So much for the myth of Osiris. Of the annual rites with which his death

and burial were celebrated we unfortunately know very little. The mourning

lasted five days,(969) from the 8th to the 12th of the month Athyr.(970)

The ceremonies began with the “earth-ploughing,” that is, with the opening

of the field labours, when the waters of the Nile are sinking. The other

rites included the search for the mangled body of Osiris, the rejoicings

at its discovery, and its solemn burial. The burial took place on the 11th

of November, and was accompanied by the recitation of lamentations from

the liturgical books. These lamentations, of which several copies have

been discovered in modern times, were put in the mouth of Isis and

Nephthys, sisters of Osiris. “In form and substance,” says Brugsch, “they

vividly recall the dirges chanted at the Adonis’ rites over the dead

god.”(971) Next day was the joyous festival of Sokari, that being the name

under which the hawk-headed Osiris of Memphis was invoked. The solemn

processions of priests which on this day wound round the temples with all

the pomp of banners, images, and sacred emblems, were amongst the most

stately pageants that ancient Egypt could show. The whole festival ended

on the 16th of November with a special rite called the erection of the

_Tatu_, _Tat_, or _Ded_ pillar.(972) This pillar appears from the

monuments to have been a column with cross bars at the top, like the yards

of a mast, or more exactly like the superposed capitals of a pillar.(973)

On a Theban tomb the king himself, assisted by his relations and a priest,

is represented hauling at the ropes by which the pillar is being raised.

The pillar was interpreted, at least in later Egyptian theology, as the

backbone of Osiris. It might very well be a conventional representation of

a tree stripped of its leaves; and if Osiris was a tree-spirit, the bare

trunk and branches of a tree might naturally be described as his backbone.

The erection of the column would then be, as Erman interprets it, a

representation of the resurrection of Osiris, which, as we learn from

Plutarch, appears to have been celebrated at his mysteries.(974) Perhaps

the ceremony which Plutarch describes as taking place on the third day of

the festival (the 19th day of the month Athyr) may also have referred to

the resurrection. He says that on that day the priests carried the sacred

ark down to the sea. Within the ark was a golden casket, into which

drinking-water was poured. A shout then went up that Osiris was found.

Then some mould was mixed with water, and out of the paste thus formed a

crescent-shaped image was fashioned, which was then dressed in robes and

adorned.(975)

The general similarity of the myth and ritual of Osiris to those of Adonis

and Attis is obvious. In all three cases we see a god whose untimely and

violent death is mourned by a loving goddess and annually celebrated by

their worshippers. The character of Osiris as a deity of vegetation is

brought out by the legend that he was the first to teach men the use of

corn, and by the fact that his annual festival began with ploughing the

earth. He is said also to have introduced the cultivation of the

vine.(976) In one of the chambers dedicated to Osiris in the great temple

of Isis at Philae the dead body of Osiris is represented with stalks of

corn springing from it, and a priest is watering the stalks from a pitcher

which he holds in his hand. The accompanying inscription sets forth that

“This is the form of him whom one may not name, Osiris of the mysteries,

who springs from the returning waters.”(977) It would seem impossible to

devise a more graphic way of representing Osiris as a personification of

the corn; while the inscription proves that this personification was the

kernel of the mysteries of the god, the innermost secret that was only

revealed to the initiated. In estimating the mythical character of Osiris

very great weight must be given to this monument. The legend that his

mangled remains were scattered up and down the land may be a mythical way

of expressing either the sowing or the winnowing of the grain. The latter

interpretation is supported by the story that Isis placed the severed

limbs of Osiris on a corn-sieve.(978) Or the legend may be a reminiscence

of the custom of slaying a human victim (probably considered as a

representative of the corn-spirit) and distributing his flesh or

scattering his ashes over the fields to fertilise them. We have already

seen that in modern Europe the figure of “Death” is sometimes torn in

pieces, and that the fragments are then buried in the fields to make the

crops grow well.(979) Later on we shall meet with examples of human

victims being treated in the same way. With regard to the ancient

Egyptians, we have it on the authority of Manetho that they used to burn

red-haired men and scatter their ashes with winnowing-fans.(980) That this

custom was not, as might perhaps have been supposed, a mere way of

wreaking their spite on foreigners, amongst whom rather than amongst the

native Egyptians red-haired people would generally be found, appears from

the fact that the oxen which were sacrificed had also to be red; a single

black or white hair found on a beast would have disqualified it for the

sacrifice.(981) The red hair of the human victims was thus probably

essential; the fact that they were generally foreigners was only

accidental. If, as I conjecture, these human sacrifices were intended to

promote the growth of the crops—and the _winnowing_ of their ashes seems

to support this view—red-haired victims were perhaps selected as best

fitted to represent the spirit of the golden grain. For when a god is

represented by a living person, it is natural that the human

representative should be chosen on the ground of his supposed resemblance

to the god. Hence the ancient Mexicans, conceiving the maize as a personal

being who went through the whole course of life between seed-time and

harvest, sacrificed new-born babes when the maize was sown, older children

when it had sprouted, and so on till it was fully ripe, when they

sacrificed old men.(982) A name for Osiris was the “crop” or

“harvest”;(983) and the ancients sometimes explained him as a

personification of the corn.(984)

But Osiris was not only a corn-spirit; he was also a tree-spirit, and this

was probably his original character; for, as we have already observed, the

corn-spirit seems to be only an extension of the older tree-spirit. His

character as a tree-spirit was represented very graphically in a ceremony

described by Firmicus Maternus.(985) A pine-tree was cut down, the centre

was hollowed out, and with the wood thus excavated an image of Osiris was

made, which was then “buried” in the hollow of the tree. Here, again, it

is hard to imagine how the conception of a tree as tenanted by a personal

being could be more plainly expressed. The image of Osiris thus made was

kept for a year and then burned, exactly as was done with the image of

Attis which was attached to the pine-tree. The ceremony of cutting the

tree, as described by Firmicus Maternus, appears to be alluded to by

Plutarch.(986) It was probably the ritual counterpart of the mythical

discovery of the body of Osiris enclosed in the _erica_ tree. We may

conjecture that the erection of the _Tatu_ pillar at the close of the

annual festival of Osiris(987) was identical with the ceremony described

by Firmicus; it is to be noted that in the myth the _erica_ tree formed a

pillar in the King’s house. Like the similar custom of cutting a pine-tree

and fastening an image to it in the rites of Attis, the ceremony perhaps

belonged to that class of customs of which the bringing in the May-pole is

among the most familiar. As to the pine-tree in particular, at Denderah

the tree of Osiris is a conifer, and the coffer containing the body of

Osiris is here represented as enclosed within the tree.(988) A pine-cone

is often represented on the monuments as offered to Osiris, and a MS. of

the Louvre speaks of the cedar as sprung from Osiris.(989) The sycamore

and the tamarisk are also his trees. In inscriptions he is spoken of as

residing in them;(990) and his mother Nut is frequently represented in a

sycamore.(991) In a sepulchre at How (Diospolis Parva) a tamarisk is

represented overshadowing the coffer of Osiris; and in the series of

sculptures which represent the mystic history of Osiris in the great

temple of Isis at Philae, a tamarisk is depicted with two men pouring

water on it. The inscription on this last monument leaves no doubt, says

Brugsch, that the verdure of the earth is believed to be connected with

the verdure of the tree, and that the sculpture refers to the grave of

Osiris at Philae, of which Plutarch says that it was overshadowed by a

_methide_ plant, taller than any olive-tree. This sculpture, it may be

observed, occurs in the same chamber in which Osiris is represented as a

corpse with ears of corn sprouting from him.(992) In inscriptions Osiris

is referred to as “the one in the tree,” “the solitary one in the acacia,”

etc.(993) On the monuments he sometimes appears as a mummy covered with a

tree or with plants.(994) It accords with the character of Osiris as a

tree-spirit that his worshippers were forbidden to injure fruit-trees, and

with his character as a god of vegetation in general that they were not

allowed to stop up wells of water, which are so important for purposes of

irrigation in hot southern lands.(995)

The original meaning of the goddess Isis is still more difficult to

determine than that of her brother and husband Osiris. Her attributes and

epithets were so numerous that in the hieroglyphics she is called “the

many-named,” “the thousand-named,” and in Greek inscriptions “the

myriad-named.”(996) Tiele confesses candidly that “it is now impossible to

tell precisely to what natural phenomena the character of Isis at first

referred.”(997) Mr. Renouf states that Isis was the Dawn,(998) but without

assigning any reason whatever for the identification. There are at least

some grounds for seeing in her a goddess of corn. According to Diodorus,

whose authority appears to have been the Egyptian historian Manetho, the

discovery of wheat and barley was attributed to Isis, and at her festivals

stalks of these grains were carried in procession to commemorate the boon

she had conferred on men. Further, at harvest-time, when the Egyptian

reapers had cut the first stalks, they laid them down and beat their

breasts, lamenting and calling upon Isis.(999) Amongst the epithets by

which she is designated on the inscriptions are “creatress of the green

crop,” “the green one, whose greenness is like the greenness of the

earth,” and “mistress of bread.”(1000) According to Brugsch she is “not

only the creatress of the fresh verdure of vegetation which covers the

earth, but is actually the green corn-field itself, which is personified

as a goddess.”(1001) This is confirmed by her epithet _Sochit_ or

_Sochet_, meaning “a corn-field,” a sense which the word still retains in

Coptic.(1002) It is in this character of a corn-goddess that the Greeks

conceived Isis, for they identified her with Demeter.(1003) In a Greek

epigram she is described as “she who has given birth to the fruits of the

earth,” and “the mother of the ears of corn,”(1004) and in a hymn composed

in her honour she speaks of herself as “queen of the wheat-field,” and is

described as “charged with the care of the fruitful furrow’s wheat-rich

path.”(1005)

Osiris has been sometimes interpreted as the sun-god; and this view has

been held by so many distinguished writers in modern times that a few

words of reply seem called for. If we inquire on what evidence Osiris has

been identified with the sun or the sun-god, it will be found on

examination that the evidence is minute in quantity and dubious, where it

is not absolutely worthless, in quality. The diligent Jablonski, the first

modern scholar to collect and examine the testimony of classical writers

on Egyptian religion, says that it can be shown in many ways that Osiris

is the sun, and that he could produce a cloud of witnesses to prove it,

but that it is needless to do so, since no learned man is ignorant of the

fact.(1006) Of the writers whom he condescends to quote, the only two who

expressly identify Osiris with the sun are Diodorus and Macrobius. The

passage in Diodorus runs thus:(1007) “It is said that the aboriginal

inhabitants of Egypt, looking up to the sky, and smitten with awe and

wonder at the nature of the universe, supposed that there were two gods,

eternal and primeval, the sun and the moon, of whom they named the sun

Osiris and the moon Isis.” Even if Diodorus’s authority for this statement

is Manetho, as there is some ground for believing,(1008) little or no

weight can be attached to it. For it is plainly a philosophical, and

therefore a late, explanation of the first beginnings of Egyptian

religion, reminding us of Kant’s familiar saying about the starry heavens

and the moral law rather than of the rude traditions of a primitive

people. Jablonski’s second authority, Macrobius, is no better but rather

worse. For Macrobius was the father of that large family of mythologists

who resolve all or most gods into the sun. According to him Mercury was

the sun, Mars was the sun, Janus was the sun, Saturn was the sun, so was

Jupiter, also Nemesis, likewise Pan, etc.(1009) It was, therefore, nearly

a matter of course that he should identify Osiris with the sun.(1010) But

apart from the general principle, so frankly enunciated by Professor

Maspero, that all the gods are the sun (“_Comme tous les dieux, Osiris est

le soleil_”),(1011) Macrobius has not much cause to show for identifying

Osiris in particular with the sun. He argues that Osiris must be the sun

because an eye was one of his symbols. The premise is correct,(1012) but

what exactly it has to do with the conclusion is not clear. The opinion

that Osiris was the sun is also mentioned, but not accepted, by

Plutarch,(1013) and it is referred to by Firmicus Maternus.(1014)

Amongst modern Egyptologists, Lepsius, in identifying Osiris with the sun,

appears to rely mainly on the passage of Diodorus already quoted. But the

monuments, he adds, also show “that down to a late time Osiris was

sometimes conceived as _Ra_. In this quality he is named _Osiris-Ra_ even

in the ‘Book of the Dead,’ and Isis is often called ‘the royal consort of

Ra.’ ”(1015) That Ra was both the physical sun and the sun-god is of

course undisputed; but with every deference for the authority of so great

a scholar as Lepsius, it may be doubted whether such identification can be

taken as evidence of the original character of Osiris. For the religion of

ancient Egypt(1016) may be described as a confederacy of local cults

which, while maintaining against each other a certain measure of jealous

and even hostile independence, were yet constantly subjected to the fusing

and amalgamating action of political centralisation and philosophical

reflection. The history of the religion appears to have largely consisted

of a struggle between these opposite forces or tendencies. On the one side

there was the conservative tendency to preserve the local cults with all

their distinctive features, fresh, sharp, and crisp, as they had been

handed down from an immemorial past. On the other side there was the

progressive tendency, favoured by the gradual fusion of the people under a

powerful central government, first to dull the edge of these provincial

distinctions, and finally to break them down completely and merge them in

a single national religion. The conservative party probably mustered in

its ranks the great bulk of the people, their prejudices and affections

being warmly enlisted in favour of the local deity, with whose temple and

rites they had been familiar from childhood; and the popular aversion to

change, based on the endearing effect of old association, must have been

strongly reinforced by the less disinterested opposition of the local

clergy, whose material interests would necessarily suffer with any decay

of their shrines. On the other hand the kings, whose power and glory rose

with the political and ecclesiastical consolidation of the nation, were

the natural champions of religious unity; and their efforts would be

seconded by the cultured and reflecting minority, who could hardly fail to

be shocked by the many barbarous and revolting elements in the local

rites. As usual in such cases, the process of religious unification

appears to have been largely effected by discovering points of similarity,

real or imaginary, between various local gods, which were thereupon

declared to be only different names or manifestations of the same god.

Of the deities who thus acted as centres of attraction, absorbing in

themselves a multitude of minor divinities, by far the most important was

the sun-god Ra. There appear to have been few gods in Egypt who were not

at one time or other identified with him. Ammon of Thebes, Horus of the

East, Horus of Edfu, Chnum of Elephantine, Atum of Heliopolis, all were

regarded as one god, the sun. Even the water-god Sobk, in spite of his

crocodile shape, did not escape the same fate. Indeed one king, Amenhôtep

IV, undertook to sweep away all the old gods at a stroke and replace them

by a single god, the “great living disc of the sun.”(1017) In the hymns

composed in his honour, this deity is referred to as “the living disc of

the sun, besides whom there is none other.” He is said to have made “the

far heaven” and “men, beasts, and birds; he strengtheneth the eyes with

his beams, and when he showeth himself, all flowers live and grow, the

meadows flourish at his upgoing and are drunken at his sight, all cattle

skip on their feet, and the birds that are in the marsh flutter for joy.”

It is he “who bringeth the years, createth the months, maketh the days,

calculateth the hours, the lord of time, by whom men reckon.” In his zeal

for the unity of god, the king commanded to erase the names of all other

gods from the monuments, and to destroy their images. His rage was

particularly directed against the god Ammon, whose name and likeness were

effaced wherever they were found; even the sanctity of the tomb was

violated in order to destroy the memorials of the hated god. In some of

the halls of the great temples at Carnac, Luxor, and other places, all the

names of the gods, with a few chance exceptions, were scratched out. In no

inscription cut in this king’s reign was any god mentioned save the sun.

He even changed his own name, Amenhôtep, because it was compounded of

Ammon, and took instead the name of Chuen-’eten, “gleam of the sun’s

disc.” His death was followed by a violent reaction. The old gods were

reinstated in their rank and privileges; their names and images were

restored; and new temples were built. But all the shrines and palaces

reared by the late king were thrown down; even the sculptures that

referred to him and to his god in rock-tombs and on the sides of hills

were erased or filled up with stucco; his name appears on no later

monument, and was carefully omitted from all official lists.

This attempt of King Amenhôtep IV is only an extreme example of a tendency

which appears to have been at work on the religion of Egypt as far back as

we can trace it. Therefore, to come back to our point, in attempting to

discover the original character of any Egyptian god, no weight can be

given to the identification of him with other gods, least of all with the

sun-god Ra. Far from helping to follow up the trail, these identifications

only cross and confuse it. The best evidence for the original character of

the Egyptian gods is to be found in their ritual and myths, so far as

these are known (which unfortunately is little enough), and in the figured

representations of them on the monuments. It is on evidence drawn from

these sources that I rely mainly for the interpretation of Osiris as a

deity of vegetation.

Amongst a younger generation of scholars, Tiele is of opinion that Osiris

is the sun, because “in the hymns, his accession to the throne of his

father is compared to the rising of the sun, and it is even said of him in

so many words: ‘He glitters on the horizon, he sends out rays of light

from his double feather and inundates the world with it, as the sun from

out the highest heaven.’ ”(1018) By the same token Marie Antoinette must

have been a goddess of the morning star, because Burke saw her at

Versailles “just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated

sphere she just began to move in,—glittering like the morning star, full

of life, and splendour, and joy.” If such comparisons prove anything, they

prove that Osiris was _not_ the sun. There are always two terms to a

comparison; a thing cannot be compared to itself. But Tiele also appeals

to the monuments. What is his evidence? Osiris is sometimes represented by

a figure surmounted by “the so-called Tat pillar, entirely made up of a

kind of superimposed capitals, one of which has a rude face scratched upon

it.” Tiele is of opinion that this rude face is “intended, no doubt, to

represent the shining sun.”(1019) If every “rude face scratched” is to be

taken as a symbol of the shining sun, sun-worship will be discovered in

some unexpected places. But, on the whole, Tiele, like Jablonski,

prudently keeps to the high ground of vague generalities, and the result

of his occasional descents to the level of facts is not such as to

encourage him to prolong his stay. “Were we to come down to details,” he

says, “and to attend to slight variations, we should be lost in an ocean

of symbolism and mysticism.”(1020) This is like De Quincey’s attitude

towards murder. “General principles I will suggest. But as to any

particular case, once for all I will have nothing to do with it.” There is

no having a man who takes such lofty ground.

Mr. Le Page Renouf also considers that Osiris is the sun,(1021) and his

position is still stronger than Tiele’s. For whereas Tiele produces bad

arguments for his view, Mr. Renouf produces none at all, and therefore

cannot possibly be confuted.

The ground upon which some recent writers seem chiefly to rely for the

identification of Osiris with the sun is that the story of his death fits

better with the solar phenomena than with any other in nature. It may

readily be admitted that the daily appearance and disappearance of the sun

might very naturally be expressed by a myth of his death and resurrection;

and writers who regard Osiris as the sun are careful to emphasise the fact

that it is the diurnal, and not the annual, course of the sun to which

they understand the myth to apply. Mr. Renouf expressly admits that the

Egyptian sun cannot with any show of reason be described as dead in

winter.(1022) But if his _daily_ death was the theme of the legend, why

was it celebrated by an _annual_ ceremony? This fact alone seems fatal to

the interpretation of the myth as descriptive of sunset and sunrise.

Again, though the sun may be said to die daily, in what sense can he be

said to be torn in pieces?(1023)

In the course of our inquiry, it has, I trust, been made clear that there

is another natural phenomenon to which the conception of death and

resurrection is as applicable as to sunset and sunrise, and which, as a

matter of fact has been so conceived and represented in folk-custom. This

phenomenon is the annual growth and decay of vegetation. A strong reason

for interpreting the death of Osiris as the decay of vegetation rather

than as the sunset is to be found in the general (though not unanimous)

voice of antiquity, which classed together the worship and myths of

Osiris, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, and Demeter, as religions of essentially

the same type.(1024) The consensus of ancient opinion on this subject

seems too great to be rejected as a mere fancy. So closely did the rites

of Osiris resemble those of Adonis at Byblus that some of the people of

Byblus themselves maintained that it was Osiris and not Adonis whose death

was mourned by them.(1025) Such a view could certainly not have been held

if the rituals of the two gods had not been so alike as to be almost

indistinguishable. Again, Herodotus found the similarity between the rites

of Osiris and Dionysus so great, that he thought it impossible the latter

could have arisen independently; they must, he thought, have been recently

borrowed, with slight alterations, by the Greeks from the Egyptians.(1026)

Again, Plutarch, a very intelligent student of comparative religion,

insists upon the detailed resemblance of the rites of Osiris to those of

Dionysus.(1027) We cannot reject the evidence of such intelligent and

trustworthy witnesses on plain matters of fact which fell under their own

cognisance. Their explanations of the worships it is indeed possible to

reject, for the meaning of religious cults is often open to question; but

resemblances of ritual are matters of observation. Therefore, those who

explain Osiris as the sun are driven to the alternative of either

dismissing as mistaken the testimony of antiquity to the similarity of the

rites of Osiris, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, and Demeter, or of interpreting

all these rites as sun-worship. No modern scholar has fairly faced and

accepted either side of this alternative. To accept the former would be to

affirm that we know the rites of these deities better than the men who

practised, or at least who witnessed them. To accept the latter would

involve a wrenching, clipping, mangling, and distorting of myth and ritual

from which even Macrobius shrank.(1028) On the other hand, the view that

the essence of all these rites was the mimic death and revival of

vegetation, explains them separately and collectively in an easy and

natural way, and harmonises with the general testimony borne by antiquity

to their substantial similarity. The evidence for thus explaining Adonis,

Attis, and Osiris has now been presented to the reader; it remains to do

the same for Dionysus and Demeter.

§ 7.—Dionysus.

The Greek god Dionysus or Bacchus(1029) is best known as the god of the

vine, but he was also a god of trees in general. Thus we are told that

almost all the Greeks sacrificed to “Dionysus of the tree.”(1030) In

Boeotia one of his titles was “Dionysus in the tree.”(1031) His image was

often merely an upright post, without arms, but draped in a mantle, with a

bearded mask to represent the head, and with leafy boughs projecting from

the head or body to show the nature of the deity.(1032) On a vase his rude

effigy is depicted appearing out of a low tree or bush.(1033) He was the

patron of cultivated trees;(1034) prayers were offered to him that he

would make the trees grow;(1035) and he was especially honoured by

husbandmen, chiefly fruit-growers, who set up an image of him, in the

shape of a natural tree-stump, in their orchards.(1036) He was said to

have discovered all tree-fruits, amongst which apples and figs are

particularly mentioned;(1037) and he was himself spoken of as doing a

husbandman’s work.(1038) He was referred to as “well-fruited,” “he of the

green fruit,” and “making the fruit to grow.”(1039) One of his titles was

“teeming” or “bursting” (as of sap or blossoms);(1040) and there was a

Flowery Dionysus in Attica and at Patrae in Achaea.(1041) Amongst the

trees particularly sacred to him, in addition to the vine, was the

pine-tree.(1042) The Delphic oracle commanded the Corinthians to worship a

particular pine-tree “equally with the god,” so they made two images of

Dionysus out of it, with red faces and gilt bodies.(1043) In art a wand,

tipped with a pine-cone, is commonly carried by the god or his

worshippers.(1044) Again, the ivy and the fig-tree were especially

associated with him. In the Attic township of Acharnae there was a

Dionysus Ivy;(1045) at Lacedaemon there was a Fig Dionysus; and in Naxos,

where figs were called _meilicha_, there was a Dionysus Meilichios, the

face of whose image was made of fig-wood.(1046)

Like the other gods of vegetation whom we have been considering, Dionysus

was believed to have died a violent death, but to have been brought to

life again; and his sufferings, death, and resurrection were enacted in

his sacred rites. The Cretan myth, as related by Firmicus, ran thus. He

was said to have been the bastard son of Jupiter (Zeus), a Cretan king.

Going abroad, Jupiter transferred the throne and sceptre to the child

Dionysus, but, knowing that his wife Juno (Hera) cherished a jealous

dislike of the child, he entrusted Dionysus to the care of guards upon

whose fidelity he believed he could rely. Juno, however, bribed the

guards, and amusing the child with toys and a cunningly-wrought

looking-glass lured him into an ambush, where her satellites, the Titans,

rushed upon him, cut him limb from limb, boiled his body with various

herbs and ate it. But his sister Minerva, who had shared in the deed, kept

his heart and gave it to Jupiter on his return, revealing to him the whole

history of the crime. In his rage, Jupiter put the Titans to death by

torture, and, to soothe his grief for the loss of his son, made an image

in which he enclosed the child’s heart, and then built a temple in his

honour.(1047) In this version a Euhemeristic turn has been given to the

myth by representing Jupiter and Juno (Zeus and Hera) as a king and queen

of Crete. The guards referred to are the mythical Curetes who danced a

war-dance round the infant Dionysus as they are said to have done round

the infant Zeus.(1048) Pomegranates were supposed to have sprung from the

blood of Dionysus,(1049) as anemones from the blood of Adonis and violets

from the blood of Attis. According to some, the severed limbs of Dionysus

were pieced together, at the command of Zeus, by Apollo, who buried them

on Parnassus.(1050) The grave of Dionysus was shown in the Delphic temple

beside a golden statue of Apollo.(1051) Thus far the resurrection of the

slain god is not mentioned, but in other versions of the myth it is

variously related. One version, which represented Dionysus as a son of

Demeter, averred that his mother pieced together his mangled limbs and

made him young again.(1052) In others it is simply said that shortly after

his burial he rose from the dead and ascended up to heaven;(1053) or that

Zeus raised him up as he lay mortally wounded;(1054) or that Zeus

swallowed the heart of Dionysus and then begat him afresh by Semele,(1055)

who in the common legend figures as mother of Dionysus. Or, again, the

heart was pounded up and given in a potion to Semele, who thereby

conceived him.(1056)

Turning from the myth to the ritual, we find that the Cretans celebrated a

biennial(1057) festival at which the sufferings and death of Dionysus were

represented in every detail.(1058) Where the resurrection formed part of

the myth, it also was enacted at the rites,(1059) and it even appears that

a general doctrine of resurrection, or at least of immortality, was

inculcated on the worshippers; for Plutarch, writing to console his wife

on the death of their infant daughter, comforts her with the thought of

the immortality of the soul as taught by tradition and revealed in the

mysteries of Dionysus.(1060)

A different form of the myth of the death and resurrection of Dionysus is

that he descended into Hades to bring up his mother Semele from the

dead.(1061) The local Argive tradition was that he descended through the

Alcyonian lake; and his return from the lower world, in other words his

resurrection, was annually celebrated on the spot by the Argives, who

summoned him from the water by trumpet blasts, while they threw a lamb

into the lake as an offering to the warder of the dead.(1062) Whether this

was a spring festival does not appear, but the Lydians certainly

celebrated the advent of Dionysus in spring; the god was supposed to bring

the season with him.(1063) Deities of vegetation, who are supposed to pass

a certain portion of each year underground, naturally come to be regarded

as gods of the lower world or of the dead. Both Dionysus and Osiris were

so conceived.(1064)

A feature in the mythical character of Dionysus, which at first sight

appears inconsistent with his nature as a deity of vegetation, is that he

was often conceived and represented in animal shape, especially in the

form, or at least with the horns, of a bull. Thus he is spoken of as

“cow-born,” “bull,” “bull-shaped,” “bull-faced,” “bull-browed,”

“bull-horned,” “horn-bearing,” “two-horned,” “horned.”(1065) He was

believed to appear, at least occasionally, as a bull.(1066) His images

were often, as at Cyzicus, made in bull shape,(1067) or with bull

horns;(1068) and he was painted with horns.(1069) Types of the horned

Dionysus are found amongst the surviving monuments of antiquity.(1070) On

one statuette he appears clad in a bull’s hide, the head, horns, and hoofs

hanging down behind.(1071) At his festivals Dionysus was believed to

appear in bull form. The women of Elis hailed him as a bull, and prayed

him to come with his bull’s-foot. They sang, “Come here, Dionysus, to thy

holy temple by the sea; come with the Graces to thy temple, rushing with

thy bull’s-foot, O goodly bull, O goodly bull!”(1072) According to the

myth, it was in the shape of a bull that he was torn to pieces by the

Titans;(1073) and the Cretans, in representing the sufferings and death of

Dionysus, tore a live bull to pieces with their teeth.(1074) Indeed, the

rending and devouring of live bulls and calves appear to have been a

regular feature of the Dionysiac rites.(1075) The practice of representing

the god in bull form or with some of the features of a bull, the belief

that he appeared in bull form to his worshippers at the sacred rites, and

the legend that it was in bull form that he had been torn in pieces—all

these facts taken together leave no room to doubt that in rending and

devouring a live bull at his festival his worshippers believed that they

were killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood.

Another animal whose form Dionysus assumed was the goat. One of his names

was “_Kid._”(1076) To save him from the wrath of Hera, his father Zeus

changed him into a kid;(1077) and when the gods fled to Egypt to escape

the fury of Typhon, Dionysus was turned into a goat.(1078) Hence when his

worshippers rent in pieces a live goat and devoured it raw,(1079) they

must have believed that they were eating the body and blood of the god.

This custom of killing a god in animal form, which we shall examine more

fully presently, belongs to a very early stage in human culture, and is

apt in later times to be misunderstood. The advance of thought tends to

strip the old animal and plant gods of their bestial and vegetable husk,

and to leave their human attributes (which are always the kernel of the

conception) as the final and sole residuum. In other words, animal and

plant gods tend to become purely anthropomorphic. When they have become

wholly or nearly so, the animals and plants which were at first the

deities themselves, still retain a vague and ill-understood connection

with the anthropomorphic gods which have been developed out of them. The

origin of the relationship between the deity and the animal or plant

having been forgotten, various stories are invented to explain it. These

explanations may follow one of two lines according as they are based on

the habitual or on the exceptional treatment of the sacred animal or

plant. The sacred animal was habitually spared, and only exceptionally

slain; and accordingly the myth might be devised to explain either why it

was spared or why it was killed. Devised for the former purpose, the myth

would tell of some service rendered to the deity by the animal; devised

for the latter purpose, the myth would tell of some injury inflicted by

the animal on the god. The reason given for sacrificing goats to Dionysus

is an example of a myth of the latter sort. They were sacrificed to him,

it was said, because they injured the vine.(1080) Now the goat, as we have

seen, was originally an embodiment of the god himself. But when the god

had divested himself of his animal character and had become essentially

anthropomorphic, the killing of the goat in his worship came to be

regarded no longer as a slaying of the god himself, but as a sacrifice to

him; and since some reason had to be assigned why the goat in particular

should be sacrificed, it was alleged that this was a punishment inflicted

on the goat for injuring the vine, the object of the god’s especial care.

Thus we have the strange spectacle of a god sacrificed to himself on the

ground that he is his own enemy. And as the god is supposed to partake of

the victim offered to him, it follows that, when the victim is the god’s

old self, the god eats of his own flesh. Hence the goat-god Dionysus is

represented as eating raw goat’s blood;(1081) and the bull-god Dionysus is

called “eater of bulls.”(1082) On the analogy of these instances we may

conjecture that wherever a god is described as the eater of a particular

animal, the animal in question was originally nothing but the god

himself.(1083)

All this, however, does not explain why a deity of vegetation should

appear in animal form. But the consideration of this point had better be

deferred till we have discussed the character and attributes of Demeter.

Meantime it remains to point out that in some places, instead of an

animal, a human being was torn in pieces at the rites of Dionysus. This

was the custom in Chios and Tenedos;(1084) and at Potniae in Boeotia the

tradition ran that it had been formerly the custom to sacrifice to the

goat-smiting Dionysus a child, for whom a goat was afterwards

substituted.(1085) At Orchomenus the human victim was taken from the women

of a certain family, called the Oleiae. At the annual festival the priest

of Dionysus pursued these women with a drawn sword, and if he overtook one

of them he had a right to slay her. This right was exercised as late as

Plutarch’s time.(1086) As the slain bull or goat represented the slain

god, so, we may suppose, the human victim also represented him. It is

possible, however, that a tradition of human sacrifice may sometimes have

been a mere misinterpretation of a sacrificial ritual in which an animal

victim was treated as a human being. For example, at Tenedos the new-born

calf sacrificed to Dionysus was shod in buskins, and the mother cow was

tended like a woman in child-bed.(1087)

§ 8.—Demeter and Proserpine.

The Greek myth of Demeter and Proserpine is substantially identical with

the Syrian myth of Aphrodite (Astarte) and Adonis, the Phrygian myth of

Cybele and Attis, and the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris. In the Greek

myth, as in its Asiatic and Egyptian counterparts, a

goddess—Demeter—mourns the loss of a loved one—Proserpine—who personifies

the vegetation, more especially the corn, which dies in summer(1088) to

revive in spring. But in the Greek myth the loved and lost one is the

daughter instead of the husband or lover of the goddess; and the mother as

well as the daughter is a goddess of the corn.(1089) Thus, as modern

scholars have recognised,(1090) Demeter and Proserpine are merely a

mythical reduplication of the same natural phenomenon. Proserpine, so ran

the Greek myth,(1091) was gathering flowers when the earth gaped, and

Pluto, lord of the Dead, issuing from the abyss, carried her off on his

golden car to be his bride in the gloomy subterranean world. Her sorrowing

mother Demeter sought her over land and sea, and learning from the Sun her

daughter’s fate, she suffered not the seed to grow, but kept it hidden in

the ground, so that the whole race of men would have died of hunger if

Zeus had not sent and fetched Proserpine from the nether world. Finally it

was agreed that Proserpine should spend a third, or according to others a

half,(1092) of each year with Pluto underground, but should come forth in

spring to dwell with her mother and the gods in the upper world. Her

annual death and resurrection, that is, her annual descent into the under

world and her ascension from it, appear to have been represented in her

rites.(1093)

With regard to the name Demeter, it has been plausibly argued by

Mannhardt(1094) that the first part of the word is derived from _dēai_, a

Cretan word for “barley”;(1095) and that thus Demeter means the

Barley-mother or the Corn-mother; for the root of the word appears to have

been applied to different kinds of grain by different branches of the

Aryans, and even of the Greeks themselves.(1096) As Crete appears to have

been one of the most ancient seats of the worship of Demeter,(1097) it is

not surprising that her name should be of Cretan origin. This explanation

of the name Demeter is supported by a host of analogies which the

diligence of Mannhardt has collected from modern European folk-lore, and

of which the following are specimens. In Germany the corn is very commonly

personified under the name of the Corn-mother. Thus in spring, when the

wind sets the corn in wave-like motion, the peasants say, “There comes the

Corn-mother,” or “The Corn-mother is running over the field,” or “The

Corn-mother is going through the corn.”(1098) When children wish to go

into the fields to pull the blue corn-flowers or the red poppies, they are

told not to do so, because the Corn-mother is sitting in the corn and will

catch them.(1099) Or again she is called, according to the crop, the

Rye-mother or the Pea-mother, and children are warned against straying in

the rye or among the peas by threats of the Rye-mother or the Pea-mother.

In Norway also the Pea-mother is said to sit among the peas.(1100) Similar

expressions are current among the Slavs. The Poles and Czechs warn

children against the Corn-mother who sits in the corn. Or they call her

the Old Corn-woman, and say that she sits in the corn and strangles the

children who tread it down.(1101) The Lithuanians say, “The Old Rye-woman

sits in the corn.”(1102) Again the Corn-mother is believed to make the

crop grow. Thus in the neighbourhood of Magdeburg it is sometimes said,

“It will be a good year for flax; the Flax-mother has been seen.” At

Dinkelsbühl (Bavaria) down to fifteen or twenty years ago, people believed

that when the crops on a particular farm compared unfavourably with those

of the neighbourhood, the reason was that the Corn-mother had punished the

farmer for his sins.(1103) In a village of Styria it is said that the

Corn-mother, in the shape of a female puppet made out of the last sheaf of

corn and dressed in white, may be seen at midnight in the corn-fields,

which she fertilises by passing through them; but if she is angry with a

farmer, she withers up all his corn.(1104)

Further, the Corn-mother plays an important part in harvest customs. She

is believed to be present in the handful of corn which is left standing

last on the field; and with the cutting of this last handful she is

caught, or driven away, or killed. In the first of these cases, the last

sheaf is carried joyfully home and honoured as a divine being. It is

placed in the barn, and at threshing the corn-spirit appears again.(1105)

In the district of Hadeln (Hanover) the reapers stand round the last sheaf

and beat it with sticks in order to drive the Corn-mother out of it. They

call to each other, “There she is! hit her! Take care she doesn’t catch

you!” The beating goes on till the grain is completely threshed out; then

the Corn-mother is believed to be driven away.(1106) In the neighbourhood

of Danzig the person who cuts the last ears of corn makes them into a

doll, which is called the Corn-mother or the Old Woman, and is brought

home on the last waggon.(1107) In some parts of Holstein the last sheaf is

dressed in woman’s clothes and called the Corn-mother. It is carried home

on the last waggon, and then thoroughly drenched with water. The drenching

with water is doubtless a rain-charm.(1108) In the district of Bruck in

Styria the last sheaf, called the Corn-mother, is made up into the shape

of a woman by the oldest married woman in the village, of an age from

fifty to fifty-five years. The finest ears are plucked out of it and made

into a wreath, which, twined with flowers, is carried on her head by the

prettiest girl of the village to the farmer or squire, while the

Corn-mother is laid down in the barn to keep off the mice.(1109) In other

villages of the same district the Corn-mother, at the close of harvest, is

carried by two lads at the top of a pole. They march behind the girl who

wears the wreath to the squire’s house, and while he receives the wreath

and hangs it up in the hall, the Corn-mother is placed on the top of a

pile of wood, where she is the centre of the harvest supper and dance.

Afterwards she is hung up in the barn and remains there till the threshing

is over. The man who gives the last stroke at threshing is called the son

of the Corn-mother; he is tied up in the Corn-mother, beaten, and carried

through the village. The wreath is dedicated in church on the following

Sunday; and on Easter Eve the grain is rubbed out of it by a seven years’

old girl and scattered amongst the young corn. At Christmas the straw of

the wreath is placed in the manger to make the cattle thrive.(1110) Here

the fertilising power of the Corn-mother is plainly brought out by

scattering the seed taken from her body (for the wreath is made out of the

Corn-mother) among the new corn; and her influence over animal life is

indicated by placing the straw in the manger. At Westerhüsen in Saxony the

last corn cut is made in the shape of a woman decked with ribbons and

cloth. It is fastened on a pole and brought home on the last waggon. One

of the people on the waggon keeps waving the pole, so that the figure

moves as if alive. It is placed on the threshing-floor, and stays there

till the threshing is done.(1111) Amongst the Slavs also the last sheaf is

known as the Rye-mother, the Wheat-mother, the Oats-mother, the

Barley-mother, etc., according to the crop. In the district of Tarnow,

Galicia, the wreath made out of the last stalks is called the

Wheat-mother, Rye-mother, or Pea-mother. It is placed on a girl’s head and

kept till spring, when some of the grain is mixed with the

seed-corn.(1112) Here again the fertilising power of the Corn-mother is

indicated. In France, also, in the neighbourhood of Auxerre, the last

sheaf goes by the name of the Mother of the Wheat, Mother of the Barley,

Mother of the Rye, or Mother of the Oats. It is left standing in the field

till the last waggon is about to wend homewards. Then a puppet is made out

of it, dressed with clothes belonging to the farmer, and adorned with a

crown and a blue or white scarf. A branch of a tree is stuck in the breast

of the puppet, which is now called the Ceres. At the dance in the evening

the Ceres is placed in the middle of the floor, and the reaper who reaped

fastest dances round it with the prettiest girl for his partner. After the

dance a pyre is made. All the girls, each wearing a wreath, strip the

puppet, pull it to pieces, and place it on the pyre, along with the

flowers with which it was adorned. Then the girl who was the first to

finish reaping sets fire to the pile, and all pray that Ceres may give a

fruitful year. Here, as Mannhardt observes, the old custom has remained

intact, though the name Ceres is a bit of schoolmaster’s learning.(1113)

In Upper Britanny the last sheaf is always made into human shape; but if

the farmer is a married man, it is made double and consists of a little

corn-puppet placed inside of a large one. This is called the Mother-sheaf.

It is delivered to the farmer’s wife, who unties it and gives drink-money

in return.(1114)

Sometimes the last sheaf is called, not the Corn-mother, but the

Harvest-mother or the Great Mother. In the province of Osnabrück (Hanover)

it is called the Harvest-mother; it is made up in female form, and then

the reapers dance about with it. In some parts of Westphalia the last

sheaf at the rye harvest is made especially heavy by fastening stones in

it. It is brought home on the last waggon and is called the Great Mother,

though no special shape is given it. In the district of Erfurt a very

heavy sheaf (not necessarily the last) is called the Great Mother, and is

carried on the last waggon to the barn, where it is lifted down by all

hands amid a fire of jokes.(1115)

Sometimes again the last sheaf is called the Grandmother, and is adorned

with flowers, ribbons, and a woman’s apron. In East Prussia, at the rye or

wheat harvest, the reapers call out to the woman who binds the last sheaf,

“You are getting the Old Grandmother.” In the neighbourhood of Magdeburg

the men and women servants strive who shall get the last sheaf, called the

Grandmother. Whoever gets it will be married in the next year, but his or

her spouse will be old; if a girl gets it, she will marry a widower; if a

man gets it, he will marry an old crone. In Silesia the Grandmother—a huge

bundle made up of three or four sheaves by the person who tied the last

sheaf—was formerly fashioned into a rude likeness of the human form.(1116)

In the neighbourhood of Belfast the last sheaf is sometimes called Granny.

It is not cut in the usual way, but all the reapers throw their sickles at

it and try to bring it down. It is plaited and kept till the (next?)

autumn. Whoever gets it will marry in the course of the year.(1117)

Oftener the last sheaf is called the Old Woman or the Old Man. In Germany

it is often shaped and dressed as a woman, and the person who cuts it or

binds it is said to “get the Old Woman.”(1118) At Altisheim in Swabia when

all the corn of a farm has been cut except a single strip, all the reapers

stand in a row before the strip; each cuts his share rapidly, and he who

gives the last cut “has the Old Woman.”(1119) When the sheaves are being

set up in heaps, the person who gets hold of the Old Woman, which is the

largest and thickest of all the sheaves, is jeered at by the rest, who

sing out to him, “He has the Old Woman and must keep her.”(1120) The woman

who binds the last sheaf is sometimes herself called the Old Woman, and it

is said that she will be married in the next year.(1121) In Neusaass, West

Prussia, both the last sheaf—which is dressed up in jacket, hat and

ribbons—and the woman who binds it are called the Old Woman. Together they

are brought home on the last waggon and are drenched with water.(1122) At

Hornkampe, near Tiegenhof (West Prussia), when a man or woman lags behind

the rest in binding the corn, the other reapers dress up the last sheaf in

the form of a man or woman, and this figure goes by the laggard’s name, as

“the old Michael,” “the idle Trine.” It is brought home on the last

waggon, and, as it nears the house, the bystanders call out to the

laggard, “You have got the Old Woman and must keep her.”(1123)

In these customs, as Mannhardt has remarked, the person who is called by

the same name as the last sheaf and sits beside it on the last waggon is

obviously identified with it; he or she represents the corn-spirit which

has been caught in the last sheaf; in other words, the corn-spirit is

represented in duplicate, by a human being and by a sheaf.(1124) The

identification of the person with the sheaf is made still clearer by the

custom of wrapping up in the last sheaf the person who cuts or binds it.

Thus at Hermsdorf in Silesia it used to be the regular custom to tie up in

the last sheaf the woman who had bound it.(1125) At Weiden in Bavaria it

is the cutter, not the binder, of the last sheaf who is tied up in

it.(1126) Here the person wrapt up in the corn represents the corn-spirit,

exactly as a person wrapt in branches or leaves represents the

tree-spirit.(1127)

The last sheaf, designated as the Old Woman, is often distinguished from

the other sheaves by its size and weight. Thus in some villages of West

Prussia the Old Woman is made twice as long and thick as a common sheaf,

and a stone is fastened in the middle of it. Sometimes it is made so heavy

that a man can barely lift it.(1128) Sometimes eight or nine sheaves are

tied together to make the Old Woman, and the man who sets it up complains

of its weight.(1129) At Itzgrund, in Saxe-Coburg, the last sheaf, called

the Old Woman, is made large with the express intention of thereby

securing a good crop next year.(1130) Thus the custom of making the last

sheaf unusually large or heavy is a charm, working by sympathetic magic,

to secure a large and heavy crop in the following year.

In Denmark also the last sheaf is made larger than the others, and is

called the Old Rye-woman or the Old Barley-woman. No one likes to bind it,

because whoever does so will, it is believed, marry an old man or an old

woman. Sometimes the last wheat-sheaf, called the Old Wheat-woman, is made

up in human shape, with head, arms, and legs, is dressed in clothes and

carried home on the last waggon, the harvesters sitting beside it,

drinking and huzzaing.(1131) Of the person who binds the last sheaf it is

said, “She (or he) is the Old Rye-woman.”(1132)

In Scotland, when the last corn was cut after Hallowmas, the female figure

made out of it was sometimes called the Carlin or Carline, _i.e._ the Old

Woman. But if cut before Hallowmas, it was called the Maiden; if cut after

sunset, it was called the Witch, being supposed to bring bad luck.(1133)

We shall return to the Maiden presently. In County Antrim, down to a few

years ago, when the sickle was finally expelled by the reaping machine,

the few stalks of corn left standing last on the field were plaited

together; then the reapers, blindfolded, threw their sickles at the

plaited corn, and whoever happened to cut it through took it home with him

and put it over his door. This bunch of corn was called the

Carley(1134)—probably the same word as Carlin.

Similar customs are observed by Slavonic peoples. Thus in Poland the last

sheaf is commonly called the Baba, that is, the Old Woman. “In the last

sheaf,” it is said, “sits the Baba.” The sheaf itself is also called the

Baba, and is sometimes composed of twelve smaller sheaves lashed

together.(1135) In some parts of Bohemia the Baba, made out of the last

sheaf, has the figure of a woman with a great straw hat. It is carried

home on the last harvest-waggon and delivered, along with a garland, to

the farmer by two girls. In binding the sheaves the women strive not to be

last, for she who binds the last sheaf will have a child next year.(1136)

The last sheaf is tied up with others into a large bundle, and a green

branch is stuck on the top of it.(1137) Sometimes the harvesters call out

to the woman who binds the last sheaf, “She has the Baba,” or “She is the

Baba.” She has then to make a puppet, sometimes in female, sometimes in

male form, out of the corn; the puppet is occasionally dressed with

clothes, often with flowers and ribbons only. The cutter of the last

stalks, as well as the binder of the last sheaf, was also called Baba; and

a doll, called the Harvest-woman, was made out of the last sheaf and

adorned with ribbons. The oldest reaper had to dance, first with this

doll, and then with the farmer’s wife.(1138) In the district of Cracow,

when a man binds the last sheaf, they say, “The Grandfather is sitting in

it;” when a woman binds it, they say, “The Baba is sitting in it,” and the

woman herself is wrapt up in the sheaf, so that only her head projects out

of it. Thus encased in the sheaf, she is carried on the last

harvest-waggon to the house, where she is drenched with water by the whole

family. She remains in the sheaf till the dance is over, and for a year

she retains the name of Baba.(1139)

In Lithuania the name for the last sheaf is Boba (Old Woman), answering to

the Polish name Baba. The Boba is said to sit in the corn which is left

standing last.(1140) The person who binds the last sheaf or digs the last

potato is the subject of much banter, and receives and long retains the

name of the Old Rye-woman or the Old Potato-woman.(1141) The last

sheaf—the Boba—is made into the form of a woman, carried solemnly through

the village on the last harvest-waggon, and drenched with water at the

farmer’s house; then every one dances with it.(1142)

In Russia also the last sheaf is often shaped and dressed as a woman, and

carried with dance and song to the farmhouse. Out of the last sheaf the

Bulgarians make a doll which they call the Corn-queen or Corn-mother; it

is dressed in a woman’s shirt, carried round the village, and then thrown

into the river in order to secure plenty of rain and dew for the next

year’s crop. Or it is burned and the ashes strewn on the fields, doubtless

to fertilise them.(1143) The name Queen, as applied to the last sheaf, has

its analogies in Northern Europe. Thus Brand quotes from Hutchinson’s

_History of Northumberland_ the following: “I have seen, in some places,

an image apparelled in great finery, crowned with flowers, a sheaf of corn

placed under her arm, and a sycle in her hand, carried out of the village

in the morning of the conclusive reaping day, with music and much clamour

of the reapers, into the field, where it stands fixed on a pole all day,

and when the reaping is done, is brought home in like manner. This they

call the Harvest Queen, and it represents the Roman Ceres.”(1144) From

Cambridge also Dr. E. D. Clarke reported that “at the Hawkie

[harvest-home], as it is called, I have seen a clown dressed in woman’s

clothes, having his face painted, his head decorated with ears of corn,

and bearing about him other symbols of Ceres, carried in a waggon, with

great pomp and loud shouts, through the streets, the horses being covered

with white sheets; and when I inquired the meaning of the ceremony, was

answered by the people, that they were drawing the Harvest Queen.”(1145)

Often the customs we have been examining are practised, not on the harvest

field, but on the threshing-floor. The spirit of the corn, fleeing before

the reapers as they cut down the corn, quits the cut corn and takes refuge

in the barn, where it appears in the last sheaf threshed, either to perish

under the blows of the flail or to flee thence to the still unthreshed

corn of a neighbouring farm.(1146) Thus the last corn to be threshed is

called the Mother-corn or the Old Woman. Sometimes the person who gives

the last stroke with the flail is called the Old Woman, and is wrapt in

the straw of the last sheaf, or has a bundle of straw fastened on his

back. Whether wrapt in the straw or carrying it on his back, he is carted

through the village amid general laughter. In some districts of Bavaria,

Thüringen, etc., the man who threshes the last sheaf is said to have the

Old Woman or the Old Corn-woman; he is tied up in straw, carried or carted

about the village, and set down at last on the dunghill, or taken to the

threshing-floor of a neighbouring farmer who has not finished his

threshing.(1147) In Poland the man who gives the last stroke at threshing

is called Baba (Old Woman); he is wrapt in corn and wheeled through the

village.(1148) Sometimes in Lithuania the last sheaf is not threshed, but

is fashioned into female shape and carried to the barn of a neighbour who

has not finished his threshing.(1149) In some parts of Sweden, when a

stranger woman appears on the threshing-floor, a flail is put round her

body, stalks of corn are wound round her neck, a crown of ears is placed

on her head, and the threshers call out, “Behold the Corn-woman.” Here the

stranger woman, thus suddenly appearing, is taken to be the corn-spirit

who has just been expelled by the flails from the corn-stalks.(1150) In

other cases the farmer’s wife represents the corn-spirit. Thus in the

Commune of Saligné, Canton de Poiret (Vendée), the farmer’s wife, along

with the last sheaf, is tied up in a sheet, placed on a litter, and

carried to the threshing machine, under which she is shoved. Then the

woman is drawn out and the sheaf is threshed by itself, but the woman is

tossed in the sheet (in imitation of winnowing).(1151) It would be

impossible to express more clearly the identification of the woman with

the corn than by this graphic imitation of threshing and winnowing her.

In these customs the spirit of the ripe corn is regarded as old, or at

least as of mature age. Hence the names of Mother, Grandmother, Old Woman,

etc. But in other cases the corn-spirit is conceived as young, sometimes

as a child who is separated from its mother by the stroke of the sickle.

This last view appears in the Polish custom of calling out to the man who

cuts the last handful of corn, “You have cut the navel-string.”(1152) In

some districts of West Prussia the figure made out of the last sheaf is

called the Bastard, and a boy is wrapt up in it. The woman who binds the

last sheaf and represents the Corn-mother, is told that she is about to be

brought to bed; she cries like a woman in travail, and an old woman in the

character of grandmother acts as midwife. At last a cry is raised that the

child is born; whereupon the boy who is tied up in the sheaf whimpers and

squalls like an infant. The grandmother wraps a sack, in imitation of

swaddling bands, round the pretended baby, and it is carried joyfully to

the barn, lest it catch cold in the open air.(1153) In other parts of

North Germany, the last sheaf, or the puppet made out of it, is called the

Child, the Harvest Child, etc. In the North of England the last handful of

corn was cut by the prettiest girl and dressed up as the Corn Baby or Kern

Baby; it was brought home to music, set up in a conspicuous place at the

harvest supper, and generally kept in the parlour for the rest of the

year. The girl who cut it was the Harvest Queen.(1154) In Kent the Ivy

Girl is (or was) “a figure composed of some of the best corn the field

produces, and made as well as they can into a human shape; this is

afterwards curiously dressed by the women, and adorned with paper

trimmings, cut to resemble a cap, ruffles, handkerchief, etc., of the

finest lace. It is brought home with the last load of corn from the field

upon the waggon, and they suppose entitles them to a supper at the expense

of the employer.”(1155) In the neighbourhood of Balquhidder, Perthshire,

the last handful of corn is cut by the youngest girl on the field, and is

made into the rude form of a female doll, clad in a paper dress, and

decked with ribbons. It is called the Maiden, and is kept in the

farmhouse, generally above the chimney, for a good while, sometimes till

the Maiden of the next year is brought in. The writer of this book

witnessed the ceremony of cutting the Maiden at Balquhidder in September

1888.(1156) On some farms on the Gareloch, Dumbartonshire, about sixty

years ago the last handful of standing corn was called the Maiden. It was

divided in two, plaited, and then cut with the sickle by a girl, who, it

was thought, would be lucky and would soon be married. When it was cut the

reapers gathered together and threw their sickles in the air. The Maiden

was dressed with ribbons and hung in the kitchen near the roof, where it

was kept for several years with the date attached. Sometimes five or six

Maidens might be seen hanging at once on hooks. The harvest supper was

called the Kirn.(1157) In other farms on the Gareloch the last handful of

corn was called the Maidenhead or the Head; it was neatly plaited,

sometimes decked with ribbons, and hung in the kitchen for a year, when

the grain was given to the poultry.(1158) In the North of Scotland, the

Maiden is kept till Christmas morning, and then divided among the cattle

“to make them thrive all the year round.”(1159) In Aberdeenshire also the

last sheaf (called the clyack sheaf) was formerly cut, as it is still cut

at Balquhidder, by the youngest girl on the field; then it was dressed in

woman’s clothes, carried home in triumph, and kept till Christmas or New

Year’s morning, when it was given to a mare in foal, or, failing such, to

the oldest cow.(1160) Lastly, a somewhat maturer, but still youthful age

is assigned to the corn-spirit by the appellations of Bride, Oats-bride,

and Wheat-bride, which in Germany and Scotland are sometimes bestowed both

on the last sheaf and on the woman who binds it.(1161) Sometimes the idea

implied in these names is worked out more fully by representing the

productive powers of vegetation as bride and bridegroom. Thus in some

parts of Germany a man and woman dressed in straw and called the Oats-wife

and the Oats-man, or the Oats-bride and the Oats-bridegroom dance at the

harvest festival; then the corn-stalks are plucked from their bodies till

they stand as bare as a stubble field. In Silesia, the woman who binds the

last sheaf is called the Wheat-bride or the Oats-bride. With the harvest

crown on her head, a bridegroom by her side, and attended by bridesmaids,

she is brought to the farmhouse with all the solemnity of a wedding

procession.(1162)

The harvest customs just described are strikingly analogous to the spring

customs which we reviewed in the first chapter. (1.) As in the spring

customs the tree-spirit is represented both by a tree and by a

person,(1163) so in the harvest customs the corn-spirit is represented

both by the last sheaf and by the person who cuts or binds or threshes it.

The equivalence of the person to the sheaf is shown by giving him or her

the same name as the sheaf, or _vice versâ_; by wrapping him or her in the

sheaf; and by the rule observed in some places, that when the sheaf is

called the Mother, it must be cut by the oldest married woman; but when it

is called the Maiden, it must be cut by the youngest girl.(1164) Here the

age of the personal representative of the corn-spirit corresponds with

that of the supposed age of the corn-spirit, just as the human victims

offered by the Mexicans to promote the growth of the maize varied with the

age of the maize.(1165) For in the Mexican, as in the European, custom the

human beings were probably representatives of the corn-spirit rather than

victims offered to him. (2.) Again, the same fertilising influence which

the tree-spirit is supposed to exert over vegetation, cattle, and even

women(1166) is ascribed to the corn-spirit. Thus, its supposed influence

on vegetation is shown by the practice of taking some of the grain of the

last sheaf (in which the corn-spirit is regularly supposed to be present),

and scattering it among the young corn in spring.(1167) Its influence on

cattle is shown by giving the straw of the last sheaf to the cattle at

Christmas with the express intention of making them thrive.(1168) Lastly,

its influence on women is indicated by the custom of delivering the

Mother-sheaf, made into the likeness of a pregnant woman, to the farmer’s

wife;(1169) by the belief that the woman who binds the last sheaf will

have a child next year;(1170) perhaps, too, by the idea that the person

who gets it will marry next year.(1171)

Plainly, therefore, these spring and harvest customs are based on the same

ancient modes of thought, and form parts of the same primitive heathendom,

which was doubtless practised by our forefathers long before the dawn of

history, as it is practised to this day by many of their descendants.

Amongst the marks of a primitive religion, we may note the following:—

(1.) No special class of persons is set apart for the performance of the

rites; in other words, there are no priests. The rites may be performed by

any one, as occasion demands.

(2.) No special places are set apart for the performance of the rites; in

other words, there are no temples. The rites may be performed anywhere, as

occasion demands.

(3.) Spirits, not gods, are recognised. (_a._) As distinguished from gods,

spirits are restricted in their operations to definite departments of

nature. Their names are general, not proper. Their attributes are generic,

rather than individual; in other words, there is an indefinite number of

spirits of each class, and the individuals of a class are all much alike;

they have no definitely marked individuality; no accepted traditions are

current as to their origin, life, adventures, and character. (_b._) On the

other hand gods, as distinguished from spirits, are not exclusively

restricted in their operations to definite departments of nature. It is

true that there is generally some one department over which they preside

as their special province; but they are not rigorously confined to it;

they can exert their power for good or evil in many other spheres of

nature and life. Again, they bear individual or proper names, such as

Ceres, Proserpine, Bacchus; and their individual characters and histories

are fixed by current myths and the representations of art.

(4.) The rites are magical rather than propitiatory. In other words, the

desired objects are attained, not by propitiating the favour of divine

beings through sacrifice, prayer, and praise, but by ceremonies which, as

has been explained,(1172) are believed to influence the course of nature

directly through a physical sympathy or resemblance between the rite and

the effect which it is the intention of the rite to produce.

Judged by these tests, the spring and harvest customs of our European

peasantry deserve to rank as primitive. For no special class of persons

and no special places are set exclusively apart for their performance;

they may be performed by any one, master or man, mistress or maid, boy or

girl; they are practised, not in temples or churches, but in the woods and

meadows, beside brooks, in barns, on harvest fields and cottage floors.

The supernatural beings whose existence is taken for granted in them are

spirits rather than deities; their functions are limited to certain

well-defined departments of nature; their names are general, like the

Barley-mother, the Old Woman, the Maiden, not proper names like Ceres,

Proserpine, Bacchus. Their generic attributes are known, but their

individual histories and characters are not the subject of myths. For they

exist in classes rather than as individuals, and the members of each class

are indistinguishable. For example, every farm has its Corn-mother, or its

Old Woman, or its Maiden; but every Corn-mother is much like every other

Corn-mother, and so with the Old Women and Maidens. Lastly, in these

harvest, as in the spring, customs, the ritual is magical rather than

propitiatory. This is shown by throwing the Corn-mother into the river in

order to secure rain and dew for the crops;(1173) by making the Old Woman

heavy in order to get a heavy crop next year;(1174) by strewing grain from

the last sheaf amongst the young crops in spring;(1175) and giving the

last sheaf to the cattle to make them thrive.(1176)

Further, the custom of keeping the puppet—the representative of the

corn-spirit—till next harvest, is a charm to maintain the corn-spirit in

life and activity throughout the year.(1177) This is proved by a similar

custom observed by the ancient Peruvians, and thus described by the

historian Acosta. “They take a certain portion of the most fruitefull of

the Mays [_i.e._ maize] that growes in their farmes, the which they put in

a certaine granary which they doe call _Pirua_, with certaine ceremonies,

watching three nightes; they put this Mays in the richest garments they

have, and beeing thus wrapped and dressed, they worship this _Pirua_, and

hold it in great veneration, saying it is the mother of the mays of their

inheritances, and that by this means the mays augments and is preserved.

In this moneth [the sixth month, answering to May] they make a particular

sacrifice, and the witches demaund of this _Pirua_, if it hath strength

sufficient to continue untill the next yeare; and if it answers no, then

they carry this Mays to the farme to burne, whence they brought it,

according to every man’s power; then they make another _Pirua_, with the

same ceremonies, saying that they renue it, to the end the seede of Mays

may not perish, and if it answers that it hath force sufficient to last

longer, they leave it untill the next yeare. This foolish vanity

continueth to this day, and it is very common amongest the Indians to have

these _Piruas_.”(1178) There seems to be some error in this description of

the custom. Probably it was the dressed-up bunch of maize, not the granary

(_Pirua_), which was worshipped by the Peruvians and regarded as the

Mother of the Maize. This is confirmed by what we know of the Peruvian

custom from another source. The Peruvians, we are told, believed all

useful plants to be animated by a divine being who causes their growth.

According to the particular plant, these divine beings were called the

Maize-mother (_Zara-mama_), the Quinoa-mother (_Quinoa-mama_), the

Cocoa-mother (_Coca-mama_), and the Potato-mother (_Axo-mama_). Figures of

these divine mothers were made respectively of ears of maize and leaves of

the quinoa and cocoa plants; they were dressed in women’s clothes and

worshipped. Thus the Maize-mother was represented by a puppet made of

stalks of maize, dressed in full female attire; and the Indians believed

that “as mother, it had the power of producing and giving birth to much

maize.”(1179) Probably, therefore, Acosta misunderstood his informant, and

the Mother of the Maize which he describes was not the granary (_Pirua_)

but the bunch of maize dressed in rich vestments. The Peruvian Mother of

the Maize, like the harvest Maiden at Balquhidder, was kept for a year in

order that by her means the corn might grow and multiply. But lest her

strength might not suffice to last out the year, she was asked in the

course of the year how she felt, and if she answered that she felt weak,

she was burned and a fresh Mother of the Maize made, “to the end the seede

of Mays may not perish.” Here, it may be observed, we have a strong

confirmation of the explanation already given of the custom of killing the

god, both periodically and occasionally. The Mother of the Maize was

allowed, as a rule, to live through a year, that being the period during

which her strength might reasonably be supposed to last unimpaired; but on

any symptom of her strength failing she was put to death and a fresh and

vigorous Mother of the Maize took her place, lest the maize which depended

on her for its existence should languish and decay.

Hardly less clearly does the same train of thought come out in the harvest

customs formerly observed by the Zapotecs of Mexico. At harvest the

priests, attended by the nobles and people, went in procession to the

maize fields, where they picked out the largest and finest sheaf. This

they took with great ceremony to the town or village, and placed it in the

temple upon an altar adorned with wild flowers. After sacrificing to the

harvest god, the priests carefully wrapt up the sheaf in fine linen and

kept it till seed-time. Then the priests and nobles met again at the

temple, one of them bringing the skin of a wild beast, elaborately

ornamented, in which the linen cloth containing the sheaf was enveloped.

The sheaf was then carried once more in procession to the field from which

it had been taken. Here a small cavity or subterranean chamber had been

prepared, in which the precious sheaf was deposited, wrapt in its various

envelopes. After sacrifice had been offered to the gods of the fields for

an abundant crop, the chamber was closed and covered over with earth.

Immediately thereafter the sowing began. Finally, when the time of harvest

drew near, the buried sheaf was solemnly disinterred by the priests, who

distributed the grain to all who asked for it. The packets of grain so

distributed were carefully preserved as talismans till the harvest.(1180)

In these ceremonies, which continued to be annually celebrated long after

the Spanish conquest, the intention of keeping the finest sheaf buried in

the maize field from seed-time to harvest was undoubtedly to quicken the

growth of the maize.

In the Punjaub, to the east of the Jumna, when the cotton boles begin to

burst, it is usual “to select the largest plant in the field, and having

sprinkled it with butter-milk and rice-water, it is bound all over with

pieces of cotton, taken from the other plants of the field. This selected

plant is called Sirdar, or Bhogaldaí, _i.e._ mother-cotton, from bhogla, a

name sometimes given to a large cotton-pod, and daí (for daiya) a mother,

and after salutations are made to it, prayers are offered that the other

plants may resemble it in the richness of their produce.”(1181)

If the reader still feels any doubts as to the original meaning of the

harvest customs practised by our peasantry, these doubts may be dispelled

by comparing the harvest customs of the Dyaks of Borneo. At harvest the

Dyaks of Northern Borneo have a special feast, the object of which is “to

secure the soul of the rice, which if not so detained, the produce of

their farms would speedily rot and decay.” The mode of securing the soul

of the rice varies in different tribes. Sometimes the priest catches it,

in the form of a few grains of rice, in a white cloth. Sometimes a large

shed is erected outside the village, and near it is reared a high and

spacious altar. The corner-posts of the altar are lofty bamboos with leafy

tops, from one of which there hangs a long narrow streamer of white cloth.

Here gaily-dressed men and women dance with slow and solemn steps.

Suddenly the elders and priests rush at the white streamer, seize the end

of it, and begin dancing and swaying to and fro, amid a burst of wild

music and the yells of the spectators. An elder leaps on the altar and

shakes the bamboos violently, whereupon small stones, bunches of hair and

grains of rice fall at the feet of the dancers and are carefully picked up

by attendants. These grains of rice are the soul of the rice. At

sowing-time some of this soul of the rice is planted with the other seeds,

“and is thus propagated and communicated.”(1182) The same need of securing

the soul of the rice, if the crop is to thrive, is keenly felt by the

Karens of Burma. When a rice-field does not flourish, they suppose that

the soul (_kelah_) of the rice is in some way detained from the rice. If

the soul cannot be called back, the crop will fail. The following formula

is used in recalling the _kelah_ (soul) of the rice: “O come,

rice-_kelah_, come! Come to the field. Come to the rice. With seed of each

gender, come. Come from the river Kho, come from the river Kaw; from the

place where they meet, come. Come from the West, come from the East. From

the throat of the bird, from the maw of the ape, from the throat of the

elephant. Come from the sources of rivers and their mouths. Come from the

country of the Shan and Burman. From the distant kingdoms come. From all

granaries come. O rice-_kelah_, come to the rice.”(1183) Again, the

European custom of representing the corn-spirit in the double form of

bride and bridegroom(1184) is paralleled by a custom observed at the

rice-harvest in Java. Before the reapers begin to cut the rice, the priest

or sorcerer picks out a number of ears of rice, which are tied together,

smeared with ointment, and adorned with flowers. Thus decked out, the ears

are called the _padi-pëngantèn_, that is, the Rice-bride and the

Rice-bridegroom; their wedding feast is celebrated, and the cutting of the

rice begins immediately afterwards. Later on, when the rice is being got

in, a bridal chamber is partitioned off in the barn, and furnished with a

new mat, a lamp, and all kinds of toilet articles. Sheaves of rice, to

represent the wedding guests, are placed beside the Rice-bride and the

Rice-bridegroom. Not till this has been done may the whole harvest be

housed in the barn. And for the first forty days after the rice has been

housed, no one may enter the barn, for fear of disturbing the newly-wedded

pair.(1185)

Compared with the Corn-mother of Germany and the harvest Maiden of

Balquhidder, the Demeter and Proserpine of Greece are late products of

religious growth. But, as Aryans, the Greeks must at one time or another

have observed harvest customs like those which are still practised by

Celts, Teutons, and Slavs, and which, far beyond the limits of the Aryan

world, have been practised by the Incas of Peru, the Dyaks of Borneo, and

the Malays of Java—a sufficient proof that the ideas on which these

customs rest are not confined to any one race, but naturally suggest

themselves to all untutored peoples engaged in agriculture. It is

probable, therefore, that Demeter and Proserpine, those stately and

beautiful figures of Greek mythology, grew out of the same simple beliefs

and practices which still prevail among our modern peasantry, and that

they were represented by rude dolls made out of the yellow sheaves on many

a harvest-field long before their breathing images were wrought in bronze

and marble by the master hands of Phidias and Praxiteles. A reminiscence

of that olden time—a scent, so to say, of the harvest-field—lingered to

the last in the title of the Maiden (_Kore_) by which Proserpine was

commonly known. Thus if the prototype of Demeter is the Corn-mother of

Germany, the prototype of Proserpine is the harvest Maiden, which, autumn

after autumn, is still made from the last sheaf on the Braes of

Balquhidder. Indeed if we knew more about the peasant-farmers of ancient

Greece we should probably find that even in classical times they continued

annually to fashion their Corn-mothers (Demeters) and Maidens

(Proserpines) out of the ripe corn on the harvest fields. But

unfortunately the Demeter and Proserpine whom we know are the denizens of

towns, the majestic inhabitants of lordly temples; it was for such

divinities alone that the refined writers of antiquity had eyes; the rude

rites performed by rustics amongst the corn were beneath their notice.

Even if they noticed them, they probably never dreamed of any connection

between the puppet of corn-stalks on the sunny stubble-field and the

marble divinity in the shady coolness of the temple. Still the writings

even of these town-bred and cultured persons afford us an occasional

glimpse of a Demeter as rude as the rudest that a remote German village

can show. Thus the story that Iasion begat a child Plutus (“wealth,”

“abundance”) by Demeter on a thrice-ploughed field,(1186) may be compared

with the West Prussian custom of the mock birth of a child on the harvest

field.(1187) In this Prussian custom the pretended mother represents the

Corn-mother (_Žytniamatka_); the pretended child represents the Corn-baby,

and the whole ceremony is a charm to ensure a crop next year.(1188) There

are other folk-customs, observed both in spring and at harvest, with which

the legend of the begetting of the child Plutus is probably still more

intimately connected. Their general purport is to impart fertility to the

fields by performing, or at least mimicking, upon them the process of

procreation.(1189) Another glimpse of the savage under the civilised

Demeter will be afforded farther on, when we come to deal with another

aspect of these agricultural divinities.

The reader may have observed that in modern folk-customs the corn-spirit

is generally represented either by a Corn-mother (Old Woman, etc.) or by a

Maiden (Corn-baby, etc.), not both by a Corn-mother and by a Maiden. Why

then did the Greeks represent the corn both as a mother and a daughter? In

the Breton custom the mother-sheaf—a large figure made out of the last

sheaf with a small corn-doll inside of it—clearly represents both the

Corn-mother and the Corn-daughter, the latter still unborn.(1190) Again,

in the Prussian custom just described, the woman who plays the part of

Corn-mother represents the ripe corn; the child appears to represent next

year’s corn, which may be regarded, naturally enough, as the child of this

year’s corn, since it is from the seed of this year’s harvest that next

year’s corn will spring. Demeter would thus be the ripe corn of this year;

Proserpine the seed-corn taken from it and sown in autumn, to reappear in

spring. The descent of Proserpine into the lower world(1191) would thus be

a mythical expression for the sowing of the seed; her reappearance in

spring(1192) would express the sprouting of the young corn. Thus the

Proserpine of this year becomes the Demeter of the next, and this may very

well have been the original form of the myth. But when with the advance of

religious thought the corn came to be personified, no longer as a being

that went through the whole cycle of birth, growth, reproduction, and

death within a year, but as an immortal goddess, consistency requires that

one of the two personifications, the mother or the daughter, should be

sacrificed. But the double conception of the corn as mother and daughter

was too old and too deeply rooted in the popular mind to be eradicated by

logic, and so room had to be found in the reformed myth both for mother

and daughter. This was done by assigning to Proserpine the rôle of the

corn sown in autumn and sprouting in spring, while Demeter was left to

play the somewhat vague and ill-defined part of mother of the corn, who

laments its annual disappearance underground, and rejoices over its

reappearance in spring. Thus instead of a regular succession of divine

beings, each living a year and then giving birth to her successor, the

reformed myth exhibits the conception of two divine and immortal beings,

one of whom annually disappears into and reappears from the ground, while

the other has little to do but to weep and rejoice at the appropriate

times.

This explanation of the double personification of the corn in Greek myth

assumes that both personifications (Demeter and Proserpine) are original.

But if we assume that the Greek myth started with a single

personification, the after-growth of a second personification may perhaps

be explained as follows. On looking over the peasant harvest customs which

have been passed under review, it may be noticed that they involve two

distinct conceptions of the corn-spirit. For whereas in some of the

customs the corn-spirit is treated as immanent in the corn, in others it

is regarded as external to it. Thus when a particular sheaf is called by

the name of the corn-spirit, and is dressed in clothes and treated with

reverence,(1193) the corn-spirit is clearly regarded as immanent in the

corn. But when the corn-spirit is said to make the corn grow by passing

through it, or to blight the corn of those against whom she has a

grudge,(1194) she is clearly conceived as quite separate from, though

exercising power over, the corn. Conceived in the latter way the

corn-spirit is in a fair way to become a deity of the corn, if she has not

become so already. Of these two conceptions, that of the corn-spirit as

immanent in the corn is doubtless the older, since the view of nature as

animated by indwelling spirits appears to have generally preceded the view

of it as controlled by deities external to it; to put it shortly, animism

precedes deism. In the harvest customs of our European peasantry the

conception of the corn-spirit as immanent appears to be the prevalent one;

the conception of it as external occurs rather as an exception. In Greek

mythology, on the other hand, Demeter is distinctly conceived in the

latter way; she is the deity of the corn rather than the spirit immanent

in it.(1195) The process of thought which seems to be chiefly instrumental

in producing the transition from the one mode of conception to the other

is anthropomorphism, or the gradual investment of the immanent spirits

with more and more of the attributes of humanity. As men emerge from

savagery the tendency to anthropomorphise or humanise their divinities

gains strength; and the more anthropomorphic these become, the wider is

the breach which severs them from those natural objects of which they were

at first merely the animating spirits or souls. But in the progress

upwards from savagery, men of the same generation do not march abreast;

and though the anthropomorphic gods may satisfy the religious wants of

more advanced individuals, the more backward members of the community will

cling by preference to the older animistic notions. Now when the spirit of

any natural object (as the corn) has been invested with human qualities,

detached from the object, and converted into a deity controlling it, the

object itself is, by the withdrawal of its spirit, left inanimate, it

becomes, so to say, a spiritual vacuum. But the popular fancy, intolerant

of such a vacuum, in other words, unable to conceive anything as

inanimate, immediately creates a fresh mythical being, with which it

peoples the vacant object. Thus the same natural object is now represented

in mythology by two separate beings; first, by the old spirit now

separated from it and raised to the rank of a deity; second, by the new

spirit, freshly created by the popular fancy to supply the place vacated

by the old spirit on its elevation to a higher sphere. The problem for

mythology now is, having got two separate personifications of the same

object, what to do with them? How are their relations to each other to be

adjusted, and room found for both in the mythological system? When the old

spirit or new deity is conceived as creating or producing the object in

question, the problem is easily solved. Since the object is believed to be

produced by the old spirit, and animated by the new one, the latter, as

the soul of the object, must also owe its existence to the former; thus

the old spirit will stand to the new one as producer to produced, that is

(in mythology), as parent to child, and if both spirits are conceived as

female, their relation will be that of mother and daughter. In this way,

starting from a single personification of the corn as female, mythology

might in time reach a double personification of it as mother and daughter.

It would be very rash to affirm that this was the way in which the myth of

Demeter and Proserpine actually took shape; but it seems a legitimate

conjecture that the reduplication of deities, of which Demeter and

Proserpine furnish an example, may sometimes have arisen in the way

indicated. For example, among the pairs of deities whom we have been

considering, it has been shown that there are grounds for regarding both

Isis and her companion god Osiris as personifications of the corn.(1196)

On the hypothesis just suggested, Isis would be the old corn-spirit, and

Osiris would be the newer one, whose relationship to the old spirit was

variously explained as that of brother, husband, and son;(1197) for of

course mythology would always be free to account for the coexistence of

the two divinities in more ways than one. Further, this hypothesis offers

at least a possible explanation of the relation of Virbius to the Arician

Diana. The latter, as we have seen,(1198) was a tree-goddess; and if, as I

have conjectured, the Flamen Virbialis was no other than the priest of

Nemi himself, that is, the King of the Wood, Virbius must also have been a

tree-spirit. On the present hypothesis he was the newer tree-spirit, whose

relation to the old tree-spirit (Diana) was explained by representing him

as her favourite or lover. It must not, however, be forgotten that this

proposed explanation of such pairs of deities as Demeter and Proserpine,

Isis and Osiris, Diana and Virbius, is purely conjectural, and is only

given for what it is worth.

§ 9.—Lityerses.

In the preceding pages an attempt has been made to show that in the

Corn-mother and harvest Maiden of Northern Europe we have the prototypes

of Demeter and Proserpine. But an essential feature is still wanting to

complete the resemblance. A leading incident in the Greek myth is the

death and resurrection of Proserpine; it is this incident which, coupled

with the nature of the goddess as a deity of vegetation, links the myth

with the cults of Adonis, Attis, Osiris, and Dionysus; and it is in virtue

of this incident that the myth is considered in this chapter. It remains,

therefore, to see whether the conception of the annual death and

resurrection of a god, which figures so prominently in these great Greek

and Oriental worships, has not also its origin in the rustic rites

observed by reapers and vine-dressers amongst the corn-shocks and the

vines.

Our general ignorance of the popular superstitions and customs of the

ancients has already been confessed. But the obscurity which thus hangs

over the first beginnings of ancient religion is fortunately dissipated to

some extent in the present case. The worships of Osiris, Adonis, and Attis

had their respective seats, as we have seen, in Egypt, Syria, and Phrygia;

and in each of these countries certain harvest and vintage customs are

known to have been observed, the resemblance of which to each other and to

the national rites struck the ancients themselves, and, compared with the

harvest customs of modern peasants and barbarians, seem to throw some

light on the origin of the rites in question.

It has been already mentioned, on the authority of Diodorus, that in

ancient Egypt the reapers were wont to lament over the first sheaf cut,

invoking Isis as the goddess to whom they owed the discovery of

corn.(1199) To the plaintive song or cry sung or uttered by Egyptian

reapers the Greeks gave the name of Maneros, and explained the name by a

story that Maneros, the only son of the first Egyptian king, invented

agriculture, and, dying an untimely death, was thus lamented by the

people.(1200) It appears, however, that the name Maneros is due to a

misunderstanding of the formula _mââ-ne-hra_, “come thou back,” which has

been discovered in various Egyptian writings, for example in the dirge of

Isis in the Book of the Dead.(1201) Hence we may suppose that the cry

_mââ-ne-hra_ was chanted by the reapers over the cut corn as a dirge for

the death of the corn-spirit (Isis or Osiris) and a prayer for its return.

As the cry was raised over the first ears reaped, it would seem that the

corn-spirit was believed by the Egyptians to be present in the first corn

cut and to die under the sickle. We have seen that in Java the first ears

of rice are taken to represent the Corn-bride and the

Corn-bridegroom.(1202) In parts of Russia the first sheaf is treated much

in the same way that the last sheaf is treated elsewhere. It is reaped by

the mistress herself, taken home and set in the place of honour near the

holy pictures; afterwards it is threshed separately, and some of its grain

is mixed with the next year’s seed-corn.(1203)

In Phoenicia and Western Asia a plaintive song, like that chanted by the

Egyptian corn-reapers, was sung at the vintage and probably (to judge by

analogy) also at harvest. This Phoenician song was called by the Greeks

Linus or Ailinus and explained, like Maneros, as a lament for the death of

a youth named Linus.(1204) According to one story Linus was brought up by

a shepherd, but torn to pieces by his dogs.(1205) But, like Maneros, the

name Linus or Ailinus appears to have originated in a verbal

misunderstanding, and to be nothing more than the cry _ai lanu_, that is

“woe to us,” which the Phoenicians probably uttered in mourning for

Adonis;(1206) at least Sappho seems to have regarded Adonis and Linus as

equivalent.(1207)

In Bithynia a like mournful ditty, called Bormus or Borimus, was chanted

by Mariandynian reapers. Bormus was said to have been a handsome youth,

the son of King Upias or of a wealthy and distinguished man. One summer

day, watching the reapers at work in his fields, he went to fetch them a

drink of water and was never heard of more. So the reapers sought for him,

calling him in plaintive strains, which they continued to use ever

afterwards.(1208)

In Phrygia the corresponding song, sung by harvesters both at reaping and

at threshing, was called Lityerses. According to one story, Lityerses was

a bastard son of Midas, King of Phrygia. He used to reap the corn, and had

an enormous appetite. When a stranger happened to enter the corn-field or

to pass by it, Lityerses gave him plenty to eat and drink, then took him

to the corn-fields on the banks of the Maeander and compelled him to reap

along with him. Lastly, he used to wrap the stranger in a sheaf, cut off

his head with a sickle, and carry away his body, wrapt in the corn stalks.

But at last he was himself slain by Hercules, who threw his body into the

river.(1209) As Hercules was probably reported to have slain Lityerses in

the same way that Lityerses slew others (as Theseus treated Sinis and

Sciron), we may infer that Lityerses used to throw the bodies of his

victims into the river. According to another version of the story,

Lityerses, a son of Midas, used to challenge people to a reaping match

with him, and if he vanquished them he used to thrash them; but one day he

met with a stronger reaper, who slew him.(1210)

There are some grounds for supposing that in these stories of Lityerses we

have the description of a Phrygian harvest custom in accordance with which

certain persons, especially strangers passing the harvest field, were

regularly regarded as embodiments of the corn-spirit and as such were

seized by the reapers, wrapt in sheaves, and beheaded, their bodies, bound

up in the corn-stalks, being afterwards thrown into water as a rain-charm.

The grounds for this supposition are, first, the resemblance of the

Lityerses story to the harvest customs of European peasantry, and, second,

the fact that human beings have been commonly killed by savage races to

promote the fertility of the fields. We will examine these grounds

successively, beginning with the former.

In comparing the story with the harvest customs of Europe,(1211) three

points deserve special attention, namely: I. the reaping match and the

binding of persons in the sheaves; II. the killing of the corn-spirit or

his representatives; III. the treatment of visitors to the harvest-field

or of strangers passing it.

I. In regard to the first head, we have seen that in modern Europe the

person who cuts or binds or threshes the last sheaf is often exposed to

rough treatment at the hands of his fellow-labourers. For example, he is

bound up in the last sheaf, and, thus encased, is carried or carted about,

beaten, drenched with water, thrown on a dunghill, etc. Or, if he is

spared this horseplay, he is at least the subject of ridicule or is

believed destined to suffer some misfortune in the course of the year.

Hence the harvesters are naturally reluctant to give the last cut at

reaping or the last stroke at threshing or to bind the last sheaf, and

towards the close of the work this reluctance produces an emulation among

the labourers, each striving to finish his task as fast as possible, in

order that he may escape the invidious distinction of being last.(1212)

For example, in the neighbourhood of Danzig, when the winter corn is cut

and mostly bound up in sheaves, the portion which still remains to be

bound is divided amongst the women binders, each of whom receives a swath

of equal length to bind. A crowd of reapers, children, and idlers gathers

round to witness the contest, and at the word, “Seize the Old Man,” the

women fall to work, all binding their allotted swaths as hard as they can.

The spectators watch them narrowly, and the woman who cannot keep pace

with the rest and consequently binds the last sheaf has to carry the Old

Man (that is, the last sheaf made up in the form of a man) to the

farmhouse and deliver it to the farmer with the words, “Here I bring you

the Old Man.” At the supper which follows, the Old Man is placed at the

table and receives an abundant portion of food which, as he cannot eat it,

falls to the share of the woman who carried him. Afterwards the Old Man is

placed in the yard and all the people dance round him. Or the woman who

bound the last sheaf dances for a good while with the Old Man, while the

rest form a ring round them; afterwards they all, one after the other,

dance a single round with him. Further, the woman who bound the last sheaf

goes herself by the name of the Old Man till the next harvest, and is

often mocked with the cry, “Here comes the Old Man.”(1213) At Aschbach,

Bavaria, when the reaping is nearly finished, the reapers say, “Now we

will drive out the Old Man.” Each of them sets himself to reap a patch of

corn and reaps as fast as he can; he who cuts the last handful or the last

stalk is greeted by the rest with an exulting cry, “You have the Old Man.”

Sometimes a black mask is fastened on the reaper’s face and he is dressed

in woman’s clothes; or if the reaper is a woman, she is dressed in man’s

clothes; a dance follows. At the supper the Old Man gets twice as large a

portion of food as the others. At threshing, the proceedings are the same;

the person who gives the last stroke is said to have the Old Man.(1214)

These examples illustrate the contests in reaping, threshing, and binding

which take place amongst the harvesters, on account of their unwillingness

to suffer the ridicule and personal inconvenience attaching to the

individual who happens to finish his work last. It will be remembered that

the person who is last at reaping, binding, or threshing, is regarded as

the representative of the corn-spirit,(1215) and this idea is more fully

expressed by binding him or her in corn-stalks. The latter custom has been

already illustrated, but a few more instances may be added. At Kloxin,

near Stettin, the harvesters call out to the woman who binds the last

sheaf, “You have the Old Man, and must keep him.” The Old Man is a great

bundle of corn decked with flowers and ribbons, and fashioned into a rude

semblance of the human form. It is fastened on a rake or strapped on a

horse, and brought with music to the village. In delivering the Old Man to

the farmer, the woman says—

“Here, dear Sir, is the Old Man.

He can stay no longer on the field,

He can hide himself no longer,

He must come into the village.

Ladies and gentlemen, pray be so kind

As to give the Old Man a present.”

Forty or fifty years ago the custom was to tie up the woman herself in

pease-straw, and bring her with music to the farmhouse, where the

harvesters danced with her till the pease-straw fell off.(1216) In other

villages round Stettin, when the last harvest-waggon is being loaded,

there is a regular race amongst the women, each striving not to be last.

For she who places the last sheaf on the waggon is called the Old Man, and

is completely swathed in corn-stalks; she is also decked with flowers, and

flowers and a helmet of straw are placed on her head. In solemn procession

she carries the harvest-crown to the squire, over whose head she holds it

while she utters a string of good wishes. At the dance which follows, the

Old Man has the right to choose his (or rather her) partner; it is an

honour to dance with him.(1217) At Blankenfelde, in the district of

Potsdam, the woman who binds the last sheaf at the rye-harvest is saluted

with the cry, “You have the Old Man.” A woman is then tied up in the last

sheaf in such a way that only her head is left free; her hair also is

covered with a cap made of rye-stalks, adorned with ribbons and flowers.

She is called the Harvest-man, and must keep dancing in front of the last

harvest-waggon till it reaches the squire’s house, where she receives a

present, and is released from her envelope of corn.(1218) At Gommern, near

Magdeburg, the reaper who cuts the last ears of corn is often wrapt up in

corn-stalks so completely that it is hard to see whether there is a man in

the bundle or not. Thus wrapt up he is taken by another stalwart reaper on

his back, and carried round the field amid the joyous cries of the

harvesters.(1219) At Neuhausen, near Merseburg, the person who binds the

last sheaf is wrapt in ears of oats and saluted as the Oats-man, whereupon

the others dance round him.(1220) At Brie, Isle de France, the farmer

himself is tied up in the _first_ sheaf.(1221) At the harvest-home at

Udvarhely, Transylvania, a person is encased in corn-stalks, and wears on

his head a crown made out of the last ears cut. On reaching the village he

is soused with water over and over.(1222) At Dingelstedt, in the district

of Erfurt, about fifty years ago it was the custom to tie up a man in the

last sheaf. He was called the Old Man, and was brought home on the last

waggon, amid huzzas and music. On reaching the farmyard he was rolled

round the barn and drenched with water.(1223) At Nördlingen, Bavaria, the

man who gives the last stroke at threshing is wrapt in straw and rolled on

the threshing-floor.(1224) In some parts of Oberpfalz, Bavaria, he is said

to “get the Old Man,” is wrapt in straw, and carried to a neighbour who

has not yet finished his threshing.(1225) In Thüringen a sausage is stuck

in the last sheaf at threshing, and thrown, with the sheaf, on the

threshing-floor. It is called the _Barrenwurst_ or _Banzenwurst_, and is

eaten by all the threshers. After they have eaten it a man is encased in

pease-straw, and thus attired is led through the village.(1226)

“In all these cases the idea is that the spirit of the corn—the Old Man of

vegetation—is driven out of the corn last cut or last threshed, and lives

in the barn during the winter. At sowing-time he goes out again to the

fields to resume his activity as animating force among the sprouting

corn.”(1227)

Much the same ideas are attached to the last corn in India; for we are

told that in the Central Provinces, “when the reaping is nearly done,

about a _bisvá_, say a rood of land, of corn is left standing in the

cultivator’s last field, and the reapers rest a little. Then they rush at

this _bisvá_, tear it up, and cast it into the air, shouting victory to

Omkár Maháráj or Jhámájí, or Rámjí Dás, etc., according to their

respective possessions. A sheaf is made up of this corn, tied to a bamboo,

and stuck up in the last harvest cart, and carried home in triumph. It is

fastened up in the threshing-floor to a tree, or to the cattle-shed, where

its services are essential in averting the evil-eye.”(1228)

II. Passing to the second point of comparison between the Lityerses story

and European harvest customs, we have now to see that in the latter the

corn-spirit is often believed to be killed at reaping or threshing. In the

Romsdal and other parts of Norway, when the haymaking is over, the people

say that “the Old Hay-man has been killed.” In some parts of Bavaria the

man who gives the last stroke at threshing is said to have killed the

Corn-man, the Oats-man, or the Wheat-man, according to the crop.(1229) In

the Canton of Tillot, in Lothringen, at threshing the last corn the men

keep time with their flails, calling out as they thresh, “We are killing

the Old Woman! We are killing the Old Woman!” If there is an old woman in

the house she is warned to save herself, or she will be struck dead.(1230)

In Lithuania, near Ragnit, the last handful of corn is left standing by

itself, with the words, “The Old Woman (_Boba_) is sitting in there.” Then

a young reaper whets his scythe, and, with a strong sweep, cuts down the

handful. It is now said of him that “He has cut off the Boba’s head;” and

he receives a gratuity from the farmer and a jugful of water over his head

from the farmer’s wife.(1231) According to another account, every

Lithuanian reaper makes haste to finish his task; for the Old Rye-woman

lives in the last stalks, and whoever cuts the last stalks kills the Old

Rye-woman, and by killing her he brings trouble on himself.(1232) In

Wilkischken (district of Tilsit) the man who cuts the last corn goes by

the name of “The killer of the Rye-woman.”(1233) In Lithuania, again, the

corn-spirit is believed to be killed at threshing as well as at reaping.

When only a single pile of corn remains to be threshed, all the threshers

suddenly step back a few paces, as if at the word of command. Then they

fall to work plying their flails with the utmost rapidity and vehemence,

till they come to the last bundle. Upon this they fling themselves with

almost frantic fury, straining every nerve, and raining blows on it till

the word “Halt!” rings out sharply from the leader. The man whose flail is

the last to fall after the command to stop has been given is immediately

surrounded by all the rest, crying out that “He has struck the Old

Rye-woman dead.” He has to expiate the deed by treating them to brandy;

and, like the man who cuts the last corn, he is known as “The killer of

the Old Rye-woman.”(1234) Sometimes in Lithuania the slain corn-spirit was

represented by a puppet. Thus a female figure was made out of corn-stalks,

dressed in clothes, and placed on the threshing-floor, under the heap of

corn which was to be threshed last. Whoever thereafter gave the last

stroke at threshing “struck the Old Woman dead.”(1235) We have already had

examples of burning the figure which represents the corn-spirit.(1236)

Sometimes, again, the corn-spirit is represented by a man, who lies down

under the last corn; it is threshed upon his body, and the people say that

“the Old Man is being beaten to death.”(1237) We have already seen that

sometimes the farmer’s wife is thrust, together with the last sheaf, under

the threshing-machine, as if to thresh her, and that afterwards a pretence

is made of winnowing her.(1238) At Volders, in the Tyrol, husks of corn

are stuck behind the neck of the man who gives the last stroke at

threshing, and he is throttled with a straw garland. If he is tall, it is

believed that the corn will be tall next year. Then he is tied on a bundle

and flung into the river.(1239) In Carinthia, the thresher who gave the

last stroke, and the person who untied the last sheaf on the

threshing-floor, are bound hand and foot with straw bands, and crowns of

straw are placed on their heads. Then they are tied, face to face, on a

sledge, dragged through the village, and flung into a brook.(1240) The

custom of throwing the representative of the corn-spirit into a stream,

like that of drenching him with water, is, as usual, a rain-charm.(1241)

III. Thus far the representatives of the corn-spirit have generally been

the man or woman who cuts, binds, or threshes the last corn. We now come

to the cases in which the corn-spirit is represented either by a stranger

passing the harvest-field (as in the Lityerses tale), or by a visitor

entering it for the first time. All over Germany it is customary for the

reapers or threshers to lay hold of passing strangers and bind them with a

rope made of corn-stalks, till they pay a forfeit; and when the farmer

himself or one of his guests enters the field or the threshing-floor for

the first time, he is treated in the same way. Sometimes the rope is only

tied round his arm or his feet or his neck.(1242) But sometimes he is

regularly swathed in corn. Thus at Solör in Norway, whoever enters the

field, be he the master or a stranger, is tied up in a sheaf and must pay

a ransom. In the neighbourhood of Soest, when the farmer visits the

flax-pullers for the first time, he is completely enveloped in flax.

Passers-by are also surrounded by the women, tied up in flax, and

compelled to stand brandy.(1243) At Nördlingen strangers are caught with

straw ropes and tied up in a sheaf till they pay a forfeit. At Brie, Isle

de France, when any one who does not belong to the farm passes by the

harvest-field, the reapers give chase. If they catch him, they bind him in

a sheaf and bite him, one after the other, in the forehead, crying “You

shall carry the key of the field.”(1244) “To have the key” is an

expression used by harvesters elsewhere in the sense of to cut or bind or

thresh the last sheaf;(1245) hence, it is equivalent to the phrases “You

have the Old Man,” “You are the Old Man,” which are addressed to the

cutter, binder, or thresher of the last sheaf. Therefore, when a stranger,

as at Brie, is tied up in a sheaf and told that he will “carry the key of

the field,” it is as much as to say that he is the Old Man, that is, an

embodiment of the corn-spirit.

Thus, like Lityerses, modern reapers lay hold of a passing stranger and

tie him up in a sheaf. It is not to be expected that they should complete

the parallel by cutting off his head; but if they do not take such a

strong step, their language and gestures are at least indicative of a

desire to do so. For instance, in Mecklenburg on the first clay of

reaping, if the master or mistress or a stranger enters the field, or

merely passes by it, all the mowers face towards him and sharpen their

scythes, clashing their whet-stones against them in unison, as if they

were making ready to mow. Then the woman who leads the mowers steps up to

him and ties a band round his left arm. He must ransom himself by payment

of a forfeit.(1246) Near Ratzeburg when the master or other person of mark

enters the field or passes by it, all the harvesters stop work and march

towards him in a body, the men with their scythes in front. On meeting him

they form up in line, men and women. The men stick the poles of their

scythes in the ground, as they do in whetting them; then they take off

their caps and hang them on the scythes, while their leader stands forward

and makes a speech. When he has done, they all whet their scythes in

measured time very loudly, after which they put on their caps. Two of the

women binders then come forward; one of them ties the master or stranger

(as the case may be) with corn-ears or with a silken band; the other

delivers a rhyming address. The following are specimens of the speeches

made by the reaper on these occasions. In some parts of Pomerania every

passer-by is stopped, his way being barred with a corn-rope. The reapers

form a circle round him and sharpen their scythes, while their leader

says—

“The men are ready,

The scythes are bent,

The corn is great and small,

The gentleman must be mowed.”

Then the process of whetting the scythes is repeated.(1247) At Ramin, in

the district of Stettin, the stranger, standing encircled by the reapers,

is thus addressed—

“We’ll stroke the gentleman

With our naked sword,

Wherewith we shear meadows and fields.

We shear princes and lords.

Labourers are often athirst;

If the gentleman will stand beer and brandy

The joke will soon be over.

But, if our prayer he does not like,

The sword has a right to strike.”(1248)

That in these customs the whetting of the scythes is really meant as a

preliminary to mowing appears from the following variation of the

preceding customs. In the district of Lüneburg when any one enters the

harvest-field, he is asked whether he will engage a good fellow. If he

says yes, the harvesters mow some swaths, yelling and screaming, and then

ask him for drink-money.(1249)

On the threshing-floor strangers are also regarded as embodiments of the

corn-spirit, and are treated accordingly. At Wiedingharde in Schleswig

when a stranger comes to the threshing-floor he is asked “Shall I teach

you the flail-dance?” If he says yes, they put the arms of the

threshing-flail round his neck (as if he were a sheaf of corn), and press

them together so tightly that he is nearly choked.(1250) In some parishes

of Wermland (Sweden) when a stranger enters the threshing-floor where the

threshers are at work, they say that “they will teach him the

threshing-song.” Then they put a flail round his neck and a straw rope

about his body. Also, as we have seen, if a stranger woman enters the

threshing-floor, the threshers put a flail round her body and a wreath of

corn-stalks round her neck, and call out, “See the Corn-woman! See! that

is how the Corn-maiden looks!”(1251)

In these customs, observed both on the harvest-field and on the

threshing-floor, a passing stranger is regarded as a personification of

the corn, in other words, as the corn-spirit; and a show is made of

treating him like the corn by mowing, binding, and threshing him. If the

reader still doubts whether European peasants can really regard a passing

stranger in this light, the following custom should set their doubts at

rest. During the madder-harvest in the Dutch province of Zealand a

stranger passing by a field where the people are digging the madder-roots

will sometimes call out to them _Koortspillers_ (a term of reproach). Upon

this, two of the fleetest runners make after him, and, if they catch him,

they bring him back to the madder-field and bury him in the earth up to

his middle at least, jeering at him the while; then they ease nature

before his face.(1252) This last act is to be explained as follows. The

spirit of the corn and of other cultivated plants is sometimes conceived,

not as immanent in the plant, but as its owner; hence the cutting of the

corn at harvest, the digging of the roots, and the gathering of fruit from

the fruit-trees are each and all of them acts of spoliation, which strip

him of his property and reduce him to poverty. Hence he is often known as

“the Poor Man” or “the Poor Woman.” Thus in the neighbourhood of Eisenach

a small sheaf is sometimes left standing on the field for “the Poor Old

Woman.”(1253) At Marksuhl, near Eisenach, the puppet formed out of the

last sheaf is itself called “the Poor Woman.” At Alt Lest in Silesia the

man who binds the last sheaf is called the Beggar-man.(1254) In a village

near Roeskilde, in Zealand (Denmark), old-fashioned peasants sometimes

make up the last sheaf into a rude puppet, which is called the

Rye-beggar.(1255) In Southern Schonen the sheaf which is bound last is

called the Beggar; it is made bigger than the rest and is sometimes

dressed in clothes. In the district of Olmütz the last sheaf is called the

Beggar; it is given to an old woman, who must carry it home, limping on

one foot.(1256) Thus when the corn-spirit is conceived as a being who is

robbed of his store and impoverished by the harvesters, it is natural that

his representative—the passing stranger—should upbraid them; and it is

equally natural that they should seek to disable him from pursuing them

and recapturing the stolen property. Now, it is an old superstition that

by easing nature on the spot where a robbery is committed, the robbers

secure themselves, for a certain time, against interruption.(1257) The

fact, therefore, that the madder-diggers resort to this proceeding in

presence of the stranger proves that they consider themselves robbers and

him as the person robbed. Regarded as such, he must be the natural owner

of the madder-roots; that is, their spirit or demon; and this conception

is carried out by burying him, like the madder-roots, in the ground.(1258)

The Greeks, it may be observed, were quite familiar with the idea that a

passing stranger may be a god. Homer says that the gods in the likeness of

foreigners roam up and down cities.(1259)

Thus in these harvest-customs of modern Europe the person who cuts, binds,

or threshes the last corn is treated as an embodiment of the corn-spirit

by being wrapt up in sheaves, killed in mimicry by agricultural

implements, and thrown into the water.(1260) These coincidences with the

Lityerses story seem to prove that the latter is a genuine description of

an old Phrygian harvest-custom. But since in the modern parallels the

killing of the personal representative of the corn-spirit is necessarily

omitted or at most enacted only in mimicry, it is necessary to show that

in rude society human beings have been commonly killed as an agricultural

ceremony to promote the fertility of the fields. The following examples

will make this plain.

The Indians of Guayaquil (Ecuador) used to sacrifice human blood and the

hearts of men when they sowed their fields.(1261) At a Mexican

harvest-festival, when the first-fruits of the season were offered to the

sun, a criminal was placed between two immense stones, balanced opposite

each other, and was crushed by them as they fell together. His remains

were buried, and a feast and dance followed. This sacrifice was known as

“the meeting of the stones.”(1262) Another series of human sacrifices

offered in Mexico to make the maize thrive has been already referred

to.(1263) The Pawnees annually sacrificed a human victim in spring when

they sowed their fields. The sacrifice was believed to have been enjoined

on them by the Morning Star, or by a certain bird which the Morning Star

had sent to them as its messenger. The bird was stuffed and preserved as a

powerful “medicine.” They thought that an omission of this sacrifice would

be followed by the total failure of the crops of maize, beans, and

pumpkins. The victim was a captive of either sex. He was clad in the

gayest and most costly attire, was fattened on the choicest food, and

carefully kept in ignorance of his doom. When he was fat enough, they

bound him to a cross in the presence of the multitude, danced a solemn

dance, then cleft his head with a tomahawk and shot him with arrows.

According to one trader, the squaws then cut pieces of flesh from the

victim’s body, with which they greased their hoes; but this was denied by

another trader who had been present at the ceremony. Immediately after the

sacrifice the people proceeded to plant their fields. A particular account

has been preserved of the sacrifice of a Sioux girl by the Pawnees in

April 1837 or 1838. The girl had been kept for six months and well

treated. Two days before the sacrifice she was led from wigwam to wigwam,

accompanied by the whole council of chiefs and warriors. At each lodge she

received a small billet of wood and a little paint, which she handed to

the warrior next to her. In this way she called at every wigwam, receiving

at each the same present of wood and paint. On the 22d of April she was

taken out to be sacrificed, attended by the warriors, each of whom carried

two pieces of wood which he had received from her hands. She was burned

for some time over a slow fire, and then shot to death with arrows. The

chief sacrificer next tore out her heart and devoured it. While her flesh

was still warm it was cut in small pieces from the bones, put in little

baskets, and taken to a neighbouring cornfield. Here the head chief took a

piece of the flesh from a basket and squeezed a drop of blood upon the

newly-deposited grains of corn. His example was followed by the rest, till

all the seed had been sprinkled with the blood; it was then covered up

with earth.(1264)

A West African queen used to sacrifice a man and woman in the month of

March. They were killed with spades and hoes, and their bodies buried in

the middle of a field which had just been tilled.(1265) At Lagos in Guinea

it was the custom annually to impale a young girl alive soon after the

spring equinox in order to secure good crops. Along with her were

sacrificed sheep and goats, which, with yams, heads of maize, and

plantains, were hung on stakes on each side of her. The victims were bred

up for the purpose in the king’s seraglio, and their minds had been so

powerfully wrought upon by the fetish men that they went cheerfully to

their fate.(1266) A similar sacrifice is still annually offered at Benin,

Guinea.(1267) The Marimos, a Bechuana tribe, sacrifice a human being for

the crops. The victim chosen is generally a short, stout man. He is seized

by violence or intoxicated and taken to the fields, where he is killed

amongst the wheat to serve as “seed” (so they phrase it). After his blood

has coagulated in the sun it is burned along with the frontal bone, the

flesh attached to it, and the brain; the ashes are then scattered over the

ground to fertilise it. The rest of the body is eaten.(1268)

The Gonds of India, a Dravidian race, kidnapped Brahman boys, and kept

them as victims to be sacrificed on various occasions. At sowing and

reaping, after a triumphal procession, one of the lads was slain by being

punctured with a poisoned arrow. His blood was then sprinkled over the

ploughed field or the ripe crop, and his flesh was devoured.(1269)

But the best known case of human sacrifices, systematically offered to

ensure good crops, is supplied by the Khonds or Kandhs, another Dravidian

race in Bengal. Our knowledge of them is derived from the accounts written

by British officers who, forty or fifty years ago, were engaged in putting

them down.(1270) The sacrifices were offered to the Earth Goddess, Tari

Pennu or Bera Pennu, and were believed to ensure good crops and immunity

from all disease and accidents. In particular, they were considered

necessary in the cultivation of turmeric, the Khonds arguing that the

turmeric could not have a deep red colour without the shedding of

blood.(1271) The victim or Meriah was acceptable to the goddess only if he

had been purchased, or had been born a victim—that is, the son of a victim

father—or had been devoted as a child by his father or guardian. Khonds in

distress often sold their children for victims, “considering the

beatification of their souls certain, and their death, for the benefit of

mankind, the most honourable possible.” A man of the Panua tribe was once

seen to load a Khond with curses, and finally to spit in his face, because

the Khond had sold for a victim his own child, whom the Panua had wished

to marry. A party of Khonds, who saw this, immediately pressed forward to

comfort the seller of his child, saying, “Your child has died that all the

world may live, and the Earth Goddess herself will wipe that spittle from

your face.”(1272) The victims were often kept for years before they were

sacrificed. Being regarded as consecrated beings, they were treated with

extreme affection, mingled with deference, and were welcomed wherever they

went. A Meriah youth, on attaining maturity, was generally given a wife,

who was herself usually a Meriah or victim; and with her he received a

portion of land and farm-stock. Their offspring were also victims. Human

sacrifices were offered to the Earth Goddess by tribes, branches of

tribes, or villages, both at periodical festivals and on extraordinary

occasions. The periodical sacrifices were generally so arranged by tribes

and divisions of tribes that each head of a family was enabled, at least

once a year, to procure a shred of flesh for his fields, generally about

the time when his chief crop was laid down.(1273)

The mode of performing these tribal sacrifices was as follows. Ten or

twelve days before the sacrifice, the victim was devoted by cutting off

his hair, which, until then, was kept unshorn. Crowds of men and women

assembled to witness the sacrifice; none might be excluded, since the

sacrifice was declared to be “for all mankind.” It was preceded by several

days of wild revelry and gross debauchery.(1274) On the day before the

sacrifice the victim, dressed in a new garment, was led forth from the

village in solemn procession, with music and dancing, to the Meriah grove,

which was a clump of high forest trees standing a little way from the

village and untouched by the axe. In this grove the victim was tied to a

post, which was sometimes placed between two plants of the sankissar

shrub. He was then anointed with oil, ghee, and turmeric, and adorned with

flowers; and “a species of reverence, which it is not easy to distinguish

from adoration,” was paid to him throughout the day.(1275) A great

struggle now arose to obtain the smallest relic from his person; a

particle of the turmeric paste with which he was smeared, or a drop of his

spittle, was esteemed of sovereign virtue, especially by the women. The

crowd danced round the post to music, and, addressing the earth, said, “O

God, we offer this sacrifice to you; give us good crops, seasons, and

health.”(1276)

On the last morning the orgies, which had been scarcely interrupted during

the night, were resumed, and continued till noon, when they ceased, and

the assembly proceeded to consummate the sacrifice. The victim was again

anointed with oil, and each person touched the anointed part, and wiped

the oil on his own head. In some places the victim was then taken in

procession round the village, from door to door, where some plucked hair

from his head, and others begged for a drop of his spittle, with which

they anointed their heads.(1277) As the victim might not be bound nor make

any show of resistance, the bones of his arms and, if necessary, his legs

were broken; but often this precaution was rendered unnecessary by

stupefying him with opium.(1278) The mode of putting him to death varied

in different places. One of the commonest modes seems to have been

strangulation, or squeezing to death. The branch of a green tree was cleft

several feet down the middle; the victim’s neck (in other places, his

chest) was inserted in the cleft, which the priest, aided by his

assistants, strove with all his force to close.(1279) Then he wounded the

victim slightly with his axe, whereupon the crowd rushed at the victim and

cut the flesh from the bones, leaving the head and bowels untouched.

Sometimes he was cut up alive.(1280) In Chinna Kimedy he was dragged along

the fields, surrounded by the crowd, who, avoiding his head and

intestines, hacked the flesh from his body with their knives till he

died.(1281) Another very common mode of sacrifice in the same district was

to fasten the victim to the proboscis of a wooden elephant, which revolved

on a stout post, and, as it whirled round, the crowd cut the flesh from

the victim while life remained. In some villages Major Campbell found as

many as fourteen of these wooden elephants, which had been used at

sacrifices.(1282) In one district the victim was put to death slowly by

fire. A low stage was formed, sloping on either side like a roof; upon it

the victim was placed, his limbs wound round with cords to confine his

struggles. Fires were then lighted and hot brands applied, to make him

roll up and down the slopes of the stage as long as possible; for the more

tears he shed the more abundant would be the supply of rain. Next day the

body was cut to pieces.(1283)

The flesh cut from the victim was instantly taken home by the persons who

had been deputed by each village to bring it. To secure its rapid arrival,

it was sometimes forwarded by relays of men, and conveyed with postal

fleetness fifty or sixty miles.(1284) In each village all who stayed at

home fasted rigidly until the flesh arrived. The bearer deposited it in

the place of public assembly, where it was received by the priest and the

heads of families. The priest divided it into two portions, one of which

he offered to the Earth Goddess by burying it in a hole in the ground with

his back turned, and without looking. Then each man added a little earth

to bury it, and the priest poured water on the spot from a hill gourd. The

other portion of flesh he divided into as many shares as there were heads

of houses present. Each head of a house rolled his shred of flesh in

leaves, and buried it in his favourite field, placing it in the earth

behind his back without looking.(1285) In some places each man carried his

portion of flesh to the stream which watered his fields, and there hung it

on a pole.(1286) For three days thereafter no house was swept; and, in one

district, strict silence was observed, no fire might be given out, no wood

cut, and no strangers received. The remains of the human victim (namely,

the head, bowels, and bones) were watched by strong parties the night

after the sacrifice; and next morning they were burned, along with a whole

sheep, on a funeral pile. The ashes were scattered over the fields, laid

as paste over the houses and granaries, or mixed with the new corn to

preserve it from insects.(1287) Sometimes, however, the head and bones

were buried, not burnt.(1288) After the suppression of the human

sacrifices, inferior victims were substituted in some places; for

instance, in the capital of Chinna Kimedy a goat took the place of a human

victim.(1289)

In these Khond sacrifices the Meriahs are represented by our authorities

as victims offered to propitiate the Earth Goddess. But from the treatment

of the victims both before and after death it appears that the custom

cannot be explained as merely a propitiatory sacrifice. A part of the

flesh certainly was offered to the Earth Goddess, but the rest of the

flesh was buried by each householder in his fields, and the ashes of the

other parts of the body were scattered over the fields, laid as paste on

the granaries, or mixed with the new corn. These latter customs imply that

to the body of the Meriah there was ascribed a direct or intrinsic power

of making the crops to grow, quite independent of the indirect efficacy

which it might have as an offering to secure the good-will of the deity.

In other words, the flesh and ashes of the victim were believed to be

endowed with a magical or physical power of fertilising the land. The same

intrinsic power was ascribed to the blood and tears of the Meriah, his

blood causing the redness of the turmeric and his tears producing rain;

for it can hardly be doubted that, originally at least, the tears were

supposed to produce rain, not merely to prognosticate it. Similarly the

custom of pouring water on the buried flesh of the Meriah was no doubt a

rain-charm. Again, intrinsic supernatural power as an attribute of the

Meriah appears in the sovereign virtue believed to reside in anything that

came from his person, as his hair or spittle. The ascription of such power

to the Meriah indicates that he was much more than a mere man sacrificed

to propitiate a deity. Once more, the extreme reverence paid him points to

the same conclusion. Major Campbell speaks of the Meriah as “being

regarded as something more than mortal,”(1290) and Major Macpherson says,

“A species of reverence, which it is not easy to distinguish from

adoration, is paid to him.”(1291) In short, the Meriah appears to have

been regarded as divine. As such, he may originally have represented the

Earth deity or perhaps a deity of vegetation; though in later times he

came to be regarded rather as a victim offered to a deity than as himself

an incarnate deity. This later view of the Meriah as a victim rather than

a god may perhaps have received undue emphasis from the European writers

who have described the Khond religion. Habituated to the later idea of

sacrifice as an offering made to a god for the purpose of conciliating his

favour, European observers are apt to interpret all religious slaughter in

this sense, and to suppose that wherever such slaughter takes place, there

must necessarily be a deity to whom the slaughter is believed by the

slayers to be acceptable. Thus their preconceived ideas unconsciously

colour and warp their descriptions of savage rites.

The same custom of killing the representative of a god, of which strong

traces appear in the Khond sacrifices, may perhaps be detected in some of

the other human sacrifices described above. Thus the ashes of the

slaughtered Marimo were scattered over the fields; the blood of the

Brahman lad was put on the crop and field; and the blood of the Sioux girl

was allowed to trickle on the seed.(1292) Again, the identification of the

victim with the corn, in other words, the view that he is an embodiment or

spirit of the corn, is brought out in the pains which seem to be taken to

secure a physical correspondence between him and the natural object which

he embodies or represents. Thus the Mexicans killed young victims for the

young corn and old ones for the ripe corn; the Marimos sacrifice, as

“seed,” a short, fat man, the shortness of his stature corresponding to

that of the young corn, his fatness to the condition which it is desired

that the crops may attain; and the Pawnees fattened their victims probably

with the same view. Again, the identification of the victim with the corn

comes out in the African custom of killing him with spades and hoes, and

the Mexican custom of grinding him, like corn, between two stones.

One more point in these savage customs deserves to be noted. The Pawnee

chief devoured the heart of the Sioux girl, and the Marimos and Gonds ate

the victim’s flesh. If, as we suppose, the victim was regarded as divine,

it follows that in eating his flesh his worshippers were partaking of the

body of their god. To this point we shall return later on.

The savage rites just described offer analogies to the harvest customs of

Europe. Thus the fertilising virtue ascribed to the corn-spirit is shown

equally in the savage custom of mixing the victim’s blood or ashes with

the seed-corn and the European custom of mixing the grain from the last

sheaf with the young corn in spring.(1293) Again, the identification of

the person with the corn appears alike in the savage custom of adapting

the age and stature of the victim to the age and stature (actual or

expected) of the crop; in the Scotch and Styrian rules that when the

corn-spirit is conceived as the Maiden the last corn shall be cut by a

young maiden, but when it is conceived as the Corn-mother it shall be cut

by an old woman;(1294) in the Lothringian warning given to old women to

save themselves when the Old Woman is being killed, that is, when the last

corn is being threshed;(1295) and in the Tyrolese expectation that if the

man who gives the last stroke at threshing is tall, the next year’s corn

will be tall also.(1296) Further, the same identification is implied in

the savage custom of killing the representative of the corn-spirit with

hoes or spades or by grinding him between stones, and in the European

custom of pretending to kill him with the scythe or the flail. Once more

the Khond custom of pouring water on the buried flesh of the victim is

parallel to the European customs of pouring water on the personal

representative of the corn-spirit or plunging him into a stream.(1297)

Both the Khond and the European customs are rain-charms.

To return now to the Lityerses story. It has been shown that in rude

society human beings have been commonly killed to promote the growth of

the crops. There is therefore no improbability in the supposition that

they may once have been killed for a like purpose in Phrygia and Europe;

and when Phrygian legend and European folk-custom, closely agreeing with

each other, point to the conclusion that men were so slain, we are bound,

provisionally at least, to accept the conclusion. Further, both the

Lityerses story and European harvest customs agree in indicating that the

person slain was slain as a representative of the corn-spirit, and this

indication is in harmony with the view which savages appear to take of the

victim slain to make the crops flourish. On the whole, then, we may fairly

suppose that both in Phrygia and in Europe the representative of the

corn-spirit was annually killed upon the harvest-field. Grounds have been

already shown for believing that similarly in Europe the representative of

the tree-spirit was annually slain. The proofs of these two remarkable and

closely analogous customs are entirely independent of each other. Their

coincidence seems to furnish fresh presumption in favour of both.

To the question, how was the representative of the corn-spirit chosen? one

answer has been already given. Both the Lityerses story and European

folk-custom show that passing strangers were regarded as manifestations of

the corn-spirit escaping from the cut or threshed corn, and as such were

seized and slain. But this is not the only answer which the evidence

suggests. According to one version of the Phrygian legend the victims of

Lityerses were not passing strangers but persons whom he had vanquished in

a reaping contest; and though it is not said that he killed, but only that

he thrashed them, we can hardly avoid supposing that in one version of the

story the vanquished reapers, like the strangers in the other version,

were said to have been wrapt up by Lityerses in corn-sheaves and so

beheaded. The supposition is countenanced by European harvest-customs. We

have seen that in Europe there is sometimes a contest amongst the reapers

to avoid being last, and that the person who is vanquished in this

competition, that is, who cuts the last corn, is often roughly handled. It

is true we have not found that a pretence is made of killing him; but on

the other hand we have found that a pretence is made of killing the man

who gives the last stroke at threshing, that is, who is vanquished in the

threshing contest.(1298) Now, since it is in the character of

representative of the corn-spirit that the thresher of the last corn is

slain in mimicry, and since the same representative character attaches (as

we have seen) to the cutter and binder as well as to the thresher of the

last corn, and since the same repugnance is evinced by harvesters to be

last in any one of these labours, we may conjecture that a pretence has

been commonly made of killing the reaper and binder as well as the

thresher of the last corn, and that in ancient times this killing was

actually carried out. This conjecture is corroborated by the common

superstition that whoever cuts the last corn must die soon.(1299)

Sometimes it is thought that the person who binds the last sheaf on the

field will die in the course of next year.(1300) The reason for fixing on

the reaper, binder, or thresher of the last corn as the representative of

the corn-spirit may be this. The corn-spirit is supposed to lurk as long

as he can in the corn, retreating before the reapers, the binders, and the

threshers at their work. But when he is forcibly expelled from his

ultimate refuge in the last corn cut or the last sheaf bound or the last

grain threshed, he necessarily assumes some other form than that of the

corn-stalks which had hitherto been his garments or body. And what form

can the expelled corn-spirit assume more naturally than that of the person

who stands nearest to the corn from which he (the corn-spirit) has just

been expelled? But the person in question is necessarily the reaper,

binder, or thresher of the last corn. He or she, therefore, is seized and

treated as the corn-spirit himself.

Thus the person who was killed on the harvest-field as the representative

of the corn-spirit may have been either a passing stranger or the

harvester who was last at reaping, binding, or threshing. But there is a

third possibility, to which ancient legend and modern folk-custom alike

point. Lityerses not only put strangers to death; he was himself slain,

and probably in the same way as he had slain others, namely, by being

wrapt in a corn-sheaf, beheaded, and cast into the river; and it is

implied that this happened to Lityerses on his own land. Similarly in

modern harvest-customs the pretence of killing appears to be carried out

quite as often on the person of the master (farmer or squire) as on that

of strangers.(1301) Now when we remember that Lityerses was said to have

been the son of the King of Phrygia, and combine with this the tradition

that he was put to death, apparently as a representative of the

corn-spirit, we are led to conjecture that we have here another trace of

the custom of annually slaying one of those divine or priestly kings who

are known to have held ghostly sway in many parts of Western Asia and

particularly in Phrygia. The custom appears, as we have seen,(1302) to

have been so far modified in places that the king’s son was slain in the

king’s stead. Of the custom thus modified the story of Lityerses would

therefore be a reminiscence.

Turning now to the relation of the Phrygian Lityerses to the Phrygian

Attis, it may be remembered that at Pessinus—the seat of a priestly

kingship—the high-priest appears to have been annually slain in the

character of Attis, a god of vegetation, and that Attis was described by

an ancient authority as “a reaped ear of corn.”(1303) Thus Attis, as an

embodiment of the corn-spirit, annually slain in the person of his

representative, might be thought to be ultimately identical with

Lityerses, the latter being simply the rustic prototype out of which the

state religion of Attis was developed. It may have been so; but, on the

other hand, the analogy of European folk-custom warns us that amongst the

same people two distinct deities of vegetation may have their separate

personal representatives, both of whom are slain in the character of gods

at different times of the year. For in Europe, as we have seen, it appears

that one man was commonly slain in the character of the tree-spirit in

spring, and another in the character of the corn-spirit in autumn. It may

have been so in Phrygia also. Attis was especially a tree-god, and his

connection with corn may have been only such an extension of the power of

a tree-spirit as is indicated in customs like the Harvest-May.(1304)

Again, the representative of Attis appears to have been slain in spring;

whereas Lityerses must have been slain in summer or autumn, according to

the time of the harvest in Phrygia.(1305) On the whole, then, while we are

not justified in regarding Lityerses as the prototype of Attis, the two

may be regarded as parallel products of the same religious idea, and may

have stood to each other as in Europe the Old Man of harvest stands to the

Wild Man, the Leaf Man, etc., of spring. Both were spirits or deities of

vegetation, and the personal representatives of both were annually slain.

But whereas the Attis worship became elevated into the dignity of a state

religion and spread to Italy, the rites of Lityerses seem never to have

passed the limits of their native Phrygia, and always retained their

character of rustic ceremonies performed by peasants on the harvest-field.

At most a few villages may have clubbed together, as amongst the Khonds,

to procure a human victim to be slain as representative of the corn-spirit

for their common benefit. Such victims may have been drawn from the

families of priestly kings or kinglets, which would account for the

legendary character of Lityerses as the son of a Phrygian king. When

villages did not so club together, each village or farm may have procured

its own representative of the corn-spirit by dooming to death either a

passing stranger or the harvester who cut, bound, or threshed the last

sheaf. It is hardly necessary to add that in Phrygia, as in Europe, the

old barbarous custom of killing a man on the harvest-field or the

threshing-floor had doubtless passed into a mere pretence long before the

classical era, and was probably regarded by the reapers and threshers

themselves as no more than a rough jest which the license of a

harvest-home permitted them to play off on a passing stranger, a comrade,

or even on their master himself.