RITUAL AND MYTH
Ritual is worship organized, the detail and circumstance of adoration.
The study of ritual is one of the branches of the science of
comparative religion, but much light is often cast upon myth by its
consideration, and here we have to discuss it only in its relationship
to myth.
This almost resolves itself into an argument upon the vexed question
whether myth is a product of ritual or not. As this question has been
already fully discussed (pp. 62-64), there is no necessity to renew it
here; but it possesses a pendent question. When the original reason
for a certain ritual became forgotten and lost, a myth might arise
to account for it. Such a myth would, of course, be 'secondary' in
its nature, and is, properly speaking, more of the nature of folklore
than myth. Ritual thus arises from an original myth and gives birth to
secondary myth or folklore.
It is not essential that ritual should originate in a definite
original myth--a concrete story having _dramatis personæ_, plot, and
counterplot. The savage may conceive a deity without endowing it with
any characteristics. "The sun-being lives up there," says the savage,
or "I fear the wind. I will placate him." The only myth created is:
"The supernatural wind-being lives on the earth." All the same this
statement is myth; it is primitive theobiography.
Marett thinks that primitive religion was something "to be danced
out." The religious dance of the savage is both myth and ritual; it
combines myth, tale, and worship. Many myths were and are acted in
dance, especially among the aborigines of Australia and America.
The Eleusinian mysteries of Greece were almost certainly relics of
mythic dances such as Red Indians and Black-fellows still participate
in. We have then a meeting-place for myth and ritual in the tribal
dance, which at the same time as it represents the adventures of the
gods chants their praises in psalm and hymn (that is, in ritual) and
performs the mystic movements that are the most ancient ritual. Dance
itself may be purely ritualistic rather than explanatory. When David
"danced before the Lord" he did not 'dance out' a myth. He danced
ritualistically, with ritual movements--probably traditional and
unchangeable--to suit the cadence of his chant or psalm. It is such
ritual movements that mechanics unconsciously employ when at work. The
blacksmith when he strikes the anvil with his hammer in the intervals
of shaping the shoe he holds between the tongs does not do so because
he _requires_ to. The blows are needless and he gives them because
all other craftsmen give them; but they were not always unmeaning.
Once, perchance, they filled in the lapses of a song (like that of Joe
Gargery in _Great Expectations_), or perhaps he thought they rounded
off the music his hammer made on the hot iron he shaped on his stithy.
Now they are merely part of the _ritual_ of his craft and he is
'forced' by the immemorial usage of his 'mystery' to employ them, just
as we all employ certain stereotyped expressions, for custom's sake.
Lack of originality is the disease of ritual. Dullness, pomposity, or
mock piety are the pillars of its falling house. Why does Stiggins
state that a certain prayer-meeting will take place "D.V."? Because
other Stigginses do so, following a habit started in the dim past by
some prudent man. Why do some golfers cut such fantastic capers while
'addressing'? Because other conceited golfers do the same, having
originally seen it done with effect. It is part of the ritual of later
people to do these things, nor can they tear themselves away from them
nor appreciate their absurdity--and man is, above all, an imitative and
most unoriginal animal!
Ritual, then, enters as much into life as into religion, and secondary
myths may arise concerning craft rituals, just as they do about
religious ones.
Traces of early ritual in later folk-belief are by no means rare. Such
traces were to be found in the old Scottish festival of Bealltainn
which was held on May Day. Of course the pious medieval folk who
secured the continuity of the rite did not know that they were
celebrating a pagan festival, for the Church, following its age-long
policy of propitiating the heathen, tactfully confounded it with the
festival of the Rood, the True Cross discovered by the Empress Helena.
At Edinburgh and Peebles Bealltainn was held in medieval times on the
3rd of May, the feast day of the Rood, instead of on the first of the
month, as at Perth and elsewhere, and the old custom or ritual would
unquestionably be superimposed upon the Christian practice of the day.
It is notable that two of the Rood churches in Scotland--Holyrood Abbey
and Peebles--were reared where the Celtic rite of Bealltainn had been
unusually popular--raised, as it were, to confound and supersede the
festival. The rite of Bealltainn survived until a generation or two
ago, and circumstantial accounts have been bequeathed to us concerning
it. Says the parish minister of Callander, writing upon the festival:
"In the Parish of Callander, upon the first day of May, all the boys
in the town or hamlet meet on the moors. They cut a table on the
green sod, of a round shape, to hold the whole company. They kindle
the fire, and dress a repast of eggs and milk in the consistence of a
custard. They knead a cake of oatmeal, which is baked at the fire upon
a stone. After the custard is eaten up, they divide the cake into as
many portions, and as similar as possible, as there are persons in the
company. They blacken one of these portions with charcoal until it is
perfectly black. They put all the bits of cake into a bonnet. Every
one blindfolded draws a portion--he who holds the bonnet is entitled
to the last. Who draws the black bit is the devoted person to be
sacrificed to Baal, whose favour they mean to implore in rendering the
year productive of substance for man and beast. There is little doubt
of these human sacrifices being once offered in the country, but the
youth who has got the black bit must leap through the flame of the fire
three times."
In the preceding generations men, not boys, were the celebrants. Thus
ritual droops into the hands of the very young, the despised, or the
very old. The strong desert it, but the weak pitifully conserve it. "In
the Parish of Logierait," says Napier, "Beltane is celebrated by the
shepherds and cowherds in the following manner. They assemble in the
fields and dress a dinner of milk and eggs. This dish they eat with
a sort of cake baked for the occasion, having small lumps or nipples
raised all over its surface. These knobs are not eaten, but broken off,
and given as offerings to the different supposed powers or influences
that protect or destroy their flocks, to the one as a thank-offering,
to the other as a peace-offering."
Pennant, in his _Tour through Scotland_, thus described the Bealltainn
observances as they were practised at the end of last century. "The
herds of every village hold their Beltane (a rural sacrifice). They
cut a square trench in the ground, leaving the turf in the middle.
On that they make a fire of wood, on which they dress a large caudle
of eggs, oatmeal, butter, and milk, and bring besides these plenty
of beer and whiskey. Each of the company must contribute something
towards the feast. The rites begin by pouring a little of the caudle
upon the ground, by way of a libation. Every one then takes a cake
of oatmeal, on which are raised nine square knobs, each dedicated to
some particular being who is supposed to preserve their herds, or to
some animal the destroyer of them. Each person then turns his face
to the fire, breaks off a knob, and, flinging it over his shoulder,
says--'This I give to thee,' naming the being whom he thanks,
'preserver of my sheep,' etc.; or to the destroyer, 'This I give to
thee (O fox or eagle), spare my lambs,' etc. When this ceremony is over
they all dine on the caudle."
We thus see that Bealltainn was the survival of the sacrifice of a
human being to certain animistic spirits, the preservers of the flocks
and herds of the celebrants. Later, cattle must have taken the place of
the human victim. Jamieson remarks, quoting O'Brien: "_Ignis Bei Dei
Aseatica ea lineheil_, or May-day, so called from large fires which
the Druids were used to light on the summits of the highest hills,
into which they drove four-footed beasts, using certain ceremonies to
expiate for the sins of the people. The Pagan ceremony of lighting
these fires in honour of the Asiatic god Belus gave its name to the
entire month of May, which to this day is called _Me-na-bealtine_,
in the Irish, _Dor Keating_." He says again, speaking of these fires
of Baal, that the cattle were driven through them and not sacrificed,
the chief design being to avert contagious disorders from them for the
year. And quoting from an ancient glossary, O'Brien says: "The Druids
lighted two solemn fires every year, and drove all four-footed beasts
through them, in order to preserve them from contagious distempers
during the current year."
Bealltainn was perhaps an adaptation of one of the names of Bilé, a
Celtic god of death and the Underworld, one of the Danann or gods
imported from Gaul. Thus we may find in the festival the celebration
of a propitiatory festival to the god of death and all his devastating
crew, the tempest, the fox, the eagle--the pantheon of destroyers, whom
it was hoped to placate and soften into protective agencies.
The collection of dew is a notable circumstance in the May Day
festival. It is alluded to by Ferguson, who sings in the ancient metre
which Scotland took from France:
On May day in a fairy ring
We've seen them round St Anthon's spring
Frae grass the caller dew to wring
To wet their een
And water clear as crystal spring
To synd them clean.
First-of-May dew preserved the skin from wrinkles and freckles, and
gave a glow of youth. Dew collected on the morning of the first day
of May is supposed to confer witchcraft on the gatherer, and protect
against an evil eye. To be seen in a field at daybreak that morning
rendered the person seen an object of fear--perhaps as a witch or
wizard.
THE RITES OF DIONYSUS
The manner in which a complicated secondary myth may result from ritual
is well exemplified by that which sprang from the rites of Dionysus
celebrated at Thebes. A branch or some other symbol of vegetation was
carried through the cultivated fields in the neighbourhood of the city
by a man disguised as a woman. A human image was then attached to the
top of a tree-trunk, which was raised from the ground by ropes and
held upright. The tree-spirit is then supposed to animate the trunk.
Then, as happened in Mexico at the feast of Uitzilopochtli, the image
attached to the tree was stoned and its fragments were scrambled and
fought for. The woman who secured the head hastened to nail it to the
temple or principal house of the community.
The late explanation of these doings, the origin of which became
entirely lost, was that, as whatever was done must redound to the
honour of Dionysus, the being represented on the top of the tree-trunk
was inimical to him. The women, perhaps, supposed themselves to be
enacting the part of bacchantes crazed with wine. As Roscher and Jevons
have shown, this late story is the framework of the myth of Pentheus
as given in the _Bacchæ_ of Euripides, Pentheus, a monarch, refuses to
permit the introduction of the worship of Dionysus, who bereaves him
of his senses and, having dressed him in woman's garments, leads him
through his own town as a laughing-stock. The women of Thebes, led by
Agave, the mother of Pentheus, accept Dionysus and become mænads or
bacchantes. To enable Pentheus to see their worship, Dionysus bends
down a pine-tree, places him on the top and then lets it go. He is then
attacked by Agave and the other bacchantes, who tear him limb from limb
and set his head on the front of his own palace.
Whatever the significance of this rite--and it would seem to have its
origin in priapic and bacchic worship--we cannot fail to observe how
far too explanatory and how little ingenious the foregoing tale appears
when adapted to it. As Falstaff says of his own excuse: "It will not
fadge," It is lame and awkward. Pentheus could have beheld the rites of
the bacchantes without the pine-tree being lowered for his convenience;
and had he been bereft of his senses, he would probably have joined in
the bacchic rout instead of tamely witnessing it. The circumstances
point to the real myth behind the ritual being connected with the
secret priapic and seasonal rites of a feminine cult--for women have
their secret cults as well as men, as has been proved of late by the
wonderful and valuable discoveries of Mrs D. Aumary Talbot among the
Congo peoples--discoveries which seem destined to throw much light upon
a most interesting department of comparative religion.
The student must then be upon his guard against secondary
interpretations of ritual, which in most cases can only have reference
to an early type of myth.