The Golden Bough
A Study in Magic and Religion
By
James George Frazer, D.C.L., LL.D., Litt.D.
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
Professor of Social Anthropology in the University of Liverpool
Vol. X. of XII.
Part VII: Balder the Beautiful.
The Fire-Festivals of Europe and the Doctrine of the External Soul.
Vol. 1 of 2.
New York and London
MacMillan and Co.
1919
CONTENTS
Preface.
Chapter I. Between Heaven And Earth.
§ 1. Not to touch the Earth.
§ 2. Not to see the Sun.
Chapter II. The Seclusion of Girls at Puberty.
§ 1. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty in Africa.
§ 2. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty in New Ireland, New Guinea, and
Indonesia.
§ 3. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty in the Torres Straits Islands and
Northern Australia.
§ 4. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty among the Indians of North America.
§ 5. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty among the Indians of South America.
§ 6. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty in India and Cambodia.
§ 7. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty in Folk-tales.
§ 8. Reasons for the Seclusion of Girls at Puberty.
Chapter III. The Myth of Balder.
Chapter IV. The Fire-Festivals of Europe.
§ 1. The Lenten Fires.
§ 2. The Easter Fires.
§ 3. The Beltane Fires.
§ 4. The Midsummer Fires.
§ 5. The Autumn Fires.
§ 6. The Hallowe’en Fires.
§ 7. The Midwinter Fires.
§ 8. The Need-fire.
§ 9. The Sacrifice of an Animal to stay a Cattle-Plague.
Chapter V. The Interpretation of the Fire-Festivals.
§ 1. On the Fire-festivals in general.
§ 2. The Solar Theory of the Fire-festivals.
§ 3. The Purificatory Theory of the Fire-festivals.
Footnotes
[Cover Art]
[Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter
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PREFACE.
In this concluding part of _The Golden Bough_ I have discussed the problem
which gives its title to the whole work. If I am right, the Golden Bough
over which the King of the Wood, Diana’s priest at Aricia, kept watch and
ward was no other than a branch of mistletoe growing on an oak within the
sacred grove; and as the plucking of the bough was a necessary prelude to
the slaughter of the priest, I have been led to institute a parallel
between the King of the Wood at Nemi and the Norse god Balder, who was
worshipped in a sacred grove beside the beautiful Sogne fiord of Norway
and was said to have perished by a stroke of mistletoe, which alone of all
things on earth or in heaven could wound him. On the theory here suggested
both Balder and the King of the Wood personified in a sense the sacred oak
of our Aryan forefathers, and both had deposited their lives or souls for
safety in the parasite which sometimes, though rarely, is found growing on
an oak and by the very rarity of its appearance excites the wonder and
stimulates the devotion of ignorant men. Though I am now less than ever
disposed to lay weight on the analogy between the Italian priest and the
Norse god, I have allowed it to stand because it furnishes me with a
pretext for discussing not only the general question of the external soul
in popular superstition, but also the fire-festivals of Europe, since fire
played a part both in the myth of Balder and in the ritual of the Arician
grove. Thus Balder the Beautiful in my hands is little more than a
stalking-horse to carry two heavy pack-loads of facts. And what is true of
Balder applies equally to the priest of Nemi himself, the nominal hero of
the long tragedy of human folly and suffering which has unrolled itself
before the readers of these volumes, and on which the curtain is now about
to fall. He, too, for all the quaint garb he wears and the gravity with
which he stalks across the stage, is merely a puppet, and it is time to
unmask him before laying him up in the box.
To drop metaphor, while nominally investigating a particular problem of
ancient mythology, I have really been discussing questions of more general
interest which concern the gradual evolution of human thought from
savagery to civilization. The enquiry is beset with difficulties of many
kinds, for the record of man’s mental development is even more imperfect
than the record of his physical development, and it is harder to read, not
only by reason of the incomparably more subtle and complex nature of the
subject, but because the reader’s eyes are apt to be dimmed by thick mists
of passion and prejudice, which cloud in a far less degree the fields of
comparative anatomy and geology. My contribution to the history of the
human mind consists of little more than a rough and purely provisional
classification of facts gathered almost entirely from printed sources. If
there is one general conclusion which seems to emerge from the mass of
particulars, I venture to think that it is the essential similarity in the
working of the less developed human mind among all races, which
corresponds to the essential similarity in their bodily frame revealed by
comparative anatomy. But while this general mental similarity may, I
believe, be taken as established, we must always be on our guard against
tracing to it a multitude of particular resemblances which may be and
often are due to simple diffusion, since nothing is more certain than that
the various races of men have borrowed from each other many of their arts
and crafts, their ideas, customs, and institutions. To sift out the
elements of culture which a race has independently evolved and to
distinguish them accurately from those which it has derived from other
races is a task of extreme difficulty and delicacy, which promises to
occupy students of man for a long time to come; indeed so complex are the
facts and so imperfect in most cases is the historical record that it may
be doubted whether in regard to many of the lower races we shall ever
arrive at more than probable conjectures.
Since the last edition of _The Golden Bough_ was published some thirteen
years ago, I have seen reason to change my views on several matters
discussed in this concluding part of the work, and though I have called
attention to these changes in the text, it may be well for the sake of
clearness to recapitulate them here.
In the first place, the arguments of Dr. Edward Westermarck have satisfied
me that the solar theory of the European fire-festivals, which I accepted
from W. Mannhardt, is very slightly, if at all, supported by the evidence
and is probably erroneous. The true explanation of the festivals I now
believe to be the one advocated by Dr. Westermarck himself, namely that
they are purificatory in intention, the fire being designed not, as I
formerly held, to reinforce the sun’s light and heat by sympathetic magic,
but merely to burn or repel the noxious things, whether conceived as
material or spiritual, which threaten the life of man, of animals, and of
plants. This aspect of the fire-festivals had not wholly escaped me in
former editions; I pointed it out explicitly, but, biassed perhaps by the
great authority of Mannhardt, I treated it as secondary and subordinate
instead of primary and dominant. Out of deference to Mannhardt, for whose
work I entertain the highest respect, and because the evidence for the
purificatory theory of the fires is perhaps not quite conclusive, I have
in this edition repeated and even reinforced the arguments for the solar
theory of the festivals, so that the reader may see for himself what can
be said on both sides of the question and may draw his own conclusion; but
for my part I cannot but think that the arguments for the purificatory
theory far outweigh the arguments for the solar theory. Dr. Westermarck
based his criticisms largely on his own observations of the Mohammedan
fire-festivals of Morocco, which present a remarkable resemblance to those
of Christian Europe, though there seems no reason to assume that herein
Africa has borrowed from Europe or Europe from Africa. So far as Europe is
concerned, the evidence tends strongly to shew that the grand evil which
the festivals aimed at combating was witchcraft, and that they were
conceived to attain their end by actually burning the witches, whether
visible or invisible, in the flames. If that was so, the wide prevalence
and the immense popularity of the fire-festivals provides us with a
measure for estimating the extent of the hold which the belief in
witchcraft had on the European mind before the rise of Christianity or
rather of rationalism; for Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant,
accepted the old belief and enforced it in the old way by the faggot and
the stake. It was not until human reason at last awoke after the long
slumber of the Middle Ages that this dreadful obsession gradually passed
away like a dark cloud from the intellectual horizon of Europe.
Yet we should deceive ourselves if we imagined that the belief in
witchcraft is even now dead in the mass of the people; on the contrary
there is ample evidence to shew that it only hibernates under the chilling
influence of rationalism, and that it would start into active life if that
influence were ever seriously relaxed. The truth seems to be that to this
day the peasant remains a pagan and savage at heart; his civilization is
merely a thin veneer which the hard knocks of life soon abrade, exposing
the solid core of paganism and savagery below. The danger created by a
bottomless layer of ignorance and superstition under the crust of
civilized society is lessened, not only by the natural torpidity and
inertia of the bucolic mind, but also by the progressive decrease of the
rural as compared with the urban population in modern states; for I
believe it will be found that the artisans who congregate in towns are far
less retentive of primitive modes of thought than their rustic brethren.
In every age cities have been the centres and as it were the lighthouses
from which ideas radiate into the surrounding darkness, kindled by the
friction of mind with mind in the crowded haunts of men; and it is natural
that at these beacons of intellectual light all should partake in some
measure of the general illumination. No doubt the mental ferment and
unrest of great cities have their dark as well as their bright side; but
among the evils to be apprehended from them the chances of a pagan revival
need hardly be reckoned.
Another point on which I have changed my mind is the nature of the great
Aryan god whom the Romans called Jupiter and the Greeks Zeus. Whereas I
formerly argued that he was primarily a personification of the sacred oak
and only in the second place a personification of the thundering sky, I
now invert the order of his divine functions and believe that he was a
sky-god before he came to be associated with the oak. In fact, I revert to
the traditional view of Jupiter, recant my heresy, and am gathered like a
lost sheep into the fold of mythological orthodoxy. The good shepherd who
has brought me back is my friend Mr. W. Warde Fowler. He has removed the
stone over which I stumbled in the wilderness by explaining in a simple
and natural way how a god of the thundering sky might easily come to be
afterwards associated with the oak. The explanation turns on the great
frequency with which, as statistics prove, the oak is struck by lightning
beyond any other tree of the wood in Europe. To our rude forefathers, who
dwelt in the gloomy depths of the primaeval forest, it might well seem
that the riven and blackened oaks must indeed be favourites of the
sky-god, who so often descended on them from the murky cloud in a flash of
lightning and a crash of thunder.
This change of view as to the great Aryan god necessarily affects my
interpretation of the King of the Wood, the priest of Diana at Aricia, if
I may take that discarded puppet out of the box again for a moment. On my
theory the priest represented Jupiter in the flesh, and accordingly, if
Jupiter was primarily a sky-god, his priest cannot have been a mere
incarnation of the sacred oak, but must, like the deity whose commission
he bore, have been invested in the imagination of his worshippers with the
power of overcasting the heaven with clouds and eliciting storms of
thunder and rain from the celestial vault. The attribution of
weather-making powers to kings or priests is very common in primitive
society, and is indeed one of the principal levers by which such
personages raise themselves to a position of superiority above their
fellows. There is therefore no improbability in the supposition that as a
representative of Jupiter the priest of Diana enjoyed this reputation,
though positive evidence of it appears to be lacking.
Lastly, in the present edition I have shewn some grounds for thinking that
the Golden Bough itself, or in common parlance the mistletoe on the oak,
was supposed to have dropped from the sky upon the tree in a flash of
lightning and therefore to contain within itself the seed of celestial
fire, a sort of smouldering thunderbolt. This view of the priest and of
the bough which he guarded at the peril of his life has the advantage of
accounting for the importance which the sanctuary at Nemi acquired and the
treasure which it amassed through the offerings of the faithful; for the
shrine would seem to have been to ancient what Loreto has been to modern
Italy, a place of pilgrimage, where princes and nobles as well as
commoners poured wealth into the coffers of Diana in her green recess
among the Alban hills, just as in modern times kings and queens vied with
each other in enriching the black Virgin who from her Holy House on the
hillside at Loreto looks out on the blue Adriatic and the purple
Apennines. Such pious prodigality becomes more intelligible if the
greatest of the gods was indeed believed to dwell in human shape with his
wife among the woods of Nemi.
These are the principal points on which I have altered my opinion since
the last edition of my book was published. The mere admission of such
changes may suffice to indicate the doubt and uncertainty which attend
enquiries of this nature. The whole fabric of ancient mythology is so
foreign to our modern ways of thought, and the evidence concerning it is
for the most part so fragmentary, obscure, and conflicting that in our
attempts to piece together and interpret it we can hardly hope to reach
conclusions that will completely satisfy either ourselves or others. In
this as in other branches of study it is the fate of theories to be washed
away like children’s castles of sand by the rising tide of knowledge, and
I am not so presumptuous as to expect or desire for mine an exemption from
the common lot. I hold them all very lightly and have used them chiefly as
convenient pegs on which to hang my collections of facts. For I believe
that, while theories are transitory, a record of facts has a permanent
value, and that as a chronicle of ancient customs and beliefs my book may
retain its utility when my theories are as obsolete as the customs and
beliefs themselves deserve to be.
I cannot dismiss without some natural regret a task which has occupied and
amused me at intervals for many years. But the regret is tempered by
thankfulness and hope. I am thankful that I have been able to conclude at
least one chapter of the work I projected a long time ago. I am hopeful
that I may not now be taking a final leave of my indulgent readers, but
that, as I am sensible of little abatement in my bodily strength and of
none in my ardour for study, they will bear with me yet a while if I
should attempt to entertain them with fresh subjects of laughter and tears
drawn from the comedy and the tragedy of man’s endless quest after
happiness and truth.
J. G. FRAZER.
CAMBRIDGE, _17th October 1913_.
CHAPTER I. BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH.
§ 1. Not to touch the Earth.
(M1) We have travelled far since we turned our backs on Nemi and set forth
in quest of the secret of the Golden Bough. With the present volume we
enter on the last stage of our long journey. The reader who has had the
patience to follow the enquiry thus far may remember that at the outset
two questions were proposed for answer: Why had the priest of Aricia to
slay his predecessor? And why, before doing so, had he to pluck the Golden
Bough?(1) Of these two questions the first has now been answered. The
priest of Aricia, if I am right, was one of those sacred kings or human
divinities on whose life the welfare of the community and even the course
of nature in general are believed to be intimately dependent. It does not
appear that the subjects or worshippers of such a spiritual potentate form
to themselves any very clear notion of the exact relationship in which
they stand to him; probably their ideas on the point are vague and
fluctuating, and we should err if we attempted to define the relationship
with logical precision. All that the people know, or rather imagine, is
that somehow they themselves, their cattle, and their crops are
mysteriously bound up with their divine king, so that according as he is
well or ill the community is healthy or sickly, the flocks and herds
thrive or languish with disease, and the fields yield an abundant or a
scanty harvest. The worst evil which they can conceive of is the natural
death of their ruler, whether he succumb to sickness or old age, for in
the opinion of his followers such a death would entail the most disastrous
consequences on themselves and their possessions; fatal epidemics would
sweep away man and beast, the earth would refuse her increase, nay the
very frame of nature itself might be dissolved. To guard against these
catastrophes it is necessary to put the king to death while he is still in
the full bloom of his divine manhood, in order that his sacred life,
transmitted in unabated force to his successor, may renew its youth, and
thus by successive transmissions through a perpetual line of vigorous
incarnations may remain eternally fresh and young, a pledge and security
that men and animals shall in like manner renew their youth by a perpetual
succession of generations, and that seedtime and harvest, and summer and
winter, and rain and sunshine shall never fail. That, if my conjecture is
right, was why the priest of Aricia, the King of the Wood at Nemi, had
regularly to perish by the sword of his successor.
(M2) But we have still to ask, What was the Golden Bough? and why had each
candidate for the Arician priesthood to pluck it before he could slay the
priest? These questions I will now try to answer.
(M3) It will be well to begin by noticing two of those rules or taboos by
which, as we have seen, the life of divine kings or priests is regulated.
The first of the rules to which I desire to call the reader’s attention is
that the divine personage may not touch the ground with his foot. This
rule was observed by the supreme pontiff of the Zapotecs in Mexico; he
profaned his sanctity if he so much as touched the ground with his
foot.(2) Montezuma, emperor of Mexico, never set foot on the ground; he
was always carried on the shoulders of noblemen, and if he lighted
anywhere they laid rich tapestry for him to walk upon.(3) For the Mikado
of Japan to touch the ground with his foot was a shameful degradation;
indeed, in the sixteenth century, it was enough to deprive him of his
office. Outside his palace he was carried on men’s shoulders; within it he
walked on exquisitely wrought mats.(4) The king and queen of Tahiti might
not touch the ground anywhere but within their hereditary domains; for the
ground on which they trod became sacred. In travelling from place to place
they were carried on the shoulders of sacred men. They were always
accompanied by several pairs of these sanctified attendants; and when it
became necessary to change their bearers, the king and queen vaulted on to
the shoulders of their new bearers without letting their feet touch the
ground.(5) It was an evil omen if the king of Dosuma touched the ground,
and he had to perform an expiatory ceremony.(6) Within his palace the king
of Persia walked on carpets on which no one else might tread; outside of
it he was never seen on foot but only in a chariot or on horseback.(7) In
old days the king of Siam never set foot upon the earth, but was carried
on a throne of gold from place to place.(8) Formerly neither the kings of
Uganda, nor their mothers, nor their queens might walk on foot outside of
the spacious enclosures in which they lived. Whenever they went forth they
were carried on the shoulders of men of the Buffalo clan, several of whom
accompanied any of these royal personages on a journey and took it in turn
to bear the burden. The king sat astride the bearer’s neck with a leg over
each shoulder and his feet tucked under the bearer’s arms. When one of
these royal carriers grew tired he shot the king on to the shoulders of a
second man without allowing the royal feet to touch the ground. In this
way they went at a great pace and travelled long distances in a day, when
the king was on a journey. The bearers had a special hut in the king’s
enclosure in order to be at hand the moment they were wanted.(9) Among the
Bakuba or rather Bushongo, a nation in the southern region of the Congo,
down to a few years ago persons of the royal blood were forbidden to touch
the ground; they must sit on a hide, a chair, or the back of a slave, who
crouched on hands and feet; their feet rested on the feet of others. When
they travelled they were carried on the backs of men; but the king
journeyed in a litter supported on shafts.(10) Among the Ibo people about
Awka, in Southern Nigeria, the priest of the Earth has to observe many
taboos; for example, he may not see a corpse, and if he meets one on the
road he must hide his eyes with his wristlet. He must abstain from many
foods, such as eggs, birds of all sorts, mutton, dog, bush-buck, and so
forth. He may neither wear nor touch a mask, and no masked man may enter
his house. If a dog enters his house, it is killed and thrown out. As
priest of the Earth he may not sit on the bare ground, nor eat things that
have fallen on the ground, nor may earth be thrown at him.(11) According
to ancient Brahmanic ritual a king at his inauguration trod on a tiger’s
skin and a golden plate; he was shod with shoes of boar’s skin, and so
long as he lived thereafter he might not stand on the earth with his bare
feet.(12)
(M4) But besides persons who are permanently sacred or tabooed and are
therefore permanently forbidden to touch the ground with their feet, there
are others who enjoy the character of sanctity or taboo only on certain
occasions, and to whom accordingly the prohibition in question only
applies at the definite seasons during which they exhale the odour of
sanctity. Thus among the Kayans or Bahaus of Central Borneo, while the
priestesses are engaged in the performance of certain rites they may not
step on the ground, and boards are laid for them to tread on.(13) At a
funeral ceremony observed by night among the Michemis, a Tibetan tribe
near the northern frontier of Assam, a priest fantastically bedecked with
tiger’s teeth, many-coloured plumes, bells, and shells, executed a wild
dance for the purpose of exorcising the evil spirits; then all fires were
extinguished and a new light was struck by a man suspended by his feet
from a beam in the ceiling; “he did not touch the ground,” we are told,
“in order to indicate that the light came from heaven.”(14) Again, newly
born infants are strongly tabooed; accordingly in Loango they are not
allowed to touch the earth.(15) Among the Iluvans of Malabar the
bridegroom on his wedding-day is bathed by seven young men and then
carried or walks on planks from the bathing-place to the marriage booth;
he may not touch the ground with his feet.(16) With the Dyaks of Landak
and Tajan, two districts of Dutch Borneo, it is a custom that for a
certain time after marriage neither bride nor bridegroom may tread on the
earth.(17) Warriors, again, on the war-path are surrounded, so to say, by
an atmosphere of taboo; hence some Indians of North America might not sit
on the bare ground the whole time they were out on a warlike
expedition.(18) In Laos the hunting of elephants gives rise to many
taboos; one of them is that the chief hunter may not touch the earth with
his foot. Accordingly, when he alights from his elephant, the others
spread a carpet of leaves for him to step upon.(19) German wiseacres
recommended that when witches were led to the block or the stake, they
should not be allowed to touch the bare earth, and a reason suggested for
the rule was that if they touched the earth they might make themselves
invisible and so escape. The sagacious author of _The Striped-petticoat
Philosophy_ in the eighteenth century ridicules the idea as mere silly
talk. He admits, indeed, that the women were conveyed to the place of
execution in carts; but he denies that there is any deep significance in
the cart, and he is prepared to maintain this view by a chemical analysis
of the timber of which the cart was built. To clinch his argument he
appeals to plain matter of fact and his own personal experience. Not a
single instance, he assures us with apparent satisfaction, can be produced
of a witch who escaped the axe or the fire in this fashion. “I have
myself,” says he, “in my youth seen divers witches burned, some at
Arnstadt, some at Ilmenau, some at Schwenda, a noble village between
Arnstadt and Ilmenau, and some of them were pardoned and beheaded before
being burned. They were laid on the earth in the place of execution and
beheaded like any other poor sinner; whereas if they could have escaped by
touching the earth, not one of them would have failed to do so.”(20)
(M5) Apparently holiness, magical virtue, taboo, or whatever we may call
that mysterious quality which is supposed to pervade sacred or tabooed
persons, is conceived by the primitive philosopher as a physical substance
or fluid, with which the sacred man is charged just as a Leyden jar is
charged with electricity; and exactly as the electricity in the jar can be
discharged by contact with a good conductor, so the holiness or magical
virtue in the man can be discharged and drained away by contact with the
earth, which on this theory serves as an excellent conductor for the
magical fluid. Hence in order to preserve the charge from running to
waste, the sacred or tabooed personage must be carefully prevented from
touching the ground; in electrical language he must be insulated, if he is
not to be emptied of the precious substance or fluid with which he, as a
vial, is filled to the brim. And in many cases apparently the insulation
of the tabooed person is recommended as a precaution not merely for his
own sake but for the sake of others; for since the virtue of holiness or
taboo is, so to say, a powerful explosive which the smallest touch may
detonate, it is necessary in the interest of the general safety to keep it
within narrow bounds, lest breaking out it should blast, blight, and
destroy whatever it comes into contact with.
(M6) But things as well as persons are often charged with the mysterious
quality of holiness or taboo; hence it frequently becomes necessary for
similar reasons to guard them also from coming into contact with the
ground, lest they should in like manner be drained of their valuable
properties and be reduced to mere commonplace material objects, empty
husks from which the good grain has been eliminated. Thus, for example,
the most sacred object of the Arunta tribe in Central Australia is, or
rather used to be, a pole about twenty feet high, which is completely
smeared with human blood, crowned with an imitation of a human head, and
set up on the ground where the final initiatory ceremonies of young men
are performed. A young gum-tree is chosen to form the pole, and it must be
cut down and transported in such a way that it does not touch the earth
till it is erected in its place on the holy ground. Apparently the pole
represents some famous ancestor of the olden time.(21)
(M7) Again, at a great dancing festival celebrated by the natives of
Bartle Bay, in British New Guinea, a wild mango tree plays a prominent
part. The tree must be self-sown, that is, really wild and so young that
it has never flowered. It is chosen in the jungle some five or six weeks
before the festival, and a circle is cleared round its trunk. From that
time the master of the ceremonies and some eight to twenty other men, who
have aided him in choosing the tree and in clearing the jungle, become
strictly holy or tabooed. They sleep by themselves in a house into which
no one else may intrude: they may not wash or drink water, nor even allow
it accidentally to touch their bodies: they are forbidden to eat boiled
food and the fruit of mango trees: they may drink only the milk of a young
coco-nut which has been baked, and they may eat certain fruits and
vegetables, such as paw-paws (_Carica papaya_) and sugar-cane, but only on
condition that they have been baked. All refuse of their food is kept in
baskets in their sleeping-house and may not be removed from it till the
festival is over. At the time when the men begin to observe these rules of
abstinence, some six to ten women, members of the same clan as the master
of the ceremonies, enter on a like period of mortification, avoiding the
company of the other sex, and refraining from water, all boiled food, and
the fruit of the mango tree. These fasting men and women are the principal
dancers at the festival. The dancing takes place on a special platform in
a temporary village which has been erected for the purpose. When the
platform is about to be set up, the fasting men rub the stepping posts and
then suck their hands for the purpose of extracting the ghost of any dead
man that might chance to be in the post and might be injured by the weight
of the platform pressing down on him. Having carefully extracted these
poor souls, the men carry them away tenderly and set them free in the
forest or the long grass.
(M8) On the day before the festival one of the fasting men cuts down the
chosen mango tree in the jungle with a stone adze, which is never
afterwards put to any other use; an iron tool may not be used for the
purpose, though iron tools are now common enough in the district. In
cutting down the mango they place nets on the ground to catch any leaves
or twigs that might fall from the tree as it is being felled, and they
surround the trunk with new mats to receive the chips which fly out under
the adze of the woodman; for the chips may not drop on the earth. Once the
tree is down, it is carried to the centre of the temporary village, the
greatest care being taken to prevent it from coming into contact with the
ground. But when it is brought into the village, the houses are connected
with the top of the mango by means of long vines decorated with streamers.
In the afternoon the fasting men and women begin to dance, the men
bedizened with gay feathers, armlets, streamers, and anklets, the women
flaunting in parti-coloured petticoats and sprigs of croton leaves, which
wave from their waistbands as they dance. The dancing stops at sundown,
and when the full moon rises over the shoulder of the eastern hill (for
the date of the festival seems to be determined with reference to the time
of the moon), two chiefs mount the gables of two houses on the eastern
side of the square, and, their dusky figures standing sharply out against
the moonlight, pray to the evil spirits to go away and not to hurt the
people. Next morning pigs are killed by being speared as slowly as
possible in order that they may squeal loud and long; for the people
believe that the mango trees hear the squealing, and are pleased at the
sound, and bear plenty of fruit, whereas if they heard no squeals they
would bear no fruit. However, the trees have to content themselves with
the squeals; the flesh of the pigs is eaten by the people. This ends the
festival.
(M9) Next day the mango is taken down from the platform, wrapt in new
mats, and carried by the fasting men to their sleeping house, where it is
hung from the roof. But after an interval, it may be of many months, the
tree is brought forth again. As to the reason for its reappearance in
public opinions are divided; but some say that the tree itself orders the
master of the ceremonies to bring it forth, appearing to him in his dreams
and saying, “Let me smell the smoking fat of pigs. So will your pigs be
healthy and your crops will grow.” Be that as it may, out it comes,
conducted by the fasting men in their dancing costume; and with it come in
the solemn procession all the pots, spoons, cups and so forth used by the
fasting men during their period of holiness or taboo, also all the refuse
of their food which has been collected for months, and all the fallen
leaves and chips of the mango in their bundles of mats. These holy relics
are carried in front and the mango tree itself brings up the rear of the
procession. While these sacred objects are being handed out of the house,
the men who are present rush up, wipe off the hallowed dust which has
accumulated on them, and smear it over their own bodies, no doubt in order
to steep themselves in their blessed influence. Thus the tree is carried
as before to the centre of the temporary village, care being again taken
not to let it touch the ground. Then one of the fasting men takes from a
basket a number of young green mangoes, cuts them in pieces, and places
them with his own hands in the mouths of his fellows, the other fasting
men, who chew the pieces small and turning round spit the morsels in the
direction of the setting sun, in order that “the sun should carry the
mango bits over the whole country and everyone should know.” A portion of
the mango tree is then broken off and in the evening it is burnt along
with the bundles of leaves, chips, and refuse of food, which have been
stored up. What remains of the tree is taken to the house of the master of
the ceremonies and hung over the fire-place; it will be brought out again
at intervals and burned bit by bit, till all is consumed, whereupon a new
mango will be cut down and treated in like manner. The ashes of the holy
fire on each occasion are gathered by the people and preserved in the
house of the master of the ceremonies.(22)
(M10) The meaning of these ceremonies is not explained by the authorities
who describe them; but we may conjecture that they are intended to
fertilize the mango trees and cause them to bear a good crop of fruit. The
central feature of the whole ritual is a wild mango tree, so young that it
has never flowered: the men who cut it down, carry it into the village,
and dance at the festival, are forbidden to eat mangoes: pigs are killed
in order that their dying squeals may move the mango trees to bear fruit:
at the end of the ceremonies pieces of young green mangoes are solemnly
placed in the mouths of the fasting men and are by them spurted out
towards the setting sun in order that the luminary may carry the fragments
to every part of the country; and finally when after a longer or shorter
interval the tree is wholly consumed, its place is supplied by another.
All these circumstances are explained simply and naturally by the
supposition that the young mango tree is taken as a representative of
mangoes generally, that the dances are intended to quicken it, and that it
is preserved, like a May-pole of old in England, as a sort of general fund
of vegetable life, till the fund being exhausted by the destruction of the
tree it is renewed by the importation of a fresh young tree from the
forest. We can therefore understand why, as a storehouse of vital energy,
the tree should be carefully kept from contact with the ground, lest the
pent-up and concentrated energy should escape and dribbling away into the
earth be dissipated to no purpose.
(M11) To take other instances of what we may call the conservation of
energy in magic or religion by insulating sacred bodies from the ground,
the natives of New Britain have a secret society called the Duk-duk, the
members of which masquerade in petticoats of leaves and tall headdresses
of wickerwork shaped like candle extinguishers, which descend to the
shoulders of the wearers, completely concealing their faces. Thus
disguised they dance about to the awe and terror, real or assumed, of the
women and uninitiated, who take, or pretend to take, them for spirits.
When lads are being initiated into the secrets of this august society, the
adepts cut down some very large and heavy bamboos, one for each lad, and
the novices carry them, carefully wrapt up in leaves, to the sacred
ground, where they arrive very tired and weary, for they may not let the
bamboos touch the ground nor the sun shine on them. Outside the fence of
the enclosure every lad deposits his bamboo on a couple of forked sticks
and covers it up with nut leaves.(23) Among the Carrier Indians of
North-Western America, who burned their dead, the ashes of a chief used to
be placed in a box and set on the top of a pole beside his hut: the box
was never allowed to touch the ground.(24) In the Omaha tribe of North
American Indians the sacred clam shell of the Elk clan was wrapt up from
sight in a mat, placed on a stand, and never suffered to come in contact
with the earth.(25) The Cherokees and kindred Indian tribes of the United
States used to have certain sacred boxes or arks, which they regularly
took with them to war. Such a holy ark consisted of a square wooden box,
which contained “certain consecrated vessels made by beloved superannuated
women, and of such various antiquated forms, as would have puzzled Adam to
have given significant names to each.” The leader of a war party and his
attendant bore the ark by turns, but they never set it on the ground nor
would they themselves sit on the bare earth while they were carrying it
against the enemy. Where stones were plentiful they rested the ark on
them; but where no stones were to be found, they deposited it on short
logs. “The Indian ark is deemed so sacred and dangerous to be touched,
either by their own sanctified warriors, or the spoiling enemy, that they
durst not touch it upon any account. It is not to be meddled with by any,
except the war chieftain and his waiter, under the penalty of incurring
great evil. Nor would the most inveterate enemy touch it in the woods, for
the very same reason.” After their return home they used to hang the ark
on the leader’s red-painted war pole.(26) At Sipi, near Simla, in Northern
India, an annual fair is held, at which men purchase wives. A square box
with a domed top figures prominently at the fair. It is fixed on two poles
to be carried on men’s shoulders, and long heavily-plaited petticoats hang
from it nearly to the ground. Three sides of the box are adorned with the
head and shoulders of a female figure and the fourth side with a black
yak’s tail. Four men bear the poles, each carrying an axe in his right
hand. They dance round, with a swinging rhythmical step, to the music of
drums and a pipe. The dance goes on for hours and is thought to avert
ill-luck from the fair. It is said that the box is brought to Simla from a
place sixty miles off by relays of men, who may not stop nor set the box
on the ground the whole way.(27) In Scotland, when water was carried from
sacred wells to sick people, the water-vessel might not touch the
earth.(28) In some parts of Aberdeenshire the last bunch of standing corn,
which is commonly viewed as very sacred, being the last refuge of the
corn-spirit retreating before the reapers, is not suffered to touch the
ground; the master or “gueedman” sits down and receives each handful of
corn as it is cut on his lap.(29)
(M12) Again, sacred food may not under certain circumstances be brought
into contact with the earth. Some of the aborigines of Victoria used to
regard the fat of the emu as sacred, believing that it had once been the
fat of the black man. In taking it from the bird or giving it to another
they handled it reverently. Any one who threw away the fat or flesh of the
emu was held accursed. “The late Mr. Thomas observed on one occasion, at
Nerrenerre-Warreen, a remarkable exhibition of the effects of this
superstition. An aboriginal child—one attending the school—having eaten
some part of the flesh of an emu, threw away the skin. The skin fell to
the ground, and this being observed by his parents, they showed by their
gestures every token of horror. They looked upon their child as one
utterly lost. His desecration of the bird was regarded as a sin for which
there was no atonement.”(30) The Roumanians of Transylvania believe that
“every fresh-baked loaf of wheaten bread is sacred, and should a piece
inadvertently fall to the ground, it is hastily picked up, carefully wiped
and kissed, and if soiled, thrown into the fire—partly as an offering to
the dead, and partly because it were a heavy sin to throw away or tread
upon any particle of it.”(31) At certain festivals in south-eastern Borneo
the food which is consumed in the common house may not touch the ground;
hence, a little before the festivals take place, foot-bridges made of thin
poles are constructed from the private dwellings to the common house.(32)
When Hall was living with the Esquimaux and grew tired of eating walrus,
one of the women brought the head and neck of a reindeer for him to eat.
This venison had to be completely wrapt up before it was brought into the
house, and once in the house it could only be placed on the platform which
served as a bed. “To have placed it on the floor or on the platform behind
the fire-lamp, among the walrus, musk-ox, and polar-bear meat which occupy
a goodly portion of both of these places, would have horrified the whole
town, as, according to the actual belief of the Innuits, not another
walrus could be secured this year, and there would ever be trouble in
catching any more.”(33) But in this case the real scruple appears to have
been felt not so much at placing the venison on the ground as at bringing
it into contact with walrus meat.(34)
(M13) Sometimes magical implements and remedies are supposed to lose their
virtue by contact with the ground, the volatile essence with which they
are impregnated being no doubt drained off into the earth. Thus in the
Boulia district of Queensland the magical bone, which the native sorcerer
points at his victim as a means of killing him, is never by any chance
allowed to touch the earth.(35) The wives of rajahs in Macassar, a
district of southern Celebes, pride themselves on their luxuriant tresses
and are at great pains to oil and preserve them. Should the hair begin to
grow thin, the lady resorts to many devices to stay the ravages of time;
among other things she applies to her locks a fat extracted from
crocodiles and venomous snakes. The unguent is believed to be very
efficacious, but during its application the woman’s feet may not come into
contact with the ground, or all the benefit of the nostrum would be
lost.(36) Some people in antiquity believed that a woman in hard labour
would be delivered if a spear, which had been wrenched from a man’s body
without touching the ground, were thrown over the house where the sufferer
lay. Again, according to certain ancient writers, arrows which had been
extracted from a body without coming into contact with the earth and laid
under sleepers, acted as a love-charm.(37) Among the peasantry of the
north-east of Scotland the prehistoric weapons called celts went by the
name of “thunderbolts” and were coveted as the sure bringers of success,
always provided that they were not allowed to fall to the ground.(38)
(M14) In ancient Gaul certain glass or paste beads attained great
celebrity as amulets under the name of serpents’ eggs; it was believed
that serpents, coiling together in a wriggling, writhing mass, generated
them from their slaver and shot them into the air from their hissing jaws.
If a man was bold and dexterous enough to catch one of these eggs in his
cloak before it touched the ground, he rode off on horseback with it at
full speed, pursued by the whole pack of serpents, till he was saved by
the interposition of a river, which the snakes could not pass. The proof
of the egg being genuine was that if it were thrown into a stream it would
float up against the current, even though it were hooped in gold. The
Druids held these beads in high esteem; according to them, the precious
objects could only be obtained on a certain day of the moon, and the
peculiar virtue that resided in them was to secure success in law suits
and free access to kings. Pliny knew of a Gaulish knight who was executed
by the emperor Claudius for wearing one of these amulets.(39) Under the
name of Snake Stones (_glain neidr_) or Adder Stones the beads are still
known in those parts of our own country where the Celtic population has
lingered, with its immemorial superstitions, down to the present or recent
times; and the old story of the origin of the beads from the slaver of
serpents was believed by the modern peasantry of Cornwall, Wales, and
Scotland as by the Druids of ancient Gaul. In Cornwall the time when the
serpents united to fashion the beads was commonly said to be at or about
Midsummer Eve; in Wales it was usually thought to be spring, especially
the Eve of May Day, and even within recent years persons in the
Principality have affirmed that they witnessed the great vernal congress
of the snakes and saw the magic stone in the midst of the froth. The Welsh
peasants believe the beads to possess medicinal virtues of many sorts and
to be particularly efficacious for all maladies of the eyes. In Wales and
Ireland the beads sometimes went by the name of the Magician’s or Druid’s
Glass (_Gleini na Droedh_ and _Glaine nan Druidhe_). Specimens of them may
be seen in museums; some have been found in British barrows. They are of
glass of various colours, green, blue, pink, red, brown, and so forth,
some plain and some ribbed. Some are streaked with brilliant hues. The
beads are perforated, and in the Highlands of Scotland the hole is
explained by saying that when the bead has just been conflated by the
serpents jointly, one of the reptiles sticks his tail through the still
viscous glass. An Englishman who visited Scotland in 1699 found many of
these beads in use throughout the country. They were hung from children’s
necks to protect them from whooping cough and other ailments. Snake Stones
were, moreover, a charm to ensure prosperity in general and to repel evil
spirits. When one of these priceless treasures was not on active service,
the owner kept it in an iron box to guard it against fairies, who, as is
well known, cannot abide iron.(40)
(M15) Pliny mentions several medicinal plants, which, if they were to
retain their healing virtue, ought not to be allowed to touch the
earth.(41) The curious medical treatise of Marcellus, a native of Bordeaux
in the fourth century of our era, abounds with prescriptions of this sort;
and we can well believe the writer when he assures us that he borrowed
many of his quaint remedies from the lips of common folk and peasants
rather than from the books of the learned.(42) Thus he tells us that
certain white stones found in the stomachs of young swallows assuage the
most persistent headache, always provided that their virtue be not
impaired by contact with the ground.(43) Another of his cures for the same
malady is a wreath of fleabane placed on the head, but it must not touch
the earth.(44) On the same condition a decoction of the root of elecampane
in wine kills worms; a fern, found growing on a tree, relieves the
stomach-ache; and the pastern-bone of a hare is an infallible remedy for
colic, provided, first, it be found in the dung of a wolf, second, that it
does not touch the ground, and, third, that it is not touched by a
woman.(45) Another cure for colic is effected by certain hocus-pocus with
a scrap of wool from the forehead of a first-born lamb, if only the lamb,
instead of being allowed to fall to the ground, has been caught by hand as
it dropped from its dam.(46) In Andjra, a district of Morocco, the people
attribute many magical virtues to rain-water which has fallen on the
twenty-seventh day of April, Old Style; accordingly they collect it and
use it for a variety of purposes. Mixed with tar and sprinkled on the
door-posts it prevents snakes and scorpions from entering the house:
sprinkled on heaps of threshed corn it protects them from the evil eye:
mixed with an egg, henna, and seeds of cress it is an invaluable medicine
for sick cows: poured over a plate, on which a passage of the Koran has
been written, it strengthens the memory of schoolboys who drink it; and if
you mix it with cowdung and red earth and paint rings with the mixture
round the trunks of your fig-trees at sunset on Midsummer Day, you may
depend on it that the trees will bear an excellent crop and will not shed
their fruit untimely on the ground. But in order to preserve these
remarkable properties it is absolutely essential that the water should on
no account be allowed to touch the ground; some say too that it should not
be exposed to the sun nor breathed upon by anybody.(47) Again, the Moors
ascribe great magical efficacy to what they call “the sultan of the
oleander,” which is a stalk of oleander with a cluster of four pairs of
leaves springing from it. They think that the magical virtue is greatest
if the stalk has been cut immediately before midsummer. But when the plant
is brought into the house, the branches may not touch the ground, lest
they should lose their marvellous qualities.(48) In the olden days, before
a Lithuanian or Prussian farmer went forth to plough for the first time in
spring, he called in a wizard to perform a certain ceremony for the good
of the crops. The sage seized a mug of beer with his teeth, quaffed the
liquor, and then tossed the mug over his head. This signified that the
corn in that year should grow taller than a man. But the mug might not
fall to the ground; it had to be caught by somebody stationed at the
wizard’s back, for if it fell to the ground the consequence naturally
would be that the corn also would be laid low on the earth.(49)
§ 2. Not to see the Sun.
(M16) The second rule to be here noted is that the sun may not shine upon
the divine person. This rule was observed both by the Mikado and by the
pontiff of the Zapotecs. The latter “was looked upon as a god whom the
earth was not worthy to hold, nor the sun to shine upon.”(50) The Japanese
would not allow that the Mikado should expose his sacred person to the
open air, and the sun was not thought worthy to shine on his head.(51) The
Indians of Granada, in South America, “kept those who were to be rulers or
commanders, whether men or women, locked up for several years when they
were children, some of them seven years, and this so close that they were
not to see the sun, for if they should happen to see it they forfeited
their lordship, eating certain sorts of food appointed; and those who were
their keepers at certain times went into their retreat or prison and
scourged them severely.”(52) Thus, for example, the heir to the throne of
Bogota, who was not the son but the sister’s son of the king, had to
undergo a rigorous training from his infancy: he lived in complete
retirement in a temple, where he might not see the sun nor eat salt nor
converse with a woman: he was surrounded by guards who observed his
conduct and noted all his actions: if he broke a single one of the rules
laid down for him, he was deemed infamous and forfeited all his rights to
the throne.(53) So, too, the heir to the kingdom of Sogamoso, before
succeeding to the crown, had to fast for seven years in the temple, being
shut up in the dark and not allowed to see the sun or light.(54) The
prince who was to become Inca of Peru had to fast for a month without
seeing light.(55) On the day when a Brahman student of the Veda took a
bath, to signify that the time of his studentship was at an end, he
entered a cow-shed before sunrise, hung over the door a skin with the hair
inside, and sat there; on that day the sun should not shine upon him.(56)
(M17) Again, women after childbirth and their offspring are more or less
tabooed all the world over; hence in Corea the rays of the sun are rigidly
excluded from both mother and child for a period of twenty-one or a
hundred days, according to their rank, after the birth has taken
place.(57) Among some of the tribes on the north-west coast of New Guinea
a woman may not leave the house for months after childbirth. When she does
go out, she must cover her head with a hood or mat; for if the sun were to
shine upon her, it is thought that one of her male relations would
die.(58) Again, mourners are everywhere taboo; accordingly in mourning the
Ainos of Japan wear peculiar caps in order that the sun may not shine upon
their heads.(59) During a solemn fast of three days the Indians of Costa
Rica eat no salt, speak as little as possible, light no fires, and stay
strictly indoors, or if they go out during the day they carefully cover
themselves from the light of the sun, believing that exposure to the sun’s
rays would turn them black.(60) On Yule Night it has been customary in
parts of Sweden from time immemorial to go on pilgrimage, whereby people
learn many secret things and know what is to happen in the coming year. As
a preparation for this pilgrimage, “some secrete themselves for three days
previously in a dark cellar, so as to be shut out altogether from the
light of heaven. Others retire at an early hour of the preceding morning
to some out-of-the-way place, such as a hay-loft, where they bury
themselves in the hay, that they may neither see nor hear any living
creature; and here they remain, in silence and fasting, until after
sundown; whilst there are those who think it sufficient if they rigidly
abstain from food on the day before commencing their wanderings. During
this period of probation a man ought not to see fire, but should this have
happened, he must strike a light with flint and steel, whereby the evil
that would otherwise have ensued will be obviated.”(61) During the sixteen
days that a Pima Indian is undergoing purification for killing an Apache
he may not see a blazing fire.(62)
(M18) Acarnanian peasants tell of a handsome prince called Sunless, who
would die if he saw the sun. So he lived in an underground palace on the
site of the ancient Oeniadae, but at night he came forth and crossed the
river to visit a famous enchantress who dwelt in a castle on the further
bank. She was loth to part with him every night long before the sun was
up, and as he turned a deaf ear to all her entreaties to linger, she hit
upon the device of cutting the throats of all the cocks in the
neighbourhood. So the prince, whose ear had learned to expect the shrill
clarion of the birds as the signal of the growing light, tarried too long,
and hardly had he reached the ford when the sun rose over the Aetolian
mountains, and its fatal beams fell on him before he could regain his dark
abode.(63)