CHAPTER VI. HUMAN SCAPEGOATS IN CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY.

§ 1. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Rome.

(M178) We are now prepared to notice the use of the human scapegoat in

classical antiquity. Every year on the fourteenth of March a man clad in

skins was led in procession through the streets of Rome, beaten with long

white rods, and driven out of the city. He was called Mamurius

Veturius,(546) that is, “the old Mars,”(547) and as the ceremony took

place on the day preceding the first full moon of the old Roman year

(which began on the first of March), the skin-clad man must have

represented the Mars of the past year, who was driven out at the beginning

of a new one. Now Mars was originally not a god of war but of vegetation.

For it was to Mars that the Roman husbandman prayed for the prosperity of

his corn and his vines, his fruit-trees and his copses;(548) it was to

Mars that the priestly college of the Arval Brothers, whose business it

was to sacrifice for the growth of the crops,(549) addressed their

petitions almost exclusively;(550) and it was to Mars, as we saw,(551)

that a horse was sacrificed in October to secure an abundant harvest.

Moreover, it was to Mars, under his title of “Mars of the woods” (_Mars

Silvanus_), that farmers offered sacrifice for the welfare of their

cattle.(552) We have already seen that cattle are commonly supposed to be

under the special patronage of tree-gods.(553) Once more, the consecration

of the vernal month of March to Mars seems to point him out as the deity

of the sprouting vegetation. Thus the Roman custom of expelling the old

Mars at the beginning of the new year in spring is identical with the

Slavonic custom of “carrying out Death,” if the view here taken of the

latter custom is correct. The similarity of the Roman and Slavonic customs

has been already remarked by scholars, who appear, however, to have taken

Mamurius Veturius and the corresponding figures in the Slavonic ceremonies

to be representatives of the old year rather than of the old god of

vegetation.(554) It is possible that ceremonies of this kind may have come

to be thus interpreted in later times even by the people who practised

them. But the personification of a period of time is too abstract an idea

to be primitive.(555) However, in the Roman, as in the Slavonic, ceremony,

the representative of the god appears to have been treated not only as a

deity of vegetation but also as a scapegoat. His expulsion implies this;

for there is no reason why the god of vegetation, as such, should be

expelled the city. But it is otherwise if he is also a scapegoat; it then

becomes necessary to drive him beyond the boundaries, that he may carry

his sorrowful burden away to other lands. And, in fact, Mamurius Veturius

appears to have been driven away to the land of the Oscans, the enemies of

Rome.(556)

(M179) The blows with which the “old Mars” was expelled the city seem to

have been administered by the dancing priests of Mars, the Salii. At least

we know that in their songs these priests made mention of Mamurius

Veturius;(557) and we are told that on a day dedicated to him they beat a

hide with rods.(558) It is therefore highly probable that the hide which

they drubbed on that day was the one worn by the representative of the

deity whose name they simultaneously chanted. Thus on the fourteenth day

of March every year Rome witnessed the curious spectacle of the human

incarnation of a god chased by the god’s own priests with blows from the

city. The rite becomes at least intelligible on the theory that the man so

beaten and expelled stood for the outworn deity of vegetation, who had to

be replaced by a fresh and vigorous young divinity at the beginning of a

New Year, when everywhere around in field and meadow, in wood and thicket

the vernal flowers, the sprouting grass, and the opening buds and blossoms

testified to the stirring of new life in nature after the long torpor and

stagnation of winter. The dancing priests of the god derived their name of

Salii from the leaps or dances which they were bound to execute as a

solemn religious ceremony every year in the Comitium, the centre of Roman

political life.(559) Twice a year, in the spring month of March and the

autumn month of October, they discharged this sacred duty;(560) and as

they did so they invoked Saturn, the Roman god of sowing.(561) As the

Romans sowed the corn both in spring and autumn,(562) and as down to the

present time in Europe superstitious rustics are wont to dance and leap

high in spring for the purpose of making the crops grow high,(563) we may

conjecture that the leaps and dances performed by the Salii, the priests

of the old Italian god of vegetation, were similarly supposed to quicken

the growth of the corn by homoeopathic or imitative magic. The Salii were

not limited to Rome; similar colleges of dancing priests are known to have

existed in many towns of ancient Italy;(564) everywhere, we may

conjecture, they were supposed to contribute to the fertility of the earth

by their leaps and dances. At Rome they were divided into two colleges,

each composed of twelve members; and it is not impossible that the number

twelve was fixed with reference to the twelve months of the old lunar

year;(565) the _Fratres Arvales_, or “Brethren of the Ploughed Fields,”

another Roman college of priests, whose functions were purely

agricultural, and who wore as a badge of their office a wreath of

corn-ears, were also twelve in number, perhaps for a similar reason.(566)

Nor was the martial equipment of the Salii so alien to this peaceful

function as a modern reader might naturally suppose. Each of them wore on

his head a peaked helmet of bronze, and at his side a sword; on his left

arm he carried a shield of a peculiar shape, and in his right hand he

wielded a staff with which he smote on the shield till it rang again.(567)

Such weapons in priestly hands may be turned against spiritual foes; in

the preceding pages we have met with many examples of the use of material

arms to rout the host of demons who oppress the imagination of primitive

man, and we have seen that the clash and clangour of metal is often deemed

particularly effective in putting these baleful beings to flight.(568) May

it not have been so with the martial priests of Mars? We know that they

paraded the city for days together in a regular order, taking up their

quarters for the night at a different place each day; and as they went

they danced in triple time, singing and clashing on their shields and

taking their time from a fugleman, who skipped and postured at their

head.(569) We may conjecture that in so doing they were supposed to be

expelling the powers of evil which had accumulated during the preceding

year or six months, and which the people pictured to themselves in the

form of demons lurking in the houses, temples, and the other edifices of

the city. In savage communities such tumultuous and noisy processions

often parade the village for a similar purpose. Similarly, we have seen

that among the Iroquois men in fantastic costume used to go about

collecting the sins of the people as a preliminary to transferring them to

the scapegoat dogs; and we have met with many examples of armed men

rushing about the streets and houses to drive out demons and evils of all

kinds.(570) Why should it not have been so also in ancient Rome? The

religion of the old Romans is full of relics of savagery.

(M180) If there is any truth in this conjecture, we may suppose that, as

priests of a god who manifested his power in the vegetation of spring, the

Salii turned their attention above all to the demons of blight and

infertility, who might be thought by their maleficent activity to

counteract the genial influence of the kindly god and to endanger the

farmer’s prospects in the coming summer or winter. The conjecture may be

supported by analogies drawn from the customs of modern European peasants

as well as of savages. Thus, to begin with savages, we have seen that at

the time of sowing the Khonds drive out the “evil spirits, spoilers of the

seed” from every house in the village, the expulsion being effected by

young men who beat each other and strike the air violently with long

sticks.(571) If I am right in connecting the vernal and the autumnal

processions of the Salii with the vernal and the autumnal sowing, the

analogy between the Khond and the Roman customs would be very close. In

West Africa the fields of the King of Whydah, according to an old French

traveller, “are hoed and sowed before any of his subjects has leave to hoe

and sow a foot of his own lands. These labours are performed thrice a

year. The chiefs lead their people before the king’s palace at daybreak,

and there they sing and dance for a full quarter of an hour. Half of these

people are armed as in a day of battle, the other half have only their

farm tools. They go all together singing and dancing to the scene of their

labours, and there, keeping time to the sound of the instruments, they

work with such speed and neatness that it is a pleasure to behold. At the

end of the day they return and dance before the king’s palace. This

exercise refreshes them and does them more good than all the repose they

could take.”(572) From this account we might infer that the dancing was

merely a recreation of the field-labourers, and that the music of the band

had no other object than to animate them in their work by enabling them to

ply their mattocks in time to its stirring strains. But this inference,

though it seems to have been drawn by the traveller who has furnished the

account, would probably be erroneous. For if half of the men were armed as

for war, what were they doing in the fields all the time that the others

were digging? A clue to unravel the mystery is furnished by the

description which a later French traveller gives of a similar scene

witnessed by him near Timbo in French Guinea. He saw some natives at work

preparing the ground for sowing. “It is a very curious spectacle: fifty or

sixty blacks in a line, with bent backs, are smiting the earth

simultaneously with their little iron tools, which gleam in the sun. Ten

paces in front of them, marching backwards, the women sing a well marked

air, clapping their hands as for a dance, and the hoes keep time to the

song. Between the workers and the singers a man runs and dances, crouching

on his hams like a clown, while he whirls about his musket and performs

other manœuvres with it. Two others dance, also pirouetting and smiting

the earth here and there with their little hoe. All that is necessary for

exorcising the spirits and causing the grain to sprout.”(573) Here, while

the song of the women gives the time to the strokes of the hoes, the

dances and other antics of the armed man and his colleagues are intended

to exorcise or ward off the spirits who might interfere with the diggers

and so prevent the grain from sprouting.

(M181) Again, an old traveller in southern India tells us that “the men of

Calicut, when they wish to sow rice, observe this practice. First, they

plough the land with oxen as we do, and when they sow the rice in the

field they have all the instruments of the city continually sounding and

making merry. They also have ten or twelve men clothed like devils, and

these unite in making great rejoicing with the players on the instruments,

in order that the devil may make that rice very productive.”(574) We may

suspect that the noisy music is played and the mummers cut their capers

for the purpose rather of repelling demons than of inducing them to favour

the growth of the rice. However, where our information is so scanty it

would be rash to dogmatize. Perhaps the old traveller was right in

thinking that the mummers personated devils. Among the Kayans of Central

Borneo men disguised in wooden masks and great masses of green foliage

certainly play the part of demons for the purpose of promoting the growth

of the rice just before the seed is committed to the ground; and it is

notable that among the performances which they give on this occasion are

war dances.(575) Again, among the Kaua and Kobeua Indians of North-Western

Brazil masked men who represent spirits or demons of fertility perform

dances or rather pantomimes for the purpose of stimulating the growth of

plants, quickening the wombs of women, and promoting the multiplication of

animals.(576)

(M182) Further, we are told that “the natives of Aracan dance in order to

render propitious the spirits whom they believe to preside over the sowing

and over the harvest. There are definite times for doing it, and we may

say that in their eyes it is, as it were, an act of religion.”(577)

Another people who dance diligently to obtain good crops are the

Tarahumare Indians of Mexico. They subsist by agriculture and their

thoughts accordingly turn much on the supply of rain, which is needed for

their fields. According to them, “the favour of the gods may be won by

what for want of a better term may be called dancing, but what in reality

is a series of monotonous movements, a kind of rhythmical exercise, kept

up sometimes for two nights. By dint of such hard work they think to

prevail upon the gods to grant their prayers. The dancing is accompanied

by the song of the shaman, in which he communicates his wishes to the

unseen world, describing the beautiful effect of the rain, the fog, and

the mist on the vegetable world. He invokes the aid of all the animals,

mentioning each by name, and also calls on them, especially the deer and

the rabbit, to multiply that the people may have plenty to eat. As a

matter of fact, the Tarahumares assert that the dances have been taught

them by the animals. Like all primitive people, they are close observers

of nature. To them the animals are by no means inferior creatures; they

understand magic and are possessed of much knowledge, and may assist the

Tarahumares in making rain. In spring, the singing of the birds, the

cooing of the dove, the croaking of the frog, the chirping of the cricket,

all the sounds uttered by the denizens of the greensward, are to the

Indian appeals to the deities for rain. For what other reason should they

sing or call? For the strange behaviour of many animals in the early

spring the Tarahumares can find no other explanation but that these

creatures, too, are interested in rain. And as the gods grant the prayers

of the deer expressed in its antics and dances, and of the turkey in its

curious playing, by sending the rain, they easily infer that to please the

gods they, too, must dance as the deer and play as the turkey. From this

it will be understood that dance with these people is a very serious and

ceremonious matter, a kind of worship and incantation rather than

amusement.”(578)

(M183) The two principal dances of these Indians, the _rutuburi_ and the

_yumari_, are supposed to have been taught them by the turkey and the deer

respectively. They are danced by numbers of men and women, the two sexes

keeping apart from each other in the dance, while the shaman sings and

shakes his rattle. But “a large gathering is not necessary in order to

pray to the gods by dancing. Sometimes the family dances alone, the father

teaching the boys. While doing agricultural work, the Indians often depute

one man to dance _yumari_ near the house, while the others attend to the

work in the fields. It is a curious sight to see a lone man taking his

devotional exercise to the tune of his rattle in front of an apparently

deserted dwelling. The lonely worshipper is doing his share of the general

work by bringing down the fructifying rain and by warding off disaster,

while the rest of the family and their friends plant, hoe, weed, or

harvest. In the evening, when they return from the field, they may join

him for a little while; but often he goes on alone, dancing all night, and

singing himself hoarse, and the Indians told me that this is the very

hardest kind of work, and exhausting even to them. Solitary worship is

also observed by men who go out hunting deer or squirrels for a communal

feast. Every one of them dances _yumari_ alone in front of his house for

two hours to insure success on the hunt; and when putting corn to sprout

for the making of _tesvino_ the owner of the house dances for a while,

that the corn may sprout well.” Another dance is thought to cause the

grass and funguses to grow, and the deer and rabbits to multiply; and

another is supposed to draw the clouds together from the north and south,

so that they clash and descend in rain.(579)

(M184) The Cora Indians of Mexico celebrate a festival of sowing shortly

before they commit the seed of the maize to the ground. The festival falls

in June, because that is the month when the rainy season sets in,

supplying the moisture needed for the growth of the maize. At the festival

two old women, who represent the goddesses of sowing, dance side by side

and imitate the process of sowing by digging holes in the earth with long

sticks and inserting the seed of the maize in the holes; whereupon a man

who represents the Morning Star pours water on the buried seeds. This

solemn dance is accompanied by the singing of an appropriate hymn, which

may be compared to the song of the Arval Brothers in ancient Rome.(580)

(M185) We have seen that in many parts of Germany, Austria, and France the

peasants are still, or were till lately, accustomed to dance and leap high

in order that the crops may grow tall. Such leaps and dances are sometimes

performed by the sower immediately before or after he sows the seed; but

often they are executed by the people on a fixed day of the year, which in

some places is Twelfth Night (the sixth of January), or Candlemas (the

second of February) or Walpurgis Night, that is, the Eve of May Day; but

apparently the favourite season for these performances is the last day of

the Carnival, namely Shrove Tuesday.(581) In such cases the leaps and

dances are performed by every man for his own behoof; he skips and jumps

merely in order that his own corn, or flax, or hemp may spring up and

thrive. But sometimes in modern Europe, as (if I am right) in ancient

Rome, the duty of dancing for the crops was committed to bands or troops

of men, who cut their capers for the benefit of the whole community. For

example, at Grub, in the Swiss canton of the Grisons (Graubünden), the

practice used to be as follows. “The peasants of Grub,” we are informed,

“have still some hereditary customs, in that they assembled in some years,

mostly at the time of the summer solstice, disguised themselves as maskers

so as to be unrecognizable, armed themselves with weapons defensive and

offensive, took every man a great club or cudgel, marched in a troop

together from one village to another, and executed high leaps and strange

antics. They ran full tilt at each other, struck every man his fellow with

all his might, so that the blow resounded, and clashed their great staves

and cudgels. Hence they were called by the country folk the _Stopfer_.

These foolish pranks they played from a superstitious notion that their

corn would thrive the better; but now they have left off, and these

_Stopfer_ are no longer in any repute.” Another authority, after

describing the custom, remarks: “With this custom was formerly connected

the belief that its observance brought a fruitful year.”(582)

(M186) In the Austrian provinces of Salzburg and Tyrol bands of mummers

wearing grotesque masks, with bells jingling on their persons, and

carrying long sticks or poles in their hands, used formerly to run and

leap about on certain days of the year for the purpose of procuring good

crops. They were called _Perchten_, a name derived from Perchta, Berchta,

or Percht, a mythical old woman, whether goddess or elf, who is well known

all over South Germany; Mrs. Perchta (_Frau Perchta_), as they call her,

is to be met with in Elsace, Swabia, Bavaria, Austria, and Switzerland,

but nowhere, perhaps, so commonly as in Salzburg and the Tyrol. In the

Tyrol she appears as a little old woman with a very wrinkled face, bright

lively eyes, and a long hooked nose; her hair is dishevelled, her garments

tattered and torn. Hence they say to a slatternly wench, “You are a

regular Perchta.” She goes about especially during the twelve days from

Christmas to Twelfth Night (Epiphany), above all on the Eve of Twelfth

Night, which is often called Perchta’s Day. Many precautions must be

observed during these mystic days in order not to incur her displeasure,

for she is mischievous to man and beast. If she appears in the byre, a

distemper breaks out among the cows. That is why during these days the

byres must be kept very clean and straw laid on the threshold; otherwise

you will find bald patches on your sheep and goats next morning, and next

summer the hair which has been filched from the animals will descend in

hail-stones from the sky. Old Mrs. Perchta also keeps a very sharp eye on

spinners during the twelve days; she inspects all distaffs and

spinning-wheels in the houses, and if she finds any flax or tow unspun on

them, she tears it to bits, and she does not spare the lazy spinner, for

she scratches her and smacks her fingers so that they bear the marks of it

for the rest of her life. Indeed she sometimes does much more; for she

rips up the belly of the sluggard and stuffs it with flax. That is the

punishment with which a Bavarian mother will threaten an idle jade of a

girl who has left some flax on her distaff on New Year’s Eve. However,

they say in Bavaria that if you only eat plenty of the rich juicy cakes

which are baked for Mrs. Perchta on her day, the old woman’s knife will

glance off your body without making any impression on it. Perchta often

comes not alone but attended by many little children, who follow her as

chickens waddle after the mother hen; and if you should see any little

child lagging behind the rest and blubbering, you may be quite sure that

that child has been baptized. On the Eve of Twelfth Night everybody should

eat pancakes baked of meal and milk or water. If anybody does not do so,

old Mrs. Perchta comes and slits up his stomach, takes out the other food,

fills up the vacuity so created with a tangled skein and bricks, and then

sews up the orifice neatly, using, singularly enough, a ploughshare for a

needle and an iron chain for thread. In other or the same places she does

the same thing to anybody who does not eat herrings and dumplings on

Twelfth Night. Some say that she rides on the storm like the Wild

Huntsman, followed by a boisterous noisy pack, and carrying off people

into far countries. Yet withal old Mrs. Perchta has her redeeming

qualities. Good children who spin diligently and learn their lessons she

rewards with nuts and sugar plums. It has even been affirmed that she

makes the ploughed land fruitful and causes the cattle to thrive. When a

mist floats over the fields, the peasants see her figure gliding along in

a white mantle. On the Eve of Twelfth Night good people leave the remains

of their supper for her on the table, and when they have gone to bed and

all is quiet in the house, she comes in the likeness of an old wizened

little woman, with all the children about her, and partakes of the broken

victuals. But woe to the prying wight who peeps at her through the

key-hole! Many a man has been blinded by her for a whole year as a

punishment for his ill-timed curiosity.(583)

(M187) The processions of maskers who took their name of _Perchten_ from

this quaint creation of the popular fancy were known as _Perchten_-running

or _Perchten_-leaping from the runs and leaps which the men took in their

wild headlong course through the streets and over the fields. They appear

to have been held in all the Alpine regions of Germany, but are best known

to us in the Tyrol and Salzburg. The appropriate season for the

celebration of the rite was Perchta’s Day, that is, Twelfth Night or

Epiphany, the sixth of January, but in some places it was held on Shrove

Tuesday, the last day of the Carnival, the very day when many farmers of

Central Europe jump to make the crops grow tall. Corresponding to the

double character of Perchta as a power for good and evil, the maskers are

divided into two sets known respectively as the Beautiful and the Ugly

_Perchten_. At Lienz in the Tyrol, where the maskers made their appearance

on Shrove Tuesday, the Beautiful _Perchten_ were decked with ribbons,

galloons, and so forth, while the ugly _Perchten_ made themselves as

hideous as they could by hanging rats and mice, chains and bells about

their persons. All wore on their heads tall pointed caps with bells

attached to them; their faces were concealed by masks, and in their hands

they all carried long sticks. The sticks of the Beautiful _Perchten_ were

adorned with ribbons; those of the Ugly _Perchten_ ended in the heads of

devils. Thus equipped they leaped and ran about the streets and went into

the houses. Amongst them was a clown who blew ashes and soot in people’s

faces through a blow-pipe. It was all very merry and frolicsome, except

when “the wild Perchta” herself came, invisible to ordinary eyes, upon the

scene. Then her namesakes the _Perchten_ grew wild and furious too; they

scattered and fled for their lives to the nearest house, for as soon as

they got under the gutter of a roof they were safe. But if she caught

them, she tore them in pieces. To this day you may see the graves where

the mangled bodies of her victims lie buried. When no such interruption

took place, the noisy rout of maskers rushed madly about, with jingling

bells and resounding cracks of whips, entering the houses, dancing here,

drinking there, teasing wayfarers, or racing from village to village like

the Wild Hunt itself in the sky; till at the close of the winter day the

church bells rang the _Ave Maria_. Then at last the wild uproar died away

into silence. Such tumultuous masquerades were thought to be very

beneficial to the crops; a bad harvest would be set down to the omission

of the _Perchten_ to skip and jump about in their usual fashion.(584)

(M188) In the province of Salzburg the _Perchten_ mummers are also divided

into two sets, the Beautiful _Perchten_ and the Ugly _Perchten_. The Ugly

_Perchten_ are properly speaking twelve young men dressed in black

sheepskins and wearing hoods of badger-skins and grotesque wooden masks,

which represent either coarse human features with long teeth and horns, or

else the features of fabulous animals with beaks and bristles or movable

jaws. They all carry bells, both large and small, fastened to broad

leathern girdles. The procession was headed by a man with a big drum, and

after him came lads bearing huge torches and lanterns fastened to tall

poles; for in Salzburg or some parts of it these mummers played their

pranks by night. Behind the torchbearers came two Fools, a male and a

female, the latter acted by a lad in woman’s clothes. The male Fool

carried a sausage-like roll, with which he struck at all women or girls of

his acquaintance when they shewed themselves at the open doors or windows.

Along with the _Perchten_ themselves went a train of young fellows

cracking whips, blowing horns, or jingling bells. The ways might be miry

and the night pitch dark, but with flaring lights the procession swept

rapidly by, the men leaping along with the help of their long sticks and

waking the echoes of the slumbering valley by their loud uproar. From time

to time they stopped at a farm, danced and cut their capers before the

house, for which they were rewarded by presents of food and strong drink;

to offer them money would have been an insult. By midnight the performance

came to an end, and the tired maskers dispersed to their homes.

(M189) The Beautiful _Perchten_ in Salzburg are attired very differently

from the Ugly _Perchten_, but their costume varies with the district. Thus

in the Pongau district the distinctive feature of their costume is a tall

and heavy framework covered with bright red cloth and decorated with a

profusion of silver jewelry and filagree work. This framework is sometimes

nine or ten feet high and forty or fifty pounds in weight. The performer

carries it above his head by means of iron supports resting on his

shoulders or his back. To run or jump under the weight of such an

encumbrance is impossible; the dancer has to content himself with turning

round and round slowly and clumsily. Very different is the headdress of

the Beautiful _Perchten_ in the Pinzgau district of Salzburg. There the

performers are dressed in scarlet and wear straw hats, from which bunches

of white feathers, arranged like fans, nod and flutter in the wind. Red

shoes and white stockings complete their attire. Thus lightly equipped

they hop and jump and stamp briskly in the dance. Unlike their Ugly

namesakes, who seem now to be extinct, the Beautiful _Perchten_ still

parade from time to time among the peasantry of the Salzburg highlands;

but the intervals between their appearances are irregular, varying from

four to seven years or more. Unlike the Ugly _Perchten_, they wear no

masks and appear in full daylight, always on Perchta’s Day (Twelfth Night,

the sixth of January) and the two following Sundays. They are attended by

a train of followers who make a great din with bells, whips, pipes, horns,

rattles, and chains. Amongst them one or two clowns, clothed in white and

wearing tall pointed hats of white felt with many jingling bells attached

to them, play a conspicuous part. They carry each a sausage-shaped roll

stuffed with tow, and with this instrument they strike lightly such women

and girls among the spectators as they desire particularly to favour.

Another attendant carries the effigy of a baby in swaddling bands, made of

linen rags, and fastened to a string; this effigy he throws at women and

girls and then pulls back again, but he does this only to women and girls

whom he respects and to whom he wishes well. At St. Johann the _Perchten_

carry drawn swords; each is attended by a lad dressed as a woman; and they

are followed by men clad in black sheepskins, wearing the masks of devils,

and holding chains in their hands.(585)

(M190) What is the meaning of the quaint performances still enacted by the

_Perchten_ and their attendants in the Austrian highlands? The subject has

been carefully investigated by a highly competent enquirer, Mrs.

Andree-Eysn. She has visited the districts, witnessed the performances,

collected information, and studied the costumes. It may be well to quote

her conclusion: “If we enquire into the inner meaning which underlies the

_Perchten_-race and kindred processions, we must confess that it is not at

first sight obvious, and that the original meaning appears blurred and

indistinct. Nevertheless from many features which they present in common

it can be demonstrated that the processions were held for the purpose of

driving away demons and had for their object to promote fertility. In

favour of this view it may be urged, first of all, that their appearance

is everywhere greeted with joy, because it promises fertility and a good

harvest. ‘It is a good year,’ they say in Salzburg. If the processions are

prevented from taking place, dearth and a bad harvest are to be

apprehended. The peasants of the Tyrol still believe that the more

_Perchten_ run about, the better will the year be, and therefore they

treat them to brandy and cakes. In Lienz, when the harvest turns out ill,

they say that they omitted to let the _Perchten_ run over the fields, and

for that reason the peasant in the Sarn valley gets the _Perchten_ to leap

about on his fields, for then there will be a good year.

“If fertility and blessing are to be poured out on field, house, and

homestead, it is obvious that everything that could hinder or harm must be

averted and driven away. When we consider how even at the present time,

and still more in times gone by, much that is harmful is attributed to the

malevolence of invisible powers, we can readily understand why people

should resort to measures which they deem effective for the purpose of

disarming these malevolent beings. Now it is a common belief that certain

masks possess the virtue of banning demons, and that loud noise and din

are a means of keeping off evil spirits or hindering their activity. In

the procession of the _Perchten_ we see the principle of the banishment of

evil carried out in practice. The people attack the evil spirits and seek

to chase them away by putting on frightful masks, with which they confront

the demon. For one sort of malevolent spirits one kind of mask appears

suitable, and for another another; this spirit is daunted by this mask,

and that spirit by that; and so they came to discriminate. Originally,

particular masks may have been used against particular evil spirits, but

in course of time they were confused, the individual taste of the maker of

the mask counted for something, and so gradually it resulted in carving

all kinds of horrible, fantastic, and hideous masks which had nothing in

common but their general tendency to frighten away all evil spirits.”(586)

(M191) In support of her view that the procession of the _Perchten_ aims

chiefly at banishing demons who might otherwise blight the crops, Mrs.

Andree-Eysn lays stress on the bells which figure so prominently in the

costume of these maskers; for the sound of bells, as she reminds us, is

commonly believed to be a potent means of driving evil spirits away. The

notion is too familiar to call for proof,(587) but a single case from

Central Africa may be cited as an illustration. The Teso people, who

inhabit a land of rolling plains between Mount Elgon and Lake Kioga, “make

use of bells to exorcise the storm fiend; a person who has been injured by

a flash or in the resulting fire wears bells round his ankles for weeks

afterwards. Whenever rain threatens, and rain in Uganda almost always

comes in company with thunder and lightning, this person will parade the

village for an hour, with the jingling bells upon his legs and a wand of

papyrus in his hand, attended by as many of his family as may happen to be

at hand and not employed in necessary duties.”(588) The resemblance of

such men, with their bells and wands, to the Austrian _Perchten_ with

their bells and wands is, on the theory in question, fairly close; both of

them go about to dispel demons by the sound of their bells and probably

also by the blows of their rods. Whatever may be thought of their efficacy

in banning fiends, certain it is that in the Tyrol, where the _Perchten_

play their pranks, the chime of bells is used for the express purpose of

causing the grass to grow in spring. Thus in the lower valley of the Inn,

especially at Schwaz, on the twenty-fourth of April (there reckoned St.

George’s Day) troops of young fellows go about ringing bells, some of

which they hold in their hands, while others are attached to their

persons; and the peasants say, “Wherever the Grass-ringers come, there the

grass grows well, and the corn bears abundant fruit.” Hence the

bell-ringers are welcomed and treated wherever they go. Formerly, it is

said, they wore masks, like the _Perchten_, but afterwards they contented

themselves with blackening their faces with soot.(589) In other parts of

the Tyrol the bell-ringing processions take place at the Carnival, but

their object is the same; for “it is believed that by this noisy

procession growth in general, but especially the growth of the meadows, is

promoted.”(590) Again, at Bergell, in the Swiss canton of the Grisons,

children go in procession on the first of March ringing bells, “in order

that the grass may grow.”(591) So in Hildesheim, on the afternoon of

Ascension Day, young girls ascend the church tower and ring all the church

bells, “in order that they may get a good harvest of flax; the girl who,

hanging on to the bell-rope, is swung highest by the swing of the bell,

will get the longest flax.”(592) Here the sound of the bells as a means of

promoting the growth of the flax is reinforced by the upward swing of the

bell, which, carrying with it the bell-ringer at the end of the rope,

naturally causes the flax in like manner to rise high in the air. It is a

simple piece of imitative magic, like the leaps and bounds which the

peasants of Central Europe often execute for precisely the same purpose.

Once more, in various parts of the Tyrol on Senseless Thursday, which is

the last Thursday in Carnival, young men in motley attire, with whips and

brooms, run about cracking their whips and making believe to sweep away

the onlookers with their brooms. They are called _Huttler_ or _Huddler_.

The people say that if these fellows do not run about, the flax will not

thrive, and that on the contrary the more of them run about, the better

will the flax grow. And where there are many of them, there will be much

maize.(593) In this custom the cracking of the whips may be supposed to

serve the same purpose as the ringing of the bells by frightening and

banishing the demons of infertility and dearth. About Hall, in the

northern Tyrol, the ceremony of the _Hudel_-running, as it is called, is

or used to be as follows. A peasant-farmer, generally well-to-do and

respected, rigs himself out in motley and hides his face under a mask;

round his waist he wears a girdle crammed with rolls, while in his hand he

wields a long whip, from which more than fifty cracknels dangle on a

string. Thus arrayed he suddenly bursts from the ale-house door into the

public view, solicited thereto by the cries of the street urchins, who

have been anxiously waiting for his appearance. He throws amongst them the

string of cracknels, and while they are scrambling for these dainties, he

lays on to them most liberally with his whip. Having faithfully discharged

this public duty, he marches down between rows of peasants, who have

meantime taken up their position in a long street. Amongst them he picks

out one who is to run before him. The man selected for the honour

accordingly takes to his heels, hotly pursued by the other with the whip,

who lashes the feet of the fugitive till he comes up with him. Having run

him down, he leads him back to the alehouse, where he treats him to a roll

and a glass of wine. After that the masker runs a similar race with

another man; and so it goes on, one race after another, till the sun sets.

Then the mummer doffs his mask and leads the dance in the alehouse. The

object of these races is said to be to ensure a good crop of flax and

maize.(594)

(M192) In these races of mummers, whether known as _Perchten_ or

_Huttler_, there are certain features which it is difficult to explain on

the theory that the aim of the performers is simply to drive away demons,

and that the hideous masks which they assume have no other intention than

that of frightening these uncanny beings. For observe that in the last

example the blows of the whip fall not on the airy swarms of invisible

spirits, but on the solid persons of street urchins and sturdy yokels, who

can hardly be supposed to receive the chastisement vicariously for the

demons. Again, what are we to make of the rolls and cracknels with which

in this case the mummer is laden, and which he distributes among his

victims, as if to console them in one part of their person for the pain

which he has inflicted on another? Surely this bounty seems to invest him

with something more than the purely negative character of an exorciser of

evil; it appears to raise him to the positive character of a dispenser of

good. The same remark applies to the action of the _Perchten_ who strike

women lightly, as a mark of friendship and regard, with the sausage-like

rolls which they carry in their hands, or throw them, as a mark of favour,

the effigy of a baby. The only probable explanation of these practices, as

Mrs. Andree-Eysn rightly points out, is that the mummers thereby intend to

fertilize the women whom they honour by these attentions.(595) Here,

again, therefore the maskers appear as the actual dispensers of good, the

bestowers of fruitfulness, not merely the averters of evil. If that is so,

we seem bound to infer that these masked men represent or embody the

spirits who quicken the seed both in the earth and in the wombs of women.

That was the view of W. Mannhardt, the highest authority on the

agricultural superstitions of European peasantry. After reviewing these

and many more similar processions, he concludes that if the comparison

which he has instituted between them holds good, all these various mummers

“were intended by the original founders of the processions to represent

demons of vegetation, who by their mere appearance and cries drove away

the powers that hinder growth and woke to new life the slumbering spirits

of the grasses and corn-stalks.”(596) Thus Mannhardt admitted that these

noisy processions of masked men are really supposed to dispel the evil

spirits of blight and infertility, while at the same time he held that the

men themselves originally personated vegetation-spirits. And he thought it

probable that the original significance of these performances was in later

times misunderstood and interpreted as a simple expulsion of witches and

other uncanny beings that haunt the fields.(597)

(M193) On the whole this conclusion of an enquirer remarkable for a rare

combination of learning, sobriety, and insight, is perhaps the most

probable that can now be reached with the evidence at our disposal. It is

confirmed by some of the savage masquerades in which the maskers

definitely represent spirits of fertility in order to promote the

fruitfulness of the earth and of women;(598) and it is supported by the

evidence of many other rustic mummeries in Europe, for example, by the

English rites of Plough Monday, in which the dancers, or rather jumpers,

who wore bunches of corn in their hats as they leaped into the air, are

most naturally interpreted as agents or representatives of the

corn-spirit.(599) It is, therefore, worth observing that in some places

the dancers of Plough Monday, who attended the plough in its

peregrinations through the streets and fields, are described as

morris-dancers.(600) If the description is correct, it implies that they

had bells attached to their costume, which would further assimilate them

to the _Perchten_ and other masqueraders of Central Europe; for the chief

characteristic of the morris-dance is that the performers wear bells

fastened to their legs which jingle at every step.(601) We may suppose

that if the men who ran and capered beside the plough on Plough Monday

really wore bells, the original intention of this appendage to their

costume was either to dispel the demons who might hinder the growth of the

corn, or to waken the spirits of vegetation from their long winter sleep.

In favour of the view which sees in all these dances and mummeries rather

the banishment of what is evil than the direct promotion of what is good,

it may be urged that some of the dancers wear swords,(602) a weapon which

certainly seems better fitted to combat demons than to prune fruit-trees

or turn up the sod. Further, it deserves to be noted that many of the

performances take place either on Twelfth Day or, like the celebration of

Plough Monday, very shortly after it; and that in the Lord of Misrule, who

reigned from Christmas to Twelfth Day,(603) we have a clear trace of one

of those periods of general licence and suspension of ordinary government,

which so commonly occur at the end of the old year or the beginning of the

new one in connexion with a general expulsion of evils.

(M194) Surveying these masquerades and processions, as they have been or

still are celebrated in modern Europe, we may say in general that they

appear to have been originally intended both to stimulate the growth of

vegetation in spring and to expel the demoniac or other evil influences

which were thought to have accumulated during the preceding winter or

year; and that these two motives of stimulation and expulsion, blended and

perhaps confused together, appear to explain the quaint costumes of the

mummers, the multitudinous noises which they make, and the blows which

they direct either at invisible foes or at the visible and tangible

persons of their fellows. In the latter case the beating may be supposed

to serve as a means of forcibly freeing the sufferers from the demons or

other evil things that cling to them unseen.

(M195) To apply these conclusions to the Roman custom of expelling

Mamurius Veturius or “the Old Mars” every year in spring, we may say that

they lend some support to the theory which sees in “the Old Mars” the

outworn deity of vegetation driven away to make room, either for a younger

and more vigorous personification of vernal life, or perhaps for the

return of the same deity refreshed and renovated by the treatment to which

he had been subjected, and particularly by the vigorous application of the

rod to his sacred person. For, as we shall see presently, King Solomon was

by no means singular in his opinion of the refreshing influence of a sound

thrashing. So far as “the Old Mars” was supposed to carry away with him

the accumulated weaknesses and other evils of the past year, so far would

he serve as a public scapegoat, like the effigy in the Slavonic custom of

“Carrying out Death,” which appears not only to represent the

vegetation-spirit of the past year, but also to act as a scapegoat,

carrying away with it a heavy load of suffering, misfortune, and death.

§ 2. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Greece.

(M196) The ancient Greeks were also familiar with the use of a human

scapegoat. In Plutarch’s native town of Chaeronea a ceremony of this kind

was performed by the chief magistrate at the Town Hall, and by each

householder at his own home. It was called the “expulsion of hunger.” A

slave was beaten with rods of the _agnus castus_, and turned out of doors

with the words, “Out with hunger, and in with wealth and health.” When

Plutarch held the office of chief magistrate of his native town he

performed this ceremony at the Town Hall, and he has recorded the

discussion to which the custom afterwards gave rise.(604) The ceremony

closely resembles the Japanese, Hindoo, and Highland customs already

described.(605)

(M197) But in civilized Greece the custom of the scapegoat took darker

forms than the innocent rite over which the amiable and pious Plutarch

presided. Whenever Marseilles, one of the busiest and most brilliant of

Greek colonies, was ravaged by a plague, a man of the poorer classes used

to offer himself as a scapegoat. For a whole year he was maintained at the

public expense, being fed on choice and pure food. At the expiry of the

year he was dressed in sacred garments, decked with holy branches, and led

through the whole city, while prayers were uttered that all the evils of

the people might fall on his head. He was then cast out of the city or

stoned to death by the people outside of the walls.(606) The Athenians

regularly maintained a number of degraded and useless beings at the public

expense; and when any calamity, such as plague, drought, or famine, befell

the city, they sacrificed two of these outcasts as scapegoats. One of the

victims was sacrificed for the men and the other for the women. The former

wore round his neck a string of black, the latter a string of white figs.

Sometimes, it seems, the victim slain on behalf of the women was a woman.

They were led about the city and then sacrificed, apparently by being

stoned to death outside the city.(607) But such sacrifices were not

confined to extraordinary occasions of public calamity; it appears that

every year, at the festival of the Thargelia in May, two victims, one for

the men and one for the women, were led out of Athens and stoned to

death.(608) The city of Abdera in Thrace was publicly purified once a

year, and one of the burghers, set apart for the purpose, was stoned to

death as a scapegoat or vicarious sacrifice for the life of all the

others; six days before his execution he was excommunicated, “in order

that he alone might bear the sins of all the people.”(609)

(M198) From the Lover’s Leap, a white bluff at the southern end of their

island, the Leucadians used annually to hurl a criminal into the sea as a

scapegoat. But to lighten his fall they fastened live birds and feathers

to him, and a flotilla of small boats waited below to catch him and convey

him beyond the boundary. Probably these humane precautions were a

mitigation of an earlier custom of flinging the scapegoat into the sea to

drown, just as in Kumaon the custom of letting a man slide down a rope

from the top of a cliff appears to be a modification of an older practice

of putting him to death. The Leucadian ceremony took place at the time of

a sacrifice to Apollo, who had a temple or sanctuary on the spot.(610)

Elsewhere it was customary to cast a young man every year into the sea,

with the prayer, “Be thou our offscouring.” This ceremony was supposed to

rid the people of the evils by which they were beset, or according to a

somewhat different interpretation it redeemed them by paying the debt they

owed to the sea-god.(611) As practised by the Greeks of Asia Minor in the

sixth century before our era, the custom of the scapegoat was as follows.

When a city suffered from plague, famine, or other public calamity, an

ugly or deformed person was chosen to take upon himself all the evils

which afflicted the community. He was brought to a suitable place, where

dried figs, a barley loaf, and cheese were put into his hand. These he

ate. Then he was beaten seven times upon his genital organs with squills

and branches of the wild fig and other wild trees, while the flutes played

a particular tune. Afterwards he was burned on a pyre built of the wood of

forest trees; and his ashes were cast into the sea.(612) A similar custom

appears to have been annually celebrated by the Asiatic Greeks at the

harvest festival of the Thargelia.(613)

(M199) In the ritual just described the scourging of the victim with

squills, branches of the wild fig, and so forth, cannot have been intended

to aggravate his sufferings, otherwise any stick would have been good

enough to beat him with. The true meaning of this part of the ceremony has

been explained by W. Mannhardt.(614) He points out that the ancients

attributed to squills a magical power of averting evil influences, and

that accordingly they hung them up at the doors of their houses and made

use of them in purificatory rites.(615) Hence the Arcadian custom of

whipping the image of Pan with squills at a festival, or whenever the

hunters returned empty-handed,(616) must have been meant, not to punish

the god, but to purify him from the harmful influences which were impeding

him in the exercise of his divine functions as a god who should supply the

hunter with game. Similarly the object of beating the human scapegoat on

the genital organs with squills and so on, must have been to release his

reproductive energies from any restraint or spell under which they might

be laid by demoniacal or other malignant agency; and as the Thargelia at

which he was annually sacrificed was an early harvest festival celebrated

in May,(617) we must recognize in him a representative of the creative and

fertilizing god of vegetation. The representative of the god was annually

slain for the purpose I have indicated, that of maintaining the divine

life in perpetual vigour, untainted by the weakness of age; and before he

was put to death it was not unnatural to stimulate his reproductive powers

in order that these might be transmitted in full activity to his

successor, the new god or new embodiment of the old god, who was doubtless

supposed immediately to take the place of the one slain.(618) Similar

reasoning would lead to a similar treatment of the scapegoat on special

occasions, such as drought or famine. If the crops did not answer to the

expectation of the husbandman, this would be attributed to some failure in

the generative powers of the god whose function it was to produce the

fruits of the earth. It might be thought that he was under a spell or was

growing old and feeble. Accordingly he was slain in the person of his

representative, with all the ceremonies already described, in order that,

born young again, he might infuse his own youthful vigour into the

stagnant energies of nature. On the same principle we can understand why

Mamurius Veturius was beaten with rods, why the slave at the Chaeronean

ceremony was beaten with the _agnus castus_ (a tree to which magical

properties were ascribed),(619) why the effigy of Death in some parts of

Europe is assailed with sticks and stones,(620) and why at Babylon the

criminal who played the god was scourged before he was crucified.(621) The

purpose of the scourging was not to intensify the agony of the divine

sufferer, but on the contrary to dispel any malignant influences by which

at the supreme moment he might conceivably be beset.

(M200) Thus far I have assumed that the human victims at the Thargelia

represented the spirits of vegetation in general,(622) but it has been

well remarked by Mr. W. R. Paton that these poor wretches seem to have

masqueraded as the spirits of fig-trees in particular. He points out that

the process of caprification, as it is called, that is, the artificial

fertilization of the cultivated fig-trees by hanging strings of wild figs

among the boughs, takes place in Greece and Asia Minor in June about a

month after the date of the Thargelia, and he suggests that the hanging of

the black and white figs round the necks of the two human victims, one of

whom represented the men and the other the women, may have been a direct

imitation of the process of caprification designed, on the principle of

imitative magic, to assist the fertilization of the fig-trees. And since

caprification is in fact a marriage of the male fig-tree with the female

fig-tree, Mr. Paton further supposes that the loves of the trees may, on

the same principle of imitative magic, have been simulated by a mock or

even a real marriage between the two human victims, one of whom appears

sometimes to have been a woman. On this view the practice of beating the

human victims on their genitals with branches of wild fig-trees and with

squills was a charm intended to stimulate the generative powers of the man

and woman who for the time being personated the male and the female

fig-trees respectively, and who by their union in marriage, whether real

or pretended, were believed to help the trees to bear fruit.(623)

(M201) The theory is ingenious and attractive; and to some extent it is

borne out by the Roman celebration of the _Nonae Caprotinae_, which I have

described in an earlier part of this work.(624) For on the _Nonae

Caprotinae_, the ninth of July, the female slaves, in the attire of free

women, feasted under a wild fig-tree, cut a rod from the tree, beat each

other, perhaps with the rod, and offered the milky juice of the tree to

the goddess Juno Caprotina, whose surname seems to point her out as the

goddess of the wild fig-tree (_caprificus_). Here the rites performed in

July by women under the wild fig-tree, which the ancients rightly regarded

as a male and employed to fertilize the cultivated female fig-tree, can

hardly be dissociated from the caprification or artificial marriage of the

fig-trees which, according to Columella, was best performed in July; and

if the blows which the women gave each other on this occasion were

administered, as seems highly probable, by the rod which they cut from the

wild fig-tree, the parallel between the Roman and the Greek ceremony would

be still closer; since the Greeks, as we saw, beat the genitals of the

human victims with branches of wild fig-trees. It is true that the human

sacrifices, which formed so prominent a feature in the Greek celebration

of the Thargelia, do not figure in the Roman celebration of the _Nonae

Caprotinae_ within historical times; yet a trace of them may perhaps be

detected in the tradition that Romulus himself mysteriously disappeared on

that very day in the midst of a tremendous thunder-storm, while he was

reviewing his army outside the walls of Rome at the Goat’s Marsh (“_ad

Caprae paludem_”), a name which suggests that the place was not far

distant from the wild fig-tree or the goat-fig (_caprificus_), as the

Romans called it, where the slave women performed their curious

ceremonies. The legend that he was cut in pieces by the patricians, who

carried away the morsels of his body under their robes and buried them in

the earth,(625) exactly describes the treatment which the Khonds used to

accord to the bodies of the human victims for the purpose of fertilizing

their fields.(626) Can the king have played at Rome the same fatal part in

the fertilization of fig-trees which, if Mr. Paton is right, was played in

Greece by the male victim? The traditionary time, place, and manner of his

death all suggest it. So many coincidences between the Greek and Roman

ceremonies and traditions can hardly be wholly accidental; and accordingly

I incline to think that there may well be an element of truth in Mr.

Paton’s theory, though it must be confessed that the ancient writers who

describe the Greek custom appear to regard it merely as a purification of

the city and not at all as a mode of fertilizing fig-trees.(627) In

similar ceremonies, which combine the elements of purification and

fertilization, the notion of purification apparently tends gradually to

overshadow the notion of fertilization in the minds of those who practise

the rites. It seems to have been so in the case of the annual expulsion of

Mamurius Veturius from ancient Rome and in the parallel processions of the

_Perchten_ in modern Europe; it may have been so also in the case of the

human sacrifices at the Thargelia.(628)

(M202) The interpretation which I have adopted of the custom of beating

the human scapegoat with certain plants is supported by many analogies. We

have already met with examples of a practice of beating sick people with

the leaves of certain plants or with branches in order to rid them of

noxious influences.(629) Some of the Dravidian tribes of Northern India,

who attribute epilepsy, hysteria, and similar maladies to demoniacal

possession, endeavour to cure the sufferer by thrashing him soundly with a

sacred iron chain, which is believed to have the effect of immediately

expelling the demon.(630) When a herd of camels refuses to drink, the

Arabs will sometimes beat the male beasts on the back to drive away the

jinn who are riding them and frightening the females.(631) In Bikol, the

south-western part of Luzon, it was generally believed that if the evil

spirit Aswang were not properly exorcised he took possession of the bodies

of the dead and tormented them. Hence to deliver a corpse from his

clutches the native priestesses used to beat it with a brush or whisk made

of the leaves of the aromatic China orange, while they chanted a certain

song, throwing their bodies into contortions and uttering shrill cries, as

if the evil spirit had entered into themselves. The soul of the deceased,

thus delivered from the cruel tyranny of Aswang, was then free to roam at

pleasure along the charming lanes or in the thick shade of the

forest.(632)

(M203) Sometimes it appears that a beating is administered for the purpose

of ridding people of a ghost who may be clinging too closely to their

persons; in such cases the blows, though they descend on the bodies of the

living, are really aimed at the spirit of the dead, and have no other

object than to drive it away, just as a coachman will flick the back of a

horse with his whip to rid the beast of a fly. At a funeral in the island

of Halmahera, before the coffin is lowered into the grave, all the

relations whip themselves on the head and shoulders with wands made of

plants which are believed to possess the power of keeping off evil

spirits. The intention of the custom is said to be to bring back their own

spectres or souls and to prevent them from following the ghost; but this

may fairly be interpreted to mean that the blows are directed to brushing

off the ghost, who would otherwise abstract the soul of the person on

whose body he was allowed to settle. This interpretation is strongly

confirmed by the practice, observed by the same people on the same

occasion, of throwing the trunk of a banana-tree into the grave, and

telling the dead man that it is a companion for him; for this practice is

expressly intended to prevent the deceased from feeling lonely, and so

coming back to fetch away a friend.(633) When Mr. Batchelor returned to a

hut after visiting the grave of an old Aino woman, her relations brought

him a bowl of water to the door and requested him to wash his face and

hands. While he did so, the women beat him and brushed him down with

sacred whittled sticks (_inao_). On enquiring into the meaning of this

treatment, he discovered that it was intended to purify him from all

uncleanness contracted at the grave through contact with the ghost of the

deceased, and that the beating and brushing with the whittled sticks had

for its object to drive away all evil influences and diseases with which

the ghost of the old woman might have attempted to infect him out of spite

for his trespassing on her domain.(634) The Banmanas of Senegambia think

that the soul of a dead infant becomes for a time a wandering and

maleficent spirit. Accordingly when a baby dies, all the uncircumcised

children of the same sex in the village run about the streets in a band,

each armed with three or four supple rods. Some of them enter every house

to beg, and while they are doing so, one of the troop, propping himself

against the wall with his hands, is lashed by another of the children on

his back or legs till the blood flows. Each of the children takes it in

turn to be thus whipped. The object of the whipping, we are told, “appears

to be to preserve the uncircumcised child from being carried off by its

comrade who has just died.”(635) The severe scourgings inflicted on each

other by some South American Indians at ceremonies connected with the dead

may be similarly intended to chase away the dangerous ghost, who is

conceived as sticking like a leech or a bur to the skin of the

living.(636) The ancient Greeks employed the laurel very commonly as an

instrument of ceremonial purification;(637) and from the monuments which

represent the purgation of Orestes from the guilt of matricide(638) it

seems probable that the regular rite of cleansing a homicide consisted

essentially in sprinkling him with pig’s blood and beating him with a

laurel bough, for the purpose, as we may conjecture, of whisking away the

wrathful ghost of his victim, who was thought to buzz about him like an

angry wasp in summer. If that was so, the Greek ritual of purification

singularly resembles the Nicobarese ceremony of exorcism; for when a man

is supposed to be possessed by devils, the Nicobarese rub him all over

with pig’s blood and beat him with bunches of certain leaves, to which a

special power of exorcising demons is attributed. As fast as each devil is

thus disengaged from his person, it is carefully folded up in leaves, to

be afterwards thrown into the sea at daybreak.(639)

(M204) At the autumn festival in Peru people used to strike each other

with torches, saying, “Let all harm go away.”(640) Every year when the

Pleiades reappeared in the sky, the Guaycurus, an Indian nation of the

Gran Chaco, held a festival of rejoicing, at which men, women, and

children all thrashed each other, expecting thereby to procure health,

abundance, and victory over their enemies.(641) Indians of the Quixos, in

South America, before they set out on a long hunting expedition, cause

their wives to whip them with nettles, believing that this renders them

fleeter, and helps them to overtake the peccaries. They resort to the same

proceeding as a cure for sickness.(642) The Roocooyen Indians of French

Guiana train up young people in the way they should go by causing them to

be stung by ants and wasps; and at the ceremony held for this purpose the

grown-up people improve the occasion by allowing themselves to be whacked

by the chief with a stick over the arms, the legs, and the chest. They

appear to labour under an impression that this conveys to them all sorts

of moral and physical excellences. One of the tribe, ambitious of

acquiring the European virtues, begged a French traveller to be so kind as

to give him a good hiding. The traveller obligingly did his best to

gratify him, and the face of the Indian beamed with gratitude as the blows

fell on his naked back.(643) The Delaware Indians had two sovereign

remedies for sin; one was an emetic, the other a thrashing. In the latter

case, the remedy was administered by means of twelve different sticks,

with which the sinner was belaboured from the soles of his feet up to his

neck. In both cases the sins were supposed to be expelled from the body,

and to pass out through the throat.(644) At the inauguration of a king in

ancient India it was customary for the priests to strike him lightly on

the back with sticks. “By beating him with sticks,” it was said, “they

guide him safely over judicial punishment; whence the king is exempt from

punishment, because they guide him safely over judicial punishment.”(645)

On the thirtieth of December the heathen of Harran used to receive three,

five, or seven blows apiece from a priest with a tamarisk branch. After

the beating had been duly administered the priest on behalf of the whole

community prayed for long life, much offspring, power and glory over all

peoples, and the restoration of their ancient kingdom.(646)

(M205) Sometimes, in the opinion of those who resort to it, the effect of

a beating is not merely the negative one of dispelling demoniac or other

baneful influences; it confers positive benefits by virtue of certain

useful properties supposed to inhere in the instrument with which the

beating is administered.(647) Thus among the Kai of German New Guinea,

when a man wishes to make his banana shoots bear fruit quickly, he beats

them with a stick cut from a banana-tree which has already borne

fruit.(648) Here it is obvious that fruitfulness is believed to inhere in

a stick cut from a fruitful tree and to be imparted by contact to the

young banana plants. Similarly in New Caledonia a man will beat his taro

plants lightly with a branch, saying as he does so, “I beat this taro that

it may grow,” after which he plants the branch in the ground at the end of

the field.(649) Among the Indians of Brazil at the mouth of the Amazon,

when a man wishes to increase the size of his generative organ, he strikes

it with the fruit of a white aquatic plant called an _aninga_, which grows

luxuriantly on the banks of the river. The fruit, which is inedible,

resembles a banana, and is clearly chosen for this purpose on account of

its shape. The ceremony should be performed three days before or after the

new moon.(650) In the county of Bekes, in Hungary, barren women are

fertilized by being struck with a stick which has first been used to

separate pairing dogs.(651) Here a fertilizing virtue is clearly supposed

to be inherent in the stick and to be conveyed by contact to the women.

The Toradjas of Central Celebes think that the plant _Dracaena terminalis_

has a strong soul, because when it is lopped, it soon grows up again.

Hence when a man is ill, his friends will sometimes beat him on the crown

of the head with _Dracaena_ leaves in order to strengthen his weak soul

with the strong soul of the plant.(652) At Mowat in British New Guinea

small boys are beaten lightly with sticks during December “to make them

grow strong and hardy.”(653)

(M206) Among the Arabs of Morocco the Great Feast, which is the annual

sacrificial festival of Mohammedan peoples, is the occasion when men go

about beating people with the kindly intention of healing or preventing

sickness and benefiting the sufferers generally. In some tribes the

operator is muffled in the bloody skins of sacrificed sheep, and he

strikes everybody within reach of him with a flap of the skin or a foot of

the sheep which dangles loose from his arm; sick people present themselves

to him in order to receive the health-giving blows, and mothers bring

their little children to him for the same purpose. Anybody whom he hits on

the head will be free from headache. Nor does he confine his attention to

people; he goes about striking the tents also, in order that they too may

receive their share of the blessed influence (_baraka_) that radiates like

sunshine from a bloody sheepskin. From the costume which he wears the

masker is known as the “Lion with Sheepskins”; and he himself participates

in the blessings which he diffuses so liberally around him. Hence in at

least one tribe he is generally a person who suffers from some illness,

because he expects to be healed by the magic virtue or holiness of the

bloody skins.(654) Similarly, as we shall see presently, in ancient Mexico

the men who masqueraded in the skins of the human victims were commonly

persons who suffered from skin disease, because they thought that the

bleeding skin of a man who had been killed in the character of a god must

surely possess a sovereign virtue for the healing of disease.(655) In

Morocco the skin-clad mummer sometimes operates with sticks instead of a

flap of the skin, and sometimes the skins in which he is muffled are those

of goats instead of sheep, but in all cases the effect, or at least the

intention, is probably the same.(656)

(M207) In some parts of Eastern and Central Europe a similar custom is

very commonly observed in spring. On the first of March the Albanians

strike men and beast with cornel branches, believing that this is very

good for their health.(657) In March the Greek peasants of Cos switch

their cattle, saying, “It is March, and up with your tail!” They think

that the ceremony benefits the animals, and brings good luck. It is never

observed at any other time of the year.(658) In some parts of Mecklenburg

it is customary to beat the cattle before sunrise on the morning of Good

Friday with rods of buckthorn, which are afterwards concealed in some

secret place where neither sun nor moon can shine on them. The belief is

that though the blows light upon the animals, the pain of them is felt by

the witches who are riding the beasts.(659) In the neighbourhood of

Iserlohn, in Westphalia, the herdsman rises at peep of dawn on May

morning, climbs a hill, and cuts down the young rowan-tree which is the

first to catch the beams of the rising sun. With this he returns to the

farm-yard. The heifer which the farmer desires to “quicken” is then led to

the dunghill, and the herdsman strikes it over the hind-quarters, the

haunches, and the udders with a branch of the rowan-tree, saying,

“_Quick, quick, quick!_

_Bring milk into the dugs._

_The sap is in the birches._

_The heifer receives a name._

“_Quick, quick, quick!_

_Bring milk into the dugs._

_The sap comes in the beeches,_

_The leaf comes on the oak._

“_Quick, quick, quick!_

_Bring milk into the dugs._

_In the name of the sainted Greta,_

_Gold-flower shall be thy name,_”

and so on.(660) The intention of the ceremony appears to be to make sure

that the heifer shall in due time yield a plentiful supply of milk; and

this is perhaps supposed to be brought about by driving away the witches,

who are particularly apt, as we have seen,(661) to rob the cows of their

milk on the morning of May Day. Certainly in the north-east of Scotland

pieces of rowan-tree and woodbine used to be placed over the doors of the

byres on May Day to keep the witches from the cows; sometimes a single rod

of rowan, covered with notches, was found to answer the purpose. An even

more effectual guard against witchcraft was to tie a small cross of

rowan-wood by a scarlet thread to each beast’s tail; hence people said,

“_Rawn-tree in red-threed_

_Pits the witches t’ their speed._”(662)

In Germany also the rowan-tree is a protection against witchcraft;(663)

and Norwegian sailors and fishermen carry a piece of it in their boats for

good luck.(664) Thus the benefit to young cows of beating them with rowan

appears to be not so much the positive one of pouring milk into their

udders, as merely the negative one of averting evil influence; and the

same may perhaps be said of most of the beatings with which we are here

concerned.

(M208) On Good Friday and the two previous days people in Croatia and

Slavonia take rods with them to church, and when the service is over they

beat each other “fresh and healthy.”(665) In some parts of Russia people

returning from the church on Palm Sunday beat the children and servants

who have stayed at home with palm branches, saying, “Sickness into the

forest, health into the bones.”(666) A similar custom is widely known

under the name of _Schmeckostern_ or “Easter Smacks” in some parts of

Germany and Austria. The regions in which the practice prevails are for

the most part districts in which the people either are or once were

predominantly of Slavonic blood, such as East and West Prussia, Voigtland,

Silesia, Bohemia, and Moravia. While the German population call the custom

_Schmeckostern_, the Slavonic inhabitants give it, according to their

particular language or dialect, a variety of names which signify to beat

or scourge. It is usually observed on Easter Monday, less frequently on

Easter Saturday or Easter Sunday. Troops of boys or lads go from house to

house on the morning of Easter Monday beating every girl or woman whom

they meet; they even make their way into the bedrooms, and if they find

any girls or women still abed, they compel them with blows to get up. Even

grown-up men indulge themselves in the pastime of going to the houses of

friends and relations to inflict the “Easter Smacks.” In some places, for

example in the Leobschütz district of Silesia, the boys and men further

claim and exercise the right of drenching all the girls and women with

water on Easter Monday; and for this purpose they generally go about armed

with squirts, which are not always charged with eau de Cologne. Next day,

Easter Tuesday, the women have the right to retaliate on the men; however,

they do not as a rule go about the streets but confine their operations to

their own houses, beating and chasing from their beds any lads or men they

can find lying in them. Children are less discriminating in their “Easter

Smacks,” which they bestow impartially on parents and relations, friends

and strangers, without observing the subtle distinction of sex. In many

places it is only the women who are privileged to receive the smacks. The

instrument with which the beating is administered is in some districts,

such as Lithuania, Samland, and Neumark, a twig or branch of birch on

which the fresh green leaves have just sprouted. If the birch-trees have

not budded in time, it is customary to keep the rods in pickle for days or

even weeks, nursing them tenderly in warm water; and if that measure also

fails, they are heated in the stove-pipe. But more commonly the instrument

of torture is a branch of willow with catkins on it, which has also been

nursed in warm water or the chimney so as to be ripe for execution on

Easter Monday. A number of these birch or willow twigs are usually tied

together into a switch, and ornamented with motley ribbons and pieces of

silk paper, so that they present the appearance of a nosegay; indeed, in

northern Bohemia spring flowers form part of the decoration. In some

places, particularly in Silesia and Moravia, pieces of licorice root are

substituted for willow twigs; or again in the vine-growing districts of

Bohemia vine-branches are used for the same purpose. Sometimes a scourge

made of leather straps of various colours takes the place of a green

bough. The blows are commonly inflicted on the hands and feet; and in some

places, particularly in Bohemia, the victims are expected to reward their

tormentors with a present of red Easter eggs; nay sometimes a woman is

bound to give an egg for every blow she receives. In the afternoon the

lads carry their eggs to high ground and let them roll down the slope; he

whose egg reaches the bottom first, wins all the rest. The beating is

supposed to bring good luck to the beaten, or to warrant them against

flies and vermin during the summer, or to save them from pains in their

back throughout the whole year. At Gilgenburg in Masuren the rods or

bundles of twigs are afterwards laid by and used to drive the cattle out

to pasture for the first time after their winter confinement.(667)

(M209) In some parts of Germany and Austria a custom like that of “Easter

Smacks” is observed at the Christmas holidays, especially on Holy

Innocents’ Day, the twenty-eighth of December. Young men and women beat

each other mutually, but on different days, with branches of fresh green,

whether birch, willow, or fir. Thus, for example, among the Germans of

western Bohemia it is customary on St. Barbara’s Day (the fourth of

December) to cut twigs or branches of birch and to steep them in water in

order that they may put out leaves or buds. They are afterwards used by

each sex to beat the other on subsequent days of the Christmas holidays.

In some villages branches of willow or cherry-trees or rosemary are

employed for the same purpose. With these green boughs, sometimes tied in

bundles with red or green ribbons, the young men go about beating the

young women on the morning of St. Stephen’s Day (the twenty-sixth of

December) and also on Holy Innocents’ Day (the twenty-eighth of December).

The beating is inflicted on the hands, feet, and face; and in Neugramatin

it is said that she who is not thus beaten with fresh green will not

herself be fresh and green. As the blows descend, the young men recite

verses importing that the beating is administered as a compliment and in

order to benefit the health of the victim. For the service which they thus

render the damsels they are rewarded by them with cakes, brandy, or money.

Early in the morning of New Year’s Day the lasses pay off the lads in the

same kind.(668) A similar custom is also observed in central and

south-west Germany, especially in Voigtland. Thus in Voigtland and the

whole of the Saxon Erz-gebirge the lads beat the lasses and women on the

second day of the Christmas holidays with something green, such as

rosemary or juniper; and if possible the beating is inflicted on the women

as they lie in bed. As they beat them, the lads say

“_Fresh and green! Pretty and fine!_

_Gingerbread and brandy-wine!_”

The last words refer to the present of gingerbread and brandy which the

lads expect to receive from the lasses for the trouble of thrashing them.

Next day the lasses and women retaliate on the lads and men.(669) In

Thüringen on Holy Innocents’ Day (the twenty-eighth of December) children

armed with rods and green boughs go about the streets beating passers-by

and demanding a present in return; they even make their way into the

houses and beat the maid-servants. In Orlagau the custom is called

“whipping with fresh green.” On the second day of the Christmas holidays

the girls go to their parents, godparents, relations, and friends, and

beat them with fresh green branches of fir; next day the boys and lads do

the same. The words spoken while the beating is being administered are

“Good morning! fresh green! Long life! You must give us a bright thaler,”

and so on.(670)

(M210) In these European customs the intention of beating persons,

especially of the other sex, with fresh green leaves appears

unquestionably to be the beneficent one of renewing their life and vigour,

whether the purpose is supposed to be accomplished directly and positively

by imparting the vital energy of the fresh green to the persons, or

negatively and indirectly by dispelling any injurious influences, such as

the machinations of witches and demons, by which the persons may be

supposed to be beset. The application of the blows by the one sex to the

other, especially by young men to young women, suggests that the beating

is or was originally intended above all to stimulate the reproductive

powers of the men or women who received it; and the pains taken to ensure

that the branches with which the strokes are given should have budded or

blossomed out just before their services are wanted speak strongly in

favour of the view that in these customs we have a deliberate attempt to

transfuse a store of vital energy from the vegetable to the animal world.

(M211) These analogies, accordingly, support the interpretation which,

following my predecessors W. Mannhardt and Mr. W. R. Paton, I have given

of the beating inflicted on the human victims at the Greek harvest

festival of the Thargelia. That beating, being administered to the

generative organs of the victims by fresh green plants and branches, is

most naturally explained as a charm to increase the reproductive energies

of the men or women either by communicating to them the fruitfulness of

the plants and branches, or by ridding them of maleficent influences; and

this interpretation is confirmed by the observation that the two victims

represented the two sexes, one of them standing for the men in general and

the other for the women. The season of the year when the ceremony was

performed, namely the time of the corn harvest, tallies well with the

theory that the rite had an agricultural significance. Further, that it

was above all intended to fertilize the fig-trees is strongly suggested by

the strings of black and white figs which were hung round the necks of the

victims, as well as by the blows which were given their genital organs

with the branches of a wild fig-tree; since this procedure closely

resembles the procedure which ancient and modern husbandmen in Greek lands

have regularly resorted to for the purpose of actually fertilizing their

fig-trees. When we remember what an important part the artificial

fertilization of the date palm-tree appears to have played of old not only

in the husbandry but in the religion of Mesopotamia,(671) there seems no

reason to doubt that the artificial fertilization of the fig-tree may in

like manner have vindicated for itself a place in the solemn ritual of

Greek religion.

(M212) If these considerations are just, we must apparently conclude that

while the human victims at the Thargelia certainly appear in later

classical times to have figured chiefly as public scapegoats, who carried

away with them the sins, misfortunes, and sorrows of the whole people, at

an earlier time they may have been looked on as embodiments of vegetation,

perhaps of the corn but particularly of the fig-trees; and that the

beating which they received and the death which they died were intended

primarily to brace and refresh the powers of vegetation then beginning to

droop and languish under the torrid heat of the Greek summer.

(M213) The view here taken of the Greek scapegoat, if it is correct,

obviates an objection which might otherwise be brought against the main

argument of this book. To the theory that the priest of Aricia was slain

as a representative of the spirit of the grove,(672) it might have been

objected that such a custom has no analogy in classical antiquity. But

reasons have now been given for believing that the human being

periodically and occasionally slain by the Asiatic Greeks was regularly

treated as an embodiment of a divinity of vegetation. Probably the persons

whom the Athenians kept to be sacrificed were similarly treated as divine.

That they were social outcasts did not matter. On the primitive view a man

is not chosen to be the mouth-piece or embodiment of a god on account of

his high moral qualities or social rank. The divine afflatus descends

equally on the good and the bad, the lofty and the lowly. If then the

civilized Greeks of Asia and Athens habitually sacrificed men whom they

regarded as incarnate gods, there can be no inherent improbability in the

supposition that at the dawn of history a similar custom was observed by

the semi-barbarous Latins in the Arician Grove.