X. RELICS OF TREE-WORSHIP IN MODERN EUROPE…

X. RELICS OF TREE-WORSHIP IN MODERN EUROPE

[Sidenote: May-trees in Europe.] From the foregoing review of the beneficent qualities commonly ascribed to tree-spirits, it is easy to understand why customs like the May-tree or May-pole have prevailed so widely and figured so prominently in the popular festivals of European peasants. In spring or early summer or even on Midsummer Day, it was and still is in many parts of Europe the custom to go out to the woods, cut down a tree and bring it into the village, where it is set up amid general rejoicings; or the people cut branches in the woods, and fasten them on every house. The intention of these customs is to bring home to the village, and to each house, the blessings which the tree-spirit has in its power to bestow. Hence the custom in some places of planting a May-tree before every house, or of carrying the village May-tree from door to door, that every household may receive its share of the blessing. Out of the mass of evidence on this subject a few examples may be selected.

[Sidenote: May-trees and May-bushes in England.] Sir Henry Piers, in his Description of Westmeath, writing in 1682 says: “On May-eve, every family sets up before their door a green bush, strewed over with yellow flowers, which the meadows yield plentifully. In countries where timber is plentiful, they erect tall slender trees, which stand high, and they continue almost the whole year; so as a stranger would go nigh to imagine that they were all signs of ale-sellers, and that all houses were ale-houses.”[239] In Northamptonshire a young tree ten or twelve feet high used to be planted before each house on May Day so as to appear growing; flowers were thrown over it and strewn about the door.[240] “Among ancient customs still retained by the Cornish, may be reckoned that of decking their doors and porches on the first of May with green boughs of sycamore and hawthorn, and of planting trees, or rather stumps of trees, before their houses.”[241] In the north of England it was [Sidenote: May garlands in England.] formerly the custom for young people to rise a little after midnight on the morning of the first of May, and go out with music and the blowing of horns into the woods, where they broke branches and adorned them with nosegays and crowns of flowers. This done, they returned about sunrise and fastened the flower-decked branches over the doors and windows of their houses.[242] At Abingdon in Berkshire young people formerly went about in groups on May morning, singing a carol of which the following are two of the verses:—

“_We’ve been rambling all the night, And sometime of this day; And now returning back again, We bring a garland gay._

_A garland gay we bring you here; And at your door we stand; It is a sprout well budded out, The work of our Lord’s hand._”[243]

At the towns of Saffron Walden and Debden in Essex on the first of May little girls go about in parties from door to door singing a song almost identical with the above and carrying garlands; a doll dressed in white is usually placed in the middle of each garland.[244] Similar customs have been and indeed are still observed in various parts of England. The garlands are generally in the form of hoops intersecting each other at right angles. Thus on May morning the girls of the neighbouring villages used to flock into Northampton bringing their garlands, which they exhibited from house to house. The skeleton of the garland was formed of two hoops of osier or hazel crossing each other at right angles, and so twined with flowers and ribbons that no part of them could be seen. In the centre of the garlands were placed gaily dressed dolls, one, two, or three in number according to the size of the garland. The whole was fixed to a staff about five feet long, by which it was carried. In shewing their garlands the children chanted some simple ditties and received in return pennies, which furnished forth a feast on their return to their homes. A merry dance round the garland concluded the festivity.[245] At Uttoxeter groups of children carry garlands of flowers about the town on May Day. “The garlands consist of two hoops, one passing through the other, which give the appearance of four half-circles, and they are decorated with flowers and evergreens, and surmounted with a bunch of flowers as a sort of crown, and in the centre of the hoops is a pendant orange and flowers.” One or more of the children carry a little pole or stick upright with a bunch of flowers fastened to the top. They are themselves decorated with flowers and ribbons, and receive pence from the houses which they visit.[246] At Watford in Hertfordshire, groups of children, almost entirely girls, go about the streets from door to door on May Day singing some verses, of which two agree almost verbally with those which, as we have seen, are sung at Abingdon in Berkshire. They are dressed in white, and adorned with gay ribbons and sashes of many hues. “Two of the girls carry between them on a stick what they call ‘the garland,’ which in its simplest form, is made of two circular hoops, intersecting each other at right angles; a more elaborate form has, in addition, smaller semicircles inserted in the four angles formed by the meeting of the hoops at the top of ‘the garland.’ These hoops are covered with any wild-flowers in season, and are further ornamented with ribbons. The ‘garland’ in shape reminds me of the ‘Christmas’ which used to form the centre of the Christmas decorations in Yorkshire some few years ago, except that the latter had a bunch of mistletoe inside the hoops.”[247] A similar custom was observed at Bampton-in-the-Bush in Oxfordshire down to about the middle of the nineteenth century. The garland consisted of two crossed hoops covered with moss, flowers, and ribbons. Two girls, known as the Lady and her Maid, bore the garland between them on a stick; and a boy called the Lord, who carried a stick dressed with ribbons and flowers, collected contributions from the spectators. From time to time the Lady sang a few lines and was then kissed by the Lord.[248] At Sevenoaks in Kent the children carry boughs and garlands from door to door on May Day. The boughs consist of sticks carried upright with bunches of leaves and wild-flowers fastened to the top. The garlands are formed of two hoops interlaced cross-wise and covered with blue and yellow flowers from the woods and hedges. Sometimes the garlands are fastened to the end of a stick carried perpendicularly, sometimes they hang from the middle of a stick borne horizontally by two children.[249] In the streets of Cambridge little girls regularly make their appearance every May Day with female dolls enclosed in hoops, which are covered with ribbons and flowers. These they shew to passers-by, inviting them to remember the May Lady by paying a small sum to her bearers.[250] At Salisbury girls go through the streets on May Day in pairs, carrying between them on a stick a circular garland or hoop adorned with flowers and bows; they visit the shops asking for money. A similar custom is observed at Wilton a few miles from Salisbury.[251] At Cawthorne in Yorkshire “on the first of May the school-children came with hoops to beg for artificial flowers; these my mother’s maid used to sew on to the hoops, which with ribbons and other decorations, were used in decking out a tall May-pole planted in the village.”[252] It appears that a hoop wreathed with rowan and marsh marigold, and bearing suspended within it two balls, is still carried on May Day by villagers in some parts of Ireland. The balls, which are sometimes covered with gold and silver paper, are said to have originally represented the sun and moon.[253]

[Sidenote: May customs in France, Germany, and Greece.] In some villages of the Vosges Mountains on the first Sunday of May young girls go in bands from house to house, singing a song in praise of May, in which mention is made of the “bread and meal that come in May.” If money is given them, they fasten a green bough to the door; if it is refused, they wish the family many children and no bread to feed them.[254] In the French department of Mayenne, boys who bore the name of Maillotins used to go about from farm to farm on the first of May singing carols, for which they received money or a drink; they planted a small tree or a branch of a tree.[255] Among the Germans of Moravia on the third Sunday before Easter, which goes by the name of Laetare Sunday, it is customary in some places for young girls to carry a small fir-tree about from door to door, while they sing songs, for which they receive presents. The tree is tricked out with many-coloured ribbons, and sometimes with flowers and dyed egg-shells, and its branches are twined together so as to form what is called a crown.[256] In Corfu the children go about singing May songs on the first of May. The boys carry small cypresses adorned with ribbons, flowers, and the fruits of the season. They receive a glass of wine at each house. The girls carry nosegays. One of them is dressed up like an angel, with gilt wings, and scatters flowers.[257]

[Sidenote: Whitsuntide customs in Russia.] On the Thursday before Whitsunday the Russian villagers “go out into the woods, sing songs, weave garlands, and cut down a young birch-tree, which they dress up in woman’s clothes, or adorn with many-coloured shreds and ribbons. After that comes a feast, at the end of which they take the dressed-up birch-tree, carry it home to their village with joyful dance and song, and set it up in one of the houses, where it remains as an honoured guest till Whitsunday. On the two intervening days they pay visits to the house where their ‘guest’ is; but on the third day, Whitsunday, they take her to a stream and fling her into its waters,” throwing their garlands after her. “All over Russia every village and every town is turned, a little before Whitsunday, into a sort of garden. Everywhere along the streets the young birch-trees stand in rows, every house and every room is adorned with boughs, even the engines upon the railway are for the time decked with green leaves.”[258] In this Russian custom the dressing of the birch in woman’s clothes shews how clearly the tree is personified; and the throwing it into a stream is most probably a rain-charm. In some villages of Altmark it was formerly the custom for serving-men, grooms, and cowherds to go from farm to farm at Whitsuntide distributing crowns made of birch branches and flowers to the farmers; these crowns were hung up in the houses and left till the following year.[259]

[Sidenote: May-trees in Germany and Sweden.] In the neighbourhood of Zabern in Alsace bands of people go about carrying May-trees. Amongst them is a man dressed in a white shirt, with his face blackened; in front of him is carried a large May-tree, but each member of the band also carries a smaller one. One of the company bears a huge basket in which he collects eggs, bacon, and so forth.[260] In some parts of Sweden on the eve of May Day lads go about carrying each a bunch of fresh-gathered birch twigs, wholly or partially in leaf. With the village fiddler at their head, they make the round of the houses singing May songs; the burden of their songs is a prayer for fine weather, a plentiful harvest, and worldly and spiritual blessings. One of them carries a basket in which he collects gifts of eggs and the like. If they are well received they stick a leafy twig in the roof over the cottage door.[261]

[Sidenote: Midsummer trees and poles in Sweden.] But in Sweden midsummer is the season when these ceremonies are chiefly observed. On the Eve of St. John (the twenty-third of June) the houses are thoroughly cleansed and garnished with green boughs and flowers. Young fir-trees are raised at the doorway and elsewhere about the homestead; and very often small umbrageous arbours are constructed in the garden. In Stockholm on this day a leaf-market is held at which thousands of May-poles (Maj Stănger), from six inches to twelve feet high, decorated with leaves, flowers, slips of coloured paper, gilt egg-shells strung on reeds, and so on, are exposed for sale. Bonfires are lit on the hills, and the people dance round them and jump over them. But the chief event of the day is setting up the May-pole. This consists of a straight and tall spruce-pine tree, stripped of its branches. “At times hoops and at others pieces of wood, placed cross-wise, are attached to it at intervals; whilst at others it is provided with bows, representing, so to say, a man with his arms akimbo. From top to bottom not only the ‘Maj Stăng’ (May-pole) itself, but the hoops, bows, etc., are ornamented with leaves, flowers, slips of various cloth, gilt egg-shells, etc.; and on the top of it is a large vane, or it may be a flag.” The raising of the May-pole, the decoration of which is done by the village maidens, is an affair of much ceremony; the people flock to it from all quarters, and dance round it in a great ring.[262] Midsummer customs of the same sort used to be observed in some parts of Germany. Thus in the towns of the Upper Harz Mountains tall fir-trees, with the bark peeled off their lower trunks, were set up in open places and decked with flowers and eggs, which were painted yellow and red. Round these trees the young folk danced by day and the old folk in the evening. Many people disguised themselves, and dramatic representations were given, amongst others mock executions, at which the sufferer’s hat was knocked off instead of his head. At the village of Lerbach in these fir-clad mountains children would gather together on Midsummer Day, each with a tiny fir-tree, which they made to revolve from left to right in the direction of the sun, while they sang “The maiden turned herself about,” or “Oh, thou dear Summertime! Oh, thou dear Summertime!”[263] In some parts of Bohemia also a May-pole or midsummer-tree is erected on St. John’s Eve. The lads fetch a tall fir or pine from the wood and set it up on a height, where the girls deck it with nosegays, garlands, and red ribbons. It is afterwards burned.[264]

[Sidenote: Village May-poles in England.] It would be needless to illustrate at length the custom, which has prevailed in various parts of Europe, such as England, France, and Germany, of setting up a village May-tree or May-pole on May Day.[265] A few examples will suffice. The puritanical writer Phillip Stubbes in his Anatomie of Abuses, first published at London in 1583, has described with manifest disgust how they used to bring in the May-pole in the days of good Queen Bess. His description affords us a vivid glimpse of merry England in the olden time. “Against May, Whitsonday, or other time, all the yung men and maides, olde men and wives, run gadding over night to the woods, groves, hils, and mountains, where they spend all the night in plesant pastimes; and in the morning they return, bringing with them birch and branches of trees, to deck their assemblies withall. And no mervaile, for there is a great Lord present amongst them, as superintendent and Lord over their pastimes and sportes, namely, Sathan, prince of hel. But the chiefest jewel they bring from thence is their May-pole, which they bring home [Sidenote: Bringing in the May-pole.] with great veneration, as thus. They have twentie or fortie yoke of oxen, every oxe having a sweet nose-gay of flouers placed on the tip of his hornes, and these oxen drawe home this May-pole (this stinkyng ydol, rather), which is covered all over with floures and hearbs, bound round about with strings, from the top to the bottome, and sometime painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred men, women and children following it with great devotion. And thus beeing reared up, with handkercheefs and flags hovering on the top, they straw the ground rounde about, binde green boughes about it, set up sommer haules, bowers, and arbors hard by it. And then fall they to daunce about it, like as the heathen people did at the dedication of the Idols, whereof this is a perfect pattern, or rather the thing itself. I have heard it credibly reported (and that viva voce) by men of great gravitie and reputation, that of fortie, threescore, or a hundred maides going to the wood over night, there have scaresly the third part of them returned home againe undefiled.”[266] Of the Cornish people their historian Borlase says: “From towns they make excursions, on May eve, into the country, cut down a tall elm, bring it into town with rejoicings, and having fitted a straight taper pole to the end of it, and painted it, erect it in the most publick part, and upon holidays and festivals dress it with garlands of flowers, or ensigns and streamers.”[267] In Northumberland, down apparently to near the end of the eighteenth century, young people of both sexes used to go out early on May morning to gather the flowering thorn and the dew off the grass, which they brought home with music and acclamations; then, having dressed a pole on the green with garlands, they danced about it. The dew was considered as a great cosmetic, and preserved the face from wrinkles, blotches, and the traces of old age. A syllabub made of warm milk from the cow, sweet cakes, and wine was prepared for the feast; and a kind of divination, to discover who should be wedded first, was practised by dropping a marriage-ring into the syllabub and fishing for it with a ladle.[268] At Padstow in Cornwall, when shipbuilding was a thriving industry of the port, the shipwrights used to erect a tall May-pole at the top of Cross Street in the middle of a cross inlaid with stone. The pole was gaily decorated with spring flowers and so forth. But the custom has long been abandoned. A great feature of the celebration of May Day at Padstow used to be the Hobby Horse, that is, a man wearing a ferocious mask, who went dancing and singing before the chief houses, accompanied by a great flower-bedecked crowd of men and women, while the men fired pistols loaded with powder in all directions.[269]

[Sidenote: Village May-trees and May-poles in Germany.] In Swabia on the first of May a tall fir-tree used to be fetched into the village, where it was decked with ribbons and set up; then the people danced round it merrily to music. The tree stood on the village green the whole year through, until a fresh tree was brought in next May Day.[270] In Saxony “people were not content with bringing the summer symbolically (as king or queen) into the village; they brought the fresh green itself from the woods even into the houses: that is the May or Whitsuntide trees, which are mentioned in documents from the thirteenth century onwards. The fetching in of the May-tree was also a festival. The people went out into the woods to seek the May (majum quaerere), brought young trees, especially firs and birches, to the village and set them up before the doors of the houses or of the cattle-stalls or in the rooms. Young fellows erected such May-trees, as we have already said, before the chambers of their sweethearts. Besides these household Mays, a great May-tree or May-pole, which had also been brought in solemn procession to the village, was set up in the middle of the village or in the market-place of the town. It had been chosen by the whole community, who watched over it most carefully. Generally the tree was stripped of its branches and leaves, nothing but the crown being left, on which were displayed, in addition to many-coloured ribbons and cloths, a variety of victuals such as sausages, cakes, and eggs. The young folk exerted themselves to obtain these prizes. In the greasy poles which are still to be seen at our fairs we have a relic of these old May-poles. Not uncommonly there was a race on foot or on horseback to the May-tree—a Whitsuntide pastime which in course of time has been divested of its goal and survives as a popular custom to this day in many parts of Germany. In the great towns of our land the custom has developed into sport, for our spring races are in their origin nothing but the old German horse-races, in which the victor received a prize (generally a red cloth) from the hand of a maiden, while the last rider was greeted with jeers and gibes by the assembled community.”[271] The custom of the May-tree is observed by the Wends of Saxony, as well as by the Germans. The young men of the village choose the slimmest and tallest tree in the wood, peel it and set it up on the village green. Its leafy top is decked with cloths and ribbons presented by the girls. Here it stands, towering high above the roofs, till Ascension Day, or in many places till Whitsuntide. When it is being taken down, the young folk dance round it, and the youth who catches and breaks off the leafy crown of the falling tree is the hero of the day. Holding the green boughs aloft he is carried shoulder-high, with music and joyous shouts, to the ale-house, where the dance is resumed.[272] At Bordeaux on the [Sidenote: May-poles and May-trees in France.] first of May the boys of each street used to erect in it a May-pole, which they adorned with garlands and a great crown; and every evening during the whole of the month the young people of both sexes danced singing about the pole.[273] Down to the present day May-trees decked with flowers and ribbons are set up on May Day in every village and hamlet of gay Provence. Under them the young folk make merry and the old folk rest.[274] The Red Karens of [Sidenote: May-poles among the Karens of Burma.] Upper Burma hold a festival in April, at which the chief ceremony is the erection of a post on ground set apart for the purpose in or near each village. A new post is set up every year; the old ones are left standing, but are not renewed if they fall or decay. Omens are first drawn from chicken bones as to which tree will be the best to fell for the post, which day will be the luckiest, and so on. A pole some twenty or thirty feet long is then hewn from the tree and ornamented with a rudely carved capital. On the lucky day all the villagers assemble and drag the pole to the chosen spot. When it has been set up, the people dance “a rude sort of May-pole dance” to the music of drums and gongs. Much pork is eaten and much liquor drunk on this festive occasion.[275]

[Sidenote: Permanent May-poles.] In all these cases, apparently, the custom is or was to bring in a new May-tree each year. However, in England the village May-pole seems as a rule, at least in later times, to have been permanent, not renewed annually.[276] Villages of Upper Bavaria renew their May-pole once every three, four, or five years. It is a fir-tree fetched from the forest, and amid all the wreaths, flags, and inscriptions with which it is bedecked, an essential part is the bunch of dark green foliage left at the top “as a memento that in it we have to do, not with a dead pole, but with a living tree from the greenwood.”[277] We can hardly doubt that originally the practice everywhere was to set up a new May-tree every year. As the object of the custom was to bring in the fructifying spirit of vegetation, newly awakened in spring, the end would have been defeated if, instead of a living tree, green and sappy, an old withered one had been erected year after year or allowed to stand permanently. When, however, the meaning of the custom had been forgotten, and the May-tree was regarded simply as a centre for holiday merry-making, people saw no reason for felling a fresh tree every year, and preferred to let the same tree stand permanently, only decking it with fresh flowers on May Day. But even when the May-pole had thus become a fixture, the need of giving it the appearance of being a green tree, not a dead pole, was sometimes felt. Thus at Weverham in Cheshire “are two May-poles, which are decorated on this day (May Day) with all due attention to the ancient solemnity; the sides are hung with garlands, and the top terminated by a birch or other tall slender tree with its leaves on; the bark being peeled, and the stem spliced to the pole, so as to give the appearance of one tree from the summit.”[278] Thus the renewal of the May-tree is like the renewal of the Harvest-May;[279] each is intended to secure a fresh portion of the fertilising spirit of vegetation, and to preserve it throughout the year. But whereas the efficacy of the Harvest-May is restricted to promoting the growth of the crops, that of the May-tree or May-branch extends also, as we have seen, to women and cattle. Lastly, [Sidenote: The May-tree burnt at the end of the year.] it is worth noting that the old May-tree is sometimes burned at the end of the year. Thus in the district of Prague young people break pieces of the public May-tree and place them behind the holy pictures in their rooms, where they remain till next May Day, and are then burned on the hearth.[280] In Würtemberg the bushes which are set up on the houses on Palm Sunday are sometimes left there for a year and then burnt.[281] The eiresione (the Harvest-May of Greece) was perhaps burnt at the end of the year.[282]

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[Sidenote: Tree-spirit detached from the tree and represented in human form.] So much for the tree-spirit conceived as incorporate or immanent in the tree. We have now to shew that the tree-spirit is often conceived and represented as detached from the tree and clothed in human form, and even as embodied in living men or women. The evidence for this anthropomorphic representation of the tree-spirit is largely to be found in the popular customs of European peasantry. These will be described presently, but before examining them we may notice an Esthonian folk-tale which illustrates the same train of thought very clearly. Once upon a time, so runs [Sidenote: Esthonian story of a tree-elf.] the tale, a young peasant was busy raking the hay in a meadow, when on the rim of the horizon a heavy thunder-cloud loomed black and angry, warning him to make haste with his work before the storm should break. He finished in time, and was wending his way homeward, when under a tree he espied a stranger fast asleep. “He will be drenched to the skin,” thought the good-natured young fellow to himself, “if I allow him to sleep on.” So he stepped up to the sleeper and shaking him forcibly roused him from his slumber. The stranger started up, and at sight of the thunder-cloud, which now darkened the sky, he blenched, fumbled in his pockets, and finding nothing in them wherewith to reward the friendly swain, he said, “This time I am your debtor. But the time will come when I shall be able to repay your kindness. Remember what I tell you. You will enlist. You will be parted from your friends for years, and one day a feeling of homesickness will come over you in a foreign land. Then look up, and you will see a crooked birch-tree a few steps from you. Go to it, knock thrice on the trunk, and ask, ‘Is the Crooked One at home?’ The rest will follow.” With these words the stranger hastened away and was out of sight in a moment. The peasant also went his way, and soon forgot all about the matter. Well, time went by and part of the stranger’s prophecy came true. For the peasant turned soldier and served in a cavalry regiment for years. One day, when he was quartered with his regiment in the north of Finland, it fell to his turn to tend the horses while his comrades were roistering in the tavern. Suddenly a great yearning for home, such as he had never known before, came over the lonely trooper; tears started to his eyes, and dear visions of his native land crowded on his soul. Then he bethought him of the sleeping stranger in the wood, and the whole scene came back to him as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. He looked up, and there, strange to tell, he was aware of a crooked birch-tree right in front of him. More in jest than in earnest he went up to it and did as the stranger had bidden him. Hardly had the words, “Is the Crooked One at home?” passed his lips when the stranger himself stood before him and said, “I am glad you have come. I feared you had forgotten me. You wish to be at home, do you not?” The trooper said yes, he did. Then the Crooked One cried into the tree, “Young folks, which of you is the fleetest?” A voice from the birch replied, “Father, I can run as fast as a moor-hen flies.” “Well, I need a fleeter messenger to-day.” A second voice answered, “I can run like the wind.” “I need a swifter envoy,” said the father. Then a third voice cried, “I can run like the thought of man.” “You are after my own heart. Fill a bag full of gold and take it with my friend and benefactor to his home.” Then he caught the soldier by the hat, crying, “The hat to the man, and the man to the house!” The same moment the soldier felt his hat fly from his head. When he looked about for it, lo! he was at home in the old familiar parlour wearing his old peasant clothes, and the great sack of money stood beside him. Yet on parade and at the roll-call he was never missed. When the man who told this story was asked, “Who could the stranger be?” he answered, “Who but a tree-elf?”[283]

[Sidenote: Tree-spirit represented simultaneously in vegetable and human form.] There is an instructive class of cases in which the tree-spirit is represented simultaneously in vegetable form and in human form, which are set side by side as if for the express purpose of explaining each other. In these cases the human representative of the tree-spirit is sometimes a doll or puppet, sometimes a living person; but whether a puppet or a person, it is placed beside a tree or bough; so that together the person or puppet, and the tree or bough, form a sort of bilingual inscription, the one being, so to speak, a translation of the other. Here, therefore, there is no room left for doubt that the spirit of the tree is actually represented in human form. Thus in Bohemia, on the fourth Sunday in Lent, young people throw a puppet called Death into the water; then the girls go into the wood, cut down a young tree, and fasten to it a puppet dressed in white clothes to look like a woman; with this tree and puppet they go from house to house collecting gratuities and singing songs with the refrain:—

“_We carry Death out of the village, We bring Summer into the village._”[284]

Here, as we shall see later on, the “Summer” is the spirit of vegetation returning or reviving in spring. In some parts of our own country children go about asking for pence with some small imitations of May-poles, and with a finely-dressed doll which they call the Lady of the May.[285] In these cases the tree and the puppet are obviously regarded as equivalent.

[Sidenote: The Little May Rose.] At Thann, in Alsace, a girl called the Little May Rose, dressed in white, carries a small May-tree, which is gay with garlands and ribbons. Her companions collect gifts from door to door, singing a song:—

“_Little May Rose turn round three times, Let us look at you round and round! Rose of the May, come to the greenwood away, We will be merry all. So we go from the May to the roses._”

In the course of the song a wish is expressed that those who give nothing may lose their fowls by the marten, that their vine may bear no clusters, their tree no nuts, their field no corn; the produce of the year is supposed to depend on the gifts offered to these May singers.[286] Here and in the cases mentioned above, where children go about with green boughs or garlands on May Day singing and collecting money, the meaning is that with the spirit of vegetation they bring plenty and good luck to the house, and they expect to be paid for the service. In Russian Lithuania, on the first of May, they used to set up a green tree before the village. Then the rustic swains chose the prettiest girl, crowned her, swathed her in birch branches and set her beside the May-tree, where they danced, sang, and shouted “O May! O May!”[287] In Brie (Isle de France) a May-tree is set up in the midst of the village; its top is crowned with flowers; lower down it is twined with leaves and twigs, still lower with huge green branches. The girls dance round it, and at the same time a lad wrapt in leaves and called Father May is led about.[288] In the small towns of the Franken Wald [Sidenote: The Walber.] mountains in Northern Bavaria, on the second of May, a Walber tree is erected before a tavern, and a man dances round it, enveloped in straw from head to foot in such a way that the ears of corn unite above his head to form a crown. He is called the Walber, and used to be led in procession through the streets, which were adorned with sprigs of birch.[289]

[Sidenote: Green George in Carinthia.] Amongst the Slavs of Carinthia, on St. George’s Day (the twenty-third of April), the young people deck with flowers and garlands a tree which has been felled on the eve of the festival. The tree is then carried in procession, accompanied with music and joyful acclamations, the chief figure in the procession being the Green George, a young fellow clad from head to foot in green birch branches. At the close of the ceremonies the Green George, that is an effigy of him, is thrown into the water. It is the aim of the lad who acts Green George to step out of his leafy envelope and substitute the effigy so adroitly that no one shall perceive the change. In many places, however, the lad himself who plays the part of Green George is ducked in a river or pond, with the express intention of thus ensuring rain to make the fields and meadows green in summer. In some places the cattle are crowned and driven from their stalls to the accompaniment of a song:—

“_Green George we bring, Green George we accompany, May he feed our herds well. If not, to the water with him._”[290]

Here we see that the same powers of making rain and fostering the cattle, which are ascribed to the tree-spirit regarded as incorporate in the tree, are also attributed to the tree-spirit represented by a living man.

[Sidenote: Green George among the gypsies.] Among the gypsies of Transylvania and Roumania the festival of Green George is the chief celebration of spring. Some of them keep it on Easter Monday, others on St. George’s Day (the twenty-third of April). On the eve of the festival a young willow tree is cut down, adorned with garlands and leaves, and set up in the ground. Women with child place one of their garments under the tree, and leave it there over night; if next morning they find a leaf of the tree lying on the garment, they know that their delivery will be easy. Sick and old people go to the tree in the evening, spit on it thrice, and say, “You will soon die, but let us live.” Next morning the gypsies gather about the willow. The chief figure of the festival is Green George, a lad who is concealed from top to toe in green leaves and blossoms. He throws a few handfuls of grass to the beasts of the tribe, in order that they may have no lack of fodder throughout the year. Then he takes three iron nails, which have lain for three days and nights in water, and knocks them into the willow; after which he pulls them out and flings them into a running stream to propitiate the water-spirits. Finally, a pretence is made of throwing Green George into the water, but in fact it is only a puppet made of branches and leaves which is ducked in the stream.[291] In this version of the custom the powers of granting an easy delivery to women and of communicating vital energy to the sick and old are clearly ascribed to the willow; while Green George, the human double of the tree, bestows food on the cattle, and further ensures the favour of the water-spirits by putting them in indirect communication with the tree.

[Sidenote: Double representation of the tree-spirit by tree and man among the Oraons.] An example of the double representation of the spirit of vegetation by a tree and a living man is reported from Bengal. The Oraons have a festival in spring while the sál-trees are in blossom, because they think that at this time the marriage of earth is celebrated and the sál flowers are necessary for the ceremony. On an appointed day the villagers go with their priest to the Sarna, the sacred grove, a remnant of the old sál forest in which a goddess Sarna Burhi, or woman of the grove, is supposed to dwell. She is thought to have great influence on the rain; and the priest arriving with his party at the grove sacrifices to her five fowls, of which a morsel is given to each person present. Then they gather the sál flowers and return laden with them to the village. Next day the priest visits every house, carrying the flowers in a wide open basket. The women of each house bring out water to wash his feet as he approaches, and kneeling make him an obeisance. Then he dances with them and places some of the sál flowers over the door of the house and in the women’s hair. No sooner is this done than the women empty their water-jugs over him, drenching him to the skin. A feast follows, and the young people, with sál flowers in their hair, dance all night on the village green.[292] Here, the equivalence of the flower-bearing priest to the goddess of the flowering tree comes out plainly. For she is supposed to influence the rain, and the drenching of the priest with water is, doubtless, like the ducking of the Green George in Carinthia and elsewhere, a rain-charm. Thus the priest, as if he were the tree goddess herself, goes from door to door dispensing rain and bestowing fruitfulness on each house, but especially on the women. In some parts [Sidenote: Double representation of the harvest-goddess Gauri by a bundle of plants and an unmarried girl.] of India the harvest-goddess Gauri, the wife of Siva, is represented both by an unmarried girl and by a bundle of the wild flowering balsam plant touch-me-not (Impatiens sp.), which is tied up in a mummy-like figure with a woman’s mask, dress, and ornaments. Before being removed from the soil to represent the goddess the plants are worshipped. The girl is also worshipped. Then the bundle of plants is carried and the girl who personates the goddess walks through the rooms of the house, while the supposed footprints of Gauri herself are imprinted on the floor with red paste. On entering each room the human representative of Gauri is asked, “Gauri, Gauri, whither have you come and what do you see?” and the girl makes appropriate replies. Then she is given a mouthful of sweets and the mistress of the house says, “Come with golden feet and stay for ever.” The plant-formed effigy of Gauri is afterwards worshipped as the goddess herself and receives offerings of rice-cakes and pancakes. On the third day it is thrown into a river or tank; then a handful of pebbles or sand is brought home from the spot and thrown all over the house and the trees to bring good luck to the house and to protect the trees from vermin. A remarkable feature of the ceremonies is that the goddess Gauri is supposed to be secretly followed by her husband Siva, who remains hidden under the fold of her garment and is represented by a lôṭâ, covered by a coco-nut and filled with rice, which is carefully measured. After the image of Gauri has been thrown into the river or tank, the rice in the lôṭâ representing Siva is carefully measured again, in order to see whether the quantity has increased or decreased, and according to the result an abundant or a scanty harvest is prognosticated.[293] Hence it appears that the whole ritual aims at ensuring a plentiful crop of rice. In this case the spirit of vegetation thus represented in duplicate by a living girl and the effigy of a woman is a harvest goddess, not a tree-spirit, but the principle is the same.

[Sidenote: W. Mannhardt’s summary of the evidence.] Without citing more examples to the same effect, we may sum up the results of the preceding pages in the words of Mannhardt: “The customs quoted suffice to establish with certainty the conclusion that in these spring processions the spirit of vegetation is often represented both by the May-tree and in addition by a man dressed in green leaves or flowers or by a girl similarly adorned. It is the same spirit which animates the tree and is active in the inferior plants and which we have recognised in the May-tree and the Harvest-May. Quite consistently the spirit is also supposed to manifest his presence in the first flower of spring and reveals himself both in a girl representing a May-rose, and also, as giver of harvest, in the person of the Walber. The procession with this representative of the divinity was supposed to produce the same beneficial effects on the fowls, the fruit-trees, and the crops as the presence of the deity himself. In other words, the mummer was regarded not as an image but as an actual representative of the spirit of vegetation; hence the wish expressed by the attendants on the May-rose and the May-tree that those who refuse them gifts of eggs, bacon, and so forth, may have no share in the blessings which it is in the power of the itinerant spirit to bestow. We may conclude that these begging processions with May-trees or May-boughs from door to door (‘bringing the May or the summer’) had everywhere originally a serious and, so to speak, sacramental significance; people really believed that the god of growth was present unseen in the bough; by the procession he was brought to each house to bestow his blessing. The names May, Father May, May Lady, Queen of the May, by which the anthropomorphic spirit of vegetation is often denoted, shew that the idea of the spirit of vegetation is blent with a personification of the season at which his powers are most strikingly manifested.”[294]

[Sidenote: Tree-spirit or vegetation-spirit represented by a person alone.] Thus far we have seen that the tree-spirit or the spirit of vegetation in general is represented either in vegetable form alone, as by a tree, bough, or flower; or in vegetable and human form simultaneously, as by a tree, bough, or flower in combination with a puppet or a living person. It remains to shew that the representation of him by a tree, bough, or flower is sometimes entirely dropped, while the representation of him by a living person remains. In this case the representative character of the person is generally marked by dressing him or her in leaves or flowers; sometimes too it is indicated by the name he or she bears.

[Sidenote: Green George in Russia.] Thus in some parts of Russia on St. George’s Day (the twenty-third of April) a youth is dressed out, like our Jack-in-the-Green, with leaves and flowers. The Slovenes call him the Green George. Holding a lighted torch in one hand and a pie in the other, he goes out to the corn-fields, followed by girls singing appropriate songs. A circle of brushwood is then lighted, in the middle of which is set the pie. All who take part in the ceremony then sit down around the fire and divide the pie among them.[295] In this custom the Green George dressed in leaves and flowers is plainly identical with the similarly disguised Green George who is associated with a tree in the Carinthian, Transylvanian, and Roumanian customs observed on the same day. Again, [Sidenote: Whitsuntide customs in Russia.] we saw that in Russia at Whitsuntide a birch-tree is dressed in woman’s clothes and set up in the house. Clearly equivalent to this is the custom observed on Whit-Monday by Russian girls in the district of Pinsk. They choose the prettiest of their number, envelop her in a mass of foliage taken from the birch-trees and maples, and carry her about through the village. In a district of Little Russia they take round a “poplar,” represented by a girl wearing bright flowers in her hair.[296] At Whitsuntide in Holland poor women used to go about begging with a little girl called Whitsuntide Flower (Pinxterbloem, perhaps a kind of iris); she was decked with flowers and sat in a waggon. In North Brabant she wears the flowers from which she takes her name and a song is sung:—

“_Whitsuntide Flower, Turn yourself once round._”[297]

[Sidenote: May customs in France.] All over Provence on the first of May pretty little girls are dressed in white, decked with crowns and wreaths of roses, and set on seats or platforms strewn with flowers in the streets, while their companions go about begging coppers for the Mayos or Mayes, as they are called, from the passers-by.[298] In some parts of the Ardennes on May Day a small girl, clad in white and wearing a chaplet of flowers on her head, used to go from house to house with her play-mates, collecting contributions and singing that it was May, the month of May, the pretty month of May, that the wheat was tall, the hawthorn in bloom, and the lark carolling in the sky.[299]

[Sidenote: The Little Leaf Man.] In Ruhla (Thüringen) as soon as the trees begin to grow green in spring, the children assemble on a Sunday and go out into the woods, where they choose one of their play-mates to be the Little Leaf Man. They break branches from the trees and twine them about the child till only his shoes peep out from the leafy mantle. Holes are made in it for him to see through, and two of the children lead the Little Leaf Man that he may not stumble or fall. Singing and dancing they take him from house to house, asking for gifts of food such as eggs, cream, sausages, and cakes. Lastly, they sprinkle the Leaf Man with water and feast on the food they have collected.[300] At Röllshausen on the [Sidenote: Leaf-clad mummers at Whitsuntide.] Schwalm, in Hesse, when afternoon service is over on Whitsunday, the schoolboys and schoolgirls go out into the wood and there clothe a boy from head to foot in leaves so that nobody would know him. He is called the Little Whitsuntide Man. A procession is then formed. Two boys lead their leaf-clad playfellow; two others precede him with a basket; and two girls with another basket bring up the rear. Thus they go from house to house singing hymns or popular songs and collecting eggs and cakes in the baskets. When they have feasted on these, they strip their comrade of his verdant envelope on an open place in front of the village.[301] In some parts of Rhenish Bavaria at Whitsuntide a boy or lad is swathed in the yellow blossom of the broom, the dark green twigs of the firs, and other foliage. Thus attired he is known as the Quack and goes from door to door, whirling about in the dance, while an appropriate song is chanted and his companions levy contributions.[302] In the Fricktal, Switzerland, at Whitsuntide boys go out into a wood and swathe one of their number in leafy boughs. He is called the Whitsuntide-lout (Pfingstlümmel), and being mounted on horseback with a green branch in his hand he is led back into the village. At the village-well a halt is called and the leaf-clad lout is dismounted and ducked in the trough. Thereby he acquires the right of sprinkling water on everybody, and he exercises the right specially on girls and street urchins. The urchins march before him in bands begging him to give them a Whitsuntide wetting.[303]

[Sidenote: Jack-in-the-Green in England.] In England the best-known example of these leaf-clad mummers is the Jack-in-the-Green, a chimney-sweeper who walks encased in a pyramidal framework of wickerwork, which is covered with holly and ivy, and surmounted by a crown of flowers and ribbons. Thus arrayed he dances on May Day at the head of a troop of chimney-sweeps, who collect pence.[304] The ceremony was witnessed at Cheltenham on the second of May 1892, by Dr. W. H. D. Rouse, who has described in detail the costume of the performers. They were all chimney-sweeps of the town. Jack-in-the-Green or the Bush-carrier was enclosed in a wooden framework on which leaves were fastened so as to make a thick cone about six feet high, topped with a crown, which consisted of two wooden hoops placed crosswise and covered with flowers. The leafy envelope was unbroken except for a single opening through which peered the face of the mummer. From time to time in their progress through the streets the performers halted, and three of them, dressed in red, blue, and yellow respectively, tripped lightly round the leaf-covered man to the inspiring strains of a fiddle and a tin whistle on which two of their comrades with blackened faces discoursed sweet music. The leader of the procession was a clown fantastically clad in a long white pinafore or blouse with coloured fringes and frills, and wearing on his head a beaver hat of the familiar pattern, the crown of which hung loose and was adorned with ribbons and a bird or a bundle of feathers. Large black rings surrounded his eyes, and a red dab over mouth and chin lent a pleasing variety to his countenance. He contributed to the public hilarity by flapping the yellow fringe of his blouse with quaint gestures and occasionally fanning himself languidly. His efforts were seconded by another performer, who wore a red fool’s cap, all stuck with flowers, and a white pinafore enriched with black human figures in front and a black gridiron-like pattern, crossed diagonally by a red bar, at the back. Two boys in white pinafores, with similar figures, or stars, on the breast, and a fish on the back, completed the company. Formerly there used to be a man in woman’s clothes, who personated the clown’s wife.[305] In some parts also of France a young fellow is encased in a wicker framework covered with leaves and is led about.[306] In Frickthal, in the Swiss [Sidenote: The Whitsuntide Basket in Switzerland.] canton of Aargau, a similar frame of basketwork is called the Whitsuntide Basket. As soon as the trees begin to bud, a spot is chosen in the wood, and here the village lads make the frame with all secrecy, lest others should forestall them. Leafy branches are twined round two hoops, one of which rests on the shoulders of the wearer, the other encircles his calves; holes are made for his eyes and mouth; and a large nosegay crowns the whole. In this guise he appears suddenly in the village at the hour of vespers, preceded by three boys blowing on horns made of willow bark. The great object of his supporters is to set up the Whitsuntide Basket on the village well, and to keep it and him there, despite the efforts of the lads from neighbouring villages, who seek to carry off the Whitsuntide Basket and set it up on their own well.[307] In the neighbourhood of Ertingen (Würtemberg) a [Sidenote: The Lazy Man in Würtemberg.] masker of the same sort, known as the Lazy Man (Latzmann), goes about the village on Midsummer Day; he is hidden under a great pyramidal or conical frame of wickerwork, ten or twelve feet high, which is completely covered with sprigs of fir. He has a bell which he rings as he goes, and he is attended by a suite of persons dressed up in character—a footman, a colonel, a butcher, an angel, the devil, the doctor, and so on. They march in Indian file and halt before every house, where each of them speaks in character, except the Lazy Man, who says nothing. With what they get by begging from door to door they hold a feast.[308]

In the class of cases of which the foregoing are specimens it is obvious that the leaf-clad person who is led about is equivalent to the May-tree, May-bough, or May-doll, which is carried from house to house by children begging. Both are representatives of the beneficent spirit of vegetation, whose visit to the house is recompensed by a present of money or food.

[Sidenote: Leaf-clad representative of vegetation sometimes called a King or Queen.] Often the leaf-clad person who represents the spirit of vegetation is known as the king or the queen; thus, for example, he or she is called the May King, Whitsuntide King, Queen of May, and so on. These titles, as Mannhardt observes, imply that the spirit incorporate in vegetation is a ruler, whose creative power extends far and wide.[309]

[Sidenote: May-Kings at Whitsuntide in Germany and Bohemia.] In a village near Salzwedel a May-tree is set up at Whitsuntide and the boys race to it; he who reaches it first is king; a garland of flowers is put round his neck and in his hand he carries a May-bush, with which, as the procession moves along, he sweeps away the dew. At each house they sing a song, wishing the inmates good luck, referring to the “black cow in the stall milking white milk, black hen on the nest laying white eggs,” and begging a gift of eggs, bacon, and so on.[310] At the village of Ellgoth in Silesia a ceremony called the King’s Race is observed at Whitsuntide. A pole with a cloth tied to it is set up in a meadow, and the young men ride past it on horseback, each trying to snatch away the cloth as he gallops by. The one who succeeds in carrying it off and dipping it in the neighbouring Oder is proclaimed King.[311] Here the pole is clearly a substitute for a May-tree. In some villages of Brunswick at Whitsuntide a May King is completely enveloped in a May-bush. In some parts of Thüringen also they have a May King at Whitsuntide, but he is dressed up rather differently. A frame of wood is made in which a man can stand; it is completely covered with birch boughs and is surmounted by a crown of birch and flowers, in which a bell is fastened. This frame is placed in the wood and the May King gets into it. The rest go out and look for him, and when they have found him they lead him back into the village to the magistrate, the clergyman, and others, who have to guess who is in the verdurous frame. If they guess wrong, the May King rings his bell by shaking his head, and a forfeit of beer or the like must be paid by the unsuccessful guesser.[312] At Wahrstedt in Brunswick the boys at Whitsuntide choose by lot a king and a high-steward (füstje-meier). The latter is completely concealed in a May-bush, wears a wooden crown wreathed with flowers, and carries a wooden sword. The king, on the other hand, is only distinguished by a nosegay in his cap, and a reed, with a red ribbon tied to it, in his hand. They beg for eggs from house to house, threatening that, where none are given, none will be laid by the hens throughout the year. In this custom the high-steward appears, for some reason, to have usurped the insignia of the king.[313] At Hildesheim, in Hanover, five or six young fellows go about on the afternoon of Whit-Monday cracking long whips in measured time and collecting eggs from the houses. The chief person of the band is the [Sidenote: The Leaf King.] Leaf King, a lad swathed so completely in birchen twigs that nothing of him can be seen but his feet. A huge head-dress of birchen twigs adds to his apparent stature. In his hand he carries a long crook, with which he tries to catch stray dogs and children.[314] In some parts of Bohemia on Whit-Monday the young fellows disguise themselves in tall caps of birch bark adorned with flowers. One of them is dressed as a king and dragged on a sledge to the village green, and if on the way they pass a pool the sledge is always overturned into it. Arrived at the green they gather round the king; the crier jumps on a stone or climbs up a tree and recites lampoons about each house and its inmates. Afterwards the disguises of bark are stripped off and they go about the village in holiday attire, carrying a May-tree and begging. Cakes, eggs, and corn are sometimes given them.[315] At Grossvargula, near Langensalza, in [Sidenote: The Grass King.] the eighteenth century a Grass King used to be led about in procession at Whitsuntide. He was encased in a pyramid of poplar branches, the top of which was adorned with a royal crown of branches and flowers. He rode on horseback with the leafy pyramid over him, so that its lower end touched the ground, and an opening was left in it only for his face. Surrounded by a cavalcade of young fellows, he rode in procession to the town hall, the parsonage, and so on, where they all got a drink of beer. Then under the seven lindens of the neighbouring Sommerberg, the Grass King was stripped of his green casing; the crown was handed to the Mayor, and the branches were stuck in the flax fields in order to make the flax grow tall.[316] In this last trait the fertilising influence ascribed to the representative of the tree-spirit comes out clearly. In the neighbourhood of Pilsen (Bohemia) a conical hut of green branches, without any door, is erected at Whitsuntide in the midst of the village. To this hut rides a troop of village lads with a king at their head. He wears a sword at his side and a sugar-loaf hat of rushes on his head. In his train are a judge, a crier, and a personage called the Frog-flayer or Hangman. This last is a sort of ragged merryandrew, wearing a rusty old sword and bestriding a sorry hack. On reaching the hut the crier dismounts and goes round it looking for a door. Finding none, he says, “Ah, this is perhaps an enchanted castle; the witches creep through the leaves and need no door.” At last he draws his sword and hews his way into the hut, where there is a chair, on which he seats himself and proceeds to criticise in rhyme the girls, farmers, and farm-servants of the neighbourhood. When this is over, the Frog-flayer steps forward and, after exhibiting a cage with frogs in it, sets up a gallows on which he hangs the frogs in a row.[317] In the neighbourhood of Plas the ceremony differs in some points. The king and his soldiers are completely clad in bark, adorned with flowers and ribbons; they all carry swords and ride horses, which are gay with green branches and flowers. While the village dames and girls are being criticised at the arbour, a frog is secretly pinched and poked by the crier till it quacks. Sentence of death is passed on the frog by the king; the hangman beheads it and flings the bleeding body among the spectators. Lastly, the king is driven from the hut and pursued by the soldiers.[318] The pinching and beheading of the frog are doubtless, as Mannhardt observes,[319] a rain-charm. We have seen that some Indians of the Orinoco beat frogs for the express purpose of producing rain, and that killing a frog is a European rain-charm.[320]

[Sidenote: May-Queens and Whitsuntide Queens.] Often the spirit of vegetation in spring is represented by a queen instead of a king. In the neighbourhood of Libchowic (Bohemia), on the fourth Sunday in Lent, girls dressed in white and wearing the first spring flowers, as violets and daisies, in their hair, lead about the village a girl who is called the Queen and is crowned with flowers. During the procession, which is conducted with great solemnity, none of the girls may stand still, but must keep whirling round continually and singing. In every house the Queen announces the arrival of spring and wishes the inmates good luck and blessings, for which she receives presents.[321] In German Hungary the girls choose the prettiest girl to be their Whitsuntide Queen, fasten a towering wreath on her brow, and carry her singing through the streets. At every house they stop, sing old ballads, and receive presents.[322] In the south-east of Ireland on May Day the prettiest girl used to be chosen Queen of the district for twelve months. She was crowned with wild flowers; feasting, dancing, and rustic sports followed, and were closed by a grand procession in the evening. During her year of office she presided over rural gatherings of young people at dances and merry-makings. If she married before next May Day, her authority was at an end, but her successor was not elected till that day came round.[323] The May Queen is common in France[324] and familiar in England. Thus at the adjoining [Sidenote: The May Queen in Warwickshire.] villages of Cherrington and Stourton in south Warwickshire, the Queen of May is still represented on May Day by a small girl dressed in white and wearing a wreath of flowers on her head. An older girl wheels the Queen in what is called a mail-cart, that is, a child’s perambulator on two wheels. Another girl carries a money-box. Four boys bear the May-pole, a conical framework formed of a high tripod with a central shaft. The whole structure is encased in a series of five hoops, which rise one above the other, diminishing in size from bottom to top with the tapering of the cone. The hoops, as well as the tripod and the central shaft, are all covered with whatever flowers happen to be in bloom, such as marsh-marigolds, primroses, or blue-bells. To the top of the central shaft is fastened a bunch of the flower called crown-imperial, if it is in season. The lowest hoop is crossed by two bars at right angles to each other, and the projecting ends of the bars serve as handles, by which the four boys carry the May-pole. Each of the bearers has a garland of flowers slung over his shoulder. Thus the children go from house to house, singing their songs and receiving money, which goes to provide a treat for them in the afternoon.[325]

[Sidenote: Spirit of vegetation represented simultaneously by a King and Queen or a Bridegroom and Bride.] Again the spirit of vegetation is sometimes represented by a king and queen, a lord and lady, or a bridegroom and bride. Here again the parallelism holds between the anthropomorphic and the vegetable representation of the tree-spirit, for we have seen above that trees are sometimes married to each other.[326] At Halford in south Warwickshire the children go from house to house on May Day, [Sidenote: Whitsuntide King and Queen.] walking two and two in procession and headed by a King and Queen. Two boys carry a May-pole some six or seven feet high, which is covered with flowers and greenery. Fastened to it near the top are two cross-bars at right angles to each other. These are also decked with flowers, and from the ends of the bars hang hoops similarly adorned. At the houses the children sing May songs and receive money, which is used to provide tea for them at the school-house in the afternoon.[327] In a Bohemian village near Königgrätz on Whit-Monday the children play the king’s game, at which a king and queen march about under a canopy, the queen wearing a garland, and the youngest girl carrying two wreaths on a plate behind them. They are attended by boys and girls called groomsmen and bridesmaids, and they go from house to house collecting gifts.[328] A regular feature in the popular celebration of Whitsuntide in Silesia used to be, and to some extent still is, the contest for the kingship. This contest took various forms, but the mark or goal was generally the May-tree or May-pole. Sometimes the youth who succeeded in climbing the smooth pole and bringing down the prize was proclaimed the Whitsuntide King and his sweetheart the Whitsuntide Bride. Afterwards the king, carrying the May-bush, repaired with the rest of the company to the ale-house, where a dance and a feast ended the merry-making. Often the young farmers and labourers raced on horseback to the May-pole, which was adorned with flowers, ribbons, and a crown. He who first reached the pole was the Whitsuntide King, and the rest had to obey his orders for that day. The worst rider became the clown. At the May-tree all dismounted and hoisted the king on their shoulders. He nimbly swarmed up the pole and brought down the May-bush and the crown, which had been fastened to the top. Meantime the clown hurried to the ale-house and proceeded to bolt thirty rolls of bread and to swig four quart bottles of brandy with the utmost possible despatch. He was followed by the king, who bore the May-bush and crown at the head of the company. If on their arrival the clown had already disposed of the rolls and the brandy, and greeted the king with a speech and a glass of beer, his score was paid by the king; otherwise he had to settle it himself. After church time the stately procession wound through the village. At the head of it rode the king, decked with flowers and carrying the May-bush. Next came the clown with his clothes turned inside out, a great flaxen beard on his chin, and the Whitsuntide crown on his head. Two riders disguised as guards followed. The procession drew up before every farmyard; the two guards dismounted, shut the clown into the house, and claimed a contribution from the housewife to buy soap with which to wash the clown’s beard. Custom allowed them to carry off any victuals which were not under lock and key. Last of all they came to the house in which the king’s sweetheart lived. She was greeted as Whitsuntide Queen and received suitable presents—to wit, a many-coloured sash, a cloth, and an apron. The king got as a prize, a vest, a neckcloth, and so forth, and had the right of setting up the May-bush or Whitsuntide-tree before his master’s yard, where it remained as an honourable token till the same day next year. Finally the procession took its way to the tavern, where the king and queen opened the dance. Sometimes the Whitsuntide King and Queen succeeded to office in a different way. A man of straw, as [Sidenote: King and Queen of May.] large as life and crowned with a red cap, was conveyed in a cart, between two men armed and disguised as guards, to a place where a mock court was waiting to try him. A great crowd followed the cart. After a formal trial the straw man was condemned to death and fastened to a stake on the execution ground. The young men with bandaged eyes tried to stab him with a spear. He who succeeded became king and his sweetheart queen. The straw man was known as the Goliath.[329] Near Grenoble, in France, a king and queen are chosen on the first of May and are set on a throne for all to see.[330] At Headington, near Oxford, children used to carry garlands from door to door on May Day. Each garland was borne by two girls, and they were followed by a lord and lady—a boy and girl linked together by a white handkerchief, of which each held an end, and dressed with ribbons, sashes, and flowers. At each door they sang a verse:—

“_Gentlemen and ladies, We wish you happy May; We come to shew you a garland, Because it is May-day._”

On receiving money the lord put his arm about his lady’s waist and kissed her.[331] At Fleuriers in Switzerland on the seventh of May 1843 a May-bridegroom (Époux de Mai) and his bride were escorted in a procession of over two hundred children, some of whom carried green branches of beech. A number of May Fools were entrusted with the delicate duty of going round with the hat. The proceeds of their tact and industry furnished a banquet in the evening, and the day ended with a children’s ball.[332] In some Saxon villages at Whitsuntide a lad and a lass used to disguise themselves and hide in the bushes or high grass outside the village. Then the whole village went out with music “to seek the bridal pair.” When they found the couple they all gathered round them, the music struck up, and the bridal pair was led merrily to the village. In the evening they danced. In some places the bridal pair was called the prince and the princess.[333]

[Sidenote: Whitsuntide Bridegroom and Bride in Denmark.] In a parish of Denmark it used to be the custom at Whitsuntide to dress up a little girl as the Whitsun-bride (pinse-bruden) and a little boy as her groom. She was decked in all the finery of a grown-up bride, and wore a crown of the freshest flowers of spring on her head. Her groom was as gay as flowers, ribbons, and knots could make him. The other children adorned themselves as best they could with the yellow flowers of the trollius and caltha. Then they went in great state from farmhouse to farmhouse, two little girls walking at the head of the procession as bridesmaids, and six or eight outriders galloping ahead on hobby-horses to announce their coming. Contributions of eggs, butter, loaves, cream, coffee, sugar, and tallow-candles were received and conveyed away in baskets. When they had made the round of the farms, some of the farmers’ wives helped to arrange the wedding feast, and the children danced merrily in clogs on the stamped clay floor till the sun rose and the birds began to sing. All this is now a thing of the past. Only the old folks still remember the little Whitsun-bride and her mimic pomp.[334]

[Sidenote: Midsummer Bridegroom and Bride in Sweden and Norway.] We have seen that in Sweden the ceremonies associated elsewhere with May Day or Whitsuntide commonly take place at Midsummer.[335] Accordingly we find that in some parts of the Swedish province of Blekinge they still choose a Midsummer’s Bride, to whom the “church coronet” is occasionally lent. The girl selects for herself a Bridegroom, and a collection is made for the pair, who for the time being are looked on as man and wife. The other youths also choose each his bride.[336] A similar ceremony seems to be still kept up in Norway, for a correspondent writes to me as follows in reference to the Danish custom of the Whitsun-bride: “It may interest you to know that on June 23, 1893, I witnessed at Ullensvang, Hardanger, Norway, a ceremony almost exactly the same as that described in your book. Wild flowers are scarce there, and the bride wore the usual metal crown, the attendants for the most part wearing the pretty Hardanger costume. The dancing took place in an unlighted barn, as the farmer was afraid of fire. There were plenty of boys at the dance, but so far as I can remember, none in the procession. The custom is clearly dying out, and the somewhat reluctant bridegroom was the subject of a good deal of chaff from his fellows.”[337] In Sardinia the Midsummer couples are known as the Sweethearts of St. John, and their association with the growth of plants is clearly brought out by the pots of sprouting grain which form a principal part of the ceremony.[338]

[Sidenote: Forsaken Bridegroom or Bride of May or Whitsuntide.] In the neighbourhood of Briançon (Dauphiné) on May Day the lads wrap up in green leaves a young fellow whose sweetheart has deserted him or married another. He lies down on the ground and feigns to be asleep. Then a girl who likes him, and would marry him, comes and wakes him, and raising him up offers him her arm and a flag. So they go to the alehouse, where the pair lead off the dancing. But they must marry within the year, or they are treated as old bachelor and old maid, and are debarred the company of the young folk. The lad is called the bridegroom of the month of May (le fiancé du mois de May). In the alehouse he puts off his garment of leaves, out of which, mixed with flowers, his partner in the dance makes a nosegay, and wears it at her breast next day, when he leads her again to the alehouse.[339] Like this is a Russian custom observed in the district of Nerechta on the Thursday before Whitsunday. The girls go out into a birch-wood, wind a girdle or band round a stately birch, twist its lower branches into a wreath, and kiss each other in pairs through the wreath. The girls who kiss through the wreath call each other gossips. Then one of the girls steps forward, and mimicking a drunken man, flings herself on the ground, rolls on the grass, and feigns to fall fast asleep. Another girl wakens the pretended sleeper and kisses him; then the whole bevy trips singing through the wood to twine garlands, which they throw into the water. In the fate of the garlands floating on the stream they read their own.[340] Here the part of the sleeper was probably at one time played by a lad. In these French and Russian customs we have a forsaken bridegroom, in the following a forsaken bride. On Shrove Tuesday the Slovenes of Oberkrain drag a straw puppet with joyous cries up and down the village; then they throw it into the water or burn it, and from the height of the flames they judge of the abundance of the next harvest. The noisy crew is followed by a female masker, who drags a great board by a string and gives out that she is a forsaken bride.[341]

Viewed in the light of what has gone before, the awakening of the forsaken sleeper in these ceremonies probably represents the revival of vegetation in spring. But it is not easy to assign their respective parts to the forsaken bridegroom and to the girl who wakes him from his slumber. Is the sleeper the leafless forest or the bare earth of winter? Is the girl who wakens him the fresh verdure or the genial sunshine of spring? It is hardly possible, on the evidence before us, to answer these questions. The Oraons of Bengal, it may be remembered, celebrate the marriage of earth in the springtime, when the sál-tree is in blossom.[342] But from this we can hardly argue that in the European ceremonies the sleeping bridegroom is “the dreaming earth” and the girl the spring blossoms.

[Sidenote: St. Bride in Scotland and the Isle of Man.] In the Highlands of Scotland the revival of vegetation in spring used to be graphically represented on St. Bride’s Day, the first of February. Thus in the Hebrides “the mistress and servants of each family take a sheaf of oats, and dress it up in women’s apparel, put it in a large basket, and lay a wooden club by it, and this they call Briid’s bed; and then the mistress and servants cry three times, ‘Briid is come, Briid is welcome.’ This they do just before going to bed, and when they rise in the morning they look among the ashes, expecting to see the impression of Briid’s club there; which if they do, they reckon it a true presage of a good crop and prosperous year, and the contrary they take as an ill omen.”[343] The same custom is described by another witness thus: “Upon the night before Candlemas it is usual to make a bed with corn and hay, over which some blankets are laid, in a part of the house, near the door. When it is ready, a person goes out and repeats three times, ... ‘Bridget, Bridget, come in; thy bed is ready.’ One or more candles are left burning near it all night.”[344] Similarly in the Isle of Man “on the eve of the first of February, a festival was formerly kept, called, in the Manks language, Laa’l Breeshey, in honour of the Irish lady who went over to the Isle of Man to receive the veil from St. Maughold. The custom was to gather a bundle of green rushes, and standing with them in the hand on the threshold of the door, to invite the holy Saint Bridget to come and lodge with them that night. In the Manks language, the invitation ran thus:—‘Brede, Brede, tar gys my thie tar dyn thie ayms noght. Foshil jee yn dorrys da Brede, as lhig da Brede e heet staigh.’ In English: ‘Bridget, Bridget, come to my house, come to my house to-night. Open the door for Bridget, and let Bridget come in.’ After these words were repeated, the rushes were strewn on the floor by way of a carpet or bed for St. Bridget. A custom very similar to this was also observed in some of the Out-Isles of the ancient kingdom of Man.”[345] In these Manx and Highland ceremonies it is obvious that St. Bride, or St. Bridget, is an old heathen goddess of fertility, disguised in a threadbare Christian cloak. Probably she is no other than the Celtic goddess Brigit, who will meet us again later on.[346]

[Sidenote: May Bride or Whitsuntide Bride.] Often the marriage of the spirit of vegetation in spring, though not directly represented, is implied by naming the human representative of the spirit, “the Bride,” and dressing her in wedding attire. Thus in some villages of Altmark at Whitsuntide, while the boys go about carrying a May-tree or leading a boy enveloped in leaves and flowers, the girls lead about the May Bride, a girl dressed as a bride with a great nosegay in her hair. They go from house to house, the May Bride singing a song in which she asks for a present, and tells the inmates of each house that if they give her something they will themselves have something the whole year through; but if they give her nothing they will themselves have nothing.[347] In some parts of Westphalia two girls lead a flower-crowned girl called the Whitsuntide Bride from door to door, singing a song in which they ask for eggs.[348] At Waggum in Brunswick, when service is over on Whitsunday, the village girls assemble, dressed in white or bright colours, decked with flowers, and wearing chaplets of spring flowers in their hair. One of them represents the May Bride, and carries a crown of flowers on a staff as a sign of her dignity. As usual the children go about from cottage to cottage singing and begging for eggs, sausages, cakes, or money. In other parts of Brunswick it is a boy clothed all in birch leaves who personates the May Bride.[349] In Bresse in the month of May a girl called la Mariée is tricked out with ribbons and nosegays and is led about by a gallant. She is preceded by a lad carrying a green May-tree, and appropriate verses are sung.[350]

Footnote 239:

Quoted by J. Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 246 (ed. Bohn).

Footnote 240:

T. F. Thiselton Dyer, British Popular Customs (London, 1876), p. 254.

Footnote 241:

W. Borlase, The Natural History of Cornwall (Oxford, 1758), p. 294.

Footnote 242:

J. Brand, op. cit. i. 212 sq.

Footnote 243:

T. F. Thiselton Dyer, Popular British Customs, p. 233.

Footnote 244:

R. Chambers, Book of Days (London and Edinburgh, 1886), i. 578; T. F. Thiselton Dyer, op. cit. pp. 237 sq.

Footnote 245:

W. Hone, Every Day Book (London, N.D.), ii. 615 sq.; T. F. Thiselton Dyer, British Popular Customs, pp. 251 sq. At Polebrook in Northamptonshire the verses sung by the children on their rounds include two which are almost identical with those sung at Abingdon in Berkshire. See Dyer, op. cit. pp. 255 sq. The same verses were formerly sung on May Day at Hitchin in Hertfordshire (Hone, Every Day Book, i. 567 sq.; Dyer, op. cit. pp. 240 sq.).

Footnote 246:

Dyer, op. cit. p. 263.

Footnote 247:

Percy Manning, in Folk-lore, iv. (1893) pp. 403 sq.

Footnote 248:

Id., in Folk-lore, viii. (1897) p. 308. Customs of the same sort are reported also from Combe, Headington, and Islip, all in Oxfordshire (Dyer, British Popular Customs, pp. 261 sq.). See below, pp. 90 sq.

Footnote 249:

Dyer, op. cit. p. 243.

Footnote 250:

W. H. D. Rouse, in Folk-lore, iv. (1893) p. 53. I have witnessed the ceremony almost annually for many years. Many of the hoops have no doll, and ribbons or rags of coloured cloth are more conspicuous than flowers in their decoration.

Footnote 251:

J. P. Emslie, in Folk-lore, xi. (1900) p. 210.

Footnote 252:

Memoirs of Anna Maria Wilhelmina Pickering, edited by her son, Spencer Pickering (London, 1903), pp. 160 sq.

Footnote 253:

Lady Wilde, Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages of Ireland (London, 1890), pp. 101 sq. At the ancient Greek festival of the Daphnephoria or “Laurel-bearing” a staff of olive-wood, decked with laurels, purple ribbons, and many-coloured flowers, was carried in procession, and attached to it were two large globes representing the sun and moon, together with a number of smaller globes which stood for the stars. See Proclus, quoted by Photius, Bibliotheca, p. 321, ed. Bekker.

Footnote 254:

E. Cortet, Essai sur les fêtes religieuses (Paris, 1867) pp. 167 sqq.

Footnote 255:

Revue des traditions populaires, ii. (1887) p. 200.

Footnote 256:

W. Müller, Beiträge zur Volkskunde der Deutschen in Mähren (Wien und Olmütz, 1893), pp. 319 sq., 355-359.

Footnote 257:

Folk-lore, i. (1890) pp. 518 sqq.

Footnote 258:

W. R. S. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People 2nd Ed., (London, 1872), pp. 234 sq.

Footnote 259:

A. Kuhn, Märkische Sagen und Märchen (Berlin, 1843), p. 315.

Footnote 260:

W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 162.

Footnote 261:

L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden, p. 235.

Footnote 262:

L. Lloyd, op. cit. pp. 257 sqq.

Footnote 263:

H. Pröhle, Harzbilder (Leipsic, 1855), pp. 19 sq. Compare id., in Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie und Sittenkunde, i. (1853) pp. 81 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Germanische Mythen, pp. 512 sqq.; A. Kuhn und W. Schwartz, Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche (Leipsic, 1848), p. 390, § 80.

Footnote 264:

Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen (Prague, N.D.), pp. 308 sq. A fuller description of the ceremony will be given later.

Footnote 265:

For the evidence see J. Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 234 sqq.; W. Hone, Every Day Book, i. 547 sqq., ii. 574 sqq.; R. Chambers, Book of Days, i. 574 sqq.; T. F. Thiselton Dyer, British Popular Customs, pp. 228 sqq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 168 sqq.

Footnote 266:

Phillip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses, p. 149 (F. J. Furnivall’s reprint). In later editions some verbal changes were made.

Footnote 267:

W. Borlase, Natural History of Cornwall (Oxford, 1758), p. 294.

Footnote 268:

W. Hutchinson, View of Northumberland (Newcastle, 1778), ii. Appendix, pp. 13 sq.; Dyer, British Popular Customs, p. 257.

Footnote 269:

“Padstow ‘Hobby Hoss,’” Folklore, xvi. (1905) pp. 59 sq.

Footnote 270:

E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben (Stuttgart, 1852), p. 396.

Footnote 271:

E. Mogk, in R. Wuttke’s Sächsische Volkskunde 2nd Ed., (Dresden, 1901), pp. 309 sq.

Footnote 272:

M. Rentsch, in R. Wuttke’s op. cit. p. 359.

Footnote 273:

A. De Nore, Coutumes, mythes et traditions des provinces de France (Paris and Lyons, 1846), p. 137.

Footnote 274:

Bérenger-Féraud, Superstitions et survivances (Paris, 1896), v. 308 sq. Compare id., Reminiscences populaires de la Provence, pp. 21 sq., 26, 27.

Footnote 275:

J. G. Scott and J. P. Hardiman, Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, part i. vol. i. (Rangoon, 1900) p. 529.

Footnote 276:

W. Hone, Every Day Book, i. 547 sqq.; R. Chambers, Book of Days, i. 571.

Footnote 277:

Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde des Königreichs Bayern, i. 372.

Footnote 278:

W. Hone, Every Day Book, ii. 597 sq. Mr. G. W. Prothero tells me that about the year 1875 he saw a permanent May-pole decked with flowers on May Day on the road between Cambridge and St. Neot’s, not far from the turning to Caxton.

Footnote 279:

See above, pp. 47 sq.

Footnote 280:

Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen, p. 217; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 566.

Footnote 281:

A. Birlinger, Volksthümliches aus Schwaben (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1861-1862), ii. 74 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 566.

Footnote 282:

Aristophanes, Plutus, 1054; W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, pp. 222 sq.

Footnote 283:

Boecler-Kreutzwald, Der Ehsten abergläubische Gebräuche, Weisen und Gewohnheiten, pp. 112-114. Some traits in this story seem to suggest that the return of the trooper to his old home was, like that of the war-broken veteran in Campbell’s poem, only a soldier’s dream.

Footnote 284:

Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen, pp. 86 sqq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 156.

Footnote 285:

R. Chambers, Book of Days, i. 573. Compare the Cambridge custom, described above, p. 62.

Footnote 286:

W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 312.

Footnote 287:

W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 313.

Footnote 288:

Ibid. p. 314.

Footnote 289:

Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde des Königreichs Bayern, iii. 357; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 312 sq. The word Walber probably comes from Walburgis, which is doubtless only another form of the better known Walpurgis. The second of May is called Walburgis Day, at least in this part of Bavaria.

Footnote 290:

W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 313 sq.

Footnote 291:

H. von Wlislocki, Volksglaube und religiöser Brauch der Zigeuner (Münster i. W., 1891), pp. 148 sq.

Footnote 292:

E. T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, p. 261.

Footnote 293:

B. A. Gupte, “Harvest Festivals in honour of Gauri and Ganesh,” Indian Antiquary, xxxv. (1906) p. 61.

Footnote 294:

W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 315 sq.

Footnote 295:

W. R. S. Ralston, Russian Folk-tales, p. 345. As to Green George see above, pp. 75 sq.

Footnote 296:

W. R. S. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 234.

Footnote 297:

W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 318; J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 4th ed., ii. 657.

Footnote 298:

A. de Nore, Coutumes, mythes et traditions des provinces de France, pp. 17 sq.; Bérenger-Féraud, Réminiscences populaires de la Provence, pp. 1 sq.

Footnote 299:

A. Meyrac, Traditions, coutumes, légendes et contes des Ardennes (Charleville, 1890), pp. 79-82. The girl was called the Trimouzette. A custom of the same general character was practised down to recent times in the Jura (Bérenger-Féraud, Réminiscences populaires de la Provence, p. 18).

Footnote 300:

F. A. Reimann, Deutsche Volksfeste im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Weimar, 1839), pp. 159 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 320; A. Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen, p. 211.

Footnote 301:

W. Kolbe, Hessische Volks-Sitten und Gebräuche im Lichte der heidnischen Vorzeit (Marburg, 1888), p. 70.

Footnote 302:

Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde des Königreichs Bayern, iv. 2, pp. 359 sq. Similarly in the Département de l’Ain (France) on the first of May eight or ten boys unite, clothe one of their number in leaves, and go from house to house begging (W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 318).

Footnote 303:

E. Hoffmann-Krayer, “Fruchtbarkeitsriten im schweizerischen Volksbrauch,” Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde, xi. (1907) p. 252.

Footnote 304:

W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 322; W. Hone, Every-Day Book, i. 583 sqq.; T. F. Thiselton Dyer, British Popular Customs, pp. 230 sq.

Footnote 305:

W. H. D. Rouse, “May-Day in Cheltenham,” Folk-lore, iv. (1893) pp. 50-53. On May Day 1891 I saw a Jack-in-the-Green in the streets of Cambridge.

Footnote 306:

W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 323.

Footnote 307:

W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 323; H. Herzog, Schweizerische Volksfeste, Sitten und Gebräuche (Aarau, 1884), pp. 248 sq.

Footnote 308:

A. Birlinger, Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, ii. 114 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 325.

Footnote 309:

W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 314 sq.

Footnote 310:

A. Kuhn und W. Schwartz, Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche, p. 380.

Footnote 311:

F. Tetzner, “Die Tschechen und Mährer in Schlesien,” Globus, lxviii (1900) p. 340.

Footnote 312:

A. Kuhn und W. Schwartz, op. cit. pp. 383 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 342.

Footnote 313:

R. Andree, Braunschweiger Volkskunde (Brunswick, 1896), pp. 249 sq.

Footnote 314:

K. Seifart, Sagen, Märchen, Schwänke und Gebräuche aus Stadt und Stift Hildesheim, Zweite Auflage (Hildesheim, 1889), pp. 180 sq.

Footnote 315:

Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen, pp. 260 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 342 sq.

Footnote 316:

F. A. Reimann, Deutsche Volksfeste im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, pp. 157-159; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 347 sq.; A. Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen (Vienna, 1878), p. 203.

Footnote 317:

Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen, pp. 253 sqq.

Footnote 318:

Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen, p. 262; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 353 sq.

Footnote 319:

Baumkultus, p. 355.

Footnote 320:

Above, vol. i. pp. 292, 293.

Footnote 321:

Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen, p. 93; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 344.

Footnote 322:

W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 343 sq.

Footnote 323:

T. F. Thiselton Dyer, British Popular Customs, pp. 270 sq.

Footnote 324:

W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 344 sqq.; E. Cortet, Fêtes religieuses, pp. 160 sqq.; D. Monnier, Traditions populaires comparées, pp. 282 sqq.; Bérenger-Féraud, Réminiscences populaires de la Provence, pp. 17 sq.; Ch. Beauquier, Les Mois en Franche-Comté (Paris, 1900), pp. 65-69. In Franche-Comté she seems to be generally known as l’épousée, “the spouse.”

Footnote 325:

From information given me by Mabel Bailey, in the service of Miss A. Wyse of Halford. My informant’s father is a native of Stourton, and she herself has spent much of her life there. I conjecture that the conical flower-bedecked structure may once have been borne by a mummer concealed within it. Compare the customs described above, pp. 82 sq.

Footnote 326:

Above, pp. 24 sqq.

Footnote 327:

From information given me by Miss A. Wyse of Halford.

Footnote 328:

Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen, pp. 265 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 422.

Footnote 329:

P. Drechsler, Sitte, Brauch und Volksglaube in Schlesien, i. (Leipsic, 1903) pp. 125-129.

Footnote 330:

D. Monnier, Traditions populaires comparées (Paris, 1854), p. 304; E. Cortet, Fêtes religieuses, p. 161; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 423.

Footnote 331:

J. Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 233 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 424. We have seen (p. 62) that a custom of the same sort used to be observed at Bampton-in-the-Bush in Oxfordshire.

Footnote 332:

E. Hoffmann-Krayer, “Fruchtbarkeitsriten im schweizerischen Volksbrauch,” Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde, xi. (1907) pp. 257 sq.

Footnote 333:

E. Sommer, Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Sachsen und Thüringen (Halle, 1843), pp. 151 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 431 sq. The custom is now obsolete (E. Mogk, in R. Wuttke’s Sächsische Volkskunde, 2nd Ed., Dresden, 1901, p. 309).

Footnote 334:

H. F. Feilberg, in Folk-lore, vi. (1895) pp. 194 sq.

Footnote 335:

See above, p. 65.

Footnote 336:

L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden, p. 257.

Footnote 337:

Mr. W. C. Crofts, in a letter to me dated February 3, 1901, 9 Northwich Terrace, Cheltenham.

Footnote 338:

For details see Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 202 sq.

Footnote 339:

This custom was told to W. Mannhardt by a French prisoner in the war of 1870-71 (Baumkultus, p. 434).

Footnote 340:

W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 434 sq.

Footnote 341:

Ibid. p. 435.

Footnote 342:

See above, pp. 76 sq.

Footnote 343:

M. Martin, Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (London, 1673 [1703]), p. 119; id. in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, iii. 613; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 436. According to Martin, the ceremony took place on Candlemas Day, the second of February. But this seems to be a mistake. See J. G. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, pp. 247 sq. The Rev. James Macdonald, of Reay in Caithness, was assured by old people that the sheaf used in making Briid’s bed was the last sheaf cut at harvest (J. Macdonald, Religion and Myth, p. 141). Later on we shall see that the last sheaf is often regarded as embodying the spirit of the corn, and special care is therefore taken of it.

Footnote 344:

John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Alex. Allardyce (Edinburgh, 1888), ii. 447. At Ballinasloe in County Galway it is customary to fasten a cross of twisted corn in the roof of the cottages on Candlemas Day. The cross is fastened by means of a knife stuck through a potato, and remains in its place for months, if not for a year. This custom (of which I was informed by Miss Nina Hill in a letter dated May 5, 1898) may be connected with the Highland one described in the text.

Footnote 345:

J. Train, Historical and Statistical Account of the Isle of Man (Douglas, Isle of Man, 1845), ii. 116.

Footnote 346:

See below, pp. 240 sqq. Brigit is the true original form of the name, which has been corrupted into Breed, Bride, and Bridget. See Douglas Hyde, A Literary History of Ireland (London, 1899), p. 53, note 2.

Footnote 347:

A. Kuhn, Märkische Sagen und Märchen, pp. 318 sqq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 437.

Footnote 348:

W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 438.

Footnote 349:

R. Andree, Braunschweiger Volkskunde (Brunswick, 1896), p. 248.

Footnote 350:

D. Monnier, Traditions populaires comparées, pp. 283 sq.; E. Cortet, Fêtes religieuses, pp. 162 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 439 sq.

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XI. THE INFLUENCE OF THE SEXES ON VEGETATION

[Sidenote: The marriage of the King and Queen of May intended to promote the growth of vegetation by homoeopathic magic.] From the preceding examination of the spring and summer festivals of Europe we may infer that our rude forefathers personified the powers of vegetation as male and female, and attempted, on the principle of homoeopathic or imitative magic, to quicken the growth of trees and plants by representing the marriage of the sylvan deities in the persons of a King and Queen of May, a Whitsun Bridegroom and Bride, and so forth. Such representations were accordingly no mere symbolic or allegorical dramas, pastoral plays designed to amuse or instruct a rustic audience. They were charms intended to make the woods to grow green, the fresh grass to sprout, the corn to shoot, and the flowers to blow. And it was natural to suppose that the more closely the mock marriage of the leaf-clad or flower-decked mummers aped the real marriage of the woodland sprites, the more effective would be the charm. Accordingly we may assume with a high degree of probability that the profligacy which notoriously attended these ceremonies[351] was at one time not an accidental excess but an essential part of the rites, and that in the opinion of those who performed them the marriage of trees and plants could not be fertile without the real union of the human sexes. At the present day it might perhaps be vain to look in civilised Europe for customs of this sort observed for the explicit purpose of promoting the growth of vegetation. But ruder races in other parts of the world have consciously employed the intercourse of the sexes as a means to ensure the fruitfulness of the earth; and some rites which are still, or were till lately, kept up in Europe can be reasonably explained only as stunted relics of a similar practice. The following facts will make this plain.

[Sidenote: Intercourse of the sexes practised in order to make the crops grow.] For four days before they committed the seed to the earth the Pipiles of Central America kept apart from their wives “in order that on the night before planting they might indulge their passions to the fullest extent; certain persons are even said to have been appointed to perform the sexual act at the very moment when the first seeds were deposited in the ground.” The use of their wives at that time was indeed enjoined upon the people by the priests as a religious duty, in default of which it was not lawful to sow the seed.[352] The only possible explanation of this custom seems to be that the Indians confused the process by which human beings reproduce their kind with the process by which plants discharge the same function, and fancied that by resorting to the former they were simultaneously forwarding the latter. In the month of December, when the alligator pears begin to ripen, the Indians of Peru used to hold a festival called Acatay mita in order to make the fruit grow mellow. The festival lasted five days and nights, and was preceded by a fast of five days during which they ate neither salt nor pepper and refrained from their wives. At the festival men and boys assembled stark naked in an open space among the orchards, and ran from there to a distant hill. Any woman whom they overtook on the way they violated.[353] In some parts of Java, at the season when the bloom will soon be on the rice, the husbandman and his wife visit their fields by night and there engage in sexual intercourse for the purpose of promoting the growth of the crop.[354] In the Leti, Sarmata, and some other groups of islands which lie between the western end of New Guinea and the northern part of Australia, the heathen population regard the sun as the male principle by whom the earth or female principle is fertilised. They call him Upu-lera or Mr. Sun, and represent him under the form of a lamp made of coco-nut leaves, which may be seen hanging everywhere in their houses and in the sacred fig-tree. Under the tree lies a large flat stone, which serves as a sacrificial table. On it the heads of slain foes were and are still placed in some of the islands. Once a year, at the beginning of the rainy season, Mr. Sun comes down into the holy fig-tree to fertilise the earth, and to facilitate his descent a ladder with seven rungs is considerately placed at his disposal. It is set up under the tree and is adorned with carved figures of the birds whose shrill clarion heralds the approach of the sun in the East. On this occasion pigs and dogs are sacrificed in profusion; men and women alike indulge in a saturnalia; and the mystic union of the sun and the earth is dramatically represented in public, amid song and dance, by the real union of the sexes under the tree. The object of the festival, we are told, is to procure rain, plenty of food and drink, abundance of cattle and children and riches from Grandfather Sun. They pray that he may make every she-goat to cast two or three young, the people to multiply, the dead pigs to be replaced by living pigs, the empty rice-baskets to be filled, and so on. And to induce him to grant their requests they offer him pork and rice and liquor, and invite him to fall to. In the Babar Islands a special flag is hoisted at this festival as a symbol of the creative energy of the sun; it is of white cotton, about nine feet high, and consists of the figure of a man in an appropriate attitude.[355] Among the Tangkhuls of Manipur, before the rice is sown and when it is reaped, the boys and girls have a tug-of-war with a tough rope of twisted creeper. Great jars of beer are set ready, and the strictness of their ordinary morality is broken by a night of unbridled licence.[356] It would be unjust to treat these orgies as a mere outburst of unbridled passion; no doubt they are deliberately and solemnly organised as essential to the fertility of the earth and the welfare of man.

[Sidenote: Intercourse of the sexes practised in order to make trees bear fruit.] The same means which are thus adopted to stimulate the growth of the crops are naturally employed to ensure the fruitfulness of trees. The work known as The Agriculture of the Nabataeans contained apparently a direction that the grafting of a tree upon another tree of a different sort should be done by a damsel, who at the very moment of inserting the graft in the bough should herself be subjected to treatment which can only be regarded as a direct copy of the operation she was performing on the tree.[357] In some parts of Amboyna, when the state of the clove plantation indicates that the crop is likely to be scanty, the men go naked to the plantations by night, and there seek to fertilise the trees precisely as they would impregnate women, while at the same time they call out for “More cloves!” This is supposed to make the trees bear fruit more abundantly.[358] In Java when a palm tree is to be tapped for wine, the man who proposes to relieve the tree of its superfluous juices deems it necessary to approach the palm in the character of a lover and a husband, as well as of a son. When he comes upon a palm which he thinks suitable, he will not begin cutting at the trunk until he has intimated as delicately as he can the reasons which lead him to perform that surgical operation, and the ardent affection which he cherishes for the tree. For this purpose he holds a dialogue with the palm, in which he naturally speaks in the character of the tree as well as in his own. “O mother endang-reni!” he begins, “for the sake of you I have let myself be drenched by the rain and scorched by the sun; long have I sought you! Now at last have I found you. How ardently have I longed for you! Often before have you given me the breast. Yet I still thirst. Therefore now I ask for four potfuls more.” “Well, fair youth,” replies the tree, “I have always been here. What is the reason that you have sought me?” “The reason I have sought you is that I have heard you suffer from incontinentia urinae.” “So I do,” says the tree. “Will you marry me?” says the man. “That I will,” says the tree, “but first you must plight your troth and recite the usual confession of faith.” On that the man takes a rattan leaf and wraps it round the palm as a pledge of betrothal, after which he says the creed: “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.” The maidenly and orthodox scruples of the tree having thus been satisfied, he embraces it as his bride. At first he attaches only a small dish to the trunk to receive the juices which exude from the cut in the bark; a large dish might frighten the tree. In fastening the dish to the palm he says, “Bok-endang-reni! your child is languishing away for thirst. He asks you for a drink.” The tree replies, “Let him slake his thirst! Mother’s breasts are full to overflowing.”[359] We have already seen that in some parts of Northern India a mock marriage between two actors is performed in honour of a newly-planted orchard,[360] no doubt for the purpose of making it bear fruit. In the Nicobar Islands a pregnant woman is taken into the gardens in order to impart the blessing of fertility to the plants.[361]

[Sidenote: In Uganda parents of twins are supposed to fertilise the plantains.] The Baganda of Central Africa believe so strongly in the intimate relation between the intercourse of the sexes and the fertility of the ground that among them a barren wife is generally sent away because she is supposed to prevent her husband’s garden from bearing fruit. On the contrary, a couple who have given proof of extraordinary fertility by becoming the parents of twins are believed by the Baganda to be endowed with a corresponding power of increasing the fruitfulness of the plantain-trees, which furnish them with their staple food. Some little time after the birth of the twins a ceremony is performed, the object of which clearly is to transmit the reproductive virtue of the parents to the plantains. The mother lies down on her back in the thick grass near the house and places a flower of the plantain between her legs; then her husband comes and knocks the flower away with his genital member. Further, the parents go through the country, performing dances in the gardens of favoured friends, apparently for the purpose of causing the plantain-trees to bear fruit more abundantly. The same belief in the fertilising power of such parents probably explains why in Uganda the father of twins is inviolable and may go into anybody’s garden and take the produce at will. To distinguish him from the common herd his hair is cut in a special way, and he wears little bells at his ankles which tinkle as he walks. His sacred character is further manifested by a rule which he must observe after the round of visits has been paid, and the dances in the gardens are over. He has to remain at home until the next time that the army goes forth to battle, and in the interval he may neither dress his hair nor cut his finger-nails. When war has been proclaimed, his whole body is shaved and his nails cut. The clipped hair and nails he ties up in a ball, which he takes with him to the war, along with the bark cloth which he wore at the dances. When he has killed a foe, he crams the ball into the dead man’s mouth, ties the bark-cloth round his neck, and leaves them there on the battlefield.[362] Apparently the ceremony is intended to rid him of the peculiar sanctity or state of taboo which he contracted by the birth of twins, and to facilitate his return to ordinary life. For, to the mind of the savage, as we shall see later on, sanctity has its dangers and inconveniences, and the sacred man may often be glad to divest himself of it by stripping himself of those separable parts of his person—the hair and nails—to which the holy contagion is apt to cling.

[Sidenote: Relics of similar customs in Europe.] In various parts of Europe customs have prevailed both at spring and harvest which are clearly based on the same crude notion that the relation of the human sexes to each other can be so used as to quicken the growth of plants. For example, in the Ukraine on St. George’s Day (the twenty-third of April) the priest in his robes, attended by his acolytes, goes out to the fields of the village, where the crops are beginning to shew green above the ground, and blesses them. After that the young married people lie down in couples on the sown fields and roll several times over on them, in the belief that this will promote the growth of the crops. In some parts of Russia the priest himself is rolled by women over the sprouting crop, and that without regard to the mud and holes which he may encounter in his beneficent progress. If the shepherd resists or remonstrates, his flock murmurs, “Little Father, you do not really wish us well, you do not wish us to have corn, although you do wish to live on our corn.”[363] In England it seems to have been customary for young couples to roll down a slope together on May Day; on Greenwich-hill the custom was practised at Easter and Whitsuntide,[364] as it was till lately practised near Dublin on Whitmonday.[365] When we consider how closely these seasons, especially May Day and Whitsuntide, are associated with ceremonies for the revival of plant life in spring, we shall scarcely doubt that the custom of rolling in couples at such times had originally the same significance which it still has in Russia; and when further we compare this particular custom with the practice of representing the vernal powers of vegetation by a bridal pair, and remember the traditions which even in our own country attach to May Day,[366] we shall probably do no injustice to our forefathers if we conclude that they once celebrated the return of spring with grosser rites, of which the customs I have referred to are only a stunted survival. Indeed, these rites in their grossest form are said to be still observed in various parts of Holland at Whitsuntide.[367] In some parts of Germany at harvest the men and women, who have reaped the corn, roll together on the field.[368] This again is probably a mitigation of an older and ruder custom designed to impart fertility to the fields by methods like those resorted to by the Pipiles of Central America long ago and by the cultivators of rice in Java at the present time. In Poso, when the rice-crop is not thriving, the farmer’s wife sets bowls of rice and betel in various parts of the field; then she lies down, draws her petticoat over her head, and pretends to fall asleep. But one of her children thereupon mimics the crowing of a cock, and at the sound she gets up, “because a new day has dawned.” The intention of this ceremony, which the natives could not or would not explain to the Dutch missionary who reports it, may be to place the woman at the disposal of the god of the field. We are expressly told that there is a special god of the rice-fields named Puwe-wai, and that the ceremony in question is performed in his honour.[369]

[Sidenote: Continence practised in order to make the crops grow.] To the student who cares to track the devious course of the human mind in its gropings after truth, it is of some interest to observe that the same theoretical belief in the sympathetic influence of the sexes on vegetation, which has led some peoples to indulge their passions as a means of fertilising the earth, has led others to seek the same end by directly opposite means. From the moment that they sowed the maize till the time that they reaped it, the Indians of Nicaragua lived chastely, keeping apart from their wives and sleeping in a separate place. They ate no salt, and drank neither cocoa nor chicha, the fermented liquor made from maize; in short the season was for them, as the Spanish historians observe, a time of abstinence.[370] To this day some of the Indian tribes of Central America practise continence for the purpose of thereby promoting the growth of the crops. Thus we are told that before sowing the maize the Kekchi Indians sleep apart from their wives, and eat no flesh for five days, while among the Lanquineros and Cajaboneros the period of abstinence from these carnal pleasures extends to thirteen days.[371] So amongst some of the Germans of Transylvania it is a rule that no man may sleep with his wife during the whole of the time that he is engaged in sowing his fields.[372] The same rule is observed at Kalotaszeg in Hungary; the people think that if the custom were not observed the corn would be mildewed.[373] Similarly a Central Australian headman of the Kaitish tribe strictly abstains from marital relations with his wife all the time that he is performing magical ceremonies to make the grass grow; for he believes that a breach of this rule would prevent the grass seed from sprouting properly.[374] In some of the Melanesian islands, when the yam vines are being trained, the men sleep near the gardens and never approach their wives; should they enter the garden after breaking this rule of continence the fruits of the garden would be spoilt.[375] In the Motu tribe of New Guinea, when rain has fallen plentifully and there is promise of a good crop of bananas, one of the chief men becomes holy or taboo, and must live apart from his wife and eat only certain kinds of food. He bids the young men beat the drum and dance, “in order that by so doing there may be a large harvest. If the dancing is not given, there will be an end to the good growth; but if it is continued, all will go well. People come in from other villages to assist, and will dance all night.”[376] In the Mekeo district of British New Guinea, when a taboo has been put on the coco-nuts and areca-nuts to promote their growth, some fourteen or fifteen men act as watchmen to enforce the taboo. Every evening they go round the village armed with clubs and wearing masks or so covered with leaves that nobody would know them. All the time they are in office they may not chew betel nor drink coco-nut water, lest the areca-nuts (which are eaten with betel) and the coco-nuts should fail. Moreover, they may not live with their wives; indeed, they may not even look at a woman, and if they pass one they must keep their eyes on the ground.[377] Among the Kabuis of Manipur, before the rice is sown and when it is reaped, the strictest chastity has to be observed, especially by the religious head of the village, who, besides always taking the omens on behalf of the villagers, is the first to sow and the first to reap.[378] Some of the tribes of Assam believe that so long as the crops remain ungarnered, the slightest incontinence might ruin all.[379] In the incense-growing region of Arabia in antiquity there were three families charged with the special care of the incense-trees. They were called sacred, and at the time when they cut the trees or gathered the incense they were forbidden to pollute themselves with women or with the contact of the dead; the observance of these rules of ceremonial purity was believed to increase the supply of incense.[380] Apparently the incense itself was deemed holy, for on being gathered it was deposited in the sanctuary of the Sun, where the merchants inspected and purchased it.[381] With ancient Greek husbandmen it was a maxim that olives should always be planted and gathered by pure boys and virgins; the uncommon fruitfulness of the olive-trees at Anazarbus in Cilicia was attributed to their being tended by young and innocent children. In default of such workers, the olive-gatherer had to swear that he had been faithful to his own wife; for his fidelity was believed to ensure an abundant crop of fruit the following year.[382]

[Sidenote: Illicit love supposed to blight the fruits of the earth.] Again, the sympathetic relation supposed to exist between the commerce of the sexes and the fertility of the earth manifests itself in the belief that illicit love tends, directly or indirectly, to mar that fertility and to blight the crops.[383] Such a belief prevails, for example, among the Karens of Burma. They imagine that adultery or fornication has a powerful influence to injure the harvest. Hence if the crops have been bad for a year or two, and no rain falls, the villagers set down the dearth to secret sins of this kind, and say that the God of heaven and earth is angry with them on that account; and they all unite in making an offering to appease him. Further, whenever adultery or fornication is detected, the elders decide that the sinners must buy a hog and kill it. Then the woman takes one foot of the hog, and the man takes another, and they scrape out furrows in the ground with each foot, and fill the furrows with the blood of the hog. Next they scratch the ground with their hands and pray: “God of heaven and earth, God of the mountains and hills, I have destroyed the productiveness of the country. Do not be angry with me, do not hate me; but have mercy on me, and compassionate me. Now I repair the mountains, now I heal the hills, and the streams and the lands. May there be no failure of crops, may there be no unsuccessful labours, or unfortunate efforts in my country. Let them be dissipated to the foot of the horizon. Make thy paddy fruitful, thy rice abundant. Make the vegetables to flourish. If we cultivate but little, still grant that we may obtain a little.” After each has prayed thus, they return to the house and say they have repaired the earth.[384] The Battas of Sumatra think that if an unmarried woman is big with child, it is necessary to give her in marriage at once, even to a man of lower rank; for otherwise the people will be infested by tigers, and the crops in the field will not yield an abundant return. The crime of incest, in their opinion, would blast the whole harvest if the wrong were not speedily repaired. Epidemics and other calamities that affect the whole people are almost always traced by them to incest, by which is to be understood any marriage that conflicts with their customs.[385]

[Sidenote: Dyak belief that lewdness may cause bad weather and spoil the crops.] Similar views are held by various tribes of Borneo. Thus when the rain pours down steadily day after day and week after week, and the crops are rotting in the fields, the Dyaks of Borneo come to the conclusion that some one has been indulging in fleshly lusts; so the elders lay their heads together and adjudicate on all cases of incest and bigamy, and purify the earth with the blood of pigs, which appears to possess in a high degree the valuable property of atoning for moral guilt. For three days the villages are tabooed and all labour discontinued; the inhabitants remain at home, and no strangers are admitted. Not long ago the offenders, whose lewdness had thus brought the whole country into danger, would have been punished with death or at least slavery. A Dyak may not marry his first cousin unless he first performs a special ceremony called bergaput to avert evil consequences from the land. The couple repair to the water-side, fill a small pitcher with their personal ornaments, and sink it in the river; or instead of a jar they fling a chopper and a plate into the water. A pig is then sacrificed on the bank, and its carcase, drained of blood, is thrown in after the jar. Next the pair are pushed into the water by their friends and ordered to bathe together. Lastly, a joint of bamboo is filled with pig’s blood, and the couple perambulate the country and the villages round about, sprinkling the blood on the ground. After that they are free to marry. This is done, we are told, for the sake of the whole country, in order that the rice may not be blasted.[386] The Bahaus or Kayans, a tribe in the interior of Borneo, [Sidenote: Kayan belief that adultery or fornication spoils the harvest.] believe that adultery is punished by the spirits, who visit the whole tribe with failure of the crops and other misfortunes. Hence in order to avert these calamities from the innocent members of the tribe, the two culprits, with all their possessions, are put in quarantine on a gravel bank in the middle of the river; then in order thoroughly to disinfect them, pigs and fowls are killed, and with the blood priestesses smear the property of the guilty pair. Finally the two are set on a raft, with sixteen eggs, and allowed to drift down the stream. They may save themselves by swimming ashore, but this is perhaps a mitigation of an older sentence of death by drowning. Young people shower long grass-stalks, which stand for spears, at the shamefaced and dripping couple.[387] The Blu-u Kayans of the same region similarly imagine that an intrigue between an unmarried pair is punished by the spirits with failure of the harvest, of the fishing, and of the hunt. Hence the delinquents have to appease the wrath of the spirits by sacrificing a pig and some rice.[388]

[Sidenote: Incest and seduction supposed to be a cause of bad weather and failure of crops in Celebes.] Among the Macassars and Bugineese of Southern Celebes incest is a capital crime. “In the Bugineese language this misdeed is called sâpa-tâna, which, literally translated, signifies that the ground (tâna) which has been polluted with the blood of such a person must above all be shunned (sâpa). When we remember how afraid of evil spirits a native is in passing even a spot that has been stained with innocent blood, we can easily conceive what passes in his mind at the thought of the blood of one who has been guilty of such a crime. When the rivers dry up and the supply of fish runs short, when the harvest and the produce of the gardens miscarry, when edible fruits fail, and especially when sickness is rife among the cattle and horses, as well as when civil strife breaks out and the country suffers from any other widespread calamity, the native generally thinks that earth and air have been sullied with the blood of persons who have committed incest. The blood of such people should naturally not be shed. Hence the punishment usually inflicted on them is that of drowning. They are tied up in a sack and thrown into the sea. Yet they get with them on their journey to eternity the necessary provisions, consisting of a bag of rice, salt, dried fish, coco-nuts and so on, not forgetting three quids of betel.”[389] Among the Tomori of Central Celebes a person guilty of incest is throttled; no drop of his blood may fall on the ground, for if it did, the rice would never grow again. The union of uncle and niece is regarded by these people as incest, but it can be expiated by an offering. A garment of the man and one of the woman are laid on a copper vessel; the blood of a sacrificed animal, either a goat or a fowl, is allowed to drip on the garments, and then the vessel with its contents is suffered to float down the river.[390] Among the Tolalaki, another tribe of Central Celebes, persons who have defiled themselves with incest are shut up in a basket and drowned. No drop of their blood may be spilt on the ground, for that would hinder the earth from ever bearing fruit again.[391] When it rains in torrents, the Galelareese of Halmahera say that brother and sister, or father and daughter, or in short some near relations are having illicit relations with each other, and that every human being must be informed of it, for then only will the rain cease to descend. The superstition has repeatedly caused blood relations to be accused, rightfully or wrongfully, of incest. The people also regard other alarming natural phenomena, for instance a violent earthquake or the eruption of a volcano, as consequences of crimes of the same sort. Persons charged with such offences are brought to Ternate; it is said that formerly they were often drowned on the way or, on being haled thither, were condemned to be thrown into the volcano.[392]

[Sidenote: Breaches of sexual morality supposed to prevent rain and so to blight the fruits of the earth in Africa.] In some parts of Africa, also, it is believed that breaches of sexual morality disturb the course of nature, particularly by blighting the fruits of the earth. Thus the negroes of Loango suppose that the intercourse of a man with an immature girl is punished by God with drought and consequent famine, until the culprits atone for their sin by dancing naked before the king and an assembly of the people, who throw hot gravel and bits of glass at the pair. For example, in the year 1898, it was discovered that a long drought was caused by the misconduct of three girls, who were with child before they had passed through what is called the paint-house, that is, before they had been painted red and secluded for a time in token that they had attained to the age of puberty. The people were very angry and tried to punish or even kill the girls.[393] Amongst the Bavili of Loango, it is believed that if a man breaks the marriage law by marrying a woman of his mother’s clan, God will in like manner punish the crime by withholding the rains in their due season.[394] Similar notions of the blighting influence of sexual crime appear to be entertained by the Nandi of British East Africa, for amongst them a girl who has been gotten with child by a warrior, may never look inside of a granary for fear of spoiling the corn.[395] Among the Basutos likewise “while the corn is exposed to view, all defiled persons are carefully kept from it. If the aid of a man in this state is necessary for carrying home the harvest, he remains at some distance while the sacks are filled, and only approaches to place them upon the draught oxen. He withdraws as soon as the load is deposited at the dwelling, and under no pretext can he assist in pouring the corn into the baskets in which it is preserved.”[396] The nature of the defilement which thus disqualifies a man for handling the corn is not mentioned, but probably it would include unchastity. We may conjecture that it was for a similar reason that the Basoga of Central Africa used to punish severely the seduction of a virgin. “If a man was convicted of such a crime, and the woman’s guilt was discovered, he and she were sent at night time to Kaluba’s village, where they were tied to a tree. This tall spreading incense-tree was thought to be under the protection of a spirit called Kakua Kambuzi. Next morning the erring couple were discovered by people in the surrounding plantations, who released them. They were then allowed to settle near the tree of the protecting spirit.” This practice of tying the culprits to a sacred tree may have been thought to atone for their crime and so to ensure the fertility of the earth which they had imperilled. The notion perhaps was to deliver the criminals into the power of the offended tree-spirit; if they were found alive in the morning, it was a sign that he had pardoned them. “Curiously enough, the Basoga also held in great abhorrence anything like incest amongst domestic animals—that is to say, they greatly disapproved of intercourse between a bull calf and its mother-cow, or between a bull and a cow that were known to be brother and sister. If this occurred, the bull and cow were sent by night to a fetish tree and tied there. The next morning the chief of the district appropriated the animals and turned them to his own use.”[397] Following out the same train of thought, the Toradjas of Central Celebes ingeniously employ [Sidenote: Incest of animals employed as a rain-charm in Africa.] the incest of animals as a rain-charm. For they believe that the anger of the gods at incest or bestiality manifests itself in the form of violent storms, heavy rain, or long drought. Accordingly they think that it is always in their power to enrage the gods by committing incest and so to procure rain when it is needed. However, they abstain from perpetrating the crime among themselves, first, because it would be necessary to put the culprits to death, and second, because the storms thus raised would be so furious that they would do more harm than good. But they fancy that the incest, real or simulated, of animals is a lighter offence, which by discomposing, without exasperating, the higher powers will disturb the balance of nature just enough to improve the weather. A ceremony of this sort was witnessed by a missionary. Rain was wanted, and the headman of the village had to see that it fell. He took his measures accordingly. Attended by a crowd he carried a cock and a little sow to the river. Here the animals were killed, laid side by side in an intimate embrace, and wrapped tightly up in a piece of cotton. Then the headman engaged in prayer. “O gods above and gods below,” said he, “if you have pity on us, and will that we eat food this year, give rain. If you will not give rain, well we have here buried a cock and a sow in an intimate embrace.” By which he meant to say, “Be angry at this abomination which we have committed, and manifest your anger in storms.”[398]

These examples suffice to prove that among many savage races breaches of the marriage laws are thought to blast the fruits of the earth through excessive rain or excessive drought. Similar notions of the disastrous effects of sexual crimes may [Sidenote: Similar notions of the blighting effect of sexual crime may be detected among the civilised races of antiquity, for example, among the Jews.] be detected among some of the civilised races of antiquity, who seem not to have limited the supposed sterilising influence of such offences to the fruits of the earth, but to have extended it also to women and cattle.[399] Thus among the Hebrews we read how Job, passionately protesting his innocence before God, declares that he is no adulterer; “For that,” says he, “were an heinous crime; yea, it were an iniquity to be punished by the judges: for it is a fire that consumeth unto Destruction, and would root out all mine increase.”[400] In this passage the Hebrew word translated “increase” commonly means “the produce of the earth;”[401] and if we give the word its usual sense here, then Job affirms adultery to be destructive of the fruits of the ground, which is just what many savages still believe. This interpretation of his words is strongly confirmed by two narratives in Genesis, where we read how Sarah, Abraham’s wife, was taken into his harem by a king who did not know her to be the wife of the patriarch, and how thereafter God visited the king and his household with great plagues, especially by closing up the wombs of the king’s wives and his maid-servants, so that they bore no children. It was not till the king had discovered and confessed his sin, and Abraham had prayed God to forgive him, that the king’s women again became fruitful.[402] These narratives seem to imply that adultery, even when it is committed in ignorance, is a cause of plague and especially of sterility among women. Again, in Leviticus, after a long list of sexual crimes, we read:[403] “Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out from before you: and the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land vomiteth out her inhabitants.” This passage appears to imply that the land itself was somehow physically tainted by sexual transgressions so that it could no longer support the inhabitants.

[Sidenote: Blighting effect attributed to incest by the ancient Greeks and Irish.] It would seem that the ancient Greeks and Romans entertained similar notions as to the wasting effect of incest. According to Sophocles the land of Thebes suffered from blight, from pestilence, and from the sterility both of women and of cattle under the reign of Oedipus, who had unwittingly slain his father and wedded his mother, and the Delphic oracle declared that the only way to restore the prosperity of the country was to banish the sinner from it, as if his mere presence withered plants, animals, and women.[404] No doubt the poet and his hearers set down these public calamities in great part to the guilt of parricide, which rested on Oedipus; but they can hardly have failed to lay much also of the evil at the door of his incest with his mother. Again, in ancient Italy, under the Emperor Claudius, a Roman noble was accused of incest with his sister. He committed suicide, his sister was banished, and the emperor ordered that certain ancient ceremonies traditionally derived from the laws of King Servius Tullius should be performed, and that expiation should be made by the pontiffs at the sacred grove of Diana,[405] probably the famous Arician grove, which has furnished the starting-point of our enquiry. As Diana appears to have been a goddess of fertility in general and of the fruitfulness of women in particular, the atonement made at her sanctuary for incest may perhaps be accepted as evidence that the Romans, like other peoples, attributed to sexual immorality a tendency to blast the fruits both of the earth and of the womb. This inference is strengthened by a precept laid down by grave Roman writers that bakers, cooks, and butlers ought to be strictly chaste and continent, because it was most important that food and cups should be handled either by persons under the age of puberty, or at all events by persons who indulged very sparingly in sexual intercourse; for which reason if a baker, a cook, or a butler broke this rule of continence it was his bounden duty to wash in a river or other running water before he applied himself again to his professional duties. But for all such duties the services of a boy or of a virgin were preferred.[406] The Celts of ancient Ireland similarly believed that incest blighted the fruits of the earth. According to legend Munster was afflicted in the third century of our era with a failure of the crops and other misfortunes. When the nobles enquired into the matter, they were told that these calamities were the result of an incest which the king had committed with his sister. In order to put an end to the evil they demanded of the king his two sons, the fruit of his unholy union, that they might consume them with fire and cast their ashes into the running stream. However, one of the sons, Corc by name, is said to have been purged of his inherited taint by being sent out of Ireland to an island, where a Druid purified him every morning, by putting him on the back of a white cow with red ears, and pouring water over him, till one day the cow jumped into the sea and became a rock, no doubt taking the sin of Corc’s father away with her. After that the boy was brought back to Erin.[407]

[Sidenote: Belief in the blighting effect of incest may have helped to institute the forbidden degrees.] Thus the belief that incest or sexual crime in general has power to blast the fruits of the earth is widespread and probably goes back to a very remote antiquity; it may long have preceded the rise of agriculture. We may conjecture that in its origin the belief was magical rather than religious; in other words, that the blight was at first supposed to be a direct consequence of the act itself rather than a punishment inflicted on the criminal by gods or spirits. Conceived as an unnatural union of the sexes, incest might be thought to subvert the regular processes of reproduction, and so to prevent the earth from yielding its fruits and to hinder animals and men from propagating their kinds. At a later time the anger of spiritual beings would naturally be invoked in order to give a religious sanction to the old taboo. If this was so, it is possible that something of the horror which incest has excited among most, though by no means all, races of men, sprang from this ancient superstition and has been transmitted as an instinct in many nations long after the imaginary ground of it had been forgotten. Certainly a course of conduct which was supposed to endanger or destroy the general supply of food and therefore to strike a blow at the very life of the whole people, could not but present itself to the savage imagination as a crime of the blackest dye, fraught with the most fatal consequences to the public weal. How far such a superstition may in the beginning have operated to prevent the union of near kin, in other words, to institute the system of prohibited degrees which still prevails among the great majority of mankind, both savage and civilised, is a question which deserves to be considered by the historians of marriage.[408]

[Sidenote: Explanation of the seeming contradiction in the foregoing customs.] If we ask why it is that similar beliefs should logically lead, among different peoples, to such opposite modes of conduct as strict chastity and more or less open debauchery, the reason, as it presents itself to the primitive mind, is perhaps not very far to seek. If rude man identifies himself, in a manner, with nature; if he fails to distinguish the impulses and processes in himself from the methods which nature adopts to ensure the reproduction of plants and animals, he may leap to one of two conclusions. Either he may infer that by yielding to his appetites he will thereby assist in the multiplication of plants and animals; or he may imagine that the vigour which he refuses to expend in reproducing his own kind, will form as it were a store of energy whereby other creatures, whether vegetable or animal, will somehow benefit in propagating their species. Thus from the same crude philosophy, the same primitive notions of nature and life, the savage may derive by different channels a rule either of profligacy or of asceticism.

[Sidenote: Indirect benefit of some of these superstitious customs.] To readers bred in a religion which is saturated with the ascetic idealism of the East, the explanation which I have given of the rule of continence observed under certain circumstances by rude or savage peoples may seem far-fetched [Sidenote: The ascetic view of chastity not understood by the savage.] and improbable. They may think that moral purity, which is so intimately associated in their minds with the observance of such a rule, furnishes a sufficient explanation of it; they may hold with Milton[409] that chastity in itself is a noble virtue, and that the restraint which it imposes on one of the strongest impulses of our animal nature marks out those who can submit to it as men raised above the common herd, and therefore worthy to receive the seal of the divine approbation. However natural this mode of thought may seem to us, it is utterly foreign and indeed incomprehensible to the savage. If he resists on occasion the sexual instinct, it is from no high idealism, no ethereal aspiration after moral purity, but for the sake of some ulterior yet perfectly definite and concrete object, to gain which he is prepared to sacrifice the immediate gratification of his senses. That this is or may be so, the examples I have cited are amply sufficient to prove. They shew that where the instinct of self-preservation, which manifests itself chiefly in the search for food, conflicts or appears to conflict with the instinct which conduces to the propagation of the species, the former instinct, as the primary and more fundamental, is capable of over-mastering the latter. In short, the savage is willing to restrain his sexual propensity for the sake of food. Another object for the sake of which he consents to exercise the same self-restraint is victory in war. Not only the warrior in the field but his friends at home will often bridle their sensual appetites from a belief that by so doing they will the more easily overcome their enemies.[410] The fallacy of such a belief, like the belief that the chastity of the sower conduces to the growth of the seed, is plain enough to us; yet perhaps the self-restraint which these and the like beliefs, vain and false as they are, have imposed on mankind, has not been without its utility in bracing and strengthening the breed. For strength of character in the race as in the individual consists mainly in the power of sacrificing the present to the future, of disregarding the immediate temptations of ephemeral pleasure for more distant and lasting sources of satisfaction. The more the power is exercised the higher and stronger becomes the character; till the height of heroism is reached in men who renounce the pleasures of life and even life itself for the sake of keeping or winning for others, perhaps in distant ages, the blessings of freedom and truth.

Footnote 351:

See above, p. 67, and below, p. 104.

Footnote 352:

Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique et de l’Amérique Centrale (Paris, 1857-1859), ii. 565; H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 719 sq., iii. 507; O. Stoll, Die Ethnologie der Indianerstämme von Guatemala (Leyden, 1889), p. 47.

Footnote 353:

P. J. de Arriaga, Extirpacion de la idolatria del Piru (Lima, 1621), pp. 36 sq.

Footnote 354:

G. A. Wilken, “Het animisme bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel,” De Indische Gids, June 1884, p. 958.

Footnote 355:

J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, pp. 337, 372-375, 410 sq.; G. W. W. C. Baron van Hoëvell, in Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xxxiii. (1890) pp. 204 sq., 206 sq.; id., in Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, viii. (1895) p. 134; J. A. Jacobsen, Reisen in die Inselwelt des Banda-Meeres (Berlin, 1896), pp. 123, 125; J. H. de Vries, “Reis door eenige eilandgroepen der Residentie Amboina,” Tijdschrift van het konink. Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, Tweede Serie, xvii. (1900) pp. 594, 612, 615 sq. The name of the festival is variously given as porĕke, porĕka, porka, and purka. In the island of Timor the marriage of the Sun-god with Mother Earth is deemed the source of all fertility and growth. See J. S. G. Gramberg, “Eene maand in de Binnenlanden van Timor,” Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, xxxvi. 206 sq.; H. Sondervan, “Timor en de Timoreezen,” Tijdschriftvan het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, Tweede Serie, dl. v. (1888), Afdeeling meer uitgebreide artikelen, p. 397.

Footnote 356:

T. C. Hodson, “The Native Tribes of Manipur,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxi. (1901) p. 307.

Footnote 357:

Maimonides, translated by D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, ii. 475. It is not quite clear whether the direction, which Maimonides here attributes to the heathen of Harran, is taken by him from the beginning of The Agriculture of the Nabataeans, which he had referred to a few lines before. The first part of that work appears to be lost, though other parts of it exist in manuscript at Paris, Oxford, and elsewhere. See D. Chwolsohn, op. cit. i. 697 sqq. The book is an early Mohammedan forgery; but the superstitions it describes may very well be genuine. See A. von Gutschmid, Kleine Schriften, ii. 568-713.

Footnote 358:

G. W. W. C. Baron van Hoëvell, Ambon en meer bepaaldelijk de Oeliasers (Dordrecht, 1875), pp. 62 sq.

Footnote 359:

J. Kreemer, “Tiang-dèrès” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xxvi. (1882), pp. 128-132. This and the preceding custom have been already quoted by G. A. Wilken (“Het animisme bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel,” De Indische Gids, June 1884, pp. 962 sq.; and Handleiding voor de vorgelijkende Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië (Leyden, 1893), p. 550).

Footnote 360:

Above, p. 26.

Footnote 361:

W. Svoboda, “Die Bewohner des Nikobaren-Archipels,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, v. (1892) pp. 193 sq. For other examples of a fruitful woman making trees fruitful, see above, vol. i. pp. 140 sq.

Footnote 362:

J. Roscoe, “Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) pp. 32-35, 38, 80. The Peruvian custom described above (vol. i. p. 266) may in like manner have been intended to promote the growth of beans through the fertilising influence of the parents of twins. On the contrary among the Bassari of Togo, in Western Africa, women who have given birth to twins may not go near the farm at the seasons of sowing and reaping, lest they should destroy the crop. Only after the birth of another child does custom allow them to share again the labour of the fields. See H. Klose, Togo unter deutscher Flagge (Berlin, 1899), p. 510.

Footnote 363:

W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 480 sq.; id., Mythologische Forschungen (Strasburg, 1884), p. 341.

Footnote 364:

J. Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 181.

Footnote 365:

My informant is Prof. W. Ridgeway. The place was a field at the head of the Dargle vale, near Enniskerry.

Footnote 366:

See above, p. 67.

Footnote 367:

G. W. W. C. Baron van Hoëvell, in Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, viii. (1895) p. 134 note. The custom seems to go by the name of dauwtroppen or “dew-treading.” As districts or places in which the practice is still kept up the writer names South Holland, Dordrecht, and Rotterdam.

Footnote 368:

L. Strackerjan, Aberglaube und Sagen aus dem Herzogthum Oldenburg (Oldenburg, 1867), ii. p. 78, § 361; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 481; id., Mythologische Forschungen, p. 340. Compare Th. Siebs, “Das Saterland,” Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, iii. (1893) p. 277.

Footnote 369:

A. C. Kruijt, “Een en ander aangaande het geestelijk en maatschappelijk leven van den Poso-Alfoer,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xxxix. (1895) p. 138, ibid. xl. (1896) pp. 16 sq.

Footnote 370:

G. F. Oviedo y Valdes, Histoire du Nicaragua (published in Ternaux-Compans’ Voyages, relations et mémoires originaux, etc.), Paris, 1840, pp. 228 sq.; A. de Herrera, General History of the Vast Continent and Islands called America (Stevens’s translation, London, 1725-26), iii. 298.

Footnote 371:

C. Sapper, “Die Gebräuche und religiösen Anschauungen der Kekchi-Indianer,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, viii. (1895) p. 203. Abstinence from women for several days is also practised before the sowing of beans and of chilis, but only by Indians who do a large business in these commodities (ibid. p. 205).

Footnote 372:

A. Heinrich, Agrarische Sitten und Gebräuche unter den Sachsen Siebenbürgens (Hermannstadt, 1880), p. 7.

Footnote 373:

R. Temesvary, Volksbräuche und Aberglauben in der Geburtshilfe und der Pflege der Neugebornen in Ungarn (Leipsic, 1900), p. 16.

Footnote 374:

Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 293. See above, vol. i. p. 88.

Footnote 375:

R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians, p. 134.

Footnote 376:

J. Chalmers, Pioneering in New Guinea (London, 1887), p. 181. The word which I have taken to mean “holy or taboo” is helaga. Mr. Chalmers does not translate or explain it. Dr. C. G. Seligmann says that the word “conveys something of the idea of ‘sacred,’ ‘set apart,’ ‘charged with virtue’” (The Melanesians of British New Guinea, p. 101, note 2).

Footnote 377:

A. C. Haddon, Head-hunters (London, 1901), pp. 270-272, 275 sq.

Footnote 378:

T. C. Hodson, “The Native Tribes of Manipur,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxi. (1901) p. 307.

Footnote 379:

T. C. Hodson, “The genna amongst the Tribes of Assam,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxvi. (1906) p. 94.

Footnote 380:

Pliny, Nat. Hist. xii. 54; Solinus, xxxiii. 6 sq., p. 166, ed. Th. Mommsen (first edition).

Footnote 381:

Theophrastus, Histor. plant. ix. 4. 5 sq.

Footnote 382:

Palladius, De re rustica, i. 6. 14; Geoponica, ix. 3. 5 sq.

Footnote 383:

With what follows compare Psyche’s Task, chapter iv. pp. 31 sqq., where I have adduced the same evidence to some extent in the same words.

Footnote 384:

F. Mason, “On dwellings, works of art, laws, etc., of the Karens,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, xxxvii. (1868) Part ii. pp. 147 sq. Compare A. R. M’Mahon, The Karens of the Golden Chersonese (London, 1876), pp. 334 sq.

Footnote 385:

J. B. Neumann, “Het Pane- en Bila-stroomgebied op het eiland Sumatra,” Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, Tweede Serie, dl. iii. Afdeeling, meer uitgebreide artikelen, No. 3 (1886), pp. 514 sq.; M. Joustra, “Het leven, de zeden en gewoonten der Bataks,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xlvi. (1902) p. 411.

Footnote 386:

H. Ling Roth, “Low’s natives of Borneo,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxi. (1892) pp. 113 sq., 133, xxii. (1893) p. 24; id., Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, i. 401. Compare Rev. J. Perham, “Petara, or Sea Dyak Gods,” Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. 8, December 1881, p. 150; H. Ling Roth, Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, i. 180. According to Archdeacon Perham, “Every district traversed by an adulterer is believed to be accursed of the gods until the proper sacrifice has been offered.” In respectable Dyak families, when an unmarried girl is found with child and the father is unknown, they sacrifice a pig and sprinkle the doors with its blood to wash away the sin (Spenser St. John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, 2nd Ed., i. 64). In Ceram a person convicted of unchastity has to expiate his guilt by smearing every house in the village with the blood of a pig and a fowl. See A. Bastian, Indonesien, i. (Berlin, 1884) p. 144.

Footnote 387:

A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch Borneo (Leyden, 1904-1907), i. 367.

Footnote 388:

A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch Borneo, ii. 99; id., In Centraal Borneo (Leyden, 1900), ii. 278.

Footnote 389:

B. F. Matthes, “Over de âdá’s of gewoonten der Makassaren en Boegineezen,” Verslagen en Mededeelingen der koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afdeeling Letterkunde, Derde Reeks, II. (Amsterdam, 1885) p. 182. The similar Roman penalty for parricide (Digest, xlviii. 9. 9; Valerius Maximus, i. 1. 13; J. E. B. Mayor’s note on Juvenal Sat. viii. 214) may have been adopted for a similar reason. But in that case the scourging which preceded the drowning can hardly have been originally a part of the punishment.

Footnote 390:

A. C. Kruijt, “Eenige ethnografische aanteekeningen omtrent de Toboengkoe en de Tomori,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xliv. (1900) p. 235.

Footnote 391:

A. C. Kruijt, “Van Posso naar Mori,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xliv. (1900) p. 162.

Footnote 392:

M. J. van Baarda, “Fabelen, Verhalen en Overleveringen der Galelareezen,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, xlv. (1895) p. 514. In the Banggai Archipelago, to the east of Celebes, earthquakes are explained as punishments inflicted by evil spirits for indulgence in illicit love (F. S. A. de Clercq, Bijdragen tot de Kennis der Residentie Ternate (Leyden, 1890), p. 132).

Footnote 393:

O. Dapper, Description de l’Afrique (Amsterdam, 1686), p. 326; R. E. Dennett, At the Back of the Black Man’s Mind (London, 1906), pp. 53, 67-71.

Footnote 394:

R. E. Dennett, op. cit. p. 52.

Footnote 395:

A. C. Hollis, The Nandi, their Language and Folk-lore (Oxford, 1909), p. 76.

Footnote 396:

Rev. E. Casalis, The Basutos (London, 1861), p. 252.

Footnote 397:

Sir Harry Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate (London, 1902), ii. 718 sq.

Footnote 398:

A. C. Kruijt, “Regen lokken en regen verdrijven bij de Toradja’s van Midden Celebes,” Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xliv. (1901) p. 4.

Footnote 399:

Probably a similar extension of the superstition to animal life occurs also among savages, though the authorities I have consulted do not mention it. A trace, however, of such an extension appears in a belief entertained by the Khasis of Assam, that if a man defies tribal custom by marrying a woman of his own clan, the women of the tribe will die in childbed and the people will suffer from other calamities. See Colonel P. R. T. Gurdon, The Khasis (London, 1907), pp. 94, 123.

Footnote 400:

Job xxxi. 11 sq. (Revised Version).

Footnote 401:

תבואה. See Hebrew and English Lexicon, by F. Brown, S. R. Driver, and Ch. A. Briggs (Oxford, 1906), p. 100.

Footnote 402:

Genesis xii. 10-20, xx. 1-18.

Footnote 403:

Leviticus xviii. 24 sq.

Footnote 404:

Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, 22 sqq., 95 sqq.

Footnote 405:

Tacitus, Annals, xii. 4 and 8.

Footnote 406:

Columella, De re rustica, xii. 2 sq., appealing to the authority of M. Ambivius, Maenas Licinius, and C. Matius. See on this subject below, p. 205.

Footnote 407:

G. Keating, History of Ireland, translated by J. O’Mahony (New York, 1857), pp. 337 sq.; P. W. Joyce, Social History of Ancient Ireland (London, 1903), ii. 512 sq.; J. Rhys, Celtic Heathendom (London and Edinburgh, 1888), pp. 308 sq.

Footnote 408:

Compare Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 153 sqq.

Footnote 409:

“Next (for hear me out now, readers) that I may tell ye whither my younger feet wandered; I betook me among those lofty fables and romances which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had in renown over all Christendom. There I read it in the oath of every knight that he should defend to the utmost expense of his best blood, or of his life, if it so befell him, the honour and chastity of virgin or matron; from whence even then I learned what a noble virtue chastity sure must be, to the defence of which so many worthies, by such a dear adventure of themselves, had sworn; and if I found in the story afterward any of them by word or deed breaking that oath, I judged it the same fault of the poet as that which is attributed to Homer, to have written indecent things of the gods. Only this my mind gave me, that every free and gentle spirit, without that oath, ought to be born a knight, nor needed to expect the gilt spur or the laying of a sword upon his shoulder to stir him up both by his counsel and his arm, to secure and protect the weakness of any attempted chastity” (Milton, “Apology for Smectymnuus,” Complete Collection of the Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous Works of John Milton (London, 1738), vol. i. p. 111).

Footnote 410:

For examples of chastity observed at home by the friends of the absent warriors, see above, vol. i. pp. 128, 131, 133. Examples of chastity observed by the warriors themselves in the field will be given in the second part of this work. Meanwhile see The Golden Bough, 2nd Ed., i. 328, note 2.

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