CHAPTER I. THE KING OF THE WOOD.

The Golden Bough

A Study in Comparative Religion

By

James George Frazer, M.A.

Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge

In Two Volumes.

Vol. I.

New York and London

MacMillan and Co.

1894

CONTENTS

Dedication.

Preface.

Chapter I. The King Of The Wood.

§ 1.—The Arician Grove.

§ 2.—Primitive man and the supernatural.

§ 3.—Incarnate gods.

§ 4.—Tree-worship.

§ 5.—Tree-worship in antiquity.

Chapter II. The Perils Of The Soul.

§ 1.—Royal and priestly taboos.

§ 2.—The nature of the soul.

§ 3.—Royal and priestly taboos (continued).

Chapter III. Killing The God.

§ 1.—Killing the divine king.

§ 2.—Killing the tree-spirit.

§ 3.—Carrying out Death.

§ 4.—Adonis.

§ 5.—Attis.

§ 6.—Osiris.

§ 7.—Dionysus.

§ 8.—Demeter and Proserpine.

§ 9.—Lityerses.

Footnotes

[Cover Art]

[Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter

at Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]

[Frontispiece]

DEDICATION.

To My Friend

WILLIAM ROBERTSON SMITH

In Gratitude And Admiration

PREFACE.

For some time I have been preparing a general work on primitive

superstition and religion. Among the problems which had attracted my

attention was the hitherto unexplained rule of the Arician priesthood; and

last spring it happened that in the course of my reading I came across

some facts which, combined with others I had noted before, suggested an

explanation of the rule in question. As the explanation, if correct,

promised to throw light on some obscure features of primitive religion, I

resolved to develop it fully, and, detaching it from my general work, to

issue it as a separate study. This book is the result.

Now that the theory, which necessarily presented itself to me at first in

outline, has been worked out in detail, I cannot but feel that in some

places I may have pushed it too far. If this should prove to have been the

case, I will readily acknowledge and retract my error as soon as it is

brought home to me. Meantime my essay may serve its purpose as a first

attempt to solve a difficult problem, and to bring a variety of scattered

facts into some sort of order and system.

A justification is perhaps needed of the length at which I have dwelt upon

the popular festivals observed by European peasants in spring, at

midsummer, and at harvest. It can hardly be too often repeated, since it

is not yet generally recognised, that in spite of their fragmentary

character the popular superstitions and customs of the peasantry are by

far the fullest and most trustworthy evidence we possess as to the

primitive religion of the Aryans. Indeed the primitive Aryan, in all that

regards his mental fibre and texture, is not extinct. He is amongst us to

this day. The great intellectual and moral forces which have

revolutionised the educated world have scarcely affected the peasant. In

his inmost beliefs he is what his forefathers were in the days when forest

trees still grew and squirrels played on the ground where Rome and London

now stand.

Hence every inquiry into the primitive religion of the Aryans should

either start from the superstitious beliefs and observances of the

peasantry, or should at least be constantly checked and controlled by

reference to them. Compared with the evidence afforded by living

tradition, the testimony of ancient books on the subject of early religion

is worth very little. For literature accelerates the advance of thought at

a rate which leaves the slow progress of opinion by word of mouth at an

immeasurable distance behind. Two or three generations of literature may

do more to change thought than two or three thousand years of traditional

life. But the mass of the people who do not read books remain unaffected

by the mental revolution wrought by literature; and so it has come about

that in Europe at the present day the superstitious beliefs and practices

which have been handed down by word of mouth are generally of a far more

archaic type than the religion depicted in the most ancient literature of

the Aryan race.

It is on these grounds that, in discussing the meaning and origin of an

ancient Italian priesthood, I have devoted so much attention to the

popular customs and superstitions of modern Europe. In this part of my

subject I have made great use of the works of the late W. Mannhardt,

without which, indeed, my book could scarcely have been written. Fully

recognising the truth of the principles which I have imperfectly stated,

Mannhardt set himself systematically to collect, compare, and explain the

living superstitions of the peasantry. Of this wide field the special

department which he marked out for himself was the religion of the woodman

and the farmer, in other words, the superstitious beliefs and rites

connected with trees and cultivated plants. By oral inquiry, and by

printed questions scattered broadcast over Europe, as well as by

ransacking the literature of folk-lore, he collected a mass of evidence,

part of which he published in a series of admirable works. But his health,

always feeble, broke down before he could complete the comprehensive and

really vast scheme which he had planned, and at his too early death much

of his precious materials remained unpublished. His manuscripts are now

deposited in the University Library at Berlin, and in the interest of the

study to which he devoted his life it is greatly to be desired that they

should be examined, and that such portions of them as he has not utilised

in his books should be given to the world.

Of his published works the most important are, first, two tracts,

_Roggenwolf und Roggenhund_, Danzig 1865 (second edition, Danzig, 1866),

and _Die Korndämonen_, Berlin, 1868. These little works were put forward

by him tentatively, in the hope of exciting interest in his inquiries and

thereby securing the help of others in pursuing them. But, except from a

few learned societies, they met with very little attention. Undeterred by

the cold reception accorded to his efforts he worked steadily on, and in

1875 published his chief work, _Der Baumkultus der Germanen und ihrer

Nachbarstämme_. This was followed in 1877 by _Antike Wald- und Feldkulte_.

His _Mythologische Forschungen_, a posthumous work, appeared in 1884.(1)

Much as I owe to Mannhardt, I owe still more to my friend Professor W.

Robertson Smith. My interest in the early history of society was first

excited by the works of Dr. E. B. Tylor, which opened up a mental vista

undreamed of by me before. But it is a long step from a lively interest in

a subject to a systematic study of it; and that I took this step is due to

the influence of my friend W. Robertson Smith. The debt which I owe to the

vast stores of his knowledge, the abundance and fertility of his ideas,

and his unwearied kindness, can scarcely be overestimated. Those who know

his writings may form some, though a very inadequate, conception of the

extent to which I have been influenced by him. The views of sacrifice set

forth in his article “Sacrifice” in the _Encyclopaedia __ Britannica_, and

further developed in his recent work, _The Religion of the Semites_, mark

a new departure in the historical study of religion, and ample traces of

them will be found in this book. Indeed the central idea of my essay—the

conception of the slain god—is derived directly, I believe, from my

friend. But it is due to him to add that he is in no way responsible for

the general explanation which I have offered of the custom of slaying the

god. He has read the greater part of the proofs in circumstances which

enhanced the kindness, and has made many valuable suggestions which I have

usually adopted; but except where he is cited by name, or where the views

expressed coincide with those of his published works, he is not to be

regarded as necessarily assenting to any of the theories propounded in

this book.

The works of Professor G. A. Wilken of Leyden have been of great service

in directing me to the best original authorities on the Dutch East Indies,

a very important field to the ethnologist. To the courtesy of the Rev.

Walter Gregor, M.A., of Pitsligo, I am indebted for some interesting

communications which will be found acknowledged in their proper places.

Mr. Francis Darwin has kindly allowed me to consult him on some botanical

questions. The manuscript authorities to which I occasionally refer are

answers to a list of ethnological questions which I am circulating. Most

of them will, I hope, be published in the _Journal of the Anthropological

Institute_.

The drawing of the Golden Bough which adorns the cover is from the pencil

of my friend Professor J. H. Middleton. The constant interest and sympathy

which he has shown in the progress of the book have been a great help and

encouragement to me in writing it.

The Index has been compiled by Mr. A. Rogers, of the University Library,

Cambridge.

J. G. FRAZER.

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,

_8th March 1890_.

CHAPTER I. THE KING OF THE WOOD.

“The still glassy lake that sleeps

Beneath Aricia’s trees—

Those trees in whose dim shadow

The ghastly priest doth reign,

The priest who slew the slayer,

And shall himself be slain.”

MACAULAY.

§ 1.—The Arician Grove.

Who does not know Turner’s picture of the Golden Bough? The scene,

suffused with the golden glow of imagination in which the divine mind of

Turner steeped and transfigured even the fairest natural landscape, is a

dream-like vision of the little woodland lake of Nemi, “Diana’s Mirror,”

as it was called by the ancients. No one who has seen that calm water,

lapped in a green hollow of the Alban hills, can ever forget it. The two

characteristic Italian villages which slumber on its banks, and the

equally Italian palazzo whose terraced gardens descend steeply to the

lake, hardly break the stillness and even the solitariness of the scene.

Dian herself might still linger by this lonely shore, still haunt these

woodlands wild.

In antiquity this sylvan landscape was the scene of a strange and

recurring tragedy. On the northern shore of the lake, right under the

precipitous cliffs on which the modern village of Nemi is perched, stood

the sacred grove and sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, or Diana of the

Wood.(2) The lake and the grove were sometimes known as the lake and grove

of Aricia.(3) But the town of Aricia (the modern La Riccia) was situated

about three miles off, at the foot of the Alban Mount, and separated by a

steep descent from the lake, which lies in a small crater-like hollow on

the mountain side. In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round

which at any time of the day and probably far into the night a strange

figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and

he kept peering warily about him as if every instant he expected to be set

upon by an enemy.(4) He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom

he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his

stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A candidate for the priesthood

could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him

he held office till he was himself slain by a stronger or a craftier.

This strange rule has no parallel in classical antiquity, and cannot be

explained from it. To find an explanation we must go farther afield. No

one will probably deny that such a custom savours of a barbarous age and,

surviving into imperial times, stands out in striking isolation from the

polished Italian society of the day, like a primeval rock rising from a

smooth-shaven lawn. It is the very rudeness and barbarity of the custom

which allow us a hope of explaining it. For recent researches into the

early history of man have revealed the essential similarity with which,

under many superficial differences, the human mind has elaborated its

first crude philosophy of life. Accordingly if we can show that a

barbarous custom, like that of the priesthood of Nemi, has existed

elsewhere; if we can detect the motives which led to its institution; if

we can prove that these motives have operated widely, perhaps universally,

in human society, producing in varied circumstances a variety of

institutions specifically different but generically alike; if we can show,

lastly, that these very motives, with some of their derivative

institutions, were actually at work in classical antiquity; then we may

fairly infer that at a remoter age the same motives gave birth to the

priesthood of Nemi. Such an inference, in default of direct evidence as to

how the priesthood did actually arise, can never amount to demonstration.

But it will be more or less probable according to the degree of

completeness with which it fulfils the conditions indicated above. The

object of this book is, by meeting these conditions, to offer a fairly

probable explanation of the priesthood of Nemi.

I begin by setting forth the few facts and legends which have come down to

us on the subject. According to one story the worship of Diana at Nemi was

instituted by Orestes, who, after killing Thoas, King of the Tauric

Chersonese (the Crimea), fled with his sister to Italy, bringing with him

the image of the Tauric Diana. The bloody ritual which legend ascribed to

that goddess is familiar to classical readers; it is said that every

stranger who landed on the shore was sacrificed on her altar. But

transported to Italy, the rite assumed a milder form. Within the sanctuary

at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no branch might be broken. Only a

runaway slave was allowed to break off, if he could, one of its boughs.

Success in the attempt entitled him to fight the priest in single combat,

and if he slew him he reigned in his stead with the title of King of the

Wood (_Rex Nemorensis_). Tradition averred that the fateful branch was

that Golden Bough which, at the Sibyl’s bidding, Aeneas plucked before he

essayed the perilous journey to the world of the dead. The flight of the

slave represented, it was said, the flight of Orestes; his combat with the

priest was a reminiscence of the human sacrifices once offered to the

Tauric Diana. This rule of succession by the sword was observed down to

imperial times; for amongst his other freaks Caligula, thinking that the

priest of Nemi had held office too long, hired a more stalwart ruffian to

slay him.(5)

Of the worship of Diana at Nemi two leading features can still be made

out. First, from the votive-offerings found in modern times on the site,

it appears that she was especially worshipped by women desirous of

children or of an easy delivery.(6) Second, fire seems to have played a

foremost part in her ritual. For during her annual festival, celebrated at

the hottest time of the year, her grove was lit up by a multitude of

torches, whose ruddy glare was reflected by the waters of the lake; and

throughout the length and breadth of Italy the day was kept with holy

rites at every domestic hearth.(7) Moreover, women whose prayers had been

heard by the goddess brought lighted torches to the grove in fulfilment of

their vows.(8) Lastly, the title of Vesta borne by the Arician Diana(9)

points almost certainly to the maintenance of a perpetual holy fire in her

sanctuary.

At her annual festival all young people went through a purificatory

ceremony in her honour; dogs were crowned; and the feast consisted of a

young kid, wine, and cakes, served up piping hot on platters of

leaves.(10)

But Diana did not reign alone in her grove at Nemi. Two lesser divinities

shared her forest sanctuary. One was Egeria, the nymph of the clear water

which, bubbling from the basaltic rocks, used to fall in graceful cascades

into the lake at the place called Le Mole.(11) According to one story the

grove was first consecrated to Diana by a Manius Egerius, who was the

ancestor of a long and distinguished line. Hence the proverb “There are

many Manii at Ariciae.” Others explained the proverb very differently.

They said it meant that there were a great many ugly and deformed people,

and they referred to the word _Mania_ which meant a bogey or bugbear to

frighten children.(12)

The other of these minor deities was Virbius. Legend had it that Virbius

was the youthful Greek hero Hippolytus, who had been killed by his horses

on the sea-shore of the Saronic Gulf. Him, to please Diana, the leech

Aesculapius brought to life again by his simples. But Jupiter, indignant

that a mortal man should return from the gates of death, thrust down the

meddling leech himself to Hades; and Diana, for the love she bore

Hippolytus, carried him away to Italy and hid him from the angry god in

the dells of Nemi, where he reigned a forest king under the name of

Virbius. Horses were excluded from the grove and sanctuary, because horses

had killed Hippolytus.(13) Some thought that Virbius was the sun. It was

unlawful to touch his image.(14) His worship was cared for by a special

priest, the Flamen Virbialis.(15)

Such then are the facts and theories bequeathed to us by antiquity on the

subject of the priesthood of Nemi. From materials so slight and scanty it

is impossible to extract a solution of the problem. It remains to try

whether the survey of a wider field may not yield us the clue we seek. The

questions to be answered are two: first, why had the priest to slay his

predecessor? and second, why, before he slew him, had he to pluck the

Golden Bough? The rest of this book will be an attempt to answer these

questions.

§ 2.—Primitive man and the supernatural.

The first point on which we fasten is the priest’s title. Why was he

called the King of the Wood? why was his office spoken of as a

Kingdom?(16)

The union of a royal title with priestly duties was common in ancient

Italy and Greece. At Rome and in other Italian cities there was a priest

called the Sacrificial King or King of the Sacred Rites (_Rex

Sacrificulus_ or _Rex Sacrorum_), and his wife bore the title of Queen of

the Sacred Rites.(17) In republican Athens the second magistrate of the

state was called the King, and his wife the Queen; the functions of both

were religious.(18) Many other Greek democracies had titular kings, whose

duties, so far as they are known, seem to have been priestly.(19) At Rome

the tradition was that the Sacrificial King had been appointed after the

expulsion of the kings in order to offer the sacrifices which had been

previously offered by the kings.(20) In Greece a similar view appears to

have prevailed as to the origin of the priestly kings.(21) In itself the

view is not improbable, and it is borne out by the example of Sparta, the

only purely Greek state which retained the kingly form of government in

historical times. For in Sparta all state sacrifices were offered by the

kings as descendants of the god.(22) This combination of priestly

functions with royal authority is familiar to every one. Asia Minor, for

example, was the seat of various great religious capitals peopled by

thousands of “sacred slaves,” and ruled by pontiffs who wielded at once

temporal and spiritual authority, like the popes of mediaeval Rome. Such

priest-ridden cities were Zela and Pessinus.(23) Teutonic kings, again, in

the old heathen days seem to have stood in the position, and exercised the

powers of high priests.(24) The Emperors of China offer public sacrifices,

the details of which are regulated by the ritual books.(25) It is

needless, however, to multiply examples of what is the rule rather than

the exception in the early history of the kingship.

But when we have said that the ancient kings were commonly priests also,

we are far from having exhausted the religious aspect of their office. In

those days the divinity that hedges a king was no empty form of speech but

the expression of a sober belief. Kings were revered, in many cases not

merely as priests, that is, as intercessors between man and god, but as

themselves gods, able to bestow upon their subjects and worshippers those

blessings which are commonly supposed to be beyond the reach of man, and

are sought, if at all, only by prayer and sacrifice offered to superhuman

and invisible beings. Thus kings are often expected to give rain and

sunshine in due season, to make the crops grow, and so on. Strange as this

expectation appears to us, it is quite of a piece with early modes of

thought. A savage hardly conceives the distinction commonly drawn by more

advanced peoples between the natural and the supernatural. To him the

world is mostly worked by supernatural agents, that is, by personal beings

acting on impulses and motives like his own, liable like him to be moved

by appeals to their pity, their fears, and their hopes. In a world so

conceived he sees no limit to his power of influencing the course of

nature to his own advantage. Prayers, promises, or threats may secure him

fine weather and an abundant crop from the gods; and if a god should

happen, as he sometimes believes, to become incarnate in his own person,

then he need appeal to no higher power; he, the savage, possesses in

himself all the supernatural powers necessary to further his own

well-being and that of his fellow men.

This is one way in which the idea of a man-god is reached. But there is

another. Side by side with the view of the world as pervaded by spiritual

forces, primitive man has another conception in which we may detect a germ

of the modern notion of natural law or the view of nature as a series of

events occurring in an invariable order without the intervention of

personal agency. The germ of which I speak is involved in that sympathetic

magic, as it may be called, which plays a large part in most systems of

superstition. One of the principles of sympathetic magic is that any

effect may be produced by imitating it. To take a few instances. If it is

wished to kill a person an image of him is made and then destroyed; and it

is believed that through a certain physical sympathy between the person

and his image, the man feels the injuries done to the image as if they

were done to his own body, and that when it is destroyed he must

simultaneously perish. Again, in Morocco a fowl or a pigeon may sometimes

be seen with a little red bundle tied to its foot. The bundle contains a

charm, and it is believed that as the charm is kept in constant motion by

the bird a corresponding restlessness is kept up in the mind of him or her

against whom the charm is directed.(26) In Nias when a wild pig has fallen

into the pit prepared for it, it is taken out and its back is rubbed with

nine fallen leaves, in the belief that this will make nine more wild pigs

fall into the pit just as the nine leaves fell from the tree.(27) When a

Cambodian hunter has set his nets and taken nothing, he strips himself

naked, goes some way off, then strolls up to the net as if he did not see

it, lets himself be caught in it and cries, “Hillo! what’s this? I’m

afraid I’m caught.” After that the net is sure to catch game.(28) In

Thüringen the man who sows flax carries the seed in a long bag which

reaches from his shoulders to his knees, and he walks with long strides,

so that the bag sways to and fro on his back. It is believed that this

will cause the flax crop to wave in the wind.(29) In the interior of

Sumatra the rice is sown by women who, in sowing, let their hair hang

loose down their back, in order that the rice may grow luxuriantly and

have long stalks.(30) Again, magic sympathy is supposed to exist between a

man and any severed portion of his person, as his hair or nails; so that

whoever gets possession of hair or nails may work his will, at any

distance, upon the person from whom they were cut. This superstition is

world-wide. Further, the sympathy in question exists between friends and

relations, especially at critical times. Hence, for example, the elaborate

code of rules which regulates the conduct of persons left at home while a

party of their friends is out fishing or hunting or on the war-path. It is

thought that if the persons left at home broke these rules their absent

friends would suffer an injury, corresponding in its nature to the breach

of the rule. Thus when a Dyak is out head-hunting, his wife or, if he is

unmarried, his sister, must wear a sword day and night in order that he

may always be thinking of his weapons; and she may not sleep during the

day nor go to bed before two in the morning, lest her husband or brother

should thereby be surprised in his sleep by an enemy.(31) In Laos when an

elephant hunter is setting out for the chase he warns his wife not to cut

her hair or oil her body in his absence; for if she cut her hair the

elephant would burst the toils, if she oiled herself it would slip through

them.(32)

In all these cases (and similar instances might be multiplied

indefinitely) an action is performed or avoided, because its performance

is believed to entail good or bad consequences of a sort resembling the

act itself. Sometimes the magic sympathy takes effect not so much through

an act as through a supposed resemblance of qualities. Thus some Bechuanas

wear a ferret as a charm because, being very tenacious of life, it will

make them difficult to kill.(33) Others wear a certain insect, mutilated

but living, for a similar purpose.(34) Other Bechuana warriors wear the

hair of an ox among their own hair and the skin of a frog on their mantle,

because a frog is slippery and the ox from which the hair has been taken

has no horns and is therefore hard to catch; so the warrior who is

provided with these charms believes that he will be as hard to hold as the

ox and the frog.(35)

Thus we see that in sympathetic magic one event is supposed to be followed

necessarily and invariably by another, without the intervention of any

spiritual or personal agency. This is, in fact, the modern conception of

physical causation; the conception, indeed, is misapplied, but it is there

none the less. Here, then, we have another mode in which primitive man

seeks to bend nature to his wishes. There is, perhaps, hardly a savage who

does not fancy himself possessed of this power of influencing the course

of nature by sympathetic magic; a man-god, on this view, is only an

individual who is believed to enjoy this common power in an unusually high

degree. Thus, whereas a man-god of the former or inspired type derives his

divinity from a deity who has taken up his abode in a tabernacle of flesh,

a man-god of the latter type draws his supernatural power from a certain

physical sympathy with nature. He is not merely the receptacle of a divine

spirit. His whole being, body and soul, is so delicately attuned to the

harmony of the world that a touch of his hand or a turn of his head may

send a thrill vibrating through the universal framework of things; and

conversely his divine organism is acutely sensitive to such slight changes

of environment as would leave ordinary mortals wholly unaffected. But the

line between these two types of man-god, however sharply we may draw it in

theory, is seldom to be traced with precision in practice, and in what

follows I shall not insist on it.

To readers long familiarised with the conception of natural law, the

belief of primitive man that he can rule the elements must be so foreign

that it may be well to illustrate it by examples. When we have seen that

in early society men who make no pretence at all of being gods do

nevertheless commonly believe themselves to be invested with supernatural

powers, we shall have the less difficulty in comprehending the

extraordinary range of powers ascribed to individuals who are actually

regarded as divine.

Of all natural phenomena there are perhaps none which civilised man feels

himself more powerless to influence than the rain, the sun, and the wind.

Yet all these are commonly supposed by savages to be in some degree under

their control.

To begin with rain-making. In a village near Dorpat in Russia, when rain

was much wanted, three men used to climb up the fir-trees of an old sacred

grove. One of them drummed with a hammer on a kettle or small cask to

imitate thunder; the second knocked two fire-brands together and made the

sparks fly, to imitate lightning; and the third, who was called “the

rain-maker,” had a bunch of twigs with which he sprinkled water from a

vessel on all sides.(36) This is an example of sympathetic magic; the

desired event is supposed to be produced by imitating it. Rain is often

thus made by imitation. In Halmahera (Gilolo), a large island to the west

of New Guinea, a wizard makes rain by dipping a branch of a particular

kind of tree in water and sprinkling the ground with it.(37) In Ceram it

is enough to dedicate the bark of a certain tree to the spirits and lay it

in water.(38) In New Britain the rain-maker wraps some leaves of a red and

green striped creeper in a banana-leaf, moistens the bundle with water and

buries it in the ground; then he imitates with his mouth the plashing of

rain.(39) Amongst the Omaha Indians of North America, when the corn is

withering for want of rain, the members of the sacred Buffalo Society fill

a large vessel with water and dance four times round it. One of them

drinks some of the water and spirts it into the air, making a fine spray

in imitation of a mist or drizzling rain. Then he upsets the vessel,

spilling the water on the ground; whereupon the dancers fall down and

drink up the water, getting mud all over their faces. Lastly they spirt

the water into the air, making a fine mist. This saves the corn.(40)

Amongst the Australian Wotjobaluk the rain-maker dipped a bunch of his own

hair in water, sucked out the water and squirted it westward, or he

twirled the ball round his head making a spray like rain.(41) Squirting

water from the mouth is also a West African way of making rain.(42)

Another mode is to dip a particular stone in water or sprinkle water on

it. In a Samoan village a certain stone was carefully housed as the

representative of the rain-making god; and in time of drought his priests

carried the stone in procession, and dipped it in a stream.(43) In the

Ta-ta-thi tribe of New South Wales the rain-maker breaks off a piece of

quartz crystal and spits it towards the sky; the rest of the crystal he

wraps in emu feathers, soaks both crystal and feathers in water, and

carefully hides them.(44) In the Keramin tribe of New South Wales the

wizard retires to the bed of a creek, drops water on a round flat stone,

then covers up and conceals it.(45) The Fountain of Baranton, of romantic

fame, in the forest of Brécilien, used to be resorted to by peasants when

they needed rain; they caught some of the water in a tankard and threw it

on a slab near the spring.(46) When some of the Apache Indians wish for

rain, they take water from a certain spring and throw it on a particular

point high up on a rock; the clouds then soon gather and rain begins to

fall.(47) There is a lonely tarn on Snowdon called Dulyn or the Black

Lake, lying “in a dismal dingle surrounded by high and dangerous rocks.” A

row of stepping stones runs out into the lake; and if any one steps on the

stones and throws water so as to wet the farthest stone, which is called

the Red Altar, “it is but a chance that you do not get rain before night,

even when it is hot weather.”(48) In these cases it is probable that, as

in Samoa, the stone is regarded as in some sort divine. This appears from

the custom sometimes observed of dipping the cross in the Fountain of

Baranton, to procure rain; for this is plainly a substitute for the older

way of throwing the water on the stone.(49) In Mingrelia, to get rain they

dip a holy image in water daily till it rains.(50) In Navarre the image of

St. Peter was taken to a river, where some prayed to him for rain, but

others called out to duck him in the water.(51) Here the dipping in the

water is used as a threat; but originally it was probably a sympathetic

charm, as in the following instance. In New Caledonia the rain-makers

blackened themselves all over, dug up a dead body, took the bones to a

cave, jointed them, and hung the skeleton over some taro leaves. Water was

poured over the skeleton to run down on the leaves. “They supposed that

the soul of the departed took up the water, made rain of it, and showered

it down again.”(52) The same motive comes clearly out in a mode of making

rain which is practised by various peoples of South Eastern Europe. In

time of drought the Servians strip a girl, clothe her from head to foot in

grass, herbs, and flowers, even her face being hidden with them. Thus

disguised she is called the Dodola, and goes through the village with a

troop of girls. They stop before every house; the Dodola dances, while the

other girls form a ring round her singing one of the Dodola songs, and the

housewife pours a pail of water over her.

One of the songs they sing runs thus—

“We go through the village;

The clouds go in the sky;

We go faster,

Faster go the clouds;

They have overtaken us,

And wetted the corn and the vine.”

A similar custom is observed by the Greeks, Bulgarians, and

Roumanians.(53) In such customs the leaf-dressed girl represents the

spirit of vegetation, and drenching her with water is an imitation of

rain. In Russia, in the Government of Kursk, when rain is much wanted, the

women seize a passing stranger and throw him into the river, or souse him

from head to foot.(54) Later on we shall see that a passing stranger is

often, as here, taken for a god or spirit. Amongst the Minahassa of North

Celebes the priest bathes as a rain-charm.(55) In the Caucasian Province

of Georgia, when a drought has lasted long, marriageable girls are yoked

in couples with an ox-yoke on their shoulders, a priest holds the reins,

and thus harnessed they wade through rivers, puddles, and marshes,

praying, screaming, weeping, and laughing.(56) In a district of

Transylvania, when the ground is parched with drought, some girls strip

themselves naked, and, led by an older woman, who is also naked, they

steal a harrow and carry it across the field to a brook, where they set it

afloat. Next they sit on the harrow and keep a tiny flame burning on each

corner of it for an hour. Then they leave the harrow in the water and go

home.(57) A similar rain-charm is resorted to in India; naked women drag a

plough across the field by night.(58) It is not said that they plunge the

plough into a stream or sprinkle it with water. But the charm would hardly

be complete without it.

Sometimes the charm works through an animal. To procure rain the Peruvians

used to set a black sheep in a field, poured _chica_ over it, and gave it

nothing to eat till rain fell.(59) In a district of Sumatra all the women

of the village, scantily clad, go to the river, wade into it, and splash

each other with the water. A black cat is thrown into the water and made

to swim about for a while, then allowed to escape to the bank, pursued by

the splashing of the women.(60) In these cases the colour of the animal is

part of the charm; being black it will darken the sky with rain-clouds. So

the Bechuanas burn the stomach of an ox at evening, because they say, “the

black smoke will gather the clouds, and cause the rain to come.”(61) The

Timorese sacrifice a black pig for rain, a white or red one for

sunshine.(62) The Garos offer a black goat on the top of a very high

mountain in time of drought.(63)

Sometimes people try to coerce the rain-god into giving rain. In China a

huge dragon made of paper or wood, representing the rain-god, is carried

about in procession; but if no rain follows, it is cursed and torn in

pieces.(64) In the like circumstances the Feloupes of Senegambia throw

down their fetishes and drag them about the fields, cursing them till rain

falls.(65) Some Indians of the Orinoco worshipped toads and kept them in

vessels in order to obtain from them rain or sunshine as might be

required; when their prayers were not answered they beat the toads.(66)

Killing a frog is a European rain-charm.(67) When the spirits withhold

rain or sunshine, the Comanches whip a slave; if the gods prove obstinate,

the victim is almost flayed alive.(68) Here the human being may represent

the god, like the leaf-clad Dodola. When the rice-crop is endangered by

long drought, the governor of Battambang, a province of Siam, goes in

great state to a certain pagoda and prays to Buddha for rain. Then

accompanied by his suite and followed by an enormous crowd he adjourns to

a plain behind the pagoda. Here a dummy figure has been made up, dressed

in bright colours, and placed in the middle of the plain. A wild music

begins to play; maddened by the din of drums and cymbals and crackers, and

goaded on by their drivers, the elephants charge down on the dummy and

trample it to pieces. After this, Buddha will soon give rain.(69)

Another way of constraining the rain-god is to disturb him in his haunts.

This seems the reason why rain is supposed to be the consequence of

troubling a sacred spring. The Dards believe that if a cowskin or anything

impure is placed in certain springs, storms will follow.(70) Gervasius

mentions a spring into which if a stone or a stick were thrown, rain would

at once issue from it and drench the thrower.(71) There was a fountain in

Munster such that if it were touched or even looked at by a human being,

it would at once flood the whole province with rain.(72) Sometimes an

appeal is made to the pity of the gods. When their corn is being burnt up

by the sun, the Zulus look out for a “heaven-bird,” kill it, and throw it

into a pool. Then the heaven melts with tenderness for the death of the

bird; “it wails for it by raining, wailing a funeral wail.”(73) In times

of drought the Guanches of Teneriffe led their sheep to sacred ground, and

there they separated the lambs from their dams, that their plaintive

bleating might touch the heart of the god.(74) A peculiar mode of making

rain was adopted by the heathen Arabs. They tied two sorts of bushes to

the tails and hind-legs of their cattle, and setting fire to the bushes

drove the cattle to the top of a mountain, praying for rain.(75) This may

be, as Wellhausen suggests,(76) an imitation of lightning on the horizon.

But it may also be a way of threatening the sky; as some West African

rain-makers put a pot of inflammable materials on the fire and blow up the

flames, threatening that if heaven does not soon give rain they will send

up a flame which will set the sky on fire.(77) The Dieyerie of South

Australia have a way of their own of making rain. A hole is dug about

twelve feet long and eight or ten broad, and over this hole a hut of logs

and branches is made. Two men, supposed to have received a special

inspiration from Mooramoora (the Good Spirit), are bled by an old and

influential man with a sharp flint inside the arm; the blood is made to

flow on the other men of the tribe who sit huddled together. At the same

time the two bleeding men throw handfuls of down, some of which adheres to

the blood, while the rest floats in the air. The blood is thought to

represent the rain, and the down the clouds. During the ceremony two large

stones are placed in the middle of the hut; they stand for gathering

clouds and presage rain. Then the men who were bled carry away the stones

for about fifteen miles and place them as high as they can in the tallest

tree. Meanwhile, the other men gather gypsum, pound it fine, and throw it

into a water-hole. This the Mooramoora is supposed to see, and at once he

causes the clouds to appear in the sky. Lastly, the men surround the hut,

butt at it with their heads, force their way in, and reappear on the other

side, repeating this till the hut is wrecked. In doing this they are

forbidden to use their hands or arms; but when the heavy logs alone

remain, they are allowed to pull them out with their hands. “The piercing

of the hut with their heads symbolises the piercing of the clouds; the

fall of the hut, the fall of rain.”(78) Another Australian mode of

rain-making is to burn human hair.(79)

Like other peoples the Greeks and Romans sought to procure rain by magic,

when prayers and processions(80) had proved ineffectual. For example, in

Arcadia, when the corn and trees were parched with drought, the priest of

Zeus dipped an oak branch into a certain spring on Mount Lycaeus. Thus

troubled, the water sent up a misty cloud, from which rain soon fell upon

the land.(81) A similar mode of making rain is still practised, as we have

seen, in Halmahera near New Guinea. The people of Crannon in Thessaly had

a bronze chariot which they kept in a temple. When they desired a shower

they shook the chariot and the shower fell.(82) Probably the rattling of

the chariot was meant to imitate thunder; we have already seen that in

Russia mock thunder and lightning form part of a rain-charm. The mythical

Salmoneus of Thessaly made mock thunder by dragging bronze kettles behind

his chariot or by driving over a bronze bridge, while he hurled blazing

torches in imitation of lightning. It was his impious wish to mimic the

thundering car of Zeus as it rolled across the vault of heaven.(83) Near a

temple of Mars, outside the walls of Rome, there was kept a certain stone

known as the _lapis manalis_. In time of drought the stone was dragged

into Rome and this was supposed to bring down rain immediately.(84) There

were Etruscan wizards who made rain or discovered springs of water, it is

not certain which. They were thought to bring the rain or the water out of

their bellies.(85) The legendary Telchines in Rhodes are described as

magicians who could change their shape and bring clouds, rain, and

snow.(86)

Again, primitive man fancies he can make the sun to shine, and can hasten

or stay its going down. At an eclipse the Ojebways used to think that the

sun was being extinguished. So they shot fire-tipped arrows in the air,

hoping thus to rekindle his expiring light.(87) Conversely during an

eclipse of the moon some Indian tribes of the Orinoco used to bury lighted

brands in the ground; because, said they, if the moon were to be

extinguished, all fire on earth would be extinguished with her, except

such as was hidden from her sight.(88) In New Caledonia when a wizard

desires to make sunshine, he takes some plants and corals to the

burial-ground, and makes them into a bundle, adding two locks of hair cut

from a living child (his own child if possible), also two teeth or an

entire jawbone from the skeleton of an ancestor. He then climbs a high

mountain whose top catches the first rays of the morning sun. Here he

deposits three sorts of plants on a flat stone, places a branch of dry

coral beside them, and hangs the bundle of charms over the stone. Next

morning he returns to this rude altar, and at the moment when the sun

rises from the sea he kindles a fire on the altar. As the smoke rises, he

rubs the stone with the dry coral, invokes his ancestors and says: “Sun! I

do this that you may be burning hot, and eat up all the clouds in the

sky.” The same ceremony is repeated at sunset.(89) When the sun rises

behind clouds—a rare event in the bright sky of Southern Africa—the Sun

clan of the Bechuanas say that he is grieving their heart. All work stands

still, and all the food of the previous day is given to matrons or old

women. They may eat it and may share it with the children they are

nursing, but no one else may taste it. The people go down to the river and

wash themselves all over. Each man throws into the river a stone taken

from his domestic hearth, and replaces it with one picked up in the bed of

the river. On their return to the village the chief kindles a fire in his

hut, and all his subjects come and get a light from it. A general dance

follows.(90) In these cases it seems that the lighting of the flame on

earth is supposed to rekindle the solar fire. Such a belief comes

naturally to people who, like the Sun clan of the Bechuanas, deem

themselves the veritable kinsmen of the sun. The Melanesians make sunshine

by means of a mock sun. A round stone is wound about with red braid and

stuck with owl’s feathers to represent rays; it is then hung on a high

tree. Or the stone is laid on the ground with white rods radiating from it

to imitate sunbeams.(91) Sometimes the mode of making sunshine is the

converse of that of making rain. Thus we have seen that a white or red pig

is sacrificed for sunshine, as a black one is sacrificed for rain.(92)

Some of the New Caledonians drench a skeleton to make rain, but burn it to

make sunshine.(93)

In a pass of the Peruvian Andes stand two ruined towers on opposite hills.

Iron hooks are clamped into their walls for the purpose of stretching a

net from one tower to the other. The net is intended to catch the sun.(94)

On the top of a small hill in Fiji grew a patch of reeds, and travellers

who feared to be belated used to tie the tops of a handful of reeds

together to detain the sun from going down.(95) The intention perhaps was

to entangle the sun in the reeds, just as the Peruvians try to catch him

in the net. Stories of men who have caught the sun in a noose are widely

spread.(96) Jerome of Prague, travelling among the heathen Lithuanians

early in the fifteenth century, found a tribe who worshipped the sun and

venerated a large iron hammer. The priests told him that once the sun had

been invisible for several months, because a powerful king had shut it up

in a strong tower; but the signs of the zodiac had broken open the tower

with this very hammer and released the sun. Therefore they adored the

hammer.(97) When an Australian blackfellow wishes to stay the sun from

going down till he gets home, he places a sod in the fork of a tree,

exactly facing the setting sun.(98) For the same purpose an Indian of

Yucatan, journeying westward, places a stone in a tree or pulls out some

of his eyelashes and blows them towards the sun.(99) South African

natives, in travelling, will put a stone in a branch of a tree or place

some grass on the path with a stone over it, believing that this will

cause their friends to keep the meal waiting till their arrival.(100) In

these, as in previous examples, the purpose apparently is to retard the

sun. But why should the act of putting a stone or a sod in a tree be

supposed to effect this? A partial explanation is suggested by another

Australian custom. In their journeys the natives are accustomed to place

stones in trees at different heights from the ground in order to indicate

the height of the sun in the sky at the moment when they passed the

particular tree. Those who follow are thus made aware of the time of day

when their friends in advance passed the spot.(101) Possibly the natives,

thus accustomed to mark the sun’s progress, may have slipped into the

confusion of imagining that to mark the sun’s progress was to arrest it at

the point marked. On the other hand, to make it go down faster, the

Australians throw sand into the air and blow with their mouths towards the

sun.(102)

Once more, the savage thinks he can make the wind to blow or to be still.

When the day is hot and a Yakut has a long way to go, he takes a stone

which he has chanced to find in an animal or fish, winds a horse-hair

several times round it, and ties it to a stick. He then waves the stick

about, uttering a spell. Soon a cool breeze begins to blow.(103) The Wind

clan of the Omahas flap their blankets to start a breeze which will drive

away the mosquitoes.(104) When a Haida Indian wishes to obtain a fair

wind, he fasts, shoots a raven, singes it in the fire, and then going to

the edge of the sea sweeps it over the surface of the water four times in

the direction in which he wishes the wind to blow. He then throws the

raven behind him, but afterwards picks it up and sets it in a sitting

posture at the foot of a spruce-tree, facing towards the required wind.

Propping its beak open with a stick, he requests a fair wind for a certain

number of days; then going away he lies covered up in his mantle till

another Indian asks him for how many days he has desired the wind, which

question he answers.(105) When a sorcerer in New Britain wishes to make a

wind blow in a certain direction, he throws burnt lime in the air,

chanting a song all the time. Then he waves sprigs of ginger and other

plants about, throws them up and catches them. Next he makes a small fire

with these sprigs on the spot where the lime has fallen thickest, and

walks round the fire chanting. Lastly, he takes the ashes and throws them

on the water.(106) On the altar of Fladda’s chapel, in the island of

Fladdahuan (one of the Hebrides), lay a round bluish stone which was

always moist. Windbound fishermen walked sunwise round the chapel and then

poured water on the stone, whereupon a favourable breeze was sure to

spring up.(107) In Finnland wizards used to sell wind to storm-staid

mariners. The wind was enclosed in three knots; if they undid the first

knot, a moderate wind sprang up; if the second, it blew half a gale; if

the third, a hurricane.(108) The same thing is said to have been done by

wizards and witches in Lappland, in the island of Lewis, and in the Isle

of Man.(109) A Norwegian witch has boasted of sinking a ship by opening a

bag in which she had shut up a wind.(110) Ulysses received the winds in a

leather bag from Aeolus, King of the Winds.(111) So Perdoytus, the

Lithuanian wind-god, keeps the winds enclosed in a leather bag; when they

escape from it he pursues them, beats them, and shuts them up again.(112)

The Motumotu in New Guinea think that storms are sent by an Oiabu

sorcerer; for each wind he has a bamboo which he opens at pleasure.(113)

But here we have passed from custom (with which alone we are at present

concerned) into mythology. Shetland seamen still buy winds from old women

who claim to rule the storms. There are now in Lerwick old women who live

by selling wind.(114) When the Hottentots wish to make the wind drop, they

take one of their fattest skins and hang it on the end of a pole,

believing that by blowing the skin down the wind will lose all its force

and must itself fall.(115) In some parts of Austria, during a heavy storm,

it is customary to open the window and throw out a handful of meal, chaff,

or feathers, saying to the wind, “There, that’s for you, stop!”(116) Once

when north-westerly winds had kept the ice long on the coast, and food was

getting scarce, the Eskimos of Alaska performed a ceremony to make a calm.

A fire was kindled on the shore and the men gathered round it and chanted.

An old man then stepped up to the fire and in a coaxing voice invited the

demon of the wind to come under the fire and warm himself. When he was

supposed to have arrived, a vessel of water, to which each man present had

contributed, was thrown on the fire by an old man, and immediately a

flight of arrows sped towards the spot where the fire had been. They

thought that the demon would not stay where he had been so badly treated.

To complete the effect, guns were discharged in various directions, and

the captain of a European vessel was asked to fire on the wind with

cannon.(117) When the wind blows down their huts, the Payaguas in South

America snatch up firebrands and run against the wind menacing it with the

blazing brands, while others beat the air with their fists to frighten the

storm.(118) When the Guaycurus are threatened by a severe storm the men go

out armed, and the women and children scream their loudest to intimidate

the demon.(119) During a tempest the inhabitants of a Batta village in

Sumatra have been seen to rush from their houses armed with sword and

lance. The Raja placed himself at their head, and with shouts and yells

they hewed and hacked at the invisible foe. An old woman was observed to

be especially active in defending her house, slashing the air right and

left with a long sabre.(120)

In the light of these examples a story told by Herodotus, which his modern

critics have treated as a fable, is perfectly credible. He says, without

however vouching for the truth of the tale, that once in the land of the

Psylli, the modern Tripoli, the wind blowing from the Sahara had dried up

all the water-tanks. So the people took counsel and marched in a body to

make war on the south wind. But when they entered the desert, the simoom

swept down on them and buried them to a man.(121) The story may well have

been told by one who watched them disappearing, in battle array, with

drums and cymbals beating, into the red cloud of whirling sand. It is

still said of the Bedouins of Eastern Africa that “no whirlwind ever

sweeps across the path without being pursued by a dozen savages with drawn

creeses, who stab into the centre of the dusty column in order to drive

away the evil spirit that is believed to be riding on the blast.”(122) So

in Australia the huge columns of red sand that move rapidly across a

desert tract are thought by the blackfellows to be spirits passing along.

Once an athletic young black ran after one of these moving columns to kill

it with boomerangs. He was away two or three hours and came back very

weary, saying he had killed Koochee (the demon), but that Koochee had

growled at him and he must die.(123) Even where these dust columns are not

attacked they are still regarded with awe. In some parts of India they are

supposed to be _bhuts_ going to bathe in the Ganges.(124) Californian

Indians think that they are happy souls ascending to the heavenly

land.(125)

When a gust lifts the hay in the meadow, the Breton peasant throws a knife

or a fork at it to prevent the devil from carrying off the hay.(126)

German peasants throw a knife or a hat at a whirlwind because there is a

witch or a wizard in it.(127)

§ 3.—Incarnate gods.

These examples, drawn from the beliefs and practices of rude peoples all

over the world, may suffice to prove that the savage, whether European or

otherwise, fails to recognise those limitations to his power over nature

which seem so obvious to us. In a society where every man is supposed to

be endowed more or less with powers which we should call supernatural, it

is plain that the distinction between gods and men is somewhat blurred, or

rather has scarcely emerged. The conception of gods as supernatural beings

entirely distinct from and superior to man, and wielding powers to which

he possesses nothing comparable in degree and hardly even in kind, has

been slowly evolved in the course of history. At first the supernatural

agents are not regarded as greatly, if at all, superior to man; for they

may be frightened and coerced by him into doing his will. At this stage of

thought the world is viewed as a great democracy; all beings in it,

whether natural or supernatural, are supposed to stand on a footing of

tolerable equality. But with the growth of his knowledge man learns to

realise more clearly the vastness of nature and his own littleness and

feebleness in presence of it. The recognition of his own helplessness does

not, however, carry with it a corresponding belief in the impotence of

those supernatural beings with which his imagination peoples the universe.

On the contrary it enhances his conception of their power. For the idea of

the world as a system of impersonal forces acting in accordance with fixed

and invariable laws has not yet fully dawned or darkened upon him. The

germ of the idea he certainly has, and he acts upon it, not only in magic

art, but in much of the business of daily life. But the idea remains

undeveloped, and so far as he attempts consciously to explain the world he

lives in, he pictures it as the manifestation of conscious will and

personal agency. If then he feels himself to be so frail and slight, how

vast and powerful must he deem the beings who control the gigantic

machinery of nature! Thus as his old sense of equality with the gods

slowly vanishes, he resigns at the same time the hope of directing the

course of nature by his own unaided resources, that is, by magic, and

looks more and more to the gods as the sole repositories of those

supernatural powers which he once claimed to share with them. With the

first advance of knowledge, therefore, prayer and sacrifice assume the

leading place in religious ritual; and magic, which once ranked with them

as a legitimate equal, is gradually relegated to the background and sinks

to the level of a black art. It is now regarded as an encroachment, at

once vain and impious, on the domain of the gods, and as such encounters

the steady opposition of the priests, whose reputation and influence gain

or lose with those of their gods. Hence, when at a late period the

distinction between religion and superstition has emerged, we find that

sacrifice and prayer are the resource of the pious and enlightened portion

of the community, while magic is the refuge of the superstitious and

ignorant. But when, still later, the conception of the elemental forces as

personal agents is giving way to the recognition of natural law; then

magic, based as it implicitly is on the idea of a necessary and invariable

sequence of cause and effect, independent of personal will, reappears from

the obscurity and discredit into which it had fallen, and by investigating

the causal sequences in nature, directly prepares the way for science.

Alchemy leads up to chemistry.

The notion of a man-god or of a human being endowed with divine or

supernatural powers, belongs essentially to that earlier period of

religious history in which gods and men are still viewed as beings of much

the same order, and before they are divided by the impassable gulf which,

to later thought, opens out between them. Strange, therefore, as may seem

to us the idea of a god incarnate in human form, it has nothing very

startling for early man, who sees in a man-god or a god-man only a higher

degree of the same supernatural powers which he arrogates in perfect good

faith to himself. Such incarnate gods are common in rude society. The

incarnation may be temporary or permanent. In the former case, the

incarnation—commonly known as inspiration or possession—reveals itself in

supernatural knowledge rather than in supernatural power. In other words,

its usual manifestations are divination and prophesy rather than miracles.

On the other hand, when the incarnation is not merely temporary, when the

divine spirit has permanently taken up its abode in a human body, the

god-man is usually expected to vindicate his character by working

miracles. Only we have to remember that by men at this stage of thought

miracles are not considered as breaches of natural law. Not conceiving the

existence of natural law, primitive man cannot conceive a breach of it. A

miracle is to him merely an unusually striking manifestation of a common

power.

The belief in temporary incarnation or inspiration is world-wide. Certain

persons are supposed to be possessed from time to time by a spirit or

deity; while the possession lasts, their own personality lies in abeyance,

the presence of the spirit is revealed by convulsive shiverings and

shakings of the man’s whole body, by wild gestures and excited looks, all

of which are referred, not to the man himself, but to the spirit which has

entered into him; and in this abnormal state all his utterances are

accepted as the voice of the god or spirit dwelling in him and speaking

through him. In Mangaia the priests in whom the gods took up their abode

from time to time were called “god-boxes” or, for shortness, “gods.”

Before giving oracles as gods, they drank an intoxicating liquor, and in

the frenzy thus produced their wild words were received as the voice of

the god.(128) But examples of such temporary inspiration are so common in

every part of the world and are now so familiar through books on

ethnology, that it is needless to cite illustrations of the general

principle.(129) It may be well, however, to refer to two particular modes

of producing temporary inspiration, because they are perhaps less known

than some others, and because we shall have occasion to refer to them

later on. One of these modes of producing inspiration is by sucking the

fresh blood of a sacrificed victim. In the temple of Apollo Diradiotes at

Argos, a lamb was sacrificed by night once a month; a woman, who had to

observe a rule of chastity, tasted the blood of the lamb, and thus being

inspired by the god she prophesied or divined.(130) At Aegira in Achaea

the priestess of Earth drank the fresh blood of a bull before she

descended into the cave to prophesy.(131) In Southern India a devil-dancer

“drinks the blood of the sacrifice, putting the throat of the decapitated

goat to his mouth. Then, as if he had acquired new life, he begins to

brandish his staff of bells, and to dance with a quick but wild unsteady

step. Suddenly the afflatus descends. There is no mistaking that glare, or

those frantic leaps. He snorts, he stares, he gyrates. The demon has now

taken bodily possession of him; and, though he retains the power of

utterance and of motion, both are under the demon’s control, and his

separate consciousness is in abeyance.... The devil-dancer is now

worshipped as a present deity, and every bystander consults him respecting

his disease, his wants, the welfare of his absent relatives, the offerings

to be made for the accomplishment of his wishes, and, in short, respecting

everything for which superhuman knowledge is supposed to be

available.”(132) At a festival of the Minahassa in northern Celebes, after

a pig has been killed, the priest rushes furiously at it, thrusts his head

into the carcass and drinks of the blood. Then he is dragged away from it

by force and set on a chair, whereupon he begins to prophesy how the rice

crop will turn out that year. A second time he runs at the carcass and

drinks of the blood; a second time he is forced into the chair and

continues his predictions. It is thought there is a spirit in him which

possesses the power of prophecy.(133) At Rhetra, a great religious capital

of the Western Slavs, the priest tasted the blood of the sacrificed oxen

and sheep in order the better to prophesy.(134) The true test of a Dainyal

or diviner among some of the Hindoo Koosh tribes is to suck the blood from

the neck of a decapitated goat.(135) The other mode of producing temporary

inspiration, to which I shall here refer, is by means of a branch or

leaves of a sacred tree. Thus in the Hindoo Koosh a fire is kindled with

twigs of the sacred cedar; and the Dainyal or sibyl, with a cloth over her

head, inhales the thick pungent smoke till she is seized with convulsions

and falls senseless to the ground. Soon she rises and raises a shrill

chant, which is caught up and loudly repeated by her audience.(136) So

Apollo’s prophetess ate the sacred laurel before she prophesied.(137) It

is worth observing that many peoples expect the victim as well as the

priest or prophet to give signs of inspiration by convulsive movements of

the body; and if the animal remains obstinately steady, they esteem it

unfit for sacrifice. Thus when the Yakuts sacrifice to an evil spirit, the

beast must bellow and roll about, which is considered a token that the

evil spirit has entered into it.(138) Apollo’s prophetess could give no

oracles unless the victim to be sacrificed trembled in every limb when the

wine was poured on its head. But for ordinary Greek sacrifices it was

enough that the victim should shake its head; to make it do so, water was

poured on it.(139) Many other peoples (Tonquinese, Hindoos, Chuwash, etc.)

have adopted the same test of a suitable victim; they pour water or wine

on its head; if the animal shakes its head it is accepted for sacrifice;

if it does not, it is rejected.(140)

The person temporarily inspired is believed to acquire, not merely divine

knowledge, but also, at least occasionally, divine power. In Cambodia,

when an epidemic breaks out, the inhabitants of several villages unite and

go with a band of music at their head to look for the man whom the local

god is believed to have chosen for his temporary incarnation. When found,

the man is taken to the altar of the god, where the mystery of incarnation

takes place. Then the man becomes an object of veneration to his fellows,

who implore him to protect the village against the plague.(141) The image

of Apollo at Hylæ in Phocis was believed to impart superhuman strength.

Sacred men, inspired by it, leaped down precipices, tore up huge trees by

the roots, and carried them on their backs along the narrowest

defiles.(142) The feats performed by inspired dervishes belong to the same

class.

Thus far we have seen that the savage, failing to discern the limits of

his ability to control nature, ascribes to himself and to all men certain

powers which we should now call supernatural. Further, we have seen that

over and above this general supernaturalism, some persons are supposed to

be inspired for short periods by a divine spirit, and thus temporarily to

enjoy the knowledge and power of the indwelling deity. From beliefs like

these it is an easy step to the conviction that certain men are

permanently possessed by a deity, or in some other undefined way are

endued with so high a degree of supernatural powers as to be ranked as

gods and to receive the homage of prayer and sacrifice. Sometimes these

human gods are restricted to purely supernatural or spiritual functions.

Sometimes they exercise supreme political power in addition. In the latter

case they are kings as well as gods, and the government is a theocracy. I

shall give examples of both.

In the Marquesas Islands there was a class of men who were deified in

their life-time. They were supposed to wield a supernatural power over the

elements; they could give abundant harvests or smite the ground with

barrenness; and they could inflict disease or death. Human sacrifices were

offered to them to avert their wrath. There were not many of them, at the

most one or two in each island. They lived in mystic seclusion. Their

powers were sometimes, but not always, hereditary. A missionary has

described one of these human gods from personal observation. The god was a

very old man who lived in a large house within an enclosure. In the house

was a kind of altar, and on the beams of the house and on the trees round

it were hung human skeletons, head down. No one entered the enclosure,

except the persons dedicated to the service of the god; only on days when

human victims were sacrificed might ordinary people penetrate into the

precinct. This human god received more sacrifices than all the other gods;

often he would sit on a sort of scaffold in front of his house and call

for two or three human victims at a time. They were always brought, for

the terror he inspired was extreme. He was invoked all over the island,

and offerings were sent to him from every side.(143) Again, of the South

Sea Islands in general we are told that each island had a man who

represented or personified the divinity. Such men were called gods, and

their substance was confounded with that of the deity. The man-god was

sometimes the king himself; oftener he was a priest or subordinate

chief.(144) Tanatoa, King of Raiatea, was deified by a certain ceremony

performed at the chief temple. “As one of the divinities of his subjects,

therefore, the king was worshipped, consulted as an oracle and had

sacrifices and prayers offered to him.”(145) This was not an exceptional

case. The kings of the island regularly enjoyed divine honours, being

deified at the time of their accession.(146) At his inauguration the king

of Tahiti received a sacred girdle of red and yellow feathers, “which not

only raised him to the highest earthly station, but identified him with

their gods.”(147) The gods of Samoa generally appeared in animal form, but

sometimes they were permanently incarnate in men, who gave oracles,

received offerings (occasionally of human flesh), healed the sick,

answered prayers, and so on.(148) In regard to the old religion of the

Fijians, and especially of the inhabitants of Somo-somo, it is said that

“there appears to be no certain line of demarcation between departed

spirits and gods, nor between gods and living men, for many of the priests

and old chiefs are considered as sacred persons, and not a few of them

will also claim to themselves the right of divinity. ‘I am a god,’

Tuikilakila would say; and he believed it too.”(149) In the Pelew Islands

it is believed that every god can take possession of a man and speak

through him. The possession may be either temporary or permanent; in the

latter case the chosen person is called a _korong_. The god is free in his

choice, so the position of _korong_ is not hereditary. After the death of

a _korong_ the god is for some time unrepresented, until he suddenly makes

his appearance in a new Avatar. The person thus chosen gives signs of the

divine presence by behaving in a strange way; he gapes, runs about, and

performs a number of senseless acts. At first people laugh at him, but his

sacred mission is in time recognised, and he is invited to assume his

proper position in the state. Generally this position is a distinguished

one and confers on him a powerful influence over the whole community. In

some of the islands the god is political sovereign of the land; and hence

his new incarnation, however humble his origin, is raised to the same high

rank, and rules, as god and king, over all the other chiefs.(150) In time

of public calamity, as during war or pestilence, some of the Molucca

Islanders used to celebrate a festival of heaven. If no good result

followed, they bought a slave, took him at the next festival to the place

of sacrifice, and set him on a raised place under a certain bamboo-tree.

This tree represented heaven and had been honoured as its image at

previous festivals. The portion of the sacrifice which had previously been

offered to heaven was now given to the slave, who ate and drank it in the

name and stead of heaven. Henceforth the slave was well treated, kept for

the festivals of heaven, and employed to represent heaven and receive the

offerings in its name.(151) In Tonquin every village chooses its guardian

spirit, often in the form of an animal, as a dog, tiger, cat, or serpent.

Sometimes a living person is selected as patron-divinity. Thus a beggar

persuaded the people of a village that he was their guardian spirit; so

they loaded him with honours and entertained him with their best.(152) In

India “every king is regarded as little short of a present god.”(153) The

Indian law-book of Manu goes farther and says that “even an infant king

must not be despised from an idea that he is a mere mortal; for he is a

great deity in human form.”(154) There is said to be a sect in Orissa who

worship the Queen of England as their chief divinity. And to this day in

India all living persons remarkable for great strength or valour or for

supposed miraculous powers run the risk of being worshipped as gods. Thus,

a sect in the Punjaub worshipped a deity whom they called Nikkal Sen. This

Nikkal Sen was no other than the redoubted General Nicholson, and nothing

that the general could do or say damped the enthusiasm of his adorers. The

more he punished them, the greater grew the religious awe with which they

worshipped him.(155) Amongst the Todas, a pastoral people of the

Neilgherry Hills of Southern India, the dairy is a sanctuary, and the

milkman (_pâlâl_) who attends to it is a god. On being asked whether the

Todas salute the sun, one of these divine milkmen replied, “Those poor

fellows do so, but I,” tapping his chest, “I, a god! why should I salute

the sun?” Every one, even his own father, prostrates himself before the

milkman, and no one would dare to refuse him anything. No human being,

except another milkman, may touch him; and he gives oracles to all who

consult him, speaking with the voice of a god.(156)

The King of Iddah told the English officers of the Niger Expedition, “God

made me after his own image; I am all the same as God; and He appointed me

a king.”(157)

Sometimes, at the death of the human incarnation, the divine spirit

transmigrates into another man. In the kingdom of Kaffa, in Eastern

Africa, the heathen part of the people worship a spirit called _Deòce_, to

whom they offer prayer and sacrifice, and whom they invoke on all

important occasions. This spirit is incarnate in the grand magician or

pope, a person of great wealth and influence, ranking almost with the

king, and wielding the spiritual, as the king wields the temporal, power.

It happened that, shortly before the arrival of a Christian missionary in

the kingdom, this African pope died, and the priests, fearing that the

missionary would assume the position vacated by the deceased pope,

declared that the _Deòce_ had passed into the king, who henceforth,

uniting the spiritual with the temporal power, reigned as god and

king.(158) Before beginning to work at the salt-pans in a Laosian village,

the workmen offer sacrifice to a local divinity. This divinity is

incarnate in a woman and transmigrates at her death into another

woman.(159) In Bhotan the spiritual head of the government is a person

called the Dhurma Raja, who is supposed to be a perpetual incarnation of

the deity. At his death the new incarnate god shows himself in an infant

by the refusal of his mother’s milk and a preference for that of a

cow.(160) The Buddhist Tartars believe in a great number of living

Buddhas, who officiate as Grand Lamas at the head of the most important

monasteries. When one of these Grand Lamas dies his disciples do not

sorrow, for they know that he will soon reappear, being born in the form

of an infant. Their only anxiety is to discover the place of his birth. If

at this time they see a rainbow they take it as a sign sent them by the

departed Lama to guide them to his cradle. Sometimes the divine infant

himself reveals his identity. “I am the Grand Lama,” he says, “the living

Buddha of such and such a temple. Take me to my old monastery. I am its

immortal head.” In whatever way the birthplace of the Buddha is revealed,

whether by the Buddha’s own avowal or by the sign in the sky, tents are

struck, and the joyful pilgrims, often headed by the king or one of the

most illustrious of the royal family, set forth to find and bring home the

infant god. Generally he is born in Tibet, the holy land, and to reach him

the caravan has often to traverse the most frightful deserts. When at last

they find the child they fall down and worship him. Before, however, he is

acknowledged as the Grand Lama whom they seek he must satisfy them of his

identity. He is asked the name of the monastery of which he claims to be

the head, how far off it is, and how many monks live in it; he must also

describe the habits of the deceased Grand Lama and the manner of his

death. Then various articles, as prayer-books, tea-pots, and cups, are

placed before him, and he has to point out those used by himself in his

previous life. If he does so without a mistake his claims are admitted,

and he is conducted in triumph to the monastery.(161) At the head of all

the Lamas is the Dalai Lama of Lhasa, the Rome of Tibet. He is regarded as

a living god and at death his divine and immortal spirit is born again in

a child. According to some accounts the mode of discovering the Dalai Lama

is similar to the method, already described, of discovering an ordinary

Grand Lama. Other accounts speak of an election by lot. Wherever he is

born, the trees and plants, it is said, put forth green leaves; at his

bidding flowers bloom and springs of water rise; and his presence diffuses

heavenly blessings. His palace stands on a commanding height; its gilded

cupolas are seen sparkling in the sunlight for miles.(162)

Issuing from the sultry valleys upon the lofty plateau of the Colombian

Andes, the Spanish conquerors were astonished to find, in contrast to the

savage hordes they had left in the sweltering jungles below, a people

enjoying a fair degree of civilisation, practising agriculture, and living

under a government which Humboldt has compared to the theocracies of Tibet

and Japan. These were the Chibchas, Muyscas, or Mozcas, divided into two

kingdoms, with capitals at Bogota and Tunja, but united apparently in

spiritual allegiance to the high pontiff of Sogamozo or Iraca. By a long

and ascetic novitiate, this ghostly ruler was reputed to have acquired

such sanctity that the waters and the rain obeyed him, and the weather

depended on his will.(163) Weather kings are common in Africa. Thus the

Waganda of Central Africa believe in a god of Lake Nyanza, who sometimes

takes up his abode in a man or woman. The incarnate god is much feared by

all the people, including the king and the chiefs. He is consulted as an

oracle; by his word he can inflict or heal sickness, withhold rain, and

cause famine. Large presents are made him when his advice is sought.(164)

Often the king himself is supposed to control the weather. The king of

Loango is honoured by his people “as though he were a god; and he is

called Sambee and Pango, which mean god. They believe that he can let them

have rain when he likes; and once a year, in December, which is the time

they want rain, the people come to beg of him to grant it to them.” On

this occasion the king, standing on his throne, shoots an arrow into the

air, which is supposed to bring on rain.(165) Much the same is said of the

king of Mombaza.(166) The king of Quiteva, in Eastern Africa, ranks with

the deity; “indeed, the Caffres acknowledge no other gods than their

monarch, and to him they address those prayers which other nations are

wont to prefer to heaven.... Hence these unfortunate beings, under the

persuasion that their king is a deity, exhaust their utmost means and ruin

themselves in gifts to obtain with more facility what they need. Thus,

prostrate at his feet, they implore of him, when the weather long

continues dry, to intercede with heaven that they may have rain; and when

too much rain has fallen, that they may have fair weather; thus, also, in

case of winds, storms, and everything, they would either deprecate or

implore.”(167) Amongst the Barotse, a tribe on the upper Zambesi, “there

is an old, but waning belief, that a chief is a demigod, and in heavy

thunderstorms the Barotse flock to the chief’s yard for protection from

the lightning. I have been greatly distressed at seeing them fall on their

knees before the chief, entreating him to open the water-pots of heaven

and send rain upon their gardens.... The king’s servants declare

themselves to be invincible, because they are the servants of God (meaning

_the king_).”(168) The chief of Mowat, New Guinea, is believed to have the

power of affecting the growth of crops for good or ill, and of coaxing the

_dugong_ and turtle to come from all parts and allow themselves to be

taken.(169)

Amongst the Antaymours of Madagascar the king is responsible for the

growth of the crops and for every misfortune that befalls the people.(170)

In many places the king is punished if rain does not fall and the crops do

not turn out well. Thus, in some parts of West Africa, when prayers and

offerings presented to the king have failed to procure rain, his subjects

bind him with ropes and take him by force to the grave of his forefathers,

that he may obtain from them the needed rain.(171) It appears that the

Scythians also, when food was scarce, put their king in bonds.(172) The

Banjars in West Africa ascribe to their king the power of causing rain or

fine weather. So long as the weather is fine they load him with presents

of grain and cattle. But if long drought or rain threatens to spoil the

crops, they insult and beat him till the weather changes.(173) When the

harvest fails or the surf on the coast is too heavy to allow of fishing,

the people of Loango accuse their king of a “bad heart” and depose

him.(174) On the Pepper Coast the high priest or Bodio is responsible for

the health of the community, the fertility of the earth, and the abundance

of fish in the sea and rivers; and if the country suffers in any of these

respects the Bodio is deposed from his office.(175) So the Burgundians of

old deposed their king if the crops failed.(176) Some peoples have gone

further and killed their kings in times of scarcity. Thus, in the time of

the Swedish king Domalde a mighty famine broke out, which lasted several

years, and could be stayed by the blood neither of beasts nor of men. So,

in a great popular assembly held at Upsala, the chiefs decided that king

Domalde himself was the cause of the scarcity and must be sacrificed for

good seasons. So they slew him and smeared with his blood the altars of

the gods. Again, we are told that the Swedes always attributed good or bad

crops to their kings as the cause. Now, in the reign of King Olaf, there

came dear times and famine, and the people thought that the fault was the

king’s, because he was sparing in his sacrifices. So, mustering an army,

they marched against him, surrounded his dwelling, and burned him in it,

“giving him to Odin as a sacrifice for good crops.”(177) In 1814, a

pestilence having broken out among the reindeer of the Chukch, the Shamans

declared that the beloved chief Koch must be sacrificed to the angry gods;

so the chief’s own son stabbed him with a dagger.(178) On the coral island

of Niuē, or Savage Island, in the South Pacific, there formerly reigned a

line of kings. But as the kings were also high priests, and were supposed

to make the food grow, the people became angry with them in times of

scarcity and killed them; till at last, as one after another was killed,

no one would be king, and the monarchy came to an end.(179) As in these

cases the divine kings, so in ancient Egypt the divine beasts, were

responsible for the course of nature. When pestilence and other calamities

had fallen on the land, in consequence of a long and severe drought, the

priests took the sacred animals secretly by night, and threatened them,

but if the evil did not abate they slew the beasts.(180)

From this survey of the religious position occupied by the king in rude

societies we may infer that the claim to divine and supernatural powers

put forward by the monarchs of great historical empires like those of

Egypt, Mexico, and Peru, was not the simple outcome of inflated vanity or

the empty expression of a grovelling adulation; it was merely a survival

and extension of the old savage apotheosis of living kings. Thus, for

example, as children of the Sun the Incas of Peru were revered like gods;

they could do no wrong, and no one dreamed of offending against the

person, honour, or property of the monarch or of any of the royal race.

Hence, too, the Incas did not, like most people, look on sickness as an

evil. They considered it a messenger sent from their father the Sun to

call his son to come and rest with him in heaven. Therefore the usual

words in which an Inca announced his approaching end were these: “My

father calls me to come and rest with him.” They would not oppose their

father’s will by offering sacrifice for recovery, but openly declared that

he had called them to his rest.(181) The Mexican kings at their accession

took an oath that they would make the sun to shine, the clouds to give

rain, the rivers to flow, and the earth to bring forth fruits in

abundance.(182) By Chinese custom the emperor is deemed responsible if the

drought be at all severe, and many are the self-condemnatory edicts on

this subject published in the pages of the _Peking Gazette_. However it is

rather as a high priest than as a god that the Chinese emperor bears the

blame; for in extreme cases he seeks to remedy the evil by personally

offering prayers and sacrifices to heaven.(183) The Parthian monarchs of

the Arsacid house styled themselves brothers of the sun and moon and were

worshipped as deities. It was esteemed sacrilege to strike even a private

member of the Arsacid family in a brawl.(184) The kings of Egypt were

deified in their lifetime, and their worship was celebrated in special

temples and by special priests. Indeed the worship of the kings sometimes

cast that of the gods into the shade. Thus in the reign of Merenra a high

official declared that he had built many holy places in order that the

spirits of the king, the ever-living Merenra, might be invoked “more than

all the gods.”(185) The King of Egypt seems to have shared with the sacred

animals the blame of any failure of the crops.(186) He was addressed as

“Lord of heaven, lord of earth, sun, life of the whole world, lord of

time, measurer of the sun’s course, Tum for men, lord of well-being,

creator of the harvest, maker and fashioner of mortals, bestower of breath

upon all men, giver of life to all the host of gods, pillar of heaven,

threshold of the earth, weigher of the equipoise of both worlds, lord of

rich gifts, increaser of the corn” etc.(187) Yet, as we should expect, the

exalted powers thus ascribed to the king differed in degree rather than in

kind from those which every Egyptian claimed for himself. Tiele observes

that “as every good man at his death became Osiris, as every one in danger

or need could by the use of magic sentences assume the form of a deity, it

is quite comprehensible how the king, not only after death, but already

during his life, was placed on a level with the deity.”(188)

Thus it appears that the same union of sacred functions with a royal title

which meets us in the King of the Wood at Nemi, the Sacrificial King at

Rome and the King Archon at Athens, occurs frequently outside the limits

of classical antiquity and is a common feature of societies at all stages

from barbarism to civilisation. Further, it appears that the royal priest

is often a king in fact as well as in name, swaying the sceptre as well as

the crosier. All this confirms the tradition of the origin of the titular

and priestly kings in the republics of ancient Greece and Italy. At least

by showing that the combination of spiritual and temporal power, of which

Graeco-Italian tradition preserved the memory, has actually existed in

many places, we have obviated any suspicion of improbability that might

have attached to the tradition. Therefore we may now fairly ask, May not

the King of the Wood have had an origin like that which a probable

tradition assigns to the Sacrificial King of Rome and the King Archon of

Athens? In other words, may not his predecessors in office have been a

line of kings whom a republican revolution stripped of their political

power, leaving them only their religious functions and the shadow of a

crown? There are at least two reasons for answering this question in the

negative. One reason is drawn from the abode of the priest of Nemi; the

other from his title, the King of the Wood. If his predecessors had been

kings in the ordinary sense, he would surely have been found residing,

like the fallen kings of Rome and Athens, in the city of which the sceptre

had passed from him. This city must have been Aricia, for there was none

nearer. But Aricia, as we have seen, was three miles off from his forest

sanctuary by the lake shore. If he reigned, it was not in the city, but in

the greenwood. Again his title, King of the Wood, hardly allows us to

suppose that he had ever been a king in the common sense of the word. More

likely he was a king of nature, and of a special side of nature, namely,

the woods from which he took his title. If we could find instances of what

we may call departmental kings of nature, that is of persons supposed to

rule over particular elements or aspects of nature, they would probably

present a closer analogy to the King of the Wood than the divine kings we

have been hitherto considering, whose control of nature is general rather

than special. Instances of such departmental kings are not wanting.

On a hill at Bomma (the mouth of the Congo) dwells Namvulu Vumu, King of

the Rain and Storm.(189) Of some of the tribes on the Upper Nile we are

told that they have no kings in the common sense; the only persons whom

they acknowledge as such are the Kings of the Rain, _Mata Kodou_, who are

credited with the power of giving rain at the proper time, that is in the

rainy season. Before the rains begin to fall at the end of March the

country is a parched and arid desert; and the cattle, which form the

people’s chief wealth, perish for lack of grass. So, when the end of March

draws on, each householder betakes himself to the King of the Rain and

offers him a cow that he may make the rain to fall soon. If no shower

falls, the people assemble and demand that the king shall give them rain;

and if the sky still continues cloudless, they rip up his belly in which

he is believed to keep the storms. Amongst the Bari tribe one of these

Rain Kings made rain by sprinkling water on the ground out of a

hand-bell.(190)

Among tribes on the outskirts of Abyssinia a similar office exists and has

been thus described by an observer. “The priesthood of the Alfai, as he is

called by the Barea and Kunáma, is a remarkable one; he is believed to be

able to make rain. This office formerly existed among the Algeds and

appears to be still common to the Nuba negroes. The Alfai of the Bareas,

who is also consulted by the northern Kunáma, lives near Tembádere on a

mountain alone with his family. The people bring him tribute in the form

of clothes and fruits, and cultivate for him a large field of his own. He

is a kind of king, and his office passes by inheritance to his brother or

sister’s son. He is supposed to conjure down rain and to drive away the

locusts. But if he disappoints the people’s expectation and a great

drought arises in the land, the Alfai is stoned to death, and his nearest

relations are obliged to cast the first stone at him. When we passed

through the country, the office of Alfai was still held by an old man; but

I heard that rain-making had proved too dangerous for him and that he had

renounced his office.”(191)

In the backwoods of Cambodia live two mysterious sovereigns known as the

King of the Fire and the King of the Water. Their fame is spread all over

the south of the great Indo-Chinese peninsula; but only a faint echo of it

has reached the West. No European, so far as is known, has ever seen them;

and their very existence might have passed for a fable, were it not that

till a few years ago communications were regularly maintained between them

and the King of Cambodia, who year by year exchanged presents with them.

The Cambodian gifts were passed from tribe to tribe till they reached

their destination; for no Cambodian would essay the long and perilous

journey. The tribe amongst whom the Kings of Fire and Water reside is the

Chréais or Jaray, a race with European features but a sallow complexion,

inhabiting the forest-clad mountains and high plateaux which separate

Cambodia from Annam. Their royal functions are of a purely mystic or

spiritual order; they have no political authority; they are simple

peasants, living by the sweat of their brow and the offerings of the

faithful. According to one account they live in absolute solitude, never

meeting each other and never seeing a human face. They inhabit

successively seven towers perched upon seven mountains, and every year

they pass from one tower to another. People come furtively and cast within

their reach what is needful for their subsistence. The kingship lasts

seven years, the time necessary to inhabit all the towers successively;

but many die before their time is out. The offices are hereditary in one

or (according to others) two royal families, who enjoy high consideration,

have revenues assigned to them, and are exempt from the necessity of

tilling the ground. But naturally the dignity is not coveted, and when a

vacancy occurs, all eligible men (they must be strong and have children)

flee and hide themselves. Another account, admitting the reluctance of the

hereditary candidates to accept the crown, does not countenance the report

of their hermit-like seclusion in the seven towers. For it represents the

people as prostrating themselves before the mystic kings whenever they

appear in public, it being thought that a terrible hurricane would burst

over the country if this mark of homage were omitted.

The same report says that the Fire King, the more important of the two,

and whose supernatural powers have never been questioned, officiates at

marriages, festivals, and sacrifices in honour of the Yan. On these

occasions a special place is set apart for him; and the path by which he

approaches is spread with white cotton cloths. A reason for confining the

royal dignity to the same family is that this family is in possession of

certain famous talismans which would lose their virtue or disappear if

they passed out of the family. These talismans are three: the fruit of a

creeper called _Cui_, gathered ages ago but still fresh and green; a

rattan, also very old and still not dry; lastly a sword containing a Yan

or spirit, who guards it constantly and works miracles with it. To this

wondrous brand sacrifices of buffaloes, pigs, fowls, and ducks are offered

for rain. It is kept swathed in cotton and silk; and amongst the annual

presents sent by the King of Cambodia were rich stuffs to wrap the sacred

sword.