode forth and asked the princess

what she did “on this hard stone,” and why she looked so sad. She told

him that the dragon was coming to eat her up. On that the knight bade

her be of good cheer, for that with his sword he would rid the country

of the monster. With that he charged the dragon, thrusting his spear

into its maw and taking care to stab a bladder of bullock’s blood which

was there concealed. The gush of blood which followed was an

indispensable part of the show, and if the knight missed his stroke he

was unmercifully jeered and taunted by the crowd. Having despatched the

monster with sword and pistol, the knight then hastened to the princess

and told her that he had slain the dragon who had so long oppressed the

town. In return she tied a wreath round his arm, and announced that her

noble father and mother would soon come to give them half the kingdom.

The men-at-arms then escorted the knight and the princess to the tavern,

there to end the day with dance and revelry. Bohemians and Bavarians

came from many miles to witness this play of the Slaying of the Dragon,

and when the monster’s blood streamed forth they eagerly mopped it up,

along with the blood-soaked earth, in white cloths, which they

afterwards laid on the flax-fields, in order that the flax might thrive

and grow tall. For the “dragon’s blood” was thought to be a sure

protection against witchcraft.[538] This use of the blood suffices to

prove that the Slaying of the Dragon at Furth was not a mere popular

spectacle, but a magical rite designed to fertilise the fields. As such

it probably descended from a very remote antiquity, and may well have

been invested with a character of solemnity, if not of tragedy, long

before it degenerated into a farce.

[Sidenote: St. Romain delivers Rouen from a dragon.] More famous was the

dragon from which, according to legend, St. Romain delivered Rouen, and

far more impressive was the ceremony with which, down to the French

Revolution, the city commemorated its deliverance. The stately and

beautiful edifices of the Middle Ages, which still adorn Rouen, formed a

fitting background for a pageant which carried the mind back to the days

when Henry II. of England and Richard Cœur-de-Lion, Dukes of Normandy,

still had their palace in this ancient capital of their ancestral

domains. Legend ran that about the year 520 A.D. a forest or marsh near

the city was infested by a monstrous beast in the shape of a serpent or

dragon, which every day wrought great harm to Rouen and its

neighbourhood, devouring man and beast, causing boats and mariners on

the river Seine to perish, and inflicting other woes innumerable on the

commonwealth. At last the archbishop, St. Romain, resolved to beard the

monster in his den. He could get none to accompany him but a prisoner

condemned to death for murder. On their approach the dragon made as

though he would swallow them up; but the archbishop, relying on the

divine help, made the sign of the cross, and at once the monster became

so gentle that he suffered the saint to bind him with his stole and the

murderer to lead him like a lamb to the slaughter. Thus they went in

procession to a public place in Rouen, where the dragon was burnt in the

presence of the people and its ashes cast into the river. The murderer

was pardoned for his services; and the fame of the deed having gone

abroad, St. Romain, or his successor St. Ouen, whose memory is enshrined

in a church of dreamlike beauty at Rouen, obtained from King Dagobert in

perpetuity a privilege for the archbishop, dean, and canons of the

cathedral, to wit, that every year on Ascension Day, the anniversary of

the miracle, they should [Sidenote: In memory of this deliverance the

archbishop and chapter of Rouen were annually allowed to pardon a

malefactor on Ascension Day.] pardon and release from prison a

malefactor, whomsoever they chose, and whatever the crime of which he

had been guilty. This privilege, unique in France, was claimed by the

chapter of the cathedral as early as the beginning of the thirteenth

century; for in 1210, the governor of the castle of Rouen having boggled

at giving up a prisoner, the chapter appealed to King Philip Augustus,

who caused an enquiry to be made into the claim. At this enquiry nine

witnesses swore that never in the reigns of Henry II. and Richard

Cœur-de-Lion, Dukes of Normandy, had there been any difficulty raised on

the point in question. Henceforward the chapter seems to have enjoyed

the right without opposition down to 1790, when it exercised its

privilege of mercy for the last time. Next year the face of things had

changed; there was neither archbishop nor chapter at Rouen. A register

of the names of the prisoners who were pardoned, together with an

account of their crimes, was kept and still exists. Only a few of the

names in the thirteenth century are known, and there are many gaps in

the first half of the fourteenth century; but from that time onward the

register is nearly complete. Most of the crimes appear to have been

murder or homicide.

[Sidenote: Ceremony of the annual pardon and release of a prisoner at

Rouen.] The proceedings, on the great day of pardon, varied somewhat in

different ages. The following account is based in great part on a

description written in the reign of Henry III. and published at Rouen in

1587. Fifteen days before Ascension Day the canons of the cathedral

summoned the king’s officers to stop all proceedings against criminals

detained in prison. Afterwards, on the Monday of Rogations, two canons

examined the prisoners and took their confessions, going from prison to

prison till Ascension Day. On that day, about seven o’clock in the

morning, all the canons assembled in the chapter-house and invoked the

grace of the Holy Spirit by the hymn _Veni creator Spiritus_, and other

prayers. Also they made oath to reveal none of the depositions of the

criminals, but to hold them sacred under the seal of confession. The

depositions having been taken and the commissioners heard, the chapter,

after due deliberation, named him or her among the prisoners who was to

receive the benefit of the privilege. A card bearing the prisoner’s name

and sealed with the seal of the chapter was then sent to the members of

parliament, who were sitting in full assembly, clad in their red robes,

in the great hall of the palace to receive the nomination of the

prisoner and to give it legal effect. The criminal was then released and

pardoned. Immediately the minster bells began to ring, the doors of the

cathedral were flung open, the organ pealed, hymns were sung, candles

lit, and every solemnity observed in token of joy and gladness. Further,

in presence of the conclave all the depositions of the other prisoners

were burnt on the altar of the chapter-house. Then the archbishop and

the whole of the clergy of the cathedral went in procession to the great

square known as the Old Tower near the river, carrying the shrines and

reliquaries of the minster, and accompanied by the joyous music of

hautboys and clarions. Apparently the Old Tower occupies the site of the

ancient castle of the Dukes of Normandy, and the custom of going thither

in procession came down from a time when the prisoners were detained in

the castle-dungeons. In the square there stood, and still stands, a

platform of stone raised high above the ground and approached by flights

of steps. Thither they brought the shrine (_fierte_) of St. Romain, and

thither too was led the pardoned prisoner. He ascended the platform, and

after confessing his sins and receiving absolution he thrice lifted the

shrine of St. Romain, while the innumerable multitude assembled in the

square cried aloud, each time the shrine was lifted, “_Noel! Noel!

Noel!_” which was understood to mean “God be with us!” That done, the

procession re-formed and returned to the cathedral. At the head walked a

beadle clad in violet, who bore on a pole the wicker effigy of the

winged dragon of Notre Dame, holding a large fish in its mouth. The

whispers and cries excited by the appearance of the monster were drowned

in the loud fanfares of cornets, clarions, and trumpets. Behind the

musicians, who wore the liveries of the Master of the Brotherhood of

Notre Dame with his arms emblazoned on an ensign of taffeta, came the

carved silver-gilt shrine of Notre Dame. After it followed the clergy of

the cathedral to the number of two hundred, clad in robes of violet or

crimson silk, bearing banners, crosses, and shrines, and chanting the

hymn _De resurrectione Domini_. Then came the archbishop, giving his

blessing to the great multitude who thronged the streets. The prisoner

himself walked behind, bareheaded, crowned with flowers, carrying one

end of the litter which supported the shrine of St. Romain; the fetters

he had worn hung from the litter; and with him paced, with lighted

torches in their hands, the men or women who, for the last seven years,

had in like manner received their pardon. Another beadle, in a violet

livery, marched behind bearing aloft on a pole the wicker effigy of the

dragon (_Gargouille_) destroyed by St. Romain; in its mouth the dragon

sometimes held a live animal, such as a young fox, a rabbit, or a

sucking pig, and it was attended by the Brotherhood of the

Gargouillards. The clergy of the thirty-two parishes of Rouen also took

part in the procession, which moved from the Old Tower to the cathedral

amid the acclamations of the crowd, while from every church tower in the

city the bells rang out a joyous peal, the great _Georges d’Amboise_

thundering above them all. After mass had been performed in the

cathedral, the prisoner was taken to the house of the Master of the

Brotherhood of St. Romain, where he was magnificently feasted, lodged,

and served, however humble his rank. Next morning he again presented

himself to the chapter, where, kneeling in the presence of a great

assembly, he was severely reproved for his sins and admonished to give

thanks to God, to St. Romain, and to the canons for the pardon he had

received in virtue of the privilege.

[Sidenote: History and meaning of the privilege of the _Fierte_ or

shrine of St. Romain at Rouen.] What was the origin and meaning of this

remarkable privilege of the _Fierte_, as the shrine of St. Romain was

called? Its history has been carefully investigated by A. Floquet, Chief

Registrar of the Royal Court of Rouen, with the aid of all the

documentary evidence, including the archives both at Rouen and Paris. He

appears to have shewn conclusively that the association of St. Romain

with the custom is comparatively late. We possess a life of the saint in

Latin verse, dating from the eighth century, in which the miracles said

to have been wrought by him are set forth in a strain of pompous eulogy.

Yet neither in it nor in any of the other early lives of St. Romain and

St. Ouen, nor in any of the older chronicles and martyrologies, is a

single word said about the destruction of the dragon and the deliverance

of the prisoner. It is not till 1394 that we meet for the first time

with a mention of the miracle. Moreover, the deliverance of the prisoner

can hardly have been instituted in honour of St. Romain, else it would

have taken place on the twenty-third of October, the day on which the

Church of Rouen celebrates the translation of the saint’s bones to the

cathedral. St. Romain died in 638, and his bones were transferred to the

cathedral of Rouen at the end of the eleventh or the beginning of the

twelfth century. Further, Floquet has adduced strong grounds for

believing that the privilege claimed by the chapter of Rouen of annually

pardoning a condemned criminal on Ascension Day was unknown in the early

years of the twelfth century, and that it originated in the reign of

Henry I. or Stephen, if not in that of Henry II. He supposes the

ceremony to have been in its origin a scenic representation of the

triumph of Christ over sin and death, the deliverance of the condemned

prisoner symbolising the deliverance of man from the yoke of corruption,

and bringing home to the people in a visible form the great mystery

which the festival of the Ascension was instituted to commemorate. Such

dramatic expositions of Christian doctrine, he points out, were common

in the Middle Ages.

[Sidenote: Suggested origin of the custom.] Plausible as is this

solution of the problem, it can scarcely be regarded as satisfactory.

Had this been the real origin of the privilege, we should expect to find

the Ascension of Christ either plainly enacted, or at least distinctly

alluded to in the ceremony; but this, so far as we can learn, was not

so. Again, would it not savour of blasphemy to represent the sinless and

glorified Redeemer by a ruffian stained with the blackest crimes?

Moreover, the part played by the dragon in the legend and in the

spectacle seems too important to allow us to explain it away, with

Floquet, as a mere symbol of the suppression of paganism by St. Romain.

The tale of the conquest of the dragon is older than Christianity, and

cannot be explained by it. At Rouen the connexion of St. Romain with the

story seems certainly to be late, but that does not prove the story

itself to be late also. Judging from the analogy of similar tales

elsewhere, we may conjecture that in the Rouen version the criminal

represents a victim annually sacrificed to a water-spirit or other

fabulous being, while the Christian saint has displaced a pagan hero,

who was said to have delivered the victim from death and put an end to

the sacrifice by slaying the monster. Thus it seems possible that the

custom of annually pardoning a condemned malefactor may have superseded

an older practice of treating him as a public scapegoat, who died to

save the rest of the people. In the sequel we shall see that such

customs have been observed in many lands. It is not incredible that at

Rouen a usage of this sort should have survived in a modified shape from

pagan times down to the twelfth century, and that the Church should at

last have intervened to save the wretch and turn a relic of heathendom

to the glory of God and St. Romain. But this explanation of the famous

privilege of the _Fierte_ is put forward with a full sense of the

difficulties attending it, and with no wish to dogmatise on so obscure a

subject.[539]