§ 2.—Balder.
A god whose life might in a sense be said to be neither in heaven nor earth but between the two, was the Norse Balder, the good and beautiful god. The story of his death is as follows: Once on a time Balder dreamed heavy dreams which seemed to forebode his death. Thereupon the gods held a council and resolved to make him secure against every danger. So the goddess Frigg took an oath from fire and water, iron and all metals, stones and earth, from trees, sicknesses and poisons, and from all four-footed beasts, birds, and creeping things, that they would not hurt Balder. When this was done Balder was deemed invulnerable; so the gods amused themselves by setting him in their midst, while some shot at him, others hewed at him, and others threw stones at him. But whatever they did, nothing could hurt him; and at this they were all glad. Only Loki, the mischief-maker, was displeased, and he went in the guise of an old woman to Frigg, who told him that the weapons of the gods could not wound Balder, since she had made them all swear not to hurt him. Then Loki asked, “Have all things sworn to spare Balder?” She answered, “East of Walhalla grows a plant called mistletoe; it seemed to me too [pg 245] young to swear.” So Loki went and pulled the mistletoe and took it to the assembly of the gods. There he found the blind god Hödur standing at the outside of the circle. Loki asked him, “Why do you not shoot at Balder?” Hödur answered, “Because I do not see where he stands; besides I have no weapon.” Then said Loki, “Do like the rest and show Balder honour, as they all do. I will show you where he stands, and do you shoot at him with this twig.” Hödur took the mistletoe and threw it at Balder, as Loki directed him. The mistletoe struck Balder and pierced him through and through, and he fell down dead. And that was the greatest misfortune that ever befel gods and men. For a while the gods stood speechless, then they lifted up their voices and wept bitterly. They took Balder's body and brought it to the sea-shore. There stood Balder's ship; it was called Ringhorn, and was the hugest of all ships. The gods wished to launch the ship and to burn Balder's body on it, but the ship would not stir. So they sent for a giantess called Hyrrockin. She came riding on a wolf and gave the ship such a push that fire flashed from the rollers and all the earth shook. Then Balder's body was taken and placed on the funeral pile upon his ship. When his wife Nanna saw that, her heart burst for sorrow and she died. So she was laid on the funeral pile with her husband, and fire was put to it. Balder's horse, too, with all its trappings, was burned on the pile.[651]
The circumstantiality of this story suggests that it belongs to the extensive class of myths which are invented [pg 246] to explain ritual. For a myth is never so graphic and precise in its details as when it is a simple transcript of a ceremony which the author of the myth witnessed with his eyes. At all events, if it can be made probable that rites like those described in the Balder myth have been practised by Norsemen and by other European peoples, we shall be justified in inferring that the ritual gave birth to the myth, not the myth to the ritual. For while many cases can be shown in which a myth has been invented to explain a rite, it would be hard to point to a single case in which a myth has given rise to a rite. Ritual may be the parent of myth, but can never be its child.[652]
The main incidents in the myth of Balder's death are two; first, the pulling of the mistletoe, and second, the death and burning of the god. Now both these incidents appear to have formed parts of an annual ceremony once observed by Celts and Norsemen, probably also by Germans and Slavs.
In most parts of Europe the peasants have been accustomed from time immemorial to kindle bonfires on certain days of the year, and to dance round them or leap over them. Customs of this kind can be traced back on historical evidence to the Middle Ages,[653] and their analogy to similar customs observed in antiquity goes with strong internal evidence to prove that their origin must be sought in a period long [pg 247] prior to the spread of Christianity. Indeed the earliest evidence of their observance in Northern Europe is furnished by the attempts made by Christian synods in the eighth century to put them down as heathenish rites.[654] Not uncommonly effigies are burned in these fires, or a pretence is made of burning a living person in them; and there are grounds for believing that anciently human beings were actually burned on these occasions. A brief review of the customs in question will bring out the traces of human sacrifice, and will serve at the same time to throw light on their meaning.[655]
The seasons of the year at which these bonfires are most commonly lit are spring and midsummer, but in some places they are kindled at Hallow E'en (October 31st) and Christmas. In spring the first Sunday in Lent (Quadragesima) and Easter Eve are the days on which in different places the ceremony is observed. Thus in the Eifel Mountains, Rhenish Prussia, on the first Sunday in Lent young people used to collect straw and brushwood from house to house. These they carried to an eminence and piled them up round a tall, slim, beech-tree, to which a piece of wood was fastened at right angles to form a cross. The structure was known as the “hut” or “castle.” Fire was set to it and the young people marched round the blazing “castle” bareheaded, each carrying a lighted torch and praying aloud. Sometimes a straw man was burned in the “hut.” People observed the direction in which the smoke blew from the fire. If it blew towards the corn-fields, it was a sign that the [pg 248] harvest would be abundant. On the same day, in some parts of the Eifel, a great wheel was made of straw and dragged by three horses to the top of a hill. Thither the village boys marched at nightfall, set fire to the wheel, and sent it rolling down the slope. Two lads followed it with levers to set it in motion again, in case it should anywhere meet with a check.[656] About Echternach the same ceremony is called “burning the witch.”[657] At Voralberg in the Tyrol on the first Sunday in Lent a slender young fir-tree is surrounded with a pile of straw and fire-wood. At the top of the tree is fastened a human figure called the “witch”; it is made of old clothes and stuffed with gunpowder. At night the whole is set on fire and boys and girls dance round it, swinging torches and singing rhymes in which the words “corn in the winnowing-basket, the plough in the earth” may be distinguished.[658] In Swabia on the first Sunday in Lent a figure called the “witch” or the “old wife” or “winter's grandmother” is made up of clothes and fastened to a pole. This is stuck in the middle of a pile of wood, to which fire is applied. While the “witch” is burning the young people throw blazing discs into the air. The discs are thin round pieces of wood, a few inches in diameter, with notched edges to imitate the rays of the sun or stars. They have a hole in the middle, by which they are attached to the end of a wand. Before the disc is thrown it is set on fire, the wand is swung to and fro, and the impetus thus communicated to the disc is augmented by dashing the rod sharply against a sloping board. The burning disc is thus thrown off, and mounting [pg 249] high into the air, describes a long curve before it reaches the ground. A single lad may fling up forty or fifty of these discs, one after the other. The object is to throw them as high as possible. The wand by which they are hurled must, at least in some parts of Swabia, be of hazel. Sometimes the lads also leap over the fire brandishing blazing torches of pine-wood. The charred embers of the burned “witch” and discs are taken home and planted in the flax-fields the same night, in the belief that they will keep vermin from the fields.[659] In the Rhön Mountains, Bavaria, on the first Sunday in Lent the people used to march to the top of a hill or eminence. Children and lads carried torches, brooms daubed with tar, and poles swathed in straw. A wheel, wrapt in combustibles, was kindled and rolled down the hill; and the young people rushed about the fields with their burning torches and brooms, till at last they flung them in a heap, and standing round them, struck up a hymn or a popular song. The object of running about the fields with the blazing torches was to “drive away the wicked sower.” Or it was done in honour of the Virgin, that she might preserve the fruits of the earth throughout the year and bless them.[660]
It seems hardly possible to separate from these bonfires, kindled on the first Sunday in Lent, the fires in which, about the same season, the effigy called Death is burned as part of the ceremony of “carrying out Death.” We have seen that at Spachendorf, [pg 250] Austrian Silesia, on the morning of Rupert's Day (Shrove Tuesday?) a straw-man, dressed in a fur coat and a fur cap, is laid in a hole outside the village and there burned, and that while it is blazing every one seeks to snatch a fragment of it, which he fastens to a branch of the highest tree in his garden or buries in his field, believing that this will make the crops to grow better. The ceremony is known as the “burying of Death.”[661] Even when the straw-man is not designated as Death, the meaning of the observance is probably the same; for the name Death, as I have tried to show, does not express the original intention of the ceremony. At Cobern in the Eifel Mountains the lads make up a straw-man on Shrove Tuesday. The effigy is formally tried and accused of having perpetrated all the thefts that have been committed in the neighbourhood throughout the year. Being condemned to death, the straw-man is led through the village, shot, and burned upon a pyre. They dance round the blazing pile, and the last bride must leap over it.[662] In Oldenburg on the evening of Shrove Tuesday people used to make long bundles of straw, which they set on fire, and then ran about the fields waving them, shrieking, and singing wild songs. Finally they burnt a straw-man on the field.[663] In the district of Düsseldorf the straw-man burned on Shrove Tuesday was made of an unthreshed sheaf of corn.[664] On the first Monday after the spring equinox the urchins of Zurich drag a straw-man on a little cart through the streets, while at the same time the girls [pg 251] carry about a May-tree. When vespers ring, the straw-man is burned.[665] In the district of Aachen on Ash Wednesday a man used to be encased in peas-straw and taken to an appointed place. Here he slipped quietly out of his straw casing, which was then burned, the children thinking that it was the man who was being burned.[666] In the Val di Ledro (Tyrol) on the last day of the Carnival a figure is made up of straw and brushwood and then burned. The figure is called the Old Woman, and the ceremony “burning the Old Woman.”[667]
Another occasion on which these fire-festivals are held is Easter Eve, the Saturday before Easter Sunday. On that day it has been customary in Catholic countries to extinguish all the lights in the churches, and then to make a new fire, sometimes with flint and steel, sometimes with a burning-glass. At this fire is lit the Easter candle, which is then used to rekindle all the extinguished lights in the church. In many parts of Germany a bonfire is also kindled, by means of the new fire, on some open space near the church. It is consecrated, and the people bring sticks of oak, walnut, and beech, which they char in the fire, and then take home with them. Some of these charred sticks are thereupon burned at home in a newly-kindled fire, with a prayer that God will preserve the homestead from fire, lightning, and hail. Thus every house receives “new fire.” Some of the sticks are placed in the fields, gardens, and meadows, with a prayer that God will keep them from blight and hail. Such fields and gardens are thought to thrive more than others; the corn and the plants that grow in them are not beaten [pg 252] down by hail, nor devoured by mice, vermin, and beetles, no witch harms them, and the ears of corn stand close and full. The charred sticks are also applied to the plough. The ashes of the Easter bonfire, together with the ashes of the consecrated palm-branches, are mixed with the seed at sowing. A wooden figure called Judas is sometimes burned in the consecrated bonfire.[668]
Sometimes instead of the consecrated bonfire a profane fire used to be kindled on Easter Eve. In the afternoon the lads of the village collected firewood and carried it to a corn-field or to the top of a hill. Here they piled it together and fastened in the midst of it a pole with a cross-piece, all wrapt in straw, so that it looked like a man with outstretched arms. This figure was called the Easter-man, or the Judas. In the evening the lads lit their lanterns at the new holy fire in the church, and ran at full speed to the pile. The one who reached it first set fire to it and to the effigy. No women or girls might be present, though they were allowed to watch the scene from a distance. Great was the joy while the effigy was burning. The ashes were collected and thrown at sunrise into running water, or were scattered over the fields on Easter Monday. At the same time the palm branches which had been consecrated on Palm Sunday, and sticks which had been charred in the fire and consecrated on Good Friday, were also stuck up in the fields. The object was to preserve the fields from hail.[669] In Münsterland, these Easter fires are always kindled upon [pg 253] certain definite hills, which are hence known as Easter or Pascal Mountains. The whole community assembles about the fire. Fathers of families form an inner circle round it. An outer circle is formed by the young men and maidens, who, singing Easter hymns, march round and round the fire in the direction of the sun, till the blaze dies down. Then the girls jump over the fire in a line, one after the other, each supported by two young men who hold her hands and run beside her. When the fire has burned out, the whole assemblage marches in solemn procession to the church, singing hymns. They march thrice round the church, and then break up. In the twilight boys with blazing bundles of straw run over the fields to make them fruitful.[670] In Holland, also, Easter fires used to be kindled on the highest eminences, the people danced round them, and leaped through the flames.[671] In Schaumburg, the Easter bonfires may be seen blazing on all the mountains around for miles. They are made with a tar barrel fastened to a pine-tree, which is wrapt in straw. The people dance singing round them.[672] Easter bonfires are also common in the Harz Mountains and in Brunswick, Hanover, and Westphalia. They are generally lit upon particular heights and mountains which are hence called Easter Mountains. In the Harz the fire is commonly made by piling brushwood about a tree and setting it on fire, and blazing tar barrels are often rolled down into the valley. In Osterode, every one tries to snatch a brand from the bonfire and rushes about with it; the better it burns, the more lucky it is. In Grund there are torch [pg 254] races.[673] In the Altmark, the Easter bonfires are composed of tar barrels, bee-hives, etc., piled round a pole. The young folk dance round the fire; and when it has died out, the old folk come and collect the ashes, which they preserve as a remedy for the ailments of bees. It is also believed that as far as the blaze of the bonfire is visible, the corn will grow well throughout the year, and no conflagration will break out.[674] In some parts of Bavaria, bonfires were kindled at Easter upon steep mountains, and burning arrows or discs of wood were shot high into the air, as in the Swabian custom already described. Sometimes, instead of the discs, an old waggon wheel was wrapt in straw, set on fire, and sent rolling down the mountain. The lads who hurled the discs received painted Easter eggs from the girls.[675] In some parts of Swabia the Easter fires might not be kindled with iron or flint or steel; but only by the friction of wood.[676] At Braunröde in the Harz Mountains it was the custom to burn squirrels in the Easter bonfire.[677] In the Altmark, bones were burned in it.[678]
In the central Highlands of Scotland bonfires, known as the Beltane fires, were formerly kindled with great ceremony on the 1st of May, and the traces of human sacrifices at them were particularly clear and unequivocal. In the neighbourhood of Callander, in Perthshire, the custom lasted down to [pg 255] the close of last century. The fires were lit by the people of each hamlet on a hill or knoll round which their cattle were pasturing. Hence various eminences in the Highlands are known as “the hill of the fires,” just as in Germany some mountains take their name from the Easter fires which are kindled upon them. On the morning of May Day the people repaired to a hill or knoll and cut a round trench in the green sod, leaving in the centre a platform of turf large enough to contain the whole company. On this turf they seated themselves, and in the middle was placed a pile of wood or other fuel, which of old they kindled with tein-eigin—that is, forced fire or need-fire. The way of making the need-fire was this: “The night before, all the fires in the country were carefully extinguished, and next morning the materials for exciting this sacred fire were prepared. The most primitive method seems to be that which was used in the islands of Skye, Mull, and Tiree. A well-seasoned plank of oak was procured, in the midst of which a hole was bored. A wimble of the same timber was then applied, the end of which they fitted to the hole. But in some parts of the mainland the machinery was different. They used a frame of green wood, of a square form, in the centre of which was an axle-tree. In some places three times three persons, in others three times nine, were required for turning round, by turns, the axle-tree or wimble. If any of them had been guilty of murder, adultery, theft, or other atrocious crime, it was imagined either that the fire would not kindle, or that it would be devoid of its usual virtue. So soon as any sparks were emitted by means of the violent friction, they applied a species of agaric which grows on old birch-trees, [pg 256] and is very combustible. This fire had the appearance of being immediately derived from heaven, and manifold were the virtues ascribed to it. They esteemed it a preservative against witchcraft, and a sovereign remedy against malignant diseases, both in the human species and in cattle; and by it the strongest poisons were supposed to have their nature changed.” For many years, however, before the close of last century, the Beltane fires were kindled in the usual way. The fire being lit, the company prepared a custard of eggs and milk, which they ate. Afterwards they amused themselves a while by singing and dancing round the fire. Then “they knead a cake of oatmeal, which is toasted at the embers against a stone. After the custard is eaten up they divide the cake into so many portions, as similar as possible to one another in size and shape, as there are persons in the company. They daub one of these portions all over with charcoal until it be perfectly black. They put all the bits of cake into a bonnet. Every one, blindfold, draws out a portion. He who holds the bonnet is entitled to the last bit. Whoever draws the black bit is the devoted person who is to be sacrificed to Baal, whose favour they mean to implore, in rendering the year productive of the sustenance of man and beast.” The victim thus selected “was called cailleach bealtine—i.e. the Beltane carline, a term of great reproach. Upon his being known, part of the company laid hold of him, and made a show of putting him into the fire; but, the majority interposing, he was rescued. And in some places they laid him flat on the ground, making as if they would quarter him. Afterwards he was pelted with eggshells, and retained the odious appellation during the [pg 257] whole year. And, while the feast was fresh in people's memory, they affected to speak of the cailleach bealtine as dead.” He had to leap thrice through the flames, and this concluded the ceremony.[679]
Another account of the Beltane festival, written in the latter half of last century, is as follows: “On the 1st of May the herdsmen of every village hold their Beltien, a rural sacrifice. They cut a square trench on the ground, leaving the turf in the middle; on that they make a fire of wood, on which they dress a large caudle of eggs, butter, oatmeal, and milk, and bring, besides the ingredients of the caudle, plenty of beer and whisky; for each of the company must contribute something. The rites begin with spilling some of the caudle on the ground, by way of libation; on that every one takes a cake of oatmeal, upon which are raised nine square knobs, each dedicated to some particular being, the supposed preserver of their flocks and herds, or to some particular animal, the real destroyer of them; each person then turns his face to the fire, breaks off a knob, and, flinging it over his shoulder, says, ‘This I give to thee, preserve thou my horses; this to thee, preserve thou my sheep; and so on.’ After that they use the same ceremony to the noxious animals: ‘This I give to thee, O fox! spare thou my lambs; this to thee, O hooded crow! this to thee, O eagle!’ When the ceremony is over they dine on the caudle; and, after the feast is finished, what is left is hid by two persons deputed for that purpose; but on the next Sunday they reassemble, and finish the reliques of the [pg 258] first entertainment.”[680] The 1st of May is a great popular festival in the more midland and southern parts of Sweden. On the preceding evening huge bonfires, which should be lighted by striking two flints together, blaze on all the hills and knolls. Every large hamlet has its own fire, round which the young people dance in a ring. The old folk notice whether the flames incline to the north or to the south. In the former case the spring will be cold and backward; in the latter mild and genial.[681]
But the season at which these fire-festivals are most generally held all over Europe is the summer solstice, that is, Midsummer Eve (23d June) or Midsummer Day (24th June). According to a mediæval writer the three great features of this festival were the bonfires, the procession with torches round the fields, and the custom of rolling a wheel. The writer adds that the smoke drives away harmful dragons which cause sickness, and he explains the custom of rolling the wheel to mean that the sun has now reached the highest point in the ecliptic, and begins thenceforward to descend.[682] From his description, which is still applicable, we see that the main features of the midsummer fire-festival are identical with those which characterise the spring festivals. In Swabia lads and lasses, hand in hand, leap over the midsummer bonfire, praying that the hemp may grow three ells high, and they set fire to wheels of straw and send them rolling down the hill.[683] In Lechrain bonfires are kindled on [pg 259] the mountains on Midsummer Day; and besides the bonfire a tall beam, thickly wrapt in straw, and surmounted by a cross-piece, is burned in many places. Round this cross, as it burns, the lads dance; and when the flames have subsided, the young people leap over the fire in pairs, a young man and a young woman together. It is believed that the flax will grow that year as high as they leap over the fire; and that if a charred billet be taken from the fire and stuck in a flax field it will promote the growth of the flax.[684] At Deffingen, as they jumped over the midsummer bonfire, they cried out, “Flax, flax! may the flax this year grow seven ells high!”[685] In Bohemia bonfires are kindled on many of the mountains on Midsummer Eve; boys and girls, hand in hand, leap over them; cart-wheels smeared with resin are ignited and sent rolling down the hill; and brooms covered with tar and set on fire are swung about or thrown high into the air. The handles of the brooms or embers from the fire are preserved and stuck in gardens to protect the vegetables from caterpillars and gnats. Sometimes the boys run down the hillside in troops, brandishing the blazing brooms and shouting. The bonfire is sometimes made by stacking wood and branches round the trunk of a tree and setting the whole on fire.[686]
In old farm-houses of the Surenthal and Winenthal a couple of holes or a whole row of them may sometimes be seen facing each other in the door-posts of the barn or stable. Sometimes the holes are smooth and round; sometimes they are deeply burnt and blackened. [pg 260] The explanation of them is this. About midsummer, but especially on Midsummer Day, two such holes are bored opposite each other, into which the extremities of a strong pole are fixed. The holes are then stuffed with tow steeped in resin and oil; a rope is looped round the pole, and two young men, who must be brothers or must have the same baptismal name, and must be of the same age, pull the ends of the rope backwards and forwards so as to make the pole revolve rapidly, till smoke and sparks issue from the two holes in the door-posts. The sparks are caught and blown up with tinder, and this is the new and pure fire, the appearance of which is greeted with cries of joy. Heaps of combustible materials are now ignited with the new fire, and blazing bundles are placed on boards and sent floating down the brook. The boys light torches at the new fire and run to fumigate the pastures. This is believed to drive away all the demons and witches that molest the cattle. Finally the torches are thrown in a heap on the meadow and allowed to burn out. On their way back the boys strew the ashes over the fields: this is supposed to make them fertile. If a farmer has taken possession of a new house, or if servants have changed masters, the boys fumigate the new abode and are rewarded by the farmer with a supper.[687]
At Konz, on the Moselle, the midsummer fire-festival used to be celebrated as follows. A quantity of straw, contributed jointly by every house, was collected on the top of the Stromberg Hill. Here, towards evening, the men and boys assembled, while the women and girls took up their position at a certain well down below. On the top of the hill a huge wheel was completely covered with a portion of the [pg 261] collected straw, the remainder of which was made into torches. The mayor of Sierk, who always received a basket of cherries for his services, gave the signal, the wheel was ignited with a torch, and sent rolling down the hill amid shouts of joy. All the men and boys swung their torches in the air, some of them remained on the top of the hill, while others followed the fiery wheel on its course down the hillside to the Moselle. As it passed the women and girls at the well they raised cries of joy which were answered by the men on the top of the hill. The inhabitants of the neighbouring villages also stood on the banks of the river and mingled their voices with the general shout of jubilation. The wheel was often extinguished before it reached the water, but if it plunged blazing into the river the people expected an abundant vintage, and the inhabitants of Konz had the right to exact a waggon-load of white wine from the surrounding vineyards.[688]
In France the midsummer customs are similar. In Poitou a wheel enveloped in straw is set on fire, and people run with it through the fields, which are supposed to be fertilised thereby; also, the people leap thrice over the fire, holding in their hands branches of nut-trees, which are afterwards hung over the door of the cattle-stall. At Brest torches are brandished, and hundreds of them flung up into the air together.[689] In Britanny midsummer fires blaze on the hills, the people dance round them, singing and leaping over the glowing embers. The bonfire is made by piling wood round a pole which is surmounted by a nosegay or crown.[690] [pg 262] Sometimes, instead of rolling fiery wheels, discs of wood are ignited in the midsummer fires and thrown into the air in the manner already described.[691] At Edersleben, near Sangerhausen, a high pole was planted in the ground and a tar barrel was hung from it by a chain which reached to the ground. The barrel was then set on fire and swung round the pole amid shouts of joy.[692]
In our own country the custom of lighting bonfires at midsummer has prevailed extensively. In the North of England these fires used to be lit in the open streets. Young and old gathered round them; the former leaped over the fires and engaged in games, while the old people looked on. Sometimes the fires were kindled on the tops of high hills. The people also carried firebrands about the fields.[693] In Herefordshire and Somersetshire people used to make fires in the fields on Midsummer Eve “to bless the apples.”[694] In Devonshire the custom of leaping over the midsummer fires was also observed.[695] In Cornwall bonfires were lit on Midsummer Eve and the people marched round them with lighted torches, which they also carried from village to village. On Whiteborough, a large tumulus near Launceston, a huge bonfire used to be kindled on Midsummer Eve; a tall summer pole with a large bush at the top was fixed in the centre of the bonfire.[696] At Darowen in Wales small bonfires were lit on Midsummer Eve.[697] On the same [pg 263] day people in the Isle of Man used to light fires to the windward of every field, so that the smoke might pass over the corn; and they folded their cattle and carried blazing furze or gorse round them several times.[698]
In Ireland, “on the Eves of St. John Baptist and St. Peter, they always have in every town a bonfire late in the evening, and carry about bundles of reeds fast tied and fired; these being dry, will last long, and flame better than a torch, and be a pleasing divertive prospect to the distant beholder; a stranger would go near to imagine the whole country was on fire.”[699] Another writer says of the South of Ireland: “On Midsummer's Eve, every eminence, near which is a habitation, blazes with bonfires; and round these they carry numerous torches, shouting and dancing.”[700] An author who described Ireland in the first quarter of last century says: “On the vigil of St. John the Baptist's nativity, they make bonfires, and run along the streets and fields with wisps of straw blazing on long poles to purify the air, which they think infectious by believing all the devils, spirits, ghosts, and hobgoblins fly abroad this night to hurt mankind.”[701] Another writer states that he witnessed the festival in Ireland in 1782: “Exactly at midnight the fires began to appear, and taking advantage of going up to the leads of the house, which had a widely extended view, I saw on a radius of thirty miles, all around, the fires burning on every eminence which the country afforded. I had a further satisfaction in learning, from undoubted authority, that the people danced [pg 264]round the fires, and at the close went through these fires, and made their sons and daughters, together with their cattle, pass through the fire; and the whole was conducted with religious solemnity.”[702] That the custom prevailed in full force as late as 1867 appears from a notice in the Liverpool Mercury, 29th June 1867, which runs thus: “The old pagan fire-worship still survives in Ireland, though nominally in honour of St. John. On Sunday night bonfires were observed throughout nearly every county in the province of Leinster. In Kilkenny fires blazed on every hillside at intervals of about a mile. There were very many in the Queen's county, also in Kildare and Wexford. The effect in the rich sunset appeared to travellers very grand. The people assemble and dance round the fires, the children jump through the flames, and in former times live coals were carried into the corn-fields to prevent blight.”[703]
In Scotland the traces of midsummer fires are few. In reference to the parish of Mongahitter it is said: “The Midsummer Eve fire, a relic of Druidism, was kindled in some parts of this country.”[704] Moresin states that on St. Peter's Day (29th June) the Scotch ran about with lighted torches on mountains and high grounds;[705] and at Loudon in Ayrshire it appears that down to the close of last century the custom still prevailed for herdsmen and young people to kindle fires on high grounds on St. Peter's Day.[706] In the Perthshire Highlands on Midsummer Day the cowherd used to go three times round the fold, according to the [pg 265] course of the sun, with a burning torch in his hand. This was believed to purify the flocks and herds and prevent diseases.[707]
In Slavonic countries also the midsummer festival is celebrated with similar rites. In Russia fires are lighted and young people, crowned with flowers, jump through them and drive their cattle through them. In Little Russia a stake is driven into the ground on St. John's Night, wrapt in straw, and set on fire. As the flames rise the peasant women throw birch-tree boughs into them, saying, “May my flax be as tall as this bough!”[708] “In Ruthenia the bonfires are lighted by a flame procured from wood by friction, the operation being performed by the elders of the party, amid the respectful silence of the rest. But as soon as the fire is ‘churned,’ the bystanders break forth with joyous songs, and when the bonfires are lit the young people take hands, and spring in couples through the smoke, if not through the flames, and after that the cattle in their turn are driven through it.”[709] In many parts of Prussia and Lithuania great fires are kindled on the Eve of St. John (Midsummer Eve). All the heights are ablaze with them, as far as the eye can see. The fires are supposed to be a protection against thunder, hail, and cattle disease, especially if next morning the cattle are driven over the places where the fires burned.[710] In some parts of Masuren it is the custom on the evening of Midsummer Day to put out all the fires in the village. Then an oaken stake is driven into the ground, a wheel is fixed on it as on an axle [pg 266] and is made to revolve rapidly, till the friction produces fire. Every one takes home a light from the new fire and rekindles the fire on the domestic hearth.[711] In Bohemia the cows used to be driven over the midsummer fires to protect them from witchcraft.[712] In Servia on Midsummer Eve herdsmen light torches of birch bark and march round the sheepfolds and cattle-stalls; then they climb the hills and there allow the torches to burn out.[713]
In Greece the women light fires on St. John's Eve and jump over them crying, “I leave my sins behind me.”[714] Italy must also have had its midsummer bonfires, since at Orvieto they were specially excepted from the prohibition directed against bonfires in general.[715] We have seen that they are still lighted in Sardinia.[716] In Corsica on the Eve of St. John the people set fire to the trunk of a tree or to a whole tree, and the young men and maidens dance round the blaze, which is called fucaraja.[717] Midsummer fires are, or were formerly, lighted in Spain.[718] Even the Mohammedans of Algeria and Morocco are reported to have kindled great midsummer bonfires of straw, into which they kept throwing incense and spices the whole night, invoking the divine blessing on their fruit-trees.[719]
It remains to show that the burning of effigies of human beings in the midsummer fires was not uncommon. At Rottenburg in Würtemberg, down [pg 267] to the beginning of the present century, a ceremony was observed on Midsummer Day which was called “beheading the angel-man.” A stump was driven into the ground, wrapt with straw, and fashioned into the rude likeness of a human figure, with arms, head, and face. This was the angel-man; round about him wood was piled up. The boys, armed with swords, assembled in crowds, covered the figure completely over with flowers, and eagerly awaited the signal. When the pile of wood was fired and the angel-man burst into a blaze, the word was given and all the boys fell upon him with their swords and hewed the burning figure in pieces. Then they leaped backwards and forwards over the fire.[720] In some parts of the Tyrol a straw-man is carted about the village on Midsummer Day and then burned. He is called the Lotter, which has been corrupted into Luther.[721] In French Flanders down to 1789 a straw figure representing a man was always burned in the midsummer bonfire, and the figure of a woman was burned on St. Peter's Day, 29th June.[722] At Grätz on the 23d June the common people used to make a puppet called the Tatermann, which they dragged to the bleaching-ground, and pelted with burning besoms till it took fire.[723] In some parts of Russia a figure of Kupalo is burned or thrown into a stream on St. John's Night.[724] The Russian custom of carrying the straw effigy of Kupalo over the midsummer bonfire has been already described.[725]
The best general explanation of these European [pg 268] fire-festivals seems to be the one given by Mannhardt, namely, that they are sun-charms or magical ceremonies intended to ensure a proper supply of sunshine for men, animals, and plants. We have seen that savages resort to charms for making sunshine,[726] and we need not wonder that primitive man in Europe has done the same. Indeed, considering the cold and cloudy climate of Europe during a considerable part of the year, it is natural that sun-charms should have played a much more prominent part among the superstitious practices of European peoples than among those of savages who live nearer the equator. This view of the festivals in question is supported by various considerations drawn partly from the rites themselves, partly from the influence which they are believed to exert upon the weather and on vegetation. For example, the custom of rolling a burning wheel down a hillside, which is often observed on these occasions, seems a very natural imitation of the sun's course in the sky, and the imitation is especially appropriate on Midsummer Day when the sun's annual declension begins. Not less graphic is the imitation of his apparent revolution by swinging a burning tar-barrel round a pole.[727] The custom of throwing blazing discs, shaped like suns, into the air is probably also a piece of imitative magic. In these, as in so many cases, the magic force is supposed to take effect through mimicry or sympathy; by imitating the desired result you actually produce it; by counterfeiting the sun's progress through the heavens you really help the luminary to pursue his celestial journey with punctuality and despatch. The name “fire of heaven,” by which the [pg 269] midsummer fire is sometimes popularly known,[728] clearly indicates a consciousness of the connection between the earthly and the heavenly flame.
Again, the manner in which the fire appears to have been originally kindled on these occasions favours the view that it was intended to be a mock-sun. For, as various scholars have seen,[729] it is highly probable that originally at these festivals fire was universally obtained by the friction of two pieces of wood. We have seen that this is still the case in some places both at the Easter and midsummer fires, and that it is expressly stated to have been formerly the case at the Beltane fires.[730] But what makes it almost certain that this was once the invariable mode of kindling the fire at these periodic festivals is the analogy of the need-fires. Need-fires are kindled, not at fixed periods, but on occasions of special distress, particularly at the outbreak of a murrain, and the cattle are driven through the need-fire, just as they are sometimes driven through the midsummer fires.[731] Now, the need-fire has always been produced by the friction of wood and sometimes by the revolution of a wheel; in Mull, for example, it was made by turning an oaken wheel over nine oaken spindles from east to west, that is, in the direction of the sun. It is a plausible conjecture that the wheel employed to produce the need-fire represents the sun;[732] and if the spring and midsummer fires were originally produced in the same way, it would be a confirmation [pg 270] of the view that they were originally sun-charms. In point of fact there is, as Kuhn has pointed out,[733] some evidence to show that the midsummer fire was originally thus produced. For at Obermedlingen in Swabia the “fire of heaven,” as it was called, was made on St. Vitus's Day (15th June) by igniting a cart-wheel, which, smeared with pitch and plaited with straw, was fastened on a pole twelve feet high, the top of the pole being inserted in the nave of the wheel. This fire was made on the summit of the mountain, and as the flame ascended, the people uttered a set form of words, with eyes and arms directed heaven-ward.[734] Here the fact of a wheel being fixed on the top of a pole and ignited makes it probable that originally the fire was produced, as in the need-fire, by the revolution of a wheel. The day on which the ceremony takes place (15th June) is near midsummer; and we have seen that in Masuren fire is (or was) actually made on Midsummer Day by turning a wheel rapidly about an oaken pole, though it is not said that the new fire so produced is used to light a bonfire.
Once more, the influence which these bonfires are supposed to exert on the weather and on vegetation, goes to show that they are sun-charms, since the effects ascribed to them are identical with those of sunshine. Thus, in Sweden the warmth or cold of the coming season is inferred from the direction in which the flames of the bonfire are blown; if they blow to the south, it will be warm, if to the north, cold. No doubt at present the direction of the flames is regarded merely as an augury of the weather, not as a mode of influencing it. But we may be pretty sure that this is one of the cases in which magic has [pg 271] dwindled into divination. So in the Eifel Mountains, when the smoke blows towards the corn-fields, this is an omen that the harvest will be abundant. But doubtless the older view was, not merely that the smoke and flames prognosticated, but that they actually produced an abundant harvest, the heat of the flames acting like sunshine on the corn. Indeed, this older view must still have been held by people in the Isle of Man when they lit fires to windward of their fields in order that the smoke might blow over them. Again, the idea that the corn will grow well as far as the blaze of the bonfire is visible, is certainly a remnant of the belief in the quickening and fertilising power of the bonfires. The same belief reappears in the notion that embers taken from the bonfires and inserted in the fields will promote the growth of the crops, and again it plainly underlies the custom of mixing the ashes of the bonfire with the seed-corn at sowing, or of scattering the ashes by themselves over the field. The belief that the flax will grow as high as the people leap over the bonfire belongs clearly to the same class of ideas. Once more, we saw that at Konz, on the banks of the Moselle, if the blazing wheel which was trundled down the hillside reached the river without being extinguished, this was hailed as a proof that the vintage would be abundant. So firmly was this belief held that the successful performance of the ceremony entitled the villagers to levy a tax upon the owners of the neighbouring vineyards. Here the unextinguished wheel meant an unclouded sun, and this in turn meant an abundant vintage. So the waggon-load of white wine which the villagers received from the vineyards round about was in fact a payment for the sunshine which they had procured for the grapes.
The interpretation of these fire-customs as charms for making sunshine is confirmed by a parallel custom observed by the Hindoos of Southern India at the Pongol or Feast of Ingathering. The festival is celebrated in the early part of January, when, according to Hindoo astrologers, the sun enters the tropic of Capricorn, and the chief event of the festival coincides with the passage of the sun. For some days previously the boys gather heaps of sticks, straw, dead leaves, and everything that will burn. On the morning of the first day of the festival the heaps are fired. Every street and lane has its bonfire. The young folk leap over the fire or pile on fresh fuel. This fire is an offering to Sûrya, the sun-god, or to Agni, the deity of fire; it “wakes him from his sleep, calling on him again to gladden the earth with his light and heat.”[735] To say that the fires awaken the sun-god from his sleep is only a metaphorical and perhaps modernised expression of the belief that they actually help to rekindle the sun's light and heat.
The custom of leaping over the fire and driving cattle through it may be intended, on the one hand, to secure for man and beast a share of the vital energy of the sun, and, on the other hand, to purify them from all evil influences; for to the primitive mind fire is the most powerful of all purificatory agents. The latter idea is obviously uppermost in the minds of Greek women when they leap over the midsummer fire, saying, “I leave my sins behind me.” So in Yucatan at a New Year's festival the people used to light a huge bonfire and pass through it, in the belief that this was a means of [pg 273] ridding themselves of their troubles.[736] The custom of driving cattle through a fire is not confined to Europe. At certain times the Hottentots make a fire of chips, dry branches, and green twigs, so as to raise a great smoke. Through this fire they drive their sheep, dragging them through by force, if necessary. If the sheep make their escape without passing through the fire, it is reckoned a heavy disgrace and a very bad omen. But if they pass readily through or over the fire, the joy of the Hottentots is indescribable.[737]
The procession or race with burning torches, which so often forms a part of these fire-festivals, appears to be simply a means of diffusing far and wide the genial influence of the bonfire or of the sunshine which it represents. Hence on these occasions lighted torches are very frequently carried over the fields, sometimes with the avowed intention of fertilising them;[738] and with the same intention live coals from the bonfire are sometimes placed in the field “to prevent blight.” The custom of trundling a burning wheel over the fields, which is practised for the express purpose of fertilising them, embodies the same idea in a still more graphic form; since in this way the mock-sun itself, not merely its light and heat represented by torches, is made actually to pass over the ground which is to receive its quickening and kindly influence. Again, the custom of carrying lighted brands round the cattle is plainly [pg 274] equivalent to driving the animals through the fire. It is quite possible that in these customs the idea of the quickening power of fire may be combined with the conception of it as a purgative agent for the expulsion or destruction of evil beings. It is certainly sometimes interpreted in the latter way by persons who practise the customs; and this purgative use of fire comes out very prominently, as we have seen, in the general expulsion of demons from towns and villages. But in the present class of cases this aspect of it is perhaps secondary, if indeed it is more than a later misinterpretation of the custom.
It remains to ask, What is the meaning of burning an effigy in these bonfires? The effigies so burned, as was remarked above, can hardly be separated from the effigies of Death which are burned or otherwise destroyed in spring; and grounds have been already given for regarding the so-called effigies of Death as really representations of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. Are the other effigies, which are burned in the spring and midsummer bonfires, susceptible of the same explanation? It would seem so. For just as the fragments of the so-called Death are stuck in the fields to make the crops grow, so the charred embers of the figure burned in the spring bonfires are sometimes placed in the fields in the belief that they will keep vermin from the crop. Again, the rule that the last married bride must leap over the fire in which the straw-man is burned on Shrove Tuesday, is probably intended to make her fruitful. But, as we have seen, the power of blessing women with offspring is a special attribute of tree-spirits;[739] it is therefore a fair presumption that the burning [pg 275] effigy over which the bride must leap is a representative of the fertilising tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. This character of the effigy, as representative of the spirit of vegetation, is almost unmistakable when the effigy is composed of an unthreshed sheaf of corn or is covered from head to foot with flowers.[740] Again, it is to be noted that instead of an effigy living trees are sometimes burned both in the spring and midsummer bonfires.[741] Now, considering the frequency with which the tree-spirit is represented in human shape, it is hardly rash to suppose that when sometimes a tree and sometimes an effigy is burned in these fires, the effigy and the tree are regarded as equivalent to each other, each being a representative of the tree-spirit. This, again, is confirmed by observing, first, that sometimes the effigy which is to be burned is carried about simultaneously with a May-tree, the former being carried by the boys, the latter by the girls;[742] and, second, that the effigy is sometimes tied to a living tree and burned with it.[743] In these cases, we can scarcely doubt, the tree-spirit is represented, as we have found it represented before, in duplicate, both by the tree and by the effigy. That the true character of the effigy as a representative of the beneficent spirit of vegetation should sometimes be forgotten, is natural. The custom of burning a beneficent god is too foreign to later modes of thought to escape misinterpretation. Naturally enough the people who continued to burn his image came in time to identify it as the effigy of persons, whom, on various grounds, they considered objectionable, such as Judas Iscariot, Luther, and a witch.
The general reasons for killing a god or his [pg 276] representative have been examined in the preceding chapter. But when the god happens to be a deity of vegetation, there are special reasons why he should die by fire. For light and heat are necessary to vegetable growth; and, on the principle of sympathetic magic, by subjecting the personal representative of vegetation to their influence, you secure a supply of these necessaries for trees and crops. In other words, by burning the spirit of vegetation in a fire which represents the sun, you make sure that, for a time at least, vegetation shall have plenty of sun. It may be objected that, if the intention is simply to secure enough sunshine for vegetation, this end would be better attained, on the principles of sympathetic magic, by merely passing the representative of vegetation through the fire instead of burning him. In point of fact this is sometimes done. In Russia, as we have seen, the straw figure of Kupalo is not burned in the midsummer fire, but merely carried backwards and forwards across it.[744] But, for the reasons already given, it is necessary that the god should die; so next day Kupalo is stripped of her ornaments and thrown into a stream. In this Russian custom, therefore, the passage of the image through the fire is a sun-charm pure and simple; the killing of the god is a separate act, and the mode of killing him—by drowning—is probably a rain-charm. But usually people have not thought it necessary to draw this fine distinction; for the various reasons already assigned, it is advantageous, they think, to expose the god of vegetation to a considerable degree of heat, and it is also advantageous to kill him, and they combine these advantages in a rough-and-ready way by burning him.
Finally, we have to ask, were human beings formerly burned as representatives of the tree-spirit or deity of vegetation? We have seen reasons for believing that living persons have often acted as representatives of the tree-spirit, and have suffered death as such. There is no reason, therefore, why they should not have been burned, if any special advantages were likely to be attained by putting them to death in that way. The consideration of human suffering is not one which enters into the calculations of primitive man. It would have been surprising if it did, when we remember the record of Christian Europe. Now, in the fire-festivals which we are discussing, the pretence of burning people is sometimes carried so far that it seems reasonable to regard it as a mitigated survival of an older custom of actually burning them. Thus in Aachen, as we saw, the man clad in peas-straw acts so cleverly that the children really believe he is being burned. And at the Beltane fires the pretended victim was seized, and a show made of throwing him into the fire, and for some time afterwards people affected to speak of him as dead. In the following customs Mannhardt is probably right in recognising traces of an old custom of burning a leaf-clad representative of the spirit of vegetation. At Wolfeck, in Austria, on Midsummer Day, a boy completely clad in green fir branches goes from house to house, accompanied by a noisy crew, collecting wood for the bonfire. As he gets the wood he sings—
“Forest trees I want,
No sour milk for me,
But beer and wine,
So can the wood-man be jolly and gay.”[745]
In some parts of Bavaria, also, the boys who go from house to house collecting fuel for the midsummer bonfire envelop one of their number from head to foot in green branches of firs, and lead him by a rope through the whole village.[746] At Moosheim, in Würtemberg, the festival of St. John's Fire usually lasted for fourteen days, ending on the second Sunday after Midsummer Day. On this last day the bonfire was left in charge of the children, while the older people retired to a wood. Here they encased a young fellow in leaves and twigs, who, thus disguised, went to the fire, scattered it, and trod it out. All the people present fled at the sight of him.[747]
But it seems possible to go farther than this. Of human sacrifices offered on these occasions the most unequivocal traces, as we have seen, are those which, about a hundred years ago, still lingered at the Beltane fires in the Highlands of Scotland, that is, among a Celtic people who, situated in a remote corner of Europe, enjoying practical independence, and almost completely isolated from foreign influence, had till then conserved their old heathenism better than any other people in the West of Europe. It is significant, therefore, that human sacrifices by fire are known, on unquestionable evidence, to have been systematically practised by the Celts. The earliest description of these sacrifices is by Julius Caesar. As conqueror of the hitherto independent Celts of Gaul, Caesar had ample opportunity of observing the national Celtic religion and manners, while these were still fresh and crisp from the native mint and had not yet been fused in the melting-pot of Roman civilisation. With [pg 279] his own notes Caesar appears to have incorporated the observations of a Greek explorer, by name Posidonius, who travelled in Gaul about fifty years before Caesar carried the Roman arms to the English Channel. The Greek geographer Strabo and the historian Diodorus seem also to have derived their descriptions of the Celtic sacrifices from the work of Posidonius, but independently of each other and of Caesar, for each of the three derivative accounts contains some details which are not to be found in either of the others. By combining them, therefore, we can restore the original account of Posidonius with some certainty, and thus obtain a picture of the sacrifices offered by the Celts of Gaul at the close of the second century b.c.[748] The following seem to have been the main outlines of the custom. Condemned criminals were reserved by the Celts in order to be sacrificed to the gods at a great festival which took place once in every five years. The more there were of such victims, the greater was believed to be the fertility of the land.[749] When there were not enough criminals to furnish victims, captives taken in war were sacrificed to supply the deficiency. When the time came the victims were sacrificed by the Druids or priests. Some were shot down with arrows, some were impaled, and some were burned alive in the following manner. Colossal images of wicker-work or of wood and grass were constructed; these were filled with live men, cattle, and animals of other kinds; fire was then applied to the images, and they were burned with their living contents.
Such were the great festivals held once every five years. But besides these quinquennial festivals, celebrated on so grand a scale and with, apparently, so large an expenditure of human life, it seems reasonable to suppose that festivals of the same sort, only on a lesser scale, were held annually, and that from these annual festivals are lineally descended some at least of the fire-festivals which, with their traces of human sacrifices, are still celebrated year by year in many parts of Europe. The gigantic images constructed of osiers or covered with grass in which the Druids enclosed their victims remind us of the leafy framework in which the human representative of the tree-spirit is still so often encased.[750] Considering, therefore, that the fertility of the land was apparently supposed to depend upon the due performance of these sacrifices, Mannhardt is probably right in viewing the Celtic victims, cased in osiers and grass, as representatives of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. These wicker giants of the Druids seem to have still their representatives at the spring and midsummer festivals of modern Europe. At Douay a procession takes place annually on the Sunday nearest to the 7th of July. The great feature of the procession is a colossal figure made of osiers, and called “the giant,” which is moved through the streets by means of rollers and ropes worked by men who are enclosed within the figure. The wooden head of the giant is said to have been carved and painted by Rubens. The figure is armed as a knight with lance and sword, helmet and shield. Behind him march his wife and his three children, all constructed of osiers on the same principle, but on a smaller scale.[751] At Dunkirk the giant is forty [pg 281] to fifty feet high, being made of basket-work and canvas, properly painted and dressed. It contains a great many living men within it, who move it about. Wicker giants of this sort are common in the towns of Belgium and French Flanders; they are led about at the Carnival in spring. The people, it is said, are much attached to these grotesque figures, speak of them with patriotic enthusiasm, and never weary of gazing at them.[752] In England artificial giants seem to have been a standing feature of the midsummer festival. A writer of the sixteenth century speaks of “Midsommer pageants in London, where, to make the people wonder, are set forth great and uglie gyants, marching as if they were alive, and armed at all points, but within they are stuffed full of browne paper and tow, which the shrewd boyes, underpeeping, do guilefully discover, and turne to a greate derision.”[753] The Mayor of Chester in 1599 “altered many antient customs, as the shooting for the sheriff's breakfast; the going of the Giants at Midsommer, etc.”[754] In these cases the giants only figure in the processions. But sometimes they are burned in the spring or summer bonfires. Thus the people of the Rue aux Ours in Paris used annually to make a great wicker-work figure, dressed as a soldier, which they promenaded up and down the streets for several days, and solemnly burned on the 3d of July, the crowd of spectators singing Salve Regina. The burning fragments of the image were scattered among the people, who eagerly scrambled for them. The [pg 282] custom was abolished in 1743.[755] In Brie, Isle de France, a wicker-work giant, eighteen feet high, was annually burned on Midsummer Eve.[756]
Again, the Druidical custom of burning live animals, enclosed in wicker-work, has its counterpart at the spring and midsummer festivals. At Luchon in the Pyrenees on Midsummer Eve “a hollow column, composed of strong wicker-work, is raised to the height of about sixty feet in the centre of the principal suburb, and interlaced with green foliage up to the very top; while the most beautiful flowers and shrubs procurable are artistically arranged in groups below, so as to form a sort of background to the scene. The column is then filled with combustible materials, ready for ignition. At an appointed hour—about 8 p.m.—a grand procession, composed of the clergy, followed by young men and maidens in holiday attire, pour forth from the town chanting hymns, and take up their position around the column. Meanwhile, bonfires are lit, with beautiful effect, in the surrounding hills. As many living serpents as could be collected are now thrown into the column, which is set on fire at the base by means of torches, armed with which about fifty boys and men dance around with frantic gestures. The serpents, to avoid the flames, wriggle their way to the top, whence they are seen lashing out laterally until finally obliged to drop, their struggles for life giving rise to enthusiastic delight among the surrounding spectators. This is a favourite annual ceremony for the inhabitants of Luchon and its neighbourhood, and local tradition assigns to it a heathen origin.”[757] In the midsummer [pg 283] fires formerly kindled on the Place de Grève at Paris it was the custom to burn a basket, barrel, or sack full of live cats; sometimes a fox was burned. The people collected the embers and ashes of the fire and took them home, believing that they brought good luck.[758] At Metz midsummer fires were lighted on the Esplanade, and six cats were burned in them.[759] In Russia a white cock was sometimes burned in the midsummer bonfire;[760] in Meissen or Thüringen a horse's head used to be thrown into it.[761] Sometimes animals are burned in the spring bonfires. In the Vosges cats were burned on Shrove Tuesday; in Elsass they were thrown into the Easter bonfire.[762] We have seen that squirrels were sometimes burned in the Easter fire.
If the men who were burned in wicker frames by the Druids represented the spirit of vegetation, the animals burned along with them must have had the same meaning. Amongst the animals burned by the Druids or in modern bonfires have been, as we saw, cattle, cats, foxes, and cocks; and all of these creatures are variously regarded by European peoples as embodiments of the corn-spirit.[763] I am not aware of any certain evidence that in Europe serpents have been regarded as representatives of the tree-spirit or corn-spirit;[764] as victims at the midsummer festival in Luchon they may [pg 284] have replaced animals which really had this representative character. When the meaning of the custom was forgotten, utility and humanity might unite in suggesting the substitution of noxious reptiles as victims in room of harmless and useful animals.
Thus it appears that the sacrificial rites of the Celts of ancient Gaul can be traced in the popular festivals of modern Europe. Naturally it is in France, or rather in the wider area comprised within the limits of ancient Gaul, that these rites have left the clearest traces in the customs of burning giants of wicker-work and animals enclosed in wicker-work or baskets. These customs, it will have been remarked, are generally observed at or about midsummer. From this we may infer that the original rites of which these are the degenerate successors were solemnised at midsummer. This inference harmonises with the conclusion suggested by a general survey of European folk-custom, that the midsummer festival must on the whole have been the most widely diffused and the most solemn of all the yearly festivals celebrated by the primitive Aryans in Europe. And in its application to the Celts this general conclusion is corroborated by the more or less perfect vestiges of midsummer fire-festivals which we have found lingering in all those westernmost promontories and islands which are the last strongholds of the Celtic race in Europe—Britanny, Cornwall, Wales, the Isle of Man, Scotland, and Ireland. In Scotland, it is true, the chief Celtic fire-festivals certainly appear to have been held at Beltane (1st May) and Hallow E'en; but this was exceptional.
To sum up: the combined evidence of ancient writers and of modern folk-custom points to the conclusion that amongst the Celts of Gaul an annual [pg 285] festival was celebrated at midsummer, at which living men, representing the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation, were enclosed in wicker-frames and burned. The whole rite was designed as a charm to make the sun to shine and the crops to grow.
But another great feature of the Celtic midsummer festival appears to have been the gathering of the sacred mistletoe by the Druids. The ceremony has been thus described by Pliny in a passage which has often been quoted. After enumerating the different kinds of mistletoe he proceeds: “In treating of this subject, the admiration in which the mistletoe is held throughout Gaul ought not to pass unnoticed. The Druids, for so they call their wizards, esteem nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree on which it grows, provided only that the tree is an oak. But apart from this they choose oak-woods for their sacred groves and perform no sacred rites without oak-leaves; so that the very name of Druids may be regarded as a Greek appellation derived from their worship of the oak.[765] For they believe that whatever grows on these trees is sent from heaven, and is a sign that the tree has been chosen by the god himself. The mistletoe is very rarely to be met with; but when it is found, they gather it with solemn ceremony. This they do especially in the sixth month (the beginnings of their months and years are determined by the moon) and after the tree has passed the thirtieth year of its age, [pg 286] because by that time it has plenty of vigour, though it has not attained half its full size. After due preparations have been made for a sacrifice and a feast under the tree, they hail it as the universal healer and bring to the spot two white bulls, whose horns have never been bound before. A priest clad in a white robe climbs the tree and with a golden[766] sickle cuts the mistletoe, which is caught in a white cloth. Then they sacrifice the victims, praying that God may make his own gift to prosper with those upon whom he has bestowed it. They believe that a potion prepared from mistletoe will make barren animals to bring forth, and that the plant is a remedy against all poison.”[767]
In saying that the Druids cut the mistletoe in the sixth month Pliny must have had in his mind the Roman calendar, in which the sixth month was June. Now, if the cutting of the mistletoe took place in June, we may be almost certain that the day which witnessed the ceremony was Midsummer Eve. For in many places Midsummer Eve, a day redolent of a thousand decaying fancies of yore, is still the time for culling certain magic plants, whose evanescent virtue can be secured at this mystic season alone. For example, on Midsummer Eve the fern is believed to burst into a wondrous bloom, like fire or burnished gold. Whoever [pg 287] catches this bloom, which very quickly fades and falls off, can make himself invisible, can understand the language of animals, and so forth. But he must not touch it with his hand; he must spread a white cloth under the fern, and the magic bloom (or seed) will fall into it.[768] Again, St. John's wort (Hypericum perforatum), a herb which is believed to heal all kinds of wounds and to drive away witches and demons, is gathered on Midsummer Eve (Eve of St. John), and is worn as an amulet or hung over doors and windows on that day.[769] Again, mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) is believed to possess magic qualities provided it be gathered on St. John's Eve. Hence in France it is called the herb of St. John. People weave themselves a girdle of the plant, believing that it will protect them against ghosts, magic, misfortune, and disease, throughout the year. Or they weave garlands of it on St. John's Eve, and look through them at the midsummer bonfire or put them on their heads. Whoever does this will suffer no aches in his eyes or head that year. Sometimes the plant is thrown into the midsummer bonfire.[770] The superstitious association of fern-seed, St. John's wort, and mugwort with Midsummer Eve is widely diffused over Europe. The following associations seem to be more local. In England the orpine (Sedum telephium) is popularly called Midsummer [pg 288] Men, because it has been customary to gather it on Midsummer Eve for the purpose of using it to ascertain the fate of lovers;[771] and in England sprigs of red sage are sometimes gathered on Midsummer Eve for the same purpose.[772] In Bohemia poachers fancy they can make themselves invulnerable by means of fir-cones gathered before sunrise on St. John's Day.[773] Again, in Bohemia wild thyme gathered on Midsummer Day is used to fumigate the trees on Christmas Eve, in order that they may grow well.[774] In Germany and Bohemia a plant called St. John's Flower or St. John's Blood (Hieracium pilosella) is gathered on Midsummer Eve. It should be rooted up with a gold coin. The plant is supposed to bring luck and to be especially good for sick cattle.[775]
These facts by themselves would suffice to raise a strong presumption that, if the Druids cut the mistletoe in June, as we learn from Pliny that they did, the day on which they cut it could have been no other than Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Day. This presumption is converted into practical certainty when we find it to be still a rule of folk-lore that the mistletoe should be cut on Midsummer Eve.[776] Further, the peasants of Piedmont and Lombardy still go out on Midsummer morning to search the oak-leaves for the “oil of St. John,” which is supposed to heal all wounds made with cutting instruments.[777] Originally no doubt the “oil of St. John” was simply the mistletoe, or a decoction made [pg 289] from it. For in Holstein the mistletoe, especially oak-mistletoe, is still regarded as a panacea for green wounds;[778] and if, as is alleged, “all-healer” is an epithet of the mistletoe in the modern Celtic speech of Britanny, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland,[779] this can be nothing but a survival of the name by which, as we have seen, the Druids addressed the oak, or rather, perhaps, the mistletoe.
Thus it appears that the two main features of the Balder myth—the pulling of the mistletoe and the burning of the god—were reproduced in the great midsummer festival of the Celts. But in Scandinavia itself, the home of Balder, both these features of his myth can still be traced in the popular celebration of midsummer. For in Sweden on Midsummer Eve mistletoe is “diligently sought after, they believing it to be, in a high degree, possessed of mystic qualities; and that if a sprig of it be attached to the ceiling of the dwelling-house, the horse's stall, or the cow's crib, the ‘Troll’ will then be powerless to injure either man or beast.”[780] And in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark huge bonfires are kindled on hills and eminences on Midsummer Eve.[781] It does not appear, indeed, that any effigy is burned in these bonfires; but the burning of an effigy is a feature which might easily drop out after its meaning was forgotten. And the name of Balder's bale-fires (Balder's Bălar), by which these midsummer fires were formerly known in Sweden,[782] puts their connection with Balder beyond the reach of doubt, and makes it certain that in [pg 290] former times either a living representative or an effigy of Balder must have been annually burned in them. Midsummer was the season sacred to Balder, and the fact that the Swedish poet Tegner, in his Frithiofssaga, places the burning of Balder at midsummer[783] may perhaps be allowed as evidence of a Swedish tradition to that effect. From this double coincidence of the Balder myth, on the one hand with the midsummer festival of Celtic Gaul and on the other with the midsummer festival in Scandinavia, we may safely conclude that the myth is not a myth pure and simple, that is, a mere description of physical phenomena in imagery borrowed from human life; it must undoubtedly be a ritualistic myth, that is a myth based on actual observation of religious ceremonies and purporting to explain them. Now, the standing explanation which myth gives of ritual is that the ritual in question is a periodic commemoration of some remarkable transaction in the past, the actors in which may have been either gods or men. Such an explanation the Balder myth would seem to offer of the annual fire-festivals which, as we saw, must have played so prominent a part in the primitive religion of the Aryan race in Europe. Balder must have been the Norse representative of the being who was burnt in effigy or in the person of a living man at the fire-festivals in question. But if, as I have tried to show, the being so burnt was the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation, it follows that Balder also must have been a tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation.
But it is desirable to determine, if we can, the [pg 291] particular kind of tree or trees, of which a personal representative was burned at the fire-festivals. For we may be quite sure that it was not as a representative of vegetation in general that the victim suffered death. The conception of vegetation in general is too abstract to be primitive. Most probably the victim at first represented a particular kind of sacred tree. Now of all European trees none has such claims as the oak to be considered as pre-eminently the sacred tree of the Aryans. Its worship is attested for all the great branches of the Aryan stock in Europe. We have seen that it was not only the sacred tree, but the principal object of worship of both Celts and Slavs.[784] According to Grimm, the oak ranked first among the holy trees of the Germans, and was indeed their chief god. It is certainly known to have been adored by them in the age of heathendom, and traces of its worship have survived in various parts of Germany almost to the present day.[785] Amongst the ancient Italians, according to Preller, the oak was sacred above all other trees.[786] The image of Jupiter on the Capitol at Rome seems to have been originally nothing but a natural oak-tree.[787] At Dodona, perhaps the oldest of all Greek sanctuaries, Zeus was worshipped as immanent in the sacred oak, and the rustling of its leaves in the wind was his voice.[788] If, then, the great god of both Greeks and Romans was represented in some of his oldest shrines under the form of an oak, and if the oak was the principal object of worship of Celts, Germans, and Slavs, we may [pg 292] certainly conclude that this tree was one of the chief, if not the very chief divinity of the Aryans before the dispersion; and that their primitive home must have lain in a land which was clothed with forests of oak.[789]
Now, considering the primitive character and remarkable similarity of the fire-festivals observed by all the branches of the Aryan race in Europe, we may infer that these festivals form part of the common stock of religious observances which the various peoples carried with them in their wanderings from their original home. But, if I am right, an essential feature of those primitive fire-festivals was the burning of a man who represented the tree-spirit. In view, then, of the place occupied by the oak in the religion of the Aryans, the presumption is that the tree so represented at the fire-festivals must originally have been the oak. So far as the Celts and Slavs are concerned, this conclusion will perhaps hardly be contested. But both for them and for the Germans it is confirmed by a remarkable piece of religious conservatism. The most primitive method known to man of producing fire is by rubbing two pieces of wood against each other till they ignite; and we have seen that this method is still used in Europe for kindling sacred fires such as the [pg 293] need-fire, and that most probably it was formerly resorted to at all the fire-festivals under discussion. Now it is sometimes prescribed that the need-fire, or other sacred fire, must be made by the friction of a particular kind of wood; and wherever the kind of wood is prescribed, whether among Celts, Germans, or Slavs, that wood is always the oak. Thus we have seen that amongst the Slavs of Masuren the new fire for the village is made on Midsummer Day by causing a wheel to revolve rapidly round an axle of oak till the axle takes fire.[790] When the perpetual fire which the ancient Slavs used to maintain chanced to go out, it was rekindled by the friction of a piece of oak-wood, which had been previously heated by being struck with a gray (not a red) stone.[791] In Germany the need-fire was regularly kindled by the friction of oak-wood;[792] and in the Highlands of Scotland, both the Beltane and the need-fires were lighted by similar means.[793] Now, if the sacred fire was regularly kindled by the friction of oak-wood, we may infer that originally the fire was also fed with the same material. In point of fact, the perpetual fire which burned under the sacred oak at the great Slavonian sanctuary of Romove was fed with oak-wood;[794] and that oak-wood was formerly the fuel [pg 294] burned in the midsummer fires may perhaps be inferred from the circumstance that in many mountain districts of Germany peasants are still in the habit of making up their cottage fire on Midsummer Day with a heavy block of oak-wood. The block is so arranged that it smoulders slowly and is not finally reduced to charcoal till the expiry of a year. Then upon next Midsummer Day the charred embers of the old log are removed to make room for the new one, and are mixed with the seed-corn or scattered about the garden. This is believed to promote the growth of the crops and to preserve them from blight and vermin.[795] It may be remembered that at the Boeotian festival of the Daedala, the analogy of which to the spring and midsummer festivals of modern Europe has been already pointed out, the great feature was the felling and burning of an oak.[796] The general conclusion is, that at those periodic or occasional ceremonies, of which the object was to cause the sun to shine, and the fruits of the earth to grow, the ancient Aryans both kindled and fed the fire with the sacred oak-wood.
But if at these solemn rites the fire was regularly made of oak-wood, it follows that the man who was burned in it as a personification of the tree-spirit could have represented no tree but the oak. The sacred oak was thus burned in duplicate; the wood of the tree was consumed in the fire, and along with it was consumed a living man as a personification of the oak-spirit. The conclusion thus drawn for the European Aryans in general is confirmed in its special application to the Celts and Scandinavians by the relation in which, amongst these peoples, the mistletoe stood to the burning of the victim in the midsummer fire. We have [pg 295] seen that among Celts and Scandinavians it has been customary to gather the mistletoe at midsummer. But so far as appears on the face of this custom, there is nothing to connect it with the midsummer fires in which human victims or effigies of them were burned. Even if the fire, as seems probable, was originally always made with oak-wood, why should it have been necessary to pull the mistletoe? The last link between the midsummer customs of gathering the mistletoe and lighting the bonfires is supplied by Balder's myth, which certainly cannot be disjoined from the customs in question. The myth shows that a vital connection must once have been believed to subsist between the mistletoe and the human representative of the oak who was burned in the fire. According to the myth, Balder could be killed by nothing in heaven or earth except the mistletoe; and so long as the mistletoe remained on the oak, he was not only immortal, but invulnerable. Now, as soon as we see that Balder was the oak, the origin of the myth becomes plain. The mistletoe was viewed as the seat of life of the oak, and so long as it was uninjured nothing could kill or even wound the oak. The conception of the mistletoe as the seat of life of the oak would naturally be suggested to primitive people by the observation that while the oak is deciduous, the mistletoe which grows on it is evergreen. In winter the sight of its fresh foliage among the bare branches must have been hailed by the worshippers of the tree as a sign that the divine life which had ceased to animate the branches yet survived in the mistletoe, as the heart of a sleeper still beats when his body is motionless. Hence when the god had to be killed—when the sacred tree had to be burnt—it was necessary to begin by breaking off [pg 296] the mistletoe. For so long as the mistletoe remained intact, the oak (so people thought) was invulnerable; all the blows of their knives and axes would glance harmless from its surface. But once tear from the oak its sacred heart—the mistletoe—and the tree nodded to its fall. And when in later times the spirit of the oak came to be represented by a living man, it was logically necessary to suppose that, like the tree he personated, he could neither be killed nor wounded so long as the mistletoe remained uninjured. The pulling of the mistletoe was thus at once the signal and the cause of his death.
But since the idea of a being whose life is thus, in a sense, outside itself, must be strange to many readers, and has, indeed, not yet been recognised in its full bearing on primitive superstition, it will be worth while to devote a couple of sections to the subject. The result will be to show that, in assuming this idea as the explanation of the relation of Balder to the mistletoe, I assume a principle which is deeply engraved on the mind of primitive man.
§ 3.—The external soul in folk-tales.
In a former chapter we saw that, in the opinion of primitive people, the soul may temporarily absent itself from the body without causing death. Such temporary absences of the soul are often believed to involve considerable risk, since the wandering soul is liable to a variety of mishaps at the hands of enemies, and so forth. But there is another aspect to this power of externalising the soul. If only the safety of the soul can be ensured during its absence from the body, there [pg 297] is no reason why the soul should not continue absent for an indefinite time; indeed a man may, on a pure calculation of personal safety, desire that his soul should never return to his body. Unable to conceive of life abstractly as a “permanent possibility of sensation” or a “continuous adjustment of internal arrangements to external relations,” the savage thinks of it as a concrete material thing of a definite bulk, capable of being seen and handled, kept in a box or jar, and liable to be bruised, fractured, or smashed in pieces. It is not needful that the life, so conceived, should be in the man; it may be absent from his body and still continue to animate him, by virtue of a sort of sympathy or “action at a distance.” So long as this object which he calls his life or soul remains unharmed, the man is well; if it is injured, he suffers; if it is destroyed, he dies. Or, to put it otherwise, when a man is ill or dies, the fact is explained by saying that the material object called his life or soul, whether it be in his body or out of it, has either sustained injury or been destroyed. But there may be circumstances in which, if the life or soul remains in the man, it stands a greater chance of sustaining injury than if it were stowed away in some safe and secret place. Accordingly, in such circumstances, primitive man takes his soul out of his body and deposits it for security in some safe place, intending to replace it in his body when the danger is past. Or if he should discover some place of absolute security, he may be content to leave his soul there permanently. The advantage of this is that, so long as the soul remains unharmed in the place where he has deposited it, the man himself is immortal; nothing can kill his body, since his life is not in it.
Evidence of this primitive belief is furnished by a class of folk-tales of which the Norse story of “The giant who had no heart in his body” is perhaps the best-known example. Stories of this kind are widely diffused over the world, and from their number and the variety of incident and of details in which the leading idea is embodied, we may infer that the conception of an external soul is one which has had a powerful hold on the minds of men at an early stage of history. For folk-tales are a faithful reflection of the world as it appeared to the primitive mind; and we may be sure that any idea which commonly occurs in them, however absurd it may seem to us, must once have been an ordinary article of belief. This assurance, so far as it concerns the supposed power of externalising the soul for a longer or shorter time, is amply corroborated by a comparison of the folk-tales in question with the actual beliefs and practices of savages. To this we shall return after some specimens of the tales have been given. The specimens will be selected with a view of illustrating both the characteristic features and the wide diffusion of this class of tales.
In the first place, the story of the external soul is told, in various forms, by all Aryan peoples from Hindustan to the Hebrides. A very common form of it is this: A warlock, giant, or other fairyland being is invulnerable and immortal because he keeps his soul hidden far away in some secret place; but a fair princess, whom he holds enthralled in his enchanted castle, wiles his secret from him and reveals it to the hero, who seeks out the warlock's soul, heart, life, or death (as it is variously called), and, by destroying it, simultaneously kills the warlock. Thus a Hindoo story tells how a magician called Punchkin held a [pg 299] queen captive for twelve years, and would fain marry her, but she would not have him. At last the queen's son came to rescue her, and the two plotted together to kill Punchkin. So the queen spoke the magician fair, and pretended that she had at last made up her mind to marry him. “ ‘And do tell me,’ she said, ‘are you quite immortal? Can death never touch you? And are you too great an enchanter ever to feel human suffering?’ ... ‘It is true,’ he said, ‘that I am not as others. Far, far away—hundreds of thousands of miles from this—there lies a desolate country covered with thick jungle. In the midst of the jungle grows a circle of palm-trees, and in the centre of the circle stand six chattees full of water, piled one above another; below the sixth chattee is a small cage, which contains a little green parrot—on the life of the parrot depends my life—and if the parrot is killed I must die. It is, however,’ he added, ‘impossible that the parrot should sustain any injury, both on account of the inaccessibility of the country, and because, by my appointment, many thousand genii surround the palm-trees, and kill all who approach the place.’ ” But the queen's young son overcame all difficulties, and got possession of the parrot. He brought it to the door of the magician's palace, and began playing with it. Punchkin, the magician, saw him, and, coming out, tried to persuade the boy to give him the parrot. “ ‘Give me my parrot!’ cried Punchkin. Then the boy took hold of the parrot and tore off one of his wings; and as he did so the magician's right arm fell off. Punchkin then stretched out his left arm, crying, ‘Give me my parrot!’ The prince pulled off the parrot's second wing, and the magician's left arm tumbled off. ‘Give me my parrot!’ cried he, and fell on his knees. The [pg 300] prince pulled off the parrot's right leg, the magician's right leg fell off; the prince pulled off the parrot's left leg, down fell the magician's left. Nothing remained of him except the lifeless body and the head; but still he rolled his eyes, and cried, ‘Give me my parrot!’ ‘Take your parrot, then,’ cried the boy; and with that he wrung the bird's neck, and threw it at the magician; and, as he did so, Punchkin's head twisted round, and, with a fearful groan, he died!”[797] In another Hindoo tale an ogre is asked by his daughter, “ ‘Papa, where do you keep your soul?’ ‘Sixteen miles away from this place,’ said he, ‘is a tree. Round the tree are tigers, and bears, and scorpions, and snakes; on the top of the tree is a very great fat snake; on his head is a little cage; in the cage is a bird; and my soul is in that bird.’ ” The end of the ogre is like that of the magician in the previous tale. As the bird's wings and legs are torn off, the ogre's arms and legs drop off; and when its neck is wrung he falls down dead.[798]
In another Hindoo story a princess called Sodewa Bai is born with a golden necklace about her neck, and the astrologer told her parents, “This is no common child; the necklace of gold about her neck contains your daughter's soul; let it, therefore, be guarded with the utmost care; for if it were taken off and worn by another person, she would die.” So her mother caused it to be firmly fastened round the child's neck, and, as soon as the child was old enough to understand, she told her its value, and warned her never to let it be taken off. In course of time Sodewa Bai was married to a prince who had another wife living. The [pg 301] first wife, jealous of her young rival, persuaded a negress to steal from Sodewa Bai the golden necklace which contained her soul. The negress did so, and, as soon as she put the necklace round her own neck, Sodewa Bai died. All day long the negress used to wear the necklace; but late at night, on going to bed, she would take it off and put it by till morning; and whenever she took it off, Sodewa Bai's soul returned to her and she lived. But when morning came, and the negress put on the necklace, Sodewa Bai died again. At last the prince discovered the treachery of his elder wife and restored the golden necklace to Sodewa Bai.[799] In another Hindoo story a holy mendicant tells a queen that she will bear a son, adding, “As enemies will try to take away the life of your son, I may as well tell you that the life of the boy will be bound up in the life of a big boal-fish which is in your tank in front of the palace. In the heart of the fish is a small box of wood, in the box is a necklace of gold, that necklace is the life of your son.” The boy was born and received the name of Dalim. His mother was the Suo or younger queen. But the Duo or elder queen hated the child, and learning the secret of his life, she caused the boal-fish, with which his life was bound up, to be caught. Dalim was playing near the tank at the time, but “the moment the boal-fish was caught in the net, that moment Dalim felt unwell; and when the fish was brought up to land, Dalim fell down on the ground, and made as if he was about to breathe his last. He was immediately taken into his mother's room, and the king was astonished on hearing of the sudden illness of his son and heir. The fish was by the order of the physician taken into the room of the Duo queen, and [pg 302] as it lay on the floor striking its fins on the ground, Dalim in his mother's room was given up for lost. When the fish was cut open, a casket was found in it; and in the casket lay a necklace of gold. The moment the necklace was worn by the queen, that very moment Dalim died in his mother's room.” The queen used to put off the necklace every night, and whenever she did so, the boy came to life again. But every morning when the queen put on the necklace, he died again.[800]
In a Cashmeer story a lad visits an old ogress, pretending to be her grandson, the son of her daughter who had married a king. So the old ogress took him into her confidence and showed him seven cocks, a spinning-wheel, a pigeon, and a starling. “These seven cocks,” said she, “contain the lives of your seven uncles, who are away for a few days. Only as long as the cocks live can your uncles hope to live; no power can hurt them as long as the seven cocks are safe and sound. The spinning-wheel contains my life; if it is broken, I too shall be broken, and must die; but otherwise I shall live on for ever. The pigeon contains your grandfather's life, and the starling your mother's; as long as these live, nothing can harm your grandfather or your mother.” So the lad killed the seven cocks and the pigeon and the starling, and smashed the spinning-wheel; and at the moment he did so the ogres and ogresses perished.[801] In another story from Cashmeer an ogre cannot die unless a particular pillar in the verandah of his palace be broken. Learning the secret, a prince struck the [pg 303] pillar again and again till it was broken in pieces. And it was as if each stroke had fallen on the ogre, for he howled lamentably and shook like an aspen every time the prince hit the pillar, until at last, when the pillar fell down, the ogre also fell down and gave up the ghost.[802] In another Cashmeer tale an ogre is represented as laughing very heartily at the idea that he might possibly die. He said that “he should never die. No power could oppose him; no years could age him; he should remain ever strong and ever young, for the thing wherein his life dwelt was most difficult to obtain.” It was in a queen bee, which was in a honeycomb on a tree. But the bees in the honeycomb were many and fierce, and it was only at the greatest risk that any one could catch the queen. But the hero achieved the enterprise and crushed the queen bee; and immediately the ogre fell stone dead to the ground, so that the whole land trembled with the shock.[803] In some Bengalee tales the life of a whole tribe of ogres is described as concentrated in two bees. The secret was thus revealed by an old ogress to a captive princess who pretended to fear lest the ogress should die. “Know, foolish girl,” said the ogress, “that we ogres never die. We are not naturally immortal, but our life depends on a secret which no human being can unravel. Let me tell you what it is that you may be comforted. You know yonder tank; there is in the middle of it a crystal pillar, on the top of which in deep water are two bees. If any human being can dive into the water and bring up the two bees from the pillar in one breath, and destroy them so that not a drop of their [pg 304] blood falls to the ground, then we ogres shall certainly die; but if a single drop of blood falls to the ground, then from it will start up a thousand ogres. But what human being will find out this secret, or, finding it, will be able to achieve the feat? You need not, therefore, darling, be sad; I am practically immortal.” As usual, the princess reveals the secret to the hero, who kills the bees, and that same moment all the ogres drop down dead, each on the spot where he happened to be standing.[804] In another Bengalee story it is said that all the ogres dwell in Ceylon, and that all their lives are in a single lemon. A boy cuts the lemon in pieces, and all the ogres die.[805]
In a Siamese or Cambodian story, probably derived from India, we are told that Thossakan or Ravana, the King of Ceylon, was able by magic art to take his soul out of his body and leave it in a box at home, while he went to the wars. Thus he was invulnerable in battle. When he was about to give battle to Rama, he deposited his soul with a hermit called Fire-eye, who was to keep it safe for him. So in the fight Rama was astounded to see that his arrows struck the king without wounding him. But one of Rama's allies, knowing the secret of the king's invulnerability, transformed himself by magic into the likeness of the king, and going to the hermit asked back his soul. On receiving it he soared up into the air and flew to Rama, brandishing the box and squeezing it so hard that all the breath left the King of Ceylon's body, and he died.[806] In a Bengalee [pg 305] story a prince going into a far country planted with his own hands a tree in the courtyard of his father's palace, and said to his parents, “This tree is my life. When you see the tree green and fresh, then know that it is well with me; when you see the tree fade in some parts, then know that I am in an ill case; and when you see the whole tree fade, then know that I am dead and gone.”[807] In another Indian tale a prince, setting forth on his travels, left behind him a barley plant with instructions that it should be carefully tended and watched, for if it flourished, he would be alive and well, but if it drooped, then some mischance was about to happen to him. And so it fell out. For the prince was beheaded, and as his head rolled off, the barley plant snapped in two and the ear of barley fell to the ground.[808] In the legend of the origin of Gilgit there figures a fairy king whose soul is in the snows and who can only perish by fire.[809]
In Greek tales, ancient and modern, the idea of an external soul is not uncommon. When Meleager was seven days old, the Fates appeared to his mother and told her that Meleager would die when the brand which was blazing on the hearth had burnt down. So his mother snatched the brand from the fire and kept it in a box. But in after years, being enraged at her son for slaying her brothers, she burnt the brand in the fire and Meleager at once expired.[810] Again, Nisus King of Megara, had a purple or golden hair on the middle of his head, and it was fated that whenever the hair was pulled out the king should die. When Megara was besieged by the Cretans, the king's [pg 306] daughter Scylla fell in love with Minos, their King, and pulled out the fatal hair from her father's head. So he died.[811] Similarly Poseidon made Pterelaus immortal by giving him a golden hair on his head. But when Taphos, the home of Pterelaus, was besieged by Amphitryon, the daughter of Pterelaus fell in love with Amphitryon and killed her father by plucking out the golden hair with which his life was bound up.[812] In a modern Greek folk-tale a man's strength lies in three golden hairs on his head. When his mother pulls them out, he grows weak and timid and is slain by his enemies.[813] In another modern Greek story the life of an enchanter is bound up with three doves which are in the belly of a wild boar. When the first dove is killed, the magician grows sick, when the second is killed, he grows very sick, and when the third is killed, he dies.[814] In another Greek story of the same sort an ogre's strength is in three singing birds which are in a wild boar. The hero kills two of the birds, and then coming to the ogre's house finds him lying on the ground in great pain. He shows the third bird to the ogre, who begs that the hero will either let it fly away or give it to him to eat. But the hero wrings the bird's neck and the ogre dies on the spot.[815] In a variant of the latter story the [pg 307] monster's strength is in two doves, and when the hero kills one of them, the monster cries out, “Ah, woe is me! Half my life is gone. Something must have happened to one of the doves.” When the second dove is killed, he dies.[816] In another Greek story the incidents of the three golden hairs and the three doves are artificially combined. A monster has three golden hairs on his head which open the door of a chamber in which are three doves; when the first dove is killed, the monster grows sick, when the second is killed, he grows worse, and when the third is killed, he dies.[817] In another Greek tale an old man's strength is in a ten-headed serpent. When the serpent's heads are being cut off, he feels unwell, and when the last head is struck off, he expires.[818] In another Greek story a dervish tells a queen that she will have three sons, that at the birth of each she must plant a pumpkin in the garden, and that in the fruit borne by the pumpkins will reside the strength of the children. In due time the infants are born and the pumpkins planted. As the children grow up the pumpkins grow with them. One morning the eldest son feels sick, and on going into the garden they find that the largest pumpkin is gone. Next night the second son keeps watch in a summer-house in the garden. At midnight a negro appears and cuts the second pumpkin. At once the boy's strength goes out of him and he is unable to pursue the negro. The youngest son, however, succeeds in slaying the negro and recovering the lost pumpkins.[819]
Ancient Italian legend furnishes a close parallel to the Greek story of Meleager. Silvia, the young wife [pg 308] of Septimius Marcellus, had a child by the god Mars. The god gave her a spear, with which he said that the fate of the child would be bound up. When the boy grew up he quarrelled with his maternal uncles and slew them. So in revenge his mother burned the spear on which his life depended.[820] In one of the stories of the Pentamerone a certain queen has a twin brother, a dragon. The astrologers declared at her birth that she would live just as long as the dragon and no longer, the death of the one involving the death of the other. If the dragon were killed, the only way to restore the queen to life would be to smear her temples, breast, pulses, and nostrils with the blood of the dragon.[821] In a modern Roman version of “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp,” the magician tells the princess whom he holds captive in a floating rock in mid-ocean that he will never die. The princess reports this to the prince her husband, who has come to rescue her. The prince replies, “It is impossible but that there should be some one thing or other that is fatal to him; ask him what that one fatal thing is.” So the princess asked the magician and he told her that in the wood was a hydra with seven heads; in the middle head of the hydra was a leveret, in the head of the leveret was a bird, in the bird's head was a precious stone, and if this stone were put under his pillow he would die. The prince procured the stone and the princess laid it under the magician's pillow. No sooner did the enchanter lay his head on the pillow than he gave [pg 309] three terrible yells, turned himself round and round three times, and died.[822]
Stories of the same sort are current among Slavonic peoples. Thus in a Russian tale a warlock called Koshchei the Deathless is asked where his death is. “My death,” he answered, “is in such and such a place. There stands an oak, and under the oak is a casket, and in the casket is a hare, and in the hare is a duck, and in the duck is an egg, and in the egg is my death.” A prince obtained the egg and squeezed it, whereupon Koshchei the Deathless bent double. But when the prince shivered the egg in pieces, the warlock died.[823] “In one of the descriptions of Koshchei's death, he is said to be killed by a blow on the forehead inflicted by the mysterious egg—that last link in the magic chain by which his life is darkly bound. In another version of the same story, but told of a snake, the fatal blow is struck by a small stone found in the yolk of an egg, which is inside a duck, which is inside a hare, which is inside a stone, which is on an island.”[824] In another variant the prince shifts the fatal egg from one hand to the other, and as he does so Koshchei rushes wildly from side to side of the room. At last the prince smashes the egg, and Koshchei drops dead.[825] In another Russian story the death of an enchantress is in a blue rose-tree in a blue forest. Prince Ivan uproots the rose-tree, whereupon the enchantress straightway sickens. He brings the rose-tree to her house and finds her at the point of death. Then he throws it into the cellar, crying, “Behold her death!” and at once the whole building [pg 310] shakes, “and becomes an island, on which are people who had been sitting in Hell, and who offer up thanks to Prince Ivan.”[826] In another Russian story a prince is grievously tormented by a witch who has got hold of his heart, and keeps it seething in a magic cauldron.[827] In a Bohemian tale a warlock's strength lies in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a stag, which is under a tree. A seer finds the egg and sucks it. Then the warlock grows as weak as a child, “for all his strength had passed into the seer.”[828] In a Serbian story a fabulous being called True Steel declares, “Far away from this place there is a very high mountain, in the mountain there is a fox, in the fox there is a heart, in the heart there is a bird, and in this bird is my strength.” The fox is caught and killed and its heart is taken out. Out of the fox's heart is taken the bird, which is then burnt, and that very moment True Steel falls dead.[829] In a South Slavonian story a dragon tells an old woman, “My strength is a long way off, and you cannot go thither. Far in another empire under the emperor's city is a lake, in that lake is a dragon, and in the dragon a boar, and in the boar a pigeon, and in that is my strength.”[830]
Amongst peoples of the Teutonic stock stories of the external soul are not wanting. In a tale told by the Saxons of Transylvania it is said that a young man shot at a witch again and again. The bullets went clean through her but did her no harm, and she only laughed and mocked at him. “Silly earthworm,” [pg 311] she cried, “shoot as much as you like. It does me no harm. For know that my life resides not in me but far, far away. In a mountain is a pond, on the pond swims a duck, in the duck is an egg, in the egg burns a light, that light is my life. If you could put out that light, my life would be at an end. But that can never, never be.” However, the young man got hold of the egg, smashed it, and put out the light, and with it the witch's life went out also.[831] In a German story a cannibal called Soulless keeps his soul in a box, which stands on a rock in the middle of the Red Sea. A soldier gets possession of the box and goes with it to Soulless, who begs the soldier to give him back his soul. But the soldier opens the box, takes out the soul, and flings it backward over his head. At the same moment the cannibal drops down stone dead.[832] In an Oldenburg story a king has three sons and a daughter, and for each child there grows a flower in the king's garden. Each of the flowers is a life flower; it blooms and flourishes while the child lives, but when the child dies it withers away.[833] In another German story an old warlock lives with a damsel all alone in the midst of a vast and gloomy wood. She fears that being old he may die and leave her alone in the forest. But he reassures her. “Dear child,” he said, “I cannot die, and I have no heart in my breast.” But she importuned him to tell her where his heart was. So he said, “Far, far from here in an unknown and lonesome land stands a great church. The church is well secured with iron doors, and round about it flows [pg 312] a broad deep moat. In the church flies a bird and in the bird is my heart. So long as that bird lives, I live. It cannot die of itself, and no one can catch it; therefore I cannot die, and you need have no anxiety.” However, the young man, whose bride the damsel was to have been before the warlock spirited her away, contrived to reach the church and catch the bird. He brought it to the damsel, who stowed him and it away under the warlock's bed. Soon the old warlock came home. He was ailing, and said so. The girl wept and said, “Alas, daddy is dying; he has a heart in his breast after all.” “Child,” replied the warlock, “hold your tongue. I can't die. It will soon pass over.” At that the young man under the bed gave the bird a gentle squeeze; and as he did so, the old warlock felt very unwell and sat down. Then the young man gripped the bird tighter, and the warlock fell senseless from his chair. “Now squeeze him dead,” cried the damsel. Her lover obeyed, and when the bird was dead, the old warlock also lay dead on the floor.[834]
In the Norse tale of “the giant who had no heart in his body,” the giant tells the captive princess, “Far, far away in a lake lies an island, on that island stands a church, in that church is a well, in that well swims a duck, in that duck there is an egg, and in that egg there lies my heart.” The hero of the tale obtains the egg and squeezes it, at which the giant screams piteously and begs for his life. But the hero breaks the egg in pieces and the giant at once bursts.[835] In another Norse story a hill-ogre tells the captive princess that she will never be able to return home unless she finds the [pg 313] grain of sand which lies under the ninth tongue of the ninth head of a certain dragon; but if that grain of sand were to come over the rock in which the ogres live, they would all burst “and the rock itself would become a gilded palace, and the lake green meadows.” The hero finds the grain of sand and takes it to the top of the high rock in which the ogres live. So all the ogres burst and the rest falls out as one of the ogres had foretold.[836] In an Icelandic parallel to the story of Meleager, the spae-wives or sybils come and foretell the high destiny of the infant Gestr as he lies in his cradle. Two candles were burning beside the child, and the youngest of the spae-wives, conceiving herself slighted, cried out, “I foretell that the child shall live no longer than this candle burns.” Whereupon the chief sybil put out the candle and gave it to Gestr's mother to keep, charging her not to light it again until her son should wish to die. Gestr lived three hundred years; then he kindled the candle and expired.[837]
In a Celtic tale a giant says, “There is a great flagstone under the threshold. There is a wether under the flag. There is a duck in the wether's belly, and an egg in the belly of the duck, and it is in the egg that my soul is.” The egg is crushed, and the giant falls down dead.[838] In another Celtic tale, a sea beast has carried off a king's daughter, and an old smith declares that there is no way of killing the beast but one. “In the island that is in the midst of the loch is Eillid Chaisthion—the white-footed hind, of the [pg 314] slenderest legs, and the swiftest step, and, though she should be caught, there would spring a hoodie out of her, and though the hoodie should be caught, there would spring a trout out of her, but there is an egg in the mouth of the trout, and the soul of the beast is in the egg, and if the egg breaks, the beast is dead.” As usual the egg is broken and the beast dies.[839] In a Breton story there figures a giant whom neither fire nor water nor steel can harm. He tells a princess whom he has just married, “I am immortal, and no one can hurt me, unless he crushes on my breast an egg which is in a pigeon, which is in the belly of a hare; this hare is in the belly of a wolf, and this wolf is in the belly of my brother, who dwells a thousand leagues from here. So I am quite easy on that score.” A soldier gets the egg and crushes it on the breast of the giant, who immediately expires.[840] In another Breton tale a giant is called Body-without-Soul because his life does not reside in his body. It resides in an egg, the egg is in a dove, the dove is in a hare, the hare is in a wolf, and the wolf is in an iron chest at the bottom of the sea. The hero kills the animals one after another, and at the death of each animal the giant grows weaker, as if he had lost a limb. When at last the hero comes to the giant's castle bearing the egg in his hand, he finds Body-without-Soul stretched on his bed at the point of death. So he dashes the egg against the giant's forehead, the egg breaks, and the giant straightway dies.[841]
The notion of an external soul has now been traced in folk-tales told by Aryan peoples from India to [pg 315] Brittany and the Hebrides. We have still to show that the same idea occurs commonly in the popular stories of non-Aryan peoples. In the first place it appears in the ancient Egyptian story of “The Two Brothers.” This story was written down in the reign of Rameses II, about 1300 years b.c. It is therefore older than our present redaction of Homer, and far older than the Bible. The outline of the story, so far as it concerns us here, is as follows: Once upon a time there were two brethren; the name of the elder was Anupu and the name of the younger was Bitiu. Now Anupu had a house and a wife, and his younger brother dwelt with him as his servant. It was Anupu who made the garments, and every morning when it grew light he drove the kine afield. As he walked behind them they used to say to him, “The grass is good in such and such a place,” and he heard what they said and led them to the good pasture that they desired. So his kine grew very sleek and multiplied greatly. One day when the two brothers were at work in the field the elder brother said to the younger, “Run and fetch seed from the village.” So the younger brother ran and said to the wife of his elder brother, “Give me seed that I may run to the field, for my brother sent me saying, tarry not.” She said, “Go to the barn and take as much as you desire.” He went and filled a jar full of wheat and barley, and came forth bearing it on his shoulders. When the woman saw him her heart went out to him, and she laid hold of him and said, “Come, let us rest an hour together.” But he said, “Thou art to me as a mother, and my brother is to me as a father.” So he would not hearken to her, but took the load on his back and went away to the field. In the evening, when the elder brother was returning from the field, [pg 316] his wife feared for what she had said. So she took soot and made herself as one who has been beaten. And when her husband came home, she said, “When thy younger brother came to fetch seed, he said to me, Come, let us rest an hour together. But I would not, and he beat me.” Then the elder brother became like a panther of the south; he sharpened his knife and stood behind the door of the cow-house. And when the sun set and the younger brother came laden with all the herbs of the field, as was his wont every day, the cow that walked in front of the herd said to him, “Behold, thy elder brother stands with a knife to kill thee. Flee before him.” When he heard what the cow said, he looked under the door of the cow-house and saw the feet of his elder brother standing behind the door, his knife in his hand. So he fled and his brother pursued him with the knife. But the younger brother cried for help to the Sun, and the Sun heard him and caused a great water to spring up between him and his elder brother, and the water was full of crocodiles. The two brothers stood, the one on the one side of the water and the other on the other, and the younger brother told the elder brother all that had befallen. So the elder brother repented him of what he had done and he wept aloud. But he could not come at the farther bank by reason of the crocodiles. His younger brother called to him and said, “Go home and tend the cattle thyself. For I will dwell no more in the place where thou art. I will go to the Valley of the Acacia. But this is what thou shalt do for me. Thou shalt come and care for me, if evil befalls me, for I will enchant my heart and place it on the top of the flower of the Acacia; and if they cut the Acacia and my heart falls to the ground, thou shalt come and seek [pg 317] it, and when thou hast found it thou shalt lay it in a vessel of fresh water. Then I shall come to life again. But this is the sign that evil has befallen me; the pot of beer in thine hand shall bubble.” So he went away to the Valley of the Acacia, but his brother returned home with dust on his head and slew his wife and cast her to the dogs.
For many days afterwards the younger brother dwelt alone in the Valley of the Acacia. By day he hunted the beasts of the field, but at evening he came and laid him down under the Acacia, on the top of whose flower was his heart. And many days after that he built himself a house in the Valley of the Acacia. But the gods were grieved for him; and the Sun said to Khnum, “Make a wife for Bitiu, that he may not dwell alone.” So Khnum made him a woman to dwell with him, who was perfect in her limbs more than any woman on earth, for all the gods were in her. So she dwelt with him. But one day a lock of her hair fell into the river and floated down to the land of Egypt, to the house of Pharaoh's washerwomen. The fragrance of the lock perfumed Pharaoh's raiment, and the washerwomen were blamed, for it was said, “An odour of perfume in the garments of Pharaoh!” So the heart of Pharaoh's chief washerman was weary of the complaints that were made every day, and he went to the quay, and there in the water he saw the lock of hair. He sent one down into the river to fetch it, and, because it smelt sweetly, he took it to Pharaoh. Then Pharaoh's magicians were sent for and they said, “This lock of hair belongs to a daughter of the Sun, who has in her the essence of all the gods. Let messengers go forth to all foreign lands to seek her.” So the woman was brought from the Valley of the Acacia with chariots [pg 318] and archers and much company, and all the land of Egypt rejoiced at her coming, and Pharaoh loved her. But when they asked her of her husband, she said to Pharaoh, “Let them cut down the Acacia and let them destroy him.” So men were sent with tools to cut down the Acacia. They came to it and cut the flower upon which was the heart of Bitiu; and he fell down dead in that evil hour. But the next day, when the elder brother of Bitiu was entered into his house and had sat down, they brought him a pot of beer and it bubbled, and they gave him a jug of wine and it grew turbid. Then he took his staff and his sandals and hied him to the Valley of the Acacia, and there he found his younger brother lying dead in his house. So he sought for the heart of his brother under the Acacia. For three years he sought in vain, but in the fourth year he found it in the berry of the Acacia. So he threw the heart into a cup of fresh water. And when it was night and the heart had sucked in much water, Bitiu shook in all his limbs and revived. Then he drank the cup of water in which his heart was, and his heart went into its place, and he lived as before.[842]
In the story of Seyf-el-Mulook in the Arabian Nights, the Jinnee declares, “When I was born, the astrologers declared that the destruction of my soul would be effected by the hand of one of the sons of the human kings. I therefore took my soul, and put it into the crop of a sparrow, and I imprisoned the sparrow in a little box, and put this into another small box, and this I put within seven other small boxes, and I put these within seven chests, and the chests I put into a coffer of marble within the verge of this circumambient ocean; for this part is remote from the countries of [pg 319] mankind, and none of mankind can gain access to it.” But Seyf-el-Mulook got possession of the sparrow and strangled it, and the Jinnee fell upon the ground a heap of black ashes.[843] In a modern Arabian tale a king marries an ogress, who puts out the eyes of the king's forty wives. One of the blinded queens gives birth to a son whom she names Mohammed the Prudent. But the ogress queen hated him and compassed his death. So she sent him on an errand to the house of her kinsfolk the ogres. In the house of the ogres he saw some things hanging from the roof, and on asking a female slave what they were, she said, “That is the bottle which contains the life of my lady the queen, and the other bottle beside it contains the eyes of the queens whom my mistress blinded.” A little afterwards he spied a beetle and rose to kill it. “Don't kill it,” cried the slave, “for that is my life.” But Mohammed the Prudent watched the beetle till it entered a chink in the wall; and when the female slave had fallen asleep, he killed the beetle in its hole, and so the slave died. Then Mohammed took down the two bottles and carried them home to his father's palace. There he presented himself before the ogress queen and said, “See, I have your life in my hand, but I will not kill you till you have replaced the eyes which you took from the forty queens.” The ogress did as she was bid, and then Mohammed the Prudent said, “There, take your life.” But the bottle slipped from his hand and fell, the life of the ogress escaped from it, and she died.[844]
In a Kabyl story an ogre declares that his fate is far away in an egg, which is in a pigeon, which is in a camel, which is in the sea. The hero procures the egg and crushes it between his hands, and the ogre dies.[845] In a Magyar folk-tale, an old witch detains a young prince called Ambrose in the bowels of the earth. At last she confided to him that she kept a wild boar in a silken meadow, and if it were killed, they would find a hare inside, and inside the hare a pigeon, and inside the pigeon a small box, and inside the box one black and one shining beetle: the shining beetle held her life, and the black one held her power; if these two beetles died, then her life would come to an end also. When the old hag went out, Ambrose killed the wild boar, took out the hare, from the hare he took the pigeon, from the pigeon the box, and from the box the two beetles; he killed the black beetle, but kept the shining one alive. So the witch's power left her immediately, and when she came home, she had to take to her bed. Having learned from her how to escape from his prison to the upper air, Ambrose killed the shining beetle, and the old hag's spirit left her at once.[846] In another Hungarian story the safety [pg 321] of the Dwarf-king resides in a golden cockchafer, inside a golden cock, inside a golden sheep, inside a golden stag, in the ninety-ninth island. The hero overcomes all these golden animals and so recovers his bride, whom the Dwarf-king had carried off.[847] A Samoyed story tells how seven warlocks killed a certain man's mother and carried off his sister, whom they kept to serve them. Every night when they came home the seven warlocks used to take out their hearts and place them in a dish, which the woman hung on the tent-poles. But the wife of the man whom they had wronged stole the hearts of the warlocks while they slept, and took them to her husband. By break of day he went with the hearts to the warlocks, and found them at the point of death. They all begged for their hearts; but he threw six of their hearts to the ground, and six of the warlocks died. The seventh and eldest warlock begged hard for his heart, and the man said, “You killed my mother. Make her alive again, and I will give you back your heart.” The warlock said to his wife, “Go to the place where the dead woman lies. You will find a bag there. Bring it to me. The woman's spirit is in the bag.” So his wife brought the bag; and the warlock said to the man, “Go to your dead mother, shake the bag and let the spirit breathe over her bones; so she will come to life again.” The man did as he was bid, and his mother was restored to life. Then he hurled the seventh heart to the ground, and the seventh warlock died.[848]
In a Tartar poem two heroes named Ak Molot and Bulat engage in mortal combat. Ak Molot pierces his foe through and through with an arrow, grapples [pg 322] with him, and dashes him to the ground, but all in vain, Bulat could not die. At last when the combat has lasted three years, a friend of Ak Molot sees a golden casket hanging by a white thread from the sky, and bethinks him that perhaps this casket contains Bulat's soul. So he shot through the white thread with an arrow, and down fell the casket. He opened it, and in the casket sat ten white birds, and one of the birds was Bulat's soul. Bulat wept when he saw that his soul was found in the casket. But one after the other the birds were killed, and then Ak Molot easily slew his foe.[849] In another Tartar poem, two brothers going to fight two other brothers take out their souls and hide them in the form of a white herb with six stalks in a deep pit. But one of their foes sees them doing so and digs up their souls, which he puts into a golden ram's horn, and then puts the ram's horn in his quiver. The two warriors whose souls have thus been stolen know that they have no chance of victory, and accordingly make peace with their enemies.[850] In another Tartar poem a terrible demon sets all the gods and heroes at defiance. At last a valiant youth fights the demon, binds him hand and foot, and slices him with his sword. But still the demon is not slain. So the youth asked him, “Tell me, where is your soul hidden? For if your soul had been hidden in your body, you must have been dead long ago.” The demon replied, “On the saddle of my horse is a bag. In the bag is a serpent with twelve heads. In the serpent is my soul. When you have killed the serpent, you have killed me also.” So the youth took the saddle-bag from the horse and killed the twelve-headed serpent, whereupon the demon [pg 323] expired.[851] In another Tartar poem a hero called Kök Chan deposits with a maiden a golden ring, in which is half his strength. Afterwards when Kök Chan is wrestling long with a hero and cannot kill him, a woman drops into his mouth the ring which contains half his strength. Thus inspired with fresh force he slays his enemy.[852]
In a Mongolian story the hero Joro gets the better of his enemy the lama Tschoridong in the following way. The lama, who is an enchanter, sends out his soul in the form of a wasp to sting Joro's eyes. But Joro catches the wasp in his hand, and by alternately shutting and opening his hand he causes the lama alternately to lose and recover consciousness.[853] In a Tartar poem two youths cut open the body of an old witch and tear out her bowels, but all to no purpose, she still lives. On being asked where her soul is, she answers that it is in the middle of her shoe-sole in the form of a seven-headed speckled snake. So one of the youths slices her shoe-sole with his sword, takes out the speckled snake, and cuts off its seven heads. Then the witch dies.[854] Another Tartar poem describes how the hero Kartaga grappled with the Swan-woman. Long they wrestled. Moons waxed and waned and still they wrestled; years came and went, and still the struggle went on. But the piebald horse and the black horse knew that the Swan-woman's [pg 324] soul was not in her. Under the black earth flow nine seas; where the seas meet and form one, the sea comes to the surface of the earth. At the mouth of the nine seas rises a rock of copper; it rises to the surface of the ground, it rises up between heaven and earth, this rock of copper. At the foot of the copper rock is a black chest, in the black chest is a golden casket, and in the golden casket is the soul of the Swan-woman. Seven little birds are the soul of the Swan-woman; if the birds are killed the Swan-woman will die straightway. So the horses ran to the foot of the copper rock, opened the black chest, and brought back the golden casket. Then the piebald horse turned himself into a bald-headed man, opened the golden casket, and cut off the heads of the seven birds. So the Swan-woman died.[855] In a Tartar story a chief called Tash Kan is asked where his soul is. He answers that there are seven great poplars, and under the poplars a golden well; seven Maralen (?) come to drink the water of the well, and the belly of one of them trails on the ground; in this Maral is a golden box, in the golden box is a silver box, in the silver box are seven quails, the head of one of the quails is golden and its tail silver; that quail is Tash Kan's soul. The hero of the story gets possession of the seven quails and wrings the necks of six of them. Then Tash Kan comes running and begs the hero to let his soul go free. But the hero wrings the quail's neck, and Tash Kan drops dead.[856] In another Tartar poem the hero, pursuing his sister who has driven away his cattle, is warned to desist from the pursuit because his sister has carried away his soul in a golden sword and a golden arrow, and if he pursues [pg 325] her she will kill him by throwing the golden sword or shooting the golden arrow at him.[857]
A Malay poem relates how once upon a time in the city of Indrapoera there was a certain merchant who was rich and prosperous, but he had no children. One day as he walked with his wife by the river they found a baby girl, fair as an angel. So they adopted the child and called her Bidasari. The merchant caused a golden fish to be made, and into this fish he transferred the soul of his adopted daughter. Then he put the golden fish in a golden box full of water, and hid it in a pond in the midst of his garden. In time the girl grew to be a lovely woman. Now the King of Indrapoera had a fair young queen, who lived in fear that the king might take to himself a second wife. So, hearing of the charms of Bidasari, the queen resolved to put her out of the way. So she lured the girl to the palace and tortured her cruelly; but Bidasari could not die, because her soul was not in her. At last she could stand the torture no longer and said to the queen, “If you wish me to die, you must bring the box which is in the pond in my father's garden.” So the box was brought and opened, and there was the golden fish in the water. The girl said, “My soul is in that fish. In the morning you must take the fish out of the water, and in the evening you must put it back into the water. Do not let the fish lie about, but bind it round your neck. If you do this, I shall soon die.” So the queen took the fish out of the box and fastened it round her neck; and no sooner had she done so, than Bidasari fell into a swoon. But in the evening, when the fish was put back into the water, Bidasari came to herself again. Seeing that she thus [pg 326] had the girl in her power, the queen sent her home to her adopted parents. To save her from further persecution her parents resolved to remove their daughter from the city. So in a lonely and desolate spot they built a house and brought Bidasari thither. Here she dwelt alone, undergoing vicissitudes that corresponded with the vicissitudes of the golden fish in which was her soul. All day long, while the fish was out of the water, she remained unconscious; but in the evening, when the fish was put into the water, she revived. One day the king was out hunting, and coming to the house where Bidasari lay unconscious, was smitten with her beauty. He tried to waken her, but in vain. Next day, towards evening, he repeated his visit, but still found her unconscious. However, when darkness fell, she came to herself and told the king the secret of her life. So the king returned to the palace, took the fish from the queen, and put it in water. Immediately Bidasari revived, and the king took her to wife.[858]
The last story of an external soul which I shall notice comes from Nias, an island to the west of Sumatra, which we have visited more than once in the course of this book. Once on a time a chief was captured by his enemies, who tried to put him to death but failed. Water would not drown him nor fire burn him nor steel pierce him. At last his wife revealed the secret. On his head he had a hair as hard as a copper wire; and with this wire his life was bound up. So the hair was plucked out, and with it his spirit fled.[859]
§ 4.—The external soul in folk-custom.
Thus the idea that the soul may be deposited for a longer or shorter time in some place of security outside the body, or at all events in the hair, is found in the popular tales of many races. It remains to show that the idea is not a mere figment devised to adorn a tale, but is a real article of primitive faith, which has given rise to a corresponding set of customs.
We have seen that in the tales the hero, as a preparation for battle, sometimes removes his soul from his body, in order that his body may be invulnerable and immortal in the combat. With a like intention the savage removes his soul from his body on various occasions of real or imaginary danger. Thus we have seen that among the Minahassa of Celebes, when a family moves into a new house, a priest collects the souls of the whole family in a bag, and afterwards restores them to their owners, because the moment of entering a new house is supposed to be fraught with supernatural danger.[860] In Southern Celebes when a woman is brought to bed the messenger who fetches the doctor or the midwife always carries with him a piece of iron, which he delivers to the doctor. The doctor must keep it in his house till the confinement is over, when he gives it back, receiving a fixed sum of money for doing so. The piece of iron represents the woman's soul, which at this critical time is believed to be safer out of her body than in it. Hence the doctor must take great care of [pg 328] the piece of iron; for if it were lost, the woman's soul would assuredly, it is supposed, be lost with it.[861]
Again, we have seen that in folk-tales a man's soul or strength is sometimes represented as bound up with his hair, and that when his hair is cut off he dies or grows weak. So the natives of Amboina used to think that their strength was in their hair and would desert them if it were shorn. A criminal under torture in a Dutch Court of that island persisted in denying his guilt till his hair was cut off, when he immediately confessed. One man who was tried for murder endured without flinching the utmost ingenuity of his torturers till he saw the surgeon standing with a pair of shears. On asking what this was for, and being told that it was to cut his hair, he begged they would not do it, and made a clean breast. In subsequent cases, when torture failed to wring a confession from a prisoner, the Dutch authorities made a practice of cutting off his hair.[862] In Ceram it is still believed that if young people have their hair cut they will be weakened and enervated thereby.[863] In Zacynthus people think that the whole strength of the ancient Greeks resided in three hairs on their breasts, and vanished whenever these hairs were cut; but if the hairs were allowed to grow again, their strength returned.[864]
Again, we have seen that in folk-tales the life of a person is sometimes so bound up with the life of a plant that the withering of the plant will immediately follow or be followed by the death of the person.[865] Similarly among the M'Bengas in Western Africa, about the [pg 329] Gaboon, when two children are born on the same day, the people plant two trees of the same kind and dance round them. The life of each of the children is believed to be bound up with the life of one of the trees; and if the tree dies or is thrown down, they are sure that the child will soon die.[866] In the Cameroons, also, the life of a person is believed to be sympathetically bound up with that of a tree.[867] Some of the Papuans unite the life of a new-born child sympathetically with that of a tree by driving a pebble into the bark of the tree. This is supposed to give them complete mastery over the child's life; if the tree is cut down, the child will die.[868] After a birth the Maoris used to bury the navel-string in a sacred place and plant a young sapling over it. As the tree grew, it was a tohu oranga or sign of life for the child; if it flourished, the child would prosper; if it withered and died, the parents augured the worst for their child.[869] In Southern Celebes, when a child is born, a cocoa-nut is planted, and is watered with the water in which the after-birth and navel-string have been washed. As it grows up, the tree is called the “contemporary” of the child.[870] So in Bali a cocoa-palm is planted at the birth of a child. It is believed to grow up equally with the child, and is called its “life-plant.”[871] On certain occasions the Dyaks of Borneo plant a palm-tree, which is believed to be a complete index of their fate. If it flourishes, they reckon on good fortune; but if it withers or dies, they [pg 330] expect misfortune.[872] It is said that there are still families in Russia, Germany, England, France, and Italy who are accustomed to plant a tree at the birth of a child. The tree, it is hoped, will grow with the child, and it is tended with special care.[873] The custom is still pretty general in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland; an apple-tree is planted for a boy and a pear-tree for a girl, and the people think that the child will flourish or dwindle with the tree.[874] In Mecklenburg the after-birth is thrown out at the foot of a young tree, and the child is then believed to grow with the tree.[875] In England persons are sometimes passed through a cleft tree as a cure for rupture, and thenceforward a sympathetic connection is believed to exist between them and the tree. “Thomas Chillingworth, son of the owner of an adjoining farm, now about thirty-four years of age, was, when an infant of a year old, passed through a similar tree, now perfectly sound, which he preserves with so much care that he will not suffer a single branch to be touched, for it is believed that the life of the patient depends on the life of the tree; and the moment that it is cut down, be the patient ever so distant, the rupture returns, and a mortification ensues.”[876] When Lord Byron first visited his ancestral estate of Newstead “he planted, it seems, a young oak in some part of the grounds, and had an idea that as it flourished so should he.”[877]
But in practice, as in folk-tales, it is not merely [pg 331] with trees and plants that the life of an individual is occasionally believed to be united by a bond of physical sympathy. The same bond, it is supposed, may exist between a man and an animal or a thing, so that the death or destruction of the animal or thing is immediately followed by the death of the man. The Emperor Romanus Lecapenus was once informed by an astronomer that the life of Simeon prince of Bulgaria was bound up with a certain column in Constantinople, so that if the capital of the column were removed Simeon would immediately die. The Emperor took the hint and removed the capital, and at the same hour, as the emperor learned by inquiry, Simeon died of heart disease in Bulgaria.[878] Amongst the Karens of Burma “the knife with which the navel-string is cut is carefully preserved for the child. The life of the child is supposed to be in some way connected with it, for if lost or destroyed it is said the child will not be long-lived.”[879] The Malays believe that “the soul of a person may pass into another person or into an animal, or rather that such a mysterious relation can arise between the two that the fate of the one is wholly dependent on that of the other.”[880] In the Banks Islands “some people connect themselves with an object, generally an animal, as a lizard or a snake, or with a stone, which they imagine to have a certain very close natural relation to themselves. This, at Mota, is called tamaniu—likeness. This word at Aurora is used for the ‘atai’ [i.e. soul] of Mota. Some fancy dictates the choice of a tamaniu; or it may be [pg 332] found by drinking the infusion of certain herbs and heaping together the dregs. Whatever living thing is first seen in or upon the heap is the tamaniu. It is watched, but not fed or worshipped. The natives believe that it comes at call. The life of the man is bound up with the life of his tamaniu. If it dies, gets broken or lost, the man will die. In sickness they send to see how the tamaniu is, and judge the issue accordingly. This is only the fancy of some.”[881]
But what among the Banks Islanders and the Malays is irregular and occasional, among other peoples is systematic and universal. The Zulus believe that every man has his ihlozi, a kind of mysterious serpent, “which specially guards and helps him, lives with him, wakes with him, sleeps and travels with him, but always under ground. If it ever makes its appearance, great is the joy, and the man must seek to discover the meaning of its appearance. He who has no ihlozi must die. Therefore if any one unintentionally kills an ihlozi serpent, the man whose ihlozi it was dies, but the serpent comes to life again.”[882] Amongst the Zapotecs of Central America, when a woman was about to be confined, her relations assembled in the hut, and began to draw on the floor figures of different animals, rubbing each one out as soon as it was completed. This went on till the moment of birth, and the figure that then remained sketched upon the ground was called the child's tona or second self. “When the child grew old enough he procured the animal that represented him and took care of it, as it [pg 333] was believed that health and existence were bound up with that of the animal's, in fact that the death of both would occur simultaneously,” or rather that when the animal died the man would die.[883] Among the Indians of Guatemala the nagual or naual is an “animate or inanimate object, generally an animal, which stands in a parallel relation to a particular man, so that the weal and woe of the man depend on the fate of the animal.” Among the Chontal Indians who inhabit the part of Honduras bordering on Guatemala and in point of social culture stand very close to the Pipil Indians of Guatemala, the nagual used to be obtained as follows. The young Indian went into the forest to a lonely place by a river or to the top of a mountain, and prayed with tears to the gods that they would vouchsafe to him what his forefathers had possessed before him. After sacrificing a dog or a bird he laid himself down to sleep. Then in a dream or after awakening from sleep there appeared to him a jaguar, puma, coyote (prairie-wolf), crocodile, serpent, or bird. To this visionary animal the Indian offered blood drawn from his tongue, his ears, and other parts of his body, and prayed for an abundant yield of salt and cacao. Then the animal said to him, “On such and such a day you shall go out hunting, and the first animal that meets you will be myself, who will always be your companion and nagual.” A man who had no nagual could never grow rich. The Indians were persuaded that the death of their nagual would entail their own. Legend affirms that in the first battles with the Spaniards on [pg 334] the plateau of Quetzaltenango the naguals of the Indian chiefs fought in the form of serpents. The nagual of the highest chief was especially conspicuous, because it had the form of a great bird, resplendent in green plumage. The Spanish general Pedro de Alvarado killed the bird with his lance, and at the same moment the Indian chief fell dead to the ground.[884]
In many of the Australian tribes each sex regards a particular species of animals in the same way that a Central American Indian regards his nagual, but with this difference, that whereas the Indian apparently knows the individual animal with which his life is bound up, the Australians only know that each of their lives is bound up with some one animal of the species, but they cannot say with which. The result naturally is that every man spares and protects all the animals of the species with which the lives of the men are bound up; and every woman spares and protects all the animals of the species with which the lives of the women are bound up; because no one knows but that the death of any animal of the respective species might entail his or her own; just as the killing of the green bird was immediately followed by the death of the Indian chief, and the killing of the parrot by the death of Punchkin in the fairy tale. Thus, for example, the Wotjobaluk tribe of South Eastern Australia “held that ‘the life of Ngŭnŭngŭnŭt (the Bat) is the life of a man and the life of Yártatgŭrk (the Nightjar) is the life of a woman,’ and that when either of these creatures is killed the life of some man or of some woman is shortened. In such a case every man or every woman [pg 335] in the camp feared that he or she might be the victim, and from this cause great fights arose in this tribe. I learn that in these fights, men on one side and women on the other, it was not at all certain which would be victorious, for at times the women gave the men a severe drubbing with their yamsticks while often women were injured or killed by spears.”[885] The particular species of animals with which the lives of the sexes were believed to be respectively bound up varied somewhat from tribe to tribe. Thus whereas among the Wotjobaluk the bat was the animal of the men, at Gunbower Creek on the lower Murray the bat seems to have been the animal of the women, for the natives would not kill it for the reason that “if it was killed, one of their lubras [women] would be sure to die in consequence.”[886] But the belief itself and the fights to which it gave rise are known to have extended over a large part of South Eastern Australia, and probably they extended much farther.[887] The belief is a very serious one, and so consequently are the fights which spring from it. Thus where the bat is the men's animal they “protect it against injury, even to the half-killing of their wives for its sake;” and where the fern owl or large goatsucker (a night bird) is the women's animal, “it is jealously protected by them. If a man kills one, they are as much enraged as if it was one of their children, and will strike him with their long poles.”[888]
The jealous protection thus afforded by Australian men and women to bats and owls respectively (for bats [pg 336] and owls seem to be the creatures usually allotted to men and women respectively) is not based upon purely selfish considerations. For each man believes that not only his own life, but the lives of his father, brothers, sons, etc., are bound up with the lives of particular bats, and that therefore in protecting the bat species he is protecting the lives of all his male relations as well as his own. Similarly, each woman believes that the lives of her mother, sisters, daughters, etc., equally with her own, are bound up with the lives of particular owls, and that in guarding the owl species she is guarding the lives of all her female relations in addition to her own. Now, when men's lives are thus supposed to be contained in certain animals, it is obvious that the animals can hardly be distinguished from the men, or the men from the animals. If my brother John's life is in a bat, then, on the one hand, the bat is my brother as well as John; and, on the other hand, John is in a sense a bat, since his life is in a bat. Similarly, if my sister Mary's life is in an owl, then the owl is my sister and Mary is an owl. This is a natural enough conclusion, and the Australians have not failed to draw it. When the bat is the man's animal, it is called his brother; and when the owl is the woman's animal, it is called her sister. And conversely a man addresses a woman as an owl, and she addresses him as a bat.[889] So with the other animals allotted to the sexes respectively in other tribes. For example, among the Kurnai all Emu Wrens were “brothers” of the men, and all the men were Emu Wrens; all Superb Warblers were “sisters” of the women, and all the women were Superb Warblers.[890]
But when a savage names himself after an animal, calls it his brother, and refuses to kill it, the animal is said to be his totem. Accordingly the bat and the owl, the Emu Wren and the Superb Warbler, may properly be described as totems of the sexes. But the assignation of a totem to a sex is comparatively rare, and has hitherto been discovered nowhere but in Australia. Far more commonly the totem is appropriated not to a sex, but to a tribe or clan, and is hereditary either in the male or female line. The relation of an individual to the tribal totem does not differ in kind from his relation to the sex totem; he will not kill it, he speaks of it as his brother, and he calls himself by its name.[891] Now if the relations are similar, the explanation which holds good of the one ought equally to hold good of the other. Therefore the reason why a tribe revere a particular species of animals or plants (for the tribal totem may be a plant) and call themselves after it, must be a belief that the life of each individual of the tribe is bound up with some one animal or plant of the species, and that his or her death would be the consequence of killing that particular animal, or destroying that particular plant. This explanation of totemism squares very well with Sir George Grey's definition of a totem or kobong in Western Australia. He says, “A certain mysterious connection exists between a family and its kobong, so that a member of the family will never kill an animal of the species to which his kobong belongs, should he find it asleep; indeed he always kills it reluctantly, and never without affording it a chance to escape. This arises from the family belief that some one individual of the species is their nearest friend, to [pg 338] kill whom would be a great crime, and to be carefully avoided. Similarly, a native who has a vegetable for his kobong may not gather it under certain circumstances, and at a particular period of the year.”[892] Here it will be observed that though each man spares all the animals or plants of the species, they are not all equally precious to him; far from it, out of the whole species there is only one which is specially dear to him; but as he does not know which the dear one is, he is obliged to spare them all from fear of injuring the one. Again, this explanation of the tribal totem harmonises with the supposed effect of killing one of the totem species. “One day one of the blacks killed a crow. Three or four days afterwards a Boortwa (crow) [i.e. a man of the Crow clan or tribe] named Larry died. He had been ailing for some days, but the killing of his wingong [totem] hastened his death.”[893] Here the killing of the crow caused the death of a man of the Crow clan, exactly as, in the case of the sex totems, the killing of a bat causes the death of a Bat man, or the killing of an owl causes the death of an Owl woman. Similarly, the killing of his nagual causes the death of a Central American Indian, the killing of his ihlozi causes the death of a Zulu, the killing of his tamaniu causes the death of a Banks Islander, and the killing of the animal in which his life is stowed away causes the death of the giant or warlock in the fairy tale.
Thus it appears that the story of “The giant who had no heart in his body” furnishes the key to the religious aspect of totemism, that is, to the relation which is supposed to subsist between a man and his totem. The totem, if I am right, is simply the receptacle [pg 339] in which a man keeps his life, as Punchkin kept his life in a parrot, and Bidasari kept her soul in a golden fish. It is no valid objection to this view that when a savage has both a sex totem and a tribal totem his life must be bound up with two different animals, the death of either of which would entail his own. If a man has more vital places than one in his body, why, the savage may think, should he not have more vital places than one outside it? Why, since he can externalise his life, should he not transfer one portion of it to one animal and another to another? The divisibility of life, or, to put it otherwise, the plurality of souls, is an idea suggested by many familiar facts, and has commended itself to philosophers like Plato as well as to savages. It is only when the notion of a soul, from being a quasi-scientific hypothesis, becomes a theological dogma that its unity and indivisibility are insisted upon as essential. The savage, unshackled by dogma, is free to explain the facts of life by the assumption of as many souls as he thinks necessary. Hence, for example, the Caribs supposed that there was one soul in the head, another in the heart, and other souls at all the places where an artery is felt pulsating.[894] Some of the Hidatsa Indians explain the phenomena of gradual death, when the extremities appear dead first, by supposing that man has four souls, and that they quit the body, not simultaneously, but one after the other, dissolution being only complete when all four have departed.[895] The Laos suppose that the body is the seat of thirty spirits, which reside in the hands, the feet, the mouth, the eyes, etc.[896] Hence, [pg 340] from the primitive point of view, it is perfectly possible that a savage should have one soul in his sex totem, and another in his tribal totem. However, as I have observed, sex totems occur nowhere but in Australia; so that as a rule the savage who practises totemism need not have more than one soul out of his body at a time.
If this explanation of the totem as a receptacle in which a man keeps his soul or one of his souls is correct, we should expect to find some totemistic tribes of whom it is expressly stated that every man amongst them is believed to keep at least one soul permanently out of his body, and that the destruction of this external soul is supposed to entail the death of its owner. Such a tribe are the Battas of Sumatra. The Battas are divided into exogamous clans (margas) with descent in the male line; and each clan is forbidden to eat the flesh of a particular animal. One clan may not eat the tiger, another the ape, another the crocodile, another the dog, another the cat, another the dove, another the white buffalo. The reason given by members of a clan for abstaining from the flesh of the particular animal is either that they are descended from animals of that species, and that their souls after death may transmigrate into the animals, or that they or their forefathers have been under certain obligations to the animals. Sometimes, but not always, the clan bears the name of the animal.[897] Thus the Battas have [pg 341] totemism in full. But, further, each Batta believes that he has seven or, on a more moderate computation, three souls. One of these souls is always outside the body, but nevertheless whenever it dies, however far away it may be at the time, that same moment the man dies also.[898] The writer who mentions this belief says nothing about the Batta totems; but on the analogy of the Australian and Central American evidence we can scarcely avoid concluding that the external soul, whose death entails the death of the man, must be housed in the totem animal or plant.
Against this view it can hardly be thought to militate that the Batta does not in set terms affirm his external soul to be in his totem, but alleges other, though hardly contradictory, grounds for respecting the sacred animal or plant of his clan. For if a savage seriously believes that his life is bound up with an external object, it is in the last degree unlikely that he will let any stranger into the secret. In all that touches his inmost life and beliefs the savage is exceedingly suspicious and reserved; Europeans have resided among savages for years without discovering some of their capital articles of faith, and in the end the discovery has often been the result of accident. Above all, the savage lives in an intense and perpetual dread of assassination by sorcery; the most trifling relics of his person—the clippings of his hair and nails, his spittle, the remnants of his food, his very name—all these may, he fancies, be turned by the sorcerer to his destruction, and he is therefore anxiously careful to conceal or destroy them. But if in matters such as [pg 342] these, which are but the outposts and outworks of his life, he is shy and secretive to a degree, how close must be the concealment, how impenetrable the reserve in which he enshrouds the inner keep and citadel of his being! When the princess in the fairy tale asks the giant where he keeps his soul, he generally gives false or evasive answers, and it is only after much coaxing and wheedling that the secret is at last wrung from him. In his jealous reticence the giant resembles the timid and furtive savage; but whereas the exigencies of the story demand that the giant should at last reveal his secret, no such obligation is laid on the savage; and no inducement that can be offered is likely to tempt him to imperil his soul by revealing its hiding-place to a stranger. It is therefore no matter for surprise that the central mystery of the savage's life should so long have remained a secret, and that we should be left to piece it together from scattered hints and fragments and from the recollections of it which linger in fairy tales.
This view of totemism throws light on a class of religious rites of which no adequate explanation, so far as I am aware, has yet been offered. Amongst many savage tribes, especially such as are known to practise totemism, it is customary for lads at puberty to undergo certain initiatory rites, of which one of the commonest is a pretence of killing the lad and bringing him to life again. Such rites become intelligible if we suppose that their substance consists in extracting the youth's soul in order to transfer it to his totem. For the extraction of his soul would naturally be supposed to kill the youth or, at least, to throw him into a death-like trance, which the savage hardly distinguishes from death. His recovery would then be attributed either [pg 343] to the gradual recovery of his system from the violent shock which it had received, or, more probably, to the infusion into him of fresh life drawn from the totem. Thus the essence of these initiatory rites, so far as they consist in a simulation of death and resurrection, would be an exchange of life or souls between the man and his totem. The primitive belief in the possibility of such an exchange of souls comes clearly out in the story of the Basque hunter who affirmed that he had been killed by a bear, but that the bear had, after killing him, breathed its own soul into him, so that the bear's body was now dead, but he himself was a bear, being animated by the bear's soul.[899] This revival of the dead hunter as a bear is exactly analogous to what, if I am right, is supposed to take place in the totemistic ceremony of killing a lad at puberty and bringing him to life again. The lad dies as a man and comes to life again as an animal; the animal's soul is now in him, and his human soul is in the animal. With good right, therefore, does he call himself a Bear or a Wolf, etc., according to his totem; and with good right does he treat the bears or the wolves, etc., as his brethren, since in these animals are lodged the souls of himself and his kindred.
Examples of this supposed death and resurrection at initiation are the following. Among some of the Australian tribes of New South Wales, when lads are initiated, it is thought that a being called Thuremlin takes each lad to a distance, kills him, and sometimes cuts him up, after which he restores him to life and knocks out a tooth.[900] In one part of Queensland the [pg 344] humming sound of the Bullroarer, which is swung at the initiatory rites, is said to be the noise made by the wizards in swallowing the boys and bringing them up again as young men. “The Ualaroi of the Upper Darling River say that the boy meets a ghost which kills him and brings him to life again as a man.”[901] This resurrection appears to be represented at the initiatory rites by the following ceremony. An old man, disguised with stringy bark fibre, lies down in a grave, and is lightly covered up with sticks and earth, and as far as possible the natural appearance of the ground is restored, the excavated earth being carried away. The buried man holds a small bush in his hand; it appears to be growing in the soil, and other bushes are stuck in the soil to heighten the effect. The novices are then brought to the edge of the grave, and a song is sung, in which the only words used are the “class-name” of the buried man and the word for stringy bark fibre. Gradually, as the song continues, the bush held by the buried man begins to quiver and then to move more and more, and finally the man himself starts up from the grave.[902] Similarly, Fijian lads at initiation were shown a row of apparently dead men, covered with blood, their bodies seemingly cut open, and their entrails protruding. But at a yell from the [pg 345] priest the pretended dead men sprang to their feet and ran to the river to cleanse themselves from the blood and entrails of pigs with which they had been besmeared.[903]
In the valley of the Congo initiatory rites of this sort are common. In some places they are called Ndembo. “In the practice of Ndembo the initiating doctors get some one to fall down in a pretended fit, and in that state he is carried away to an enclosed place outside the town. This is called ‘dying Ndembo.’ Others follow suit, generally boys and girls, but often young men and women.... They are supposed to have died. But the parents and friends supply food, and after a period varying, according to custom, from three months to three years, it is arranged that the doctor shall bring them to life again.... When the doctor's fee has been paid, and money (goods) saved for a feast, the Ndembo people are brought to life. At first they pretend to know no one and nothing; they do not even know how to masticate food, and friends have to perform that office for them. They want everything nice that any one uninitiated may have, and beat them if it is not granted, or even strangle and kill people. They do not get into trouble for this, because it is thought that they do not know better. Sometimes they carry on the pretence of talking gibberish, and behaving as if they had returned from the spirit-world. After this they are known by another name, peculiar to those who have ‘died Ndembo.’ ... We hear of the custom far along on the upper river, as well as in the cataract region.”[904] The following account of [pg 346] the rites, as practised in this part of Africa, was given to Bastian by an interpreter. “In the land of Ambamba every one must die once, and when the fetish priest shakes his calabash against a village, all the men and lads whose hour is come fall into a state of lifeless torpidity, from which they generally awake after three days. But if the fetish loves a man he carries him away into the bush and buries him in the fetish house, often for many years. When he comes to life again, he begins to eat and drink as before, but his understanding is gone and the fetish man must teach him and direct him in every motion, like the smallest child. At first this can only be done with a stick, but gradually his senses return, so that it is possible to talk with him, and when his education is complete, the priest brings him back to his parents. They would seldom recognise their son but for the express assurances of the fetish priest, who moreover recalls previous events to their memory. He who has not gone through the ceremony of the new birth in Ambamba is universally looked down upon and is not admitted to the dances.” During the period of initiation the novice is sympathetically united to the fetish by which his life is henceforward determined.[905] The novice, plunged in the magic sleep or death-like trance within the sacred hut, “beholds a bird or other object with which his existence is thenceforward sympathetically bound up, just as the life of the young Indian is bound up with the animal which he sees in his dreams at puberty.”[906]
Rites of this sort were formerly observed in Quoja, on the west coast of Africa, to the north of the Congo. They are thus described by an old writer:—“They have another ceremony which they call Belli-Paaro, but it is not for everybody. For it is an incorporation in the assembly of the spirits, and confers the right of entering their groves, that is to say, of going and eating the offerings which the simple folk bring thither. The initiation or admission to the Belli-Paaro is celebrated every twenty or twenty-five years. The initiated recount marvels of the ceremony, saying that they are roasted, that they entirely change their habits and life, and that they receive a spirit quite different from that of other people and quite new lights. The badge of membership consists in some lines traced on the neck between the shoulders; the lines seem to be pricked with a needle. Those who have this mark pass for persons of spirit, and when they have attained a certain age they are allowed a voice in all public assemblies; whereas the uninitiated are regarded as profane, impure, and ignorant persons, who dare not express an opinion on any subject of importance. When the time for the ceremony has come, it is celebrated as follows: By order of the king a place is appointed in the forest, whither they bring the youths who have not been marked, not without much crying and weeping; for it is impressed upon the youths that in order to undergo this change it is necessary to suffer death. So they dispose of their property, as if it were all over with them. There are always some of the initiated beside the novices to instruct them. They teach them to dance a certain dance called killing, and to sing verses in praise of Belli. Above all, they are very careful not to let them die of hunger, [pg 348] because if they did so, it is much to be feared that the spiritual resurrection would profit them nothing. This manner of life lasts five or six years, and is comfortable enough, for there is a village in the forest, and they amuse themselves with hunting and fishing. Other lads are brought thither from time to time, so that the last comers have not long to stay. No woman or uninitiated person is suffered to pass within four or five leagues of the sacred wood. When their instruction is completed, they are taken from the wood and shut up in small huts made for the purpose. Here they begin once more to hold communion with mankind and to talk with the women who bring them their food. It is amusing to see their affected simplicity. They pretend to know no one, and to be ignorant of all the customs of the country, such as the customs of washing themselves, rubbing themselves with oil, etc. When they enter these huts, their bodies are all covered with the feathers of birds, and they wear caps of bark which hang down before their faces. But after a time they are dressed in clothes and taken to a great open place, where all the people of the neighbourhood are assembled. Here the novices give the first proof of their capacity by dancing a dance which is called the dance of Belli. After the dance is over, the novices are taken to the houses of their parents by their instructors.”[907]
Among the Indians of Virginia, an initiatory ceremony, called Huskanaw, took place every sixteen or twenty years, or oftener, as the young men happened to grow up. The youths were kept in solitary confinement in the woods for several months, [pg 349] receiving no food but an infusion of some intoxicating roots, so that they went raving mad, and continued in this state eighteen or twenty days. “Upon this occasion it is pretended that these poor creatures drink so much of the water of Lethe that they perfectly lose the remembrance of all former things, even of their parents, their treasure, and their language. When the doctors find that they have drank sufficiently of the Wysoccan (so they call this mad potion), they gradually restore them to their senses again by lessening the intoxication of their diet; but before they are perfectly well they bring them back into their towns, while they are still wild and crazy through the violence of the medicine. After this they are very fearful of discovering anything of their former remembrance; for if such a thing should happen to any of them, they must immediately be Huskanaw'd again; and the second time the usage is so severe that seldom any one escapes with life. Thus they must pretend to have forgot the very use of their tongues, so as not to be able to speak, nor understand anything that is spoken, till they learn it again. Now, whether this be real or counterfeit, I don't know; but certain it is that they will not for some time take notice of any body nor any thing with which they were before acquainted, being still under the guard of their keepers, who constantly wait upon them everywhere till they have learnt all things perfectly over again. Thus they unlive their former lives, and commence men by forgetting that they ever have been boys.”[908]
Among some of the Indian tribes of North America there are certain religious associations which are only open to candidates who have gone through a pretence [pg 350] of being killed and brought to life again. Captain Carver witnessed the admission of a candidate to an association called “the friendly society of the Spirit” among the Naudowessies. The candidate knelt before the chief, who told him that “he himself was now agitated by the same spirit which he should in a few moments communicate to him; that it would strike him dead, but that he would instantly be restored again to life.... As he spoke this, he appeared to be greatly agitated, till at last his emotions became so violent that his countenance was distorted and his whole frame convulsed. At this juncture he threw something that appeared both in shape and colour like a small bean at the young man, which seemed to enter his mouth, and he instantly fell as motionless as if he had been shot.” For a time the man lay like dead, but under a shower of blows he showed signs of consciousness, and finally, discharging from his mouth the bean, or whatever it was the chief had thrown at him, he came to life.[909] In other tribes the instrument by which the candidate is apparently slain is the medicine-bag. The bag is made of the skin of an animal (such as the otter, wild cat, serpent, bear, raccoon, wolf, owl, weasel), of which it roughly preserves the shape. Each member of the society has one of these bags, in which he keeps the odds and ends that make up his “medicine” or charms. “They believe that from the miscellaneous contents in the belly of the skin bag or animal there issues a spirit or breath, which has the power, not only to knock down and kill a man, but also to set him up and restore him to life.” The mode of killing a man with one of these medicine-bags is to thrust it at him; [pg 351] he falls like dead, but a second thrust of the bag restores him to life.[910]
A ceremony witnessed by Jewitt during his captivity among the Indians of Nootka Sound doubtless belongs to this class of customs. The Indian king or chief “discharged a pistol close to his son's ear, who immediately fell down as if killed, upon which all the women of the house set up a most lamentable cry, tearing handfuls of hair from their heads, and exclaiming that the prince was dead; at the same time a great number of the inhabitants rushed into the house armed with their daggers, muskets, etc., inquiring the cause of their outcry. These were immediately followed by two others dressed in wolf skins, with masks over their faces representing the head of that animal. The latter came in on their hands and feet in the manner of a beast, and taking up the prince, carried him off upon their backs, retiring in the same manner as they entered.”[911] In another place Jewitt mentions that the young prince—a lad of about eleven years of age—wore a mask in imitation of a wolf's head.[912] Now, as the Indians of this part of America are divided into totem clans, of which the Wolf clan is one of the principal, and as the members of each clan are in the habit of wearing some portion of the totem animal about their person,[913] it is probable that the prince belonged to the Wolf clan, and that the ceremony described by Jewitt represented the killing [pg 352] of the lad in order that he might be born anew as a wolf, much in the same way that the Basque hunter supposed himself to have been killed and to have come to life again as a bear. The Toukaway Indians of Texas, one of whose totems is the wolf, have a ceremony in which men, dressed in wolf skins, run about on all fours, howling and mimicking wolves. At last they scratch up a living tribesman, who has been buried on purpose, and putting a bow and arrows in his hands, bid him do as the wolves do—rob, kill, and murder.[914] The ceremony probably forms part of an initiatory rite like the resurrection from the grave of the old man in the Australian rites.
The people of Rook, an island east of New Guinea, hold festivals at which one or two disguised men, their heads covered with wooden masks, go dancing through the village, followed by all the other men. They demand that the circumcised boys who have not yet been swallowed by Marsaba (the devil) shall be given up to them. The boys, trembling and shrieking, are delivered to them, and must creep between the legs of the disguised men. Then the procession moves through the village again, and announces that Marsaba has eaten up the boys, and will not disgorge them till he receives a present of pigs, taro, etc. So all the villagers, according to their means, contribute provisions, which are then consumed in the name of Marsaba.[915] In New Britain all males are members [pg 353] of an association called the Duk-duk. The boys are admitted to it very young, but are not fully initiated till their fourteenth year, when they receive from the Tubuvan a terrible blow with a cane, which is supposed to kill them. The Tubuvan and the Duk-duk are two disguised men who represent cassowaries. They dance with a short hopping step in imitation of the cassowary. Each of them wears a huge hat like an extinguisher, woven of grass or palm-fibres; it is six feet high, and descends to the wearer's shoulders, completely concealing his head and face. From the neck to the knees the man's body is hidden by a crinoline made of the leaves of a certain tree fastened on hoops, one above the other. The Tubuvan is regarded as a female, the Duk-duk as a male. No woman may see these disguised men. The institution of the Duk-duk is common to the neighbouring islands of New Ireland and the Duke of York.[916]
Amongst the Galela and Tobelorese of Halmahera, an island to the west of New Guinea, boys go through a form of initiation, part of which seems to consist in a pretence of begetting them anew. When a number of boys have reached the proper age, their parents agree to celebrate the ceremony at their common expense, and they invite others to be present at it. A shed is erected, and two long tables are placed in it, with [pg 354] benches to match, one for the men and one for the women. When all the preparations have been made for a feast, a great many skins of the rayfish, and some pieces of a wood which imparts a red colour to water, are taken to the shed. A priest or elder causes a vessel to be placed in the sight of all the people, and then begins, with significant gestures, to rub a piece of the wood with the ray-skin. The powder so produced is put in the vessel, and at the same time the name of one of the boys is called out. The same proceeding is repeated for each boy. Then the vessels are filled with water, after which the feast begins. At the third cock-crow the priest smears the faces and bodies of the boys with the red water, which represents the blood shed at the perforation of the hymen. Towards daybreak the boys are taken to the wood, and must hide behind the largest trees. The men, armed with sword and shield, accompany them, dancing and singing. The priest knocks thrice on each of the trees behind which a boy is hiding. All day the boys stay in the wood, exposing themselves to the heat of the sun as much as possible. In the evening they bathe and return to the shed, where the women supply them with food.[917]
In the west of Ceram boys at puberty are admitted to the Kakian association.[918] Modern writers [pg 355] have commonly regarded this association as primarily a political league instituted to resist foreign domination. In reality its objects are purely religious and social, though it is possible that the priests may have occasionally used their powerful influence for political ends. The society is in fact merely one of those widely-diffused primitive institutions, of which a chief object is the initiation of young men. In recent years the true nature of the association has been duly recognised by the distinguished Dutch ethnologist, J. G. F. Riedel. The Kakian house is an oblong wooden shed, situated under the darkest trees in the depth of the forest, and is built to admit so little light that it is impossible to see what goes on in it. Every village has such a house. Thither the boys who are to be initiated are conducted blindfolded, followed by their parents and relations. Each boy is led by the hand by two men, who act as his sponsors or guardians, looking after him during the period of initiation. When all are assembled before the shed, the high priest calls aloud upon the devils. Immediately a hideous uproar is heard to proceed from the shed. It is made by men with bamboo trumpets, who have been secretly introduced into the building by a back door, but the women and children think it is made by the devils, and are much terrified. Then the priests enter the shed, followed by the boys, one at a time. As soon as each boy has disappeared within the precincts, a dull chopping sound is heard, a fearful cry rings out, and a sword or spear, dripping with blood, is thrust [pg 356] through the roof of the shed. This is a token that the boy's head has been cut off, and that the devil has carried him away to the other world, there to regenerate and transform him. So at sight of the bloody sword the mothers weep and wail, crying that the devil has murdered their children. In some places, it would seem, the boys are pushed through an opening made in the shape of a crocodile's jaws or a cassowary's beak, and it is then said that the devil has swallowed them. The boys remain in the shed for five or nine days. Sitting in the dark, they hear the blast of the bamboo trumpets, and from time to time the sound of musket shots and the clash of swords. Every day they bathe, and their faces and bodies are smeared with a yellow dye, to give them the appearance of having been swallowed by the devil. During his stay in the Kakian house each boy has one or two crosses tattooed with thorns on his breast or arm. When they are not sleeping, the lads must sit in a crouching posture without moving a muscle. As they sit in a row cross-legged, with their hands stretched out, the chief takes his trumpet, and placing the mouth of it on the hands of each lad, speaks through it in strange tones, imitating the voice of the spirits. He warns the lads, under pain of death, to observe the rules of the Kakian society, and never to reveal what has passed in the Kakian house. The novices are also told by the priests to behave well to their blood relations, and are taught the traditions and secrets of the tribe.
Meantime the mothers and sisters of the lads have gone home to weep and mourn. But in a day or two the men who acted as guardians or sponsors to the novices return to the village with the glad tidings that the devil, at the intercession of the priests, has restored [pg 357] the lads to life. The men who bring this news come in a fainting state and daubed with mud, like messengers freshly arrived from the nether world. Before leaving the Kakian house, each lad receives from the priest a stick adorned at both ends with cock's or cassowary's feathers. The sticks are supposed to have been given to the lads by the devil at the time when he restored them to life, and they serve as a token that the lads have been in the spirit-land. When they return to their homes they totter in their walk, and enter the house backward, as if they had forgotten how to walk properly; or they enter the house by the back door. If a plate of food is given to them, they hold it upside down. They remain dumb, indicating their wants by signs only. All this is to show that they are still under the influence of the devil or the spirits. Their sponsors have to teach them all the common acts of life, as if they were new-born children. Further, upon leaving the Kakian house the boys are strictly forbidden to eat of certain fruits until the next celebration of the rites has taken place. And for twenty or thirty days their hair may not be combed by their mothers or sisters. At the end of that time the high priest takes them to a lonely place in the forest, and cuts off a lock of hair from the crown of each of their heads. After these initiatory rites the lads are deemed men, and may marry; it would be a scandal if they married before.
The simulation of death and resurrection or of a new birth at initiation appears to have lingered on, or at least to have left traces of itself, among peoples who have advanced far beyond the stage of savagery. Thus, after his investiture with the sacred thread—the symbol of his order—a Brahman is called “twice-born.” [pg 358] Manu says, “According to the injunction of the revealed texts the first birth of an Aryan is from his natural mother, the second happens on the tying of the girdle of Muñga grass, and the third on the initiation to the performance of a Srauta sacrifice.”[919] A pretence of killing the candidate appears to have formed part of the initiation to the Mithraic mysteries.[920]
Thus, if I am right, wherever totemism is found, and wherever a pretence is made of killing and bringing to life again at initiation, there must exist or have existed not only a belief in the possibility of permanently depositing the soul in some external object—animal, plant, or what not—but an actual intention of so depositing it. If the question is put, why do men desire to deposit their life outside their bodies? the answer can only be that, like the giant in the fairy tale, they think it safer to do so than to carry it about with them, just as people deposit their money with a banker rather than carry it on their persons. We have seen that at critical periods the life or soul is sometimes temporarily deposited in a safe place till the danger is past. But institutions like totemism are not resorted to merely on special occasions of danger; they are systems into which every one, or at least every male, is obliged to be initiated at a certain period of life. Now the period of life at which initiation takes place is regularly puberty; and this fact suggests that the special danger which totemism and systems like it are intended to obviate is supposed not to arise till sexual maturity has been attained, in fact, that the danger [pg 359] apprehended is believed to attend the relation of the sexes to each other. It would be easy to prove by a long array of facts that the sexual relation is associated in the primitive mind with many supernatural perils; but the exact nature of the danger apprehended is still obscure. We may hope that a more exact acquaintance with savage modes of thought will in time disclose this central mystery of primitive society, and will thereby furnish the clue, not only to the social aspect of totemism (the prohibition of sexual union between persons of the same totem), but to the origin of the marriage system.