In return the Kings of Fire and Water sent him a huge wax candle and two

calabashes, one full of rice and the other of sesame. The candle bore the

impress of the Fire King’s middle finger. Probably the candle was thought

to contain the seed of fire, which the Cambodian monarch thus received

once a year fresh from the Fire King himself. The holy candle was kept for

sacred uses. On reaching the capital of Cambodia it was entrusted to the

Brahmans, who laid it up beside the regalia, and with the wax made tapers

which were burned on the altars on solemn days. As the candle was the

special gift of the Fire King, we may conjecture that the rice and sesame

were the special gift of the Water King. The latter was doubtless king of

rain as well as of water, and the fruits of the earth were boons conferred

by him on men. In times of calamity, as during plague, floods, and war, a

little of this sacred rice and sesame was scattered on the ground “to

appease the wrath of the maleficent spirits.”(192)

These, then, are examples of what I have called departmental kings of

nature. But it is a far cry to Italy from the forests of Cambodia and the

sources of the Nile. And though Kings of Rain, Water and Fire have been

found, we have still to discover a King of the Wood to match the Arician

priest who bore that title. Perhaps we shall find him nearer home.

§ 4.—Tree-worship.

In the religious history of the Aryan race in Europe the worship of trees

has played an important part. Nothing could be more natural. For at the

dawn of history Europe was covered with immense primeval forests, in which

the scattered clearings must have appeared like islets in an ocean of

green. Down to the first century before our era the Hercynian forest

stretched eastward from the Rhine for a distance at once vast and unknown;

Germans whom Caesar questioned had travelled for two months through it

without reaching the end.(193) In our own country the wealds of Kent,

Surrey, and Sussex are remnants of the great forest of Anderida, which

once clothed the whole of the south eastern portion of the island.

Westward it seems to have stretched till it joined another forest that

extended from Hampshire to Devon. In the reign of Henry II the citizens of

London still hunted the wild bull and the boar in the forest of Hampstead.

Even under the later Plantagenets the royal forests were sixty-eight in

number. In the forest of Arden it was said that down to modern times a

squirrel might leap from tree to tree for nearly the whole length of

Warwickshire.(194) The excavation of prehistoric pile-villages in the

valley of the Po has shown that long before the rise and probably the

foundation of Rome the north of Italy was covered with dense forests of

elms, chestnuts, and especially of oaks.(195) Archaeology is here

confirmed by history; for classical writers contain many references to

Italian forests which have now disappeared.(196) In Greece the woods of

the present day are a mere fraction of those which clothed great tracts in

antiquity, and which at a more remote epoch may have spanned the Greek

peninsula from sea to sea.(197)

From an examination of the Teutonic words for “temple” Grimm has made it

probable that amongst the Germans the oldest sanctuaries were natural

woods.(198) However this may be, tree-worship is well attested for all the

great European families of the Aryan stock. Amongst the Celts the

oak-worship of the Druids is familiar to every one.(199) Sacred groves

were common among the ancient Germans, and tree-worship is hardly extinct

amongst their descendants at the present day.(200) At Upsala, the old

religious capital of Sweden, there was a sacred grove in which every tree

was regarded as divine.(201) Amongst the ancient Prussians (a Slavonian

people) the central feature of religion was the reverence for the sacred

oaks, of which the chief stood at Romove, tended by a hierarchy of priests

who kept up a perpetual fire of oak-wood in the holy grove.(202) The

Lithuanians were not converted to Christianity till towards the close of

the fourteenth century, and amongst them at the date of their conversion

the worship of trees was prominent.(203) Proofs of the prevalence of

tree-worship in ancient Greece and Italy are abundant.(204) Nowhere,

perhaps, in the ancient world was this antique form of religion better

preserved than in the heart of the great metropolis itself. In the Forum,

the busy centre of Roman life, the sacred fig-tree of Romulus was

worshipped down to the days of the empire, and the withering of its trunk

was enough to spread consternation through the city.(205) Again, on the

slope of the Palatine Hill grew a cornel-tree which was esteemed one of

the most sacred objects in Rome. Whenever the tree appeared to a passer-by

to be drooping, he set up a hue and cry which was echoed by the people in

the street, and soon a crowd might be seen running from all sides with

buckets of water, as if (says Plutarch) they were hastening to put out a

fire.(206)

But it is necessary to examine in some detail the notions on which

tree-worship is based. To the savage the world in general is animate, and

trees are no exception to the rule. He thinks that they have souls like

his own and he treats them accordingly. Thus the Wanika in Eastern Africa

fancy that every tree and especially every cocoa-nut tree has its spirit:

“the destruction of a cocoa-nut tree is regarded as equivalent to

matricide, because that tree gives them life and nourishment, as a mother

does her child.”(207) Siamese monks, believing that there are souls

everywhere and that to destroy anything whatever is forcibly to dispossess

a soul, will not break a branch of a tree “as they will not break the arm

of an innocent person.”(208) These monks, of course, are Buddhists. But

Buddhist animism is not a philosophical theory. It is simply a common

savage dogma incorporated in the system of an historical religion. To

suppose with Benfey and others that the theories of animism and

transmigration current among rude peoples of Asia are derived from

Buddhism is to reverse the facts. Buddhism in this respect borrowed from

savagery, not savagery from Buddhism. Again, the Dyaks ascribe souls to

trees and do not dare to cut down an old tree. In some places, when an old

tree has been blown down, they set it up, smear it with blood, and deck it

with flags “to appease the soul of the tree.”(209) People in Congo place

calabashes of palm-wine at the foot of certain trees for the trees to

drink when they are thirsty.(210) In India shrubs and trees are formally

married to each other or to idols.(211) In the North West Provinces of

India a marriage ceremony is performed in honour of a newly-planted

orchard; a man holding the Salagram represents the bridegroom, and another

holding the sacred Tulsi (_Ocymum sanctum_) represents the bride.(212) On

Christmas Eve German peasants used to tie fruit-trees together with straw

ropes to make them bear fruit, saying that the trees were thus

married.(213)

In the Moluccas when the clove-trees are in blossom they are treated like

pregnant women. No noise must be made near them; no light or fire must be

carried past them at night; no one must approach them with his hat on, but

must uncover his head. These precautions are observed lest the tree should

be frightened and bear no fruit, or should drop its fruit too soon, like

the untimely delivery of a woman who has been frightened in her

pregnancy.(214) So when the paddy (rice) is in bloom the Javanese say it

is pregnant and make no noises (fire no guns, etc.) near the field,

fearing that if they did so the crop would be all straw and no grain.(215)

In Orissa, also, growing rice is “considered as a pregnant woman, and the

same ceremonies are observed with regard to it as in the case of human

females.”(216)

Conceived as animate, trees are necessarily supposed to feel injuries done

to them. When an oak is being felled “it gives a kind of shriekes or

groanes, that may be heard a mile off, as if it were the genius of the

oake lamenting. E. Wyld, Esq., hath heard it severall times.”(217) The

Ojebways “very seldom cut down green or living trees, from the idea that

it puts them to pain, and some of their medicine-men profess to have heard

the wailing of the trees under the axe.”(218) Old peasants in some parts

of Austria still believe that forest-trees are animate, and will not allow

an incision to be made in the bark without special cause; they have heard

from their fathers that the tree feels the cut not less than a wounded man

his hurt. In felling a tree they beg its pardon.(219) So in Jarkino the

woodman craves pardon of the tree he cuts down.(220) Again, when a tree is

cut it is thought to bleed. Some Indians dare not cut a certain plant,

because there comes out a red juice which they take for the blood of the

plant.(221) In Samoa there was a grove of trees which no one dared cut.

Once some strangers tried to do so, but blood flowed from the tree, and

the sacrilegious strangers fell ill and died.(222) Till 1855 there was a

sacred larch-tree at Nauders, in the Tyrol, which was thought to bleed

whenever it was cut; moreover the steel was supposed to penetrate the

woodman’s body to the same depth that it penetrated the tree, and the

wound on the tree and on the man’s body healed together.(223)

Sometimes it is the souls of the dead which are believed to animate the

trees. The Dieyerie tribe of South Australia regard as very sacred certain

trees, which are supposed to be their fathers transformed; hence they will

not cut the trees down, and protest against the settlers doing so.(224)

Some of the Philippine Islanders believe that the souls of their

forefathers are in certain trees, which they therefore spare. If obliged

to fell one of these trees they excuse themselves to it by saying that it

was the priest who made them fell it.(225) In an Annamite story an old

fisherman makes an incision in the trunk of a tree which has drifted

ashore; but blood flows from the cut, and it appears that an empress with

her three daughters, who had been cast into the sea, are embodied in the

tree.(226) The story of Polydorus will occur to readers of Virgil.

In these cases the spirit is viewed as incorporate in the tree; it

animates the tree and must suffer and die with it. But, according to

another and no doubt later view, the tree is not the body, but merely the

abode of the tree-spirit, which can quit the injured tree as men quit a

dilapidated house. Thus when the Pelew Islanders are felling a tree, they

conjure the spirit of the tree to leave it and settle on another.(227) The

Pádams of Assam think that when a child is lost it has been stolen by the

spirits of the wood. So they retaliate on the spirits by cutting down

trees till they find the child. The spirits, fearing to be left without a

tree in which to lodge, give up the child, and it is found in the fork of

a tree.(228) Before the Katodis fell a forest-tree, they choose a tree of

the same kind and worship it by presenting a cocoa-nut, burning incense,

applying a red pigment, and begging it to bless the undertaking.(229) The

intention, perhaps, is to induce the spirit of the former tree to shift

its quarters to the latter. In clearing a wood, a Galeleze must not cut

down the last tree till the spirit in it has been induced to go away.(230)

The Mundaris have sacred groves which were left standing when the land was

cleared, lest the sylvan gods, disquieted at the felling of the trees,

should abandon the place.(231) The Miris in Assam are unwilling to break

up new land for cultivation so long as there is fallow land available; for

they fear to offend the spirits of the woods by cutting down trees

unnecessarily.(232)

In Sumatra, so soon as a tree is felled, a young tree is planted on the

stump; and some betel and a few small coins are also placed on it.(233)

Here the purpose is unmistakable. The spirit of the tree is offered a new

home in the young tree planted on the stump of the old one, and the

offering of betel and money is meant to compensate him for the disturbance

he has suffered. So in the island of Chedooba, on felling a large tree,

one of the woodmen was always ready with a green sprig, which he ran and

placed on the middle of the stump the instant the tree fell.(234) For the

same purpose German woodmen make a cross upon the stump while the tree is

falling, in the belief that this enables the spirit of the tree to live

upon the stump.(235)

Thus the tree is regarded, sometimes as the body, sometimes as merely the

house of the tree-spirit; and when we read of sacred trees which may not

be cut down because they are the seat of spirits, it is not always

possible to say with certainty in which way the presence of the spirit in

the tree is conceived. In the following cases, perhaps, the trees are

conceived as the dwelling-place of the spirits rather than as their

bodies. The old Prussians, it is said, believed that gods inhabited high

trees, such as oaks, from which they gave audible answers to inquirers;

hence these trees were not felled, but worshipped as the homes of

divinities.(236) The great oak at Romove was the especial dwelling-place

of the god; it was veiled with a cloth, which was, however, removed to

allow worshippers to see the sacred tree.(237) The Battas of Sumatra have

been known to refuse to cut down certain trees because they were the abode

of mighty spirits which would resent the injury.(238) The Curka Coles of

India believe that the tops of trees are inhabited by spirits which are

disturbed by the cutting down of the trees and will take vengeance.(239)

The Samogitians thought that if any one ventured to injure certain groves,

or the birds or beasts in them, the spirits would make his hands or feet

crooked.(240)

Even where no mention is made of wood-spirits, we may generally assume

that when a grove is sacred and inviolable, it is so because it is

believed to be either inhabited or animated by sylvan deities. In Livonia

there is a sacred grove in which, if any man fells a tree or breaks a

branch, he will die within the year.(241) The Wotjaks have sacred groves.

A Russian who ventured to hew a tree in one of them fell sick and died

next day.(242) Sacrifices offered at cutting down trees are doubtless

meant to appease the wood-spirits. In Gilgit it is usual to sprinkle

goat’s blood on a tree of any kind before cutting it down.(243) Before

thinning a grove a Roman farmer had to sacrifice a pig to the god or

goddess of the grove.(244) The priestly college of the Arval Brothers at

Rome had to make expiation when a rotten bough fell to the ground in the

sacred grove, or when an old tree was blown down by a storm or dragged

down by a weight of snow on its branches.(245)

When a tree comes to be viewed, no longer as the body of the tree-spirit,

but simply as its dwelling-place which it can quit at pleasure, an

important advance has been made in religious thought. Animism is passing

into polytheism. In other words, instead of regarding each tree as a

living and conscious being, man now sees in it merely a lifeless, inert

mass, tenanted for a longer or shorter time by a supernatural being who,

as he can pass freely from tree to tree, thereby enjoys a certain right of

possession or lordship over the trees, and, ceasing to be a tree-soul,

becomes a forest god. As soon as the tree-spirit is thus in a measure

disengaged from each particular tree, he begins to change his shape and

assume the body of a man, in virtue of a general tendency of early thought

to clothe all abstract spiritual beings in concrete human form. Hence in

classical art the sylvan deities are depicted in human shape, their

woodland character being denoted by a branch or some equally obvious

symbol.(246) But this change of shape does not affect the essential

character of the tree-spirit. The powers which he exercised as a tree-soul

incorporate in a tree, he still continues to wield as a god of trees. This

I shall now prove in detail. I shall show, first, that trees considered as

animate beings are credited with the power of making the rain to fall, the

sun to shine, flocks and herds to multiply, and women to bring forth

easily; and, second, that the very same powers are attributed to tree-gods

conceived as anthropomorphic beings or as actually incarnate in living

men.

First, then, trees or tree-spirits are believed to give rain and sunshine.

When the missionary Jerome of Prague was persuading the heathen

Lithuanians to fell their sacred groves, a multitude of women besought the

Prince of Lithuania to stop him, saying that with the woods he was

destroying the house of god from which they had been wont to get rain and

sunshine.(247) The Mundaris in Assam think if a tree in the sacred grove

is felled, the sylvan gods evince their displeasure by withholding

rain.(248) In Cambodia each village or province has its sacred tree, the

abode of a spirit. If the rains are late, the people sacrifice to the

tree.(249) To extort rain from the tree-spirit a branch is sometimes

dipped in water, as we have seen above.(250) In such cases the spirit is

doubtless supposed to be immanent in the branch, and the water thus

applied to the spirit produces rain by a sort of sympathetic magic,

exactly as we saw that in New Caledonia the rain-makers pour water on a

skeleton, believing that the soul of the deceased will convert the water

into rain.(251) There is hardly room to doubt that Mannhardt is right in

explaining as a rain-charm the European custom of drenching with water the

trees which are cut at certain popular festivals, as midsummer,

Whitsuntide, and harvest.(252)

Again, tree-spirits make the crops to grow. Amongst the Mundaris every

village has its sacred grove, and “the grove deities are held responsible

for the crops, and are especially honoured at all the great agricultural

festivals.”(253) The negroes of the Gold Coast are in the habit of

sacrificing at the foot of certain tall trees, and they think that if one

of these trees were felled, all the fruits of the earth would perish.(254)

Swedish peasants stick a leafy branch in each furrow of their corn-fields,

believing that this will ensure an abundant crop.(255) The same idea comes

out in the German and French custom of the Harvest-May. This is a large

branch or a whole tree, which is decked with ears of corn, brought home on

the last waggon from the harvest-field, and fastened on the roof of the

farmhouse or of the barn, where it remains for a year. Mannhardt has

proved that this branch or tree embodies the tree-spirit conceived as the

spirit of vegetation in general, whose vivifying and fructifying influence

is thus brought to bear upon the corn in particular. Hence in Swabia the

Harvest-May is fastened amongst the last stalks of corn left standing on

the field; in other places it is planted on the cornfield and the last

sheaf cut is fastened to its trunk.(256) The Harvest-May of Germany has

its counterpart in the _eiresione_ of ancient Greece.(257) The _eiresione_

was a branch of olive or laurel, bound about with ribbons and hung with a

variety of fruits. This branch was carried in procession at a harvest

festival and was fastened over the door of the house, where it remained

for a year. The object of preserving the Harvest-May or the _eiresione_

for a year is that the life-giving virtue of the bough may foster the

growth of the crops throughout the year. By the end of the year the virtue

of the bough is supposed to be exhausted and it is replaced by a new one.

Following a similar train of thought some of the Dyaks of Sarawak are

careful at the rice harvest to take up the roots of a certain bulbous

plant, which bears a beautiful crown of white and fragrant flowers. These

roots are preserved with the rice in the granary and are planted again

with the seed-rice in the following season; for the Dyaks say that the

rice will not grow unless a plant of this sort be in the field.(258)

Customs like that of the Harvest-May appear to exist in India and Africa.

At a harvest festival of the Lhoosai of S. E. India the chief goes with

his people into the forest and fells a large tree, which is then carried

into the village and set up in the midst. Sacrifice is offered, and

spirits and rice are poured over the tree. The ceremony closes with a

feast and a dance, at which the unmarried men and girls are the only

performers.(259) Among the Bechuanas the hack-thorn is very sacred, and it

would be a serious offence to cut a bough from it and carry it into the

village during the rainy season. But when the corn is ripe in the ear the

people go with axes, and each man brings home a branch of the sacred

hack-thorn, with which they repair the village cattle-yard.(260) Many

tribes of S. E. Africa will not cut down timber while the corn is green,

fearing that if they did so, the crops would be destroyed by blight, hail,

or early frost.(261)

Again, the fructifying power of the tree is put forth at seed-time as well

as at harvest. Among the Aryan tribes of Gilgit, on the north-western

frontier of India, the sacred tree is the _Chili_, a species of cedar

(_Juniperus excelsa_). At the beginning of wheat-sowing the people receive

from the Raja’s granary a quantity of wheat, which is placed in a skin

mixed with sprigs of the sacred cedar. A large bonfire of the cedar wood

is lighted, and the wheat which is to be sown is held over the smoke. The

rest is ground and made into a large cake, which is baked on the same fire

and given to the ploughman.(262) Here the intention of fertilising the

seed by means of the sacred cedar is unmistakable. In all these cases the

power of fostering the growth of crops, and, in general, of cultivated

plants, is ascribed to trees. The ascription is not unnatural. For the

tree is the largest and most powerful member of the vegetable kingdom, and

man is familiar with it before he takes to cultivating corn. Hence he

naturally places the feebler and, to him, newer plant under the dominion

of the older and more powerful.

Again, the tree-spirit makes the herds to multiply and blesses women with

offspring. The sacred _Chili_ or cedar of Gilgit was supposed to possess

this virtue in addition to that of fertilising the corn. At the

commencement of wheat-sowing three chosen unmarried youths, after

undergoing daily washing and purification for three days, used to start

for the mountain where the cedars grew, taking with them wine, oil, bread,

and fruit of every kind. Having found a suitable tree they sprinkled the

wine and oil on it, while they ate the bread and fruit as a sacrificial

feast. Then they cut off the branch and brought it to the village, where,

amid general rejoicing, it was placed on a large stone beside running

water. “A goat was then sacrificed, its blood poured over the cedar

branch, and a wild dance took place, in which weapons were brandished

about, and the head of the slaughtered goat was borne aloft, after which

it was set up as a mark for arrows and bullet-practice. Every good shot

was rewarded with a gourd full of wine and some of the flesh of the goat.

When the flesh was finished the bones were thrown into the stream and a

general ablution took place, after which every man went to his house

taking with him a spray of the cedar. On arrival at his house he found the

door shut in his face, and on his knocking for admission, his wife asked,

‘What have you brought?’ To which he answered, ‘If you want children, I

have brought them to you; if you want food, I have brought it; if you want

cattle, I have brought them; whatever you want, I have it.’ The door was

then opened and he entered with his cedar spray. The wife then took some

of the leaves and pouring wine and water on them placed them on the fire,

and the rest were sprinkled with flour and suspended from the ceiling. She

then sprinkled flour on her husband’s head and shoulders, and addressed

him thus: ‘Ai Shiri Bagerthum, son of the fairies, you have come from

far!’ _Shiri Bagerthum_, ‘the dreadful king,’ being the form of address to

the cedar when praying for wants to be fulfilled. The next day the wife

baked a number of cakes, and taking them with her, drove the family goats

to the Chili stone. When they were collected round the stone, she began to

pelt them with pebbles, invoking the Chili at the same time. According to

the direction in which the goats ran off, omens were drawn as to the

number and sex of the kids expected during the ensuing year. Walnuts and

pomegranates were then placed on the Chili stone, the cakes were

distributed and eaten, and the goats followed to pasture in whatever

direction they showed a disposition to go. For five days afterwards this

song was sung in all the houses:—

‘Dread Fairy King, I sacrifice before you,

How nobly do you stand! you have filled up my house,

You have brought me a wife when I had not one,

Instead of daughters you have given me sons.

You have shown me the ways of right,

You have given me many children.’ ”(263)

Here the driving of the goats to the stone on which the cedar had been

placed is clearly meant to impart to them the fertilising influence of the

cedar. In Europe the May-tree (May-pole) is supposed to possess similar

powers over both women and cattle. In some parts of Germany on the 1st of

May the peasants set up May-trees at the doors of stables and byres, one

May-tree for each horse and cow; this is thought to make the cows yield

much milk.(264) Camden says of the Irish, “They fancy a green bough of a

tree, fastened on May-day against the house, will produce plenty of milk

that summer.”(265)

On the 2d of July some of the Wends used to set up an oak-tree in the

middle of the village with an iron cock fastened to its top; then they

danced round it, and drove the cattle round it to make them thrive.(266)

Some of the Esthonians believe in a mischievous spirit called Metsik, who

lives in the forest and has the weal of the cattle in his hands. Every

year a new image of him is prepared. On an appointed day all the villagers

assemble and make a straw man, dress him in clothes, and take him to the

common pasture land of the village. Here the figure is fastened to a high

tree, round which the people dance noisily. On almost every day of the

year prayer and sacrifice are offered to him that he may protect the

cattle. Sometimes the image of Metsik is made of a corn-sheaf and fastened

to a tall tree in the wood. The people perform strange antics before it to

induce Metsik to guard the corn and the cattle.(267)

The Circassians regard the pear-tree as the protector of cattle. So they

cut down a young pear-tree in the forest, branch it, and carry it home,

where it is adored as a divinity. Almost every house has one such

pear-tree. In autumn, on the day of the festival, it is carried into the

house with great ceremony to the sound of music and amid the joyous cries

of all the inmates, who compliment it on its fortunate arrival. It is

covered with candles, and a cheese is fastened to its top. Round about it

they eat, drink, and sing. Then they bid it good-bye and take it back to

the courtyard, where it remains for the rest of the year, set up against

the wall, without receiving any mark of respect.(268)

The common European custom of placing a green bush on May Day before the

house of a beloved maiden probably originated in the belief of the

fertilising power of the tree-spirit.(269) Amongst the Kara-Kirgiz barren

women roll themselves on the ground under a solitary apple-tree, in order

to obtain offspring.(270) Lastly, the power of granting to women an easy

delivery at child-birth is ascribed to trees both in Sweden and Africa. In

some districts of Sweden there was formerly a _bårdträd_ or guardian-tree

(lime, ash, or elm) in the neighbourhood of every farm. No one would pluck

a single leaf of the sacred tree, any injury to which was punished by

ill-luck or sickness. Pregnant women used to clasp the tree in their arms

in order to ensure an easy delivery.(271) In some negro tribes of the

Congo region pregnant women make themselves garments out of the bark of a

certain sacred tree, because they believe that this tree delivers them

from the dangers that attend child-bearing.(272) The story that Leto

clasped a palm-tree and an olive-tree or two laurel-trees when she was

about to give birth to Apollo and Artemis perhaps points to a similar

Greek belief in the efficacy of certain trees to facilitate delivery.(273)

From this review of the beneficent qualities commonly ascribed to

tree-spirits, it is easy to understand why customs like the May-tree or

May-pole have prevailed so widely and figured so prominently in the

popular festivals of European peasants. In spring or early summer or even

on Midsummer Day, it was and still is in many parts of Europe the custom

to go out to the woods, cut down a tree and bring it into the village,

where it is set up amid general rejoicings. Or the people cut branches in

the woods, and fasten them on every house. The intention of these customs

is to bring home to the village, and to each house, the blessings which

the tree-spirit has in its power to bestow. Hence the custom in some

places of planting a May-tree before every house, or of carrying the

village May-tree from door to door, that every household may receive its

share of the blessing. Out of the mass of evidence on this subject a few

examples may be selected.

Sir Henry Piers, in his _Description of Westmeath_, writing in 1682 says:

“On May-eve, every family sets up before their door a green bush, strewed

over with yellow flowers, which the meadows yield plentifully. In

countries where timber is plentiful, they erect tall slender trees, which

stand high, and they continue almost the whole year; so as a stranger

would go nigh to imagine that they were all signs of ale-sellers, and that

all houses were ale-houses.”(274) In Northamptonshire a young tree ten or

twelve feet high used to be planted before each house on May Day so as to

appear growing.(275) “An antient custom, still retained by the Cornish, is

that of decking their doors and porches on the 1st of May with green

boughs of sycamore and hawthorn, and of planting trees, or rather stumps

of trees, before their houses.”(276) In the north of England it was

formerly the custom for young people to rise very early on the morning of

the 1st of May, and go out with music into the woods, where they broke

branches and adorned them with nosegays and crowns of flowers. This done,

they returned about sunrise and fastened the flower-decked branches over

the doors and windows of their houses.(277) At Abingdon in Berkshire young

people formerly went about in groups on May morning, singing a carol of

which the following are some of the verses—

“We’ve been rambling all the night;

And sometime of this day;

And now returning back again,

We bring a garland gay.

“A garland gay we bring you here;

And at your door we stand;

It is a sprout well budded out,

The work of our Lord’s hand.”(278)

At the villages of Saffron Walden and Debden in Essex on the 1st of May

little girls go about in parties from door to door singing a song almost

identical with the above and carrying garlands; a doll dressed in white is

usually placed in the middle of each garland.(279) At Seven Oaks on May

Day the children carry boughs and garlands from house to house, begging

for pence. The garlands consist of two hoops interlaced crosswise, and

covered with blue and yellow flowers from the woods and hedges.(280) In

some villages of the Vosges Mountains on the first Sunday of May young

girls go in bands from house to house, singing a song in praise of May, in

which mention is made of the “bread and meal that come in May.” If money

is given them, they fasten a green bough to the door; if it is refused,

they wish the family many children and no bread to feed them.(281) In

Mayenne (France), boys who bore the name of _Maillotins_ used to go about

from farm to farm on the 1st of May singing carols, for which they

received money or a drink; they planted a small tree or a branch of a

tree.(282)

On the Thursday before Whitsunday the Russian villagers “go out into the

woods, sing songs, weave garlands, and cut down a young birch-tree, which

they dress up in woman’s clothes, or adorn with many-coloured shreds and

ribbons. After that comes a feast, at the end of which they take the

dressed-up birch-tree, carry it home to their village with joyful dance

and song, and set it up in one of the houses, where it remains as an

honoured guest till Whitsunday. On the two intervening days they pay

visits to the house where their ‘guest’ is; but on the third day,

Whitsunday, they take her to a stream and fling her into its waters,”

throwing their garlands after her. “All over Russia every village and

every town is turned, a little before Whitsunday, into a sort of garden.

Everywhere along the streets the young birch-trees stand in rows, every

house and every room is adorned with boughs, even the engines upon the

railway are for the time decked with green leaves.”(283) In this Russian

custom the dressing of the birch in woman’s clothes shows how clearly the

tree is conceived as personal; and the throwing it into a stream is most

probably a rain-charm. In some villages of Altmark it was formerly the

custom for serving-men, grooms, and cowherds to go from farm to farm at

Whitsuntide distributing crowns made of birch-branches and flowers to the

farmers; these crowns were hung up in the houses and left till the

following year.(284)

In the neighbourhood of Zabern in Alsace bands of people go about carrying

May-trees. Amongst them is a man dressed in a white shirt, with his face

blackened; in front of him is carried a large May-tree, but each member of

the band also carries a smaller one. One of the company carries a huge

basket in which he collects eggs, bacon, etc.(285) In some parts of Sweden

on the eve of May Day lads go about carrying each a bunch of

fresh-gathered birch twigs, wholly or partially in leaf. With the village

fiddler at their head they go from house to house singing May songs; the

purport of which is a prayer for fine weather, a plentiful harvest, and

worldly and spiritual blessings. One of them carries a basket in which he

collects gifts of eggs and the like. If they are well received they stick

a leafy twig in the roof over the cottage door.(286)

But in Sweden midsummer is the season when these ceremonies are chiefly

observed. On the Eve of St. John (23d June) the houses are thoroughly

cleansed and garnished with green boughs and flowers. Young fir-trees are

raised at the door-way and elsewhere about the homestead; and very often

small umbrageous arbours are constructed in the garden. In Stockholm on

this day a leaf-market is held at which thousands of May-poles (_Maj

Stănger_) six inches to twelve feet high, decorated with leaves, flowers,

slips of coloured paper, gilt egg-shells, strung on reeds, etc. are

exposed for sale. Bonfires are lit on the hills and the people dance round

them and jump over them. But the chief event of the day is setting up the

May-pole. This consists of a straight and tall spruce-pine tree, stripped

of its branches. “At times hoops and at others pieces of wood, placed

crosswise, are attached to it at intervals; whilst at others it is

provided with bows, representing so to say, a man with his arms akimbo.

From top to bottom not only the ‘Maj Stăng’ (May-pole) itself, but the

hoops, bows, etc. are ornamented with leaves, flowers, slips of various

cloth, gilt egg-shells, etc.; and on the top of it is a large vane, or it

may be a flag.” The raising of the May-pole, the decoration of which is

done by the village maidens, is an affair of much ceremony; the people

flock to it from all quarters and dance round it in a great ring.(287) In

some parts of Bohemia also a May-pole or midsummer-tree is erected on St.

John’s Eve. The lads fetch a tall fir or pine from the wood and set it up

on a height, where the girls deck it with nosegays, garlands, and red

ribbons. Then they pile brushwood, dry wood, and other combustible

materials about the tree, and, when darkness has fallen, set the whole on

fire. While the fire was burning the lads used to climb up the tree and

fetch down the garlands and ribbons which the girls had fastened to it;

but as this led to accidents, the custom has been forbidden. Sometimes the

young people fling burning besoms into the air, or run shouting down hill

with them. When the tree is consumed, the young men and their sweethearts

stand on opposite sides of the fire, and look at each other through

garlands and through the fire, to see whether they will be true lovers and

will wed. Then they throw the garlands thrice across the smouldering fire

to each other. When the blaze has died down, the couples join hands and

leap thrice across the glowing embers. The singed garlands are taken home,

and kept carefully in the house throughout the year. Whenever a

thunder-storm bursts, part of the garlands are burned on the hearth; and

when the cattle are sick or are calving, they get a portion of the

garlands to eat. The charred embers of the bonfire are stuck in the

cornfields and meadows and on the roof of the house, to keep house and

field from bad weather and injury.(288)

It is hardly necessary to illustrate the custom of setting up a village

May-tree or May-pole on May Day. One point only—the renewal of the village

May-tree—requires to be noticed. In England the village May-pole seems as

a rule, at least in later times, to have been permanent, not renewed from

year to year.(289) Sometimes, however, it was renewed annually. Thus,

Borlase says of the Cornish people: “From towns they make incursions, on

May-eve, into the country, cut down a tall elm, bring it into the town

with rejoicings, and having fitted a straight taper pole to the end of it,

and painted it, erect it in the most public part, and upon holidays and

festivals dress it with garlands of flowers or ensigns and

streamers.”(290) An annual renewal seems also to be implied in the

description by Stubbs, a Puritanical writer, of the custom of drawing home

the May-pole by twenty or forty yoke of oxen.(291) In some parts of

Germany and Austria the May-tree or Whitsuntide-tree is renewed annually,

a fresh tree being felled and set up.(292)

We can hardly doubt that originally the practice everywhere was to set up

a new May-tree every year. As the object of the custom was to bring in the

fructifying spirit of vegetation, newly awakened in spring, the end would

have been defeated if, instead of a living tree, green and sappy, an old

withered one had been erected year after year or allowed to stand

permanently. When, however, the meaning of the custom had been forgotten,

and the May-tree was regarded simply as a centre for holiday merrymaking,

people saw no reason for felling a fresh tree every year, and preferred to

let the same tree stand permanently, only decking it with fresh flowers on

May Day. But even when the May-pole had thus become a fixture, the need of

giving it the appearance of being a green tree, not a dead pole, was

sometimes felt. Thus at Weverham in Cheshire “are two May-poles, which are

decorated on this day (May Day) with all due attention to the ancient

solemnity; the sides are hung with garlands, and the top terminated by a

birch or other tall slender tree with its leaves on; the bark being

peeled, and the stem spliced to the pole, so as to give the appearance of

one tree from the summit.”(293) Thus the renewal of the May-tree is like

the renewal of the Harvest-May; each is intended to secure a fresh portion

of the fertilising spirit of vegetation, and to preserve it throughout the

year. But whereas the efficacy of the Harvest-May is restricted to

promoting the growth of the crops, that of the May-tree or May-branch

extends also, as we have seen, to women and cattle. Lastly, it is worth

noting that the old May-tree is sometimes burned at the end of the year.

Thus in the district of Prague young people break pieces off the public

May-tree and place them behind the holy pictures in their rooms, where

they remain till next May Day, and are then burned on the hearth.(294) In

Würtemberg the bushes which are set up on the houses on Palm Sunday are

sometimes left there for a year and then burnt.(295) The _eiresione_ (the

Harvest-May of Greece) was perhaps burned at the end of the year.(296)

So much for the tree-spirit conceived as incorporate or immanent in the

tree. We have now to show that the tree-spirit is often conceived and

represented as detached from the tree and clothed in human form, and even

as embodied in living men or women. The evidence for this anthropomorphic

representation of the tree-spirit is largely to be found in the popular

customs of European peasantry.

There is an instructive class of cases in which the tree-spirit is

represented simultaneously in vegetable form and in human form, which are

set side by side as if for the express purpose of explaining each other.

In these cases the human representative of the tree-spirit is sometimes a

doll or puppet, sometimes a living person; but whether a puppet or a

person, it is placed beside a tree or bough; so that together the person

or puppet, and the tree or bough, form a sort of bilingual inscription,

the one being, so to speak, a translation of the other. Here, therefore,

there is no room left for doubt that the spirit of the tree is actually

represented in human form. Thus in Bohemia, on the fourth Sunday in Lent,

young people throw a puppet called Death into the water; then the girls go

into the wood, cut down a young tree, and fasten to it a puppet dressed in

white clothes to look like a woman; with this tree and puppet they go from

house to house collecting gratuities and singing songs with the refrain—

“We carry Death out of the village,

We bring Summer into the village.”(297)

Here, as we shall see later on, the “Summer” is the spirit of vegetation

returning or reviving in spring. In some places in this country children

go about asking for pence with some small imitations of May-poles, and

with a finely dressed doll which they call the Lady of the May.(298) In

these cases the tree and the puppet are obviously regarded as equivalent.

At Thann, in Alsace, a girl called the Little May Rose, dressed in white,

carries a small May-tree, which is gay with garlands and ribbons. Her

companions collect gifts from door to door, singing a song—

“Little May Rose turn round three times,

Let us look at you round and round!

Rose of the May, come to the greenwood away,

We will be merry all.

So we go from the May to the roses.”

In the course of the song a wish is expressed that those who give nothing

may lose their fowls by the marten, that their vine may bear no clusters,

their tree no nuts, their field no corn; the produce of the year is

supposed to depend on the gifts offered to these May singers.(299) Here

and in the cases mentioned above, where children go about with green

boughs on May Day singing and collecting money, the meaning is that with

the spirit of vegetation they bring plenty and good luck to the house, and

they expect to be paid for the service. In Russian Lithuania, on the 1st

of May, they used to set up a green tree before the village. Then the

rustic swains chose the prettiest girl, crowned her, swathed her in birch

branches and set her beside the May-tree, where they danced, sang, and

shouted “O May! O May!”(300) In Brie (Isle de France) a May-tree is set up

in the midst of the village; its top is crowned with flowers; lower down

it is twined with leaves and twigs, still lower with huge green branches.

The girls dance round it, and at the same time a lad wrapt in leaves and

called Father May is led about.(301) In Bavaria, on the 2d of May, a

_Walber_ (?) tree is erected before a tavern, and a man dances round it,

enveloped in straw from head to foot in such a way that the ears of corn

unite above his head to form a crown. He is called the _Walber_, and used

to be led in solemn procession through the streets, which were adorned

with sprigs of birch.(302) In Carinthia, on St. George’s Day (24th April),

the young people deck with flowers and garlands a tree which has been

felled on the eve of the festival. The tree is then carried in procession,

accompanied with music and joyful acclamations, the chief figure in the

procession being the Green George, a young fellow clad from head to foot

in green birch branches. At the close of the ceremonies the Green George,

that is an effigy of him, is thrown into the water. It is the aim of the

lad who acts Green George to step out of his leafy envelope and substitute

the effigy so adroitly that no one shall perceive the change. In many

places, however, the lad himself who plays the part of Green George is

ducked in a river or pond, with the express intention of thus ensuring

rain to make the fields and meadows green in summer. In some places the

cattle are crowned and driven from their stalls to the accompaniment of a

song—

“Green George we bring,

Green George we accompany,

May he feed our herds well,

If not, to the water with him.”(303)

Here we see that the same powers of making rain and fostering the cattle,

which are ascribed to the tree-spirit regarded as incorporate in the tree,

are also attributed to the tree-spirit represented by a living man.

An example of the double representation of the spirit of vegetation by a

tree and a living man is reported from Bengal. The Oraons have a festival

in spring while the sál trees are in blossom, because they think that at

this time the marriage of earth is celebrated and the sál flowers are

necessary for the ceremony. On an appointed day the villagers go with

their priest to the Sarna, the sacred grove, a remnant of the old sál

forest in which a goddess Sarna Burhi, or woman of the grove, is supposed

to dwell. She is thought to have great influence on the rain; and the

priest arriving with his party at the grove sacrifices to her five fowls,

of which a morsel is given to each person present. Then they gather the

sál flowers and return laden with them to the village. Next day the priest

visits every house, carrying the flowers in a wide open basket. The women

of each house bring out water to wash his feet as he approaches, and

kneeling make him an obeisance. Then he dances with them and places some

of the sál flowers over the door of the house and in the women’s hair. No

sooner is this done than the women empty their water-jugs over him,

drenching him to the skin. A feast follows, and the young people, with sál

flowers in their hair, dance all night on the village green.(304) Here,

the equivalence of the flower-bearing priest to the goddess of the

flowering-tree comes out plainly. For she is supposed to influence the

rain, and the drenching of the priest with water is, doubtless, like the

ducking of the Green George in Bavaria, a rain-charm. Thus the priest, as

if he were the tree goddess herself, goes from door to door dispensing

rain and bestowing fruitfulness on each house, but especially on the

women.

Without citing more examples to the same effect, we may sum up the result

of the preceding paragraphs in the words of Mannhardt. “The customs quoted

suffice to establish with certainty the conclusion that in these spring

processions the spirit of vegetation is often represented both by the

May-tree and in addition by a man dressed in green leaves or flowers or by

a girl similarly adorned. It is the same spirit which animates the tree

and is active in the inferior plants and which we have recognised in the

May-tree and the Harvest-May. Quite consistently the spirit is also

supposed to manifest his presence in the first flower of spring and

reveals himself both in a girl representing a May-rose, and also, as giver

of harvest, in the person of the _Walber_. The procession with this

representative of the divinity was supposed to produce the same beneficial

effects on the fowls, the fruit-trees, and the crops as the presence of

the deity himself. In other words, the mummer was regarded not as an image

but as an actual representative of the spirit of vegetation; hence the

wish expressed by the attendants on the May-rose and the May-tree that

those who refuse them gifts of eggs, bacon, etc. may have no share in the

blessings which it is in the power of the itinerant spirit to bestow. We

may conclude that these begging processions with May-trees or May-boughs

from door to door (‘bringing the May or the summer’) had everywhere

originally a serious and, so to speak, sacramental significance; people

really believed that the god of growth was present unseen in the bough; by

the procession he was brought to each house to bestow his blessing. The

names May, Father May, May Lady, Queen of the May, by which the

anthropomorphic spirit of vegetation is often denoted, show that the

conception of the spirit of vegetation is blent with a personification of

the season at which his powers are most strikingly manifested.”(305)

Thus far we have seen that the tree-spirit or the spirit of vegetation in

general is represented either in vegetable form alone, as by a tree,

bough, or flower; or in vegetable and human form simultaneously, as by a

tree, bough, or flower in combination with a puppet or a living person. It

remains to show that the representation of him by a tree, bough, or flower

is sometimes entirely dropped, while the representation of him by a living

person remains. In this case the representative character of the person is

generally marked by dressing him or her in leaves or flowers; sometimes

too it is indicated by the name he or she bears.

We saw that in Russia at Whitsuntide a birch-tree is dressed in woman’s

clothes and set up in the house. Clearly equivalent to this is the custom

observed on Whit-Monday by Russian girls in the district of Pinsk. They

choose the prettiest of their number, envelop her in a mass of foliage

taken from the birch-trees and maples, and carry her about through the

village. In a district of Little Russia they take round a “poplar,”

represented by a girl wearing bright flowers in her hair.(306) In the

Département de l’Ain (France) on the 1st of May eight or ten boys unite,

clothe one of their number in leaves, and go from house to house

begging.(307) At Whitsuntide in Holland poor women used to go about

begging with a little girl called Whitsuntide Flower (_Pinxterbloem_,

perhaps a kind of iris); she was decked with flowers and sat in a waggon.

In North Brabant she wears the flowers from which she takes her name and a

song is sung—

“Whitsuntide Flower

Turn yourself once round.”(308)

In Ruhla (Thüringen) as soon as the trees begin to grow green in spring,

the children assemble on a Sunday and go out into the woods, where they

choose one of their playmates to be the Little Leaf Man. They break

branches from the trees and twine them about the child till only his shoes

peep out from the leafy mantle. Holes are made in it for him to see

through, and two of the children lead the Little Leaf Man that he may not

stumble or fall. Singing and dancing they take him from house to house,

asking for gifts of food (eggs, cream, sausage, cakes). Lastly they

sprinkle the Leaf Man with water and feast on the food they have

collected.(309) In England the best-known example of these leaf-clad

mummers is the Jack-in-the-Green, a chimney-sweeper who walks encased in a

pyramidal-shaped framework of wicker-work, which is covered with holly and

ivy, and surmounted by a crown of flowers and ribbons. Thus arrayed he

dances on May Day at the head of a troop of chimney-sweeps, who collect

pence.(310) In some parts also of France a young fellow is encased in a

wicker framework covered with leaves and is led about.(311) In Frickthal

(Aargau) a similar frame of basketwork is called the Whitsuntide Basket.

As soon as the trees begin to bud, a spot is chosen in the wood, and here

the village lads make the frame with all secrecy, lest others should

forestall them. Leafy branches are twined round two hoops, one of which

rests on the shoulders of the wearer, the other encircles his calves;

holes are made for his eyes and mouth; and a large nosegay crowns the

whole. In this guise he appears suddenly in the village at the hour of

vespers, preceded by three boys blowing on horns made of willow bark. The

great object of his supporters is to set up the Whitsuntide Basket beside

the village well, and to keep it and him there, despite the efforts of the

lads from neighbouring villages, who seek to carry off the Whitsuntide

Basket and set it up at their own well.(312) In the neighbourhood of

Ertingen (Würtemberg) a masker of the same sort, known as the Lazy Man

(_Latzmann_), goes about the village on Midsummer Day; he is hidden under

a great pyramidal or conical frame of wicker-work, ten or twelve feet

high, which is completely covered with sprigs of fir. He has a bell which

he rings as he goes, and he is attended by a suite of persons dressed up

in character—a footman, a colonel, a butcher, an angel, the devil, the

doctor, etc. They march in Indian file and halt before every house, where

each of them speaks in character, except the Lazy Man, who says nothing.

With what they get by begging from door to door they hold a feast.(313)

In the class of cases of which the above are specimens it is obvious that

the leaf-clad person who is led about is equivalent to the May-tree,

May-bough, or May-doll, which is carried from house to house by children

begging. Both are representatives of the beneficent spirit of vegetation,

whose visit to the house is recompensed by a present of money or food.

Often the leaf-clad person who represents the spirit of vegetation is

known as the king or the queen; thus, for example, he or she is called the

May King, Whitsuntide King, Queen of May, and so on. These titles, as

Mannhardt observes, imply that the spirit incorporate in vegetation is a

ruler, whose creative power extends far and wide.(314)

In a village near Salzwedel a May-tree is set up at Whitsuntide and the

boys race to it; he who reaches it first is king; a garland of flowers is

put round his neck and in his hand he carries a May-bush, with which, as

the procession moves along, he sweeps away the dew. At each house they

sing a song, wishing the inmates good luck, referring to the “black cow in

the stall milking white milk, black hen on the nest laying white eggs,”

and begging a gift of eggs, bacon, etc.(315) In some villages of Brunswick

at Whitsuntide a May King is completely enveloped in a May-bush. In some

parts of Thüringen also they have a May King at Whitsuntide, but he is got

up rather differently. A frame of wood is made in which a man can stand;

it is completely covered with birch boughs and is surmounted by a crown of

birch and flowers, in which a bell is fastened. This frame is placed in

the wood and the May King gets into it. The rest go out and look for him,

and when they have found him they lead him back into the village to the

magistrate, the clergyman, and others, who have to guess who is in the

verdurous frame. If they guess wrong, the May King rings his bell by

shaking his head, and a forfeit of beer or the like must be paid by the

unsuccessful guesser.(316) In some parts of Bohemia on Whit-Monday the

young fellows disguise themselves in tall caps of birch bark adorned with

flowers. One of them is dressed as a king and dragged on a sledge to the

village green, and if on the way they pass a pool the sledge is always

overturned into it. Arrived at the green they gather round the king; the

crier jumps on a stone or climbs up a tree and recites lampoons about each

house and its inmates. Afterwards the disguises of bark are stripped off

and they go about the village in holiday attire, carrying a May-tree and

begging. Cakes, eggs, and corn are sometimes given them.(317) At

Grossvargula, near Langensalza, in last century a Grass King used to be

led about in procession at Whitsuntide. He was encased in a pyramid of

poplar branches, the top of which was adorned with a royal crown of

branches and flowers. He rode on horseback with the leafy pyramid over

him, so that its lower end touched the ground, and an opening was left in

it only for his face. Surrounded by a cavalcade of young fellows, he rode

in procession to the town hall, the parsonage, etc., where they all got a

drink of beer. Then under the seven lindens of the neighbouring

Sommerberg, the Grass King was stripped of his green casing; the crown was

handed to the Mayor, and the branches were stuck in the flax fields in

order to make the flax grow tall.(318) In this last trait the fertilising

influence ascribed to the representative of the tree-spirit comes out

clearly. In the neighbourhood of Pilsen (Bohemia) a conical hut of green

branches, without any door, is erected at Whitsuntide in the midst of the

village. To this hut rides a troop of village lads with a king at their

head. He wears a sword at his side and a sugar-loaf hat of rushes on his

head. In his train are a judge, a crier, and a personage called the

Frog-flayer or Hangman. This last is a sort of ragged merryandrew, wearing

a rusty old sword and bestriding a sorry hack. On reaching the hut the

crier dismounts and goes round it looking for a door. Finding none, he

says, “Ah, this is perhaps an enchanted castle; the witches creep through

the leaves and need no door.” At last he draws his sword and hews his way

into the hut, where there is a chair, on which he seats himself and

proceeds to criticise in rhyme the girls, farmers, and farm-servants of

the neighbourhood. When this is over, the Frog-flayer steps forward and,

after exhibiting a cage with frogs in it, sets up a gallows on which he

hangs the frogs in a row.(319) In the neighbourhood of Plas the ceremony

differs in some points. The king and his soldiers are completely clad in

bark, adorned with flowers and ribbons; they all carry swords and ride

horses, which are gay with green branches and flowers. While the village

dames and girls are being criticised at the arbour, a frog is secretly

pinched and poked by the crier till it quacks. Sentence of death is passed

on the frog by the king; the hangman beheads it and flings the bleeding

body among the spectators. Lastly, the king is driven from the hut and

pursued by the soldiers.(320) The pinching and beheading of the frog are

doubtless, as Mannhardt observes,(321) a rain-charm. We have seen(322)

that some Indians of the Orinoco beat frogs for the express purpose of

producing rain, and that killing a frog is a German rain-charm.

Often the spirit of vegetation in spring is represented by a queen instead

of a king. In the neighbourhood of Libchowic (Bohemia), on the fourth

Sunday in Lent, girls dressed in white and wearing the first spring

flowers, as violets and daisies, in their hair, lead about the village a

girl who is called the Queen and is crowned with flowers. During the

procession, which is conducted with great solemnity, none of the girls may

stand still, but must keep whirling round continually and singing. In

every house the Queen announces the arrival of spring and wishes the

inmates good luck and blessings, for which she receives presents.(323) In

German Hungary the girls choose the prettiest girl to be their Whitsuntide

Queen, fasten a towering wreath on her brow, and carry her singing through

the streets. At every house they stop, sing old ballads, and receive

presents.(324) In the south-east of Ireland on May Day the prettiest girl

used to be chosen Queen of the district for twelve months. She was crowned

with wild flowers; feasting, dancing, and rustic sports followed, and were

closed by a grand procession in the evening. During her year of office she

presided over rural gatherings of young people at dances and merrymakings.

If she married before next May Day her authority was at an end, but her

successor was not elected till that day came round.(325) The May Queen is

common in France(326) and familiar in England.

Again the spirit of vegetation is sometimes represented by a king and

queen, a lord and lady, or a bridegroom and bride. Here again the

parallelism holds between the anthropomorphic and the vegetable

representation of the tree-spirit, for we have seen above that trees are

sometimes married to each other.(327) In a village near Königgrätz

(Bohemia) on Whit-Monday the children play the king’s game, at which a

king and a queen march about under a canopy, the queen wearing a garland,

and the youngest girl carrying two wreaths on a plate behind them. They

are attended by boys and girls called groom’s men and bridesmaids, and

they go from house to house collecting gifts.(328) Near Grenoble, in

France, a king and queen are chosen on the 1st of May and are set on a

throne for all to see.(329) At Headington, near Oxford, children used to

carry garlands from door to door on May Day. Each garland was carried by

two girls, and they were followed by a lord and lady—a boy and girl linked

together by a white handkerchief, of which each held an end, and dressed

with ribbons, sashes, and flowers. At each door they sang a verse—

“Gentlemen and ladies,

We wish you happy May;

We come to show you a garland,

Because it is May-day.”

On receiving money the lord put his arm about his lady’s waist and kissed

her.(330) In some Saxon villages at Whitsuntide a lad and a lass disguise

themselves and hide in the bushes or high grass outside the village. Then

the whole village goes out with music “to seek the bridal pair.” When they

find the couple they all gather round them, the music strikes up, and the

bridal pair is led merrily to the village. In the evening they dance. In

some places the bridal pair is called the prince and the princess.(331)

In the neighbourhood of Briançon (Dauphiné) on May Day the lads wrap up in

green leaves a young fellow whose sweetheart has deserted him or married

another. He lies down on the ground and feigns to be asleep. Then a girl

who likes him, and would marry him, comes and wakes him, and raising him

up offers him her arm and a flag. So they go to the alehouse, where the

pair lead off the dancing. But they must marry within the year, or they

are treated as old bachelor and old maid, and are debarred the company of

the young folk. The lad is called the bridegroom of the month of May (_le

fiancé du mois de May_). In the alehouse he puts off his garment of

leaves, out of which, mixed with flowers, his partner in the dance makes a

nosegay, and wears it at her breast next day, when he leads her again to

the alehouse.(332) Like this is a Russian custom observed in the district

of Nerechta on the Thursday before Whitsunday. The girls go out into a

birch-wood, wind a girdle or band round a stately birch, twist its lower

branches into a wreath, and kiss each other in pairs through the wreath.

The girls who kiss through the wreath call each other gossips. Then one of

the girls steps forward, and mimicking a drunken man, flings herself on

the ground, rolls on the grass, and feigns to go fast asleep. Another girl

wakens the pretended sleeper and kisses him; then the whole bevy trips

singing through the wood to twine garlands, which they throw into the

water. In the fate of the garlands floating on the stream they read their

own.(333) In this custom the rôle of the sleeper was probably at one time

sustained by a lad. In these French and Russian customs we have a forsaken

bridegroom, in the following a forsaken bride. On Shrove Tuesday the

Slovenes of Oberkrain drag a straw puppet with joyous cries up and down

the village; then they throw it into the water or burn it, and from the

height of the flames they judge of the abundance of the next harvest. The

noisy crew is followed by a female masker, who drags a great board by a

string and gives out that she is a forsaken bride.(334)

Viewed in the light of what has gone before, the awakening of the forsaken

sleeper in these ceremonies probably represents the revival of vegetation

in spring. But it is not easy to assign their respective rôles to the

forsaken bridegroom and to the girl who wakes him from his slumber. Is the

sleeper the leafless forest or the bare earth of winter? Is the girl who

wakens him the fresh verdure or the genial sunshine of spring? It is

hardly possible, on the evidence before us, to answer these questions. The

Oraons of Bengal, it may be remembered, celebrate the marriage of earth in

the springtime, when the sál-tree is in blossom. But from this we can

hardly argue that in the European ceremonies the sleeping bridegroom is

“the dreaming earth” and the girl the spring blossoms.

In the Highlands of Scotland the revival of vegetation in spring used to

be graphically represented as follows. On Candlemas day (2d February) in

the Hebrides “the mistress and servants of each family take a sheaf of

oats, and dress it up in women’s apparel, put it in a large basket, and

lay a wooden club by it, and this they call Brüd’s bed; and then the

mistress and servants cry three times, Brüd is come, Brüd is welcome. This

they do just before going to bed, and when they rise in the morning they

look among the ashes, expecting to see the impression of Brüd’s club

there; which if they do they reckon it a true presage of a good crop and

prosperous year, and the contrary they take as an ill omen.”(335) The same

custom is described by another witness thus: “Upon the night before

Candlemas it is usual to make a bed with corn and hay, over which some

blankets are laid, in a part of the house near the door. When it is ready,

a person goes out and repeats three times, ... ‘Bridget, Bridget, come in;

thy bed is ready.’ One or more candles are left burning near it all

night.”(336)

Often the marriage of the spirit of vegetation in spring, though not

directly represented, is implied by naming the human representative of the

spirit “the Bride,” and dressing her in wedding attire. Thus in some

villages of Altmark at Whitsuntide, while the boys go about carrying a

May-tree or leading a boy enveloped in leaves and flowers, the girls lead

about the May Bride, a girl dressed as a bride with a great nosegay in her

hair. They go from house to house, the May Bride singing a song in which

she asks for a present, and tells the inmates of each house that if they

give her something they will themselves have something the whole year

through; but if they give her nothing they will themselves have

nothing.(337) In some parts of Westphalia two girls lead a flower-crowned

girl called “the Whitsuntide Bride” from door to door, singing a song in

which they ask for eggs.(338) In Bresse in the month of May a girl called

_la Mariée_ is tricked out with ribbons and nosegays and is led about by a

gallant. She is preceded by a lad carrying a green May-tree, and

appropriate verses are sung.(339)

§ 5.—Tree-worship in antiquity.

Such then are some of the ways in which the tree-spirit or the spirit of

vegetation is represented in the customs of our European peasantry. From

the remarkable persistence and similarity of such customs all over Europe

we are justified in concluding that tree-worship was once an important

element in the religion of the Aryan race in Europe, and that the rites

and ceremonies of the worship were marked by great uniformity everywhere,

and did not substantially differ from those which are still or were till

lately observed by our peasants at their spring and midsummer festivals.

For these rites bear internal marks of great antiquity, and this internal

evidence is confirmed by the resemblance which the rites bear to those of

rude peoples elsewhere.(340) Therefore it is hardly rash to infer, from

this consensus of popular customs, that the Greeks and Romans, like the

other Aryan peoples of Europe, once practised forms of tree-worship

similar to those which are still kept up by our peasantry. In the palmy

days of ancient civilisation, no doubt, the worship had sunk to the level

of vulgar superstition and rustic merrymaking, as it has done among

ourselves. We need not therefore be surprised that the traces of such

popular rites are few and slight in ancient literature. They are not less

so in the polite literature of modern Europe; and the negative argument

cannot be allowed to go for more in the one case than in the other.

Enough, however, of positive evidence remains to confirm the presumption

drawn from analogy. Much of this evidence has been collected and analysed

with his usual learning and judgment by W. Mannhardt.(341) Here I shall

content myself with citing certain Greek festivals which seem to be the

classical equivalents of an English May Day in the olden time.

Every few years the Boeotians of Plataea held a festival which they called

the Little Daedala. On the day of the festival they went out into an

ancient oak forest, the trees of which were of gigantic girth. Here they

set some boiled meat on the ground, and watched the birds that gathered

round it. When a raven was observed to carry off a piece of the meat and

settle on an oak, the people followed it and cut down the tree. With the

wood of the tree they made an image, dressed it as a bride, and placed it

on a bullock-cart with a bridesmaid beside it. It seems then to have been

drawn to the banks of the river Asopus and back to the town, attended by a

piping and dancing crowd. After the festival the image was put away and

kept till the celebration of the Great Daedala, which fell only once in

sixty years. On this great occasion all the images that had accumulated

from the celebrations of the Little Daedala were dragged on carts in

solemn procession to the river Asopus, and then to the top of Mount

Cithaeron. Here an altar had been constructed of square blocks of wood

fitted together and surmounted by a heap of brushwood. Animals were

sacrificed by being burned on the altar, and the altar itself, together

with the images, were consumed by the flames. The blaze, we are told, rose

to a prodigious height and was seen for many miles. To explain the origin

of the festival it was said that once upon a time Hera had quarrelled with

Zeus and left him in high dudgeon. To lure her back Zeus gave out that he

was about to marry the nymph Plataea, daughter of the river Asopus. He

caused a wooden image to be made, dressed and veiled as a bride, and

conveyed on a bullock-cart. Transported with rage and jealousy, Hera flew

to the cart, and tearing off the veil of the pretended bride, discovered

the deceit that had been practised on her. Her rage was now changed to

laughter, and she became reconciled to her husband Zeus.(342)

The resemblance of this festival to some of the European spring and

midsummer festivals is tolerably close. We have seen that in Russia at

Whitsuntide the villagers go out into the wood, fell a birch-tree, dress

it in woman’s clothes, and bring it back to the village with dance and

song. On the third day it is thrown into the water.(343) Again, we have

seen that in Bohemia on Midsummer Eve the village lads fell a tall fir or

pine-tree in the wood and set it up on a height, where it is adorned with

garlands, nosegays, and ribbons, and afterwards burnt.(344) The reason for

burning the tree will appear afterwards; the custom itself is not uncommon

in modern Europe. In some parts of the Pyrenees a tall and slender tree is

cut down on May Day and kept till Midsummer Eve. It is then rolled to the

top of a hill, set up, and burned.(345) In Angoulême on St. Peter’s Day,

29th June, a tall leafy poplar is set up in the market-place and

burned.(346) In Cornwall “there was formerly a great bonfire on

midsummer-eve; a large summer pole was fixed in the centre, round which

the fuel was heaped up. It had a large bush on the top of it.”(347) In

Dublin on May-morning boys used to go out and cut a May-bush, bring it

back to town, and then burn it.(348)

Probably the Boeotian festival belonged to the same class of rites. It

represented the marriage of the powers of vegetation in spring or

midsummer, just as the same event is represented in modern Europe by a

King and Queen or a Lord and Lady of the May. In the Boeotian, as in the

Russian, ceremony the tree dressed as a woman represents the English

May-pole and May-queen in one. All such ceremonies, it must be remembered,

are not, or at least were not originally, mere spectacular or dramatic

exhibitions. They are magical charms designed to produce the effect which

they dramatically represent. If the revival of vegetation in spring is

represented by the awakening of a sleeper, the representation is intended

actually to quicken the growth of leaves and blossoms; if the marriage of

the powers of vegetation is represented by a King and Queen of May, the

idea is that the powers so represented will really be rendered more

productive by the ceremony. In short, all these spring and midsummer

festivals fall under the head of sympathetic magic. The event which it is

desired to bring about is represented dramatically, and the very

representation is believed to effect, or at least to contribute to, the

production of the desired event. In the case of the Daedala the story of

Hera’s quarrel with Zeus and her sullen retirement may perhaps without

straining be interpreted as a mythical expression for a bad season and the

failure of the crops. The same disastrous effects were attributed to the

anger and seclusion of Demeter after the loss of her daughter

Proserpine.(349) Now the institution of a festival is often explained by a

mythical story of the occurrence upon a particular occasion of those very

calamities which it is the real object of the festival to avert; so that

if we know the myth told to account for the historical origin of the

festival, we can often infer from it the real intention with which the

festival was celebrated. If, therefore, the origin of the Daedala was

explained by a story of a failure of crops and consequent famine, we may

infer that the real object of the festival was to prevent the occurrence

of such disasters; and, if I am right in my interpretation of the

festival, the object was supposed to be effected by a dramatic

representation of the marriage of the divinities most concerned with the

production of vegetation.(350) The marriage of Zeus and Hera was

dramatically represented at annual festivals in various parts of

Greece,(351) and it is at least a fair conjecture that the nature and

intention of these ceremonies were such as I have assigned to the Plataean

festival of the Daedala; in other words, that Zeus and Hera at these

festivals were the Greek equivalents of the Lord and Lady of the May.

Homer’s glowing picture of Zeus and Hera couched on fresh hyacinths and

crocuses,(352) like Milton’s description of the dalliance of Zephyr and

Aurora, “as he met her once a-Maying,” was perhaps painted from the life.

Still more confidently may the same character be vindicated for the annual

marriage at Athens of the Queen to Dionysus in the Flowery Month

(_Anthesterion_) of spring.(353) For Dionysus, as we shall see later on,

was essentially a god of vegetation, and the Queen at Athens was a purely

religious or priestly functionary.(354) Therefore at their annual marriage

in spring he can hardly have been anything but a King, and she a Queen, of

May. The women who attended the Queen at the marriage ceremony would

correspond to the bridesmaids who wait on the May-queen.(355) Again, the

story, dear to poets and artists, of the forsaken and sleeping Ariadne

waked and wedded by Dionysus, resembles so closely the little drama acted

by French peasants of the Alps on May Day(356) that, considering the

character of Dionysus as a god of vegetation, we can hardly help regarding

it as the description of a spring ceremony corresponding to the French

one. In point of fact the marriage of Dionysus and Ariadne is believed by

Preller to have been acted every spring in Crete.(357) His evidence,

indeed, is inconclusive, but the view itself is probable. If I am right in

instituting the comparison, the chief difference between the French and

the Greek ceremonies must have been that in the former the sleeper was the

forsaken bridegroom, in the latter the forsaken bride; and the group of

stars in the sky, in which fancy saw Ariadne’s wedding-crown,(358) could

only have been a translation to heaven of the garland worn by the Greek

girl who played the Queen of May.

On the whole, alike from the analogy of modern folk-custom and from the

facts of ancient ritual and mythology, we are justified in concluding that

the archaic forms of tree-worship disclosed by the spring and midsummer

festivals of our peasants were practised by the Greeks and Romans in

prehistoric times. Do then these forms of tree-worship help to explain the

priesthood of Aricia, the subject of our inquiry? I believe they do. In

the first place the attributes of Diana, the goddess of the Arician grove,

are those of a tree-spirit or sylvan deity. Her sanctuaries were in

groves, indeed every grove was her sanctuary,(359) and she is often

associated with the wood-god Silvanus in inscriptions.(360) Like a

tree-spirit, she helped women in travail, and in this respect her

reputation appears to have stood high at the Arician grove, if we may

judge from the votive offerings found on the spot.(361) Again, she was the

patroness of wild animals;(362) just as in Finland the wood-god Tapio was

believed to care for the wild creatures that roamed the wood, they being

considered his cattle.(363) So, too, the Samogitians deemed the birds and

beasts of the woods sacred, doubtless because they were under the

protection of the god of the wood.(364) Again, there are indications that

domestic cattle were protected by Diana,(365) as they certainly were

supposed to be by Silvanus.(366) But we have seen that special influence

over cattle is ascribed to wood-spirits; in Finland the herds enjoyed the

protection of the wood-gods both while they were in their stalls and while

they strayed in the forest.(367) Lastly, in the sacred spring which

bubbled, and the perpetual fire which seems to have burned in the Arician

grove,(368) we may perhaps detect traces of other attributes of forest

gods, the power, namely, to make the rain to fall and the sun to

shine.(369) This last attribute perhaps explains why Virbius, the

companion deity of Diana at Nemi, was by some believed to be the sun.(370)

Thus the cult of the Arician grove was essentially that of a tree-spirit

or wood deity. But our examination of European folk-custom demonstrated

that a tree-spirit is frequently represented by a living person, who is

regarded as an embodiment of the tree-spirit and possessed of its

fertilising powers; and our previous survey of primitive belief proved

that this conception of a god incarnate in a living man is common among

rude races. Further we have seen that the living person who is believed to

embody in himself the tree-spirit is often called a king, in which

respect, again, he strictly represents the tree-spirit. For the sacred

cedar of the Gilgit tribes is called, as we have seen, “the Dreadful

King”;(371) and the chief forest god of the Finns, by name Tapio,

represented as an old man with a brown beard, a high hat of fir-cones and

a coat of tree-moss, was styled the Wood King, Lord of the Woodland,

Golden King of the Wood.(372) May not then the King of the Wood in the

Arician grove have been, like the King of May, the Grass King, and the

like, an incarnation of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation? His

title, his sacred office, and his residence in the grove all point to this

conclusion, which is confirmed by his relation to the Golden Bough. For

since the King of the Wood could only be assailed by him who had plucked

the Golden Bough, his life was safe from assault so long as the bough or

the tree on which it grew remained uninjured. In a sense, therefore, his

life was bound up with that of the tree; and thus to some extent he stood

to the tree in the same relation in which the incorporate or immanent

tree-spirit stands to it. The representation of the tree-spirit both by

the King of the Wood and by the Golden Bough (for it will hardly be

disputed that the Golden Bough was looked upon as a very special

manifestation of the divine life of the grove) need not surprise us, since

we have found that the tree-spirit is not unfrequently thus represented in

double, first by a tree or a bough, and second by a living person.

On the whole then, if we consider his double character as king and priest,

his relation to the Golden Bough, and the strictly woodland character of

the divinity of the grove, we may provisionally assume that the King of

the Wood, like the May King and his congeners of Northern Europe, was

deemed a living incarnation of the tree-spirit. As such he would be

credited with those miraculous powers of sending rain and sunshine, making

the crops to grow, women to bring forth, and flocks and herds to multiply,

which are popularly ascribed to the tree-spirit itself. The reputed

possessor of powers so exalted must have been a very important personage,

and in point of fact his influence appears to have extended far and wide.

For(373) in the days when the champaign country around was still parcelled

out among the petty tribes who composed the Latin League, the sacred grove

on the Alban Mountain is known to have been an object of their common

reverence and care. And just as the kings of Cambodia used to send

offerings to the mystic Kings of Fire and Water far in the dim depths of

the tropical forest, so, we may well believe, from all sides of the broad

Latian plain the eyes and steps of Italian pilgrims turned to the quarter

where, standing sharply out against the faint blue line of the Apennines

or the deeper blue of the distant sea, the Alban Mountain rose before

them, the home of the mysterious priest of Nemi, the King of the Wood.