The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 2 of 2)
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Title: The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 2 of 2)
Author: James George Frazer
Release date: November 12, 2012 [eBook #41359]
Most recently updated: June 15, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41359
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN BOUGH: A STUDY IN COMPARATIVE RELIGION (VOL. 2 OF 2) ***
The Golden Bough
A Study in Comparative Religion
By
James George Frazer, M.A.
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
In Two Volumes.
Vol. II.
New York and London
MacMillan and Co.
1894
CONTENTS
Chapter III—(_continued_).
§ 10.—The corn-spirit as an animal.
§ 11.—Eating the god.
§ 12.—Killing the divine animal.
§ 13.—Transference of evil.
§ 14.—Expulsion of evils,
§ 15.—Scapegoats.
§ 16.—Killing the god in Mexico.
Chapter IV—The Golden Bough.
§ 1.—Between heaven and earth.
§ 2.—Balder.
§ 3.—The external soul in folk-tales.
§ 4.—The external soul in folk-custom.
§ 5.—Conclusion.
Note. Offerings of first-fruits.
Index.
Footnotes
[Cover Art]
[Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter
at Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]
CHAPTER III—(_CONTINUED_).
§ 10.—The corn-spirit as an animal.
In some of the examples cited above to establish the meaning of the term
“neck” as applied to the last sheaf, the corn-spirit appears in animal
form as a gander, a goat, a hare, a cat, and a fox. This introduces us to
a new aspect of the corn-spirit, which we must now examine. By doing so we
shall not only have fresh examples of killing the god, but may hope also
to clear up some points which remain obscure in the myths and worship of
Attis, Adonis, Osiris, Dionysus, Demeter, and Virbius.
Amongst the many animals whose forms the corn-spirit is supposed to take
are the wolf, dog, hare, cock, goose, cat, goat, cow (ox, bull), pig, and
horse. In one or other of these forms the corn-spirit is believed to be
present in the corn, and to be caught or killed in the last sheaf. As the
corn is being cut the animal flees before the reapers, and if a reaper is
taken ill on the field, he is supposed to have stumbled unwittingly on the
corn-spirit, who has thus punished the profane intruder. It is said “The
Rye-wolf has got hold of him,” “the Harvest-goat has given him a push.”
The person who cuts the last corn or binds the last sheaf gets the name of
the animal, as the Rye-wolf, the Rye-sow, the Oats-goat, etc., and retains
the name sometimes for a year. Also the animal is frequently represented
by a puppet made out of the last sheaf or of wood, flowers, etc., which is
carried home amid rejoicings on the last harvest waggon. Even where the
last sheaf is not made up in animal shape, it is often called the
Rye-wolf, the Hare, Goat, and so on. Generally each kind of crop is
supposed to have its special animal, which is caught in the last sheaf,
and called the Rye-wolf, the Barley-wolf, the Oats-wolf, the Pea-wolf, or
the Potato-wolf, according to the crop; but sometimes the figure of the
animal is only made up once for all at getting in the last crop of the
whole harvest. Sometimes the animal is believed to be killed by the last
stroke of the sickle or scythe. But oftener it is thought to live so long
as there is corn still unthreshed, and to be caught in the last sheaf
threshed. Hence the man who gives the last stroke with the flail is told
that he has got the Corn-sow, the Threshing-dog, etc. When the threshing
is finished, a puppet is made in the form of the animal, and this is
carried by the thresher of the last sheaf to a neighbouring farm, where
the threshing is still going on. This again shows that the corn-spirit is
believed to live wherever the corn is still being threshed. Sometimes the
thresher of the last sheaf himself represents the animal; and if the
people of the next farm, who are still threshing, catch him, they treat
him like the animal he represents, by shutting him up in the pig-sty,
calling him with the cries commonly addressed to pigs, and so forth.(1)
These general statements will now be illustrated by examples. We begin
with the corn-spirit conceived as a wolf or a dog. This conception is
common in France, Germany, and Slavonic countries. Thus, when the wind
sets the corn in wave-like motion, the peasants often say, “The Wolf is
going over, or through, the corn,” “the Rye-wolf is rushing over the
field,” “the Wolf is in the corn,” “the mad Dog is in the corn,” “the big
Dog is there.”(2) When children wish to go into the corn-fields to pluck
ears or gather the blue corn-flowers, they are warned not to do so, for
“the big Dog sits in the corn,” or “the Wolf sits in the corn, and will
tear you in pieces,” “the Wolf will eat you.” The wolf against whom the
children are warned is not a common wolf, for he is often spoken of as the
Corn-wolf, Rye-wolf, etc.; thus they say, “The Rye-wolf will come and eat
you up, children,” “the Rye-wolf will carry you off,” and so forth.(3)
Still he has all the outward appearance of a wolf. For in the
neighbourhood of Feilenhof (East Prussia), when a wolf was seen running
through a field, the peasants used to watch whether he carried his tail in
the air or dragged it on the ground. If he dragged it on the ground, they
went after him, and thanked him for bringing them a blessing, and even set
tit-bits before him. But if he carried his tail high, they cursed him and
tried to kill him. Here the wolf is the corn-spirit, whose fertilising
power is in his tail.(4)
Both dog and wolf appear as embodiments of the corn-spirit in
harvest-customs. Thus in some parts of Silesia the person who binds the
last sheaf is called the Wheat-dog or the Peas-pug.(5) But it is in the
harvest-customs of the north-east of France that the idea of the Corn-dog
comes out most clearly. Thus when a harvester, through sickness,
weariness, or laziness, cannot or will not keep up with the reaper in
front of him, they say, “The White Dog passed near him,” “he has the White
Bitch,” or “the White Bitch has bitten him.”(6) In the Vosges the
Harvest-May is called the “Dog of the harvest.”(7) About Lons-le-Saulnier,
in the Jura, the last sheaf is called the Bitch. In the neighbourhood of
Verdun the regular expression for finishing the reaping is, “They are
going to kill the Dog;” and at Épinal they say, according to the crop, “We
will kill the Wheat-dog, or the Rye-dog, or the Potato-dog.”(8) In
Lorraine it is said of the man who cuts the last corn, “He is killing the
Dog of the harvest.”(9) At Dux, in the Tyrol, the man who gives the last
stroke at threshing is said to “strike down the Dog;”(10) and at
Ahnebergen, near Stade, he is called, according to the crop, Corn-pug,
Rye-pug, Wheat-pug.(11)
So with the wolf. In Germany it is said that “The Wolf sits in the last
sheaf.”(12) In some places they call out to the reaper, “Beware of the
Wolf;” or they say, “He is chasing the Wolf out of the corn.”(13) The last
bunch of standing corn is called the Wolf, and the man who cuts it “has
the Wolf.” The last sheaf is also called the Wolf; and of the woman who
binds it they say, “The Wolf is biting her,” “she has the Wolf,” “she must
fetch the Wolf” (out of the corn).(14) Moreover, she is herself called
Wolf and has to bear the name for a whole year; sometimes, according to
the crop, she is called the Rye-wolf or the Potato-wolf.(15) In the island
of Rügen they call out to the woman who binds the last sheaf, “You’re
Wolf;” and when she comes home she bites the lady of the house and the
stewardess, for which she receives a large piece of meat. The same woman
may be Rye-wolf, Wheat-wolf, and Oats-wolf, if she happens to bind the
last sheaf of rye, wheat, and oats.(16) At Buir, in the district of
Cologne, it was formerly the custom to give to the last sheaf the shape of
a wolf. It was kept in the barn till all the corn was threshed. Then it
was brought to the farmer, and he had to sprinkle it with beer or
brandy.(17) In many places the sheaf called the Wolf is made up in human
form and dressed in clothes. This indicates a confusion between the
conceptions of the corn-spirit as theriomorphic (in animal form) and as
anthropomorphic (in human form).(18) Generally the Wolf is brought home on
the last waggon, with joyful cries.(19)
Again, the Wolf is supposed to hide himself amongst the cut corn in the
granary, until he is driven out of the last bundle by the strokes of the
flail. Hence at Wanzleben, near Magdeburg, after the threshing the
peasants go in procession, leading by a chain a man, who is enveloped in
the threshed out straw and is called the Wolf.(20) He represents the
corn-spirit who has been caught escaping from the threshed corn. In Trier
it is believed that the Corn-wolf is killed at threshing. The men thresh
the last sheaf till it is reduced to chopped straw. In this way they think
that the Corn-wolf who was lurking in the last sheaf, has been certainly
killed.(21)
In France also the Corn-wolf appears at harvest. Thus they call out to the
reaper of the last corn, “You will catch the Wolf.” Near Chambéry they
form a ring round the last standing corn, and cry, “The Wolf is in there.”
In Finisterre, when the reaping draws near an end, the harvesters cry,
“There is the Wolf; we will catch him.” Each takes a swath to reap, and he
who finishes first calls out, “I’ve caught the Wolf.”(22) In Guyenne, when
the last corn has been reaped, they lead a wether all round the field. It
is called “the Wolf of the field.” Its horns are decked with a wreath of
flowers and corn-ears, and its neck and body are also encircled with
garlands and ribbons. All the reapers march, singing, behind it. Then it
is killed on the field. In this part of France the last sheaf is called
the _coujoulage_, which, in the patois, means a wether. Hence the killing
of the wether represents the death of the corn-spirit, considered as
present in the last sheaf; but two different conceptions of the
corn-spirit—as a wolf and as a wether—are mixed up together.(23)
Sometimes it appears to be thought that the Wolf, caught in the last corn,
lives during the winter in the farmhouse, ready to renew his activity as
corn-spirit in the spring. Hence at midwinter, when the lengthening days
begin to herald the approach of spring, the Wolf makes his appearance once
more. In Poland a man, with a wolf’s skin thrown over his head, is led
about at Christmas; or a stuffed wolf is carried about by persons who
collect money.(24) There are facts which point to an old custom of leading
about a man enveloped in leaves and called the Wolf, while his conductors
collected money.(25)
Another form which the corn-spirit often assumes is that of a cock. In
Austria children are warned against straying in the corn-fields, because
the Corn-cock sits there, and will peck their eyes out.(26) In North
Germany they say that “the Cock sits in the last sheaf;” and at cutting
the last corn the reapers cry, “Now we will chase out the Cock.” When it
is cut they say, “We have caught the Cock.” Then a cock is made of
flowers, fastened on a pole, and carried home by the reapers, singing as
they go.(27) At Braller, in Transylvania, when the reapers come to the
last patch of corn, they cry, “Here we shall catch the Cock.”(28) At
Fürstenwalde, when the last sheaf is about to be bound, the master lets
loose a cock, which he has brought in a basket, and lets it run over the
field. All the harvesters chase it till they catch it. Elsewhere the
harvesters all try to seize the last corn cut; he who succeeds in grasping
it must crow, and is called Cock.(29) The last sheaf is called Cock,
Cock-sheaf, Harvest-cock, Harvest-hen, Autumn-hen. A distinction is made
between a Wheat-cock, Bean-cock, etc., according to the crop.(30) At
Wünschensuhl, in Thüringen, the last sheaf is made into the shape of a
cock, and called Harvest-cock.(31) A figure of a cock, made of wood,
pasteboard, or ears of corn, is borne in front of the harvest-waggon,
especially in Westphalia, where the cock carries in his beak fruits of the
earth of all kinds. Sometimes the image of the cock is fastened to the top
of a May-tree on the last harvest-waggon. Elsewhere a live cock, or a
figure of one, is attached to a harvest-crown and carried on a pole. In
Galicia and elsewhere this live cock is fastened to the garland of
corn-ears or flowers, which the leader of the women-reapers carries on her
head as she marches in front of the harvest procession.(32) In Silesia a
live cock is presented to the master on a plate. The harvest supper is
called Harvest-cock, Stubble-cock, etc., and a chief dish at it, at least
in some places, is a cock.(33) If a waggoner upsets a harvest-waggon, it
is said that “he has spilt the Harvest-cock,” and he loses the cock—that
is, the harvest supper.(34) The harvest-waggon, with the figure of the
cock on it, is driven round the farmhouse before it is taken to the barn.
Then the cock is nailed over, or at the side of the house door, or on the
gable, and remains there till next harvest.(35) In East Friesland the
person who gives the last stroke at threshing is called the Clucking-hen,
and grain is strewed before him as if he were a hen.(36)
Again, the corn-spirit is killed in the form of a cock. In parts of
Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Picardy, the reapers place a live cock in
the corn which is to be cut last, and chase it over the field, or bury it
up to the neck in the ground; afterwards they strike off its head with a
sickle or scythe.(37) In many parts of Westphalia, when the harvesters
bring the wooden cock to the farmer, he gives them a live cock, which they
kill with whips or sticks, or behead with an old sword, or throw it into
the barn to the girls, or give it to the mistress to cook. If the
Harvest-cock has not been spilt—that is, if no waggon has been upset—the
harvesters have the right of killing the farmyard cock by throwing stones
at it or beheading it. Where this custom has fallen into disuse, it is
still common for the farmer’s wife to make cockie-leekie for the
harvesters, and to show them the head of the cock which has been killed
for the soup.(38) In the neighbourhood of Klausenburg, Transylvania, a
cock is buried on the harvest-field in the earth, so that only its head
appears. A young man then takes a scythe and cuts off the cock’s head at a
single stroke. If he fails to do this, he is called the Red Cock for a
whole year, and people fear that next year’s crop will be bad.(39) In the
neighbourhood of Udvarhely, Transylvania, a live cock is bound up in the
last sheaf and killed with a spit. It is then skinned. The flesh is thrown
away, but the skin and feathers are kept till next year; and in spring the
grain from the last sheaf is mixed with the feathers of the cock and
scattered on the field which is to be tilled.(40) Nothing could set in a
clearer light the identification of the cock with the spirit of the corn.
By being tied up in the last sheaf and killed, the cock is identified with
the corn, and its death with the cutting of the corn. By keeping its
feathers till spring, then mixing them with the seed-corn taken from the
very sheaf in which the bird had been bound, and scattering the feathers
together with the seed over the field, the identity of the bird with the
corn is again emphasised, and its quickening and fertilising power, as the
corn-spirit, is intimated in the plainest manner. Thus the corn-spirit, in
the form of a cock, is killed at harvest, but rises to fresh life and
activity in spring. Again, the equivalence of the cock to the corn is
expressed, hardly less plainly, in the custom of burying the bird in the
ground, and cutting off its head (like the ears of corn) with the scythe.
Another common embodiment of the corn-spirit is the hare.(41) In some
parts of Ayrshire the cutting of the last corn is called “cutting the
Hare;”(42) and in Germany a name for the last sheaf is the Hare.(43) In
East Prussia they say that the Hare sits in the last patch of standing
corn, and must be chased out by the last reaper. The reapers hurry with
their work, each being anxious not to have “to chase out the Hare;” for
the man who does so, that is, who cuts the last corn, is much laughed
at.(44) At Birk in Transylvania, when the reapers come to the last patch,
they cry out, “We have the Hare.”(45) At Aurich, as we have seen,(46) an
expression for cutting the last corn is “to cut off the Hare’s tail.” “He
is killing the Hare” is commonly said of the man who cuts the last corn in
Germany, Sweden, Holland, France, and Italy.(47) In Norway the man who is
thus said to “kill the Hare” must give “hare’s blood,” in the form of
brandy, to his fellows to drink.(48)
Again, the corn-spirit sometimes takes the form of a cat.(49) Near Kiel
children are warned not to go into the corn-fields because “the Cat sits
there.” In the Eisenach Oberland they are told “the Corn-cat will come and
fetch you,” “the Corn-cat goes in the corn.” In some parts of Silesia at
mowing the last corn they say, “the Cat is caught;” and at threshing, the
man who gives the last stroke is called the Cat. In the neighbourhood of
Lyons the last sheaf and the harvest supper are both called the Cat. About
Vesoul when they cut the last corn they say, “We have the Cat by the
tail.” At Briançon, in Dauphiné, at the beginning of reaping, a cat is
decked out with ribbons, flowers, and ears of corn. It is called the Cat
of the ball-skin (_le chat de peau de balle_). If a reaper is wounded at
his work, they make the cat lick the wound. At the close of the reaping
the cat is again decked out with ribbons and ears of corn; then there is
dancing and merriment. When the dance is over, the cat is solemnly
stripped of its ornaments by the girls. At Grüneberg in Silesia the reaper
who cuts the last corn is called the Tom-cat. He is enveloped in
rye-stalks and green withes, and is furnished with a long plaited tail.
Sometimes as a companion he has a man similarly dressed, who is called the
(female) Cat. Their duty is to run after people whom they see and beat
them with a long stick. Near Amiens the expression for finishing the
harvest is, “They are going to kill the Cat;” and when the last corn is
cut a cat is killed in the farmyard. At threshing, in some parts of
France, a live cat is placed under the last bundle of corn to be threshed,
and is struck dead with the flails. Then on Sunday it is roasted and eaten
as a holiday dish.
Further, the corn-spirit often appears in the form of a goat. In the
province of Prussia, when the corn bends before the wind, they say, “The
Goats are chasing each other,” “the wind is driving the Goats through the
corn,” “the Goats are browsing there,” and they expect a very good
harvest. Again they say, “the Oats-goat is sitting in the oats-field,”
“the Corn-goat is sitting in the rye-field.”(50) Children are warned not
to go into the corn-fields to pluck the blue cornflowers, or amongst the
beans to pluck pods, because the Rye-goat, the Corn-goat, the Oats-goat,
or the Bean-goat is sitting or lying there, and will carry them away or
kill them.(51) When a harvester is taken sick or lags behind his fellows
at their work, they call out, “The Harvest-goat has pushed him,” “he has
been pushed by the Corn-goat.”(52) In the neighbourhood of Braunsberg
(East Prussia) at binding the oats every harvester makes haste “lest the
Corn-goat push him.” At Oefoten in Norway each harvester has his allotted
patch to reap. When a harvester in the middle has not finished reaping his
piece after his neighbours have finished theirs, they say of him, “He
remains on the island.” And if the laggard is a man, they imitate the cry
with which they call a he-goat; if a woman, the cry with which they call a
she-goat.(53) Near Straubing in Lower Bavaria, it is said of the man who
cuts the last corn that “he has the Corn-goat or the Wheat-goat, or the
Oats-goat,” according to the crop. Moreover, two horns are set up on the
last heap of corn, and it is called “the horned Goat.” At Kreutzburg, East
Prussia, they call out to the woman who is binding the last sheaf, “The
Goat is sitting in the sheaf.”(54) At Gablingen in Swabia, when the last
field of oats upon a farm is being reaped, the reapers carve a goat out of
wood. Ears of oats are inserted in its nostrils and mouth, and it is
adorned with garlands of flowers. It is set upon the field and called the
Oats-goat. When the reaping approaches an end, each reaper hastens to
finish his piece first; he who is the last to finish gets the
Oats-goat.(55) Again, the last sheaf is itself called the Goat. Thus, in
the valley of the Wiesent, Bavaria, the last sheaf bound on the field is
called the Goat, and they have a proverb, “The field must bear a
goat.”(56) At Spachbrücken in Hesse, the last handful of corn which is cut
is called the Goat, and the man who cuts it is much ridiculed.(57)
Sometimes the last sheaf is made up in the form of a goat,(58) and they
say, “The Goat is sitting in it.” Again, the person who cuts or binds the
last sheaf is called the Goat. Thus, in parts of Mecklenburg they call out
to the woman who binds the last sheaf, “You are the Harvest-goat.” In the
neighbourhood of Uelzen in Hanover, the harvest festival begins with “the
bringing of the Harvest-goat;” that is, the woman who bound the last sheaf
is wrapt in straw, crowned with a harvest-wreath, and brought in a
wheelbarrow to the village, where a round dance takes place. About
Lüneburg, also, the woman who binds the last corn is decked with a crown
of corn-ears and is called the Corn-goat.(59) In the Canton St. Gall,
Switzerland, the person who cuts the last handful of corn on the field, or
drives the last harvest-waggon to the barn, is called the Corn-goat or the
Rye-goat, or simply the Goat.(60) In the Canton Thurgau he is called
Corn-goat; like a goat he has a bell hung round his neck, is led in
triumph, and drenched with liquor. In parts of Styria, also, the man who
cuts the last corn is called Corn-goat, Oats-goat, etc. As a rule, the man
who thus gets the name of Corn-goat has to bear it a whole year till the
next harvest.(61)
According to one view, the corn-spirit, who has been caught in the form of
a goat or otherwise, lives in the farmhouse or barn over winter. Thus,
each farm has its own embodiment of the corn-spirit. But, according to
another view, the corn-spirit is the genius or deity, not of the corn of
one farm only, but of all the corn. Hence when the corn on one farm is all
cut, he flees to another where there is still corn left standing. This
idea is brought out in a harvest-custom which was formerly observed in
Skye. The farmer who first finished reaping sent a man or woman with a
sheaf to a neighbouring farmer who had not finished; the latter in his
turn, when he had finished, sent on the sheaf to his neighbour who was
still reaping; and so the sheaf made the round of the farms till all the
corn was cut. The sheaf was called the _goabbir bhacagh_, that is, the
Cripple Goat.(62) The corn-spirit was probably thus represented as lame
because he had been crippled by the cutting of the corn. We have seen that
sometimes the old woman who brings home the last sheaf must limp on one
foot.(63) In the Böhmer Wald mountains, between Bohemia and Bavaria, when
two peasants are driving home their corn together, they race against each
other to see who shall get home first. The village boys mark the loser in
the race, and at night they come and erect on the roof of his house the
Oats-goat, which is a colossal figure of a goat made of straw.(64)
But sometimes the corn-spirit, in the form of a goat, is believed to be
slain on the harvest-field by the sickle or scythe. Thus, in the
neighbourhood of Bernkastel, on the Moselle, the reapers determine by lot
the order in which they shall follow each other. The first is called the
fore-reaper, the last the tail-bearer. If a reaper overtakes the man in
front he reaps past him, bending round so as to leave the slower reaper in
a patch by himself. This patch is called the Goat; and the man for whom
“the Goat is cut” in this way, is laughed and jeered at by his fellows for
the rest of the day. When the tail-bearer cuts the last ears of corn, it
is said “He is cutting the Goat’s neck off.”(65) In the neighbourhood of
Grenoble, before the end of the reaping, a live goat is adorned with
flowers and ribbons and allowed to run about the field. The reapers chase
it and try to catch it. When it is caught, the farmer’s wife holds it fast
while the farmer cuts off its head. The goat’s flesh serves to furnish the
harvest supper. A piece of the flesh is pickled and kept till the next
harvest, when another goat is killed. Then all the harvesters eat of the
flesh. On the same day the skin of the goat is made into a cloak, which
the farmer, who works with his men, must always wear at harvest-time if
rain or bad weather sets in. But if a reaper gets pains in his back, the
farmer gives him the goat-skin to wear.(66) The reason for this seems to
be that the pains in the back, being inflicted by the corn-spirit, can
also be healed by it. Similarly we saw that elsewhere, when a reaper is
wounded at reaping, a cat, as the representative of the corn-spirit, is
made to lick the wound.(67) Esthonian reapers in the island of Mon think
that the man who cuts the first ears of corn at harvest will get pains in
his back,(68)—probably because the corn-spirit is believed to resent
especially the first wound; and, in order to escape pains in the back,
Saxon reapers in Transylvania gird their loins with the first handful of
ears which they cut.(69) Here, again, the corn-spirit is applied to for
healing or protection, but in his original vegetable form, not in the form
of a goat or a cat.
Further, the corn-spirit under the form of a goat is sometimes conceived
as lurking among the cut corn in the barn, till he is driven from it by
the threshing-flail. For example, in the neighbourhood of Marktl in Upper
Bavaria the sheaves are called Straw-goats or simply Goats. They are laid
in a great heap on the open field and threshed by two rows of men standing
opposite each other, who, as they ply their flails, sing a song in which
they say that they see the Straw-goat amongst the corn-stalks. The last
Goat, that is, the last sheaf, is adorned with a wreath of violets and
other flowers and with cakes strung together. It is placed right in the
middle of the heap. Some of the threshers rush at it and tear the best of
it out; others lay on with their flails so recklessly that heads are
sometimes broken. In threshing this last sheaf, each man casts up to the
man opposite him the misdeeds of which he has been guilty throughout the
year.(70) At Oberinntal in Tyrol the last thresher is called Goat.(71) At
Tettnang in Würtemberg the thresher who gives the last stroke to the last
bundle of corn before it is turned goes by the name of the He-goat, and it
is said “he has driven the He-goat away.” The person who, after the bundle
has been turned, gives the last stroke of all, is called the She-goat.(72)
In this custom it is implied that the corn is inhabited by a pair of
corn-spirits, male and female. Further, the corn-spirit, captured in the
form of a goat at threshing, is passed on to a neighbour whose threshing
is not yet finished. In Franche Comté, as soon as the threshing is over,
the young people set up a straw figure of a goat on the farmyard of a
neighbour who is still threshing. He must give them wine or money in
return. At Ellwangen in Würtemberg the effigy of a goat is made out of the
last bundle of corn at threshing; four sticks form its legs, and two its
horns. The man who gives the last stroke with the flail must carry the
Goat to the barn of a neighbour who is still threshing and throw it down
on the floor; if he is caught in the act, they tie the Goat on his
back.(73) A similar custom is observed at Indersdorf in Upper Bavaria; the
man who throws the straw Goat into the neighbour’s barn imitates the
bleating of a goat; if they catch him they blacken his face and tie the
Goat on his back.(74) At Zabern in Elsass, when a farmer is a week or more
behind his neighbours with his threshing, they set a real stuffed goat (or
fox) before his door.(75) Sometimes the spirit of the corn in goat form is
believed to be killed at threshing. In the district of Traunstein, Upper
Bavaria, it is thought that the Oats-goat is in the last sheaf of oats. He
is represented by an old rake set up on end, with an old pot for a head.
The children are then told to kill the Oats-goat.(76) A stranger passing a
harvest-field is sometimes taken for the Corn-goat escaping in human shape
from the cut or threshed grain. Thus, when a stranger passes a
harvest-field, all the labourers stop and shout as with one voice
“He-goat! He-goat!” At rape-seed threshing in Schleswig, which generally
takes place on the field, the same cry is raised if the stranger does not
take off his hat.(77)
At sowing their winter corn the Prussian Slavs used to kill a goat,
consume its flesh with many superstitious ceremonies, and hang the skin on
a high pole near an oak and a large stone. Here it remained till harvest.
Then, after a prayer had been offered by a peasant who acted as priest
(_Weidulut_) the young folk joined hands and danced round the oak and the
pole. Afterwards they scrambled for the bunch of corn, and the priest
distributed the herbs with a sparing hand. Then he placed the goat-skin on
the large stone, sat down on it and preached to the people about the
history of their forefathers and their old heathen customs and
beliefs.(78) The goat-skin thus suspended on the field from sowing time to
harvest represents the corn-spirit superintending the growth of the corn.
Another form which the corn-spirit often assumes is that of a bull, cow,
or ox. When the wind sweeps over the corn they say at Conitz in West
Prussia, “The Steer is running in the corn;”(79) when the corn is thick
and strong in one spot, they say in some parts of East Prussia, “The Bull
is lying in the corn.” When a harvester has overstrained and lamed
himself, they say in the Graudenz district (West Prussia), “The Bull
pushed him;” in Lothringen they say, “He has the Bull.” The meaning of
both expressions is that he has unwittingly lighted upon the divine
corn-spirit, who has punished the profane intruder with lameness.(80) So
near Chambéry when a reaper wounds himself with his sickle, it is said
that he has “the wound of the Ox.”(81) In the district of Bunzlau the last
sheaf is sometimes made into the shape of a horned ox, stuffed with tow
and wrapt in corn-ears. This figure is called the Old Man (_der Alte_). In
some parts of Bohemia the last sheaf is made up in human form and called
the Buffalo-bull.(82) These cases show a confusion between the
anthropomorphic and the theriomorphic conception of the corn-spirit. The
confusion is parallel to that of killing a wether under the name of a
wolf.(83) In the Canton of Thurgau, Switzerland, the last sheaf, if it is
a large one, is called the Cow.(84) All over Swabia the last bundle of
corn on the field is called the Cow; the man who cuts the last ears “has
the Cow,” and is himself called Cow or Barley-cow or Oats-cow, according
to the crop; at the harvest supper he gets a nosegay of flowers and
corn-ears and a more liberal allowance of drink than the rest. But he is
teased and laughed at; so no one likes to be the Cow.(85) The Cow was
sometimes represented by the figure of a woman made out of ears of corn
and corn-flowers. It was carried to the farmhouse by the man who had cut
the last handful of corn. The children ran after him and the neighbours
turned out to laugh at him, till the farmer took the Cow from him.(86)
Here again the confusion between the human and the animal form of the
corn-spirit is apparent. In various parts of Switzerland the reaper who
cuts the last ears of corn is called Wheat-cow, Corn-cow, Oats-cow, or
Corn-steer, and is the butt of many a joke.(87) In some parts of East
Prussia, when a few ears of corn have been left standing by inadvertence
on the last swath, the foremost reaper seizes them and cries, “Bull!
Bull!”(88) On the other hand, in the district of Rosenheim, in Upper
Bavaria, when a farmer is later in getting in his harvest than his
neighbours, they set up on his land a Straw-bull, as it is called. This is
a gigantic figure of a bull made of stubble on a framework of wood and
adorned with flowers and leaves. A label is attached to it containing
doggerel verses in ridicule of the man on whose land the Straw-bull is
placed.(89)
Again, the corn-spirit in the form of a bull or ox is killed on the
harvest-field at the close of the reaping. At Pouilly near Dijon, when the
last ears of corn are about to be cut, an ox adorned with ribbons,
flowers, and ears of corn is led all round the field, followed by the
whole troop of reapers dancing. Then a man disguised as the Devil cuts the
last ears of corn and immediately kills the ox. Part of the flesh of the
animal is eaten at the harvest supper; part is pickled and kept till the
first day of sowing in spring. At Pont à Mousson and elsewhere on the
evening of the last day of reaping a calf adorned with flowers and ears of
corn is led three times round the farmyard, being allured by a bait or
driven by men with sticks, or conducted by the farmer’s wife with a rope.
The calf selected for this ceremony is the calf which was born first on
the farm in the spring of the year. It is followed by all the reapers with
their implements. Then it is allowed to run free; the reapers chase it,
and whoever catches it is called King of the Calf. Lastly, it is solemnly
killed; at Lunéville the man who acts as butcher is the Jewish merchant of
the village.(90)
Sometimes again the corn-spirit hides himself amongst the cut corn in the
barn to reappear in bull or cow form at threshing. Thus at Wurmlingen in
Thüringen the man who gives the last stroke at threshing is called the
Cow, or rather the Barley-cow, Oats-cow, Peas-cow, etc., according to the
crop. He is entirely enveloped in straw; his head is surmounted by sticks
in imitation of horns, and two lads lead him by ropes to the well to
drink. On the way thither he must low like a cow, and for a long time
afterwards he goes by the name of the Cow.(91) At Obermedlingen in Swabia,
when the threshing draws near an end, each man is careful to avoid giving
the last stroke. He who does give it “gets the Cow,” which is a straw
figure dressed in an old ragged petticoat, hood, and stockings. It is tied
on his back with a straw-rope; his face is blackened, he is tied with
straw-ropes to a wheelbarrow, and wheeled round the village.(92) Here,
again, we are met with that confusion between the anthropomorphic and
theriomorphic conception of the corn-spirit, which has been already
signalised. In Canton Schaffhausen the man who threshes the last corn is
called the Cow; in Canton Thurgau, the Corn-bull; in Canton Zurich, the
Thresher-cow. In the last-mentioned district he is wrapt in straw and
bound to one of the trees in the orchard.(93) At Arad in Hungary the man
who gives the last stroke at threshing is enveloped in straw and a cow’s
hide with the horns attached to it.(94) At Pessnitz, in the district of
Dresden, the man who gives the last stroke with the flail is called Bull.
He must make a straw-man and set it up before a neighbour’s window.(95)
Here, apparently, as in so many cases, the corn-spirit is passed on to a
neighbour who has not finished threshing. So at Herbrechtingen in
Thüringen the effigy of a ragged old woman is flung into the barn of the
farmer who is last with his threshing. The man who throws it in cries,
“There is the Cow for you.” If the threshers catch him they detain him
over night and punish him by keeping him from the harvest supper.(96) In
these latter customs the confusion between the anthropomorphic and
theriomorphic conception of the corn-spirit meets us again. Further, the
corn-spirit in bull form is sometimes believed to be killed at threshing.
At Auxerre in threshing the last bundle of corn they call out twelve
times, “We are killing the Bull.” In the neighbourhood of Bordeaux, where
a butcher kills an ox on the field immediately after the close of the
reaping, it is said of the man who gives the last stroke at threshing that
“he has killed the Bull.”(97) At Chambéry the last sheaf is called the
sheaf of the Young Ox and a race takes place to it, in which all the
reapers join. When the last stroke is given at threshing they say that
“the Ox is killed;” and immediately thereupon a real ox is slaughtered by
the reaper who cut the last corn. The flesh of the ox is eaten by the
threshers at supper.(98)
We have seen that sometimes the young corn-spirit, whose task it is to
quicken the corn of the coming year, is believed to be born as a Corn-baby
on the harvest-field.(99) Similarly in Berry the young corn-spirit is
sometimes believed to be born on the field in calf form. For when a binder
has not rope enough to bind all the corn in sheaves, he puts aside the
wheat that remains over and imitates the lowing of a cow. The meaning is
that “the sheaf has given birth to a calf.”(100) In Puy-de-Dôme when a
binder cannot keep up with the reaper whom he or she follows, they say “He
or she is giving birth to the Calf.”(101) In some parts of Prussia, in
similar circumstances, they call out to the woman, “The Bull is coming,”
and imitate the bellowing of a bull.(102) In these cases the woman is
conceived as the Corn-cow or old corn-spirit, while the supposed calf is
the Corn-calf or young corn-spirit. In some parts of Austria a mythical
calf (_Muhkälbchen_) is believed to be seen amongst the sprouting corn in
spring and to push the children; when the corn waves in the wind they say,
“The Calf is going about.” Clearly, as Mannhardt observes, this calf of
the spring-time is the same animal which is afterwards believed to be
killed at reaping.(103)
Sometimes the corn-spirit appears in the shape of a horse or mare. Between
Kalw and Stuttgart, when the corn bends before the wind, they say, “There
runs the Horse.”(104) In Hertfordshire, at the end of the reaping, there
is or was a ceremony called “crying the Mare.” The last blades of corn
left standing on the field are tied together and called the Mare. The
reapers stand at a distance and throw their sickles at it; he who cuts it
through “has the prize, with acclamations and good cheer.” After it is cut
the reapers cry thrice with a loud voice, “I have her!” Others answer
thrice, “What have you?”—“A Mare! a Mare! a Mare!”—“Whose is she?” is next
asked thrice. “A. B.’s,” naming the owner thrice. “Whither will you send
her?”—“To C. D.,” naming some neighbour who has not all his corn
reaped.(105) In this custom the corn-spirit in the form of a mare is
passed on from a farm where the corn is all cut to another farm where it
is still standing, and where therefore the corn-spirit may be supposed
naturally to take refuge. In Shropshire the custom is similar. “Crying,
calling, or shouting the mare is a ceremony performed by the men of that
farm which is the first in any parish or district to finish the harvest.
The object of it is to make known their own prowess, and to taunt the
laggards by a pretended offer of the ‘owd mar’ [old mare] to help out
their ‘chem’ [team]. All the men assemble (the wooden harvest-bottle being
of course one of the company) in the stackyard, or, better, on the highest
ground on the farm, and there shout the following dialogue, preceding it
by a grand ‘Hip, hip, hip, hurrah!’
“ ‘I ’ave ’er, I ’ave ’er, I ’ave ’er!’
“ ‘Whad ’ast thee, whad ’ast thee, whad ’ast thee?’
“ ‘A mar’! a mar’! a mar’!’
“ ‘Whose is ’er, whose is ’er, whose is ’er?’
“ ‘Maister A.’s, Maister A.’s, Maister A.’s!’ (naming the farmer whose
harvest is finished).
“ ‘W’eer sha’t the’ send ’er? w’eer sha’t the’ send ’er? w’eer sha’t the’
send ’er?’
“ ‘To Maister B.’s, to Maister B.’s, to Maister B.’s’ (naming one whose
harvest is _not_ finished).”
The farmer who finishes his harvest last, and who therefore cannot send
the Mare to any one else, is said “to keep her all winter.” The mocking
offer of the Mare was sometimes responded to by a mocking acceptance of
her help. Thus an old man told an inquirer, “While we wun at supper, a mon
cumm’d wi’ a autar [halter] to fatch her away.” But at one place (Longnor,
near Leebotwood), down to about 1850, the Mare used really to be sent.
“The head man of the farmer who had finished harvest first was mounted on
the best horse of the team—the leader—both horse and man being adorned
with ribbons, streamers, etc. Thus arrayed, a boy on foot led the pair in
triumph to the neighbouring farmhouses. Sometimes the man who took the
‘mare’ received, as well as plenty of harvest-ale, some rather rough,
though good-humoured, treatment, coming back minus his decorations, and so
on.”(106) In the neighbourhood of Lille the idea of the corn-spirit in
horse form is clearly preserved. When a harvester grows weary at his work,
it is said, “He has the fatigue of the Horse.” The first sheaf, called the
“Cross of the Horse,” is placed on a cross of box-wood in the barn, and
the youngest horse on the farm must tread on it. The reapers dance round
the last blades of corn, crying, “See the remains of the Horse.” The sheaf
made out of these last blades is given to the youngest horse of the parish
(commune) to eat. This youngest horse of the parish clearly represents, as
Mannhardt says, the corn-spirit of the following year, the Corn-foal,
which absorbs the spirit of the old Corn-horse by eating the last corn
cut; for, as usual, the old corn-spirit takes his final refuge in the last
sheaf. The thresher of the last sheaf is said to “beat the Horse.”(107)
Again, a trace of the horse-shaped corn-spirit is reported from Berry. The
harvesters there are accustomed to take a noon-day sleep in the field.
This is called “seeing the Horse.” The leader or “King” of the harvesters
gives the signal for going to sleep. If he delays giving the signal, one
of the harvesters will begin to neigh like a horse, the rest imitate him,
and then they all go “to see the Horse.”(108)
The last animal embodiment of the corn-spirit which we shall notice is the
pig (boar or sow). In Thüringen, when the wind sets the young corn in
motion, they sometimes say, “The Boar is rushing through the corn.”(109)
Amongst the Esthonians of the island of Oesel the last sheaf is called the
Rye-boar, and the man who gets it is saluted with a cry of, “You have the
Rye-boar on your back!” In reply he strikes up a song, in which he prays
for plenty.(110) At Kohlerwinkel, near Augsburg, at the close of the
harvest, the last bunch of standing corn is cut down, stalk by stalk, by
all the reapers in turn. He who cuts the last stalk “gets the Sow,” and is
laughed at.(111) In other Swabian villages also the man who cuts the last
corn “has the Sow,” or “has the Rye-sow.”(112) In the Traunstein district,
Upper Bavaria, the man who cuts the last handful of rye or wheat “has the
Sow,” and is called Sow-driver.(113) At Friedingen, in Swabia, the
thresher who gives the last stroke is called Sow—Barley-sow, Corn-sow,
etc., according to the crop. At Onstmettingen the man who gives the last
stroke at threshing “has the Sow;” he is often bound up in a sheaf and
dragged by a rope along the ground.(114) And, generally, in Swabia the man
who gives the last stroke with the flail is called Sow. He may, however,
rid himself of this invidious distinction by passing on to a neighbour the
straw-rope, which is the badge of his position as Sow. So he goes to a
house and throws the straw-rope into it, crying, “There, I bring you the
Sow.” All the inmates give chase; and if they catch him they beat him,
shut him up for several hours in the pig-sty, and oblige him to take the
“Sow” away again.(115) In various parts of Upper Bavaria the man who gives
the last stroke at threshing must “carry the Pig”—that is, either a straw
effigy of a pig or merely a bundle of straw-ropes. This he carries to a
neighbouring farm where the threshing is not finished, and throws it into
the barn. If the threshers catch him they handle him roughly, beating him,
blackening or dirtying his face, throwing him into filth, binding the Sow
on his back, etc.; if the bearer of the Sow is a woman they cut off her
hair. At the harvest supper or dinner the man who “carried the Pig” gets
one or more dumplings made in the form of pigs; sometimes he gets a large
dumpling and a number of small ones, all in pig form, the large one being
called the sow and the small ones the sucking-pigs. Sometimes he has the
right to be the first to put his hand into the dish and take out as many
small dumplings (“sucking-pigs”) as he can, while the other threshers
strike at his hand with spoons or sticks. When the dumplings are served up
by the maid-servant, all the people at table cry, “Süz, süz, süz!” being
the cry used in calling pigs. Sometimes after dinner the man who “carried
the Pig” has his face blackened, and is set on a cart and drawn round the
village by his fellows, followed by a crowd crying, “Süz, süz, süz!” as if
they were calling swine. Sometimes, after being wheeled round the village,
he is flung on the dunghill.(116)
Again, the corn-spirit in the form of a pig plays his part at sowing-time
as well as at harvest. At Neuautz, in Courland, when barley is sown for
the first time in the year, the farmer’s wife boils the chine of a pig
along with the tail, and brings it to the sower on the field. He eats of
it, but cuts off the tail and sticks it in the field; it is believed that
the ears of corn will then grow as long as the tail.(117) Here the pig is
the corn-spirit, whose fertilising power is sometimes supposed to lie
especially in his tail.(118) As a pig he is put in the ground at
sowing-time, and as a pig he reappears amongst the ripe corn at harvest.
For amongst the neighbouring Esthonians, as we have seen,(119) the last
sheaf is called the Rye-boar. Somewhat similar customs are observed in
Germany. In the Salza district, near Meiningen, a certain bone in the pig
is called “the Jew on the winnowing-fan” (_der Jud’ auf der Wanne_). The
flesh of this bone is boiled on Shrove Tuesday, but the bone is put
amongst the ashes, which the neighbours exchange as presents on St.
Peter’s Day (22d February), and then mix with the seed-corn.(120) In the
whole of Hessen, Meiningen, etc., people eat pea-soup with dried pig-ribs
on Ash Wednesday or Candlemas. The ribs are then collected and hung in the
room till sowing-time, when they are inserted in the sown field or in the
seed-bag amongst the flax seed. This is thought to be an infallible
specific against earth-fleas and moles, and to cause the flax to grow well
and tall.(121) In many parts of White Russia people eat a roast lamb or
sucking-pig at Easter, and then throw the bones backwards upon the fields,
to preserve the corn from hail.(122)
But the conception of the corn-spirit as embodied in pig form is nowhere
more clearly expressed than in the Scandinavian custom of the Yule Boar.
In Sweden and Denmark at Yule (Christmas) it is the custom to bake a loaf
in the form of a boar-pig. This is called the Yule Boar. The corn of the
last sheaf is often used to make it. All through Yule the Yule Boar stands
on the table. Often it is kept till the sowing-time in spring, when part
of it is mixed with the seed-corn and part given to the ploughmen and
plough-horses or plough-oxen to eat, in the expectation of a good
harvest.(123) In this custom the corn-spirit, immanent in the last sheaf,
appears at midwinter in the form of a boar made from the corn of the last
sheaf; and his quickening influence on the corn is shown by mixing part of
the Yule Boar with the seed-corn, and giving part of it to the ploughman
and his cattle to eat. Similarly we saw that the Corn-wolf makes his
appearance at midwinter, the time when the year begins to verge towards
spring.(124) We may conjecture that the Yule straw, of which Swedish
peasants make various superstitious uses, comes, in part at least, from
the sheaf out of which the Yule Boar is made. The Yule straw is long
rye-straw, a portion of which is always set apart for this season. It is
strewn over the floor at Christmas, and the peasants attribute many
virtues to it. For example, they think that some of it scattered on the
ground will make a barren field productive. Again, the peasant at
Christmas seats himself on a log; his eldest son or daughter, or the
mother herself, if the children are not old enough, places a wisp of the
Yule straw on his knee. From this he draws out single straws, and throws
them, one by one, up to the ceiling; and as many as lodge in the rafters,
so many will be the sheaves of rye he will have to thresh at harvest.(125)
Again, it is only the Yule straw which may be used in binding the
fruit-trees as a charm to fertilise them.(126) These uses of the Yule
straw show that it is believed to possess fertilising virtues analogous to
those ascribed to the Yule Boar; the conjecture is therefore legitimate
that the Yule straw is made from the same sheaf as the Yule Boar. Formerly
a real boar was sacrificed at Christmas,(127) and apparently also a man in
the character of the Yule Boar. This, at least, may perhaps be inferred
from a Christmas custom still observed in Sweden. A man is wrapt up in a
skin, and carries a wisp of straw in his mouth, so that the projecting
straws look like the bristles of a boar. A knife is brought, and an old
woman, with her face blackened, pretends to sacrifice the man.(128)
So much for the animal embodiments of the corn-spirit as they are
presented to us in the folk-customs of Northern Europe. These customs
bring out clearly the sacramental character of the harvest supper. The
corn-spirit is conceived as embodied in an animal; this divine animal is
slain, and its flesh and blood are partaken of by the harvesters. Thus,
the cock, the goose, the hare, the cat, the goat, and the ox are eaten
sacramentally by the harvesters, and the pig is eaten sacramentally by
ploughmen in spring.(129) Again, as a substitute for the real flesh of the
divine being, bread or dumplings are made in his image and eaten
sacramentally; thus, pig-shaped dumplings are eaten by the harvesters, and
loaves made in boar-shape (the Yule Boar) are eaten in spring by the
ploughman and his cattle.
The reader has probably remarked the complete parallelism between the
anthropomorphic and the theriomorphic conceptions of the corn-spirit. The
parallel may be here briefly resumed. When the corn waves in the wind it
is said either that the Corn-mother or that the Corn-wolf, etc. is passing
through the corn. Children are warned against straying in corn-fields
either because the Corn-mother or because the Corn-wolf, etc. is there. In
the last corn cut or the last sheaf threshed either the Corn-mother or the
Corn-wolf, etc. is supposed to be present. The last sheaf is itself called
either the Corn-mother or the Corn-wolf, etc., and is made up in the shape
either of a woman or of a wolf, etc. The person who cuts, binds, or
threshes the last sheaf is called either the Old Woman or the Wolf, etc.,
according to the name bestowed on the sheaf itself. As in some places a
sheaf made in human form and called the Maiden, the Mother of the Maize,
etc. is kept from one harvest to the next in order to secure a continuance
of the corn-spirit’s blessing; so in some places the Harvest-cock and in
others the flesh of the goat is kept for a similar purpose from one
harvest to the next. As in some places the grain taken from the
Corn-mother is mixed with the seed-corn in spring to make the crop
abundant; so in some places the feathers of the cock, and in Sweden the
Yule Boar is kept till spring and mixed with the seed-corn for a like
purpose. As part of the Corn-mother or Maiden is given to the cattle to
eat in order that they may thrive, so part of the Yule Boar is given to
the ploughing horses or oxen in spring. Lastly, the death of the
corn-spirit is represented by killing (in reality or pretence) either his
human or his animal representative; and the worshippers partake
sacramentally either of the actual body and blood of the representative
(human or animal) of the divinity, or of bread made in his likeness.
Other animal forms assumed by the corn-spirit are the stag, roe, sheep,
bear, ass, fox, mouse, stork, swan, and kite.(130) If it is asked why the
corn-spirit should be thought to appear in the form of an animal and of so
many different animals, we may reply that to primitive man the simple
appearance of an animal or bird among the corn is probably sufficient of
itself to suggest a mysterious connection between the animal or bird and
the corn; and when we remember that in the old days, before fields were
fenced in, all kinds of animals must have been free to roam over them, we
need not wonder that the corn-spirit should have been identified even with
large animals like the horse and cow, which nowadays could not, except by
a rare accident, be found straying among the corn. This explanation
applies with peculiar force to the very common case in which the animal
embodiment of the corn-spirit is believed to lurk in the last standing
corn. For at harvest a number of wild animals—hares, rabbits, partridges,
etc.—are commonly driven by the progress of the reaping into the last
patch of standing corn, and make their escape from it as it is being cut
down. So regularly does this happen that reapers and others often stand
round the last patch of corn armed with sticks or guns, with which they
kill the animals as they dart out of their last refuge among the corn.
Now, primitive man, to whom magical changes of shape seem perfectly
credible, finds it most natural that the spirit of the corn, driven from
his home amongst the corn, should make his escape in the form of the
animal which is seen to rush out of the last patch of corn as it falls
under the scythe of the reaper. Thus the identification of the corn-spirit
with an animal is analogous to the identification of him with a passing
stranger. As the sudden appearance of a stranger near the harvest-field or
threshing-floor is, to the primitive mind, sufficient to identify him as
the spirit of the corn escaping from the cut or threshed corn, so the
sudden appearance of an animal issuing from the cut corn is enough to
identify it with the corn-spirit escaping from his ruined home. The two
identifications are so analogous that they can hardly be dissociated in
any attempt to explain them. Those who look to some other principle than
the one here suggested for the explanation of the latter identification
are bound to show that their explanation covers the former identification
also.
But however we may explain it, the fact remains that in peasant folk-lore
the corn-spirit is very commonly conceived and represented in animal form.
May not this fact explain the relation in which certain animals stood to
the ancient deities of vegetation, Dionysus, Demeter, Adonis, Attis, and
Osiris?
To begin with Dionysus. We have seen that he was represented sometimes as
a goat and sometimes as a bull. As a goat he can hardly be separated from
the minor divinities, the Pans, Satyrs, and Silenuses, all of whom are
closely associated with him and are represented more or less completely in
the form of goats. Thus, Pan was regularly represented in sculpture and
painting with the face and legs of a goat.(131) The Satyrs were depicted
with pointed goat-ears, and sometimes with sprouting horns and short
tails.(132) They were sometimes spoken of simply as goats;(133) and in the
drama their parts were played by men dressed in goat-skins.(134) Silenus
is represented in art clad in a goat-skin.(135) Further, the Fauns, the
Italian counterpart of the Greek Pans and Satyrs, are described as being
half goats, with goat-feet and goat-horns.(136) Again, all these minor
goat-formed divinities partake more or less clearly of the character of
woodland deities. Thus, Pan was called by the Arcadians the Lord of the
Wood.(137) The Silenuses associated with the tree-nymphs.(138) The Fauns
are expressly designated as woodland deities;(139) and their character as
such is still further brought out by their association, or even
identification, with Silvanus and the Silvanuses, who, as their name of
itself indicates, are spirits of the woods.(140) Lastly, the association
of the Satyrs with the Silenuses, Fauns, and Silvanuses,(141) proves that
the Satyrs also were woodland deities. These goat-formed spirits of the
woods have their counterparts in the folk-lore of Northern Europe. Thus,
the Russian wood-spirits, called _Ljeschie_ (from _ljes_, “wood,”) are
believed to appear partly in human shape, but with the horns, ears, and
legs of goats. The _Ljeschi_ can alter his stature at pleasure; when he
walks in the wood he is as tall as the trees; when he walks in the meadows
he is no higher than the grass. Some of the _Ljeschie_ are spirits of the
corn as well as of the wood; before harvest they are as tall as the
corn-stalks, but after it they shrink to the height of the stubble.(142)
This brings out—what we have remarked before—the close connection between
tree-spirits and corn-spirits, and shows how easily the former may melt
into the latter. Similarly the Fauns, though wood-spirits, were believed
to foster the growth of the crops.(143) We have already seen how often the
corn-spirit is represented in folk-custom as a goat.(144) On the whole,
then, as Mannhardt argues,(145) the Pans, Satyrs, and Fauns appear to
belong to a widely diffused class of wood-spirits conceived in goat-form.
The fondness of goats for straying in woods and nibbling the bark of
trees—to which it is well known that they are most destructive—is an
obvious and perhaps sufficient reason why wood-spirits should so often be
supposed to take the form of goats. The inconsistency of a god of
vegetation subsisting upon the vegetation which he personifies is not one
to strike the primitive mind. Such inconsistencies arise when the deity,
ceasing to be immanent in the vegetation, comes to be regarded as its
owner or lord; for the idea of owning the vegetation naturally leads to
that of subsisting on it. We have already seen that the corn-spirit,
originally conceived as immanent in the corn, afterwards comes to be
regarded as its owner, who lives on it and is reduced to poverty and want
by being deprived of it.(146)
Thus the representation of wood-spirits in goat-form appears to be both
widespread and, to the primitive mind, natural. Therefore when we find, as
we have done, that Dionysus—a tree-god—is sometimes represented in goat
form,(147) we can hardly avoid concluding that this representation is
simply a part of his proper character as a tree-god and is not to be
explained by the fusion of two distinct and independent cults, in one of
which he originally appeared as a tree-god and in the other as a goat. If
such a fusion took place in the case of Dionysus, it must equally have
taken place in the case of the Pans and Satyrs of Greece, the Fauns of
Italy, and the _Ljeschie_ of Russia. That such a fusion of two wholly
disconnected cults should have occurred once is possible; that it should
have occurred twice independently is improbable; that it should have
occurred thrice independently is so unlikely as to be practically
incredible.
Dionysus was also represented, as we have seen,(148) in the form of a
bull. After what has gone before we are naturally led to expect that his
bull form must have been only another expression for his character as a
deity of vegetation, especially as the bull is a common embodiment of the
corn-spirit in Northern Europe;(149) and the close association of Dionysus
with Demeter and Proserpine in the mysteries of Eleusis shows that he had
at least strong agricultural affinities. The other possible explanation of
the bull-shaped Dionysus would be that the conception of him as a bull was
originally entirely distinct from the conception of him as a deity of
vegetation, and that the fusion of the two conceptions was due to some
such circumstance as the union of two tribes, one of which had previously
worshipped a bull-god and the other a tree-god. This appears to be the
view taken by Mr. Andrew Lang, who suggests that the bull-formed Dionysus
“had either been developed out of, or had succeeded to the worship of a
bull-totem.”(150) Of course this is possible. But it is not yet certain
that the Aryans ever had totemism. On the other hand, it is quite certain
that many Aryan peoples have conceived deities of vegetation as embodied
in animal forms. Therefore when we find amongst an Aryan people like the
Greeks a deity of vegetation represented as an animal, the presumption
must be in favour of explaining this by a principle which is certainly
known to have influenced the Aryan race rather than by one which is not
certainly known to have done so. In the present state of our knowledge,
therefore, it is safer to regard the bull form of Dionysus as being, like
his goat form, an expression of his proper character as a deity of
vegetation.
The probability of this view will be somewhat increased if it can be shown
that in other rites than those of Dionysus the ancients slew an ox as a
representative of the spirit of vegetation. This they appear to have done
in the Athenian sacrifice known as “the murder of the ox” (_bouphonia_).
It took place about the end of June or beginning of July, that is, about
the time when the threshing is nearly over in Attica. According to
tradition the sacrifice was instituted to procure a cessation of drought
and barrenness which had afflicted the land. The ritual was as follows.
Barley mixed with wheat, or cakes made of them, were laid upon the bronze
altar of Zeus Polieus on the Acropolis. Oxen were driven round the altar,
and the ox which went up to the altar and ate the offering on it was
sacrificed. The axe and knife with which the beast was slain had been
previously wetted with water brought by maidens called “water-carriers.”
The weapons were then sharpened and handed to the butchers, one of whom
felled the ox with the axe and another cut its throat with the knife. As
soon as he had felled the ox, the former threw the axe from him and fled;
and the man who cut the beast’s throat apparently imitated his example.
Meantime the ox was skinned and all present partook of its flesh. Then the
hide was stuffed with straw and sewed up; next the stuffed animal was set
on its feet and yoked to a plough as if it were ploughing. A trial then
took place in an ancient law-court presided over by the King (as he was
called) to determine who had murdered the ox. The maidens who had brought
the water accused the men who had sharpened the axe and knife; the men who
had sharpened the axe and knife blamed the men who had handed these
implements to the butchers; the men who had handed the implements to the
butchers blamed the butchers; and the butchers laid the blame on the axe
and knife, which were accordingly found guilty, condemned, and cast into
the sea.(151)
The name of this sacrifice,—“the _murder_ of the ox,”(152)—the pains taken
by each person who had a hand in the slaughter to lay the blame on some
one else, together with the formal trial and punishment of the axe or
knife or both, prove that the ox was here regarded not merely as a victim
offered to a god, but as itself a sacred creature, the slaughter of which
was sacrilege or murder. This is borne out by a statement of Varro that to
kill an ox was formerly a capital crime in Attica.(153) The mode of
selecting the victim suggests that the ox which tasted the corn was viewed
as the corn-deity taking possession of his own. This interpretation is
supported by the following custom. In Beauce, in the district of Orleans,
on the 24th or 25th of April they make a straw-man called “the great
_mondard_.” For they say that the old _mondard_ is now dead and it is
necessary to make a new one. The straw-man is carried in solemn procession
up and down the village and at last is placed upon the oldest apple-tree.
There he remains till the apples are gathered, when he is taken down and
thrown into the water, or he is burned and his ashes cast into water. But
the person who plucks the first fruit from the tree succeeds to the title
of “the great _mondard_.”(154). Here the straw figure, called “the great
_mondard_” and placed on the apple-tree in spring, represents the spirit
of the tree, who, dead in winter, revives when the apple-blossoms appear
in spring. The fact, therefore, that the person who plucks the first fruit
from the apple-tree receives the name of “the great _mondard_” proves that
he is regarded as a representative of the tree-spirit. Primitive peoples
are, as a rule, reluctant to taste the annual first-fruits of any crop,
until some ceremony has been performed which makes it safe and pious for
them to do so. The reason of this reluctance appears to be that the
first-fruits either are the property of, or actually contain, a divinity.
Therefore when a man or animal is seen boldly to appropriate the sacred
first-fruits, he or it is naturally regarded as the divinity himself in
human or animal form taking possession of his own. The time of the
Athenian sacrifice—about the close of the threshing—suggests that the
wheat and barley laid upon the altar were a harvest offering; and the
sacramental character of the subsequent repast—all partaking of the flesh
of the divine animal—would make it parallel to the harvest suppers of
modern Europe, in which, as we have seen, the flesh of the animal who
represents the corn-spirit is eaten by the harvesters. Again, the
tradition that the sacrifice was instituted in order to put an end to
drought and famine is in favour of taking it as a harvest festival. The
resurrection of the corn-spirit, represented by setting up the stuffed ox
and yoking it to the plough, may be compared with the resurrection of the
tree-spirit in the person of his representative, the Wild Man.(155)
The ox appears as a representative of the corn-spirit in other parts of
the world. At Great Bassam, in Guinea, two oxen are slain annually to
procure a good harvest. If the sacrifice is to be effectual, it is
necessary that the oxen should weep. So all the women of the village sit
in front of the beasts, chanting, “The ox will weep; yes, he will weep!”
From time to time one of the women walks round the beasts, throwing manioc
meal or palm wine upon them, especially into their eyes. When tears roll
down from the eyes of the oxen, the people dance, singing, “The ox weeps!
the ox weeps!” Then two men seize the tails of the beasts and cut them off
at one blow. It is believed that a great misfortune will happen in the
course of the year if the tails are not severed at one blow. The oxen are
afterwards killed, and their flesh is eaten by the chiefs.(156) Here the
tears of the oxen, like those of the human victims amongst the Khonds, are
probably a rain-charm. We have already seen that the virtue of the
corn-spirit, embodied in animal form, is sometimes supposed to reside in
the tail, and that the last handful of corn is sometimes conceived as the
tail of the corn-spirit.(157) Still more clearly does the ox appear as a
personification of the corn-spirit in a ceremony which is observed in all
the provinces and districts of China to welcome the approach of spring. On
the first day of spring the governor or prefect of the city goes in
procession to the east gate of the city, and sacrifices to the Divine
Husbandman, who is represented with a bull’s head on the body of a man. A
large effigy of an ox, cow, or buffalo has been prepared for the occasion,
and stands outside of the east gate, with agricultural implements beside
it. It is made of differently-coloured pieces of paper pasted on a
framework either by a blind man or according to the directions of a
necromancer. The colours of the paper indicate the character of the coming
year; if red prevails, there will be many fires; if white, there will be
floods and rain, etc. The mandarins walk slowly round the ox, beating it
severely at each step with rods of various colours. It is filled with five
kinds of grain, which pour forth when the ox is broken by the blows of the
rods. The paper fragments are then set on fire, and a scramble takes place
for the burning fragments, as the people believe that whoever gets one of
them is sure to be fortunate throughout the year. A live buffalo is then
killed, and its flesh is divided among the mandarins. According to one
account, the effigy of the ox is made of clay, and, after being beaten by
the governor, is stoned by the people till they break it in pieces, “from
which they expect an abundant year.”(158) Here the corn-spirit appears to
be plainly represented by the corn-filled ox, whose fragments may
therefore be supposed to bring fertility with them. We may compare the
Silesian spring custom of burning the effigy of Death, scrambling for the
burning fragments, and burying them in the fields to secure a good crop,
and the Florentine custom of sawing the Old Woman and scrambling for the
dried fruits with which she was filled.(159)
On the whole, then, we may perhaps conclude that both as a goat and as a
bull Dionysus was essentially a god of vegetation. The Chinese and
European customs just referred to may perhaps shed light on the custom of
rending a live bull or goat at the rites of Dionysus. The animal was torn
in fragments, as the Khond victim was cut in pieces, in order that the
worshippers might each secure a portion of the life-giving and fertilising
influence of the god. The flesh was eaten raw as a sacrament, and we may
conjecture that some of it was taken home to be buried in the fields, or
otherwise employed so as to convey to the fruits of the earth the
quickening influence of the god of vegetation. The resurrection of
Dionysus, related in his myth, may have been represented in his rites by
stuffing and setting up the slain ox, as was done at the Athenian
_bouphonia_.
Passing next to the corn-goddess Demeter, and remembering that in European
folk-lore the pig is a common embodiment of the corn-spirit,(160) we may
now ask, may not the pig, which was so closely associated with Demeter, be
nothing but the goddess herself in animal form? The pig was sacred to
her;(161) in art she was represented carrying or accompanied by a
pig;(162) and the pig was regularly sacrificed in her mysteries, the
reason assigned being that the pig injures the corn and is therefore an
enemy of the goddess.(163) But after an animal has been conceived as a god
or a god as an animal, it sometimes happens, as we have seen, that the god
sloughs off his animal form and becomes purely anthropomorphic; and that
then the animal, which at first had been slain in the character of the
god, comes to be regarded as a victim offered to the god on the ground of
its hostility to the deity; in short, that the god is sacrificed to
himself on the ground that he is his own enemy. This happened to Dionysus,
and it may have happened to Demeter also. And in fact the rites of one of
her festivals, the Thesmophoria, bear out the view that originally the pig
was an embodiment of the corn-goddess herself, either Demeter or her
daughter and double Proserpine. The Thesmophoria was an autumn festival,
celebrated by women alone in October,(164) and appears to have represented
with mourning rites the descent of Proserpine (or Demeter)(165) into the
lower world, and with joy her return from the dead.(166) Hence the name
Descent or Ascent variously applied to the first, and the name
_Kalligeneia_ (fair-born) applied to the third day of the festival. Now
from a scholion on Lucian, first edited in 1870,(167) we learn some
details about the mode of celebrating the Thesmophoria, which shed
important light on the part of the festival called the Descent or the
Ascent. The scholiast tells us that it was customary at the Thesmophoria
to throw pigs, cakes of dough, and branches of pine-trees into “the chasms
of Demeter and Proserpine,” which appear to have been sacred caverns or
vaults.(168) In these caverns or vaults there were said to be serpents,
which guarded the caverns and consumed most of the flesh of the pigs and
dough-cakes which were thrown in. Afterwards—apparently at the next annual
festival(169)—the decayed remains of the pigs, the cakes, and the
pine-branches were fetched by women called “drawers,” who, after observing
rules of ceremonial purity for three days, descended into the caverns,
and, frightening away the serpents by clapping their hands, brought up the
remains and placed them on the altar. Whoever got a piece of the decayed
flesh and cakes, and sowed it with the seed-corn in his field, was
believed to be sure of a good crop.
To explain this rude and ancient rite the following legend was told. At
the moment that Pluto carried off Proserpine, a swineherd called Eubuleus
was herding his swine on the spot, and his herd was engulfed in the chasm
down which Pluto vanished with Proserpine. Accordingly at the Thesmophoria
pigs were annually thrown into caverns in order to commemorate the
disappearance of the swine of Eubuleus. It follows from this that the
casting of the pigs into the vaults at the Thesmophoria formed part of the
dramatic representation of Proserpine’s descent into the lower world; and
as no image of Proserpine appears to have been thrown in, it follows that
the descent of the pigs must have been, not an accompaniment of her
descent, but the descent itself; in short, the pigs were Proserpine.
Afterwards when Proserpine or Demeter (for the two are equivalent) became
anthropomorphic, a reason had to be found for the custom of throwing pigs
into caverns at her festival; and this was done by saying that when
Proserpine was carried off, there happened to be some swine browsing near,
which were swallowed up along with her. The story is obviously a forced
and awkward attempt to bridge over the gulf between the old conception of
the corn-spirit as a pig and the new conception of her as an
anthropomorphic goddess. A trace of the older conception survived in the
legend that when Demeter was looking for the lost Proserpine, the
footprints of the latter were obliterated by the footprints of a pig;(170)
originally, no doubt, the footprints of the pig were the footprints of
Proserpine and of Demeter herself. A consciousness of the intimate
connection of the pig with the corn lurks in the tradition that the
swineherd Eubuleus was a brother of Triptolemus, to whom Demeter first
imparted the secret of the corn. Indeed, according to one version of the
story, Eubuleus himself received, jointly with his brother Triptolemus,
the gift of the corn from Demeter as a reward for revealing to her the
fate of Proserpine.(171) Further, it is to be noted that at the
Thesmophoria the women appear to have eaten swine’s flesh.(172) The meal,
if I am right, must have been a solemn sacrament or communion, the
worshippers partaking of the body of the god.
As thus explained, the Thesmophoria has its analogies in the folk-customs
of Northern Europe which have been already described. As at the
Thesmophoria—an autumn festival in honour of the corn-goddess—swine’s
flesh was partly eaten, partly kept in caverns till the following year,
when it was taken up to be sown with the seed-corn in the fields for the
purpose of securing a good crop; so in the neighbourhood of Grenoble the
goat killed on the harvest-field is partly eaten at the harvest supper,
partly pickled and kept till the next harvest;(173) so at Pouilly the ox
killed on the harvest-field is partly eaten by the harvesters, partly
pickled and kept till the first day of sowing in spring(174)—probably to
be then mixed with the seed, or eaten by the ploughmen, or both; so at
Udvarhely the feathers of the cock which is killed in the last sheaf at
harvest are kept till spring, and then sown with the seed on the
field;(175) so in Hessen and Meiningen the flesh of pigs is eaten on Ash
Wednesday or Candlemas, and the bones are kept till sowing-time, when they
are put into the field sown or mixed with the seed in the bag;(176) so,
lastly, the corn from the last sheaf is kept till Christmas, made into the
Yule Boar, and afterwards broken and mixed with the seed-corn at sowing in
spring.(177) Thus, to put it generally, the corn-spirit is killed in
animal form in autumn; part of his flesh is eaten as a sacrament by his
worshippers; and part of it is kept till next sowing-time or harvest as a
pledge and security for the continuance or renewal of the corn-spirit’s
energies. Whether in the interval between autumn and spring he is
conceived as dead, or whether, like the ox in the _bouphonia_, he is
supposed to come to life again immediately after being killed, is not
clear. At the Thesmophoria, according to Clement and Pausanias, as emended
by Lobeck,(178) the pigs were thrown in alive, and were supposed to
reappear at the festival of the following year. Here, therefore, if we
accept Lobeck’s emendations, the corn-spirit is conceived as alive
throughout the year; he lives and works under ground, but is brought up
each autumn to be renewed and then replaced in his subterranean
abode.(179)
If it is objected that the Greeks never could have conceived Demeter and
Proserpine to be embodied in the form of pigs, it may be answered that in
the cave of Phigalia in Arcadia the Black Demeter was represented with the
head and mane of a horse on the body of a woman.(180) Between the
representation of a goddess as a pig, and the representation of her as a
woman with a horse’s head, there is little to choose in respect of
barbarism. The legend told of the Phigalian Demeter indicates that the
horse was one of the animal forms assumed in ancient Greece, as in modern
Europe,(181) by the corn-spirit. It was said that in her search for her
daughter, Demeter assumed the form of a mare to escape the addresses of
Poseidon, and that, offended at his importunity, she withdrew to the cave
of Phigalia. There, robed in black, she stayed so long that the fruits of
the earth were perishing, and mankind would have died of famine if Pan had
not soothed the angry goddess and persuaded her to quit the cave. In
memory of this event, the Phigalians set up an image of the Black Demeter
in the cave; it represented a woman dressed in a long robe, with the head
and mane of a horse.(182) The Black Demeter, in whose absence the fruits
of the earth perish, is plainly a mythical expression for the state of
vegetation in winter.
Passing now to Attis and Adonis, we may note a few facts which seem to
show that these deities of vegetation had also, like other deities of
vegetation, their animal embodiments. The worshippers of Attis abstained
from eating the flesh of swine.(183) This fact is certainly in favour of
supposing that the pig was regarded as an embodiment of Attis. And the
legend that Attis was killed by a boar(184) points in the same direction.
For after the examples of the goat Dionysus and the pig Demeter it may
almost be laid down as a rule that an animal which is said to have injured
a god was originally the god himself. Perhaps the cry of “Hyes Attes! Hyes
Attes!”(185) which was raised by the worshippers of Attis, may be neither
more nor less than “Pig Attis! Pig Attis!”—_hyes_ being possibly a
Phrygian form of the Greek _hȳs_, “a pig.”
In regard to Adonis, his connection with the boar was not always explained
by the story that he was killed by a boar. According to another story, a
boar rent with his tusk the bark of the tree in which the infant Adonis
was born.(186) According to another story, he was killed by Hephaestus on
Mount Lebanon while he was hunting wild boars.(187) These variations in
the legend serve to show that, while the connection of the boar with
Adonis was certain, the reason of the connection was not understood, and
that consequently different stories were devised to explain it. Certainly
the pig was one of the sacred animals of the Syrians. At the great
religious metropolis of Hierapolis pigs were neither sacrificed nor eaten,
and if a man touched a pig he was unclean for the rest of the day. Some
people said this was because the pigs were unclean; others said it was
because the pigs were sacred.(188) This difference of opinion points to a
state of religious thought and feeling in which the ideas of sanctity and
uncleanness are not yet differentiated, and which is best indicated by the
word taboo. It is quite consistent with this that the pig should have been
held to be an embodiment of the divine Adonis, and the analogies of
Dionysus and Demeter make it probable that the story of the hostility of
the animal to the god was only a modern misunderstanding of the old view
of the god as embodied in a pig. The rule that pigs were not sacrificed or
eaten by worshippers of Attis and presumably of Adonis, does not exclude
the possibility that in these cults the pig was slain on solemn occasions
as a representative of the god and consumed sacramentally by the
worshippers. Indeed, the sacramental killing and eating of an animal, that
is the killing and eating it as a god, implies that the animal is sacred,
and is, as a general rule, not killed.(189)
The attitude of the Jews to the pig was as ambiguous as that of the
heathen Syrians towards the same animal. The Greeks could not decide
whether the Jews worshipped swine or abominated them. On the one hand they
might not eat swine; but on the other hand they might not kill them.(190)
And if the former rule speaks for the uncleanness, the latter speaks still
more strongly for the sanctity of the animal. For whereas both rules may,
and one rule must, be explained on the supposition that the pig was
sacred; neither rule must, and one rule cannot, be explained on the
supposition that the pig was unclean. If, therefore, we prefer the former
supposition, we must conclude that, originally at least, the pig was held
to be sacred rather than unclean by the Israelites. This is confirmed by
the fact that down to the time of Isaiah some of the Jews used to meet
secretly in gardens to eat the flesh of swine and mice as a religious
rite.(191) Doubtless this was a very ancient rite, dating from a time when
both the pig and the mouse were venerated as divine, and when their flesh
was partaken of sacramentally on rare and solemn occasions as the body and
blood of gods. And in general it may be said that all so-called unclean
animals were originally sacred; the reason why they were not eaten was
that they were divine.
In ancient Egypt, within historical times, the pig occupied the same
dubious position as in Syria and Palestine, though at first sight its
uncleanness is more prominent than its sanctity. The Egyptians are
generally said by Greek writers to have abhorred the pig as a foul and
loathsome animal.(192) If a man so much as touched a pig in passing, he
stepped into the river with all his clothes on, to wash off the
taint.(193) To drink pig’s milk was believed to cause leprosy to the
drinker.(194) Swineherds, though natives of Egypt, were forbidden to enter
any temple, and they were the only men who were thus excluded. No one
would give his daughter in marriage to a swineherd, or marry a swineherd’s
daughter; the swineherds married among themselves.(195) Yet once a year
the Egyptians sacrificed pigs to the moon and to Osiris, and not only
sacrificed them, but ate of their flesh, though on any other day of the
year they would neither sacrifice them nor taste of their flesh. Those who
were too poor to offer a pig on this day baked cakes of dough, and offered
them instead.(196) This can hardly be explained except by the supposition
that the pig was a sacred animal which was eaten sacramentally by his
worshippers once a year. The view that in Egypt the pig was a sacred
animal is borne out by the very facts which, to moderns, might seem to
prove the contrary. Thus the Egyptians thought, as we have seen, that to
drink pig’s milk produced leprosy. But exactly analogous views are held by
savages about the animals and plants which they deem most sacred. Thus in
the island of Wetar (between New Guinea and Celebes) people believe
themselves to be variously descended from wild pigs, serpents, crocodiles,
turtles, dogs, and eels; a man may not eat an animal of the kind from
which he is descended; if he does so, he will become a leper, and go
mad.(197) Amongst the Omaha Indians of North America men whose totem
(sacred animal or plant) is the elk, believe that if they ate the flesh of
the male elk they would break out in boils and white spots in different
parts of their bodies.(198) In the same tribe men whose totem is the red
maize, think that if they ate red maize they would have running sores all
round their mouths.(199) The Bush negroes of Surinam, who have totemism,
believe that if they ate the _capiaï_ (an animal like a pig) it would give
them leprosy;(200) probably the _capiaï_ is one of their totems. In Samoa
each man had generally his god in the shape of some species of animal; and
if he ate one of these divine animals, it was supposed that the god
avenged himself by taking up his abode in the eater’s body, and there
generating an animal of the kind he had eaten till it caused his death.
For example, if a man whose god was the prickly sea-urchin, ate one of
these creatures, a prickly sea-urchin grew in his stomach and killed him.
If his god was an eel, and he ate an eel, he became very ill, and before
he died the voice of the god was heard from his stomach saying, “I am
killing this man; he ate my incarnation.”(201) These examples prove that
the eating of a sacred animal is often believed to produce skin-disease or
even death; so far, therefore, they support the view that the pig must
have been sacred in Egypt, since the effect of drinking its milk was
believed to be leprosy.
Again, the rule that, after touching a pig, a man had to wash himself and
his clothes, also favours the view of the sanctity of the pig. For it is a
common belief that the effect of contact with a sacred object must be
removed, by washing or otherwise, before a man is free to mingle with his
fellows. Thus the Jews wash their hands after reading the sacred
scriptures. Before coming forth from the tabernacle after the
sin-offering, the high priest had to wash himself, and put off the
garments which he had worn in the holy place.(202) It was a rule of Greek
ritual that, in offering an expiatory sacrifice, the sacrificer should not
touch the sacrifice, and that, after the offering was made, he must wash
his body and his clothes in a river or spring before he could enter a city
or his own house.(203) The Polynesians felt strongly the need of ridding
themselves of the sacred contagion, if it may be so called, which they
caught by touching sacred objects. Various ceremonies were performed for
the purpose of removing this sacred contagion. For example, in Tonga a man
who happened to touch a sacred chief, or anything personally belonging to
him, as his clothes or his mat, was obliged to go through the ceremony of
touching the soles of the chief’s (or of any chief’s) feet with his hands,
first applying the palm and then the back of each hand; next he had to
rinse his hands in water, or, if there was no water near, the sap of the
plantain or banana-tree might be used as a substitute. If he were to feed
himself with his hands before he performed this ceremony, it was believed
that he would swell up and die, or at least be afflicted with scrofula or
some other disease.(204) We have already seen what fatal effects are
supposed to follow, and do actually follow, from contact with a sacred
object in New Zealand.(205) In short, primitive man believes that what is
sacred is dangerous; it is pervaded by a sort of electrical sanctity which
communicates a shock to, even if it does not kill, whatever comes in
contact with it. Hence the savage is unwilling to touch or even to see
that which he deems peculiarly holy. Thus Bechuanas, of the Crocodile
clan, think it “hateful and unlucky” to meet or see a crocodile; the sight
is thought to cause inflammation of the eyes. Yet the crocodile is their
most sacred object; they call it their father, swear by it, and celebrate
it in their festivals.(206) The goat is the sacred animal of the
Madenassana Bushmen; yet “to look upon it would be to render the man for
the time impure, as well as to cause him undefined uneasiness.”(207) The
Elk clan, among the Omaha Indians, believe that even to touch the male elk
would be followed by an eruption of boils and white spots on the
body.(208) Members of the Reptile clan in the same tribe think that if one
of them touches or smells a snake, it will make his hair white.(209) In
Samoa people whose god was a butterfly believed that if they caught a
butterfly it would strike them dead.(210) Again, in Samoa the
reddish-seared leaves of the banana-tree were commonly used as plates for
handing food; but if any member of the Wild Pigeon clan had used banana
leaves for this purpose, it was believed that he would have suffered from
rheumatic swellings or an eruption all over the body like
chicken-pox.(211)
In the light of these parallels the beliefs and customs of the Egyptians
touching the pig are probably to be explained as based upon an opinion of
the extreme sanctity rather than of the extreme uncleanness of the animal;
or rather, to put it more correctly, they imply that the animal was looked
on, not simply as a filthy and disgusting creature, but as a being endowed
with high supernatural powers, and that as such it was regarded with that
primitive sentiment of religious awe and fear in which the feelings of
reverence and abhorrence are almost equally blended. The ancients
themselves seem to have been aware that there was another side to the
horror with which swine seemed to inspire the Egyptians. For the Greek
astronomer and mathematician Eudoxus, who resided fourteen months in Egypt
and conversed with the priests,(212) was of opinion that the Egyptians
spared the pig, not out of abhorrence, but from a regard to its utility in
agriculture; for, according to him, when the Nile had subsided, herds of
swine were turned loose over the fields to tread the seed down into the
moist earth.(213) But when a being is thus the object of mixed and
implicitly contradictory feelings, he may be said to occupy a position of
unstable equilibrium. In course of time one of the contradictory feelings
is likely to prevail over the other, and according as the feeling which
finally predominates is that of reverence or abhorrence, the being who is
the object of it will rise into a god or sink into a devil. The latter, on
the whole, was the fate of the pig in Egypt. For in historical times the
fear and horror of the pig seem certainly to have outweighed the reverence
and worship of which he must once have been the object, and of which, even
in his fallen state, he never quite lost trace. He came to be looked on as
an embodiment of Set or Typhon, the Egyptian devil and enemy of Osiris.
For it was in the shape of a boar that Typhon menaced the eye of the god
Horus, who burned him and instituted the sacrifice of the pig, the sun-god
Ra having declared the pig abominable.(214) Again, the story that Typhon
was hunting a boar when he discovered and mangled the body of Osiris, and
that this was the reason why the pig was sacrificed once a year,(215) is a
transparent modernisation of an older story that Osiris, like Adonis and
Attis, was slain or mangled by a boar, or by Typhon in the form of a boar.
Thus, the annual sacrifice of a pig to Osiris might naturally be
interpreted as vengeance inflicted on the hostile animal that had slain or
mangled the god. But, in the first place, when an animal is thus killed as
a solemn sacrifice once and once only in the year, it generally or always
means that the animal is divine—that he is spared and respected the rest
of the year as a god and slain, when he is slain, also in the character of
a god.(216) In the second place, the examples of Dionysus and Demeter, if
not of Attis and Adonis, have taught us that the animal which is
sacrificed to a god on the ground that he is the god’s enemy may have
been, and probably was, originally the god himself. Therefore, the fact
that the pig was sacrificed once a year to Osiris, and the fact that he
appears to have been sacrificed on the ground that he was the god’s enemy,
go to show, first, that originally the pig was a god, and, second, that he
was Osiris. At a later age the pig was distinguished from Osiris when the
latter became anthropomorphic and his original relation to the pig was
forgotten; later still, the pig was opposed as an enemy to Osiris by
mythologists who could think of no reason for killing an animal in
connection with the worship of a god except that the animal was the god’s
enemy; or, as Plutarch puts it, not that which is dear to the gods, but
that which is the contrary, is fit to be sacrificed.(217) At this later
stage the havoc which a wild boar notoriously makes amongst the corn would
supply a plausible reason for regarding him as an enemy of the
corn-spirit, though originally, if I am right, the very fact that the boar
was found ranging at will through the corn was the reason for identifying
him with the corn-spirit, to whom he was afterwards opposed as an enemy.
The view which identifies the pig with Osiris derives not a little support
from the fact that the day on which the pigs were sacrificed to him was
the day on which, according to tradition, Osiris was killed;(218) for thus
the killing of the pig was the annual representation of the killing of
Osiris, just as the throwing of the pigs into the caverns at the
Thesmophoria was an annual representation of the descent of Proserpine
into the lower world; and both customs are parallel to the European
practice of killing a goat, cock, etc., at harvest as a representative of
the corn-spirit.
Again, the view that the pig, originally Osiris himself, afterwards came
to be regarded as an embodiment of his enemy Typhon, is supported by the
similar relation of red-haired men and red oxen to Typhon. For in regard
to the red-haired men who were burned and whose ashes were scattered with
winnowing-fans, we have seen fair grounds for believing that originally,
like the red-haired puppies killed at Rome in spring, they were
representatives of the corn-spirit himself, that is, of Osiris, and were
slain for the express purpose of making the corn turn red or golden.
Yet at a later time these men were explained to be representatives, not of
Osiris, but of his enemy Typhon,(219) and the killing of them was regarded
as an act of vengeance inflicted on the enemy of the god. Similarly, the
red oxen sacrificed by the Egyptians were said to be sacrificed on the
ground of their resemblance to Typhon;(220) though it is more likely that
originally they were slain on the ground of their resemblance to the
corn-spirit Osiris. We have seen that the ox is a common representative of
the corn-spirit and is slain as such on the harvest-field.
Osiris was regularly identified with the bull Apis of Memphis and the bull
Mnevis of Heliopolis.(221) But it is hard to say whether these bulls were
embodiments of him as the corn-spirit, as the red oxen appear to have
been, or whether they were not rather entirely distinct deities which got
fused with Osiris by syncretism. The fact that these two bulls were
worshipped by _all_ the Egyptians,(222) seems to put them on a different
footing from the ordinary sacred animals whose cults were purely local.
Hence, if the latter were evolved from totems, as they probably were, some
other origin would have to be found for the worship of Apis and Mnevis. If
these bulls were not originally embodiments of the corn-god Osiris, they
may possibly be descendants of the sacred cattle worshipped by a pastoral
people.(223) If this were so, ancient Egypt would exhibit a stratification
of the three great types of religion corresponding to the three great
stages of society. Totemism or (roughly speaking) the worship of wild
animals—the religion of society in the hunting stage—would be represented
by the worship of the local sacred animals; the worship of cattle—the
religion of society in the pastoral stage—would be represented by the
cults of Apis and Mnevis; and the worship of cultivated plants, especially
of corn—the religion of society in the agricultural stage—would be
represented by the worship of Osiris and Isis. The Egyptian reverence for
cows, which were never killed,(224) might belong either to the second or
third of these stages. The fact that cows were regarded as sacred to, that
is, as embodiments of Isis, who was represented with cow’s horns, would
indicate that they, like the red oxen, were embodiments of the
corn-spirit. However, this identification of Isis with the cow, like that
of Osiris with the bulls Apis and Mnevis, may be only an effect of
syncretism. But whatever the original relation of Apis to Osiris may have
been, there is one fact about the former which ought not to be passed over
in a chapter dealing with the custom of killing the god. Although the bull
Apis was worshipped as a god with much pomp and profound reverence, he was
not suffered to live beyond a certain length of time which was prescribed
by the sacred books, and on the expiry of which he was drowned in a holy
spring.(225) The limit, according to Plutarch, was twenty-five years;(226)
but it cannot always have been enforced, for the tombs of the Apis bulls
have been discovered in the present century, and from the inscriptions on
them it appears that in the twenty-second dynasty two bulls lived more
than twenty-six years.(227)
We are now in a position to hazard a conjecture—for it can be little
more—as to the meaning of the tradition that Virbius, the first of the
divine Kings of the Wood at Aricia, was killed by horses. Having found,
first, that spirits of vegetation are not infrequently represented in the
form of horses;(228) and, second, that the animal which in later legends
is said to have injured the god was sometimes originally the god himself,
we may conjecture that the horses by which Virbius was said to have been
slain were really embodiments of him as a deity of vegetation. The myth
that Virbius had been killed by horses was probably invented to explain
certain features in his cult, amongst others the custom of excluding
horses from his sacred grove. For myth changes while custom remains
constant; men continue to do what their fathers did before them, though
the reasons on which their fathers acted have been long forgotten. The
history of religion is a long attempt to reconcile old custom with new
reason; to find a sound theory for an absurd practice. In the case before
us we may be sure that the myth is more modern than the custom and by no
means represents the original reason for excluding horses from the grove.
From the fact that horses were so excluded it might be inferred that they
could not be the sacred animals or embodiments of the god of the grove.
But the inference would be rash. The goat was at one time a sacred animal
or embodiment of Athene, as may be inferred from the practice of
representing her clad in a goat-skin (_aegis_). Yet the goat was neither
sacrificed to her as a rule, nor allowed to enter her great sanctuary, the
Acropolis at Athens. The reason alleged for this was that the goat injured
the olive, the sacred tree of Athene.(229) So far, therefore, the relation
of the goat to Athene is parallel to the relation of the horse to Virbius,
both animals being excluded from the sanctuary on the ground of injury
done by them to the god. But from Varro we learn that there was an
exception to the rule which excluded the goat from the Acropolis. Once a
year, he says, the goat was driven on to the Acropolis for a necessary
sacrifice.(230) Now, as has been remarked before, when an animal is
sacrificed once and once only in the year, it is probably slain, not as a
victim offered to the god, but as a representative of the god himself.
Therefore we may infer that if a goat was sacrificed on the Acropolis once
a year, it was sacrificed in the character of Athene herself; and it may
be conjectured that the skin of the sacrificed animal was placed on the
statue of the goddess and formed the _aegis_, which would thus be renewed
annually. Similarly at Thebes in Egypt rams were sacred and were not
sacrificed. But on one day in the year a ram was killed, and its skin was
placed on the statue of the god Ammon.(231) Now, if we knew the ritual of
the Arician grove better, we might find the rule of excluding horses from
it, like the rule of excluding goats from the Acropolis at Athens, was
subject to an annual exception, a horse being once a year taken into the
grove and sacrificed as an embodiment of the god Virbius. By the usual
misunderstanding the horse thus killed would come in time to be regarded
as an enemy offered up in sacrifice to the god whom he had injured, like
the pig which was sacrificed to Demeter and Osiris or the goat which was
sacrificed to Athene and Dionysus. It is so easy for a writer to record a
rule without noticing an exception that we need not wonder at finding the
rule of the Arician grove recorded without any mention of an exception
such as I suppose. If we had had only the statements of Athenaeus and
Pliny, we should have known only the rule which forbade the sacrifice of
goats to Athene and excluded them from the Acropolis, without being aware
of the important exception which the fortunate preservation of Varro’s
work has revealed to us.
The conjecture that once a year a horse may have been sacrificed in the
Arician grove as a representative of the deity of the grove derives some
support from the fact that a horse sacrifice of a similar character took
place once a year at Rome. On the 15th of October in each year a
chariot-race took place on the Field of Mars. The right-hand horse of the
victorious team was sacrificed to Mars by being stabbed with a spear. The
object of the sacrifice was to ensure good crops. The animal’s head was
cut off and adorned with a string of loaves. The inhabitants of two
wards—the Sacred Way and the Subura—then contended with each other who
should get the head. If the people of the Sacred Way got it, they fastened
it to a wall of the king’s house; if the people of the Subura got it, they
fastened it to the Mamilian tower. The horse’s tail was cut off and
carried to the king’s house with such speed that the blood dripped on the
hearth of the house.(232) Further, it appears that the blood of the horse
was caught and preserved till the 21st of April, when it was mixed by the
Vestal virgins with the blood of the unborn calves which had been
sacrificed six days before. The mixture was then distributed to shepherds,
and used by them for fumigating their flocks.(233)
In this ceremony the decoration of the horse’s head with a string of
loaves, and the alleged object of the sacrifice, namely, to procure a good
harvest, clearly indicate that the horse was killed as one of those animal
representatives of the corn-spirit of which we have seen so many examples.
The custom of cutting off the horse’s tail is like the African custom of
cutting off the tails of the oxen and sacrificing them to obtain a good
crop.(234) In both the Roman and the African custom the animal represents
the corn-spirit; and its fructifying power is supposed to reside
especially in its tail. The latter idea occurs, as we have seen, in
European folk-lore.(235) Again, the custom of fumigating the cattle in
spring with the blood of the horse may be compared with the custom of
giving the Maiden as fodder to the cattle at Christmas, and giving the
Yule Boar to the ploughing oxen or horses to eat in spring.(236) All these
customs aim at ensuring the blessing of the corn-spirit on the homestead
and its inmates and storing it up for another year.
The Roman sacrifice of the October horse, as it was called, carries us
back to the early days when the Subura, afterwards a low and crowded
quarter of the great metropolis, was still a separate village, whose
inhabitants engaged in a friendly contest on the harvest-field with their
neighbours of Rome, then a little rural town. The Field of Mars on which
the ceremony took place lay beside the Tiber, and formed part of the
king’s domain down to the abolition of the monarchy. For tradition ran
that at the time when the last of the kings was driven from Rome, the corn
stood ripe for the sickle on the crown lands beside the river; but no one
would eat the accursed grain and it was flung into the river in such heaps
that, the water being low with the summer heat, it formed the nucleus of
an island.(237) The horse sacrifice was thus an old autumn custom observed
upon the king’s corn-fields at the end of the harvest. The tail and blood
of the horse, as the chief parts of the corn-spirit’s representative, were
taken to the king’s house and kept there; just as in Germany the
harvest-cock is nailed on the gable or over the door of the farmhouse; and
as the last sheaf, in the form of the Maiden, is carried home and kept
over the fireplace in the Highlands of Scotland. Thus the blessing of the
corn-spirit was brought to the king’s house and hearth and, through them,
to the community of which he was the head. Similarly in the spring and
autumn customs of Northern Europe the May-pole is sometimes set up in
front of the house of the mayor or burgomaster, and the last sheaf at
harvest is brought to him as the head of the village. But while the tail
and blood fell to the king, the neighbouring village of the Subura, which
no doubt once had a similar ceremony of its own, was gratified by being
allowed to compete for the prize of the horse’s head. The Mamilian tower
to which the Suburans nailed the horse’s head when they succeeded in
carrying it off, appears to have been a peel-tower or keep of the old
Mamilian family, the magnates of the village.(238) The ceremony thus
performed on the king’s fields and at his house on behalf of the whole
town and of the neighbouring village presupposes a time when each commune
performed a similar ceremony on its own fields. In the rural districts of
Latium the villages may have continued to observe the custom, each on its
own land, long after the Roman hamlets had merged their separate
harvest-homes in the common celebration on the king’s lands.(239) There is
no intrinsic improbability in the supposition that the sacred grove of
Aricia, like the Field of Mars at Rome, may have been the scene of a
common harvest celebration, at which a horse was sacrificed with the same
rude rites on behalf of the neighbouring villages. The horse would
represent the fructifying spirit both of the tree and of the corn, for the
two ideas melt into each other, as we see in customs like the Harvest-May.
§ 11.—Eating the god.
We have now seen that the corn-spirit is represented sometimes in human,
sometimes in animal form, and that in both cases he is killed in the
person of his representative and eaten sacramentally. To find examples of
actually killing the human representative of the corn-spirit we had of
course to go to savage races; but the harvest suppers of our European
peasants have furnished unmistakable examples of the sacramental eating of
animals as representatives of the corn-spirit. But further, as might have
been anticipated, the new corn is itself eaten sacramentally, that is, as
the body of the corn-spirit. In Wermland, Sweden, the farmer’s wife uses
the grain of the last sheaf to bake a loaf in the shape of a little girl;
this loaf is divided amongst the whole household and eaten by them.(240)
Here the loaf represents the corn-spirit conceived as a maiden; just as in
Scotland the corn-spirit is similarly conceived and represented by the
last sheaf made up in the form of a woman and bearing the name of the
Maiden. As usual, the corn-spirit is believed to reside in the last sheaf;
and to eat a loaf made from the last sheaf is, therefore, to eat the
corn-spirit itself. Similarly at La Palisse in France a man made of dough
is hung upon the fir-tree which is carried on the last harvest-waggon. The
tree and the dough-man are taken to the mayor’s house and kept there till
the vintage is over. Then the close of the harvest is celebrated by a
feast at which the mayor breaks the dough-man in pieces and gives the
pieces to the people to eat.(241)
In these examples the corn-spirit is represented and eaten in human shape.
In other cases, though the new corn is not baked in loaves of human shape,
still the solemn ceremonies with which it is eaten suffice to indicate
that it is partaken of sacramentally, that is, as the body of the
corn-spirit. For example, the following ceremonies used to be observed by
Lithuanian peasants at eating the new corn. When the harvest and the
sowing of the new corn were over, each farmer held a festival called
Sabarios, that is, “the mixing or throwing together.” He took a handful of
each kind of grain—wheat, barley, oats, flax, beans, lentils, etc.; and
each handful he divided into three parts. The twenty-seven portions of
each grain were then thrown on a heap and all mixed up together. The grain
used had to be the grain which was first threshed and winnowed and which
had been set aside and kept for this purpose. A part of the grain thus
mixed was used to bake little loaves, one for each of the household; the
rest was mixed with more barley or oats and made into beer. The first beer
brewed from this mixture was for the drinking of the farmer, his wife, and
children; the second brew was for the servants. The beer being ready, the
farmer chose an evening when no stranger was expected. Then he knelt down
before the barrel of beer, drew a jugful of the liquor and poured it on
the bung of the barrel, saying, “O fruitful earth, make rye and barley and
all kinds of corn to flourish.” Next he took the jug to the parlour, where
his wife and children awaited him. On the floor of the parlour lay bound a
black or white or speckled (not a red) cock and a hen of the same colour
and of the same brood, which must have been hatched within the year. Then
the farmer knelt down, with the jug in his hand, and thanked God for the
harvest and prayed for a good crop next year. Then all lifted up their
hands and said, “O God, and thou, O earth, we give you this cock and hen
as a free-will offering.” With that the farmer killed the fowls with the
blows of a wooden spoon, for he might not cut their heads off. After the
first prayer and after killing each of the birds he poured out a third of
the beer. Then his wife boiled the fowls in a new pot which had never been
used before. A bushel was then set, bottom upwards, on the floor, and on
it were placed the little loaves mentioned above and the boiled fowls.
Next the new beer was fetched, together with a ladle and three mugs, none
of which was used except on this occasion. When the farmer had ladled the
beer into the mugs, the family knelt down round the bushel. The father
then uttered a prayer and drank off the three mugs of beer. The rest
followed his example. Then the loaves and the flesh of the fowls were
eaten, after which the beer went round again, till every one had emptied
each of the three mugs nine times. None of the food should remain over;
but if anything did happen to be left, it was consumed next morning with
the same ceremonies. The bones were then given to the dog to eat; if he
did not eat them all up, the remains were buried under the dung in the
cattle-stall. This ceremony was observed at the beginning of December. On
the day on which it occurred no bad word might be spoken.(242)
Such was the custom about two hundred years ago. At the present day in
Lithuania, when new potatoes or loaves made from the new corn are being
eaten, all the people at table pull each other’s hair.(243) The meaning of
the latter custom is obscure, but a similar custom was certainly observed
by the heathen Lithuanians at their solemn sacrifices.(244) Many of the
Esthonians of the island of Oesel will not eat bread baked of the new corn
till they have first taken a bite at a piece of iron.(245) The iron is
here plainly a charm, intended to render harmless the spirit that is in
the corn.(246) In Sutherlandshire at the present day, when the new
potatoes are dug all the family must taste them, otherwise “the spirits in
them [the potatoes] take offence, and the potatoes would not keep.”(247)
In one part of Yorkshire it is still the custom for the clergyman to cut
the first corn; and my informant believes that the corn so cut is used to
make the communion bread.(248) If the latter part of the custom is
correctly reported (and analogy is all in its favour), it shows how the
Christian communion has absorbed within itself a sacrament which is
doubtless far older than Christianity.
At the close of the rice harvest in Boeroe, East Indies, each clan
(_fenna_) meets at a common sacramental meal, to which every member of the
clan is bound to contribute a little of the new rice. This meal is called
“eating the soul of the rice,” a name which clearly indicates the
sacramental character of the repast. Some of the rice is also set apart
and offered to the spirits.(249) Amongst the Alfoers of Celebes the priest
sows the first rice-seed and plucks the first ripe rice in each field.
This rice he roasts and grinds into meal, and gives some of it to each of
the household.(250) Shortly before the rice harvest in Bolang Mongondo,
Celebes, an offering is made of a small pig or a fowl. Then the priest
plucks a little rice, first on his own field and then on those of his
neighbours. All the rice thus plucked by him he dries along with his own,
and then gives it back to the respective owners, who have it ground and
boiled. When it is boiled the women take it back, with an egg, to the
priest, who offers the egg in sacrifice and returns the rice to the women.
Of this rice every member of the family, down to the youngest child, must
partake. After this ceremony every one is free to get in his rice.(251)
Amongst the Burghers, a tribe of the Neilgherry Hills in Southern India,
the first handful of seed is sown and the first sheaf reaped by a
Curumbar—a man of a different tribe, whom the Burghers regard as
sorcerers. The grain contained in the first sheaf “is that day reduced to
meal, made into cakes, and, being offered as a first-fruit oblation, is,
together with the remainder of the sacrificed animal, partaken of by the
Burgher and the whole of his family as the meat of a federal offering and
sacrifice.”(252)
Amongst the Coorgs of Southern India the man who is to cut the first sheaf
of rice at harvest is chosen by an astrologer. At sunset the whole
household takes a hot bath and then goes to the rice-field, where the
chosen reaper cuts an armful of rice with a new sickle, and distributes
two or more stalks to all present. Then all return to the threshing-floor.
A bundle of leaves is adorned with a stalk of rice and fastened to the
post in the centre of the threshing-floor. Enough of the new rice is now
threshed, cleaned, and ground to provide flour for the dough cakes which
each member of the household is to eat. Then they go to the door of the
house, where the mistress washes the feet of the sheaf-cutter, and
presents to him, and after him to all the rest, a brass vessel full of
milk, honey, and sugar, from which each person takes a draught. Then the
man who cut the sheaf kneads a cake of rice meal, plantains, milk, honey,
seven new rice corns, seven pieces of cocoa-nut, etc. Every one receives a
little of this cake on an Ashvatha leaf, and eats it. The ceremony is then
over and the sheaf-cutter mixes with the company. When he was engaged in
cutting the rice no one might touch him.(253) Among the Hindoos of
Southern India the eating of the new rice is the occasion of a family
festival called Pongol. The new rice is boiled in a new pot on a fire
which is kindled at noon on the day when, according to Hindoo astrologers,
the sun enters the tropic of Capricorn. The boiling of the pot is watched
with great anxiety by the whole family, for as the milk boils, so will the
coming year be. If the milk boils rapidly, the year will be prosperous;
but it will be the reverse if the milk boils slowly. Some of the new
boiled rice is offered to the image of Ganesa; then every one partakes of
it.(254) At Gilgit, in the Hindoo Koosh, before wheat-harvest begins, a
member of every household gathers a handful of ears of corn secretly at
dusk. A few of the ears are hung up over the door of the house, and the
rest are roasted next morning, and eaten steeped in milk. The day is spent
in rejoicings, and next morning the harvest begins.(255)
The ceremony of eating the new yams at Onitsha, on the Quorra River,
Guinea, is thus described: “Each headman brought out six yams, and cut
down young branches of palm-leaves and placed them before his gate,
roasted three of the yams, and got some kola-nuts and fish. After the yam
is roasted, the _Libia_, or country doctor, takes the yam, scrapes it with
a sort of meal, and divides it into halves; he then takes one piece, and
places it on the lips of the person who is going to eat the new yam. The
eater then blows up the steam from the hot yam, and afterwards pokes the
whole into his mouth, and says, ‘I thank God for being permitted to eat
the new yam;’ he then begins to chew it heartily, with fish
likewise.”(256) Amongst the Kafirs of Natal and Zululand, no one may eat
of the new fruits till after a festival which marks the beginning of the
Kafir year. All the people assemble at the king’s kraal, where they feast
and dance. Before they separate the “dedication of the people” takes
place. Various fruits of the earth, as corn, mealies, and pumpkins, mixed
with the flesh of a sacrificed animal and with “medicine,” are boiled in
great pots, and a little of this food is placed in each man’s mouth by the
king himself. After thus partaking of the sanctified fruits, a man is
himself sanctified for the whole year, and may immediately get in his
crops.(257)
Amongst the Creek Indians of North America, the _busk_ or festival of
first-fruits was the chief ceremony of the year.(258) It was held in July
or August, when the corn was ripe, and marked the end of the old year and
the beginning of the new one. Before it took place none of the Indians
would eat or even handle any part of the new harvest. Sometimes each town
had its own busk; sometimes several towns united to hold one in common.
Before celebrating the busk, the people provided themselves with new
clothes and new household utensils and furniture; they collected their old
clothes and rubbish, together with all the remaining grain and other old
provisions, cast them together in one common heap, and consumed them with
fire.(259) As a preparation for the ceremony, all the fires in the village
were extinguished, and the ashes swept clean away. In particular, the
hearth or altar of the temple was dug up and the ashes carried out. Then
the chief priest put some roots of the button-snake plant, with some green
tobacco leaves and a little of the new fruits, at the bottom of the
fireplace, which he afterwards ordered to be covered up with white clay,
and wetted over with clean water. A thick arbour of green branches of
young trees was then made over the altar.(260) Meanwhile the women at home
were cleaning out their houses, renewing the old hearths, and scouring all
the cooking vessels that they might be ready to receive the new fire and
the new fruits.(261) The public or sacred square was carefully swept of
even the smallest crumbs of previous feasts, “for fear of polluting the
first-fruit offerings.” Also every vessel that had contained or had been
used about any food during the expiring year was removed from the temple
before sunset. Then all the men who were not known to have violated the
law of the first-fruit offering and that of marriage during the year were
summoned by a crier to enter the holy square and observe a solemn fast.
But the women (except six old ones), the children, and all who had not
attained the rank of warriors were forbidden to enter the square.
Sentinels were also posted at the corners of the square to keep out all
persons deemed impure and all animals. A strict fast was then observed for
two nights and a day, the devotees drinking a bitter decoction of
button-snake root “in order to vomit and purge their sinful bodies.” That
the people outside the square might also be purified, one of the old men
laid down a quantity of green tobacco at a corner of the square; this was
carried off by an old woman and distributed to the people without, who
chewed and swallowed it “in order to afflict their souls.” During this
general fast, the women, children, and men of weak constitution were
allowed to eat after mid-day, but not before. On the morning when the fast
ended, the women brought a quantity of the old year’s food to the outside
of the sacred square. These provisions were then brought in and set before
the famished multitude, but all traces of them had to be removed before
noon. When the sun was declining from the meridian, all the people were
commanded by the voice of a crier to stay within doors, to do no bad act,
and to be sure to extinguish and throw away every spark of the old fire.
Universal silence now reigned. Then the high priest made the new fire by
the friction of two pieces of wood, and placed it on the altar under the
green arbour. This new fire was believed to atone for all past crimes
except murder. Then a basket of new fruits was brought; the high priest
took out a little of each sort of fruit, rubbed it with bear’s oil, and
offered it, together with some flesh, “to the bountiful holy spirit of
fire, as a first-fruit offering, and an annual oblation for sin.” He also
consecrated the sacred emetics (the button-snake root and the cassina or
black-drink) by pouring a little of them into the fire. The persons who
had remained outside now approached, without entering, the sacred square;
and the chief priest thereupon made a speech, exhorting the people to
observe their old rites and customs, announcing that the new divine fire
had purged away the sins of the past year, and earnestly warning the women
that, if any of them had not extinguished the old fire, or had contracted
any impurity, they must forthwith depart, “lest the divine fire should
spoil both them and the people.” Some of the new fire was then laid down
outside the holy square; the women carried it home joyfully, and laid it
on their unpolluted hearths. When several towns had united to celebrate
the festival, the new fire might thus be carried for several miles. The
new fruits were then dressed on the new fires and eaten with bear’s oil,
which was deemed indispensable. At one point of the festival the men
rubbed the new corn between their hands, then on their faces and
breasts.(262) During the festival which followed, the warriors, dressed in
their wild martial array, their heads covered with white down and carrying
white feathers in their hands, danced round the sacred arbour, under which
burned the new fire. The ceremonies lasted eight days, during which the
strictest continence was practised. Towards the conclusion of the festival
the warriors fought a mock battle; then the men and women together, in
three circles, danced round the sacred fire. Lastly, all the people
smeared themselves with white clay and bathed in running water. They came
out of the water “believing themselves out of the reach of temporal evil
for their past vicious conduct.” So they departed in joy and peace.
The solemn preparations thus made for eating the new corn prove that it
was eaten as a sacrament. In the Boeroe and Creek customs, this sacrament
is combined with a sacrifice, and in course of time the sacrifice of
first-fruits tends to throw the sacrament into the shade, if not to
supersede it. The mere fact of having offered the first-fruits to the gods
or ancestral spirits comes now to be thought a sufficient preparation for
eating the new corn; the gods having received their share, man is free to
enjoy the rest. This mode of viewing the new fruits implies that they are
regarded no longer as themselves instinct with divine life, but merely as
a gift bestowed by the gods upon man, who is bound to express his
gratitude and homage to his divine benefactors by presenting them with a
portion of the fruits of the earth. But with sacrifice, as distinct from
sacrament, we are not here concerned.(263)
The custom of eating bread sacramentally as the body of a god was
practised by the Aztecs before the discovery and conquest of Mexico by the
Spaniards. Twice a year, in May and December, an image of the great
Mexican god Huitzilopochtli or Vitzilipuztli was made of dough, then
broken in pieces, and solemnly eaten by his worshippers. The May ceremony
is thus described by the historian Acosta. “Two daies before this feast,
the virgins whereof I have spoken (the which were shut up and secluded in
the same temple and were as it were religious women) did mingle a
quantitie of the seede of beetes with roasted Mays [maize], and then they
did mould it with honie, making an idol of that paste in bignesse like to
that of wood, putting insteede of eyes graines of greene glasse, of blue
or white; and for teeth graines of Mays set forth with all the ornament
and furniture that I have said. This being finished, all the Noblemen came
and brought it an exquisite and rich garment, like unto that of the idol,
wherewith they did attyre it. Being thus clad and deckt, they did set it
in an azured chaire and in a litter to carry it on their shoulders. The
morning of this feast being come, an houre before day all the maidens came
forth attired in white, with new ornaments, the which that day were called
the Sisters of their god Vitzilipuztli, they came crowned with garlands of
Mays rosted and parched, being like unto azahar or the flower of orange;
and about their neckes they had great chaines of the same, which went
bauldricke-wise under their left arme. Their cheekes were died with
vermillion, their armes from the elbow to the wrist were covered with red
parrots’ feathers.” Young men, crowned like the virgins with maize, then
carried the idol in its litter to the foot of the great pyramid-shaped
temple, up the steep and narrow steps of which it was drawn to the music
of flutes, trumpets, cornets, and drums. “While they mounted up the idoll
all the people stoode in the Court with much reverence and feare. Being
mounted to the top, and that they had placed it in a little lodge of roses
which they held readie, presently came the yong men, which strawed many
flowers of sundrie kindes, wherewith they filled the temple both within
and without. This done, all the virgins came out of their convent,
bringing peeces of paste compounded of beetes and rosted Mays, which was
of the same paste whereof their idol was made and compounded, and they
were of the fashion of great bones. They delivered them to the yong men,
who carried them up and laide them at the idoll’s feete, wherewith they
filled the whole place that it could receive no more. They called these
morcells of paste the flesh and bones of Vitzilipuztli.” Then the priests
came in their robes of office, “and putting themselves in order about
these morsells and peeces of paste, they used certaine ceremonies with
singing and dauncing. By means whereof they were blessed and consecrated
for the flesh and bones of this idoll.... The ceremonies, dauncing, and
sacrifice ended, they went to unclothe themselves, and the priests and
superiors of the temple tooke the idoll of paste, which they spoyled of
all the ornaments it had, and made many peeces, as well of the idoll
itselfe as of the tronchons which were consecrated, and then they gave
them to the people in maner of a communion, beginning with the greater,
and continuing unto the rest, both men, women, and little children, who
received it with such teares, feare, and reverence as it was an admirable
thing, saying that they did eate the flesh and bones of God, wherewith
they were grieved. Such as had any sicke folkes demaunded thereof for
them, and carried it with great reverence and veneration.”(264)
Before the festival in December, which took place at the winter solstice,
an image of the god Huitzilopochtli was made of seeds of various sorts
kneaded into a dough with the blood of children. The bones of the god were
represented by pieces of acacia wood, This image was placed on the chief
altar of the temple, and on the day of the festival the king offered
incense to it. Early next day it was taken down and set on its feet in a
great hall. Then a priest took a flint-tipped dart and hurled it into the
breast of the dough-image, piercing it through and through. This was
called “killing the god Huitzilopochtli so that his body might be eaten.”
One of the priests cut out the heart of the image and gave it to the king
to eat. The rest of the image was divided into minute pieces, of which
every man great and small, down to the male children in the cradle,
received one to eat. But no woman might taste a morsel. The ceremony was
called _teoqualo_, that is, “god is eaten.”(265)
At another festival the Mexicans made little images in human shape to
represent the cloud-capped mountains. These images were made of paste of
various seeds and were dressed in paper ornaments. Some people made five,
others ten, others as many as fifteen of these paste images. They were
placed in the oratory of each house and worshipped. Four times in the
course of the night offerings of food were made to them in tiny vessels;
and people sang and played the flute before them all night. At break of
day the priests stabbed the images with a weaver’s instrument, cut off
their heads, and tore out their hearts, which they presented to the master
of the house on a green saucer. The bodies of the images were then eaten
by all the family, especially by the servants, “in order that by eating
them they might be preserved from certain distempers, to which those
persons who were negligent of worship to those deities conceived
themselves to be subject.” (266)
We are now able to suggest an explanation of the proverb “there are many
Manii at Aricia.”(267) Certain loaves made in the shape of men were called
by the Romans _maniae_, and it appears that this kind of loaf was
especially made at Aricia.(268) Now, Mania, the name of one of these
loaves, was also the name of the Mother or Grandmother of Ghosts,(269) to
whom woollen effigies of men and women were dedicated at the festival of
the Compitalia. These effigies were hung at the doors of all the houses in
Rome; one effigy was hung up for every free person in the house, and one
effigy, of a different kind, for every slave. The reason was that on this
day the ghosts of the dead were believed to be going about, and it was
hoped that they would carry off the effigies at the door instead of the
living people in the house. According to tradition, these woollen figures
were substitutes for a former custom of sacrificing human beings.(270)
Upon data so fragmentary and uncertain, it is of course impossible to
build with certainty; but it seems worth suggesting that the loaves in
human form, which appear to have been baked at Aricia, were sacramental
bread, and that in the old days, when the divine King of the Wood was
annually slain, loaves were made in his image, like the paste figures of
the gods in Mexico, and were eaten sacramentally by his worshippers.(271)
The Mexican sacraments in honour of Huitzilopochtli were also accompanied
by the sacrifice of human victims. The tradition that the founder of the
sacred grove at Aricia was a man named Manius, from whom many Manii were
descended, would thus be an etymological myth invented to explain the name
_maniae_ as applied to these sacramental loaves. A dim recollection of the
original connection of these loaves with human sacrifices may perhaps be
traced in the story that the effigies dedicated to Mania at the Compitalia
were substitutes for human victims. The story itself, however, is probably
devoid of foundation, since the practice of putting up dummies to divert
the attention of demons from living people is not uncommon. For example,
when an epidemic is raging, some of the Dyaks of Borneo set up wooden
images at their doors, in the hope that the demons of the plague will be
deceived into carrying off the images instead of the people.(272) The
Minahassa of Celebes will sometimes transport a sick man to another house,
leaving on his bed a dummy made up of a pillow and clothes. This dummy the
demon is supposed to take by mistake for the sick man, who consequently
recovers.(273) Similarly in Burma it is thought that a patient will
recover if an effigy be buried in a small coffin.(274)
The custom of killing the god has now been traced amongst peoples who have
reached the agricultural stage of society. We have seen that the spirit of
the corn, or of other cultivated plants, is commonly represented either in
human or in animal form, and that a custom has prevailed of killing
annually either the human or the animal representative of the god. The
reason for thus killing the corn-spirit in the person of his
representative has been given implicitly in the earlier part of this
chapter. But, further, we have found a widespread custom of eating the god
sacramentally, either in the shape of the man or animal who represents the
god, or in the shape of bread made in human or animal form. The reasons
for thus partaking of the body of the god are, from the primitive
standpoint, simple enough. The savage commonly believes that by eating the
flesh of an animal or man he acquires not only the physical, but even the
moral and intellectual qualities which were characteristic of that animal
or man. To take examples. The Creeks, Cherokees, and kindred tribes of
North American Indians “believe that nature is possessed of such a
property, as to transfuse into men and animals the qualities, either of
the food they use, or of those objects that are presented to their senses;
he who feeds on venison is, according to their physical system, swifter
and more sagacious than the man who lives on the flesh of the clumsy bear,
or helpless dunghill fowls, the slow-footed tame cattle, or the heavy
wallowing swine. This is the reason that several of their old men
recommend, and say, that formerly their greatest chieftains observed a
constant rule in their diet, and seldom ate of any animal of a gross
quality, or heavy motion of body, fancying it conveyed a dulness through
the whole system, and disabled them from exerting themselves with proper
vigour in their martial, civil, and religious duties.”(275) The Zaparo
Indians of South America “will, unless from necessity, in most cases not
eat any heavy meats, such as tapir and peccary, but confine themselves to
birds, monkeys, deer, fish, etc., principally because they argue that the
heavier meats make them unwieldy, like the animals who supply the flesh,
impeding their agility, and unfitting them for the chase.”(276) The
Namaquas abstain from eating the flesh of hares, because they think it
would make them faint-hearted as a hare. But they eat the flesh of the
lion, or drink the blood of the leopard or lion to get the courage and
strength of these beasts.(277) The Arabs of Eastern Africa believe that an
unguent of lion’s fat inspires a man with boldness, and makes the wild
beasts flee in terror before him.(278) When a serious disease has attacked
a Zulu kraal, the medicine-man takes the bone of a very old dog, which has
died a natural death from mere old age, or the bone of an old cow, bull,
or other very old animal, and administers it to the healthy as well as to
the sick people, in order that they may live to be as old as the animal of
whose bone they have partaken.(279) The Miris of Northern India prize
tiger’s flesh as food for men; it gives them strength and courage. But “it
is not suited for women; it would make them too strong-minded.”(280)
Amongst the Dyaks of North-west Borneo young men and warriors may not eat
venison, because it would make them as timid as deer; but the women and
very old men are free to eat it.(281) Men of the Buro and Aru Islands,
East Indies, eat the flesh of dogs in order to be bold and nimble in
war.(282) Amongst the Papuans of the Port Moresby and Motumotu districts,
New Guinea, young lads eat strong pig, wallaby, and large fish, in order
to acquire the strength of the animal or fish.(283) In Corea the bones of
tigers fetch a higher price than those of leopards as a means of inspiring
courage. A Chinaman in Soul bought and ate a whole tiger to make himself
brave and fierce.(284) The special seat of courage, according to the
Chinese, is the gall-bladder; so they sometimes procure the gall-bladders
of tigers and bears, and eat the bile in the belief that it will give them
courage.(285) In Norse history, Ingiald, son of King Aunund, was timid in
his youth, but after eating the heart of a wolf he became very bold; and
Hialto gained strength and courage by eating the heart of a bear and
drinking its blood.(286) In Morocco lethargic patients are given ants to
swallow; and to eat lion’s flesh will make a coward brave.(287) When a
child is late in learning to speak, the Turks of Central Asia will give it
the tongues of certain birds to eat.(288) A North American Indian thought
that brandy must be a decoction of hearts and tongues, “Because,” said he,
“after drinking it I fear nothing, and I talk wonderfully.”(289) The
people of Darfur, in Central Africa, think that the liver is the seat of
the soul, and that a man may enlarge his soul by eating the liver of an
animal. “Whenever an animal is killed its liver is taken out and eaten,
but the people are most careful not to touch it with their hands, as it is
considered sacred; it is cut up in small pieces and eaten raw, the bits
being conveyed to the mouth on the point of a knife, or the sharp point of
a stick. Any one who may accidentally touch the liver is strictly
forbidden to partake of it, which prohibition is regarded as a great
misfortune for him.” Women are not allowed to eat liver, because they have
no soul.(290)
Again, the flesh and blood of brave men are commonly eaten and drunk to
inspire bravery. The Australian Kamilaroi eat the heart and liver of a
brave man to get his courage.(291) It is a common practice with the
Australian blacks to kill a man, cut out his caul-fat, and rub themselves
with it, “the belief being that all the qualifications, both physical and
mental, of the previous owner of the fat were thus communicated to him who
used it.”(292) The Italones of the Philippine Islands drink the blood of
their slain enemies, and eat part of the back of their heads and of their
entrails raw, in order to acquire their courage. For the same reason the
Efugaos, another tribe of the Philippines, suck the brains of their
foes.(293) Amongst the Kimbunda of Western Africa, when a new king
succeeds to the throne, a brave prisoner of war is killed in order that
the king and nobles may eat his flesh, and so acquire his strength and
courage.(294) The Basutos cut off pieces of their slain enemies and make
them into a powder, “which is supposed to communicate to them the courage,
skill, and good fortune of their adversaries.”(295) The Zulus think that
by eating the centre of the forehead and the eyebrow of an enemy they
acquire the power of looking steadfastly at a foe.(296) In the Shire
Highlands of Africa those who kill a brave man eat his heart to get his
courage.(297) For the same purpose the Chinese eat the bile of notorious
bandits who have been executed.(298) In New Zealand “the chief was an atua
[god], but there were powerful and powerless gods; each naturally sought
to make himself one of the former; the plan therefore adopted was to
incorporate the spirits of others with their own; thus, when a warrior
slew a chief he immediately gouged out his eyes and swallowed them, the
_atua tonga_, or divinity, being supposed to reside in that organ; thus he
not only killed the body, but also possessed himself of the soul of his
enemy, and consequently the more chiefs he slew the greater did his
divinity become.”(299)
It is now easy to understand why a savage should desire to partake of the
flesh of an animal or man whom he regards as divine. By eating the body of
the god he shares in the god’s attributes and powers. And when the god is
a corn-god, the corn is his proper body; when he is a vine-god, the juice
of the grape is his blood; and so by eating the bread and drinking the
wine the worshipper partakes of the real body and blood of his god. Thus
the drinking of wine in the rites of a vine-god like Dionysus is not an
act of revelry, it is a solemn sacrament.(300)
§ 12.—Killing the divine animal.
It remains to show that hunting and pastoral tribes, as well as
agricultural peoples, have been in the habit of killing their gods. The
gods whom hunters and shepherds adore and kill are animals pure and
simple, not animals regarded as embodiments of other supernatural beings.
Our first example is drawn from the Indians of California, who, living in
a fertile country(301) under a serene and temperate sky, nevertheless rank
near the bottom of the savage scale. The Acagchemen tribe of San Juan
Capistrano adored the great buzzard. Once a year, at a great festival
called _Panes_ or bird-feast, they carried one of these birds in
procession to their chief temple, which seems to have been merely an
unroofed enclosure of stakes. Here they killed the bird without losing a
drop of its blood. The skin was removed entire and preserved with the
feathers as a relic or for the purpose of making the festal garment or
_paelt_. The carcass was buried in a hole in the temple, and the old women
gathered round the grave weeping and moaning bitterly, while they threw
various kinds of seeds or pieces of food on it, crying out, “Why did you
run away? Would you not have been better with us?” and so on. They said
that the Panes was a woman who had run off to the mountains and there been
changed into a bird by the god Chinigchinich. They believed that though
they sacrificed the bird annually, she came to life again and returned to
her home in the mountains. Moreover they thought that “as often as the
bird was killed, it became multiplied; because every year all the
different Capitanes celebrated the same feast of the Panes, and were firm
in the opinion that the birds sacrificed were but one and the same
female.”(302)
The unity in multiplicity thus postulated by the Californians is very
noticeable and helps to explain their motive for killing the divine bird.
The notion of the life of a species as distinct from that of an
individual, easy and obvious as it seems to us, appears to be one which
the Californian savage cannot grasp. He is unable to conceive the life of
the species otherwise than as an individual life, and therefore as exposed
to the same dangers and calamities which menace and finally destroy the
life of the individual. Apparently he thinks that a species left to itself
will grow old and die like an individual, and that therefore some step
must be taken to save from extinction the particular species which he
regards as divine. The only means he can think of to avert the catastrophe
is to kill a member of the species in whose veins the tide of life is
still running strong and has not yet stagnated among the fens of old age.
The life thus diverted from one channel will flow, he fancies, more
freshly and freely in a new one; in other words, the slain animal will
revive and enter on a new term of life with all the spring and energy of
youth. To us this reasoning is transparently absurd, but so too is the
custom. If a better explanation, that is, one more consonant with the
facts and with the principles of savage thought, can be given of the
custom, I will willingly withdraw the one here proposed. A similar
confusion, it may be noted, between the individual life and the life of
the species was made by the Samoans. Each family had for its god a
particular species of animal; yet the death of one of these animals, for
example an owl, was not the death of the god, “he was supposed to be yet
alive, and incarnate in all the owls in existence.”(303)
The rude Californian rite which we have just considered has a close
parallel in the religion of ancient Egypt. The Thebans and all other
Egyptians who worshipped the Theban god Ammon held rams to be sacred and
would not sacrifice them. But once a year at the festival of Ammon they
killed a ram, skinned it, and clothed the image of the god in the skin.
Then they mourned over the ram and buried it in a sacred tomb. The custom
was explained by a story that Zeus had once exhibited himself to Hercules
clad in the fleece and wearing the head of a ram.(304) Of course the ram
in this case was simply the beast-god of Thebes, as the wolf was the
beast-god of Lycopolis, and the goat was the beast-god of Mendes. In other
words, the ram was Ammon himself. On the monuments, it is true, Ammon
appears in semi-human form with the body of a man and the head of a
ram.(305) But this only shows that he was in the usual chrysalis state
through which beast-gods regularly pass before they emerge as full-fledged
anthropomorphic gods. The ram, therefore, was killed, not as a sacrifice
to Ammon, but as the god himself, whose identity with the beast is plainly
shown by the custom of clothing his image in the skin of the slain ram.
The reason for thus killing the ram-god annually may have been that which
I have assigned for the general custom of killing the god and for the
special Californian custom of killing the divine buzzard. As applied to
Egypt, this explanation is supported by the analogy of the bull-god Apis,
who was not suffered to outlive a certain term of years.(306) The
intention of thus putting a limit to the life of the god was, as I have
argued, to secure him from the weakness and frailty of age. The same
reasoning would explain the custom—probably an older one—of putting the
beast-god to death annually, as was done with the ram of Thebes.
One point in the Theban ritual—the application of the skin to the image of
the god—deserves special attention. If the god was at first the living
ram, his representation by an image must have originated later. But how
did it originate? The answer to this question is perhaps furnished by the
practice of preserving the skin of the animal which is slain as divine.
The Californians, as we have seen, preserved the skin of the buzzard; and
the skin of the goat, which is killed on the harvest-field as a
representative of the corn-spirit, is kept for various superstitious
purposes.(307) The skin in fact was kept as a token or memorial of the
god, or rather as containing in it a part of the divine life, and it had
only to be stuffed or stretched upon a frame to become a regular image of
him. At first an image of this kind would be renewed annually,(308) the
new image being provided by the skin of the slain animal. But from annual
images to permanent images the transition is easy. We have seen that the
older custom of cutting a new May-tree every year was superseded by the
practice of maintaining a permanent May-pole, which was, however, annually
decked with fresh leaves and flowers and even surmounted each year by a
fresh young tree.(309) Similarly when the stuffed skin, as a
representative of the god, was replaced by a permanent image of him in
wood, stone, or metal, the permanent image was annually clad in the fresh
skin of the slain animal. When this stage had been reached, the custom of
killing the ram came naturally to be interpreted as a sacrifice offered to
the image, and was explained by a story like that of Ammon and Hercules.
West Africa furnishes another example of the annual killing of a sacred
animal and the preservation of its skin. The negroes of Issapoo, in the
island of Fernando Po, regard the cobra-capella as their guardian deity,
who can do them good or ill, bestow riches or inflict disease and death.
The skin of one of these reptiles is hung tail downwards from a branch of
the highest tree in the public square, and the placing of it on the tree
is an annual ceremony. As soon as the ceremony is over, all children born
within the past year are carried out and their hands made to touch the
tail of the serpent’s skin.(310) The latter custom is clearly a way of
placing the infants under the protection of the tribal god. Similarly in
Senegambia a python is expected to visit every child of the Python clan
within eight days after birth;(311) and the Psylli, a Snake clan of
ancient Africa, used to expose their infants to snakes in the belief that
the snakes would not harm true-born children of the clan.(312)
In the Californian, Egyptian, and Fernando Po customs the animal slain
probably is, or once was, a totem. At all events, in all three cases the
worship of the animal seems to have no relation to agriculture, and may
therefore be presumed to date from the hunter or pastoral stage of
society. The same may be said of the following custom, though the people
who practise it—the Zuni Indians of New Mexico—are now settled in walled
villages or towns of a peculiar type, and practise agriculture and the
arts of pottery and weaving. But the Zuni custom is marked by certain
features which appear to place it in a somewhat different category from
the preceding cases. It may be well therefore to describe it at full
length in the words of an eye-witness.
“With midsummer the heat became intense. My brother [_i.e._ adopted Indian
brother] and I sat, day after day, in the cool under-rooms of our
house,—the latter [_sic_] busy with his quaint forge and crude appliances,
working Mexican coins over into bangles, girdles, ear-rings, buttons, and
what not for savage ornament.... One day as I sat watching him, a
procession of fifty men went hastily down the hill, and off westward over
the plain. They were solemnly led by a painted and shell-bedecked priest,
and followed by the torch-bearing Shu-lu-wit-si, or God of Fire. After
they had vanished, I asked old brother what it all meant.
“ ‘They are going,’ said he, ‘to the city of the Ka-ka and the home of our
others.’
“Four days after, toward sunset, costumed and masked in the beautiful
paraphernalia of the Ka-k’ok-shi, or ‘Good Dance,’ they returned in file
up the same pathway, each bearing in his arms a basket filled with living,
squirming turtles, which he regarded and carried as tenderly as a mother
would her infant. Some of the wretched reptiles were carefully wrapped in
soft blankets, their heads and forefeet protruding,—and, mounted on the
backs of the plume-bedecked pilgrims, made ludicrous but solemn
caricatures of little children in the same position. While I was at supper
upstairs that evening, the governor’s brother-in-law came in. He was
welcomed by the family as if a messenger from heaven. He bore in his
tremulous fingers one of the much abused and rebellious turtles. Paint
still adhered to his hands and bare feet, which led me to infer that he
had formed one of the sacred embassy.
“ ‘So you went to Ka-thlu-el-lon, did you?’ I asked.
“ ‘E’e,’ replied the weary man, in a voice husky with long chanting, as he
sank, almost exhausted, on a roll of skins which had been placed for him,
and tenderly laid the turtle on the floor. No sooner did the creature find
itself at liberty than it made off as fast as its lame legs would take it.
Of one accord the family forsook dish, spoon, and drinking-cup, and
grabbing from a sacred meal-bowl whole handfuls of the contents, hurriedly
followed the turtle about the room, into dark corners, around water-jars,
behind the grinding-troughs, and out into the middle of the floor again,
praying and scattering meal on its back as they went. At last, strange to
say, it approached the footsore man who had brought it.
“ ‘Ha!’ he exclaimed, with emotion; ‘see, it comes to me again; ah, what
great favours the fathers of all grant me this day,’ and passing his hand
gently over the sprawling animal, he inhaled from his palm deeply and
long, at the same time invoking the favour of the gods. Then he leaned his
chin upon his hand, and with large wistful eyes regarded his ugly captive
as it sprawled about, blinking its meal-bedimmed eyes, and clawing the
smooth floor in memory of its native element. At this juncture I ventured
a question:
“ ‘Why do you not let him go, or give him some water?’
“Slowly the man turned his eyes toward me, an odd mixture of pain,
indignation, and pity on his face, while the worshipful family stared at
me with holy horror.
“ ‘Poor younger brother!’ he said at last, ‘know you not how precious it
is? It die? It will _not_ die; I tell you, it cannot die.’
“ ‘But it will die if you don’t feed it and give it water.’
“ ‘I tell you it _cannot_ die; it will only change houses to-morrow, and
go back to the home of its brothers. Ah, well! How should _you_ know?’ he
mused. Turning to the blinded turtle again: ‘Ah! my poor dear lost child
or parent, my sister or brother to have been! Who knows which? Maybe my
own great-grandfather or mother!’ And with this he fell to weeping most
pathetically, and, tremulous with sobs, which were echoed by the women and
children, he buried his face in his hands. Filled with sympathy for his
grief, however mistaken, I raised the turtle to my lips and kissed its
cold shell; then depositing it on the floor, hastily left the
grief-stricken family to their sorrows. Next day, with prayers and tender
beseechings, plumes, and offerings, the poor turtle was killed, and its
flesh and bones were removed and deposited in the little river, that it
might ‘return once more to eternal life among its comrades in the dark
waters of the lake of the dead.’ The shell, carefully scraped and dried,
was made into a dance-rattle, and, covered by a piece of buckskin, it
still hangs from the smoke-stained rafters of my brother’s house. Once a
Navajo tried to buy it for a ladle; loaded with indignant reproaches, he
was turned out of the house. Were any one to venture the suggestion that
the turtle no longer lived, his remark would cause a flood of tears, and
he would be reminded that it had only ‘changed houses and gone to live for
ever in the home of “our lost others.” ’ ”(313)
In this custom we find expressed in the clearest way a belief in the
transmigration of human souls into the bodies of turtles.(314) The same
belief in transmigration is held by the Moqui Indians, who belong to the
same race as the Zunis. The Moquis are divided into totem clans—the Bear
clan, Deer clan, Wolf clan, Hare clan, etc.; they believe that the
ancestors of the clans were bears, deer, wolves, hares, etc.; and that at
death the members of each clan become bears, deer, etc.(315) The Zuni are
also divided into clans, the totems of which agree closely with those of
the Moquis, and one of their totems is the turtle.(316) Thus their belief
in transmigration into the turtle is probably one of the regular articles
of their totem faith. What then is the meaning of killing a turtle in
which the soul of a kinsman is believed to be present? Apparently the
object is to keep up a communication with the other world in which the
souls of the departed are believed to be assembled in the form of turtles.
It is a common belief that the spirits of the dead return occasionally to
their old homes; and accordingly the unseen visitors are welcomed and
feasted by the living, and then sent upon their way.(317) In the Zuni
ceremony the dead are fetched back in the form of turtles, and the killing
of the turtles is the way of sending back the souls to the spirit-land.
Thus the general explanation given above of the custom of killing a god
seems inapplicable to the Zuni custom, the true meaning of which is
somewhat obscure.
Doubt also hangs over the meaning of the bear-sacrifice offered by the
Ainos, a primitive people who are found in the Japanese islands of Yesso
and Saghalien, and also in the southern of the Kurile Islands. It is not
quite easy to make out the attitude of the Ainos towards the bear. On the
one hand they give it the name of _Kamui_ or “god”; but as they apply the
same word to strangers,(318) it probably means no more than a being
supposed to be endowed with superhuman powers. Again, it is said “the bear
is their chief divinity;”(319) “in the religion of the Ainos the bear
plays a chief part;”(320) “amongst the animals it is especially the bear
which receives an idolatrous veneration;”(321) “they worship it after
their fashion.... There is no doubt that this wild beast inspires more of
the feeling which prompts worship than the inanimate forces of nature, and
the Ainos may be distinguished as bear-worshippers.”(322) Yet, on the
other hand, they kill the bear whenever they can;(323) “the men spend the
autumn, winter, and spring in hunting deer and bears. Part of their
tribute or taxes is paid in skins, and they subsist on the dried
meat;”(324) bear’s flesh is indeed one of their staple foods; they eat it
both fresh and salted;(325) and the skins of bears furnish them with
clothing.(326) In fact, the “worship” of which writers on this subject
speak appears to be paid only to the dead animal. Thus, although they kill
a bear whenever they can, “in the process of dissecting the carcass they
endeavour to conciliate the deity, whose representative they have slain,
by making elaborate obeisances and deprecatory salutations;”(327) “when a
bear is trapped or wounded by an arrow, the hunters go through an
apologetic or propitiatory ceremony.”(328) The skulls of slain bears
receive a place of honour in their huts, or are set up on sacred posts
outside the huts, and are treated with much respect; libations of _sake_,
an intoxicating liquor, are offered to them.(329) The skulls of foxes are
also fastened to the sacred posts outside the huts; they are regarded as
charms against evil spirits, and are consulted as oracles.(330) Yet it is
expressly said, “The live fox is revered just as little as the bear;
rather they avoid it as much as possible, considering it a wily
animal.”(331) The bear cannot, therefore, be described as a sacred animal
of the Ainos, and it certainly is not a totem; for they do not call
themselves bears, they appear to have no legend of their descent from a
bear,(332) and they kill and eat the animal freely.
But it is the bear-festival of the Ainos which concerns us here. Towards
the end of winter a young bear is caught and brought into the village. At
first he is suckled by an Aino woman; afterwards he is fed on fish. When
he grows so strong that he threatens to break out of the wooden cage in
which he is confined, the feast is held. But “it is a peculiarly striking
fact that the young bear is not kept merely to furnish a good meal; rather
he is regarded and honoured as a fetish, or even as a sort of higher
being.”(333) The festival is generally celebrated in September or October.
Before it takes place the Ainos apologise to their gods, alleging that
they have treated the bear kindly as long as they could, now they can feed
him no longer, and are obliged to kill him. A man who gives a bear-feast
invites his relations and friends; in a small village nearly the whole
community takes part in the feast. One of these festivals has been
described by an eyewitness, Dr. Scheube.(334) On entering the hut he found
about thirty Ainos present, men, women, and children, all dressed in their
best. The master of the house first offered a libation on the fireplace to
the god of the fire, and the guests followed his example. Then a libation
was offered to the house-god in his sacred corner of the hut. Meanwhile
the housewife, who had nursed the bear, sat by herself, silent and sad,
bursting now and then into tears. Her grief was obviously unaffected, and
it deepened as the festival went on. Next, the master of the house and
some of the guests went out of the hut and offered libations before the
bear’s cage. A few drops were presented to the bear in a saucer, which he
at once upset. Then the women and girls danced round the cage, their faces
turned towards it, their knees slightly bent, rising and hopping on their
toes. As they danced they clapped their hands and sang a monotonous song.
The housewife and a few old women, who might have nursed many bears,
danced tearfully, stretching out their arms to the bear, and addressing it
in terms of endearment. The young folks were less affected; they laughed
as well as sang. Disturbed by the noise, the bear began to rush about his
cage and howl lamentably. Next libations were offered to the _inabos_ or
sacred wands which stand outside of an Aino hut. These wands are about a
couple of feet high, and are whittled at the top into spiral
shavings.(335) Five new wands with bamboo leaves attached to them had been
set up for the festival. This is regularly done when a bear is killed; the
leaves mean that the bear may come to life again. Then the bear was let
out of his cage, a rope was thrown round his neck, and he was led about in
the neighbourhood of the hut. While this was being done the men, headed by
a chief, shot at the bear with arrows tipped with wooden buttons. Dr.
Scheube had to do so also. Then the bear was taken before the sacred
wands, a stick was put in his mouth, nine men knelt on him and pressed his
neck against a beam. In five minutes the bear had expired without uttering
a sound. Meantime the women and girls had taken post behind the men, where
they danced, lamenting, and beating the men who were killing the bear. The
bear’s carcass was next placed on a mat before the sacred wands; and a
sword and quiver, taken from the wands, were hung round the beast’s neck.
Being a she-bear, it was also adorned with a necklace and ear-rings. Then
food and drink were offered to it, in the shape of millet-broth,
millet-cakes, and a pot of _sake_. The men now sat down on mats before the
dead bear, offered libations to it, and drank deep. Meanwhile the women
and girls had laid aside all marks of sorrow, and danced merrily, none
more merrily than the old women. When the mirth was at its height two
young Ainos, who had let the bear out of his cage, mounted the roof of the
hut and threw cakes of millet among the company, who all scrambled for
them without distinction of age or sex. The bear was next skinned and
disembowelled, and the trunk severed from the head, to which the skin was
left hanging. The blood, caught in cups, was eagerly swallowed by the men.
None of the women or children appeared to drink the blood, though custom
did not forbid them to do so. The liver was cut in small pieces and eaten
raw, with salt, the women and children getting their share. The flesh and
the rest of the vitals were taken into the house to be kept till the next
day but one, and then to be divided among the persons who had been present
at the feast. Blood and liver were offered to Dr. Scheube. While the bear
was being disembowelled, the women and girls danced the same dance which
they had danced at the beginning—not, however, round the cage, but in
front of the sacred wands. At this dance the old women, who had been merry
a moment before, again shed tears freely. After the brain had been
extracted from the bear’s head and swallowed with salt, the skull,
detached from the skin, was hung on a pole beside the sacred wands. The
stick with which the bear had been gagged was also fastened to the pole,
and so were the sword and quiver which had been hung on the carcass. The
latter were removed in about an hour, but the rest remained standing. The
whole company, men and women, danced noisily before the pole; and another
drinking-bout, in which the women joined, closed the festival.
The mode of killing the bear is described somewhat differently by Miss
Bird, who, however, did not witness the ceremony. She says: “Yells and
shouts are used to excite the bear; and when he becomes much agitated a
chief shoots him with an arrow, inflicting a slight wound which maddens
him, on which the bars of the cage are raised, and he springs forth, very
furious. At this stage the Ainos run upon him with various weapons, each
one striving to inflict a wound, as it brings good luck to draw his blood.
As soon as he falls down exhausted his head is cut off, and the weapons
with which he has been wounded are offered to it, and he is asked to
avenge himself upon them.” At Usu, on Volcano Bay, when the bear is being
killed, the Ainos shout, “We kill you, O bear! come back soon into an
Aino.”(336) A very respectable authority, Dr. Siebold, states that the
bear’s own heart is frequently offered to the dead animal, in order to
assure him that he is still in life.(337) This, however, is denied by Dr.
Scheube, who says the heart is eaten.(338) Perhaps the custom may be
observed in some places, though not in others.
The Gilyaks, a Tunguzian people of Eastern Siberia,(339) hold a bear
festival of the same sort. “The bear is the object of the most refined
solicitude of an entire village and plays the chief part in their
religious ceremonies.”(340) An old she-bear is shot and her cub is reared,
but not suckled in the village. When the bear is big enough he is taken
from his cage and dragged through the village. But first he is led to the
bank of the river, for this is believed to ensure abundance of fish to
each family. He is then taken into every house in the village, where fish,
brandy, etc. are offered to him. Some people prostrate themselves before
the beast. His entrance into a house is supposed to bring a blessing; and
if he snuffs at the food offered to him, this also is a blessing.
Nevertheless they tease and worry, poke and tickle the animal continually,
so that he is surly and snappish.(341) After being thus taken to every
house, he is tied to a peg and shot dead with arrows. His head is then cut
off, decked with shavings, and placed on the table where the feast is set
out. Here they beg pardon of the beast and worship him. Then his flesh is
roasted and eaten in special vessels of wood finely carved. They do not
eat the flesh raw nor drink the blood, as the Ainos do. The brain and
entrails are eaten last; and the skull, still decked with shavings, is
placed on a tree near the house. Then the people sing and both sexes dance
in ranks, as bears.(342)
The Goldi, neighbours of the Gilyaks, treat the bear in much the same way.
They hunt and kill it; but sometimes they capture a live bear and keep him
in a cage, feeding him well and calling him their son and brother. Then at
a great festival he is taken from his cage, paraded about with marked
consideration, and afterwards killed and eaten. “The skull, jaw-bones, and
ears are then suspended on a tree, as an antidote against evil spirits;
but the flesh is eaten and much relished, for they believe that all who
partake of it acquire a zest for the chase, and become courageous.”(343)
In the treatment of the captive bear by these tribes there are features
which can hardly be distinguished from worship. Such in particular is the
Gilyak custom of leading him from house to house, that every family may
receive his blessing—a custom parallel to the European one of taking a
May-tree or a personal representative of the tree-spirit from door to door
in spring, in order that all may share the fresh energies of reviving
nature. Again the expected resurrection of the bear is avowedly indicated
by the bamboo leaves and by the prayer addressed to him to “come back soon
into an Aino.” And that the eating of his flesh is regarded as a sacrament
is made probable by the Gilyak custom of reserving special vessels to hold
the bear’s flesh on this solemn occasion. How is the reverence thus paid
to particular bears to be reconciled with the fact that bears in general
are habitually hunted and killed by these tribes for the sake of their
flesh and skins? On the one hand, the bear is treated as a god; on the
other hand, as a creature wholly subservient to human needs. The apparent
contradiction vanishes when we place ourselves at the savage point of
view. The savage, we must remember, believes that animals are endowed with
feelings and intelligence like those of men, and that, like men, they
possess souls which survive the death of their bodies either to wander
about as disembodied spirits or to be born again in animal form. To the
savage, therefore, who regards all living creatures as practically on a
footing of equality with man,(344) the act of killing and eating an animal
must wear a very different aspect from that which the same act presents to
us who regard the intelligence of animals as far inferior to our own and
deny them the possession of immortal souls. Thus on the principles of his
rude philosophy the savage who slays an animal believes himself exposed to
the vengeance either of its disembodied spirit or of all the other animals
of the same species, whom he considers as knit together, like men, by the
ties of kin and the obligations of the blood feud, and therefore as bound
to resent the injury done to one of their number. Accordingly the savage
makes it a rule to spare the life of those animals which he has no
pressing motive for killing, at least such fierce and dangerous animals as
are likely to exact a bloody vengeance for the slaughter of one of their
kind. Crocodiles are animals of this sort. They are only found in hot
countries where, as a rule, food is abundant and primitive man has
therefore no reason to kill them for the sake of their tough and
unpalatable flesh. Hence it is a general rule among savages to spare
crocodiles, or rather only to kill them in obedience to the law of blood
feud, that is, as a retaliation for the slaughter of men by crocodiles.
For example, the Dyaks of Borneo will not kill a crocodile unless a
crocodile has first killed a man. “For why, say they, should they commit
an act of aggression, when he and his kindred can so easily repay them?
But should the alligator take a human life, revenge becomes a sacred duty
of the living relatives, who will trap the man-eater in the spirit of an
officer of justice pursuing a criminal. Others, even then, hang back,
reluctant to embroil themselves in a quarrel which does not concern them.
The man-eating alligator is supposed to be pursued by a righteous Nemesis;
and whenever one is caught they have a profound conviction that it must be
the guilty one, or his accomplice.”(345) So the natives of Madagascar
never kill a crocodile “except in retaliation for one of their friends who
has been destroyed by a crocodile. They believe that the wanton
destruction of one of these reptiles will be followed by the loss of human
life, in accordance with the principle of _lex talionis_.” The people who
live near the lake Itasy in Madagascar make a yearly proclamation to the
crocodiles, announcing that they will revenge the death of some of their
friends by killing as many crocodiles in return and warning all
well-disposed crocodiles to keep out of the way, as they have no quarrel
with them, but only with their evil-minded relations who have taken human
life.(346) The Foulahs of Senegambia respect crocodiles on similar
grounds.(347) The Seminoles, Sioux, and Iowa Indians of North America
spare the rattle-snake because they fear that the ghost of the dead
rattle-snake would incite its kinsfolk to take vengeance.(348) No
consideration will induce a Sumatran to catch or wound a tiger except in
self-defence or immediately after the tiger has destroyed a friend or
relation. When a European has set traps for tigers, the people of the
neighbourhood have been known to go by night to the place and explain to
the tiger that the traps are not set by them nor with their consent.(349)
But the savage clearly cannot afford to spare all animals. He must either
eat some of them or starve, and when the question thus comes to be whether
he or the animal must perish, he is forced to overcome his superstitious
scruples and take the life of the beast. At the same time he does all he
can to appease his victims and their kinsfolk. Even in the act of killing
them he testifies his respect for them, endeavours to excuse or even
conceal his share in procuring their death, and promises that their
remains will be honourably treated. By thus robbing death of its terrors
he hopes to reconcile his victims to their fate and to induce their
fellows to come and be killed also. For example, it was a principle with
the Kamtchatkans never to kill a land or sea animal without first making
excuses to it and begging that the animal would not take it ill. Also they
offered it cedar-nuts, etc. to make it think that it was not a victim but
a guest at a feast. They believed that this prevented other animals of the
same species from growing shy. For instance, after they had killed a bear
and feasted on its flesh, the host would bring the bear’s head before the
company, wrap it in grass, and present it with a variety of trifles. Then
he would lay the blame of the bear’s death on the Russians, and bid the
beast wreak his wrath upon them. Also he would ask the bear to tell the
other bears how well he had been treated, that they too might come without
fear. Seals, sea-lions, and other animals were treated by the Kamtchatkans
with the same ceremonious respect.(350) When the Ostiaks have hunted and
killed a bear, they cut off its head and hang it on a tree. Then they
gather round in a circle and pay it divine honours. Next they run towards
the carcass uttering lamentations and saying, “Who killed you? It was the
Russians. Who cut off your head? It was a Russian axe. Who skinned you? It
was a knife made by a Russian.” They explain, too, that the feathers which
sped the arrow on its flight came from the wing of a strange bird, and
that they did nothing but let the arrow go. They do all this because they
believe that the wandering ghost of the slain bear would attack them on
the first opportunity, if they did not thus appease it.(351) Or they stuff
the skin of the slain bear with hay; and after celebrating their victory
with songs of mockery and insult, after spitting on and kicking it, they
set it up on its hind legs, “and then, for a considerable time, they
bestow on it all the veneration due to a guardian god.”(352) When a party
of Koriaks have killed a bear or a wolf, they skin the beast and dress one
of themselves in the skin. Then they dance round the skin-clad man, saying
that it was not they who killed the animal, but some one else, generally a
Russian. When they kill a fox they skin it, wrap the body in grass, and
bid him go tell his companions how hospitably he has been received, and
how he has received a new cloak instead of his old one.(353) The Finns
used to try to persuade a slain bear that he had not been killed by them,
but had fallen from a tree, etc.(354) When the Lapps had succeeded in
killing a bear with impunity, they thanked him for not hurting them and
for not breaking the clubs and spears which had given him his death
wounds; and they prayed that he would not visit his death upon them by
sending storms or in any other way.(355) His flesh then furnished a feast.
The reverence of hunters for the bear whom they regularly kill and eat may
thus be traced all along the northern region of the Old World, from
Behring’s Straits to Lappland. It reappears in similar forms in North
America. With the American Indians a bear hunt was an important event for
which they prepared by long fasts and purgations. Before setting out they
offered expiatory sacrifices to the souls of bears slain in previous
hunts, and besought them to be favourable to the hunters. When a bear was
killed the hunter lit his pipe, and putting the mouth of it between the
bear’s lips, blew into the bowl, filling the beast’s mouth with smoke.
Then he begged the bear not to be angry at having been killed, and not to
thwart him afterwards in the chase. The carcass was roasted whole and
eaten; not a morsel of the flesh might be left over. The head, painted red
and blue, was hung on a post and addressed by orators, who heaped praise
on the dead beast.(356) When men of the Bear clan in the Otawa tribe
killed a bear, they made him a feast of his own flesh, and addressed him
thus: “Cherish us no grudge because we have killed you. You have sense;
you see that our children are hungry. They love you and wish to take you
into their bodies. Is it not glorious to be eaten by the children of a
chief?”(357) Amongst the Nootka Indians of British Columbia, when a bear
had been killed, it was brought in and seated before the head chief in an
upright posture, with a chief’s bonnet, wrought in figures, on its head,
and its fur powdered over with white down. A tray of provisions was then
set before it, and it was invited by words and gestures to eat. The animal
was then skinned, boiled, and eaten.(358)
A like respect is testified for other dangerous animals by the hunters who
regularly trap and kill them. When Kafir hunters are in the act of
showering spears on an elephant, they call out, “Don’t kill us, great
captain; don’t strike or tread upon us, mighty chief.”(359) When he is
dead they make their excuses to him, pretending that his death was a pure
accident. As a mark of respect they bury his trunk with much solemn
ceremony; for they say that “The elephant is a great lord; his trunk is
his hand.”(360) Amongst some tribes of Eastern Africa, when a lion is
killed, the carcass is brought before the king, who does homage to it by
prostrating himself on the ground and rubbing his face on the muzzle of
the beast.(361) In some parts of Western Africa if a negro kills a leopard
he is bound fast and brought before the chiefs for having killed one of
their peers. The man defends himself on the plea that the leopard is chief
of the forest and therefore a stranger. He is then set at liberty and
rewarded. But the dead leopard, adorned with a chief’s bonnet, is set up
in the village, where nightly dances are held in its honour.(362) “Before
leaving a temporary camp in the forest, where they have killed a tapir and
dried the meat on a babracot, Indians [of Guiana] invariably destroy this
babracot, saying that should a tapir passing that way find traces of the
slaughter of one of his kind, he would come by night on the next occasion
when Indians slept at that place, and, taking a man, would babracot him in
revenge.”(363)
But it is not merely dangerous animals with whom the savage desires to
keep on good terms. It is true that the respect which he pays to wild
beasts is in some measure proportioned to their strength and ferocity.
Thus the savage Stiens of Cambodia, believing that all animals have souls
which roam about after their death, beg an animal’s pardon when they kill
it, lest its soul should come and torment them. Also they offer it
sacrifices, but these sacrifices are proportioned to the size and strength
of the animal. The ceremonies observed at the death of an elephant are
conducted with much pomp and last seven days.(364) Similar distinctions
are drawn by North American Indians. “The bear, the buffalo, and the
beaver are manidos [divinities] which furnish food. The bear is
formidable, and good to eat. They render ceremonies to him, begging him to
allow himself to be eaten, although they know he has no fancy for it. We
kill you, but you are not annihilated. His head and paws are objects of
homage.... Other animals are treated similarly from similar reasons....
Many of the animal manidos, not being dangerous, are often treated with
contempt—the terrapin, the weasel, polecat, etc.”(365) The distinction is
instructive. Animals which are feared, or are good to eat, or both, are
treated with ceremonious respect; those which are neither formidable nor
good to eat are despised. We have had examples of reverence paid to
animals which are both feared and eaten. It remains to prove that similar
respect is shown for animals which, without being feared, are either eaten
or valued for their skins.
When Siberian sable-hunters have caught a sable, no one is allowed to see
it, and they think that if good or evil be spoken of the captured sable,
no more sables will be caught. A hunter has been known to express his
belief that the sables could hear what was said of them as far off as
Moscow. He said that the chief reason why the sable hunt was now so
unproductive was that some live sables had been sent to Moscow. There they
had been viewed with astonishment as strange animals, and the sables
cannot abide that. Another, though minor, cause of the diminished take of
sable was, he alleged, that the world is now much worse than it used to
be, so that nowadays a hunter will sometimes hide the sable which he has
got instead of putting it into the common stock. This also, said he, the
sables cannot abide.(366) Alaskan hunters preserve the bones of sables and
beavers out of reach of the dogs for a year and then bury them carefully,
“lest the spirits who look after the beavers and sables should consider
that they are regarded with contempt, and hence no more should be killed
or trapped.”(367) The Canadian Indians were equally particular not to let
their dogs gnaw the bones, or at least certain of the bones, of beavers.
They took the greatest pains to collect and preserve these bones and, when
the beaver had been caught in a net, they threw them into the river. To a
Jesuit who argued that the beavers could not possibly know what became of
their bones, the Indians replied, “You know nothing about catching beavers
and yet you will be talking about it. Before the beaver is stone dead, his
soul takes a turn in the hut of the man who is killing him and makes a
careful note of what is done with his bones. If the bones are given to the
dogs, the other beavers would get word of it and would not let themselves
be caught. Whereas, if their bones are thrown into the fire or a river,
they are quite satisfied; and it is particularly gratifying to the net
which caught them.”(368) Before hunting the beaver they offered a solemn
prayer to the Great Beaver, and presented him with tobacco; and when the
chase was over, an orator pronounced a funeral oration over the dead
beavers. He praised their spirit and wisdom. “You will hear no more,” said
he, “the voice of the chieftains who commanded you and whom you chose from
among all the warrior beavers to give you laws. Your language, which the
medicine-men understand perfectly, will be heard no more at the bottom of
the lake. You will fight no more battles with the otters, your cruel foes.
No, beavers! But your skins shall serve to buy arms; we will carry your
smoked hams to our children; we will keep the dogs from eating your bones,
which are so hard.”(369)
The elan, deer, and elk were treated by the North American Indians with
the same punctilious respect, and for the same reason. Their bones might
not be given to the dogs nor thrown into the fire, nor might their fat be
dropped upon the fire, because the souls of the dead animals were believed
to see what was done to their bodies and to tell it to the other beasts,
living and dead. Hence, if their bodies were ill used, the animals of that
species would not allow themselves to be taken, neither in this world nor
in the world to come.(370) A sick man would be asked by the medicine-man
whether he had not thrown away some of the flesh of the deer or turtle,
and if he answered yes, the medicine-man would say, “That is what is
killing you. The soul of the deer or turtle has entered into your body to
avenge the wrong you did it.”(371) The Sioux will not stick an awl or
needle into a turtle, for they are sure that, if they were to do so, the
turtle would punish them at some future time.(372) The Canadian Indians
would not eat the embryos of the elk, unless at the close of the hunting
season; otherwise the mother-elks would be shy and refuse to be
caught.(373) Some of the Indians believed that each sort of animal had its
patron or genius who watched over and preserved it. An Indian girl having
once picked up a dead mouse, her father snatched the little creature from
her and tenderly caressed and fondled it. Being asked why he did so, he
said that it was to appease the genius of mice, in order that he might not
torment his daughter for eating the mouse. With that he handed the mouse
to the girl and she ate it.(374)
For like reasons, a tribe which depends for its subsistence, chiefly or in
part, upon fishing is careful to treat the fish with every mark of honour
and respect. The Indians of Peru “adored the fish that they caught in
greatest abundance; for they said that the first fish that was made in the
world above (for so they named Heaven) gave birth to all other fish of
that species, and took care to send them plenty of its children to sustain
their tribe. For this reason they worshipped sardines in one region, where
they killed more of them than of any other fish; in others, the skate; in
others, the dogfish; in others, the golden fish for its beauty; in others,
the crawfish; in others, for want of larger gods, the crabs, where they
had no other fish, or where they knew not how to catch and kill them. In
short, they had whatever fish was most serviceable to them as their
gods.”(375) The Otawa Indians of Canada, believing that the souls of dead
fish passed into other bodies of fish, never burned fish bones, for fear
of displeasing the souls of the fish, who would come no more to the
nets.(376) The Hurons also refrained from throwing fish bones into the
fire, lest the souls of the fish should go and warn the other fish not to
let themselves be caught, since the Hurons would burn their bones.
Moreover, they had men who preached to the fish and persuaded them to come
and be caught. A good preacher was much sought after, for they thought
that the exhortations of a clever man had a great effect in drawing the
fish to the nets. In the Huron fishing village where the French missionary
Sagard stayed, the preacher to the fish prided himself very much on his
eloquence, which was of a florid order. Every evening after supper, having
seen that all the people were in their places and that a strict silence
was observed, he preached to the fish. His text was that the Hurons did
not burn fish bones. “Then enlarging on his theme with extraordinary
unction, he exhorted and conjured and invited and implored the fish to
come and be caught and to be of good courage and to fear nothing, for it
was all to serve their friends who honoured them and did not burn their
bones.”(377) The disappearance of herring from the sea about Heligoland in
1530 was attributed by the fishermen to the fact that two lads had whipped
a freshly-caught herring and then flung it back into the sea.(378) The
natives of the Duke of York Island annually decorate a canoe with flowers
and ferns, lade it, or are supposed to lade it, with shell-money, and set
it adrift to pay the fish for those they lose by being caught.(379) It is
especially necessary to treat the first fish caught with consideration in
order to conciliate the rest of the fish, for their conduct may be
supposed to be influenced by the reception given to the first of their
kind which is taken. Accordingly the Maoris always put back into the sea
the first fish caught, “with a prayer that it may tempt other fish to come
and be caught.”(380)
Still more stringent are the precautions taken when the fish are the first
of the season. On salmon rivers, when the fish begin to run up the stream
in spring, they are received with much deference by tribes who, like the
Indians of the Pacific Coast of North America, subsist largely upon a fish
diet. In British Columbia the Indians used to go out to meet the first
fish as they came up the river. “They paid court to them, and would
address them thus. ‘You fish, you fish; you are all chiefs, you are; you
are all chiefs.’ ”(381) Amongst the Thlinket of Alaska the first halibut
of the season is carefully handled, addressed as a chief, and a festival
is given in his honour, after which the fishing goes on.(382) In spring,
when the winds blow soft from the south and the salmon begin to run up the
Klamath river, the Karoks of California dance for salmon, to ensure a good
catch. One of the Indians, called the Kareya or God-man, retires to the
mountains and fasts for ten days. On his return the people flee, while he
goes to the river, takes the first salmon of the catch, eats some of it,
and with the rest kindles the sacred fire in the sweating-house. “No
Indian may take a salmon before this dance is held, nor for ten days after
it, even if his family are starving.” The Karoks also believe that a
fisherman will take no salmon if the poles of which his spearing-booth is
made were gathered on the river-side, where the salmon might have seen
them. The poles must be brought from the top of the highest mountain. The
fisherman will also labour in vain if he uses the same poles a second year
in booths or weirs, “because the old salmon will have told the young ones
about them.”(383) Among the Indians of the Columbia River, “when the
salmon make their first appearance in the river, they are never allowed to
be cut crosswise, nor boiled, but roasted; nor are they allowed to be sold
without the heart being first taken out, nor to be kept over night, but
must be all consumed or eaten the day they are taken out of the water. All
these rules are observed for about ten days.”(384) They think that if the
heart of a fish were eaten by a stranger at the beginning of the season,
they would catch no more fish. Hence, they roast and eat the hearts
themselves.(385) There is a favourite fish of the Ainos which appears in
their rivers about May and June. They prepare for the fishing by observing
rules of ceremonial purity, and when they have gone out to fish, the women
at home must keep strict silence or the fish would hear them and
disappear. When the first fish is caught he is brought home and passed
through a small opening at the end of the hut, but not through the door;
for if he were passed through the door, “the other fish would certainly
see him and disappear.”(386) This explains the custom observed by other
savages of bringing game into their huts, not by the door, but by the
window, the smoke-hole, or by a special opening at the back of the
hut.(387)
With some savages a special reason for respecting the bones of game, and
generally of the animals which they eat, is a belief that, if the bones
are preserved, they will in course of time be reclothed with flesh, and
thus the animal will come to life again. It is, therefore, clearly for the
interest of the hunter to leave the bones intact, since to destroy them
would be to diminish the future supply of game. Many of the Minnetaree
Indians “believe that the bones of those bisons which they have slain and
divested of flesh rise again clothed with renewed flesh, and quickened
with life, and become fat, and fit for slaughter the succeeding
June.”(388) Hence on the western prairies of America, the skulls of
buffalos may be seen arranged in circles and symmetrical piles, awaiting
the resurrection.(389) After feasting on a dog, the Dacotas carefully
collect the bones, scrape, wash, and bury them, “partly, as it is said, to
testify to the dog-species, that in feasting upon one of their number no
disrespect was meant to the species itself, and partly also from a belief
that the bones of the animal will rise and reproduce another.”(390) In
sacrificing an animal the Lapps regularly put aside the bones, eyes, ears,
heart, lungs, sexual parts (if the animal was a male), and a morsel of
flesh from each limb. Then, after eating the rest of the flesh, they laid
the bones etc. in anatomical order in a coffin and buried them with the
usual rites, believing that the god to whom the animal was sacrificed
would reclothe the bones with flesh and restore the animal to life in
Jabme-Aimo, the subterranean world of the dead. Sometimes, as after
feasting on a bear, they seem to have contented themselves with thus
burying the bones.(391) Thus the Lapps expected the resurrection of the
slain animal to take place in another world, resembling in this respect
the Kamtchatkans, who believed that every creature, down to the smallest
fly, would rise from the dead and live underground.(392) On the other
hand, the North American Indians looked for the resurrection of the
animals in the present world. The habit, observed especially by Mongolian
peoples, of stuffing the skin of a sacrificed animal, or stretching it on
a framework,(393) points rather to a belief in a resurrection of the
latter sort. The objection commonly entertained by primitive peoples to
break the bones of the animals which they have eaten or sacrificed(394)
may be based either on a belief in the resurrection of the animals, or on
a fear of intimidating the other creatures of the same species and
offending the ghosts of the slain animals. The reluctance of North
American Indians to let dogs gnaw the bones of animals(395) is perhaps
only a precaution to prevent the bones from being broken. There are traces
in folk-tales of the same primitive belief that animals or men may come to
life again, if only their bones are preserved; not uncommonly the animal
or man in the story comes to life lame of a limb, because one of his bones
has been eaten, broken, or lost.(396) In a Magyar tale, the hero is cut in
pieces, but the serpent-king lays the bones together in their proper
order, and washes them with water, whereupon the hero comes to life again.
His shoulder-blade, however, had been lost, so the serpent-king supplied
its place with one of gold and ivory.(397) Such stories, as Mannhardt has
seen, explain why Pythagoras, who claimed to have lived many lives, one
after the other, was said to have exhibited his golden leg as a proof of
his supernatural pretensions.(398) Doubtless he was reported to have
explained that at one of his resurrections a leg had been broken or
mislaid, and that it had been replaced with one of gold. Similarly, when
the murdered Pelops was restored to life, the shoulder which Demeter had
eaten was replaced with one of ivory.(399) The story that one of the
members of the mangled Osiris was eaten by fish, and that, when Isis
collected his scattered limbs, she replaced the missing member with one of
wood,(400) may perhaps belong to the same circle of beliefs.
There is a certain rule observed by savage hunters and fishers which,
obscure at first sight, may be explained by this savage belief in
resurrection. A traveller in America in the early part of this century was
told by a half-breed Choctaw that the Indians “had an obscure story,
somewhat resembling that of Jacob wrestling with an angel; and that the
full-blooded Indians always separate the sinew which shrank, and that it
is never seen in the venison exposed for sale; he did not know what they
did with it. His elder brother, whom I afterwards met, told me that they
eat it as a rarity; but I have also heard, though on less respectable
authority, that they refrain from it, like the ancient Jews. A gentleman,
who had lived on the Indian frontier, or in the nation, for ten or fifteen
years, told me that he had often been surprised that the Indians always
detached the sinew; but it had never occurred to him to inquire the
reason.”(401) James Adair, who knew the Indians of the South Eastern
States intimately, and whose theories appear not to have distorted his
view of the facts, observes that “when in the woods, the Indians cut a
small piece out of the lower part of the thighs of the deer they kill,
lengthways and pretty deep. Among the great number of venison-hams they
bring to our trading houses, I do not remember to have observed one
without it.... And I have been assured by a gentleman of character, who is
now an inhabitant of South Carolina, and well acquainted with the customs
of the Northern Indians, that they also cut a piece out of the thigh of
every deer they kill, and throw it away; and reckon it such a dangerous
pollution to eat it as to occasion sickness and other misfortunes of
sundry kinds, especially by spoiling their guns from shooting with proper
force and direction.”(402) In recent years the statement of Adair’s
informant has been confirmed by the French missionary Petitot, who has
also published the “obscure story” to which Hodgson refers. The Loucheux
and Hare-skin Indians who roam the bleak steppes and forests that stretch
from Hudson’s Bay to the Rocky Mountains, and northward to the frozen sea,
are forbidden by custom to eat the sinew of the legs of animals. To
explain this custom they tell the following “sacred story.” Once upon a
time a man found a burrow of porcupines, and going down into it after the
porcupines he lost his way in the darkness, till a kind giant called “He
who sees before and behind” released him by cleaving open the earth. So
the man, whose name was “Fireless and Homeless,” lived with the kind
giant, and the giant hunted elans and beavers for him, and carried him
about in the sheath of his flint knife. “But know, my son,” said the
giant, “that he who uses the sky as his head is angry with me, and has
sworn my destruction. If he slays me the clouds will be tinged with my
blood; they will be red with it, probably.” Then he gave the man an axe
made of the tooth of a gigantic beaver, and went forth to meet his enemy.
But from under the ice the man heard a dull muffled sound. It was a whale
which was making this noise because it was naked and cold. Warned by the
man, the giant went toward the whale, which took human shape, and rushed
upon the giant. It was the wicked giant, the kind giant’s enemy. The two
struggled together for a long time, till the kind giant cried, “Oh, my
son! cut, cut the sinew of the leg.” The man cut the sinew, and the wicked
giant fell down and was slain. That is why the Indians do not eat the
sinew of the leg. Afterwards, one day the sky suddenly grew red, so
Fireless and Homeless knew that the kind giant was dead, and he wept.(403)
This myth, it is almost needless to observe, does not really explain the
custom. No people ever observed a custom because a
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