CHAPTER III. KILLING THE GOD.

“Sed adhuc supersunt aliae superstitiones, quarum secreta pandenda

sunt, ... ut et in istis profanis religionibus sciatis mortes esse

hominum consecratas.”—FIRMICUS MATERNUS, _De errore profanarum

religionum_, c. 6.

§ 1.—Killing the divine king.

Lacking the idea of eternal duration primitive man naturally supposes the

gods to be mortal like himself. The Greenlanders believed that a wind

could kill their most powerful god, and that he would certainly die if he

touched a dog. When they heard of the Christian God, they kept asking if

he _never_ died, and being informed that he did not, they were much

surprised and said that he must be a very great god indeed.(755) In answer

to the inquiries of Colonel Dodge, a North American Indian stated that the

world was made by the Great Spirit. Being asked which Great Spirit he

meant, the good one or the bad one, “Oh, neither of _them_” replied he,

“the Great Spirit that made the world is dead long ago. He could not

possibly have lived as long as this.”(756) A tribe in the Philippine

Islands told the Spanish conquerors that the grave of the Creator was upon

the top of Mount Cabunian.(757) Heitsi-eibib, a god or divine hero of the

Hottentots, died several times and came to life again. His graves are

generally to be met with in narrow passes between mountains.(758) The

grave of Zeus, the great god of Greece, was shown to visitors in Crete as

late as about the beginning of our era.(759) The body of Dionysus was

buried at Delphi beside the golden statue of Apollo, and his tomb bore the

inscription, “Here lies Dionysus dead, the son of Semele.”(760) According

to one account, Apollo himself was buried at Delphi; for Pythagoras is

said to have carved an inscription on his tomb, setting forth how the god

had been killed by the python and buried under the tripod.(761) Cronus was

buried in Sicily,(762) and the graves of Hermes, Aphrodite, and Ares were

shown in Hermopolis, Cyprus, and Thrace.(763)

If the great invisible gods are thus supposed to die, it is not to be

expected that a god who dwells in the flesh and blood of a man should

escape the same fate. Now primitive peoples, as we have seen, sometimes

believe that their safety and even that of the world is bound up with the

life of one of these god-men or human incarnations of the divinity.

Naturally, therefore, they take the utmost care of his life, out of a

regard for their own. But no amount of care and precaution will prevent

the man-god from growing old and feeble and at last dying. His worshippers

have to lay their account with this sad necessity and to meet it as best

they can. The danger is a formidable one; for if the course of nature is

dependent on the man-god’s life, what catastrophes may not be expected

from the gradual enfeeblement of his powers and their final extinction in

death? There is only one way of averting these dangers. The man-god must

be killed as soon as he shows symptoms that his powers are beginning to

fail, and his soul must be transferred to a vigorous successor before it

has been seriously impaired by the threatened decay. The advantages of

thus putting the man-god to death instead of allowing him to die of old

age and disease are, to the savage, obvious enough. For if the man-god

dies what we call a natural death, it means, according to the savage, that

his soul has either voluntarily departed from his body and refuses to

return, or more commonly that it has been extracted or at least detained

in its wanderings by a demon or sorcerer.(764) In any of these cases the

soul of the man-god is lost to his worshippers; and with it their

prosperity is gone and their very existence endangered. Even if they could

arrange to catch the soul of the dying god as it left his lips or his

nostrils and so transfer it to a successor, this would not effect their

purpose; for, thus dying of disease, his soul would necessarily leave his

body in the last stage of weakness and exhaustion, and as such it would

continue to drag out a feeble existence in the body to which it might be

transferred. Whereas by killing him his worshippers could, in the first

place, make sure of catching his soul as it escaped and transferring it to

a suitable successor; and, in the second place, by killing him before his

natural force was abated, they would secure that the world should not fall

into decay with the decay of the man-god. Every purpose, therefore, was

answered, and all dangers averted by thus killing the man-god and

transferring his soul, while yet at its prime, to a vigorous successor.

Some of the reasons for preferring a violent death to the slow death of

old age or disease are obviously as applicable to common men as to the

man-god. Thus the Mangaians think that “the spirits of those who die a

natural death are excessively feeble and weak, as their bodies were at

dissolution; whereas the spirits of those who are slain in battle are

strong and vigorous, their bodies not having been reduced by

disease.”(765) Hence, men sometimes prefer to kill themselves or to be

killed before they grow feeble, in order that in the future life their

souls may start fresh and vigorous as they left their bodies, instead of

decrepit and worn out with age and disease. Thus in Fiji, “self-immolation

is by no means rare, and they believe that as they leave this life, so

they will remain ever after. This forms a powerful motive to escape from

decrepitude, or from a crippled condition, by a voluntary death.”(766) Or,

as another observer of the Fijians puts it more fully, “the custom of

voluntary suicide on the part of the old men, which is among their most

extraordinary usages, is also connected with their superstitions

respecting a future life. They believe that persons enter upon the

delights of their elysium with the same faculties, mental and physical,

that they possess at the hour of death, in short, that the spiritual life

commences where the corporeal existence terminates. With these views, it

is natural that they should desire to pass through this change before

their mental and bodily powers are so enfeebled by age as to deprive them

of their capacity for enjoyment. To this motive must be added the contempt

which attaches to physical weakness among a nation of warriors, and the

wrongs and insults which await those who are no longer able to protect

themselves. When therefore a man finds his strength declining with the

advance of age, and feels that he will soon be unequal to discharge the

duties of this life, and to partake in the pleasures of that which is to

come, he calls together his relations, and tells them that he is now worn

out and useless, that he sees they are all ashamed of him, and that he has

determined to be buried.” So on a day appointed they meet and bury him

alive.(767) In Vaté (New Hebrides) the aged were buried alive at their own

request. It was considered a disgrace to the family of an old chief if he

was not buried alive.(768) Of the Kamants, a Jewish tribe in Abyssinia, it

is reported that “they never let a person die a natural death, but if any

of their relatives is nearly expiring, the priest of the village is called

to cut his throat; if this be omitted, they believe that the departed soul

has not entered the mansions of the blessed.”(769)

But it is with the death of the god-man—the divine king or priest—that we

are here especially concerned. The people of Congo believed, as we have

seen, that if their pontiff the Chitomé were to die a natural death, the

world would perish, and the earth, which he alone sustained by his power

and merit, would immediately be annihilated. Accordingly when he fell ill

and seemed likely to die, the man who was destined to be his successor

entered the pontiff’s house with a rope or a club and strangled or clubbed

him to death.(770) The Ethiopian kings of Meroe were worshipped as gods;

but whenever the priests chose, they sent a messenger to the king,

ordering him to die, and alleging an oracle of the gods as their authority

for the command. This command the kings always obeyed down to the reign of

Ergamenes, a contemporary of Ptolemy II, King of Egypt. Having received a

Greek education which emancipated him from the superstitions of his

countrymen, Ergamenes ventured to disregard the command of the priests,

and, entering the Golden Temple with a body of soldiers, put the priests

to the sword.(771) In the kingdom of Unyoro in Central Africa, custom

still requires that as soon as the king falls seriously ill or begins to

break up from age, he shall be killed by his own wives; for, according to

an old prophecy, the throne will pass away from the dynasty in the event

of the king dying a natural death.(772) When the king of Kibanga, on the

Upper Congo, seems near his end, the sorcerers put a rope round his neck,

which they draw gradually tighter till he dies.(773) It seems to have been

a Zulu custom to put the king to death as soon as he began to have

wrinkles or gray hairs. At least this seems implied in the following

passage, written by one who resided for some time at the court of the

notorious Zulu tyrant Chaka, in the early part of this century: “The

extraordinary violence of the king’s rage with me was mainly occasioned by

that absurd nostrum, the hair oil, with the notion of which Mr. Farewell

had impressed him as being a specific for removing all indications of age.

From the first moment of his having heard that such a preparation was

attainable, he evinced a solicitude to procure it, and on every occasion

never forgot to remind us of his anxiety respecting it; more especially on

our departure on the mission his injunctions were particularly directed to

this object. It will be seen that it is one of the barbarous customs of

the Zoolas in their choice or election of their kings that he must neither

have wrinkles nor gray hairs, as they are both distinguishing marks of

disqualification for becoming a monarch of a warlike people. It is also

equally indispensable that their king should never exhibit those proofs of

having become unfit and incompetent to reign; it is therefore important

that they should conceal these indications so long as they possibly can.

Chaka had become greatly apprehensive of the approach of gray hairs; which

would at once be the signal for him to prepare to make his exit from this

sublunary world, it being always followed by the death of the

monarch.”(774)

The custom of putting kings to death as soon as they suffered from any

personal defect prevailed two centuries ago in the Kafir kingdoms of

Sofala, to the north of the present Zululand. These kings of Sofala, as we

have seen,(775) were regarded as gods by their people, being entreated to

give rain or sunshine, according as each might be wanted. Nevertheless a

slight bodily blemish, such as the loss of a tooth, was considered a

sufficient cause for putting one of these god-men to death, as we learn

from the following passage of an old historian. “Contiguous to the domains

of the Quiteva [the king of the country bordering on the river Sofala],

are those of another prince called Sedanda. This prince becoming afflicted

with leprosy, resolved on following implicitly the laws of the country,

and poisoning himself, conceiving his malady to be incurable, or at least

that it would render him so loathsome in the eyes of his people that they

would with difficulty recognise him. In consequence he nominated his

successor, holding as his opinion that sovereigns who should serve in all

things as an example to their people ought to have no defect whatever,

even in their persons; that when any defects may chance to befall them

they cease to be worthy of life and of governing their dominions; and

preferring death in compliance with this law to life, with the reproach of

having been its violator. But this law was not observed with equal

scrupulosity by one of the Quitevas, who, having lost a tooth and feeling

no disposition to follow the practice of his predecessors, published to

the people that he had lost a front tooth, in order that when they might

behold, they yet might be able to recognise him; declaring at the same

time that he was resolved on living and reigning as long as he could,

esteeming his existence requisite for the welfare of his subjects. He at

the same time loudly condemned the practice of his predecessors, whom he

taxed with imprudence, nay, even with madness, for having condemned

themselves to death for casual accidents to their persons, confessing

plainly that it would be with much regret, even when the course of nature

should bring him to his end, that he should submit to die. He observed,

moreover, that no reasonable being, much less a monarch, ought to

anticipate the scythe of time; and, abrogating this mortal law, he

ordained that all his successors, if sane, should follow the precedent he

gave, and the new law established by him.”(776)

This King of Sofala was, therefore, a bold reformer like Ergamenes, King

of Ethiopia. We may conjecture that the ground for putting the Ethiopian

kings to death was, as in the case of the Zulu and Sofala kings, the

appearance on their person of any bodily defect or sign of decay; and that

the oracle which the priests alleged as the authority for the royal

execution was to the effect that great calamities would result from the

reign of a king who had any blemish on his body; just as an oracle warned

Sparta against a “lame reign,” that is, the reign of a lame king.(777)

This conjecture is confirmed by the fact that the kings of Ethiopia were

chosen for their size, strength, and beauty long before the custom of

killing them was abolished.(778) To this day the Sultan of Wadâi must have

no obvious bodily defect, and a king of Angoy cannot be crowned if he has

a single blemish, such as a broken or filed tooth or the scar of an old

wound.(779) It is only natural, therefore, to suppose, especially with the

other African examples before us, that any bodily defect or symptom of old

age appearing on the person of the Ethiopian monarch was the signal for

his execution. At a later time it is recorded that if the King of Ethiopia

became maimed in any part of his body all his courtiers had to suffer the

same mutilation.(780) But this rule may perhaps have been instituted at

the time when the custom of killing the king for any personal defect was

abolished; instead of compelling the king to die because, _e.g._, he had

lost a tooth, all his subjects would be obliged to lose a tooth, and thus

the invidious superiority of the subjects over the king would be

cancelled. A rule of this sort is still observed in the same region at the

court of the Sultans of Darfur. When the Sultan coughs, every one makes

the sound _ts ts_ by striking the tongue against the root of the upper

teeth; when he sneezes, the whole assembly utters a sound like the cry of

the jeko; when he falls off his horse, all his followers must fall off

likewise; if any one of them remains in the saddle, no matter how high his

rank, he is laid on the ground and beaten.(781) At the court of the King

of Uganda in Central Africa, when the king laughs, every one laughs; when

he sneezes, every one sneezes; when he has a cold, every one pretends to

have a cold; when he has his hair cut, so has every one.(782) At the court

of Boni in Celebes it is a rule that whatever the king does all the

courtiers must do. If he stands, they stand; if he sits, they sit; if he

falls off his horse, they fall off their horses; if he bathes, they bathe,

and passers-by must go into the water in the dress, good or bad, which

they happen to have on.(783) But to return to the death of the divine man.

The old Prussians acknowledged as their supreme lord a ruler who governed

them in the name of the gods, and was known as God’s Mouth (_Kirwaido_).

When he felt himself weak and ill, if he wished to leave a good name

behind him, he had a great heap made of thorn-bushes and straw, on which

he mounted and delivered a long sermon to the people, exhorting them to

serve the gods and promising to go to the gods and speak for the people.

Then he took some of the perpetual fire which burned in front of the holy

oak-tree, and lighting the pile with it burned himself to death.(784)

In the cases hitherto described, the divine king or priest is suffered by

his people to retain office until some outward defect, some visible

symptom of failing health or advancing age warns them that he is no longer

equal to the discharge of his divine duties; but not until such symptoms

have made their appearance is he put to death. Some peoples, however,

appear to have thought it unsafe to wait for even the slightest symptom of

decay and have preferred to kill the king while he was still in the full

vigour of life. Accordingly, they have fixed a term beyond which he might

not reign, and at the close of which he must die, the term fixed upon

being short enough to exclude the probability of his degenerating

physically in the interval. In some parts of Southern India the period

fixed was twelve years. Thus, according to an old traveller, in the

province of Quilacare “There is a Gentile house of prayer, in which there

is an idol which they hold in great account, and every twelve years they

celebrate a great feast to it, whither all the Gentiles go as to a

jubilee. This temple possesses many lands and much revenue; it is a very

great affair. This province has a king over it; who has not more than

twelve years to reign from jubilee to jubilee. His manner of living is in

this wise, that is to say, when the twelve years are completed, on the day

of this feast there assemble together innumerable people, and much money

is spent in giving food to Bramans. The king has a wooden scaffolding

made, spread over with silken hangings; and on that day he goes to bathe

at a tank with great ceremonies and sound of music, after that he comes to

the idol and prays to it, and mounts on to the scaffolding, and there

before all the people he takes some very sharp knives and begins to cut

off his nose, and then his ears and his lips and all his members and as

much flesh of himself as he can; and he throws it away very hurriedly

until so much of his blood is spilled that he begins to faint, and then he

cuts his throat himself. And he performs this sacrifice to the idol; and

whoever desires to reign other twelve years, and undertake this martyrdom

for love of the idol, has to be present looking on at this; and from that

place they raise him up as king.”(785)

Formerly the Samorin or King of Calicut, on the Malabar coast, had also to

cut his throat in public at the end of a twelve years’ reign. But towards

the end of the seventeenth century the rule had been modified as follows:

“A new custom is followed by the modern Samorins, that jubilee is

proclaimed throughout his dominions, at the end of twelve years, and a

tent is pitched for him in a spacious plain, and a great feast is

celebrated for ten or twelve days, with mirth and jollity, guns firing

night and day, so at the end of the feast any four of the guests that have

a mind to gain a crown by a desperate action, in fighting their way

through 30 or 40,000 of his guards, and kill the Samorin in his tent, he

that kills him succeeds him in his empire. In anno 1695, one those

jubilees happened, and the tent pitched near Pennany, a sea-port of his,

about fifteen leagues to the southward of Calicut. There were but three

men that would venture on that desperate action, who fell in, with sword

and target among the guard, and, after they had killed and wounded many

were themselves killed. One of the desperados had a nephew of fifteen or

sixteen years of age, that kept close by his uncle in the attack on the

guards, and, when he saw him fall, the youth got through the guards into

the tent, and made a stroke at his Majesty’s head, and had certainly

despatched him, if a large brass lamp which was burning over his head, had

not marred the blow; but, before he could make another he was killed by

the guards; and, I believe, the same Samorin reigns yet. I chanced to come

that time along the coast and heard the guns for two or three days and

nights successively.”(786)

In some places it appears that the people could not trust the king to

remain in full bodily and mental vigour for more than a year; hence at the

end of a year’s reign he was put to death, and a new king appointed to

reign in his turn a year, and suffer death at the end of it. At least this

is the conclusion to which the following evidence points. According to the

historian Berosus, who as a Babylonian priest spoke with ample knowledge,

there was annually celebrated in Babylon a festival called the Sacaea. It

began on the 16th day of the month Lous, and lasted for five days. During

these five days masters and servants changed places, the servants giving

orders and the masters obeying them. A prisoner condemned to death was

dressed in the king’s robes, seated on the king’s throne, allowed to issue

whatever commands he pleased, to eat, drink, and enjoy himself, and to lie

with the king’s concubines. But at the end of the five days he was

stripped of his royal robes, scourged, and crucified.(787) This custom

might perhaps have been explained as merely a grim jest perpetrated in a

season of jollity at the expense of an unhappy criminal. But one

circumstance—the leave given to the mock king to enjoy the king’s

concubines—is decisive against this interpretation. Considering the

jealous seclusion of an oriental despot’s harem we may be quite certain

that permission to invade it would never have been granted by the despot,

least of all to a condemned criminal, except for the very gravest cause.

This cause could hardly be other than that the condemned man was about to

die in the king’s stead, and that to make the substitution perfect it was

necessary he should enjoy the full rights of royalty during his brief

reign. There is nothing surprising in this substitution. The rule that the

king must be put to death either on the appearance of any symptom of

bodily decay or at the end of a fixed period is certainly one which,

sooner or later, the kings would seek to abolish or modify. We have seen

that in Ethiopia and Sofala the rule was boldly set aside by enlightened

monarchs; and that in Calicut the old custom of killing the king at the

end of twelve years was changed into a permission granted to any one at

the end of the twelve years’ period to attack the king, and, in the event

of killing him, to reign in his stead; though, as the king took care at

these times to be surrounded by his guards, the permission was little more

than a form. Another way of modifying the stern old rule is seen in the

Babylonian custom just described. When the time drew near for the king to

be put to death (in Babylon this appears to have been at the end of a

single year’s reign) he abdicated for a few days, during which a temporary

king reigned and suffered in his stead. At first the temporary king may

have been an innocent person, possibly a member of the king’s own family;

but with the growth of civilisation the sacrifice of an innocent person

would be revolting to the public sentiment, and accordingly a condemned

criminal would be invested with the brief and fatal sovereignty. In the

sequel we shall find other examples of a dying criminal representing a

dying god. For we must not forget that the king is slain in his character

of a god, his death and resurrection, as the only means of perpetuating

the divine life unimpaired, being deemed necessary for the salvation of

his people and the world.

In some places this modified form of the old custom has been further

softened down. The king still abdicates annually for a short time and his

place is filled by a more or less nominal sovereign; but at the close of

his short reign the latter is no longer killed, though sometimes a mock

execution still survives as a memorial of the time when he was actually

put to death. To take examples. In the month of Méac (February) the King

of Cambodia annually abdicated for three days. During this time he

performed no act of authority, he did not touch the seals, he did not even

receive the revenues which fell due. In his stead there reigned a

temporary king called Sdach Méac, that is, King February. The office of

temporary king was hereditary in a family distantly connected with the

royal house, the sons succeeding the fathers and the younger brothers the

elder brothers, just as in the succession to the real sovereignty. On a

favourable day fixed by the astrologers the temporary king was conducted

by the mandarins in triumphal procession. He rode one of the royal

elephants, seated in the royal palanquin, and escorted by soldiers who,

dressed in appropriate costumes, represented the neighbouring peoples of

Siam, Annam, Laos, and so on. Instead of the golden crown he wore a peaked

white cap, and his regalia, instead of being of gold encrusted with

diamonds, were of rough wood. After paying homage to the real king, from

whom he received the sovereignty for three days, together with all the

revenues accruing during that time (though this last custom has been

omitted for some time), he moved in procession round the palace and

through the streets of the capital. On the third day, after the usual

procession, the temporary king gave orders that the elephants should

trample under foot the “mountain of rice,” which was a scaffold of bamboo

surrounded by sheaves of rice. The people gathered up the rice, each man

taking home a little with him to secure a good harvest. Some of it was

also taken to the king, who had it cooked and presented to the monks.(788)

In Siam on the sixth day of the moon in the sixth month (the end of April)

a temporary king is appointed, who for three days enjoys the royal

prerogatives, the real king remaining shut up in his palace. This

temporary king sends his numerous satellites in all directions to seize

and confiscate whatever they can find in the bazaar and open shops; even

the ships and junks which arrive in harbour during the three days are

confiscated to him and must be redeemed. He goes to a field in the middle

of the city, whither is brought a gilded plough drawn by gaily-decked

oxen. After the plough has been anointed and the oxen rubbed with incense,

the mock king traces nine furrows with the plough, followed by aged dames

of the palace scattering the first seed of the season. As soon as the nine

furrows are drawn, the crowd of spectators rushes in and scrambles for the

seed which has just been sown, believing that, mixed with the seed-rice,

it will ensure a plentiful crop. Then the oxen are unyoked, and rice,

maize, sesame, sago, bananas, sugar-cane, melons, etc. are set before

them; whatever they eat first will, it is thought, be dear in the year

following, though some people interpret the omen in the opposite sense.

During this time the temporary king stands leaning against a tree with his

right foot resting on his left knee. From standing thus on one foot he is

popularly known as King Hop; but his official title is Phaya Phollathep,

“Lord of the Heavenly Hosts.”(789) He is a sort of Minister of

Agriculture; all disputes about fields, rice, and so on, are referred to

him. There is moreover another ceremony in which he personates the king.

It takes place in the second month (which falls in the cold season) and

lasts three days. He is conducted in procession to an open place opposite

the Temple of the Brahmans, where there are a number of poles dressed like

May-poles, upon which the Brahmans swing. All the while that they swing

and dance, the Lord of the Heavenly Hosts has to stand on one foot upon a

seat which is made of bricks plastered over, covered with a white cloth,

and hung with tapestry. He is supported by a wooden frame with a gilt

canopy, and two Brahmans stand one on each side of him. The dancing

Brahmans carry buffalo horns with which they draw water from a large

copper caldron and sprinkle it on the people; this is supposed to bring

good luck, causing the people to dwell in peace and quiet, health and

prosperity. The time during which the Lord of the Heavenly Hosts has to

stand on one foot is about three hours. This is thought “to prove the

dispositions of the Devattas and spirits.” If he lets his foot down “he is

liable to forfeit his property and have his family enslaved by the king;

as it is believed to be a bad omen, portending destruction to the state,

and instability to the throne. But if he stand firm he is believed to have

gained a victory over evil spirits, and he has moreover the privilege,

ostensibly at least, of seizing any ship which may enter the harbour

during these three days, and taking its contents, and also of entering any

open shop in the town and carrying away what he chooses.”(790)

In Upper Egypt on the first day of the solar year by Coptic reckoning,

that is on 10th September, when the Nile has generally reached its highest

point, the regular government is suspended for three days and every town

chooses its own ruler. This temporary lord wears a sort of tall fool’s cap

and a long flaxen beard, and is enveloped in a strange mantle. With a wand

of office in his hand and attended by men disguised as scribes,

executioners, etc., he proceeds to the Governor’s house. The latter allows

himself to be deposed; and the mock king, mounting the throne, holds a

tribunal, to the decisions of which even the governor and his officials

must bow. After three days the mock king is condemned to death; the

envelope or shell in which he was encased is committed to the flames, and

from its ashes the Fellah creeps forth.(791)

Sometimes the temporary king occupies the throne, not annually, but once

for all at the beginning of each reign. Thus in the kingdom of Jambi (in

Sumatra) it is the custom that at the beginning of a new reign a man of

the people should occupy the throne and exercise the royal prerogatives

for a single day. The origin of the custom is explained by a tradition

that there were once five royal brothers, the four elder of whom all

declined the crown on the ground of various bodily defects, leaving it to

their youngest brother. But the eldest occupied the throne for one day,

and reserved for his descendants a similar privilege at the beginning of

every reign. Thus the office of temporary king is hereditary in a family

akin to the royal house.(792) In Bilaspur it seems to be the custom, after

the death of a Rajah, for a Brahman to eat rice out of the dead Rajah’s

hand, and then to occupy the throne for a year. At the end of the year the

Brahman receives presents and is dismissed from the territory, being

forbidden apparently to return. “The idea seems to be that the spirit of

the Rájá enters into the Bráhman who eats the _khír_ (rice and milk) out

of his hand when he is dead, as the Brahman is apparently carefully

watched during the whole year, and not allowed to go away.” The same or a

similar custom is believed to obtain among the hill states about

Kángrá.(793) At the installation of a prince of Carinthia a peasant, in

whose family the office was hereditary, ascended a marble stone which

stood surrounded by meadows in a spacious valley; on his right stood a

black mother-cow, on his left an ugly mare. A rustic crowd gathered about

him. Then the future prince, dressed as a peasant and carrying a

shepherd’s staff, drew near, attended by courtiers and magistrates. On

perceiving him the peasant called out, “Who is this whom I see coming so

proudly along?” The people answered, “The prince of the land.” The peasant

was then prevailed on to surrender the marble seat to the prince on

condition of receiving sixty pence, the cow and mare, and exemption from

taxes. But before yielding his place he gave the prince a light blow on

the cheek.(794)

Some points about these temporary kings deserve to be specially noticed

before we pass to the next branch of the evidence. In the first place, the

Cambodian and Siamese examples bring clearly out the fact that it is

especially the divine or supernatural functions of the king which are

transferred to his temporary substitute. This appears from the belief that

by keeping up his foot the temporary king of Siam gained a victory over

the evil spirits; whereas by letting it down he imperilled the existence

of the state. Again, the Cambodian ceremony of trampling down the

“mountain of rice,” and the Siamese ceremony of opening the ploughing and

sowing, are charms to produce a plentiful harvest, as appears from the

belief that those who carry home some of the trampled rice or of the seed

sown will thereby secure a good crop. But the task of making the crops

grow, thus deputed to the temporary kings, is one of the supernatural

functions regularly supposed to be discharged by kings in primitive

society. The rule that the mock king must stand on one foot upon a raised

seat in the rice-field was perhaps originally meant as a charm to make the

crop grow high; at least this was the object of a similar ceremony

observed by the old Prussians. The tallest girl, standing on one foot upon

a seat, with her lap full of cakes, a cup of brandy in her right hand and

a piece of elm-bark or linden-bark in her left, prayed to the god

Waizganthos that the flax might grow as high as she was standing. Then,

after draining the cup, she had it refilled, and poured the brandy on the

ground as an offering to Waizganthos, and threw down the cakes for his

attendant sprites. If she remained steady on one foot throughout the

ceremony, it was an omen that the flax crop would be good; but if she let

her foot down, it was feared that the crop might fail.(795) The gilded

plough with which the Siamese mock king opens the ploughing may be

compared with the bronze ploughs which the Etruscans employed at the

ceremony of founding cities;(796) in both cases the use of iron was

probably forbidden on superstitious grounds.(797)

Another point to notice about these temporary kings is that in two places

(Cambodia and Jambi) they come of a stock which is believed to be akin to

the royal family. If the view here taken of the origin of these temporary

kingships is correct, the fact that the temporary king is sometimes of the

same race as the real king admits of a ready explanation. When the king

first succeeded in getting the life of another accepted as a sacrifice in

lieu of his own, he would have to show that the death of that other would

serve the purpose quite as well as his own would have done. Now it was as

a god that the king had to die; therefore the substitute who died for him

had to be invested, at least for the occasion, with the divine attributes

of the king. This, as we have just seen, was certainly the case with the

temporary kings of Siam and Cambodia; they were invested with the

supernatural functions, which in an earlier stage of society were the

special attributes of the king. But no one could so well represent the

king in his divine character as his son, who might be supposed to share

the divine afflatus of his father. No one, therefore, could so

appropriately die for the king and, through him, for the whole people, as

the king’s son. There is evidence that amongst the Semites of Western Asia

(the very region where the redemption of the king’s life by the sacrifice

of another comes out so unmistakably in the Sacaean festival) the king, in

a time of national danger, sometimes gave his own son to die as a

sacrifice for the people. Thus Philo of Byblus, in his work on the Jews,

says: “It was an ancient custom in a crisis of great danger that the ruler

of a city or nation should give his beloved son to die for the whole

people, as a ransom offered to the avenging demons; and the children thus

offered were slain with mystic rites. So Cronus, whom the Phoenicians call

Israel, being king of the land and having an only-begotten son called

Jeoud (for in the Phoenician tongue Jeoud signifies ‘only-begotten’),

dressed him in royal robes and sacrificed him upon an altar in a time of

war, when the country was in great danger from the enemy.”(798) When the

King of Moab was besieged by the Israelites and hard beset, he took his

eldest son, who should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a

burnt offering on the wall.(799) But amongst the Semites the practice of

sacrificing their children was not confined to kings. In times of great

calamity, such as pestilence, drought, or defeat in war, the Phoenicians

used to sacrifice one of their dearest to Baal. “Phoenician history,” says

an ancient writer, “is full of such sacrifices.”(800) When the

Carthaginians were defeated and besieged by Agathocles, they ascribed

their disasters to the wrath of Baal; for whereas in former times they had

been wont to sacrifice to him their own children, they had latterly fallen

into the habit of buying children and rearing them to be victims. So, to

appease the angry god, two hundred children of the noblest families were

picked out for sacrifice, and the tale of victims was swelled by not less

than three hundred more who volunteered to die for the fatherland. They

were sacrificed by being placed, one by one, on the sloping hands of the

brazen image, from which they rolled into a pit of fire.(801) If an

aristocracy thus adopted the practice of sacrificing other people’s

children instead of their own, kings may very well have followed or set

the example. A final mitigation of the custom would be the substitution of

condemned criminals for innocent victims. Such a substitution is known to

have taken place in the human sacrifices annually offered in Rhodes to

Baal.(802)

The custom of sacrificing children, especially the first born, is not

peculiarly Semitic. In some tribes of New South Wales the first-born child

of every woman was eaten by the tribe as part of a religious

ceremony.(803) The Indians of Florida sacrificed their first-born male

children.(804) Amongst the people of Senjero in Eastern Africa we are told

that many families “must offer up their first-born sons as sacrifices,

because once upon a time, when summer and winter were jumbled together in

a bad season, and the fruits of the earth would not ripen, the soothsayers

enjoined it. At that time a great pillar of iron is said to have stood at

the entrance of the capital, which by the advice of the soothsayers was

broken down by order of the king, upon which the seasons became regular

again. To avert the recurrence of such a confusion of the seasons, the

soothsayers are reported to have enjoined the king to pour human blood

once a year on the base of the broken shaft of the pillar, and also upon

the throne. Since then certain families are obliged to deliver up their

first-born sons, who are sacrificed at an appointed time.”(805) The

heathen Russians often sacrificed their first-born to the god Perun.(806)

The condemnation and pretended death by fire of the mock king in Egypt is

probably a reminiscence of a real custom of burning him. Evidence of a

practice of burning divine personages will be forthcoming later on. In

Bilaspur the expulsion of the Brahman who had occupied the king’s throne

for a year is perhaps a substitute for putting him to death.

The explanation here given of the custom of killing divine persons

assumes, or at least is readily combined with, the idea that the soul of

the slain divinity is transmitted to his successor. Of this transmission I

have no direct proof; and so far a link in the chain of evidence is

wanting. But if I cannot prove by actual examples this succession to the

soul of the slain god, it can at least be made probable that such a

succession was supposed to take place. For it has been already shown that

the soul of the incarnate deity is often supposed to transmigrate at death

into another incarnation;(807) and if this takes place when the death is a

natural one, there seems no reason why it should not take place when the

death is a violent one. Certainly the idea that the soul of a dying person

may be transmitted to his successor is perfectly familiar to primitive

peoples. In Nias the eldest son usually succeeds his father in the

chieftainship. But if from any bodily or mental defect the eldest son is

incapacitated from ruling, the father determines in his life-time which of

his sons shall succeed him. In order, however, to establish his right of

succession it is necessary that the son upon whom his father’s choice

falls shall catch in his mouth or in a bag the last breath, and with it

the soul, of the dying chief. For whoever catches his last breath is chief

equally with the appointed successor. Hence the other brothers, and

sometimes also strangers, crowd round the dying man to catch his soul as

it passes. The houses in Nias are raised above the ground on posts, and it

has happened that when the dying man lay with his face on the floor, one

of the candidates has bored a hole in the floor and sucked in the chief’s

last breath through a bamboo tube. When the chief has no son, his soul is

caught in a bag, which is fastened to an image made to represent the

deceased; the soul is then believed to pass into the image.(808) Amongst

the Takilis or Carrier Indians of North-West America, when a corpse is

burned the priest pretends to catch the soul of the deceased in his hands,

which he closes with many gesticulations. He then communicates the

captured soul to the dead man’s successor by throwing his hands towards

and blowing upon him. The person to whom the soul is thus communicated

takes the name and rank of the deceased. On the death of a chief the

priest thus fills a responsible and influential position, for he may

transmit the soul to whom he will, though, doubtless, he generally follows

the regular line of succession.(809) Algonkin women who wished to become

mothers flocked to the side of a dying person in the hope of receiving and

being impregnated by the passing soul. Amongst the Seminoles of Florida

when a woman died in childbed the infant was held over her face to receive

her parting spirit.(810) The Romans caught the breath of dying friends in

their mouths, and so received into themselves the soul of the

departed.(811) The same custom is said to be still practised in

Lancashire.(812) We may therefore fairly suppose that when the divine king

or priest is put to death his spirit is believed to pass into his

successor.

§ 2.—Killing the tree-spirit.

It remains to ask what light the custom of killing the divine king or

priest sheds upon the subject of our inquiry. In the first chapter we saw

reason to suppose that the King of the Wood was regarded as an incarnation

of the tree-spirit or of the spirit of vegetation, and that as such he

would be endowed, in the belief of his worshippers, with a supernatural

power of making the trees to bear fruit, the crops to grow, and so on. His

life must therefore have been held very precious by his worshippers, and

was probably hedged in by a system of elaborate precautions or taboos like

those by which, in so many places, the life of the god-man has been

guarded against the malignant influence of demons and sorcerers. But we

have seen that the very value attached to the life of the man-god

necessitates his violent death as the only means of preserving it from the

inevitable decay of age. The same reasoning would apply to the King of the

Wood; he too had to be killed in order that the divine spirit, incarnate

in him, might be transferred in unabated vigour to his successor. The rule

that he held office till a stronger should slay him might be supposed to

secure both the preservation of his divine life in full vigour and its

transference to a suitable successor as soon as that vigour began to be

impaired. For so long as he could maintain his position by the strong

hand, it might be inferred that his natural force was not abated; whereas

his defeat and death at the hands of another proved that his strength was

beginning to fail and that it was time his divine life should be lodged in

a less dilapidated tabernacle. This explanation of the rule that the King

of the Wood had to be slain by his successor at least renders that rule

perfectly intelligible. Moreover it is countenanced by the analogy of the

Chitombé, upon whose life the existence of the world was supposed to hang,

and who was therefore slain by his successor as soon as he showed signs of

breaking up. Again, the terms on which in later times the King of Calicut

held office are identical with those attached to the office of King of the

Wood, except that whereas the former might be assailed by a candidate at

any time, the King of Calicut might only be attacked once every twelve

years. But as the leave granted to the King of Calicut to reign so long as

he could defend himself against all comers was a mitigation of the old

rule which set a fixed term to his life, so we may conjecture that the

similar permission granted to the King of the Wood was a mitigation of an

older custom of putting him to death at the end of a set period. In both

cases the new rule gave to the god-man at least a chance for his life,

which under the old rule was denied him; and people probably reconciled

themselves to the change by reflecting that so long as the god-man could

maintain himself by the sword against all assaults, there was no reason to

apprehend that the fatal decay had set in.

The conjecture that the King of the Wood was formerly put to death at the

expiry of a set term, without being allowed a chance for his life, will be

confirmed if evidence can be adduced of a custom of periodically killing

his counterparts, the human representatives of the tree-spirit, in

Northern Europe. Now in point of fact such a custom has left unmistakable

traces of itself in the rural festivals of the peasantry. To take

examples.

In Lower Bavaria the Whitsuntide representative of the tree-spirit—the

_Pfingstl_ as he was called—was clad from top to toe in leaves and

flowers. On his head he wore a high pointed cap, the ends of which rested

on his shoulders, only two holes being left in it for his eyes. The cap

was covered with water flowers and surmounted with a nosegay of peonies.

The sleeves of his coat were also made of water-plants, and the rest of

his body was enveloped in alder and hazel leaves. On each side of him

marched a boy holding up one of the _Pfingstl_’s arms. These two boys

carried drawn swords, and so did most of the others who formed the

procession. They stopped at every house where they hoped to receive a

present; and the people, in hiding, soused the leaf-clad boy with water.

All rejoiced when he was well drenched. Finally he waded into the brook up

to his middle; whereupon one of the boys, standing on the bridge,

pretended to cut off his head.(813) At Wurmlingen in Swabia a score of

young fellows dress themselves on Whit-Monday in white shirts and white

trousers, with red scarves round their waists and swords hanging from the

scarves. They ride on horse-back into the wood, led by two trumpeters

blowing their trumpets. In the wood they cut down leafy oak branches, in

which they envelop from head to foot him who was the last of their number

to ride out of the village. His legs, however, are encased separately, so

that he may be able to mount his horse again. Further, they give him a

long artificial neck, with an artificial head and a false face on the top

of it. Then a May-tree is cut, generally an aspen or beech about ten feet

high; and being decked with coloured handkerchiefs and ribbons it is

entrusted to a special “May-bearer.” The cavalcade then returns with music

and song to the village. Amongst the personages who figure in the

procession are a Moorish king with a sooty face and a crown on his head, a

Dr. Iron-Beard, a corporal, and an executioner. They halt on the village

green, and each of the characters makes a speech in rhyme. The executioner

announces that the leaf-clad man has been condemned to death and cuts off

his false head. Then the riders race to the May-tree, which has been set

up a little way off. The first man who succeeds in wrenching it from the

ground as he gallops past keeps it with all its decorations. The ceremony

is observed every second or third year.(814)

In Saxony and Thüringen there is a Whitsuntide ceremony called “chasing

the Wild Man out of the bush,” or “fetching the Wild Man out of the wood.”

A young fellow is enveloped in leaves or moss and called the Wild Man. He

hides in the wood and the other lads of the village go out to seek him.

They find him, lead him captive out of the wood, and fire at him with

blank muskets. He falls like dead to the ground, but a lad dressed as a

doctor bleeds him, and he comes to life again. At this they rejoice and

binding him fast on a waggon take him to the village, where they tell all

the people how they have caught the Wild Man. At every house they receive

a gift.(815) In the Erzgebirge the following custom was annually observed

at Shrovetide about the beginning of the seventeenth century. Two men

disguised as Wild Men, the one in brushwood and moss, the other in straw,

were led about the streets, and at last taken to the market-place, where

they were chased up and down, shot and stabbed. Before falling they reeled

about with strange gestures and spirted blood on the people from bladders

which they carried. When they were down, the huntsmen placed them on

boards and carried them to the alehouse, the miners marching beside them

and winding blasts on their mining tools as if they had taken a noble head

of game.(816) A very similar Shrovetide custom is still observed in the

neighbourhood of Schluckenau (Bohemia). A man dressed up as a Wild Man is

chased through several streets till he comes to a narrow lane across which

a cord is stretched. He stumbles over the cord and, falling to the ground,

is overtaken and caught by his pursuers. The executioner runs up and stabs

with his sword a bladder filled with blood which the Wild Man wears round

his body; so the Wild Man dies, while a stream of blood reddens the

ground. Next day a straw-man, made up to look like the Wild Man, is placed

on a litter, and, accompanied by a great crowd, is taken to a pool into

which it is thrown by the executioner. The ceremony is called “burying the

Carnival.”(817)

In Semic (Bohemia) the custom of beheading the King is observed on

Whit-Monday. A troop of young people disguise themselves; each is girt

with a girdle of bark and carries a wooden sword and a trumpet of

willow-bark. The King wears a robe of tree-bark adorned with flowers, on

his head is a crown of bark decked with flowers and branches, his feet are

wound about with ferns, a mask hides his face, and for a sceptre he has a

hawthorn switch in his hand. A lad leads him through the village by a rope

fastened to his foot, while the rest dance about, blow their trumpets, and

whistle. In every farmhouse the King is chased round the room, and one of

the troop, amid much noise and outcry, strikes with his sword a blow on

the King’s robe of bark till it rings again. Then a gratuity is

demanded.(818) The ceremony of decapitation, which is here somewhat

slurred over, is carried out with a greater semblance of reality in other

parts of Bohemia. Thus in some villages of the Königgrätz district on

Whit-Monday the girls assemble under one lime-tree and the young men under

another, all dressed in their best and tricked out with ribbons. The young

men twine a garland for the Queen and the girls for the King. When they

have chosen the King and Queen they all go in procession, two and two, to

the alehouse, from the balcony of which the crier proclaims the names of

the King and Queen. Both are then invested with the insignia of their

dignity and are crowned with the garlands, while the music plays up. Then

some one gets on a bench and accuses the King of various offences, such as

ill-treating the cattle. The King appeals to witnesses and a trial ensues,

at the close of which the judge, who carries a white wand as his badge of

office, pronounces a verdict of “guilty” or “not guilty.” If the verdict

is “guilty” the judge breaks his wand, the King kneels on a white cloth,

all heads are bared, and a soldier sets three or four hats, one above the

other, on the King’s head. The judge then pronounces the word “guilty”

thrice in a loud voice, and orders the crier to behead the King. The crier

obeys by striking off the King’s hats with his wooden sword.(819)

But perhaps, for our purpose, the most instructive of these mimic

executions is the following Bohemian one, which has been in part described

already.(820) In some places of the Pilsen district (Bohemia) on

Whit-Monday the King is dressed in bark, ornamented with flowers and

ribbons; he wears a crown of gilt paper and rides a horse, which is also

decked with flowers. Attended by a judge, an executioner and other

characters, and followed by a train of soldiers, all mounted, he rides to

the village square, where a hut or arbour of green boughs has been erected

under the May-trees, which are firs, freshly cut, peeled to the top, and

dressed with flowers and ribbons. After the dames and maidens of the

village have been criticised and a frog beheaded, in the way already

described, the cavalcade rides to a place previously determined upon, in a

straight, broad street. Here they draw up in two lines and the King takes

to flight. He is given a short start and rides off at full speed, pursued

by the whole troop. If they fail to catch him he remains King for another

year, and his companions must pay his score at the alehouse in the

evening. But if they overtake and catch him he is scourged with hazel rods

or beaten with the wooden swords and compelled to dismount. Then the

executioner asks, “Shall I behead this King?” The answer is given, “Behead

him;” the executioner brandishes his axe, and with the words, “One, two,

three, let the King headless be!” he strikes off the King’s crown. Amid

the loud cries of the bystanders the King sinks to the ground; then he is

laid on a bier and carried to the nearest farmhouse.(821)

In the personages who are thus slain in mimicry it is impossible not to

recognise representatives of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation, as

he is supposed to manifest himself in spring. The bark, leaves, and

flowers in which the actors are dressed, and the season of the year at

which they appear, show that they belong to the same class as the Grass

King, King of the May, Jack-in-the-Green, and other representatives of the

vernal spirit of vegetation which we examined in the first chapter. As if

to remove any possible doubt on this head, we find that in two cases(822)

these slain men are brought into direct connection with May-trees, which

are (as we have seen) the impersonal, as the May King, Grass King, etc.,

are the personal representatives of the tree-spirit. The drenching of the

_Pfingstl_ with water and his wading up to the middle into the brook are,

therefore, no doubt rain-charms like those which have been already

described.(823)

But if these personages represent, as they certainly do, the spirit of

vegetation in spring, the question arises, Why kill them? What is the

object of slaying the spirit of vegetation at any time and above all in

spring, when his services are most wanted? The only answer to this

question seems to be given in the explanation already proposed of the

custom of killing the divine king or priest. The divine life, incarnate in

a material and mortal body, is liable to be tainted and corrupted by the

weakness of the frail medium in which it is for a time enshrined; and if

it is to be saved from the increasing enfeeblement which it must

necessarily share with its human incarnation as he advances in years, it

must be detached from him before, or at least as soon as, he exhibits

signs of decay, in order to be transferred to a vigorous successor. This

is done by killing the old representative of the god and conveying the

divine spirit from him to a new incarnation. The killing of the god, that

is, of his human incarnation, is, therefore, only a necessary step to his

revival or resurrection in a better form. Far from being an extinction of

the divine spirit, it is only the beginning of a purer and stronger

manifestation of it. If this explanation holds good of the custom of

killing divine kings and priests in general, it is still more obviously

applicable to the custom of annually killing the representative of the

tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation in spring. For the decay of vegetation

in winter is readily interpreted by primitive man as an enfeeblement of

the spirit of vegetation; the spirit has (he thinks) grown old and weak

and must therefore be renovated by being slain and brought to life in a

younger and fresher form. Thus the killing of the representative of the

tree-spirit in spring is regarded as a means to promote and quicken the

growth of vegetation. For the killing of the tree-spirit is associated

always (we must suppose) implicitly, and sometimes explicitly also, with a

revival or resurrection of him in a more youthful and vigorous form. Thus

in the Saxon and Thüringen custom, after the Wild Man has been shot he is

brought to life again by a doctor;(824) and in the Wurmlingen ceremony

there figures a Dr. Iron-Beard, who probably once played a similar part;

certainly in another spring ceremony (to be described presently) Dr.

Iron-Beard pretends to restore a dead man to life. But of this revival or

resurrection of the god we shall have more to say anon.

The points of similarity between these North European personages and the

subject of our inquiry—the King of the Wood or priest of Nemi—are

sufficiently striking. In these northern maskers we see kings, whose dress

of bark and leaves, along with the hut of green boughs and the fir-trees

under which they hold their court, proclaim them unmistakably as, like

their Italian counterpart, Kings of the Wood. Like him they die a violent

death; but like him they may escape from it for a time by their bodily

strength and agility; for in several of these northern customs the flight

and pursuit of the king is a prominent part of the ceremony, and in one

case at least if the king can outrun his pursuers he retains his life and

his office for another year. In this last case, in fact, the king holds

office on condition of running for his life once a year, just as the King

of Calicut in later times held office on condition of defending his life

against all comers once every twelve years, and just as the priest of Nemi

held office on condition of defending himself against any assault at any

time. In all these cases the life of the god-man is prolonged on condition

of showing, in a severe physical contest of fight or flight, that his

bodily strength is not decayed, and that, therefore, the violent death,

which sooner or later is inevitable, may for the present be postponed.

With regard to flight it is noticeable that flight figured conspicuously

both in the legend and the practice of the King of the Wood. He had to be

a runaway slave (_fugitivus_) in memory of the flight of Orestes, the

traditional founder of the worship; hence the Kings of the Wood are

described by an ancient writer as “both strong of hand and fleet of

foot.”(825) Perhaps if we knew the ritual of the Arician grove fully we

might find that the king was allowed a chance for his life by flight, like

his Bohemian brother. We may conjecture that the annual flight of the

priestly king at Rome (_regifugium_)(826) was at first a flight of the

same kind; in other words, that he was originally one of those divine

kings who are either put to death after a fixed period or allowed to prove

by the strong hand or the fleet foot that their divinity is vigorous and

unimpaired. One more point of resemblance may be noted between the Italian

King of the Wood and his northern counterparts. In Saxony and Thüringen

the representative of the tree-spirit, after being killed, is brought to

life again by a doctor. This is exactly what legend affirmed to have

happened to the first King of the Wood at Nemi, Hippolytus or Virbius, who

after he had been killed by his horses was restored to life by the

physician Aesculapius.(827) Such a legend tallies well with the theory

that the slaying of the King of the Wood was only a step to his revival or

resurrection in his successor.

It has been assumed that the mock killing of the Wild Man and of the King

in North European folk-custom is a modern substitute for an ancient custom

of killing them in earnest. Those who best know the tenacity of life

possessed by folk-custom and its tendency, with the growth of

civilisation, to dwindle from solemn ritual into mere pageant and pastime,

will be least likely to question the truth of this assumption. That human

sacrifices were commonly offered by the ancestors of the civilised races

of North Europe (Celts, Teutons, and Slavs) is certain.(828) It is not,

therefore, surprising that the modern peasant should do in mimicry what

his forefathers did in reality. We know as a matter of fact that in other

parts of the world mock human sacrifices have been substituted for real

ones. Thus Captain Bourke was informed by an old chief that the Indians of

Arizona used to offer human sacrifices at the Feast of Fire when the days

are shortest. The victim had his throat cut, his breast opened, and his

heart taken out by one of the priests. This custom was abolished by the

Mexicans, but for a long time afterwards a modified form of it was

secretly observed as follows. The victim, generally a young man, had his

throat cut, and blood was allowed to flow freely; but the medicine-men

sprinkled “medicine” on the gash, which soon healed up, and the man

recovered.(829) So in the ritual of Artemis at Halae in Attica, a man’s

throat was cut and the blood allowed to gush out, but he was not

killed.(830) At the funeral of a chief in Nias slaves are sacrificed; a

little of their hair is cut off, and then they are beheaded. The victims

are generally purchased for the purpose, and their number is proportioned

to the wealth and power of the deceased. But if the number required is

excessively great or cannot be procured, some of the chief’s own slaves

undergo a sham sacrifice. They are told, and believe, that they are about

to be decapitated; their heads are placed on a log and their necks struck

with the back of a sword. The fright drives some of them crazy.(831) When

a Hindoo has killed or ill-treated an ape, a bird of prey of a certain

kind, or a cobra capella, in the presence of the worshippers of Vishnu, he

must expiate his offence by the pretended sacrifice and resurrection of a

human being. An incision is made in the victim’s arm, the blood flows, he

grows faint, falls, and feigns to die. Afterwards he is brought to life by

being sprinkled with blood drawn from the thigh of a worshipper of Vishnu.

The crowd of spectators is fully convinced of the reality of this

simulated death and resurrection.(832) Sometimes the mock sacrifice is

carried out, not on a living person but on an image. Thus an Indian

law-book, the _Calica Puran_, prescribes that when the sacrifice of lions,

tigers, or human beings is required, an image of a lion, tiger, or man

shall be made with butter, paste, or barley meal, and sacrificed

instead.(833) Some of the Gonds of India formerly offered human

sacrifices; they now sacrifice straw-men instead.(834) Colonel Dalton was

told that in some of their villages the Bhagats (Hindooised Oraons)

“annually make an image of a man in wood, put clothes and ornaments on it,

and present it before the altar of a Mahádeo. The person who officiates as

priest on the occasion says: ‘O, Mahádeo, we sacrifice this man to you

according to ancient customs. Give us rain in due season, and a plentiful

harvest.’ Then with one stroke of the axe the head of the image is struck

off, and the body is removed and buried.”(835)

§ 3.—Carrying out Death.

Thus far I have offered an explanation of the rule which required that the

priest of Nemi should be slain by his successor. The explanation claims to

be no more than probable; our scanty knowledge of the custom and of its

history forbids it to be more. But its probability will be augmented in

proportion to the extent to which the motives and modes of thought which

it assumes can be proved to have operated in primitive society. Hitherto

the god with whose death and resurrection we have been chiefly concerned

has been the tree-god. Tree-worship may perhaps be regarded (though this

is a conjecture) as occupying an intermediate place in the history of

religion, between the religion of the hunter and shepherd on the one side,

whose gods are mostly animals, and the religion of the husbandman on the

other hand, in whose worship the cultivated plants play a leading part. If

then I can show that the custom of killing the god and the belief in his

resurrection originated, or at least existed, in the hunting and pastoral

stage of society, when the slain god was an animal, and survived into the

agricultural stage, when the slain god was the corn or a human being

representing the corn, the probability of my explanation will have been

considerably increased. This I shall attempt to do in the remainder of

this chapter, in the course of which I hope to clear up some obscurities

which still remain, and to answer some objections which may have suggested

themselves to the reader.

We start from the point at which we left off—the spring customs of

European peasantry. Besides the ceremonies already described there are two

kindred sets of observances in which the simulated death of a divine or

supernatural being is a leading feature. These observances are commonly

known as “Burying the Carnival,” and “Driving or carrying out Death.” Both

customs are chiefly practised, or at least best known, on German and

Slavonic ground. The former custom is observed on the last day of the

Carnival, namely, Shrove Tuesday (_Fastnacht_), or on the first day of

Lent, namely, Ash Wednesday. The latter custom is commonly observed on the

Fourth Sunday in Lent, which hence gets the name of Dead Sunday

(_Todtensonntag_); but in some places it is observed a week earlier; in

others again, as amongst the Czechs of Bohemia, a week later. Originally

the date of the celebration of the “Carrying out Death” appears not to

have been fixed, but to have depended on the appearance of the first

swallow or of some other natural phenomenon.(836) A Bohemian form of the

custom of “Burying the Carnival” has been already described.(837) The

following Swabian form is obviously similar. In the neighbourhood of

Tübingen on Shrove Tuesday a straw-man, called the Shrovetide Bear, is

made up; he is dressed in a pair of old trousers, and a fresh

black-pudding or two squirts filled with blood are inserted in his neck.

After a formal condemnation he is beheaded, laid in a coffin, and on Ash

Wednesday is buried in the churchyard. This is called “Burying the

Carnival” (“_die Fastnacht vergraben_”).(838) Amongst some of the Saxons

of Transylvania the Carnival is hung. Thus at Braller on Ash Wednesday or

Shrove Tuesday two white and two chestnut horses draw a sledge on which is

placed a straw-man swathed in a white cloth; beside him is a cart-wheel

which is kept turning round. Two lads disguised as old men follow the

sledge lamenting. The rest of the village lads, mounted on horseback and

decked with ribbons, accompany the procession, which is headed by two

girls crowned with evergreen and drawn in a waggon or sledge. A trial is

held under a tree, at which lads disguised as soldiers pronounce sentence

of death. The two old men try to rescue the straw-man and to fly with him,

but to no purpose; he is caught by the two girls and handed over to the

executioner, who hangs him on a tree. In vain the old men try to climb up

the tree and take him down; they always tumble down, and at last in

despair they throw themselves on the ground and weep and howl for the

hanged man. An official then makes a speech in which he declares that the

Carnival was condemned to death because he had done them harm, by wearing

out their shoes and making them tired and sleepy.(839) At the “Burial of

Carnival” in Lechrain, a man dressed as a woman in black clothes is

carried on a litter or bier by four men; he is lamented over by men

disguised as women in black clothes, then thrown down before the village

dung-heap, drenched with water, buried in the dung-heap, and covered with

straw.(840) Similarly in Schörzingen, near Schömberg, the “Carnival

(Shrovetide) Fool” was carried all about the village on a bier, preceded

by a man dressed in white, and followed by a devil who was dressed in

black and carried chains, which he clanked. One of the train collected

gifts. After the procession the Fool was buried under straw and dung.(841)

In Rottweil the “Carnival Fool” is made drunk on Ash Wednesday and buried

under straw amid loud lamentation.(842) In Wurmlingen the Fool is

represented by a young fellow enveloped in straw, who is led about the

village by a rope as a “Bear” on Shrove Tuesday and the preceding day. He

dances to the flute. Then on Ash Wednesday a straw-man is made, placed on

a trough, carried out of the village to the sound of drums and mournful

music, and buried in a field.(843) In Altdorf and Weingarten on Ash

Wednesday the Fool, represented by a straw-man, is carried about and then

thrown into the water to the accompaniment of melancholy music. In other

villages of Swabia the part of fool is played by a live person, who is

thrown into the water after being carried about in procession.(844) At

Balwe, in Westphalia, a straw-man is made on Shrove Tuesday and thrown

into the river amid rejoicings. This is called, as usual, “Burying the

Carnival.”(845) On the evening of Shrove Tuesday, the Esthonians make a

straw figure called _metsik_ or “wood-spirit;” one year it is dressed with

a man’s coat and hat, next year with a hood and a petticoat. This figure

is stuck on a long pole, carried across the boundary of the village with

loud cries of joy, and fastened to the top of a tree in the wood. The

ceremony is believed to be a protection against all kinds of

misfortune.(846) Sometimes the resurrection of the pretended dead person

is enacted. Thus, in some parts of Swabia, on Shrove Tuesday Dr.

Iron-Beard professes to bleed a sick man, who thereupon falls as dead to

the ground; but the doctor at last restores him to life by blowing air

into him through a tube.(847) In the Harz mountains, when Carnival is

over, a man is laid on a baking-trough and carried with dirges to a grave;

but in the grave, instead of the man, a glass of brandy is placed. A

speech is delivered and then the people return to the village-green or

meeting-place, where they smoke the long clay pipes which are distributed

at funerals. On the morning of Shrove Tuesday in the following year the

brandy is dug up and the festival begins by every one tasting the brandy

which, as the phrase goes, has come to life again.(848)

The ceremony of “Carrying out Death” presents much the same features as

“Burying the Carnival;” except that the figure of Death is oftener drowned

or burned than buried, and that the carrying out of Death is generally

followed by a ceremony, or at least accompanied by a profession, of

bringing in Summer, Spring, or Life. Thus, in some villages of Thüringen

on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, the children used to carry a puppet of

birchen twigs through the village, and then threw it into a pool, while

they sang, “We carry the old Death out behind the herdsman’s old house; we

have got Summer, and Kroden’s(?) power is destroyed.”(849) In one village

of Thüringen (Dobschwitz near Gera), the ceremony of “Driving out Death”

is still annually observed on the 1st of March. The young people make up a

figure of straw or the like materials, dress it in old clothes which they

have begged from the houses in the village, and carry it out and throw it

into the river. On returning to the village they announce the fact to the

people, and receive eggs and other victuals as a reward. In other villages

of Thüringen, in which the population was originally Slavonic, the

carrying out of the puppet is accompanied with the singing of a song,

which begins, “Now we carry Death out of the village and Spring into the

village.”(850) In Bohemia the children go out with a straw-man,

representing Death, to the end of the village, where they burn it,

singing—

“Now carry we Death out of the village,

The new Summer into the village,

Welcome dear Summer,

Green little corn!”(851)

At Tabor (Bohemia) the figure of Death is carried out of the town and

flung from a high rock into the water, while they sing—

“Death swims on the water,

Summer will soon be here,

We carried Death away for you,

We brought the Summer.

And do thou, O holy Marketa,

Give us a good year

For wheat and for rye.”(852)

In other parts of Bohemia they carry Death to the end of the village,

singing—

“We carry Death out of the village,

And the New Year into the village.

Dear Spring, we bid you welcome,

Green grass, we bid you welcome.”

Behind the village they erect a pyre, on which they burn the straw figure,

reviling and scoffing at it the while. Then they return, singing—

“We have carried away Death,

And brought Life back.

He has taken up his quarters in the village,

Therefore sing joyous songs.”(853)

At Nürnberg, girls of seven to eighteen years of age, dressed in their

best, carry through the streets a little open coffin in which is a doll,

hidden under a shroud. Others carry a beech branch, with an apple fastened

to it for a head, in an open box. They sing, “We carry Death into the

water, it is well,” or, “We carry Death into the water, carry him in and

out again.”(854)

The effigy of Death is often regarded with fear and treated with marks of

hatred and contempt. In Lusatia the figure is sometimes made to look in at

the window of a house, and it is believed that some one in the house will

die within the year unless his life is redeemed by the payment of

money.(855) Again, after throwing the effigy away, the bearers sometimes

run home lest Death should follow them; and if one of them falls in

running, it is believed that he will die within the year.(856) At Chrudim,

in Bohemia, the figure of Death is made out of a cross, with a head and

mask stuck at the top, and a shirt stretched out on it. On the Fifth

Sunday in Lent the boys take this effigy to the nearest brook or pool, and

standing in a line throw it into the water. Then they all plunge in after

it; but as soon as it is caught no one more may enter the water. The boy

who did not enter the water or entered it last will die within the year,

and he is obliged to carry the Death back to the village. The effigy is

then burned.(857) On the other hand it is believed that no one will die

within the year in the house out of which the figure of Death has been

carried;(858) and the village out of which Death has been driven is

sometimes supposed to be protected against sickness and plague.(859) In

some villages of Austrian Silesia on the Saturday before Dead Sunday an

effigy is made of old clothes, hay, and straw, for the purpose of driving

Death out of the village. On Sunday the people, armed with sticks and

straps, assemble before the house where the figure is lodged. Four lads

then draw the effigy by cords through the village amid exultant shouts,

while all the others beat it with their sticks and straps. On reaching a

field which belongs to a neighbouring village they lay down the figure,

cudgel it soundly, and scatter the fragments over the field. The people

believe that the village from which Death has been thus carried out will

be safe from any infectious disease for the whole year.(860) In Slavonia

the figure of Death is cudgelled and then rent in two.(861) In Poland the

effigy, made of hemp and straw, is flung into a pool or swamp with the

words, “The devil take thee.”(862)

The custom of “sawing the Old Woman,” which is or used to be observed in

Italy and Spain on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, is doubtless, as Grimm

supposes, merely another form of the custom of “carrying out Death.” A

great hideous figure representing the oldest woman of the village was

dragged out and sawn in two, amid a prodigious noise made with cow-bells,

pots and pans, etc.(863) In Palermo the ceremony used to be still more

realistic. At Mid-Lent an old woman was drawn through the streets on a

cart, attended by two men dressed in the costume of the _Compagnia

de’Bianchi_, a society or religious order whose function it was to attend

and console prisoners condemned to death. A scaffold was erected in a

public square; the old woman mounted it, and two mock executioners

proceeded, amid a storm of huzzas and hand-clapping, to saw through her

neck or rather through a bladder of blood which had been previously fitted

to her neck. The blood gushed out and the old woman pretended to swoon and

die. The last of these mock executions took place in 1737.(864) At

Florence, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Old Woman was

represented by a figure stuffed with walnuts and dried figs and fastened

to the top of a ladder. At Mid-Lent this effigy was sawn through the

middle under the _Loggie_ of the Mercato Nuovo, and as the dried fruits

tumbled out they were scrambled for by the crowd. A trace of the custom is

still to be seen in the practice, observed by urchins, of secretly pinning

paper ladders to the shoulders of women of the lower classes who happen to

show themselves in the streets on the morning of Mid-Lent.(865) A similar

custom is observed by urchins in Rome; and at Naples on the 1st of April

boys cut strips of cloth into the shape of saws, smear them with gypsum,

and strike passers-by with their “saws” on the back, thus imprinting the

figure of a saw upon their clothes.(866) At Montalto in Calabria boys go

about at Mid-Lent with little saws made of cane and jeer at old people,

who therefore generally stay indoors on that day. The Calabrian women meet

together at this time and feast on figs, chestnuts, honey, etc.; this they

call “sawing the Old Woman”—a reminiscence probably of a custom like the

old Florentine one.(867)

In Barcelona on the day in question boys run about the streets, some with

saws, others with billets of wood, others again with cloths in which they

collect gratuities. They sing a song in which it is said that they are

looking for the oldest woman of the city for the purpose of sawing her in

two in honour of Mid-Lent; at last, pretending to have found her, they saw

something in two and burn it. A like custom is found amongst the South

Slavs. In Lent the Croats tell their children that at noon an old woman is

being sawn in two outside the gates; and in Carniola also the saying is

current that at Mid-Lent an old woman is taken out of the village and sawn

in two. The North Slavonian expression for keeping Mid-Lent is _bábu

rezati_, that is, “sawing the Old Wife.”(868)

In the preceding ceremonies the return of Spring, Summer, or Life, as a

sequel to the expulsion of Death, is only implied or at most announced. In

the following ceremonies it is plainly enacted. In some parts of Bohemia

the effigy of Death is buried at sunset; then the girls go out into the

wood and cut down a young tree with a green crown, hang a doll dressed as

a woman on it, deck the whole with green, red, and white ribbons, and

march in procession with their _Líto_ (Summer) into the village,

collecting gifts and singing—

“We carried Death out of the village,

We are carrying Summer into the village.”(869)

In many Silesian villages the figure of Death, after being treated with

respect, is stripped of its clothes and flung with curses into the water,

or torn in pieces in a field. Then a fir-tree adorned with ribbons,

coloured egg-shells, and motley bits of cloth, is carried through the

streets by boys who collect pennies and sing—

“We have carried Death out,

We are bringing the dear Summer back,

The Summer and the May

And all the flowers gay.”(870)

At Eisenach on the Fourth Sunday in Lent young people used to fasten a

straw-man, representing Death, to a wheel, which they trundled to the top

of a hill. Then setting fire to the figure they allowed it and the wheel

to roll downhill. Next they cut a tall fir-tree, tricked it out with

ribbons, and set it up in the plain. The men then climbed the tree to

fetch down the ribbons.(871) In Upper Lusatia the figure of Death, made of

straw and rags, is dressed in a veil furnished by the last bride and a

shirt furnished by the house in which the last death occurred. Thus

arrayed the figure is stuck on the end of a long pole and carried at full

speed by the tallest and strongest girl, while the rest pelt the effigy

with sticks and stones. Whoever hits it will be sure to live through the

year. In this way Death is carried out of the village and thrown into the

water or over the boundary of the next village. On their way home each one

breaks a green branch and carries it gaily with him till he reaches the

village, when he throws it away. Sometimes the young people of the next

village, upon whose land the figure has been thrown, run after them and

hurl it back, not wishing to have Death among them. Hence the two parties

occasionally come to blows.(872)

In these cases Death is represented by the puppet which is thrown away,

Summer or Life by the branches or trees which are brought back. But

sometimes a new potency of life seems to be attributed to the image of

Death itself, and by a kind of resurrection it becomes the instrument of

the general revival. Thus in some parts of Lusatia women alone are

concerned in carrying out Death, and suffer no male to meddle with it.

Attired in mourning, which they wear the whole day, they make a puppet of

straw, clothe it in a white shirt, and give it a broom in one hand and a

scythe in the other. Singing songs and pursued by urchins throwing stones,

they carry the puppet to the village boundary, where they tear it in

pieces. Then they cut down a fine tree, hang the shirt on it, and carry it

home singing.(873) On the Feast of Ascension the Saxons of a village near

Hermanstadt (Transylvania) observe the ceremony of “carrying out Death” in

the following manner. After forenoon church all the school-girls repair to

the house of one of their number, and there dress up the Death. This is

done by tying a threshed-out corn-sheaf into the rough semblance of a head

and body, while the arms are simulated by a broomstick stuck horizontally.

The figure is dressed in the Sunday clothes of a village matron. It is

then displayed at the window that all people may see it on their way to

afternoon church. As soon as vespers are over the girls seize the effigy

and, singing a hymn, carry it in procession round the village. Boys are

excluded from the procession. After the procession has traversed the

village from end to end, the figure is taken to another house and stripped

of its attire; the naked straw bundle is then thrown out of the window to

the boys, who carry it off and fling it into the nearest stream. This is

the first act of the drama. In the second, one of the girls is solemnly

invested with the clothes and ornaments previously worn by the figure of

Death, and, like it, is led in procession round the village to the singing

of the same hymns as before. The ceremony ends with a feast at the house

of the girl who acted the chief part; as before, the boys are excluded.

“According to popular belief, it is allowed to eat fruit only after this

day, as now the ‘Death,’ that is, the unwholesomeness—has been expelled

from them. Also the river in which the Death has been drowned may now be

considered fit for public bathing. If this ceremony be neglected in the

village where it is customary, such neglect is supposed to entail death to

one of the young people, or loss of virtue to a girl.”(874)

In the first of these two ceremonies the tree which is brought home after

the destruction of the figure of Death is plainly equivalent to the trees

or branches which, in the preceding customs, were brought back as

representatives of Summer or Life, after Death had been thrown away or

destroyed. But the transference of the shirt worn by the effigy of Death

to the tree clearly indicates that the tree is a kind of revivification,

in a new form, of the destroyed effigy.(875) This comes out also in the

Transylvanian custom; the dressing of a girl in the clothes worn by the

Death, and the leading her about the village to the same songs which had

been sung when the Death was being carried about, show that she is

intended to be a kind of resuscitation of the being whose effigy has just

been destroyed. These examples therefore suggest that the Death whose

demolition is represented in these ceremonies cannot be regarded as the

purely destructive agent which we understand by Death. If the tree which

is brought back as an embodiment of the reviving vegetation of spring is

clothed in the shirt worn by the Death which has been just destroyed, the

object certainly cannot be to check and counteract the revival of

vegetation; it can only be to foster and promote it. Therefore the being

which has just been destroyed—the so-called Death—must be supposed to be

endowed with a vivifying and quickening influence, which it can

communicate to the vegetable and even the animal world. This ascription of

a life-giving virtue to the figure of Death is put beyond a doubt by the

custom, observed in some places, of taking pieces of the straw effigy of

Death and placing them in the fields to make the crops grow, or in the

manger to make the cattle thrive. Thus in Spachendorf (Austrian Silesia)

the figure of Death made of straw, brushwood, and rags, is carried out

with wild songs to an open place outside the village and there burned, and

while it is burning a general struggle takes place for the pieces, which

are pulled out of the flames with bare hands. Each one who secures a

fragment of the effigy ties it to a branch of the largest tree in his

garden, or buries it in his field, in the belief that this causes the

crops to grow better.(876) In the Troppau district (Austrian Silesia) the

straw figure which the boys make on the Fourth Sunday in Lent is dressed

by the girls in woman’s clothes and hung with ribbons, necklace, and

garlands. Attached to a long pole it is carried out of the village,

followed by a troop of young people of both sexes, who alternately frolic,

lament, and sing songs. Arrived at its destination—a field outside the

village—the figure is stripped of its clothes and ornaments; then the

crowd rushes on it and tears it to bits, scuffling for the fragments.

Every one tries to get a wisp of the straw of which the effigy was made,

because such a wisp, placed in the manger, is believed to make the cattle

thrive.(877) Or the straw is put in the hens’ nest, it being supposed that

this prevents the hens from carrying away their eggs, and makes them brood

much better.(878) The same attribution of a fertilising power to the

figure of Death appears in the belief that if the bearers of the figure,

after throwing it away, meet cattle and strike them with their sticks,

this will render the cattle prolific.(879) Perhaps the sticks had been

previously used to beat the Death,(880) and so had acquired the

fertilising power ascribed to the effigy. In Leipzig at Mid-Lent men and

women of the lowest class used to carry through all the streets a straw

effigy of Death, which they exhibited to young wives, and finally threw

into the river, alleging that this made young wives fruitful, cleansed the

city, and averted the plague and other sickness from the inhabitants for

that year.(881)

It seems hardly possible to separate from the May-trees the trees or

branches which are brought into the village after the destruction of the

Death. The bearers who bring them in profess to be bringing in the

Summer;(882) therefore the trees obviously represent the Summer; and the

doll which is sometimes attached to the Summer-tree is a duplicate

representative of the Summer, just as the May is sometimes represented at

the same time by a May-tree and a May Lady.(883) Further, the Summer-trees

are adorned like May-trees with ribbons, etc.; like May-trees, when large,

they are planted in the ground and climbed up; and like May-trees, when

small, they are carried from door to door by boys or girls singing songs

and collecting money.(884) And as if to demonstrate the identity of the

two sets of customs the bearers of the Summer-tree sometimes announce that

they are bringing in the Summer and the May.(885) The customs, therefore,

of bringing in the May and bringing in the Summer are essentially the

same; and the Summer-tree is merely another form of the May-tree, the only

distinction (besides that of name) being in the time at which they are

respectively brought in; for while the May-tree is usually fetched in on

the 1st of May or at Whitsuntide, the Summer-tree is fetched in on the

Fourth Sunday in Lent. Therefore, if the explanation here adopted of the

May-tree (namely, that it is an embodiment of the tree-spirit or spirit of

vegetation) is correct, the Summer-tree must likewise be an embodiment of

the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. But we have seen that the

Summer-tree is in some cases a revivification of the effigy of Death. It

follows, therefore, that in these cases the effigy called Death must be an

embodiment of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. This inference is

confirmed, first, by the vivifying and fertilising influence which the

fragments of the effigy of Death are believed to exercise both on

vegetable and on animal life;(886) for this influence, as we saw in the

first chapter, is supposed to be a special attribute of the tree-spirit.

It is confirmed, secondly, by observing that the effigy of Death is

sometimes composed of birchen twigs, of the branch of a beech-tree, of a

threshed-out corn-sheaf, or of hemp;(887) and that sometimes it is hung on

a little tree and so carried about by girls collecting money,(888) just as

is done with the May-tree and the May Lady, and with the Summer-tree and

the doll attached to it. In short we are driven to regard the expulsion of

Death and the bringing in of Summer as, in some cases at least, merely

another form of that death and resuscitation of the spirit of vegetation

in spring which we saw enacted in the killing and resurrection of the Wild

Man.(889) The burial and resurrection of the Carnival is probably another

way of expressing the same idea. The burying of the representative of the

Carnival under a dung-heap is natural, if he is supposed to possess a

quickening and fertilising influence like that ascribed to the effigy of

Death. By the Esthonians, indeed, the straw figure which is carried out of

the village in the usual way on Shrove Tuesday is not called the Carnival,

but the Wood-spirit (_Metsik_), and the identity of it with the

wood-spirit is further shown by fixing it to the top of a tree in the

wood, where it remains for a year, and is besought almost daily with

prayers and offerings to protect the herds; for like a true wood-spirit

the _Metsik_ is a patron of cattle. Sometimes the _Metsik_ is made of

sheafs of corn.(890) Therefore, we may fairly conjecture that the names

Carnival, Death, and Summer, are comparatively late and inadequate

expressions for the beings personified or embodied in the customs

described. The very abstractness of the names bespeaks a modern origin;

the personification of times and seasons like the Carnival and Summer, or

of an abstract notion like death, is hardly primitive. But the ceremonies

themselves bear the stamp of a dateless antiquity; therefore we can hardly

help supposing that in their origin the ideas which they embodied were of

a more simple and concrete order. The conception of a tree, perhaps of a

particular kind of tree (for some savages have no word for tree in

general), or even of an individual tree, is sufficiently concrete to

supply a basis from which by a gradual process of generalisation the wider

conception of a spirit of vegetation might be reached. But this general

conception of vegetation would readily be confounded with the season in

which it manifests itself; hence the substitution of Spring, Summer, or

May for the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation would be easy and natural.

Again the concrete notion of the dying tree or dying vegetation would by a

similar process of generalisation glide into a notion of death in general;

so that instead of the carrying out of the dying or dead vegetation in

spring (as a preliminary to its revival) we should in time get a carrying

out of Death itself. The view that in these spring ceremonies Death meant

originally the dying or dead vegetation of winter has the high support of

W. Mannhardt; and he confirms it by the analogy of the name Death as

applied to the spirit of the ripe corn. Commonly the spirit of the ripe

corn is conceived, not as dead, but as old, and hence it goes by the name

of the Old Man or the Old Woman. But in some places the last sheaf cut at

harvest, which is generally believed to be the seat of the corn spirit, is

called “the Dead One;” children are warned against entering the

corn-fields because Death sits in the corn; and, in a game played by Saxon

children in Transylvania at the maize harvest, Death is represented by a

child completely covered with maize leaves.(891)

The supposition that behind the conceptions of Death, Carnival, Summer,

etc., as embodied in these spring ceremonies, there lurk older and more

concrete notions is to a certain extent countenanced by the fact that in

Russia funeral ceremonies like those of “Burying the Carnival” and

“Carrying out Death” are celebrated under the names, not of Death or the

Carnival, but of certain mythic figures, Kostrubonko, Kostroma, Kupalo,

Lada, and Yarilo. These Russian ceremonies are observed both in spring and

at midsummer. Thus “in Little Russia it used to be the custom at

Eastertide to celebrate the funeral of a being called Kostrubonko, the

deity of the spring. A circle was formed of singers who moved slowly

around a girl who lay on the ground as if dead, and as they went they

sang—

‘Dead, dead is our Kostrubonko!

Dead, dead is our dear one!’

until the girl suddenly sprang up, on which the chorus joyfully exclaimed—

‘Come to life, come to life has our Kostrubonko!

Come to life, come to life has our dear one!’ ”(892)

On the Eve of St. John (Midsummer Eve) a figure of Kupalo is made of straw

and “is dressed in woman’s clothes, with a necklace and a floral crown.

Then a tree is felled, and, after being decked with ribbons, is set up on

some chosen spot. Near this tree, to which they give the name of Marena

[Winter or Death], the straw figure is placed, together with a table, on

which stand spirits and viands. Afterwards a bonfire is lit, and the young

men and maidens jump over it in couples, carrying the figure with them. On

the next day they strip the tree and the figure of their ornaments, and

throw them both into a stream.”(893) On St. Peter’s Day (29th June) or on

the following Sunday, “the Funeral of Kostroma” or of Lada or of Yarilo is

celebrated in Russia. In the Governments of Penza and Simbirsk the

“funeral” used to be represented as follows. A bonfire was kindled on the

28th of June, and on the next day the maidens chose one of their number to

play the part of Kostroma. Her companions saluted her with deep

obeisances, placed her on a board, and carried her to the bank of a

stream. There they bathed her in the water, while the oldest girl made a

basket of lime-tree bark and beat it like a drum. Then they returned to

the village and ended the day with processions, games, and dances.(894) In

the Murom district, Kostroma was represented by a straw figure dressed in

woman’s clothes and flowers. This was laid in a trough and carried with

songs to the bank of a lake or river. Here the crowd divided into two

sides, of which the one attacked and the other defended the figure. At

last the assailants gained the day, stripped the figure of its dress and

ornaments, tore it in pieces, trod the straw of which it was made under

foot, and flung it into the stream; while the defenders of the figure hid

their faces in their hands and pretended to bewail the death of

Kostroma.(895) In the district of Kostroma the burial of Yarilo was

celebrated on the 29th or 30th of June. The people chose an old man and

gave him a small coffin containing a Priapus-like figure representing

Yarilo. This he carried out of the town, followed by women chanting dirges

and expressing by their gestures grief and despair. In the open fields a

grave was dug, and into it the figure was lowered amid weeping and

wailing, after which games and dances were begun, “calling to mind the

funeral games celebrated in old times by the pagan Slavonians.”(896) In

Little Russia the figure of Yarilo was laid in a coffin and carried

through the streets after sunset surrounded by drunken women, who kept

repeating mournfully, “He is dead! he is dead!” The men lifted and shook

the figure as if they were trying to recall the dead man to life. Then

they said to the women, “Women, weep not. I know what is sweeter than

honey.” But the women continued to lament and chant, as they do at

funerals. “Of what was he guilty? He was so good. He will arise no more. O

how shall we part from thee? What is life without thee? Arise, if only for

a brief hour. But he rises not, he rises not.” At last the Yarilo was

buried in a grave.(897)

These Russian customs are plainly of the same nature as those which in

Austria and Germany are known as “Burying the Carnival” and “Carrying out

Death.” Therefore if my interpretation of the latter is right, the Russian

Kostroma, Yarilo, etc. must also have been originally embodiments of the

spirit of vegetation, and their death must have been regarded as a

necessary preliminary to their revival. The revival as a sequel to the

death is enacted in the first of the ceremonies described, the death and

resurrection of Kostrubonko. The reason why in some of these Russian

ceremonies the death of the spirit of vegetation is celebrated at

midsummer may be that the decline of summer is dated from Midsummer Day,

after which the days begin to shorten, and the sun sets out on his

downward journey—

“To the darksome hollows

Where the frosts of winter lie.”

Such a turning-point of the year, when vegetation might be thought to

share the incipient though still almost imperceptible decay of summer,

might very well be chosen by primitive man as a fit moment for resorting

to those magic ceremonies by which he hopes to stay the decline, or at

least to ensure the revival, of plant life.

But while the death of vegetation appears to have been represented in all,

and its revival in some, of these spring and midsummer ceremonies, there

are features in some of them which can hardly be explained on this

hypothesis alone. The solemn funeral, the lamentations, and the mourning

attire, which often characterise these ceremonies, are indeed appropriate

at the death of the beneficent spirit of vegetation. But what shall we say

of the glee with which the effigy is often carried out, of the sticks and

stones with which it is assailed, and the taunts and curses which are

hurled at it? What shall we say of the dread of the effigy evinced by the

haste with which the bearers scamper home as soon as they have thrown it

away, and by the belief that some one must soon die in any house into

which it has looked? This dread might perhaps be explained by a belief

that there is a certain infectiousness in the dead spirit of vegetation

which renders its approach dangerous. But this explanation, besides being

rather strained, does not cover the rejoicings which often attend the

carrying out of Death.

We must therefore recognise two distinct and seemingly opposite features

in these ceremonies; on the one hand, sorrow for the death, and affection

and respect for the dead; on the other hand, fear and hatred of the dead,

and rejoicings at his death. How the former of these features is to be

explained I have attempted to show; how the latter came to be so closely

associated with the former is a question which I shall try to answer in

the sequel.

Before we quit these European customs to go farther afield, it will be

well to notice that occasionally the expulsion of Death or of a mythic

being is conducted without any visible representative of the personage

expelled. Thus at Königshain, near Görlitz (Silesia), all the villagers,

young and old, used to go out with straw torches to the top of a

neighbouring hill, called _Todtenstein_ (Death-stone), where they lit

their torches, and so returned home singing, “We have driven out Death, we

are bringing back Summer.”(898) In Albania young people light torches of

resinous wood on Easter Eve, and march in procession through the village

brandishing them. At last they throw the torches into the river, saying,

“Ha, Kore, we fling you into the river, like these torches, that you may

return no more.” Some say that the intention of the ceremony is to drive

out winter; but Kore is conceived as a malignant being who devours

children.(899)

In the Kânagrâ district, India, there is a custom observed by young girls

in spring which closely resembles some of the European spring ceremonies

just described. It is called the _Ralî Ka melâ_, or fair of Rali, the

_Ralî_ being a small painted earthen image of Siva or Pârvatî. It lasts

through most of Chet (March-April) up to the Sankrânt of Baisâkh (April),

and is in vogue all over the Kânagrâ district. Its celebration is entirely

confined to young girls. On a morning in March all the young girls of the

village take small baskets of _dûb_ grass and flowers to a certain fixed

spot, where they throw them in a heap. Round this heap they stand in a

circle and sing. This goes on every day for ten days, till the heap of

grass and flowers has reached a fair height. Then they cut in the jungle

two branches having three prongs at one end, and place them, prongs

downwards, over the heap of flowers, so as to make two tripods or

pyramids. On the single uppermost points of these branches they get an

image-maker to construct two clay images, one to represent Siva, and the

other Pârvatî. The girls then divide themselves into two parties, one for

Siva and one for Pârvatî, and marry the images in the usual way, leaving

out no part of the ceremony. After the marriage they have a feast, the

cost of which is defrayed by contributions solicited from their parents.

Then at the next Sankrânt (Baisâkh) they all go together to the riverside,

throw the images into a deep pool, and weep over the place, as though they

were performing funeral obsequies. The boys of the neighbourhood often

annoy them by diving after the images, bringing them up, and waving them

about while the girls are crying over them. The object of the fair is said

to be to secure a good husband.(900)

That in this Indian ceremony the deities Siva and Pârvatî are conceived as

spirits of vegetation seems to be proved by the fact that their images are

placed on branches over a heap of grass and flowers. Here, as often in

European folk-custom, the divinities of vegetation are represented in

duplicate, by plants and by puppets. The marriage of these Indian deities

in spring corresponds to the European ceremonies in which the marriage of

the vernal spirits of vegetation is represented by the King and Queen of

May, the May Bride, Bridegroom of the May, etc.(901) The throwing of the

images into the water, and the mourning for them, are the equivalents of

the European customs of throwing the dead spirit of vegetation (under the

name of Death, Yarilo, Kostroma, etc.) into the water and lamenting over

it. Again, in India, as often in Europe, the rite is performed exclusively

by females. The notion that the ceremony was effective for procuring

husbands to the girls can be explained by the quickening and fertilising

influence which the spirit of vegetation is believed to exert upon human

and animal, as well as upon vegetable life.(902)

§ 4.—Adonis.

But it is in Egypt and Western Asia that the death and resurrection of

vegetation appear to have been most widely celebrated with ceremonies like

those of modern Europe. Under the names of Osiris, Adonis, Thammuz, Attis,

and Dionysus, the Egyptians, Syrians, Babylonians, Phrygians, and Greeks

represented the decay and revival of vegetation with rites which, as the

ancients themselves recognised, were substantially the same, and which

find their parallels in the spring and midsummer customs of our European

peasantry. The nature and worship of these deities have been discussed at

length by many learned writers; all that I propose to do is to sketch

those salient features in their ritual and legends which seem to establish

the view here taken of their nature. We begin with Adonis or Thammuz.

The worship of Adonis was practised by the Semitic peoples of Syria, from

whom it was borrowed by the Greeks as early at least as the fifth century

before Christ. The name Adonis is the Phoenician _Adon_, “lord.”(903) He

was said to have been a fair youth, beloved by Aphrodite (the Semitic

Astarte), but slain by a boar in his youthful prime. His death was

annually lamented with a bitter wailing, chiefly by women; images of him,

dressed to resemble corpses, were carried out as to burial and then thrown

into the sea or into springs;(904) and in some places his revival was

celebrated on the following day.(905) But the ceremonies varied somewhat

both in the manner and the season of their celebration in different

places. At Alexandria images of Adonis and Aphrodite were displayed on two

couches; beside them were set ripe fruits of all kinds, cakes, plants

growing in flower pots, and green bowers twined with anise. The marriage

of the lovers was celebrated one day, and on the next the image of Adonis

was borne by women attired as mourners, with streaming hair and bared

breasts, to the sea-shore and committed to the waves.(906) The date at

which this Alexandrian ceremony was observed is not expressly stated; but

from the mention of the ripe fruits it has been inferred that it took

place in late summer.(907) At Byblus the death of Adonis was annually

mourned with weeping, wailing, and beating of the breast; but next day he

was believed to come to life again and ascend up to heaven in the presence

of his worshippers.(908) This celebration appears to have taken place in

spring; for its date was determined by the discoloration of the river

Adonis, and this has been observed by modern travellers to occur in

spring. At that season the red earth washed down from the mountains by the

rain tinges the water of the river and even the sea for a great way with a

blood-red hue, and the crimson stain was believed to be the blood of

Adonis, annually wounded to death by the boar on Mount Lebanon.(909)

Again, the red anemone(910) was said to have sprung from the blood of

Adonis; and as the anemone blooms in Syria about Easter, this is a fresh

proof that the festival of Adonis, or at least one of his festivals, was

celebrated in spring. The name of the flower is probably derived from

Naaman (“darling”), which seems to have been an epithet of Adonis. The

Arabs still call the anemone “wounds of the Naaman.”(911)

The resemblance of these ceremonies to the Indian and European ceremonies

previously described is obvious. In particular, apart from the somewhat

doubtful date of its celebration, the Alexandrian ceremony is almost

identical with the Indian. In both of them the marriage of two divinities,

whose connection with vegetation seems indicated by the fresh plants with

which they are surrounded, is celebrated in effigy, and the effigies are

afterwards mourned over and thrown into the water.(912) From the

similarity of these customs to each other and to the spring and midsummer

customs of modern Europe we should naturally expect that they all admit of

a common explanation. Hence, if the explanation here adopted of the latter

is correct, the ceremony of the death and resurrection of Adonis must also

have been a representation of the decay and revival of vegetation. The

inference thus based on the similarity of the customs is confirmed by the

following features in the legend and ritual of Adonis. His connection with

vegetation comes out at once in the common story of his birth. He was said

to have been born from a myrrh-tree, the bark of which bursting, after a

ten months’ gestation, allowed the lovely infant to come forth. According

to some, a boar rent the bark with his tusk and so opened a passage for

the babe. A faint rationalistic colour was given to the legend by saying

that his mother was a woman named Myrrh, who had been turned into a

myrrh-tree soon after she had conceived the child.(913) Again the story

that Adonis spent half, or according to others a third, of the year in the

lower world and the rest of it in the upper world,(914) is explained most

simply and naturally by supposing that he represented vegetation,

especially the corn, which lies buried in the earth half the year and

reappears above ground the other half. Certainly of the annual phenomena

of nature there is none which suggests so obviously the idea of a yearly

death and resurrection as the disappearance and reappearance of vegetation

in autumn and spring. Adonis has been taken for the sun; but there is

nothing in the sun’s annual course within the temperate and tropical zones

to suggest that he is dead for half or a third of the year and alive for

the other half or two-thirds. He might, indeed, be conceived as weakened

in winter,(915) but dead he could not be thought to be; his daily

reappearance contradicts the supposition. Within the arctic circle, where

the sun annually disappears for a continuous period of from twenty-four

hours to six months, according to the latitude, his annual death and

resurrection would certainly be an obvious idea; but no one has suggested

that the Adonis worship came from those regions. On the other hand the

annual death and revival of vegetation is a conception which readily

presents itself to men in every stage of savagery and civilisation; and

the vastness of the scale on which this yearly decay and regeneration

takes place, together with man’s intimate dependence on it for

subsistence, combine to render it the most striking annual phenomenon in

nature, at least within the temperate zones. It is no wonder that a

phenomenon so important, so striking, and so universal should, by

suggesting similar ideas, have given rise to similar rites in many lands.

We may, therefore, accept as probable an explanation of the Adonis worship

which accords so well with the facts of nature and with the analogy of

similar rites in other lands, and which besides is countenanced by a

considerable body of opinion amongst the ancients themselves.(916)

The character of Thammuz or Adonis as a corn-spirit comes out plainly in

an account of his festival given by an Arabic writer of the tenth century.

In describing the rites and sacrifices observed at the different seasons

of the year by the heathen Syrians of Harran, he says:—“Thammuz (July). In

the middle of this month is the festival of el-Bûgât, that is, of the

weeping women, and this is the Tâ-uz festival, which is celebrated in

honour of the god Tâ-uz. The women bewail him, because his lord slew him

so cruelly, ground his bones in a mill, and then scattered them to the

wind. The women (during this festival) eat nothing which has been ground

in a mill, but limit their diet to steeped wheat, sweet vetches, dates,

raisins, and the like.”(917) Thammuz (of which Tâ-uz is only another form

of pronunciation) is here like Burns’s John Barleycorn—

“They wasted, o’er a scorching flame,

The marrow of his bones;

But a miller us’d him worst of all,

For he crush’d him between two stones.”(918)

But perhaps the best proof that Adonis was a deity of vegetation is

furnished by the gardens of Adonis, as they were called. These were

baskets or pots filled with earth, in which wheat, barley, lettuces,

fennel, and various kinds of flowers were sown and tended for eight days,

chiefly or exclusively by women. Fostered by the sun’s heat, the plants

shot up rapidly, but having no root withered as rapidly away, and at the

end of eight days were carried out with the images of the dead Adonis, and

flung with them into the sea or into springs.(919) At Athens these

ceremonies were observed at midsummer. For we know that the fleet which

Athens fitted out against Syracuse, and by the destruction of which her

power was permanently crippled, sailed at midsummer, and by an ominous

coincidence the sombre rites of Adonis were being celebrated at the very

time. As the troops marched down to the harbour to embark, the streets

through which they passed were lined with coffins and corpse-like

effigies, and the air was rent with the noise of women wailing for the

dead Adonis. The circumstance cast a gloom over the sailing of the most

splendid armament that Athens ever sent to sea.(920)

These gardens of Adonis are most naturally interpreted as representatives

of Adonis or manifestations of his power; they represented him, true to

his original nature, in vegetable form, while the images of him, with

which they were carried out and cast into the water, represented him in

his later anthropomorphic form. All these Adonis ceremonies, if I am

right, were originally intended as charms to promote the growth and

revival of vegetation; and the principle by which they were supposed to

produce this effect was sympathetic magic. As was explained in the first

chapter, primitive people suppose that by representing or mimicking the

effect which they desire to produce they actually help to produce it; thus

by sprinkling water they make rain, by lighting a fire they make sunshine,

and so on. Similarly by mimicking the growth of crops, they hope to insure

a good harvest. The rapid growth of the wheat and barley in the gardens of

Adonis was intended to make the corn shoot up; and the throwing of the

gardens and of the images into the water was a charm to secure a due

supply of fertilising rain.(921) The same, I take it, was the object of

throwing the effigies of Death and the Carnival into water in the

corresponding ceremonies of modern Europe. We have seen that the custom of

drenching a leaf-clad person (who undoubtedly personifies vegetation) with

water is still resorted to in Europe for the express purpose of producing

rain.(922) Similarly the custom of throwing water on the last corn cut at

harvest, or on the person who brings it home (a custom observed in Germany

and France, and till quite lately in England and Scotland), is in some

places practised with the avowed intent to procure rain for the next

year’s crops. Thus in Wallachia and amongst the Roumanians of

Transylvania, when a girl is bringing home a crown made of the last ears

of corn cut at harvest, all who meet her hasten to throw water on her, and

two farm-servants are placed at the door for the purpose; for they believe

that if this were not done, the crops next year would perish from

drought.(923) So amongst the Saxons of Transylvania, the person who wears

the wreath made of the last corn cut (sometimes the reaper who cut the

last corn also wears the wreath) is drenched with water to the skin; for

the wetter he is the better will be next year’s harvest, and the more

grain there will be threshed out.(924) At the spring ploughing in Prussia,

when the ploughmen and sowers returned in the evening from their work in

the fields, the farmer’s wife and the servants used to splash water over

them. The ploughmen and sowers retorted by seizing every one, throwing

them into the pond, and ducking them under the water. The farmer’s wife

might claim exemption on payment of a forfeit; but every one else had to

be ducked. By observing this custom they hoped to ensure a due supply of

rain for the seed.(925) Also after harvest in Prussia, the person who wore

a wreath made of the last corn cut was drenched with water, while a prayer

was uttered that “as the corn had sprung up and multiplied through the

water, so it might spring up and multiply in the barn and granary.”(926)

In a Babylonian legend, the goddess Istar (Astarte, Aphrodite) descends to

Hades to fetch the water of life with which to restore to life the dead

Thammuz, and it appears that the water was thrown over him at a great

mourning ceremony, at which men and women stood round the funeral pyre of

Thammuz lamenting.(927) This legend, as Mannhardt points out, is probably

a mythical explanation of a Babylonian festival resembling the Syrian

festival of Adonis. At this festival, which doubtless took place in the

month Thammuz (June-July)(928) and therefore about midsummer, the dead

Thammuz was probably represented in effigy, water was poured over him, and

he came to life again. This Babylonian legend is, therefore, of

importance, since it confirms the view that the purpose for which the

images and gardens of Adonis were thrown into the water was to effect the

resurrection of the god, that is, to secure the revival of vegetation. The

connection of Thammuz with vegetation is proved by a fragment of a

Babylonian hymn, in which Thammuz is described as dwelling in the midst of

a great tree at the centre of the earth.(929)

The opinion that the gardens of Adonis are essentially charms to promote

the growth of vegetation, especially of the crops, and that they belong to

the same class of customs as those spring and midsummer folk-customs of

modern Europe which have been described, does not rest for its evidence

merely on the intrinsic probability of the case. Fortunately, we are able

to show that gardens of Adonis (if we may use the expression in a general

sense) are still planted, first, by a primitive race at their sowing

season, and, second, by European peasants at midsummer. Amongst the Oraons

and Mundas of Bengal, when the time comes for planting out the rice which

has been grown in seed-beds, a party of young people of both sexes go to

the forest and cut a young Karma tree, or the branch of one. Bearing it in

triumph they return dancing, singing, and beating drums, and plant it in

the middle of the village dancing-ground. A sacrifice is offered to the

tree; and next morning the youth of both sexes, linked arm-in-arm, dance

in a great circle round the Karma tree, which is decked with strips of

coloured cloth and sham bracelets and necklets of plaited straw. As a

preparation for the festival, the daughters of the head-man of the village

cultivate blades of barley in a peculiar way. The seed is sown in moist,

sandy soil, mixed with turmeric, and the blades sprout and unfold of a

pale yellow or primrose colour. On the day of the festival the girls take

up these blades and carry them in baskets to the dancing-ground, where,

prostrating themselves reverentially, they place some of the plants before

the Karma tree. Finally, the Karma tree is taken away and thrown into a

stream or tank.(930) The meaning of planting these barley blades and then

presenting them to the Karma tree is hardly open to question. We have seen

that trees are supposed to exercise a quickening influence upon the growth

of crops, and that amongst the very people in question—the Mundas or

Mundaris—“the grove deities are held responsible for the crops.”(931)

Therefore, when at the season for planting out the rice the Mundas bring

in a tree and treat it with so much respect, their object can only be to

foster thereby the growth of the rice which is about to be planted out;

and the custom of causing barley blades to sprout rapidly and then

presenting them to the tree must be intended to subserve the same purpose,

perhaps by reminding the tree-spirit of his duty towards the crops, and

stimulating his activity by this visible example of rapid vegetable

growth. The throwing of the Karma tree into the water is to be interpreted

as a rain-charm. Whether the barley blades are also thrown into the water

is not said; but, if my interpretation of the custom is right, probably

they are so. A distinction between this Bengal custom and the Greek rites

of Adonis is that in the former the tree-spirit appears in his original

form as a tree; whereas in the Adonis worship he appears in

anthropomorphic form, represented as a dead man, though his vegetable

nature is indicated by the gardens of Adonis, which are, so to say, a

secondary manifestation of his original power as a tree-spirit.

In Sardinia the gardens of Adonis are still planted in connection with the

great midsummer festival which bears the name of St. John. At the end of

March or on the 1st of April a young man of the village presents himself

to a girl and asks her to be his _comare_ (gossip or sweetheart), offering

to be her _compare_. The invitation is considered as an honour by the

girl’s family, and is gladly accepted. At the end of May the girl makes a

pot of the bark of the cork-tree, fills it with earth, and sows a handful

of wheat and barley in it. The pot being placed in the sun and often

watered, the corn sprouts rapidly and has a good head by Midsummer Eve

(St. John’s Eve, 23d June). The pot is then called _Erme_ or _Nenneri_. On

St. John’s Day the young man and the girl, dressed in their best,

accompanied by a long retinue and preceded by children gambolling and

frolicking, move in procession to a church outside the village. Here they

break the pot by throwing it against the door of the church. Then they sit

down in a ring on the grass and eat eggs and herbs to the music of flutes.

Wine is mixed in a cup and passed round, each one drinking as it passes.

Then they join hands and sing “Sweethearts of St. John” (_Compare e comare

di San Giovanni_) over and over again, the flutes playing the while. When

they tire of singing, they stand up and dance gaily in a ring till

evening. This is the general Sardinian custom. As practised at Ozieri it

has some special features. In May the pots are made of cork-bark and

planted with corn, as already described. Then on the Eve of St. John the

window-sills are draped with rich cloths, on which the pots are placed,

adorned with crimson and blue silk and ribbons of various colours. On each

of the pots they used formerly to place a statuette or cloth doll dressed

as a woman, or a Priapus-like figure made of paste; but this custom,

rigorously forbidden by the Church, has fallen into disuse. The village

swains go about in a troop to look at the pots and their decorations and

to wait for the girls, who assemble on the public square to celebrate the

festival. Here a great bonfire is kindled, round which they dance and make

merry. Those who wish to be “Sweethearts of St. John” act as follows. The

young man stands on one side of the bonfire and the girl on the other, and

they, in a manner, join hands by each grasping one end of a long stick,

which they pass three times backwards and forwards across the fire, thus

thrusting their hands thrice rapidly into the flames. This seals their

relationship to each other. Dancing and music go on till late at

night.(932) The correspondence of these Sardinian pots of grain to the

gardens of Adonis seems complete, and the images formerly placed in them

answer to the images of Adonis which accompanied his gardens.

This Sardinian custom is one of those midsummer customs, once celebrated

in many parts of Europe, a chief feature of which is the great bonfire

round which people dance and over which they leap. Examples of these

customs have already been cited from Sweden and Bohemia.(933) These

examples sufficiently prove the connection of the midsummer bonfire with

vegetation; for both in Sweden and Bohemia an essential part of the

festival is the raising of a May-pole or Midsummer-tree, which in Bohemia

is burned in the bonfire. Again, in the Russian midsummer ceremony cited

above,(934) the straw figure of Kupalo, the representative of vegetation,

is placed beside a May-pole or Midsummer-tree and then carried to and fro

across a bonfire. Kupalo is here represented in duplicate, in tree-form by

the Midsummer-tree, and in anthropomorphic form by the straw effigy, just

as Adonis was represented both by an image and a garden of Adonis; and the

duplicate representatives of Kupalo, like those of Adonis, are finally

cast into water. In the Sardinian custom the Gossips or Sweethearts of St.

John probably correspond to the Lord and Lady or King and Queen of May. In

the province of Blekinge (Sweden), part of the midsummer festival is the

election of a Midsummer Bride, who chooses her bridegroom; a collection is

made for the pair, who for the time being are looked upon as man and

wife.(935) Such Midsummer pairs are probably, like the May pairs,

representatives of the spirit of vegetation in its reproductive capacity;

they represent in flesh and blood what the images of Siva and Pârvatî in

the Indian ceremony, and the images of Adonis and Aphrodite in the

Alexandrian ceremony, represented in effigy. The reason why ceremonies

whose aim is to foster the growth of vegetation should thus be associated

with bonfires; why in particular the representative of vegetation should

be burned in tree-form or passed across the fire in effigy or in the form

of a living couple, will be explained later on. Here it is enough to have

proved the fact of such association and therefore to have obviated the

objection which might have been raised to my interpretation of the

Sardinian custom, on the ground that the bonfires have nothing to do with

vegetation. One more piece of evidence may here be given to prove the

contrary. In some parts of Germany young men and girls leap over midsummer

bonfires for the express purpose of making the hemp or flax grow

tall.(936) We may, therefore, assume that in the Sardinian custom the

blades of wheat and barley which are forced on in pots for the midsummer

festival, and which correspond so closely to the gardens of Adonis, form

one of those widely-spread midsummer ceremonies, the original object of

which was to promote the growth of vegetation, and especially of the

crops. But as, by an easy extension of ideas, the spirit of vegetation was

believed to exercise a beneficent influence over human as well as animal

life, the gardens of Adonis would be supposed, like the May-trees or

May-boughs, to bring good luck to the family or to the individual who

planted them; and even after the idea had been abandoned that they

operated actively to bring good luck, omens might still be drawn from them

as to the good or bad fortune of families or individuals. It is thus that

magic dwindles into divination. Accordingly we find modes of divination

practised at midsummer which resemble more or less closely the gardens of

Adonis. Thus an anonymous Italian writer of the sixteenth century has

recorded that it was customary to sow barley and wheat a few days before

the festival of St. John (Midsummer Day) and also before that of St.

Vitus; and it was believed that the person for whom they were sown would

be fortunate and get a good husband or a good wife, if the grain sprouted

well; but if they sprouted ill, he or she would be unlucky.(937) In

various parts of Italy and all over Sicily it is still customary to put

plants in water or in earth on the Eve of St. John, and from the manner in

which they are found to be blooming or fading on St. John’s Day omens are

drawn, especially as to fortune in love. Amongst the plants used for this

purpose are _Ciuri di S. Giuvanni_ (St. John’s wort?) and nettles.(938) In

Prussia two hundred years ago the farmers used to send out their servants,

especially their maids, to gather St. John’s wort on Midsummer Eve or

Midsummer Day (St. John’s Day). When they had fetched it, the farmer took

as many plants as there were persons and stuck them in the wall or between

the beams; and it was thought that the person whose plant did not bloom

would soon fall sick or die. The rest of the plants were tied in a bundle,

fastened to the end of a pole, and set up at the gate or wherever the corn

would be brought in at the next harvest. This bundle was called _Kupole_;

the ceremony was known as Kupole’s festival; and at it the farmer prayed

for a good crop of hay, etc.(939) This Prussian custom is particularly

notable, inasmuch as it strongly confirms the opinion expressed above that

Kupalo (doubtless identical with Kupole) was originally a deity of

vegetation.(940) For here Kupalo is represented by a bundle of plants

specially associated with midsummer in folk-custom; and her influence over

vegetation is plainly signified by placing her plant-formed representative

over the place where the harvest is brought in, as well as by the prayers

for a good crop which are uttered on the occasion. A fresh argument is

thus supplied in support of the conclusion that the Death, whose analogy

to Kupalo, Yarilo, etc., has been shown, was originally a personification

of vegetation, more especially of vegetation as dying or dead in winter.

Further, my interpretation of the gardens of Adonis is confirmed by

finding that in this Prussian custom the very same kind of plants are used

to form the gardens of Adonis (as we may call them) and the image of the

deity. Nothing could set in a stronger light the truth of the view that

the gardens of Adonis are merely another manifestation of the god himself.

The last example of the gardens of Adonis which I shall cite is the

following. At the approach of Easter, Sicilian women sow wheat, lentils,

and canary-seed in plates, which are kept in the dark and watered every

two days. The plants soon shoot up; the stalks are tied together with red

ribbons, and the plates containing them are placed on the sepulchres

which, with effigies of the dead Christ, are made up in Roman Catholic and

Greek churches on Good Friday,(941) just as the gardens of Adonis were

placed on the grave of the dead Adonis.(942) The whole custom—sepulchres

as well as plates of sprouting grain—is probably nothing but a

continuation, under a different name, of the Adonis worship.

§ 5.—Attis.

The next of those gods, whose supposed death and resurrection struck such

deep roots into the religious faith and ritual of Western Asia, is Attis.

He was to Phrygia what Adonis was to Syria. Like Adonis, he appears to

have been a god of vegetation, and his death and resurrection were

annually mourned and rejoiced over at a festival in spring. The legends

and rites of the two gods were so much alike that the ancients themselves

sometimes identified them.(943) Attis was said to have been a fair youth

who was beloved by the great Phrygian goddess Cybele. Two different

accounts of his death were current. According to the one, he was killed by

a boar, like Adonis. According to the other, he mutilated himself under a

pine-tree, and died from the effusion of blood. The latter is said to have

been the local story told by the people of Pessinus, a great centre of

Cybele worship, and the whole legend of which it forms a part is stamped

with a character of rudeness and savagery that speaks strongly for its

antiquity.(944) But the genuineness of the other story seems also vouched

for by the fact that his worshippers, especially the people of Pessinus,

abstained from eating swine.(945) After his death Attis is said to have

been changed into a pine-tree.(946) The ceremonies observed at his

festival are not very fully known, but their general order appears to have

been as follows.(947) At the spring equinox (22d March) a pine-tree was

cut in the woods and brought into the sanctuary of Cybele, where it was

treated as a divinity. It was adorned with woollen bands and wreaths of

violets, for violets were said to have sprung from the blood of Attis, as

anemones from the blood of Adonis; and the effigy of a young man was

attached to the middle of the tree.(948) On the second day (23d March) the

chief ceremony seems to have been a blowing of trumpets.(949) The third

day (24th March) was known as the Day of Blood: the high priest drew blood

from his arms and presented it as an offering.(950) It was perhaps on this

day or night that the mourning for Attis took place over an effigy, which

was afterwards solemnly buried.(951) The fourth day (25th March) was the

Festival of Joy (_Hilaria_), at which the resurrection of Attis was

probably celebrated—at least the celebration of his resurrection seems to

have followed closely upon that of his death.(952) The Roman festival

closed on 27th March with a procession to the brook Almo, in which the

bullock-cart of the goddess, her image, and other sacred objects were

bathed. But this bath of the goddess is known to have also formed part of

her festival in her Asiatic home. On returning from the water the cart and

oxen were strewn with fresh spring flowers.(953)

The original character of Attis as a tree-spirit is brought out plainly by

the part which the pine-tree plays in his legend and ritual. The story

that he was a human being transformed into a pine-tree is only one of

those transparent attempts at rationalising the old beliefs which meet us

so frequently in mythology. His tree origin is further attested by the

story that he was born of a virgin, who conceived by putting in her bosom

a ripe almond or pomegranate.(954) The bringing in of the pine-tree from

the wood, decked with violets and woollen bands, corresponds to bringing

in the May-tree or Summer-tree in modern folk-custom; and the effigy which

was attached to the pine-tree was only a duplicate representative of the

tree-spirit or Attis. At what point of the ceremonies the violets and the

effigy were attached to the tree is not said, but we should assume this to

be done after the mimic death and burial of Attis. The fastening of his

effigy to the tree would then be a representation of his coming to life

again in tree-form, just as the placing of the shirt of the effigy of

Death upon a tree represents the revival of the spirit of vegetation in a

new form.(955) After being attached to the tree, the effigy was kept for a

year and then burned.(956) We have seen that this was apparently sometimes

done with the May-pole;(957) and we shall see presently that the effigy of

the corn-spirit, made at harvest, is often preserved till it is replaced

by a new effigy at next year’s harvest. The original intention of thus

preserving the effigy for a year and then replacing it by a new one was

doubtless to maintain the spirit of vegetation in fresh and vigorous life.

The bathing of the image of Cybele was probably a rain-charm, like the

throwing of the effigies of Death and of Adonis into the water. Like

tree-spirits in general, Attis appears to have been conceived as

exercising power over the growth of corn, or even to have been identified

with the corn. One of his epithets was “very fruitful;” he was addressed

as the “reaped green (or yellow) ear of corn,” and the story of his

sufferings, death, and resurrection was interpreted as the ripe grain

wounded by the reaper, buried in the granary, and coming to life again

when sown in the ground.(958) His worshippers abstained from eating seeds

and the roots of vegetables,(959) just as at the Adonis ceremonies women

abstained from eating corn ground in a mill. Such acts would probably have

been esteemed a sacrilegious partaking of the life or of the bruised and

broken body of the god.

From inscriptions it appears that both at Pessinus and Rome the high

priest of Cybele was regularly called Attis.(960) It is therefore a

reasonable conjecture that the high priest played the part of the

legendary Attis at the annual festival.(961) We have seen that on the Day

of Blood he drew blood from his arms, and this may have been an imitation

of the self-inflicted death of Attis under the pine-tree. It is not

inconsistent with this supposition that Attis was also represented at

these ceremonies by an effigy; for we have already had cases in which the

divine being is first represented by a living person and afterwards by an

effigy, which is then burned or otherwise destroyed.(962) Perhaps we may

go a step farther and conjecture that this mimic killing of the priest (if

it was such), accompanied by a real effusion of his blood, was in Phrygia,

as it has been elsewhere, a substitute for a human sacrifice which in

earlier times was actually offered. Professor W. M. Ramsay, whose

authority on all questions relating to Phrygia no one will dispute, is of

opinion that at these Phrygian ceremonies “the representative of the god

was probably slain each year by a cruel death, just as the god himself

died.”(963) We know from Strabo(964) that the priests of Pessinus were at

one time potentates as well as priests; they may, therefore, have belonged

to that class of divine kings or popes whose duty it was to die each year

for their people and the world. As a god of vegetation, annually slain,

the representative of Attis would be parallel to the Wild Man, the King,

etc., of north European folk-custom, and to the Italian priest of Nemi.

§ 6.—Osiris.

There seem to be some grounds for believing that Osiris, the great god of

ancient Egypt, was one of those personifications of vegetation, whose

annual death and resurrection have been celebrated in so many lands. But

as the chief of the gods he appears to have absorbed the attributes of

other deities, so that his character and rites present a complex of

heterogeneous elements which, with the scanty evidence at our disposal, it

is hardly possible to sort out. It may be worth while, however, to put

together some of the facts which lend support to the view that Osiris or

at least one of the deities out of whom he was compounded was a god of

vegetation, analogous to Adonis and Attis.

The outline of his myth is as follows.(965) Osiris was the son of the

earth-god Qeb (or Seb, as the name is sometimes transliterated).(966)

Reigning as a king on earth, he reclaimed the Egyptians from savagery,

gave them laws, and taught them to worship the gods. Before his time the

Egyptians had been cannibals. But Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris,

discovered wheat and barley growing wild, and Osiris introduced the

cultivation of these grains amongst his people, who forthwith abandoned

cannibalism and took kindly to a corn diet.(967) Afterwards Osiris

travelled over the world diffusing the blessings of civilisation wherever

he went. But on his return his brother Set (whom the Greeks called

Typhon), with seventy-two others, plotted against him, and having

inveigled him into a beautifully decorated coffer, they nailed it down on

him, soldered it fast with molten lead, and flung it into the Nile. It

floated down to the sea. This happened on the 17th day of the month Athyr.

Isis put on mourning, and wandered disconsolately up and down seeking the

body, till at last she found it at Byblus, on the Syrian coast, whither it

had drifted with the waves. An _erica_ tree had shot up and enfolded the

coffer within its stem, and the King of Byblus, admiring the fine growth

of the tree, had caused it to be cut down and converted into a pillar of

his palace. From him Isis obtained leave to open the trunk of the tree,

and having taken out the coffer, she carried it away with her. But she

left it to visit her son Horus at Butus in the Delta, and Typhon found the

coffer as he was hunting a boar by the light of a full moon.(968) He

recognised the body of Osiris, rent it into fourteen pieces, and scattered

them abroad. Isis sailed up and down the marshes in a papyrus boat seeking

the fragments, and as she found each she buried it. Hence many graves of

Osiris were shown in Egypt. Others said that Isis left an effigy of Osiris

in every city, pretending it was his body, in order that Osiris might be

worshipped in many places, and to prevent Typhon from discovering the real

corpse. Afterwards her son Horus fought against Typhon, conquered him, and

bound him fast. But Isis, to whom he had been delivered, loosed his bonds

and let him go. This angered Horus, and he pulled the crown from his

mother’s head; but Hermes replaced it with a helmet made in the shape of a

cow’s head. Typhon was subsequently defeated in two other battles. The

rest of the myth included the dismemberment of Horus and the beheading of

Isis.