[Sidenote: “Numa’s crockery,” the primitive earthenware vessels used by

the Vestals.] If further evidence were needed to convince us that the

round temple of Vesta merely reproduced a Roman house of the olden time,

it might be supplied by the primitive vessels of coarse earthenware in

which the Vestals always presented their offerings, and which, in memory

of the artlessness of an earlier age, went by the name of “Numa’s

crockery.”[666] A Greek historian, writing when Rome was at the height

of her power and glory under Augustus, praises the Romans for the

austere simplicity with which, in an age of vulgar wealth and

ostentation, they continued to honour the gods of their fathers. “I have

seen,” said he, “meals set before the gods on old-fashioned wooden

tables, in mats and earthenware dishes, the food consisting of barley

loaves and cakes and spelt and firstfruits and such-like things, all

plain and inexpensive and free from any touch of vulgarity. And I have

seen libations offered, not in vessels of silver and gold, but in little

earthen cups and jugs; and I heartily admired a people which thus walked

in the ways of their fathers, not deviating from the ancient rites into

extravagance and display.”[667] Specimens of this antique pottery have

come to light of late years at the house of the Vestals, the temple of

Vesta, and other religious centres in the Forum;[668] others had been

found previously on the Esquiline hill and in the necropolis of Alba

Longa.[669] We may conjecture that if the Romans continued to serve the

gods their meals in simple earthenware dishes long after they themselves

quaffed their wine from goblets of crystal and gold or from murrhine

cups with their cloudy iridescent hues of purple and white,[670] they

did so, not from any principle of severe good taste, but rather from

that superstitious fear of innovation which has embalmed in religious

ritual, as in amber, so many curious relics of the past. The old forms

and materials of the vessels were consecrated by immemorial usage and

might not be changed with impunity. Indeed, in the ritual of the Arval

Brothers the holy pots themselves appear to have been an object of

worship.[671] Specimens of these pots have been found on the site of the

sacred grove where the Brothers performed their quaint service, and they

shed an interesting light on the conservatism of the Roman religion.

Some of them are moulded in the most primitive fashion by [Sidenote:

Rude pottery used by the Arval Brothers.] the hand without any

mechanical appliance. But most of them belong to a stage of art, later

indeed than this rude beginning, yet earlier than the invention of the

potter’s wheel. In order to give the vessels their proper shape and

prevent the sides from collapsing, wooden hoops were inserted in them,

and the marks made by these hoops in the soft clay may still be seen on

the inside of most of the pots found in the grove. We may suppose that

when the potter’s wheel came into universal use, the old art of making

pottery by the hand was lost; but as religion would have nothing to do

with pots made in the new-fangled way, the pious workman had to imitate

the ancient ware as well as he could, eking out his imperfect skill with

the aid of wooden hoops.[672] Perhaps the _fictores Vestalium_ and the

_fictores Pontificum_, of whom we read in inscriptions,[673] were those

potters who, combining a retrograde art with sound religious principles,

provided the Vestals and Pontiffs with the coarse crockery so dear to

gods and to antiquaries. If that was so, they may have had in the

exercise of their craft to observe some such curious rules as are still

[Sidenote: Savage superstitions as to the making of pottery.] observed

in similar circumstances by the savage Yuracares, a tribe of Indians

living dispersed in the depths of beautiful tropical forests, at the

eastern foot of the Bolivian Andes. We are told by an explorer that “the

manufacture of pottery is not an everyday affair with this superstitious

people, and accordingly they surround it with singular precautions. The

women, who alone are entrusted with the duty, go away very solemnly to

look for the clay, but they do so only when there is no crop to be

gathered. In the fear of thunder they betake themselves to the most

sequestered spots of the forest in order not to be seen. There they

build a hut. While they are at work they observe certain ceremonies and

never open their mouth, speaking to each other by signs, being persuaded

that one word spoken would infallibly cause all their pots to break in

the firing; and they do not go near their husbands, for if they did, all

the sick people would die.”[674] Among the Ba-Ronga of South Africa

pottery is made by women only, and they prefer to employ a child under

puberty to light the fire in which the pots are to be baked, because the

child has pure hands and the pots are therefore less likely to crack in

the furnace than if the woman lit the fire herself.[675] If the reader

objects that Roman potters cannot have been trammelled by superstitions

like those which hamper the savage potters of America and Africa, I

would remind him of the rules laid down by grave Roman writers for the

moral guidance of cooks, bakers, and butlers. After mentioning a number

of these writers by name, Columella informs us that “all of them are of

opinion that he who engages in any one of these occupations is bound to

be [Sidenote: Chastity required in persons who handle dishes and food.]

chaste and continent, since everything depends on taking care that

neither the dishes nor the food should be handled by any one above the

age of puberty, or at least by any one who is not exceedingly abstemious

in sexual matters. Therefore a man or woman who is sexually unclean

ought to wash in a river or running water before he touches the contents

of the storeroom. That is why there should be a boy or a maid to fetch

from the storeroom the things that are needed.”[676] When Roman cooks,

bakers, and butlers were expected to be so strict in the service of

their human masters, it might naturally be thought that the potters

should be not less so whose business it was to fashion the rude yet

precious vessels meet for the worship of the gods.

[Sidenote: Sanctity of the storeroom (_penus_) and of the Penates in a

Roman house.] If the storeroom (_penus_) of a Roman house was deemed so

holy that its contents could only be handled by persons ceremonially

clean, the reason was that the Penates or gods of the storeroom dwelt in

it.[677] The domestic hearth, where the household meals were cooked in

the simple days of old, was the natural altar of the Penates;[678] their

images, together with those of the Lares, stood by it and shone in the

cheerful glow of the fire, when the family gathered round it in the

evening.[679] Thus in every house Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, was

intimately bound up with the Penates or gods of the storeroom; indeed,

she was reckoned one of them.[680] Now the temple of Vesta, being

nothing more than a type of the oldest form of Roman house, naturally

had, like an ordinary house, its sacred storeroom, and its Penates or

gods of the storeroom.[681] Hence if in every common house strict

chastity was, theoretically at least, expected of all who entered the

storeroom, we can well understand why such an obligation should have

been laid on the Vestals, who had in their charge the holiest of all

storerooms, the chamber in which were popularly supposed to be preserved

the talismans on which the safety of the state depended.[682]

[Sidenote: Thus the temple of Vesta, with its perpetual fire and its

sacred storeroom, was merely a copy of the Roman king’s house.] Thus on

the whole we may regard it as highly probable that the round temple of

Vesta in the Forum, with its sacred storeroom and perpetual fire, was

merely a survival, under changed conditions, of the old house of the

Roman kings, which again may have been a copy of the still older house

of the kings of Alba. Both were modelled on the round huts of wattled

osiers in which the early Latins dwelt among the woods and hills of

Latium in the days when the Alban Mountain was still an active volcano.

Hence it is legitimate to compare the old legends of the royal hearth

with the later practice in regard to the hearth of Vesta, and from the

comparison to explain, if we can, the meaning both of the legends and of

the practice.

Footnote 639:

Plutarch, _De fortuna Romanorum_, 10; Dionysius Halicarnasensis,

_Antiquit. Rom._ iv. 1 _sq._; Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 627-636; Pliny, _Nat.

Hist._ ii. 241, xxxvi. 204; Livy, i. 39; Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ ii.

683; Arnobius, _Adversus nationes_, v. 18. According to the Etruscan

annals, Servius Tullius was an Etruscan by name Mastarna, who came to

Rome with his friend Caeles Vibenna, and, changing his name, obtained

the kingdom. This was stated by the Emperor Claudius in a speech of

which fragments are engraved on a bronze tablet found at Lyons. See

Tacitus, _Annals_, ed. Orelli, 2nd Ed., p. 342. As the emperor wrote a

history of Etruria in twenty books (Suetonius, _Divus Claudius_, 42)

he probably had some authority for the statement, and the historical,

or at least legendary, character of Mastarna and Caeles Vibenna is

vouched for by a painting inscribed with their names, which was found

in 1857 in an Etruscan tomb at Vulci. See G. Dennis, _Cities and

Cemeteries of Etruria_, 3rd Ed., ii. 506 _sq._ But from this it by no

means follows that the identification of Mastarna with Servius Tullius

was correct. Schwegler preferred the Roman to the Etruscan tradition

(_Römische Geschichte_, i. 720 _sq._), and so, after long hesitation,

did Niebuhr (_History of Rome_, 3rd Ed., i. 380 _sqq._). It is fair to

add that both these historians wrote before the discovery of the tomb

at Vulci.

Footnote 640:

A. Schwegler, _Römische Geschichte_, i. 715; L. Preller, _Römische

Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., ii. 344.

Footnote 641:

Plutarch, _Romulus_, 2.

Footnote 642:

Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ i. 76 _sq._; Livy, i. 3 _sq._;

Plutarch, _Romulus_, 3; Zonaras, _Annal._ vii. 1; Justin, xliii. 2.

1-3.

Footnote 643:

Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ vii. 678.

Footnote 644:

Virgil, _Aen._ vii. 343.

Footnote 645:

Aulus Gellius, i. 12, 14 and 19. Compare L. Preller, _Römische

Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., ii, 161, 344. There was a very ancient worship

of Vesta at Lavinium, the city named after Amata’s daughter Lavinia,

the ancestress of the Alban kings. See above, vol. i. p. 14.

Footnote 646:

Virgil, _Aen._ vii. 71-77.

Footnote 647:

Virgil, _Aen._ ii. 680-686. We may compare the halo with which the

vainglorious and rascally artist of genius, Benvenuto Cellini,

declared his head to be encircled. “Ever since the time of my strange

vision until now,” says he, “an aureole of glory (marvellous to

relate) has rested on my head. This is visible to every sort of men to

whom I have chosen to point it out; but those have been very few. This

halo can be observed above my shadow in the morning from the rising of

the sun for about two hours, and far better when the grass is drenched

with dew. It is also visible at evening about sunset. I became aware

of it in France at Paris; for the air in those parts is so much freer

from mist, that one can see it there far better manifested than in

Italy, mists being far more frequent among us.” See _The Life of

Benvenuto Cellini_, translated by J. Addington Symonds 3rd Ed.,

(London, 1889), pp. 279 _sq._

Footnote 648:

See above, pp. 131 _sqq._

Footnote 649:

A. B. Ellis, The _Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast of West

Africa_, p. 60. See above, pp. 149 _sq._

Footnote 650:

See below, p. 229.

Footnote 651:

Apollodorus iii. 14. 6; Schol. on Homer, _Iliad_, ii. 547; J. Tzetzes,

_Chiliades_, v. 669 _sq._; Augustine, _De civitate Dei_, xviii. 12.

Footnote 652:

Pausanias i. 26. 6 _sq._; Strabo ix. 1. 16, p. 396; Plutarch, _Numa_,

9; _id._, _Sulla_, 13. As to the identity of Erechtheus and

Erichthonius see my note on Pausanias, i. 18. 2 (vol. ii. p. 169).

Footnote 653:

Pausanias, i. 27. 3, with my note.

Footnote 654:

The theory was formerly advocated by me (_Journal of Philology_, xiv.

(1885) pp. 154 _sqq._) As to the duties of the Vestals see J.

Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 2nd Ed., pp. 342 _sqq._

Footnote 655:

This explanation was first, so far as I know, given by me in my

_Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship_ (London, 1905), p.

221. It has since been adopted by Mr. E. Fehrle (_Die kultische

Keuschheit im Altertum_, Giessen, 1910, pp. 210 _sqq._).

Footnote 656:

Aulus Gellius, xiv. 7. 7. Compare Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ vii. 153,

ix. 4.

Footnote 657:

_Ovid_, Fasti, vi. 261 _sq._

Footnote 658:

Festus, _s.v._ “penus,” p. 250, ed. C. O. Müller, where for _saepius_

we must obviously read _saeptus_.

Footnote 659:

Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 199, iii. 183 _sq._; Dionysius Halicarnasensis,

_Antiquit. Rom._ i. 79. 11. For the situation of the hut see also

Plutarch, _Romulus_, 20.

Footnote 660:

Conon, _Narrationes_, 48; Vitruvius, ii. 1. 5, p. 35, ed. Rose and

Müller-Strübing; Macrobius, _Saturn._ i. 15. 10. Compare Virgil,

_Aen._ viii. 653 _sq._ As to the two huts on the Palatine and the

Capitol see A. Schwegler, _Römische Geschichte_, i. 394; L. Jahn on

Macrobius, _l.c._

Footnote 661:

Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ ii. 66; Plutarch, _Numa_, 11

and 14; Solinus, i. 21; Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 263 _sqq._; _id._,

_Tristia_, iii. 1. 29 _sq._; Tacitus, _Annals_, xv. 41.

Footnote 662:

Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ viii. 363. Festus, however, distinguishes

the old royal palace (_Regia_) from the house of the King of the

Sacred Rites (_s.v._ “Sacram viam,” pp. 290, 293, ed. C. O. Müller).

In classical times the _Regia_ was the residence or office of the

Pontifex Maximus; but we can hardly doubt that formerly it was the

house of the _Rex Sacrorum_. See O. Gilbert, _Geschichte und

Topographie der Stadt Rom im Altertum_, i. 225, 235 _sq._, 341, 344.

As to the existing remains of the _Regia_, the temple of Vesta, and

the house of the Vestals, see O. Richter, _Topographie der Stadt Rom_,

2nd Ed., pp. 88 _sqq._; Ch. Huelsen, _Die Ausgrabungen auf dem Forum

Romanum_ 2nd Ed., (Rome, 1903), pp. 62 _sqq._, 88 _sqq._; Mrs. E.

Burton-Brown, _Recent Excavations in the Roman Forum_ (London, 1904),

pp. 26 _sqq._

Footnote 663:

Dio Cassius, liv. 27, who tells us that Augustus annexed the house of

the King of the Sacred Rites to the house of the Vestals, on which it

abutted.

Footnote 664:

Many such phenomena are noted by Julius Obsequens in his book of

prodigies, appended to W. Weissenborn’s edition of Livy, vol. x. 2,

pp. 193 _sqq._ (Berlin, 1881).

Footnote 665:

W. Helbig, _Die Italiker in der Poebene_, pp. 50-55; E. Burton-Brown,

_Recent Excavations in the Roman Forum_, pp. 30, 152, 154. For

pictures of these hut-urns see G. Boni in _Notizie degli Scavi_, May

1900, p. 191, fig. 52; _id._, in _Nuova Antologia_, August 1900, p.

22.

Footnote 666:

Valerius Maximus, iv. 4. 11; Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 310; Acron on Horace,

_Odes_, i. 31, quoted by G. Boni in _Notizie degli Scavi_, May 1900,

p. 179; Cicero, _Paradoxa_, i. 2; _id._, _De natura deorum_, iii. 17.

43; Persius, _Sat._ ii. 59 _sq._; Juvenal, _Sat._ vi. 342 _sqq._

Footnote 667:

Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ ii. 23. On earthenware vessels

used in religious rites see also Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxxv. 108, “_In

sacris quidem etiam inter has opes hodie non murrinis crystallinisve,

sed fictilibus prolibatur simpulis_”; Apuleius, _De magia_, 18,

“_Eadem paupertas etiam populo Romano imperium a primordio fundavit,

proque eo in hodiernum diis immortalibus simpuvio et catino fictili

sacrificat._”

Footnote 668:

G. Boni in _Notizie degli Scavi_, May 1900, p. 179; E. Burton-Brown,

_Recent Excavations in the Roman Forum_, pp. 23 _sq._, 41.

Footnote 669:

W. Helbig, _Die Italiker in der Poebene_, pp. 82 _sqq._

Footnote 670:

Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxxvii. 21 _sq._

Footnote 671:

G. Henzen, _Acta Fratrum Arvalium_ (Berlin, 1874), pp. 26, 30; H.

Dessau, _Inscriptiones Latinae selectae_, No. 5039; J. Marquardt,

_Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 2nd Ed., 456.

Footnote 672:

W. Helbig, _Die Italiker in der Poebene_, p. 87.

Footnote 673:

G. Wilmanns, _Exempla inscriptionum Latinarum_, Nos. 311, 986, 1326,

1331; H. Dessau, _Inscriptiones Latinae selectae_, Nos. 456, 3314,

4926, 4933, 4936, 4942, 4943. Modern writers, following Varro (_De

lingua Latina_, vii. 44, “_fictores dicti a fingendis libis_”),

explain these _fictores_ as bakers of sacred cakes. See Ch. A. Lobeck,

_Aglaophamus_, pp. 1084 _sq._; J. Marquardt, _Römische

Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 2nd Ed., 249. They may be right, but it is to

be observed that Varro does not expressly refer to the _fictores_ of

the Vestals and Pontiffs, and further, that in Latin _fictor_ commonly

means a potter, not a baker, for which the regular word is _pistor_.

Footnote 674:

A. d’Orbigny, _Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale_, iii. (Paris and

Strasburg, 1844) p. 194. Much of d’Orbigny’s valuable information as

to this tribe was drawn from the manuscript of Father Lacueva, a

Spanish Franciscan monk of wealthy family and saint-like character,

who spent eighteen or twenty years among the Yuracares in a vain

attempt to convert them. With regard to the crops mentioned in the

text, these savages plant banana-trees, manioc, sugar-cane, and

vegetables round about their huts, which they erect in clearings of

the forest. See d’Orbigny, _op. cit._ iii. 196 _sq._

Footnote 675:

H. A. Junod, “Les Conceptions physiologiques des Bantou Sud-Africains

et leurs tabous,” _Revue d’Ethnographie et de Sociologie_, i. (1910),

p. 147.

Footnote 676:

Columella, _De re rustica_, xii. 4. 2 _sq._

Footnote 677:

Cicero, _De natura deorum_, ii. 27. 68.

Footnote 678:

Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ xi. 211.

Footnote 679:

Horace, _Epodes_, ii. 65 _sq._; Martial, iii. 58. 3 _sq._; L. Preller,

_Römische Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., ii. 105 _sqq._, 155 _sqq._ See also A.

De-Marchi, _Il Culto privato di Roma antica_, i. (Milan, 1896) p. 67,

with plate iii.

Footnote 680:

Macrobius, _Saturn._ iii. 4. 11; G. Wissowa, _Religion und Kultus der

Römer_, pp. 145 _sq._

Footnote 681:

Festus, _s.v._ “penus,” pp. 250, 251, ed. C. O. Müller; Tacitus,

_Annals_, xv. 41; J. Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 2nd

Ed., 252 _sq._

Footnote 682:

Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ ii. 66; Livy, xxvi. 27.

14; J. Marquardt, _op. cit._ iii. 2nd Ed., 250 _sq._

CHAPTER XV

THE FIRE-DRILL

[Sidenote: Mode of rekindling the Vestal fire at Rome by means of the

fire-drill.] In historical times, whenever the Vestal fire at Rome

happened to be extinguished, the virgins were beaten by the pontiff;

after which it was their custom, apparently with the aid of the pontiff,

to rekindle the fire by drilling a hole in a board of lucky wood till a

flame was elicited by friction. The new fire thus obtained was carried

into the temple of Vesta by one of the virgins in a bronze sieve.[683]

As this mode of producing fire is one of the most primitive known to

man, and has been commonly employed by many savage [Sidenote: Use of the

fire-drill by savages.] tribes down to modern times,[684] we need have

no difficulty in believing that its use in the worship of Vesta was a

survival from prehistoric ages, and that whenever the fire on the hearth

of the Latin kings went out it was regularly relit in the same fashion.

In its simplest form the fire-drill, as the apparatus has been

appropriately named by Professor E. B. Tylor, consists of two sticks,

the one furnished with a point and the other with a hole. The point of

the one stick is inserted into the hole of the other, which is laid flat

on the ground, while the operator holds the pointed stick upright in

position and twirls it rapidly between his hands till the rubbing of the

two sticks against each other produces sparks and at last a flame.

[Sidenote: Many savages regard the two sticks of the fire-drill as male

and female, and the rubbing of the two together as a sexual union.] Many

savages see in this operation a resemblance to the union of the sexes,

and have accordingly named the pointed stick the man and the holed stick

the woman. Thus we are told that among the Thompson Indians of British

Columbia “fire was obtained by means of the fire-drill, which consisted

of two dried sticks, each over a foot in length, and rounded off to less

than an inch in diameter. One stick was sharpened at one end; while the

other was marked with a couple of notches close to each other—one on the

side, and the other on top. The sharpened end of the first stick was

placed in the top notch of the other stick, and turned rapidly between

the straightened palms of both hands. The heat thus produced by the

friction of the sticks caused sparks to fall down the side notch upon

tinder placed underneath, which, when it commenced to smoke, was taken

in the hands, and blown upon until fanned into a flame. The tinder was

dry grass, the shredded dry bark of the sagebrush, or cedar-bark. The

sharpened stick was called the ‘man,’ and was made of black-pine root,

tops of young yellow pine, heart of yellow-pine cones, service-berry

wood, etc. The notched stick was called the ‘woman,’ and was generally

made of poplar-root. However, many kinds of wood were used for this

purpose. When hot ashes or a spark fell upon the tinder, they said, ‘The

woman has given birth.’”[685] The Hopi Indians kindle fire ceremonially

by the friction of two sticks, which are regarded respectively as male

and female. The female stick has a notch in it and is laid flat on the

floor; the point of the male stick is inserted in the notch of the

female stick and is made to revolve rapidly by twirling the stick

between the hands. Pollen is added as a male symbol, and the spark is

caught in a tinder of shredded cedar bark.[686] The Urabunna tribe of

Central Australia, who also make fire by means of the fire-drill, call

the upright piece “the child-stick,” while they give to the horizontal

or notched piece the name of “the mother-stick” or “the mother of the

fire.”[687] So in the Murray Islands, Torres Straits, the upright stick

is called the child (_werem_), and the horizontal stick the mother

(_apu_). In Mabuiag, Torres Straits, on the other hand, the vertical

stick is known as the male organ (_ini_), and the horizontal stick as

the hole (_sakai_).[688]

[Sidenote: The fire-drill among the Arabs.] “The ancient Bedouins

kindled fire by means of the fire-drill, which was composed of a

horizontal stick, the _zenda_, and an upright stick, the _zend_. The

science of language furnishes us with many parallels for this mode of

regarding the two parts as male and female; the two parts of the lock

are distinguished in like manner; the spark is then the child, _tifl_;

compare also our German _Schraubenmutter_, _Muttergewinde_. The sticks

for making fire by friction are not taken from the same tree; on the

contrary, they choose one as hard and tough as possible, and the other

soft, which allows the hard one to fit into it more easily and catches

fire the quicker on account of its loose texture. The soft wood was

naturally the horizontal stick, the _zenda_, which the Arabs made out of

_Calotropis procera_ (_’oshar_), while for the upright stick they used a

hard branch of _markh_.”[689]

[Sidenote: The fire-drill in Africa.] The Ngumbu of South Cameroons, in

West Africa, formerly made fire by rubbing two sticks against each

other. Of the sticks the one, called the male _nschio_, was put into a

hole of the other, which was called the female _nschio_.[690] In East

Africa the Masai men make fire by drilling a hole in a flat piece of

wood with a hard pointed stick. They say that the hard pointed stick is

a man and that the flat piece of wood is his wife. The former is cut

from _Ficus sycomorus_ and _Ekebergia sp._, the latter from any fibrous

tree, such as _Kigelia africana_, _Cordia ovalis_, or _Acacia albida_.

The women get their fire from the one which has thus been kindled by the

men.[691] The Nandi similarly produce fire by rapidly drilling a hard

pointed stick into a small hole in a flat piece of soft wood. The hard

stick is called the male (_kirkit_) and the piece of soft wood the

female (_kôket_). Among the Nandi, as apparently among the Masai,

fire-making is an exclusive privilege of the men of the tribe.[692] The

Baganda of Central Africa also made fire by means of the fire-drill;

they called the upright stick the male, and the horizontal stick the

female.[693] Among the Bantu tribes of south-eastern Africa, “when the

native Africans use special fire, either in connection with sacrifice or

the festival of first-fruits, it is produced by a doctor, and in the

following manner:—Two sticks, made of the _Uzwati_ tree, and called the

‘husband and wife,’ are given to him by the chief. These sticks are

prepared by the magicians, and are the exclusive property of the chief,

the ‘wife’ being the shorter of the two. The doctor cuts a piece off

each stick, and proceeds to kindle fire in the usual manner, by

revolving the one rapidly between the palms of his hands, while its end

rests in a small hollow dug in the side of the other. After he has

obtained fire, he gives it to his attendant, who gets the pots in order,

and everything ready for cooking the newly-reaped fruits. The sticks are

handed back to the chief by the doctor—no other hand must touch them—and

put away till they are required next season. They are regarded as in a

measure sacred, and no one, except the chief’s personal servant, may go

to the side of the hut where they are kept. After being repeatedly used

for fire-making, the doctor disposes of what remains, and new ones are

made and consecrated by the magician. A special pot is used for the

preparation of the feast, and no other than it may be set on a fire

produced from the ‘husband and wife.’ When the feast is over, the fire

is carefully extinguished, and the pot placed along with the sticks,

where it remains untouched for another year.”[694] But even for the

purposes of daily life these tribes still kindle fire in this manner, if

they happen to be without matches. “A native takes two special sticks,

made of a light wood. One of these he points: this is called the male

stick. He then makes a conical hole in the centre of the other stick,

which is called the female. Placing the female stick on the ground, he

holds it firmly by his feet—a native finds no difficulty in this, as he

can easily pick things off the ground with his toes if his hands are

full. He then places the pointed stick into the conical hole, and slowly

twirls the male stick between his hands. He does this while using a good

deal of pressure, and the wood becomes powdered, lying round the

revolving point in a little heap of dust. When he thinks he has made

sufficient of the wood dust, he twirls the stick very fast, and in a

moment the powder bursts into flame, which he uses to set fire to some

dried grass.”[695]

[Sidenote: Fire-customs of the Herero.] The Damaras or Herero of

Damaraland, in south-western Africa, maintain sacred fires in their

villages, and their customs and beliefs in this respect present a close

resemblance to the Roman worship of Vesta. Fortunately the Herero

fire-worship has been described by a number of independent witnesses,

and as their accounts agree substantially with each other, we may assume

that they are correct. The people are a tall, finely-built race of

nomadic herdsmen belonging to the Bantu stock, who seem to have migrated

into their present country from the north and east about a hundred and

fifty or two hundred years ago. The desert character of the country and

its seclusion from the outer world long combined to preserve the

primitive manners of the inhabitants.[696] In their native state the

Herero are a purely pastoral people, possessing [Sidenote: The Herero a

pastoral people.] immense herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and goats,

which are the pride and joy of their hearts, almost their idols. They

subsist chiefly on the milk of their herds, which they commonly drink

sour. Of the flesh they make but little use, for they seldom kill any of

their cattle, and never a cow, a calf, or a lamb. Even oxen and weathers

are only slaughtered on solemn and festal occasions, such as visits,

burials, and the like. Such slaughter is a great event in a village, and

young and old flock from far and near to partake of the meat.[697] Their

huts are of a round [Sidenote: Huts and villages of the Herero.] beehive

shape, about ten feet in diameter. The framework consists of stout

branches, of which the lower ends are rammed into the ground, while the

upper ends are bent together and tied with bark. A village is composed

of a number of these round huts arranged in a circle about the calves’

pen as a centre and surrounded by an artificial hedge of

thorn-bushes.[698] At night the cattle are driven in through the hedge

and take up their quarters in the open space round the calves’ pen.[699]

[Sidenote: Sacred fire of the Herero village maintained in or before the

hut of the chief’s principal wife.] The hut of the great or principal

wife of the chief, built and furnished in a more elaborate style than

the rest, regularly stands to the east of the calves’ pen, in the

direction of sunrise, so that from its position we can always learn

approximately the season of the year when the village was founded. The

chief or headman of the village has no special hut of his own; he passes

the day in the hut of the great wife, and the night commonly in one of

the huts of his other wives in the northern semicircle. Between the

house of the great wife and the calves’ pen, but somewhat nearer to the

pen, is a large heap of ashes on which, in good weather, a small,

faintly glimmering fire may be seen to burn at any time of the day. The

heap of ashes is the sacred hearth (_okuruo_); the fire is the holy fire

(_omurangere_ or _omurangerero_) of the village. The open space between

the sacred hearth and the house of the great wife is known as the holy

ground or the holy house (_otyizero_).[700] Betwixt the hearth and the

calves’ fold stands a great withered branch of the _omumborombonga_

(_Combretum primigenum_), the sacred tree of the Herero, from which they

believe that both they and their cattle are descended. When a branch of

this tree cannot be obtained its place is taken by a bough of the

_omwapu_ tree (_Grevia spec._)[701] At night and in rainy weather the

fire is transferred to the hut of the great wife, where it is carefully

kept alight.[702] According to another account, the fire is regularly

preserved in the house, and a brand is only brought out into the open

air when the cattle are being milked at morning and evening in order

that in presence of the fire the cow may be healthy and give much

milk.[703] The custom in this respect perhaps varies in different

villages, and may be determined in some measure by the climate. The

sacred fire is regarded as the centre of the village; from it at evening

the people fetch a light to kindle the fire on their own hearths, for

every householder has his own private hearth in front of his hut. At the

holy hearth are kept the most sacred possessions of the tribe, to wit,

the bundle of sticks which represent their ancestors; here sacrifices

are offered and enchantments performed; here the flesh of the victims is

cooked; here is the proper place of the chief; here the elders assemble

in council, and judgment is given; here strangers are received and

ambassadors entertained. At the banquets held on solemn occasions all

may partake of the flesh, whether they be friends or foes; the

stranger’s curse would rest on the churl who should refuse him his just

share; and this curse the Herero dreads above everything because he

believes its effect to be infallible. So great is the veneration felt by

the natives for the sacred hearth, with its hallowed bough, that they

dare not approach it without testifying the deepest respect. They take

off their sandals, throw themselves on the ground, and pray their great

ancestor (_Tate Mukuru_) to be gracious to them. The horns of the oxen

slaughtered at festivals lie beside the hearth; the chief sits on the

largest pair when he is engaged in performing his magical rites. Near

the fire, too, is a stone on which none but the chief has the right to

sit.[704]

[Sidenote: The sacred fire among the Herero is watched and fed by

the chief’s eldest unmarried daughter, who performs other priestly

duties.] The duty of maintaining the sacred fire and preserving it

from extinction is entrusted to the eldest unmarried daughter of

the chief by his great wife; if he has no daughter, the task

devolves on the unmarried girl who is next of kin to him. She

bears the title of _ondangere_, derived from the name of the

sacred fire (_omurangere_).[705] Besides keeping up the fire she

has other priestly functions to discharge. Before the men start on

a dangerous expedition, she rubs the holy ashes on their

foreheads.[706] When a woman brings her new-born infant to the

sacred hearth to receive its name, the maiden priestess or Vestal,

as we may call her, sprinkles water on both mother and child.[707]

Every morning, when the cattle walk out of the fold, she

besprinkles the fattest of them with a brush dipped in water.[708]

When an ox dies by accident at the village, she lays a piece of

wood on its back, praying at the same time for long life, plenty

of cattle, and so forth. Moreover, she ties a double knot in her

apron for the dead beast, for a curse would follow if she

neglected to do so.[709] Lastly, when the site of the village is

changed, the priestess walks at the head of the people and of the

herds, carrying a firebrand from the old sacred hearth and taking

the utmost care to keep it alight.[710]

The chief or headman of the village is also the priest; [Sidenote: The

Herero chief acts as a priest.] he alone may perform religious

ceremonies except such as fall within the province of the Vestal

priestess, his daughter. In his capacity of priest he keeps the sacred

bundle of sticks which represent the ancestors, and at sacrifices he

offers meat to them that they may consecrate it. When the old village is

abandoned, it is his duty to carry, like Aeneas quitting the ruins of

Troy,[711] these rude penates to the new home. However, it is deemed

enough if he merely places the holy bundle on his back, and then hands

it to a servant, who carries it for him. As a priest he introduces the

newborn children to the spirits of the ancestors at the sacred hearth,

and gives the infants their names; and as a priest he has a cow to

himself, whose milk no one else may drink. This milk is kept in vessels

which differ from the ordinary milk vessels, not only in shape and size,

but also in being marked with the badge of his paternal clan. When a man

goes forth from the village with his family and servants to herd the

cattle on a distant pasture, or to found another village, he takes with

him a burning brand from the sacred hearth wherewith to kindle the holy

fire in his new home. By [Sidenote: Fire taken from the chief’s hearth

by the founder of a new village.] doing so he acknowledges himself the

vassal of the chief from whose hearth he took the fire. In this way a

single village may give out swarm after swarm, till it has become the

metropolis or capital of a whole group of villages, the inhabitants of

which recognise the supremacy of the parent community, and regard

themselves as all sitting round its sacred fire. It is thus that a

village may grow into a tribe and its headman into a powerful chief,

who, by means of marriage alliances and the adhesion of weaker rivals,

may extend his sway over alien communities, and so gradually acquire the

rank and authority of a king.[712] The political evolution of the Herero

has indeed stopped short of this final stage; but among the more

advanced branches of the Bantu race, such as the Zulus and the

Matabeles, it is possible that the kingship has developed along these

lines.

[Sidenote: The combined office of chief and priest among the Herero

descends in the male line.] The possession of the sacred fire and of the

ancestral sticks, carrying with it both political authority and priestly

dignity, descends in the male line, and hence generally passes from

father to son. In any case, whether the deceased had a son or not, the

double office of chief and priest must always remain in his paternal

clan (_oruzo_). If it should happen that the clan becomes extinct by his

death, the [Sidenote: A chief’s sacred hearth abandoned for some time

after his death.] sacred fire is put out, the hearth destroyed, no brand

is taken from it, and the sticks representing the ancestors are laid

with the dead man in the grave. But should there be an heir, as usually

happens, he takes a fire-brand from the sacred hearth and departs with

all the people to seek a new home, abandoning the old village for years.

In time, however, they return to the spot, rebuild the huts on the same

sites, and inhabit them again. But in the interval none of the kinsmen

of the deceased may approach the deserted village under pain of

incurring the wrath of the ghost. When the return at last takes place,

and the people have announced their arrival to the dead chief at his

grave, which is generally in the cattle-pen, they make a new fire by the

friction of the two sacred fire-sticks on the old hearth; for it is not

lawful to bring with them a brand from their last settlement.[713]

[Sidenote: The sacred Herero fire rekindled by the fire-drill.] If the

sacred fire should go out through the neglect of the priestess, a sudden

shower of rain, or any other accident, the Herero deem it a very evil

omen. The whole tribe is immediately summoned and large offerings of

cattle are made as an expiation. Then the fire is relit by means of the

friction of two sacred fire-sticks, which have been handed down from

father to son. Every chief possesses such fire-sticks, and keeps them

tied up with the bundle of holy sticks that represent the ancestors. One

of the fire-sticks is pointed, the other has a hole in the middle, and

sometimes also a notch cut round it. In the notch some fungus or rotten

wood is placed as tinder. The holed stick is held fast on the ground by

the knees of the operator, who inserts the point of the other stick in

the hole and twirls it rapidly between the palms of his hands in the

usual way. As soon as a spark is emitted it catches the tinder, which

can then easily be blown up into a flame. Thus it is from the tinder, we

are told, and not from the sticks, that the flame is elicited. In this

fashion, if everything is very dry, as it generally is in Hereroland,

the native gets fire in about a minute. The names applied to the two

sticks indicate that the pointed stick (_ondume_) is regarded as male

and the holed stick (_otyiya_) as female, and that the process of making

fire by the friction of the two is compared to the intercourse of the

sexes. As to the wood of which the fire-sticks are made accounts differ.

According to Dr. H. Schinz the holed or female stick is of a soft wood,

the pointed or male stick of a hard wood, generally of the [Sidenote:

The male fire-stick made of the sacred _omumborombonga_ tree.] sacred

_omumborombonga_ tree (_Combretum primigenum_). According to Mr. C. G.

Büttner, neither of the sticks need be of a special tree, and any wood

that happens to be at hand may be employed for the purpose; only the

wood of the thorny acacias, which abound in the country, appears to be

unsuitable.[714] Probably the rule mentioned by Dr. Schinz is the

original one, and if in some places the wood of the sacred tree has

ceased to be used to light the holy fire, the reason may be simply that

the tree does not grow there, and that accordingly the people are

obliged to use such wood as they can find. We have seen that a branch of

the sacred _omumborombonga_ tree is regularly planted beside the village

hearth, but that in default of it the people have to put up with a bough

of another kind of tree, the _omuwapu_ (_Grevia spec_).[715] Such

substitutions were especially apt to be forced on the Herero in the

southern part of the country, where the _omumborombonga_ tree is very

rare and forests do not exist, the larger trees growing singly or in

clumps. In the north, on the other hand, vegetation is much richer, and

regular woods are to be found. Here, in particular, the _omumborombonga_

tree is one of the ornaments of the landscape. It grows only beside

water-courses, and generally stands solitary, surpassing a tall oak in

height, and rivalling it in girth; indeed, so thick is the trunk that

were it hollowed out a family could lodge in it. Unlike most trees in

the country it is thornless. Whole forests of it grow to the eastward of

Hereroland, in the direction of Lake Ngami. So close is the grain and so

heavy the wood that some of the early explorers gave it the name of the

“iron tree.”[716] Hence it is well adapted to form the upright stick of

the fire-drill, for which a hard wood is required.

[Sidenote: Herero tradition of the origin of men and cattle from the

sacred _omumborombonga_ tree.] The Herero have a tradition that in the

beginning they and their cattle and all four-footed beasts came forth

from the _omumborombonga_ tree in a single day, whereas birds, fish, and

creeping things sprang from the rain. However, slightly different

versions of the Herero genesis appear to be current. As to the origin of

men and cattle from the tree, public opinion is unanimous; but some

dissenters hold that sheep and perhaps goats, but certainly sheep,

issued from a flat rock in the north of the country. For some time past,

unfortunately, the tree has ceased to be prolific; it is of no use

waiting beside it in the hope of capturing such oxen and sheep as it

might bear. Yet still the Herero testify great respect for the tree

which they regard as their ancestor (_omukuru_). To injure it is deemed

a sacrilege which the ancestor will punish sooner or later. In passing

it they bow reverently and stick a bunch of green twigs or grass into

the trunk or throw it down at the foot. They address the tree, saying,

“_U-zera tate mukururume_, Thou art holy, grandfather!” and they even

enter into conversation with it, giving the answers themselves in a

changed voice. They hardly dare to sit down in its shadow. All this

reverence they display for every tree of the species.[717]

[Sidenote: Migration from one country to another sometimes involves a

change of sacred tree.] On the whole, then, we may infer that so long as

the Herero dwelt in a land where their ancestral tree abounded, they

made the male fire-stick from its wood; but that as they gradually

migrated from a region of tropical rains and luxuriant forests to the

arid mountains, open grass lands, and dry torrid climate of their

present country,[718] they had in some places to forgo its use and to

take another tree in its stead. Similarly the Aryan invaders of Greece

and Italy were obliged, under a southern sky, to seek substitutes for

the sacred oak of their old northern home; and more and more, as time

went on and the deciduous woods retreated up the mountain slopes, they

found what they sought in the laurel, the olive, and the vine. Zeus

himself had to put up with the white poplar at his great sanctuary of

Olympia in the hot lowlands of Elis;[719] and on summer days, when the

light leaves of the poplar hardly stirred in the languid air and the

buzz of the flies was more than usually exasperating, he perhaps looked

wistfully away to the Arcadian mountains, looming blue in the distance

through a haze of heat, and sighed for the shadow and the coolness of

their oak woods.

[Sidenote: The worship of the chief’s fire a form of ancestor-worship.]

Thus it appears that the sanctity ascribed by the Herero to the chief’s

fire springs from a custom of kindling it with the wood of their

ancestral tree; in fact, the cult of the fire resolves itself into a

form of ancestor-worship. For the religion of the Herero, like that of

all Bantu peoples, is first and foremost a propitiation of the spirits

of their forefathers conceived as powerful beings able and willing to

harm them. From youth to death the Herero live in constant dread of

their ancestors (_ovakuru_, plural of _omukuru_), who, sometimes seen

and sometimes unseen, return to earth and play their descendants many a

spiteful trick. They glide into the village, steal the milk, drive the

cattle from the fold, and waylay women. More than that, they can inflict

disease and death, decide the issue of war, and send or withhold rain at

pleasure. They are the cause of every vexation and misfortune, and the

whole aim of the living is by frequent sacrifices to mollify and appease

the dead.[720]

[Sidenote: The sacred hearth a special seat of the ancestral spirits.]

Now the sacred hearth seems to be in a special sense the seat of the

worship paid to the ancestral spirits. Here the head of the family sits

and communes with his forefather, giving himself the answers he thinks

fit.[721] Hither the newborn child is brought with its mother to be

introduced to the spirits and to receive its name, and the chief,

addressing his ancestors, announces, “To you a child is born in your

village; may this village never come to an end!”[722] Hither the bride

is conducted at her marriage, and a sheep having been sacrificed, its

flesh is placed on the holy bushes at the hearth.[723] Hither the sick

are carried to be commended to the care of their ghostly kinsmen, and as

the sufferer is borne round and round the fire his friends chant:—

“_See, Father, we have come here,

With this sick man to you,

That he may soon recover._”[724]

[Sidenote: Sacred sticks representing the deceased ancestors of the

Herero.] But the most tangible link between the worship of the fire and

the worship of the dead is furnished by the sacred sticks representing

the ancestors, which are kept in a bundle together with the two sticks

used for kindling the fire by friction. Each of these rude idols or

Lares, as we may call them, “symbolises a definite ancestor of the

paternal clan, and, taken together, they may be regarded as the most

sacred possession of a family. They stand in the closest relation to the

holy hearth, or rather to the priestly dignity, and must therefore

always remain in the same paternal clan.”[725] These sticks “are cut

from trees or bushes which are dedicated to the ancestors, and they

represent the ancestors at the sacrificial meals, for the cooked flesh

of the victims is always set before them first. Many people always keep

these sticks, tied up in a bundle with straps and hung with amulets, in

the branches of the sacrificial bushes which stand on the sacred hearth

(_okuruo_). The sacrificial bush serves to support the severed pieces of

the victim, and thus in a measure represents an altar or table of

sacrifice.”[726] When after an absence of years the people return to a

village where a chief died and was buried, a new fire is kindled by

friction on the old hearth, the flesh of the first animal slaughtered

here is cooked in a particular vessel, and the chief hands a portion of

it to every person present. “An image, consisting of two pieces of wood,

supposed to represent the household deity, or rather the deified parent,

is then produced, and moistened in the platter of each individual. The

chief then takes the image, and, after affixing a piece of meat to the

upper end of it, he plants it in the ground, on the identical spot where

his parent was accustomed to sacrifice. The first pail of milk produced

from the cattle is also taken to the grave; a small quantity is poured

on the ground, and a blessing asked on the remainder.” Each clan, the

writer adds, has a particular tree or shrub consecrated to it, and of

this tree or shrub the two sticks representing the deceased are

made.[727]

[Sidenote: The sacred sticks representing the ancestors are probably the

fire-sticks which were used to kindle fresh fire in the village after a

death.] In these accounts the sacred sticks which stand for the

ancestors, and to which the meat of sacrifices is first offered, are

distinguished, expressly or implicitly, from the sacred sticks which are

used to make the holy fire.[728] Other writers, however, identify the

two sets of sticks. Thus we are told that the Herero “make images of

their ancestors as follows. They take the two sticks with which they

make fire and tie them together with a fresh wisp of corn. Then they

worship this object as their ancestor. They may approach it only on

their knees. For hours together they sit before it and talk with it. If

you ask them where they imagine their ancestors to be, since they cannot

surely be these sticks, they answer that they do not know. The sticks

are kept in the house of the great wife.”[729] Again, another writer

defines the _ondume_ or male fire-stick as a “stick representing an

_omukuru_, _i.e._ ancestor, deity, with which and the _otyiza_ the holy

fire is made.”[730] Again, the Rev. G. Viehe, in describing the

ceremonies observed at the return to a deserted village where an

ancestor (_omukuru_) is buried, tells us that they bring no fire with

them, “but holy fire must now be obtained from the _omukuru_. This is

done with the _ondume_ and the _otyiza_. The meaning of these two words

plainly shows that the first represents the _omukuru_, and the other his

wife.”[731] The same excellent authority defines the _ozondume_ as

“sticks which represent the _ovakuru_, _i.e._ ancestors, deities”;[732]

and _ozondume_ is simply the plural of _ondume_, the male

fire-stick.[733] Hence it appears highly probable that the sticks

representing the ancestors are, in fact, nothing but the male

fire-sticks, each of which was cut to make a new fire on the return to

the old village after a chiefs death. The stick would be an appropriate

emblem of the deceased, who had been in his lifetime the owner of the

sacred fire, and who now after his death bestowed it on his descendants

by means of the friction of his wooden image. And the symbolism will

appear all the more natural when we remember that the male fire-stick is

generally made from the ancestral tree, that the process of fire-making

is regarded by the Herero as the begetting of a child, and that their

name for the stick, according to the most probable etymology, signifies

“the begetter.” Such sticks would be far too sacred to be thrown away

when they had served their immediate purpose of kindling a new fire, and

thus in time a whole bundle of them would accumulate, each of them

recalling, and in a sense representing, one of the great forefathers of

the tribe. When the old sticks had ceased to be used as fire-lighters,

and were preserved merely as memorials of the dead, it is not surprising

that their original function should be overlooked by some European

observers, who have thus been led to distinguish them from the sticks by

which the fire is actually produced at the present day.[734] Amongst the

[Sidenote: Sacred fire-boards among the Koryaks and Chuckchees of

north-eastern Asia.] Koryaks of north-eastern Asia, when the sacred

fire-boards, roughly carved in human form, are so full of holes that

they can no longer be used for the purpose of kindling fire, they are

still kept as holy relics in a shrine near the door of the house; and a

stranger who observed the respect with which they are treated, but who

did not know their history, might well mistake them for figures of

worshipful ancestors and never guess the practical purpose which they

once served as fire-lighters. A Koryak family regards its sacred

fire-board not only as the deity of the household fire, the guardian of

the family hearth, but also as the guardian of the reindeer, and they

call it the “master of the herd.” It is supposed to protect the reindeer

from wolves and from sickness and to prevent the animals from straying

away and being lost. When a reindeer is slaughtered, the sacred

fire-board is taken out and smeared with the blood. The maritime

Koryaks, who do not live by reindeer, regard the sacred fire-board as

the master of the underground house and the helper in the hunt of

sea-mammals. They call it “father” and feed it from time to time with

fat, which they smear on its mouth.[735] Among the neighbouring

Chuckchees in the north-eastern extremity of Asia similar ideas and

customs obtain in respect of the fire-boards. These are roughly carved

in human form and personified, almost deified, as the supernatural

guardians of the reindeer. The holes made by drilling in the board are

deemed the eyes of the figure and the squeaking noise produced by the

friction of the fire-drill in the hole is thought to be its voice. At

every sacrifice the mouth of the figure is greased with tallow or with

the marrow of bones. When a new fire-board is made, it is consecrated by

being smeared with the blood of a slaughtered reindeer, and the owner

says, “Enough! Take up your abode here!” Then the other fire-boards are

brought to the same place and set side by side on the ground. The owner

says, “Ho! these are your companions. See that I always find easily

every kind of game!” Next he slaughters another reindeer and says, “Hi!

Since you are one of my young men, go and drive the herd hither!” Then

after a pause he asks the fire-board, “Have you brought it?” to which in

the name of the fire-board he answers, “I have.” Thereupon, speaking in

his own person, he says, “Then catch some reindeer! It seems that you

will keep a good watch over the herd. There, from the actual chief of

the fire-boards, you may learn wisdom.” These sacred fire-boards are

often handed down from generation to generation as family heir-looms.

During the calving-season they are taken from their bag and placed

behind the frame in the outer tent in order that they may protect the

dams.[736]

[Sidenote: The evolution of a fire-god or fire-goddess.] These Koryak

and Chuckchee customs illustrate the evolution of a fire-god into the

patron deity of a family and his representation in human form by the

board which is used in fire-making. As the fire-board is that part of

the kindling apparatus which is commonly regarded as female in

contradistinction to the drill, which is regarded as male, we can easily

understand why the deity of the fire should sometimes, as at Rome, be

conceived as a goddess rather than as a god; whereas if the drill itself

were viewed as the essential part of the apparatus we should expect to

find a fire-god and not a fire-goddess.

Footnote 683:

Festus, _s.v._ “Ignis,” p. 106, ed. C. O. Müller: “_Ignis Vestae si

quando interstinctus esset, virgines verberibus afficiebantur a

pontifice, quibus mos erat tabulam felicis materiae tamdiu terebrare,

quousque exceptum ignem cribro aeneo virgo in aedem ferret_.” In this

passage it is not clear whether _quibus_ refers to the virgins alone

or to the virgins and the pontiff together; but the strict grammatical

construction is in favour of the latter interpretation. The point is

not unimportant, as we shall see presently. From a passage of Plutarch

(_Numa_, 9) it has sometimes been inferred that the Vestal fire was

rekindled by sunlight reflected from a burning-glass. But in this

passage Plutarch is describing a Greek, not a Roman, mode of making

fire, as has been rightly pointed out by Professor M. H. Morgan (“De

ignis eliciendi modis apud antiquos,” _Harvard Studies in Classical

Philology_, i. (1890) pp. 56 _sqq._). In this memoir Professor Morgan

has collected and discussed the passages of Greek and Latin writers

which refer to the kindling of fire.

Footnote 684:

See E. B. Tylor, _Early History of Mankind_, 3rd Ed., pp. 238 _sqq._

More evidence might easily be given. See, for example, J. Dawson,

_Australian Aborigines_, pp. 15 _sq._; C. Lumholtz, _Among Cannibals_,

p. 191; A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp.

770-773; Maximilian Prinz zu Wied-Newied, _Reise nach Brasilien_, ii.

18 _sq._; E. F. im Thurn, _Among the Indians of Guiana_, pp. 257-259;

K. von den Steinen, _Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens_, pp.

223 _sqq._; H. Ling Roth, _The Natives of Sarawak and British North

Borneo_, i. 375 _sqq._; A. Maass, _Bei liebenswürdigen Wilden, ein

Beitrag zur Kenntniss der Mentawai-Insulaner_ (Berlin, 1902), pp. 114,

116; Mgr. Le Roy, “Les Pygmées,” _Missions Catholiques_, xxix. (1897),

p. 137; E. Thurston, _Ethnographic Notes in Southern India_ (Madras,

1906), pp. 464-470; W. A. Reed, _Negritos of Zambales_ (Manila, 1904),

p. 40.

Footnote 685:

J. Teit, “The Thompson Indians of British Columbia,” pp. 203, 205

(_Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, The Jesup North

Pacific Expedition_, vol. i. part 4).

Footnote 686:

J. Walter Fewkes, “The Lesser New-fire Ceremony at Walpi,” _American

Anthropologist_, N.S. iii. (1901) p. 445.

Footnote 687:

Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 621.

Footnote 688:

For this information I am indebted to Mr. S. H. Ray.

Footnote 689:

G. Jacob, _Altarabisches Beduineneben_ 2nd Ed., (Berlin, 1897), p. 91.

In his _Arabic-English Lexicon_, book i. p. 1257, E. W. Lane gives the

following account of the subject: “_zand_, a piece of stick or wood,

for producing fire; the upper one of the two pieces of stick, or wood,

with which fire is produced: ... and _zanda_ is the appellation of the

lower one thereof, in which is the notch or hollow, or in which is a

hole.... One end of the _zand_ is put into the _fard_ (notch) of the

_zanda_, and the _zand_ is then rapidly twirled round in producing

fire.... The best kind of _zand_ is made of _’afār_ and the best kind

of _zanda_ of _markh_.” It will be observed that the two writers

differ as to _markh_ wood, Jacob saying that it is used to make the

upright (male) stick, and Lane that it is used to make the horizontal

(female) stick. My learned friend Professor A. A. Bevan, who directed

my attention to both passages and transliterated for me the Arabic

words in Lane, has kindly consulted the original authorities on this

point and informs me that Lane is right.

Footnote 690:

L. Concradt, “Die Ngumbu in Südkamerun,” _Globus_, lxxxi, (1902) p.

354.

Footnote 691:

A. C. Hollis, _The Masai_ (Oxford, 1905), p. 342.

Footnote 692:

A. C. Hollis, _The Nandi_ (Oxford, 1909), p. 85.

Footnote 693:

Letter of the Rev. J. Roscoe, dated Mengo, Uganda, 3rd August 1904.

Footnote 694:

J. Macdonald, _Light in Africa_ 2nd Ed., (London, 1890), pp. 216 _sq._

Footnote 695:

Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_ (London, 1904), pp. 51 _sq._

Footnote 696:

J. Irle, _Die Herero_ (Gütersloh, 1906), pp. 49 _sqq._, 53 _sqq._

Compare Josaphat Hahn, “Die Ovaherero,” _Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft

für Erdkunde zu Berlin_, iv. (1869) pp. 227 _sqq._; H. Schinz,

_Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika_ (Oldenburg and Leipsic, N.D.), pp. 142 _sq._;

E. Dannert, _Zum Rechte der Herero_ (Berlin, 1906), pp. 1 _sqq._ The

people call themselves _Ovaherero_ (plural); the singular form is

_Omuherero_. The name Damaras was given them by the English and Dutch.

Under the influence of the missionaries most of the heathen customs

described in the text seem now to have disappeared. See P. H.

Brincker, “Character, Sitten, und Gebräuche, speciell der Bantu

Deutsch-Südwest-afrikas,” _Mittheilungen des Seminars für

Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin_, iii. (1900) Dritte Abtheilung, p.

72.

Footnote 697:

C. J. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_ (London, 1856), p. 230; J. Chapman,

_Travels in the Interior of South Africa_ (London, 1868), i. 325; J.

Hahn, “Die Ovaherero,” _Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu

Berlin_, iv. (1869) pp. 244-247, 250; C. J. Büttner, _Das Hinterland

von Walfischbai und Angra Pequena_ (Heidelberg, 1884), pp. 228 _sq._;

H. Schinz, _Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika_, pp. 158-161; J. Irle, _Die

Herero_, pp. 32 _sqq._, 113.

Footnote 698:

Francis Galton, _Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa_

3rd Ed., (London, 1890), p. 116; J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iv. (1869), p.

247; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 155; J. Irle, _Die Herero_, pp. 111

_sq._

Footnote 699:

H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 159.

Footnote 700:

H. Schinz, _op. cit._ pp. 155-157; compare J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iv.

(1869) p. 499; J. Irle, _Die Herero_, p. 78; E. Dannert, _Zum Rechte

der Herero_, pp. 4 _sq._ At first sight Dr. Schinz’s account appears

to differ slightly from that given by the Rev. G. Viehe, who says: “In

the werfts of the Ovaherero, the houses of the chief are on the

eastern side. Next to these, towards the west, follow, one after

another, the holy house (_otyizero_), the place of the holy fire

(_okuruo_), and the kraal [_i.e._ the calves’ pen] (_otyunda_); thus

the _otyizero_ is on the east, and the _otyunda_ on the west side of

the _okuruo_” (“Some Customs of the Ovaherero,” _South African

Folk-lore Journal_, i. (1879) p. 62). But it seems clear that by the

chief’s house Mr. Viehe means what Dr. Schinz calls the house of the

great wife; and that what Mr. Viehe calls the holy house is the open

space between the sacred hearth and the house of the great wife or

chief. That space is described as the holy ground by Dr. Schinz, who

uses that phrase (“_der geweihte Boden_”) as the equivalent of the

native _otyizero_. Thus the two writers are in substantial agreement

with each other. On the other hand Dr. C. H. Hahn gives the name of

_otyizero_ or sacred house to “the chief house of the chief, in front

of which is the place of the holy fire.” He adds that “the chief has

several houses, according to the number of wives, each wife having her

own hut” (_South African Folk-lore Journal_, ii. (1880) p. 62, note

1.) The name _otyizero_ seems to be derived from _zera_, “sacred,”

“taboo.” See G. Viehe, _op. cit._ pp. 39, 41, 43; Rev. E. Dannert, in

(_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, ii. (1880) pp. 63, 65, 105, and

the editor’s note, _ib._ p. 93.

Footnote 701:

H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 155.

Footnote 702:

C. J. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, p. 223; J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iv. (1869)

p. 500; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 165.

Footnote 703:

H. Brincker, _Wörterbuch und kurzgefasste Grammatik des Otjiherero_

(Leipsic, 1886), _s.v._ “_okuruo_”; _id._ “Pyrolatrie in Südafrika,”

_Globus_, lxvii. (January 1895) p. 97; Meyer, quoted by J. Kohler,

“Das Recht der Herero,” _Zeitschrift für vergleichende

Rechtswissenschaft_, xiv. (1900) p. 315.

Footnote 704:

J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iv. (1869) pp. 499 _sq._; Rev. H. Beiderbecke, in

(_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, ii. (1880) p. 84; C. G.

Büttner, “Ueber Handwerke und technische Fertigkeiten der Eingeborenen

in Damaraland,” _Ausland_, 7th July 1884, p. 522; P. H. Brincker, in

_Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin_,

iii. (1900) Dritte Abtheilung, p. 75; _id._, _Wörterbuch des

Otjiherero_, _s.v._ “_okuruo_”; _id._, “Pyrolatrie in Südafrika,”

_Globus_, lxvii. (January 1895) p. 97; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 183;

Meyer, _l.c._

Footnote 705:

C. J. Andersson, _op. cit._ p. 223; J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iv. (1869) p.

500; Rev. E. Dannert, in (_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, ii.

(1880) p. 66; Rev. H. Beiderbecke, _ibid._ p. 83, note 4; C. G.

Büttner, _l.c._; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 165; J. Irle, _Die Herero_,

pp. 78 _sq._; E. Dannert, _Zum Rechte der Herero_, p. 5. According to

Meyer (_l.c._) and E. Dannert (_Zum Rechte der Herero_, p. 5), if the

chief’s eldest daughter marries, the duty of tending the fire passes

to his eldest wife. This statement is at variance with all the other

testimony on the subject, and for reasons which will appear presently

I regard it as improbable. At least it can hardly represent the

original custom.

Footnote 706:

Rev. H. Beiderbecke, in (_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, ii.

(1880) p. 84.

Footnote 707:

Rev. E. Dannert, in (_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, ii. (1880)

p. 66; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 168.

Footnote 708:

Francis Galton, _op. cit._ p. 115.

Footnote 709:

C. J. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, p. 223.

Footnote 710:

C. J. Andersson, _l.c._; J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iv. (1869) p. 500; H.

Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 167.

Footnote 711:

Virgil, _Aen._ ii. 717 _sqq._, 747.

Footnote 712:

C. J. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, p. 224; Rev. G. Viehe, in (_South

African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, i. (1879) p. 43; Rev. E. Dannert, in

(_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, ii. (1880) p. 67; C. G.

Büttner, _l.c._; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ pp. 166, 167, 186; Meyer,

quoted by J. Kohler, _op. cit._ p. 315; P. H. Brincker, in

_Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin_,

iii. (1900) Dritte Abtheilung, pp. 75 _sq._; J. Irle, _Die Herero_, p.

80; E. Dannert, _Zum Rechte der Herero_ (Berlin, 1906), p. 5.

Footnote 713:

C. J. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, pp. 228 _sq._; Rev. G. Viehe, _op.

cit._ i. (1879) pp. 61 _sq._; C. G. Büttner, _l.c._; H. Schinz, _op.

cit._ pp. 165, 180. The Herero have a curious twofold system of

paternal clans (_otuzo_, plural; _oruzo_, singular) and maternal clans

(_omaanda_, plural; _eanda_, singular). Every person inherits an

_oruzo_ from his father and an _eanda_ from his mother. See my

_Totemism and Exogamy_, ii. 357 _sqq._

Footnote 714:

C. J. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, pp. 223 _sq._; J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iv.

(1869) p. 500; Rev. G. Viehe, _op. cit._ i. (1879) pp. 39, 61; C. G.

Büttner, _l.c._; H. Brincker, _Wörterbuch des Otji-herero_, _s.vv._

_ondume_ and _otjija_; _id._ “Character, Sitten, und Gebräuche,

speciell der Bantu Deutsch-Südwest-afrikas,” _Mittheilungen des

Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin_, iii. (1900) Dritte

Abtheilung, p. 75; _id._ “Pyrolatrie in Südafrika,” _Globus_, lxvii.

(January, 1895) p. 96; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ pp. 165 _sq._; J. Kohler,

_op. cit._ pp. 305, 315; J. Irle, _Die Herero_, pp. 79 _sq._ According

to Dr. Schinz, the meaning of the names applied to the fire-sticks has

been much disputed; he himself adopts the view given in the text, and

supports it by weighty reason which, taken along with analogous

designations in many other parts of the world, may be regarded as

conclusive. He tells us that _otyiza_ means _pudendum muliebre_, and

this is actually the name of the holed stick according to Mr. Viehe

(_ll.cc._), though Dr. Schinz gives _otyia_ as the name. I have

followed Dr. Brincker in accepting _otyiya_ (_otjija_) as the correct

form of the word. Further, Dr. Schinz derives _ondume_, the name of

the pointed stick, from a verb _ruma_, meaning “to have intercourse

with a woman.” Moreover, he reports that the Ai San Bushmen, near

Noihas, in the Kalahari desert, call the vertical fire-stick _tau

doro_ and the horizontal fire-stick _gai doro_, where _tau_ is the

masculine prefix and _gai_ the feminine. Finally, a Herero explained

to him the significance of the names by referring in an unmistakable

manner to the corresponding relations in the animal kingdom. That the

two sticks are regarded as male and female is positively affirmed by

Mr. Viehe, Mr. Meyer (quoted by J. Kohler), and Dr. Brincker.

Footnote 715:

See above, pp. 213 _sq._ Mr. G. Viehe says that the _omuwapu_ tree

“acts a very important part in almost all the religious ceremonies” of

the Herero (_op. cit._ i. 45). Probably it is only used where the

_omumborombonga_ cannot be had.

Footnote 716:

J. Hahn, “Das Land der Herero,” _Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für

Erdkunde zu Berlin_, iii. (1868) pp. 200, 213, 214 _sq._; C. J.

Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, pp. 218, 221; _id._, _The Okavango River_

(London, 1861), pp. 21 _sq._; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 182.

Footnote 717:

C. J. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, p. 221; Francis Galton, _op. cit._ p.

115; J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iii. (1868) p. 215, iv. (1869) p. 498, note;

Rev. H. Beiderbecke, in _(South African) Folk-lore Journal_, ii.

(1880) pp. 92 _sq._; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ pp. 182 _sq._; Meyer,

quoted by J. Kohler, _op. cit._ p. 297; P. H. Brincker, in

_Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin_

(1900), Dritte Abtheilung, p. 73; J. Irle, _Die Herero_, pp. 75 _sq._,

77; E. Dannert, _Zum Rechte der Herero_, pp. 3 _sq._

Footnote 718:

On the evidence for this migration see J. Chapman, _Travels in the

Interior of South Africa_, i. 325-327; J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iii. (1868)

pp. 227 _sqq._ As to the physical features and climate of Hereroland,

see J. Hahn, “Das Land der Ovaherero,” _Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft

für Erdkunde zu Berlin_, iii. (1868) pp. 193 _sqq._; J. Irle, _Die

Herero_, pp. 9 _sqq._, 19 _sqq._

Footnote 719:

Pausanias, v. 13. 3, v. 14. 2. On the substitution of the poplar for

the oak, see Mr. A. B. Cook in _Folk-lore_, xv. (1904) pp. 297 _sq._

Footnote 720:

Rev. G. Viehe, “Some Customs of the Ovaherero,” (_South African_)

_Folk-lore Journal_, i. (1879) pp. 64-66; Rev. H. Beiderbecke, in

(_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, ii. (1880) p. 91; H. Schinz,

_op. cit._ pp. 183 _sq._; P. H. Brincker, in _Mittheilungen des

Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin_, iii. (1900) Dritte

Abtheilung, pp. 89 _sq._; J. Irle, _Die Herero_, pp. 74, 75, 77.

Apparently it is only a powerful or eminent man who becomes an

_omukuru_ after his death. Or rather, perhaps, though all dead men

become _ovakuru_, only the strong and brave are feared and worshipped.

Footnote 721:

H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 183.

Footnote 722:

Rev. E. Dannert, “Customs of the Ovaherero at the Birth of a Child,”

(_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, ii. (1880) pp. 66 _sq._ Compare

Rev. G. Viehe, _op. cit._ i. (1879) p. 41; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p.

168.

Footnote 723:

Rev. G. Viehe, in (_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, i. (1879) pp.

49 _sq._

Footnote 724:

Rev. G. Viehe, _op. cit._ i. 51.

Footnote 725:

H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 166. Compare J. Irle, _Die Herero_, p. 77.

Footnote 726:

J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iv. (1869) p. 500, note.

Footnote 727:

C. J. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, pp. 228 _sq._ The ceremony is described

more fully by the Rev. G. Viehe, “Some Customs of the Ovaherero,”

(_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, i. (1879) pp. 61 _sq._, from

whose account some of the details in the text are borrowed.

Footnote 728:

The distinction is made also by Mr. J. Irle. According to him, while

the fire-sticks are called _ozondume_ (plural of _ondume_), the sticks

which represent the ancestors are called _ozohongue_ and are made from

the _omuvapu_ bush. In every chief’s house there is a bundle of about

twenty of these ancestral sticks. When a chief dies, the sticks are

wrapped in a portion of the sacred bull (_omusisi_) which is

slaughtered on this occasion, and a new stick is added to the bundle.

At the same time Mr. Irle tells us that the fire-sticks (_ozondume_)

also represent the ancestors and are made like them from the _omuvapu_

bush. See J. Irle, _Die Herero_, pp. 77, 79.

Footnote 729:

Bensen, quoted by J. Kohler, “Das Recht der Herero,” _Zeitschrift für

vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft_, xiv. (1900) p. 305.

Footnote 730:

Rev. G. Viehe, or his editor, _op. cit._ i. (1879) p. 39. The _otyiza_

(_otyiya_) is the female fire-stick. See above, p. 218 note 1.

Footnote 731:

Rev. G. Viehe, in (_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, i. (1879) p.

61.

Footnote 732:

_Ibid._ p. 43, compare p. 50.

Footnote 733:

J. Irle, _Die Herero_, p. 79.

Footnote 734:

I have assumed that the ancestral sticks, whatever their origin,

represent only men. This is plainly implied by Dr. Brincker, who tells

us that “each of these sticks represents the male member of generation

and in the Bantu sense a personality, which stands for the presence of

the deceased chief on all festive occasions and especially at

religious ceremonies” (“Character, Sitten, und Gebräuche, speciell der

Bantu Deutsch-Südwestafrikas,” _Mittheilungen des Seminars für

Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin_, iii. (1900) Dritte Abtheilung, p.

74). In savage society women are of too little account for their

ghosts to be commonly worshipped. Speaking of the Bantu peoples, a

writer who knows them well observes: “This lack of respect for old

women is a part of the natives’ religious system, and is connected

with their conception of a future life, in which women play a

subordinate part, their spirits not being able to cause much trouble,

and therefore not being of much account” (Dudley Kidd, _The Essential

Kafir_, p. 23).

Footnote 735:

W. Jochelson, “The Koryak,” pp. 32-36 (_Memoir of the American Museum

of Natural History, The Jesup North Pacific Expedition_, vol. vi.,

Leyden and New York, 1908).

Footnote 736:

W. Bogaras, “The Chukchee Religion,” pp. 349-353 (_Memoir of the

American Museum of Natural History, The Jesup North Pacific

Expedition_, vol. vii. part ii., Leyden and New York, 1904).

CHAPTER XVI

FATHER JOVE AND MOTHER VESTA

[Sidenote: Similarity between the fire-customs of the Herero and the

ancient Latins.] The reader may remember that the preceding account of

the fire-customs of the Herero was introduced for the sake of comparison

with the Latin worship of Vesta. The points of similarity between the

two will now be indicated. In the first place we have seen reason to

hold that the ever-burning Vestal fire at Rome was merely a survival of

the fire on the king’s hearth. So among the Herero the sacred fire of

the village is the chief’s fire, which is kept burning or smouldering in

his house by day and by night. In Rome, as in Hereroland, the extinction

of the fire was regarded as an evil omen, which had to be expiated by

sacrifices,[737] and new fire was procured in primitive fashion by

twirling the point of one stick in the hole of another. The Roman fire

was fed with the wood of the sacred oak tree, just as the African fire

is kindled with the wood of the sacred _omumborombonga_ tree. Beside

both were kept the images of the ancestors, the Lares at Rome, the

_ozondume_ in Hereroland. The king’s house which sheltered the fire and

the images was originally in Italy what the chief’s hut still is in

Hereroland, a circular hut of osiers, not as ancient dreamers thought,

because the earth is round,[738] nor yet because a circle is the symbol

of rest, but simply because it is both easier and cheaper to build a

round hut than a square.[739]

[Sidenote: The Roman Vestals, or some of them, appear to have been

originally the king’s daughters.] Further, in Rome the sacred fire was

tended, as it still is in Hereroland, by unmarried women, and as the

Herero priestesses are the chiefs daughters, so, we may conjecture, it

was with some at least of the Vestals among the ancient Latins. The

Roman Vestals appear to have been under the _patria potestas_ of the

king, and, in republican times, of the Pontifex Maximus, who succeeded

to some of the king’s functions.[740] But if they were under the _patria

potestas_ of the king, they must have been either his wives or

daughters; as virgins they cannot have been his wives; it remains,

therefore, that they were his daughters. Various circumstances confirm

this view. Their house at Rome, as we saw, always adjoined the Regia,

the old palace of the kings; they were treated with marks of respect

usually accorded to royalty;[741] and the most famous of all the

Vestals, the mother of Romulus, was said to be a daughter of the King of

Alba.[742] The custom of putting an unfaithful Vestal to death by

immuring her in a subterranean chamber[743] may have been adopted in

order to avoid the necessity of taking the life of a princess by

violence;[744] for, as we shall learn later on, there is a very

widespread reluctance to spill royal blood.

[Sidenote: Rites performed by the Vestals for the fertility of the earth

and the fecundity of cattle.] Amongst the Herero the chief’s daughter

who tends the holy fire has also to perform certain priestly rites,

which have for their object the prosperity and multiplication of the

cattle.[745] So, too, it was with the Roman Vestals. On the fifteenth of

April every year pregnant cows were sacrificed to the Earth goddess; the

unborn calves were torn from their mothers’ wombs, the chief Vestal

burned them and kept their ashes for use at the shepherds’ festival of

the Parilia. This sacrifice of pregnant cows was a fertility charm

designed, by a curious application of homoeopathic magic, to quicken

both the seed in the ground and the wombs of the cows and the ewes.[746]

At the Parilia, held on the twenty-first of April, the Vestals mixed the

ashes of the unborn calves with the blood of a horse which had been

sacrificed in October, and this mixture they distributed to shepherds,

who fumigated their flocks with it as a means of ensuring their

fecundity and a plentiful supply of milk.[747]

[Sidenote: The Vestals were probably regarded as embodiments of Vesta,

who was a mother-goddess, the bestower of offspring on cattle and

women.] Strange as at first it may seem to find holy virgins assisting

in operations intended to promote the fertility of the earth and of

cattle, this reproductive function accords perfectly with the view that

they were of old the wives of the fire-god and the mothers of kings. On

that view, also, we can understand why down to imperial times the

Vestals adored the male emblem of generation,[748] and why Vesta

herself, the goddess of whom they were the priestesses and probably the

embodiments, was worshipped by the Romans not as a virgin but as a

mother.[749] She was sometimes identified with Venus.[750] Like Diana,

with whom she was identified at Nemi, she appears to have been a goddess

of fecundity, who bestowed offspring both on cattle and on women. That

she was supposed to multiply cattle is indicated by the ceremonies which

the Vestals performed in April; that she made women to be mothers is

hinted at not obscurely by the legends of the birth of the old Latin

kings.[751] The ancient Aryan practice of leading a bride thrice round

the hearth of her new home[752] may have been intended not merely to

introduce her to the ancestral spirits who had their seats there, but

also to promote conception, perhaps by allowing one of these very

spirits to enter into her and be born again. When the ancient Hindoo

bridegroom led his bride round the fire, he addressed the fire-god

[Sidenote: Custom of leading a bride round the fire perhaps a fertility

charm.] Agni with the words, “Mayst thou give back, Agni, to the husband

the wife together with offspring.”[753] When a Slavonian bride enters

her husband’s house after marriage she is led thrice round the hearth;

then she must stir the fire with the poker, saying, “As many sparks

spring up, so many cattle, so many male children shall enliven the new

home.”[754] At Mostar, in Herzegovina, the bride seats herself on a bag

of fruit beside the hearth in her new home and pokes the fire thrice.

While she does so, they bring her a small boy and set him on her lap.

She turns the child thrice round in order that she may give birth to

male children.[755] Still more clearly does belief in the impregnation

of a woman by fire come out in another South Slavonian custom. When a

wife wishes to have a child, she will hold a vessel full of water beside

the fire on the hearth, while her husband knocks two burning brands

together so that the sparks fly out. When some of them have fallen into

the vessel, the woman drinks the water which has thus been fertilised by

the fire.[756] The same belief seems still to linger in England; for

there is a Lincolnshire saying that if a woman’s apron is burned above

the knee by a spark or red-hot cinder flying out of a fire, she will

become a mother.[757] Thus the superstition which gave rise to the

stories of the birth of the old Roman kings holds its ground to this day

in Europe, even in our own country. So indestructible are the crude

fancies of our savage forefathers. Thus we may safely infer that the old

practice of leading a bride formally to or round the hearth was designed

to make her fruitful through the generative virtue ascribed to the fire.

The custom is not confined to peoples of the Aryan stock, for it is

observed also by the Esthonians and the Wotyaks of Russia[758] and, as

we have seen, by the Herero of South Africa.[759] It expresses in daily

life the same idea which is embodied in the myths of the birth of

Servius Tullius and the other Latin kings, whose virgin mothers

conceived through contact with a spark or tongue of fire.[760]

[Sidenote: New-born children brought to the hearth as a mode of

introducing them to the ancestral spirits.] Accordingly, where beliefs

and customs of this sort have prevailed, it is easy to understand why

new-born children should be brought to the hearth, and why their birth

should there be solemnly announced to the ancestors. This is done by the

Herero,[761] and in like manner on the fifth or seventh day after a

birth the ancient Greeks used to run naked round the hearth with the

new-born babe in their arms.[762] This Greek ceremony may perhaps be

regarded as merely a purification, in other words as a means of keeping

at bay the demons who lie in wait for infants. Certainly in other parts

of the world a custom has prevailed of passing a newly born child

backwards and forwards through the smoke of the fire for the express

purpose of warding off evil spirits or other baleful influences.[763]

Yet on the analogy of the preceding customs we may conjecture that a

practice of solemnly bringing infants to the domestic hearth has also

been resorted to as a mode of introducing them to the spirits of their

fathers.[764] In Russia the old belief that the souls of the ancestors

were somehow in the fire on the hearth has left traces of itself down to

the present time. Thus in the Nijegorod Government it is still forbidden

to break up the smouldering faggots in a stove, because to do so might

cause the ancestors to fall through into hell. And when a Russian family

moves from one house to another, the fire is raked out of the old stove

into a jar and solemnly conveyed to the new one, where it is received

with the words, “Welcome, grandfather, to the new home!”[765]

[Sidenote: Reasons why a procreative virtue was ascribed to fire.] But

why, it may be asked, should a procreative virtue be attributed to the

fire, which at first sight appears to be a purely destructive agent? and

why in particular should the ancestral spirits be conceived as present

in it? Two different reasons perhaps led savage philosophers to these

conclusions. In the first place the common mode of making fire by means

of the fire-drill has suggested, as we have seen, to many savages the

notion that fire is the child of the fire-sticks, in other words that

the rubbing of the fire-sticks together is a sexual union which begets

offspring in the shape of a flame. This of itself suffices to impress on

the mind of a savage the idea that a capacity of reproduction is innate

in the fire, and consequently that a woman may conceive by contact with

it. Strictly speaking, he ought perhaps to refer this power of

reproduction not to the fire but to the fire-sticks; but savage thought

is in general too vague to distinguish clearly between cause and effect.

If he thinks the matter out, as he may do if he is more than usually

reflective, the savage will probably conclude that fire [Sidenote: The

process of making fire by friction seems to the savage an act of

generation.] exists unseen in all wood, and is only elicited from it by

friction,[766] so that the spark or flame is the child, not so much of

the fire-sticks, as of the parent fires in them. But this refinement of

thought may well be above the reach even of a savage philosopher. The

second reason which seems to have led early man to associate the fire

with the souls of his ancestors was a superstitious veneration for the

ancestral tree which furnished either the fuel for the sacred fire or

the material out of which he carved one or both of the fire-sticks.

Among the Herero, as we [Sidenote: Again, the fire was associated with

the ancestors through the sacred ancestral tree which furnished either

the fuel or the fire-sticks.] saw, the male fire-stick commonly is, or

used to be, made out of the holy _omumborombonga_ tree, from which they

believe that they and their cattle sprang in days of old. Hence nothing

could be more natural than that they should regard the fire produced by

the friction of a piece of the ancestral tree, as akin to themselves,

the offspring of the same mighty forefather, to wit, the sacred tree.

Similarly, the Vestal fire at Rome was fed with the wood of the oak, the

sacred tree of Jupiter, and the first Romans are described as “born of

the tree trunks and the heart of oak.”[767] No wonder, then, that the

Latin kings, who claimed to represent Jupiter, and in that capacity

masqueraded in his costume and made mock thunder, should have prided

themselves on being sprung from a fire which was fed with the wood of

the god’s holy tree; such an origin was only another form of descent

from the oak and from the god of the oak, Jupiter himself.

[Sidenote: Esthonian marriage custom.] The theory that impregnation by

fire is really impregnation by the wood of the tree with which the fire

is kindled, derives some confirmation from a custom which is observed at

marriage by some of the Esthonians in the neighbourhood of Oberpahlen.

The bride is escorted to a tree, which is thereupon cut down and burned.

When the fire blazes up, she is led thrice round it and placed between

three armed men, who clash their swords over her head, while the women

sing a song. Then some coins are thrown into the fire, and when it has

died out they are recovered and knocked into the stump of the tree,

which was cut down to serve as fuel.[768] This is clearly a mode of

rewarding, first the fire, and next the tree, for some benefit they have

conferred on the bride. But in early society husband and wife desire

nothing so much as offspring; this therefore may very well be the

benefit for which the Esthonian bride repays the tree.

[Sidenote: The conception of the Fire-mother intimately bound up with

that of the female fire-stick in the fire-drill.] Thus far we have

regarded mainly the paternal aspect of the fire, which the Latins

mythically embodied in Jupiter, that is literally Father Jove, the god

of the oak. The maternal aspect of the fire was for them represented by

Mother Vesta, as they called her; and as the Roman king stood for Father

Jove, so his wife or daughter—the practice on this point appears to have

varied—stood for Mother Vesta. Sometimes, as we have seen, the Vestal

virgins, the priestesses or rather incarnations of Vesta, appear to have

been the daughters, not the wives, of the king. But, on the other hand,

there are grounds for thinking that the wife of King Latinus, the

legendary ancestor of the Latins, was traditionally regarded as a

Vestal,[769] and the analogy of the Flamen Dialis with his wife the

Flaminica, as I shall shew presently, points also to a married pair of

priestly functionaries concerned with the kindling and maintenance of

the sacred fire. However that may have been, we may take it as probable

that the notion of the fire-mother was intimately associated with, if it

did not spring directly from, the female fire-stick of the fire-drill,

just as the conception of the fire-father was similarly bound up with

the male fire-stick.

[Sidenote: The Fire-father and the Fire-mother represented by a priest

and priestess who together made the sacred fire by means of the

fire-drill.] Further, it seems that these mythical beings, the

fire-father and the fire-mother, were represented in real life by a

priest and a priestess, who together made the sacred fire, the priest

appropriately twirling the pointed male stick, while the priestess held

fast on the ground the holed female stick, ready to blow up into a flame

the spark which fell on the tinder. In the composite religion of Rome,

formed like the Roman state by the fusion of several tribes, each with

its own gods and priests, such pairs of fire-priests may at first have

been duplicated. In one or more of the tribes which afterwards made up

the Roman commonwealth the function of kindling the holy fire of oak was

perhaps assigned to the Flamen Dialis and his wife the Flaminica, the

living representatives of Jupiter and Juno; and if, as some scholars

think, the name _flamen_ comes from _flare_, “to blow up,”[770] the

derivation would fit well with this theory. But in historical Rome the

duty of making the sacred fire lay with the Vestal virgins and the chief

pontiff.[771] The mode in which they shared the work between them is not

described by ancient writers, but we may suppose that one of the virgins

held the board of lucky wood on the ground while the pontiff inserted

the point of a peg into the hole of the board and made the peg revolve

rapidly between the palms of his hands. When the likeness of this mode

of producing fire to the intercourse of the sexes had once struck

people, they would deem it unnatural, and even indecent, for a woman to

usurp the man’s function of twirling the pointed male stick. But the

Vestals certainly helped to make fire by friction; it would seem,

therefore, that the part they took in the process can only have been the

one I have conjecturally assigned to them. At all events, the conjecture

is supported by the following analogies.

[Sidenote: Among the Djakuns fire is made by the leader and his

unmarried daughter.] The Djakuns, a wild tribe of the Malay Peninsula,

are in the habit of making fire by friction. A traveller has described

the custom as follows: “When a troop was on a journey and intended

either to pitch a temporary camp, or to make a longer settlement, the

first camp fire was kindled for good luck by an unmarried girl with the

help of the fire-drill. Generally this girl was the daughter of the man

who served the troop as leader. It was deemed of special importance that

on the first night of a settlement the fire of every band should be lit

by the unmarried daughter of a leader. But she might only discharge this

duty if she had not her monthly sickness on her at the time. This custom

is all the more remarkable inasmuch as the Djakuns in their migrations

always carried a smouldering rope of bark with them.” “When the fire was

to be kindled, the girl took the piece of soft wood and held it on the

ground, while her father, or any other married man, twirled the vertical

borer upon it. She waited for the spark to spring from the wood, and

fanned it into a flame either by blowing on it or by waving the piece of

wood quickly about in her hand. For this purpose she caught the spark in

a bundle of teased bark and exposed it to a draught of air.” “Fire so

produced was employed to kindle the other fires for that night. They

ascribed to it good luck in cooking and a greater power of keeping off

tigers and so forth, than if the first fire had been kindled by a spark

from the smouldering bark rope.”[772] This account suggests a reason why

a holy fire should be tended by a number of virgins: one or more of them

might at any time be incapacitated by a natural infirmity for the

discharge of the sacred duty.

[Sidenote: Among the Slavs of the Balkans fire is made by a young girl

and boy.] Again, the Slavs of the Balkan Peninsula ascribe a healing or

protective power to “living fire,” and when an epidemic is raging in a

village they will sometimes extinguish all the fires on the hearths and

procure a “living fire” by the friction of wood. At the present day this

is done by various mechanical devices, but the oldest method, now almost

obsolete, is said to be as follows:—A girl and a boy between the ages of

eleven and fourteen, having been chosen to make the fire, are led into a

dark room, where they must strip themselves of all their clothes without

speaking a word. Then two perfectly dry cylindrical pieces of lime-wood

are given them, which they must rub rapidly against each other, turn

about, till they take fire. Tinder is then lit at the flame and used for

the purpose of healing. This mode of kindling the “living fire” is still

practised in the Schar Mountains of Old Servia. The writer who describes

it witnessed some years ago the use of the sacred fire at the village of

Setonje, at the foot of the Homolye Mountains, in the heart of the great

Servian forest. But on that occasion the fire was made in the manner

described, not by a boy and girl, but by an old woman and an old man.

Every fire in the village had previously been extinguished, and was

afterwards relit with the new fire.[773]

[Sidenote: Among the Kachins fire is made by a man and woman jointly.]

Among the Kachins of Burma, when people take solemn possession of a new

house, a new fire is made in front of it by a man and woman jointly. A

dry piece of bamboo is pegged down on the ground; the two fire-makers

sit down facing each other at either end of it, and together rub another

piece of bamboo on the horizontal piece, one of them holding the wrists

of the other and both pressing down firmly till fire is elicited.[774]

[Sidenote: Thus the conception of the fire-sticks as male and female is

carried out by requiring the male stick to be worked by a man and the

female stick to be worked by a woman.] In the first at least of these

customs, it is plain, the conception of the fire-sticks as male and

female has been logically carried out by requiring the male fire-stick

to be worked by a man and the female fire-stick to be held by a woman.

But opinions seem to differ on the question whether the fire-makers

[Sidenote: But opinions differ as to whether the fire-makers should be

married or single.] should be wedded or single. The Djakuns prefer that

the man should be married and the woman unmarried; on the other hand,

the Slavs of the Schar Mountains clearly think it better that both

should be single, since they entrust the duty of making the fire to a

boy and girl. In so far as the man’s part in the work is concerned, some

of our Scottish Highlanders agree with the Djakuns at the other end of

the world; for the natives of Lewis “did also make use of a fire called

_Tin-egin_, _i.e._ a forced fire, or fire of necessity, which they used

as an antidote against the plague or murrain in cattle; and it was

performed thus: all the fires in the parish were extinguished, and then

eighty-one married men, being thought the necessary number for effecting

this design, took two great planks of wood, and nine of them were

employed by turns, who by their repeated efforts rubbed one of the

planks against the other until the heat thereof produced fire; and from

this forced fire each family is supplied with new fire, which is no

sooner kindled than a pot full of water is quickly set on it, and

afterwards sprinkled upon the people infected with the plague, or upon

the cattle that have the murrain. And this they all say they find

successful by experiment: it was practised in the main land, opposite to

the south of Skie, within these thirty years.”[775] On the other hand,

the Germans of Halberstadt sided with the South Slavs on this point, for

they caused the forced fire, or need fire, as it is commonly called, to

be made by two chaste boys, who pulled at a rope which ran round a

wooden cylinder.[776] The theory and practice of the Basutos in South

Africa were similar. After a birth had taken place they used to kindle

the fire of the hut afresh, and “for this purpose it was necessary that

a young man of chaste habits should rub two pieces of wood quickly one

against another, until a flame sprung up, pure as himself. It was firmly

believed that a premature death awaited him who should dare to take upon

himself this office, after having lost his innocence. As soon,

therefore, as a birth was proclaimed in the village, the fathers took

their sons to undergo the ordeal. Those who felt themselves guilty

confessed their crime, and submitted to be scourged rather than expose

themselves to the consequences of a fatal temerity.”[777]

[Sidenote: Reasons for entrusting the making of fire to unmarried boys

and girls.] It is not hard to divine why the task of twirling the male

fire-stick in the hole of the female fire-stick should by some people be

assigned to married men. The analogy of the process to the intercourse

of the sexes furnishes an obvious reason. It is less easy to understand

why other people should prefer to entrust the duty to unmarried boys.

But probably the preference is based on a belief that chastity leaves

the boys with a stock of reproductive energy which they may expend on

the operation of fire-making, whereas married men dissipate the same

energy in other channels. A somewhat similar train of thought may

explain a rule of virginity enjoined on women who assist in the

production of fire by holding the female fire-stick on the ground. As a

virgin’s womb is free to conceive, so, it might be thought, will be the

womb of the female fire-stick which she holds; whereas had the female

fire-maker been already with child, she could not be reimpregnated, and

consequently the female fire-stick could not give birth to a spark.

Thus, in the sympathetic connexion between the fire-sticks and the

fire-makers we seem to reach the ultimate origin of the order of the

Vestal Virgins: they had to be chaste, because otherwise they could not

light the fire. Once when the sacred fire had gone out, the Vestal in

charge of it was suspected of having brought about the calamity by her

unchastity, but she triumphantly repelled the suspicion by eliciting a

flame from the cold ashes.[778] Ideas of the same primitive kind still

linger among the French peasantry, who think that if a girl can blow up

a smouldering candle into a flame she is a virgin, but that if she fails

to do so, she is not.[779] In ancient Greece none but persons of pure

life were allowed to blow up the holy fire with their mouths; a vile man

who had polluted his lips was deemed unworthy to discharge the

duty.[780]

[Sidenote: The holy fire and virgins of St. Brigit in Ireland.] The

French superstition, which I have just mentioned, may well date from

Druidical times, for there are some grounds for thinking that among the

old Celts, as among their near kinsmen the Latins, holy fires were

tended by virgins. In our own country perpetual fires were maintained in

the temple of a goddess whom the Romans identified with Minerva,[781]

but whose native Celtic name seems to have been Brigit. Like Minerva,

Brigit was a goddess of poetry and wisdom, and she had two sisters also

called Brigit, who presided over leechcraft and smithcraft respectively.

This appears to be only another way of saying that Brigit was the

patroness of bards, physicians, and smiths.[782] Now, at Kildare in

Ireland the nuns of St. Brigit tended a perpetual holy fire down to the

suppression of the monasteries under Henry VIII.; and we can hardly

doubt that in doing so they merely kept up, under a Christian name, an

ancient pagan worship of Brigit in her character of a fire-goddess or

patroness of smiths. The nuns were nineteen in number. Each of them had

the care of the fire for a single night in turn; and on the twentieth

evening the last nun, having heaped wood on the fire, used to say,

“Brigit, take charge of your own fire; for this night belongs to you.”

She then went away, and next morning they always found the fire still

burning and the usual quantity of fuel consumed. Like the Vestal fire at

Rome in the old days, the fire of St. Brigit burned within a circular

enclosure made of stakes and brushwood, and no male might set foot

inside the fence. The nuns were allowed to fan the fire or blow it up

with bellows, but they might not blow on it with their breath.[783]

[Sidenote: Not to breathe on a holy fire.] Similarly it is said that the

Balkan Slavs will not blow with their mouths on the holy fire of the

domestic hearth;[784] a Brahman is forbidden to blow a fire with his

mouth;[785] and among the Parsees the priests have to wear a veil over

their mouth lest they should defile the sacred fire by their

breath.[786] The custom of maintaining a perpetual fire was not peculiar

[Sidenote: Other perpetual fires in Ireland.] to Kildare, but seems to

have been common in Ireland, for the native records shew that such fires

were kept up in several monasteries, in each of which a small church or

oratory was set apart for the purpose. This was done, for example, at

the monasteries of Seirkieran, Kilmainham, and Inishmurray.[787] We may

conjecture that these holy fires were merely survivals of the perpetual

fires which in pagan [Sidenote: St. Brigit’s fire perhaps fed with

oak-wood.] times had burned in honour of Brigit. The view that Brigit

was a fire-goddess is confirmed by the observation that in the Christian

calendar her festival falls the day before Candlemas, and the customs

observed at that season by Celtic peasantry seem to prove that she was a

goddess of the crops as well as of fire.[788] If that was so, it is

another reason for comparing her to Vesta, whose priestesses performed

ceremonies to fertilise both the earth and the cattle.[789] Further,

there are some grounds for connecting Brigit, like Vesta, with the oak;

for at Kildare her Christian namesake, St. Brigit, otherwise known as

St. Bride or St. Bridget, built her church under an oak-tree, which

existed till the tenth century, and gave its name to the spot, for

Kildare is _Cilldara_, “the church of the oak-tree.”[790] The “church of

the oak” may well have displaced a temple or sanctuary of the oak, where

in Druidical days the holy fire was fed, like the Vestal fire at Rome,

with the wood of the sacred tree.

[Sidenote: Early Irish monasteries built in oak groves.] We may suspect

that a conversion of this sort was often effected in Ireland by the

early Christian missionaries. The monasteries of Derry and Durrow,

founded by St. Columba, were both named after the oak groves amidst

which they were built; and at Derry the saint spared the beautiful trees

and strictly enjoined his successors to do the same. In his old age,

when he lived an exile on the shores of the bleak storm-swept isle of

Iona, his heart yearned to the home of his youth among the oak groves of

Ireland, and he gave expression to the yearning in passionate verse:—

“_That spot is the dearest on Erin’s ground,

For the treasures that peace and purity lend,

For the hosts of bright angels that circle it round,

Protecting its borders from end to end._

“_The dearest of any on Erin’s ground,

For its peace and its beauty I gave it my love;

Each leaf of the oaks around Derry is found

To be crowded with angels from heaven above._

“_My Derry! my Derry! my little oak grove,

My dwelling, my home, and my own little cell,

May God the Eternal in Heaven above

Send death to thy foes, and defend thee well._”[791]

A feeling of the same sort came over a very different exile in a very

different scene, when growing old amid the turmoil, the gaieties, the

distractions of Paris, he remembered the German oak woods of his youth.

“_Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland.

Der Eichenbaum

Wuchs dort so hoch, die Veilchen nickten sanft.

Es war ein Traum._”

[Sidenote: Virgin priestesses of fire among the Incas of Peru.] Far from

the oaks of Erin and the saint’s last home among the stormy Hebrides, a

sacred fire has been tended by holy virgins, with statelier rites and in

more solemn fanes, under the equinoctial line. The Incas of Peru, who

deemed themselves the children of the Sun, procured a new fire from

their great father at the solstice in June, our Midsummer Day. They

kindled it by holding towards the sun a hollow mirror, which reflected

his beams on a tinder of cotton wool. But if the sky happened to be

overcast at the time, they made the new fire by rubbing two sticks

against each other; and they looked upon it as a bad omen when they were

obliged to do this, for they said the Sun must be angry with them, since

he refused to kindle the flame with his own hand. The sacred fire,

however obtained, was deposited at Cuzco, the capital of Peru, in the

temple of the Sun, and also in a great convent of holy virgins, who

guarded it carefully throughout the year, and it was an evil augury if

they suffered it to go out. These [Sidenote: Wives of the Sun in Peru.]

virgins were regarded as the wives of the Sun, and they were bound to

perpetual chastity. If any of them proved unfaithful to her husband the

Sun, she was buried alive, like a Roman Vestal, and her paramour was

strangled. The reason for putting her to death in this manner was

probably, as at Rome, a reluctance to shed royal blood; for all these

virgins were of the royal family, being daughters of the Incas or of his

kinsmen. Besides tending the holy fire, they had to weave and make all

the clothes worn by the Inca and his legitimate wife, to bake the bread

that was offered to the Sun at his great festivals, and to brew the wine

which the Inca and his family drank on these occasions. All the

furniture of the convent, down to the pots, pans, and jars, were of gold

and silver, just as in the temple of the Sun, because the virgins were

deemed to be his wives. And they had a golden garden, where the very

clods were of fine gold; where golden maize reared its stalks, leaves

and cobs, all of the precious metal; and where golden shepherds, with

slings and crooks of gold, tended golden sheep and lambs.[792] The

analogy of these virgin guardians of the sacred flame furnishes an

argument in favour of the view set forth in the preceding pages; for if

the Peruvian Vestals were the brides of the Sun, may not the Roman

Vestals have been the brides of the Fire?

[Sidenote: Virgin priestesses of fire in Mexico and Yucatan.] On the

summit of the great pyramidal temple at Mexico two fires burned

continually on stone hearths in front of two chapels, and dreadful

misfortunes were supposed to follow if the fires were allowed to go out.

They were kept up by priests and maidens, some of whom had taken a vow

of perpetual virginity. But most of these girls seem to have served only

for a year or more until their marriage. They offered incense to the

idols, wove cloths for the service of the temple, swept the sacred area,

and baked the cakes which were presented to the gods but eaten by their

priests. They were clad all in white, without any ornament. A broom and

a censer were their emblems. Death was the penalty inflicted on the

faithless virgin who polluted by her incontinence the temple of the

god.[793] In Yucatan there was an order of Vestals instituted by a

princess, who acted as lady-superior and was deified after her death

under the title of the Virgin of the Fire. The members enrolled

themselves voluntarily either for life or for a term of years, after

which they might marry. Their duty was to tend the sacred fire, the

emblem of the sun. If they broke their vow of chastity or allowed the

fire to go out, they were shot to death with arrows.[794]

[Sidenote: Virgin priestesses of fire among the Baganda.] Amongst the

Baganda of Central Africa there used to be an order of Vestal Virgins

(_bakaja_) who were attached to the temples of the gods. Their duties

were to keep the fire of the god burning all night, to see that there

was a good supply of firewood, and to watch that the suppliants did not

bring to the deity anything that was tabooed to him. These maidens are

also said to have had charge of some of the vessels. All of them were

young girls; no man might touch them; and when they reached the age of

puberty, the god ordered them to be given in marriage. The place of a

girl who thus vacated office had to be supplied by another girl taken

from the same clan.[795]

[Sidenote: Resemblance between the Flamen Dialis of the Romans and the

_Agnihotri_ or fire-priest of the Brahmans.] We have seen that some

people commit the task of making fire by friction to married men; and

following the opinion of other scholars I have conjectured that in some

of the Latin tribes the duty of kindling and feeding the sacred fire may

have been assigned to the Flamen Dialis, who had always to be married;

if his wife died, he vacated his office.[796] The sanctity of his fire

is proved by the rule that no brand might be taken from his house except

for the purpose of a sacrifice.[797] Further, the importance ascribed to

the discharge of his duties is attested by another old rule which

forbade him to be absent from his house in Rome for a single night.[798]

The prohibition would be intelligible if one of his duties had formerly

been to superintend the maintenance of a perpetual fire. However that

may have been, the life of the priest was regulated by a whole code of

curious restrictions or taboos, which rendered the office so burdensome

and vexatious that, in spite of the high honours attached to the post,

for a period of more than seventy years together no man was found

willing to undertake it.[799] Some of these restrictions will be

examined later on.[800] Their similarity to the rules of life still

observed in India by the Brahmans who are fire-priests (_Agnihotris_)

seems to confirm the view that the Flamen also was originally a

fire-priest. The parallel between the two priesthoods would be all the

more remarkable if, as some scholars hold, the very names Brahman and

Flamen are philologically identical.[801] As to these Brahmanical

fire-priests or Agnihotris we are told that the number of them nowadays

is very limited, because the ceremonies involve heavy expenditure, and

the rules which regulate them are very elaborate and difficult. The

offering of food to the fire at meals is, indeed, one of the five daily

duties of every Brahman; but the regular fire-service is the special

duty of the Agnihotri. In order that he may be ceremonially pure he is

bound by certain obligations not to travel or remain away from home for

any long time; to sell nothing which is produced by himself or his

family; to pay little attention to worldly affairs; to speak the truth;

to bathe and worship the deities in the afternoon as well as in the

morning; and to sacrifice to his deceased ancestors on the fifteenth of

every month. He is not allowed to take food at night. He may not eat

alkaline salt, meat, honey, and inferior grain, such as some varieties

of pulse, millet, and the egg plant. He never wears shoes nor sleeps on

a bed, but always on the ground. He is expected to keep awake most of

the night and to study the Shâstras. He may have no connexion with, nor

unholy thoughts regarding, any woman but his wife; and he must abstain

from every other act that involves personal impurity.[802] With these

rules we may compare some of the obligations laid on the Flamen Dialis.

In the old days, as we saw, he was bound never to be absent from his

house for a single night. He might not touch or even name raw meat,

beans, ivy, and a she-goat; he might not eat leavened bread, nor touch a

dead body; and the feet of his bed had always to be smeared with

mud.[803] This last rule seems to be a mitigation of an older custom of

sleeping on the ground, a custom which is still observed by the

fire-priest in India, as it was in antiquity by the priests of Zeus at

Dodona.[804] Similarly the priest of the old Prussian god Potrimpo was

bound to sleep on the bare earth for three nights before he sacrificed

to the deity.[805]

[Sidenote: Mode in which the _Agnihotri_ procures fresh fire by the

friction of fire-sticks.] Every Agnihotri has a separate room in his

house where the sacred fire is kept burning in a small pit of a cubit

square. Should the fire chance to go out, the priest must get fresh fire

from another priest or procure it by the friction of fire-sticks

(_arani_). These comprise, first, a block of _sami_ wood (_Prosopis

spicigera_) in which a small hole is made emblematical of the female

principle (_sakti yoni_), and, second, an upright shaft which is made to

revolve in the hole of the block by means of a rope. The point in the

drill where the rope is applied to cause it to revolve is called _deva

yoni_. Two priests take part in the operation. Before they begin they

sing a hymn in honour of the fire-god Agni. When the fire has been

kindled they place it in a copper vessel and sprinkle it with powdered

cow-dung. When it is well alight, they cover it with another copper

vessel, sprinkle it with drops of water, and sing another hymn in honour

of Agni. Finally, the new fire is consigned to the fire-pit.[806]

According to another description of the modern Indian fire-drill, the

lower block is usually made of the hard wood of the _khadira_ or _khair_

tree (_Acacia catechu_), and it contains two shallow holes. In one of

these holes the revolving drill works and produces sparks by friction;

the other hole contains tinder which is ignited by means of the sparks.

This latter hole is known as the _yoni_, the female organ of generation.

The upper or revolving portion of the drill is called the _pramantha_.

It consists of a round shaft of hard wood, with a spike of softer wood

inserted in its lower end. One priest causes the shaft to revolve by

pulling a cord, while another priest presses the spike down into the

hole in the block by leaning hard upon a flat board placed on the top of

the shaft. The spike is generally made of the peepul or sacred fig-tree.

When it has become charred by friction, it is replaced by another.[807]

According to one account, the fire is made in this fashion, not by two

priests, but by the Brahman and his wife; she pulls the cord, while he

holds the borer in the hole and recites the spells necessary for the

production of the fire.[808]

[Sidenote: The Indian fire-sticks made from the sacred fig and _sami_

wood.] This practice of the modern Agnihotri or fire-priest of India is

in general accord with the precepts laid down in the ancient sacred

books of his religion. For these direct that the upper or male stick of

the fire-drill should be made of the sacred fig-tree (_asvattha_), and

the lower or female stick of _sami_ wood (_Prosopis spicigera_); and

they draw out the analogy between the process of fire-making and the

intercourse of the sexes in minute detail.[809] It deserves to be

[Sidenote: The male fire-stick made by preference from a sacred fig-tree

growing as a parasite on the female _sami_ tree.] noted that the male

fire-stick was cut by preference from a sacred fig-tree which grew as a

parasite on a _sami_ or female tree. The reason for this preference is

obvious to the primitive mind. A parasite clasping a tree with its

tendrils is conceived as a man embracing a woman, hence a pair of

fire-sticks made from a pair of trees thus interlaced will naturally

possess the power of procreating fire by friction in an unusually high

degree.[810] So completely, in the Hindoo mind, does the process of

making fire by friction blend with the union of the human sexes that it

is actually employed as part of a charm to procure male offspring.[811]

Such a confusion of thought helps us to understand the part played by

the domestic fire in the ritual of marriage and birth as well as in the

legends of the miraculous origin of the Latin kings.[812] In ancient

India the male and the female fire-stick were identified with King

Pururavas and the nymph Urvasi, whose loves and sorrows formed the theme

of a beautiful tale.[813]

[Sidenote: The Greeks also preferred to make one of the fire-sticks from

a parasitic plant.] Like the ancient Indians, the Greeks seem to have

preferred that one of the two fire-sticks should be made from a

parasitic or creeping plant. They recommended that the borer of the

fire-drill should be made of laurel and the board of ivy or another

creeper, apparently a kind of wild vine which grew like ivy upon trees;

but in practice both the borer and the board were sometimes made of

other woods, among which buckthorn, the evergreen oak, and the lime are

particularly mentioned.[814] When we consider the analogy of the Indian

preference for a borer made from a parasite, and remember how deeply

rooted in the primitive mind is the comparison of the friction of the

fire-sticks to the union [Sidenote: The reason for such a preference is

the analogy of the union of the sexes.] of the sexes, we shall hardly

doubt that the Greeks originally chose the ivy or wild vine for a

fire-stick from motives of the sort which led the Hindoos to select the

wood of a parasitic fig-tree for the same purpose. But while the Hindoos

regarded the parasite as male and the tree to which it clung as female,

the Greeks of Theophrastus’s time seem to have inverted this conception,

since they recommended that the board, which plays the part of the

female in the fire-drill, should be made of ivy or another creeper,

whereas the borer, which necessarily represents the male, was to be

fashioned out of laurel. This would imply that the ivy was a female and

the laurel a male. Yet in Greek, on the contrary, the word for ivy is

masculine, and the plant was identified mythologically with the male god

Dionysus;[815] whereas the word for laurel is feminine and the tree was

identified with a nymph. Hence we may conjecture that at first the

Greeks, like the Hindoos, regarded the clinging creeper as the male and

the tree which it embraced as the female, and that of old, therefore,

they made the borer of the fire-drill out of ivy and the board out of

laurel. If this was so, the reasons which led them to reverse the usage

can only be guessed at. Perhaps practical convenience had a share in

bringing about the change. For the laurel is, as the late Professor H.

Marshall Ward kindly informed me, a harder wood than the ivy, and to

judge by general, though not universal, practice most people find it

easier to make fire by the friction of a hard borer on a soft board than

by rubbing a hard board with a soft point. This, therefore, would be a

reason for making the borer of laurel and the board of ivy. If such a

change took place in the history of the Greek fire-drill, it would be an

interesting example of superstition modified, if not vanquished, by

utility in the struggle for existence.

Footnote 737:

Livy, xxviii. 11. 6 _sq._; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._

ii. 67. 5.

Footnote 738:

Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 265 _sqq._; Festus, p. 262, ed. C. O. Müller.

Footnote 739:

Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, pp. 11 _sq._ On the diffusion of

the round hut in Africa Sir H. H. Johnston says: “The original form of

house throughout all British Central Africa was what the majority of

the houses still are—circular and somewhat like a beehive in shape,

with round walls of wattle and daub and thatched roof. This style of

house is characteristic of (_a_) all Africa south of the Zambezi;

(_b_) all British Central Africa; as much of the Portuguese provinces

of Zambezia and Moçambique as are not under direct Portuguese or

Muhammedan influence which may have introduced the rectangular

dwelling; (_c_) all East Africa up to and including the Egyptian

Sudan, where Arab influence has not introduced the oblong rectangular

building; (_d_) the Central Nigerian Sudan, much of Senegambia, and

perhaps the West Coast of Africa as far east and south as the Gold

Coast, subject, of course, to the same limitations as to foreign

influence” (_British Central Africa_, London, 1897, P. 453).

Footnote 740:

J. Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 2nd Ed., pp. 250, 341

_sq._

Footnote 741:

J. Marquardt, _op. cit._ iii. 2nd Ed., pp. 340 _sq._; _Journal of

Philology_, xiv. (1885) pp. 155 _sq._

Footnote 742:

Livy, i. 3 _sq._; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ i. 76

_sq._; Plutarch, _Romulus_, 3.

Footnote 743:

Plutarch, _Numa_, 10; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ ii. 67.

4, viii. 89. 5.

Footnote 744:

The suggestion is due to Mr. M. A. Bayfield (_Classical Review_, xv.

1901, p. 448). He compares the similar execution of the princess

Antigone (Sophocles, _Antigone_, 773 _sqq._). However, we must

remember that a custom of burying people alive has been practised as a

punishment or a sacrifice by Romans, Persians, and Germans, even when

the victims were not of royal blood. See Livy, xxii. 57. 6; Pliny,

_Nat. Hist._ xxviii. 12; Plutarch, _Marcellus_, 3; _id._, _Quaest.

Rom._ 83; Herodotus, vii. 114; J. Grimm, _Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer_,

3rd Ed., pp. 694 _sq._ As to the objection to spill royal blood, see

_The Golden Bough_, Second Edition, i. 354 _sq._

Footnote 745:

See above, p. 215.

Footnote 746:

Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 629-672. Compare Varro, _De lingua Latina_, vi. 15;

Joannes Lydus, _De mensibus_, iv. 49.

Footnote 747:

Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 731-782. See below, p. 326.

Footnote 748:

Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxviii. 39; “_Quamquam religione tutatur et

fascinus, imperatorum quoque, non solum infantium custos, qui deus

inter sacra Romana Vestalibus colitur_.”

Footnote 749:

Virgil, _Georg._ i. 498; Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 828; G. Henzen, _Acta

fratrum Arvalium_, pp. 124, 147; H. Dessau, _Inscriptiones Latinae

selectae_, Nos. 5047, 5048. Ennius represented Vesta as the mother of

Saturn and Titan. See Lactantius, _Divin. inst._ i. 14.

Footnote 750:

Augustine, _De civitate Dei_, iv. 10.

Footnote 751:

See above, pp. 195 _sqq._

Footnote 752:

_Grihya Sûtras_, translated by H. Oldenberg, vol. i. pp. 37, 168, 279,

283, 382, 384, vol. ii. pp. 46, 191, 260; M. Winternitz, “Das

altindische Hochzeitsrituell,” pp. 4, 56-62 (_Denkschriften der

kaiserl. Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien_, xl., Vienna, 1892); H.

Zimmer, _Altindisches Leben_, p. 312; G. A. Grierson, _Bihār Peasant

Life_ (Calcutta, 1885), p. 368; F. S. Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch der

Südslaven_, pp. 386, 436, cp. 430; J. Lasicius, “De diis Samagitarum

caeterorumque Sarmatarum,” in _Magazin herausgegeben von der

Lettisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft_, xiv. 99; J. Maeletius

(Maletius), “De sacrificiis et idolatria veterum Borussorum Livonum

aliarumque vicinarum gentium,” in _Mitteilungen der Litterarischen

Gesellschaft Masovia_, viii. (1902) pp. 191, 204 (this work is also

reprinted under the name of J. Menecius in _Scriptores rerum

Livonicarum_, ii. (Riga and Leipsic, 1848) pp. 389-392); F. Woeste, in

_Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie und Sittenkunde_, ii. (1855) p.

91; A. Kuhn und W. Schwartz, _Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und

Gebräuche_, pp. 433, 522; A. Kuhn, _Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen aus

Westfalen_, ii. 38; J. H. Schmitz, _Sitten und Sagen, etc., des Eifler

Volkes_, i. 67; Montanus, _Die deutsche Volksfeste, Volksbräuche und

deutscher Volksglaube_, p. 85; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Hochzeitsbuch_

(Leipsic, 1871), p. 222; L. v. Schroeder, _Die Hochzeitsbräuche der

Esten_ (Berlin, 1888), pp. 127 _sqq._; E. Samter, _Familienfeste der

Griechen und Römer_ (Berlin, 1901), pp. 59-62; O. Schrader,

_Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde_, pp. 356 _sq._ This

evidence proves that the custom has been practised by the Indian,

Slavonian, Lithuanian, and Teutonic branches of the Aryan race, from

which we may fairly infer that it was observed by the ancestors of the

whole family before their dispersion.

Footnote 753:

_Grihya-Sûtras_, translated by H. Oldenberg, vol. i. p. 283 (_Sacred

Books of the East_, vol. xxix.).

Footnote 754:

Prof. Vl. Titelbach, “Das heilige Feuer bei den Balkanslaven,”

_Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie_, xiii. (1900) p. 1.

Footnote 755:

F. S. Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven_ (Vienna, 1885), p. 430.

Footnote 756:

F. S. Krauss, _op. cit._ p. 531.

Footnote 757:

This saying was communicated to me by Miss Mabel Peacock in a letter

dated Kirton-in-Lindsey, Lincolnshire, 30th October 1905.

Footnote 758:

Max Buch, _Die Wotjäken_ (Stuttgart, 1882), pp. 52, 59; L. v.

Schroeder, _op. cit._ pp. 129, 132.

Footnote 759:

Above, pp. 221 _sq._

Footnote 760:

As it is believed that fire may impregnate human beings, so conversely

some people seem to imagine that it may be impregnated by them. Thus

Mr. T. R. Glover, Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, writes to

me (18th June 1906): “A curious and not very quotable instance of (I

suppose) Sacred Marriage was brought to my notice by Mr. Brown of the

Canadian Baptist Mission to the Telugus. He said that in Hindoo

temples (in South India chiefly?) sometimes a scaffolding is erected

over a fire. A man and a woman are got to copulate on it and allow the

human seed to fall into the fire.” But perhaps this ceremony is only

another way of conveying the fertilising virtue of the fire to the

woman, in other words, of getting her with child.

Footnote 761:

Above, pp. 215, 221.

Footnote 762:

Suidas, Harpocration, and _Etymologicum Magnum_, _s.v._ Ἀμφιδρόμια;

Hesychius, _s.v._ δρομάφιον ἧμαρ; Schol. on Plato, _Theaetetus_, p.

160 E. On this custom see S. Reinach, _Cultes, mythes, et religions_,

i. (Paris, 1905) pp. 137-145. He suggests that the running of the

naked men who carried the babies was intended, by means of sympathetic

magic, to impart to the little ones in after-life the power of running

fast. But this theory does not explain why the race took place round

the hearth.

Footnote 763:

The custom has been practised with this intention in Scotland, China,

New Britain, the Tenimber and Timorlaut Islands, and by the Ovambo of

South Africa. See Pennant’s “Second Tour in Scotland,” Pinkerton’s

_Voyages and Travels_, iii. 383; Miss C. F. Gordon Cumming, _In the

Hebrides_, ed. 1883, p. 101; _China Review_, ix. (1880-1881) p. 303;

R. Parkinson, _Im Bismarck-Archipel_, pp. 94 _sq._; J. G. F. Riedel,

_De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua_, p. 303;

H. Schinz, _Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika_, p. 307. A similar custom was

observed, probably for the same reason, in ancient Mexico and in

Madagascar. See Clavigero, _History of Mexico_, translated by Cullen,

i. 31; W. Ellis, _History of Madagascar_, i. 152. Compare my note,

“The Youth of Achilles,” _Classical Review_, vii. (1893) pp. 293 _sq._

Footnote 764:

Compare E. Samter, _Familienfeste der Griechen und Römer_ (Berlin,

1901), pp. 59-62.

Footnote 765:

W. R. S. Ralston, _The Songs of the Russian People_, pp. 120 _sq._

Ralston held that the Russian house-spirit Domovoy, who is supposed to

live behind the stove, is the modern representative of an ancestral

spirit. Compare _ibid._ pp. 84, 86, 119.

Footnote 766:

Evidence of this view will be adduced later on. See _The Golden

Bough_, Second Edition, iii. 456.

Footnote 767:

See above, pp. 185 _sq._

Footnote 768:

L. v. Schroeder, _Die Hochzeitsbräuche der Esten_ (Berlin, 1888), pp.

129 _sq._

Footnote 769:

See above, p. 197.

Footnote 770:

Th. Mommsen, _History of Rome_, New Edition (London, 1894), i. 215

_sq._; J. Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 2nd Ed., p.

326; W. Warde Fowler, _Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic_,

p. 147. For another derivation of their name see below, p. 247.

Footnote 771:

See above, p. 207.

Footnote 772:

H. Vaughan Stevens, “Mitteilungen aus dem Frauenleben der Ôrang

Belendas, der Ôrang Djâkun und der Ôrang Lâut,” bearbeitet von Dr. Max

Bartels, _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, xxviii. (1896) pp. 168 _sq._

The writer adds that any person, boy, man, or woman (provided she was

not menstruous) might light the fire, if it were more convenient that

he or she should do so. Thus the co-operation of a married man and an

unmarried girl, though apparently deemed the best, was not the only

permissible way of igniting the wood. The good faith or at all events

the accuracy of the late German traveller H. Vaughan Stevens is not, I

understand, above suspicion; but Mr. Nelson Annandale, joint author of

_Fasciculi Malayenses_, writes to me of him that “he certainly had a

knowledge and experience of the wild tribes of the Malay region which

few or none have excelled, for he lived literally as one of

themselves.”

Footnote 773:

Prof. Vl. Titelbach, “Das heilige Feuer bei den Balkanslaven,”

_Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie_, xiii. (1900) pp. 2-4. The

ceremony witnessed by Prof. Titelbach will be described later on in

this work. Kinglake rode through the great Servian forest on his way

from Belgrade to Constantinople, and from his description (_Eothen_,

ch. ii.) we gather that it is chiefly composed of oak. He says:

“Endless and endless now on either side the tall oaks closed in their

ranks, and stood gloomily lowering over us.”

Footnote 774:

Ch. Gilhodes, “La Culture matérielle des Katchins (Birmanie),”

_Anthropos_, v. (1910) p. 629.

Footnote 775:

M. Martin’s “Description of the Western Islands of Scotland,” in

Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, iii. 611. The first edition of

Martin’s work was published in 1703, and the second in 1716.

Footnote 776:

J. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, 4th ed., i. 504.

Footnote 777:

E. Casalis, _The Basutos_, pp. 267 _sq._

Footnote 778:

Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ ii. 68; Valerius Maximus,

i. 1. 7.

Footnote 779:

J. Lecœur, _Esquisses du Bocage Normand_, ii. (Condé-sur-Noireau,

1887) p. 27; B. Souché, _Croyances, présages et traditions diverses_

(Niort, 1880), p. 12.

Footnote 780:

Polybius, xii. 13. In Darfur a curious power over fire is ascribed to

women who have been faithful to their husbands. “It is a belief among

the Forians, that if the city takes fire, the only means of arresting

the progress of the flames is to bring near them a woman, no longer

young, who has never been guilty of intrigue. If she be pure, by

merely waving a mantle, she puts a stop to the destruction. Success

has sometimes rewarded a virtuous woman” (_Travels of an Arab

Merchant_ [Mohammed Ibn-Omar El-Tounsy] _in Soudan_, abridged from the

French by Bayle St. John (London, 1854), p. 112). Compare R. W.

Felkin, “Notes on the For Tribe of Central Africa,” _Proceedings of

the Royal Society of Edinburgh_, xiii. (1884-1886) p. 230.

Footnote 781:

Solinus, xxii. 10. The Celtic Minerva, according to Caesar (_De bello

Gallico_, vi. 17), was a goddess of the mechanical arts.

Footnote 782:

J. Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, pp. 73-77; P. W. Joyce, _Social History

of Ancient Ireland_, i. 260 _sq._

Footnote 783:

Giraldus Cambrensis, _The Topography of Ireland_, chaps.

xxxiv.-xxxvi., translated by Thomas Wright; P. W. Joyce, _Social

History of Ancient Ireland_, i. 334 _sq._ It is said that in the

island of Sena (the modern _Sein_), off the coast of Brittany, there

was an oracle of a Gallic deity whose worship was cared for by nine

virgin priestesses. They could raise storms by their incantations, and

turn themselves into any animals they pleased (_Mela_, iii. 48); but

it is not said that they maintained a perpetual holy fire, though Ch.

Elton affirms that they did (_Origins of English History_, p. 27). M.

Salomon Reinach dismisses these virgins as a fable based on Homer’s

description of the isle of Circe (_Odyssey_, x. 135 _sqq._), and he

denies that the Gauls employed virgin priestesses. See his article,

“Les Vierges de Sena,” _Revue Celtique_, xviii. (1897) pp. 1-8; _id._,

_Cultes, mythes, et religions_, i. (Paris, 1905) pp. 195 _sqq._ To me

the nuns of St. Brigit seem to be most probably the successors of a

Celtic order of Vestals. That there were female Druids is certain, but

it does not appear whether they were virgins. See Lampridius,

_Alexander Severus_, 60; Vopiscus, _Aurelianus_, 44; _id._,

_Numerianus_, 14 _sq._

Footnote 784:

Prof. Vl. Titelbach, “Das heilige Feuer bei den Balkanslaven,”

_Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie_, xiii. (1900) p. 1.

Footnote 785:

_Laws of Manu_, iv. 53, translated by G. Bühler (_Sacred Books of the

East_, vol. xxv. p. 137).

Footnote 786:

Martin Haug, _Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of

the Parsees_ 3rd Ed., (London, 1884), p. 243, note 1. Strabo describes

the mouth-veil worn by the Magian priests in Cappadocia (xiv. 3. 15,

p. 733). At Arkon, in the island of Rügen, there was a shrine so holy

that none but the priest might enter it, and even he might not breathe

in it. As often as he needed to draw in or give out breath, he used to

run out of the door lest he should taint the divine presence with his

breath. See Saxo Grammaticus, _Historia Danica_, bk. xiv. p. 824, ed.

P. E. Müller (p. 393 of Elton’s English translation).

Footnote 787:

P. W. Joyce, _Social History of Ancient Ireland_, i. 335 _sq._;

Standish H. O’Grady, _Sylva Gadelica_, translation (London, 1892), pp.

15, 16, 41.

Footnote 788:

See above, pp. 94 _sq._

Footnote 789:

See above, p. 229.

Footnote 790:

Douglas Hyde, _A Literary History of Ireland_ (London, 1899), p. 158.

The tradition of the oak of Kildare survives in the lines,

“_That oak of Saint Bride, which nor Devil nor Dane

Nor Saxon nor Dutchman could rend from her fane_,”

which are quoted by Mr. D. Fitzgerald in _Revue Celtique_, iv.

(1879-1880) p. 193.

Footnote 791:

Douglas Hyde, _op. cit._ pp. 169-171. At Kells, also, St. Columba

dwelt under a great oak-tree. The writer of his Irish life, quoted by

Mr. Hyde, says that the oak-tree “remained till these latter times,

when it fell through the crash of a mighty wind. And a certain man

took somewhat of its bark to tan his shoes with. Now, when he did on

the shoes, he was smitten with leprosy from his sole to his crown.”

Footnote 792: