§ 11. The Magic Spring.
The foregoing customs were originally rites intended to ensure the revival of nature in spring by means of imitative magic. Feelings with which the primitive savage may have regarded the changes of the seasons.
The general explanation which we have been led to adopt of these and many similar ceremonies is that they are, or were in their origin, magical rites intended to ensure the revival of nature in spring. The means by which they were supposed to effect this end were imitation and sympathy. Led astray by his ignorance of the true causes of things, primitive man believed that in order to produce the great phenomena of nature on which his life depended he had only to imitate them, and that immediately by a secret [pg 267] sympathy or mystic influence the little drama which he acted in forest glade or mountain dell, on desert plain or wind-swept shore, would be taken up and repeated by mightier actors on a vaster stage. He fancied that by masquerading in leaves and flowers he helped the bare earth to clothe herself with verdure, and that by playing the death and burial of winter he drove that gloomy season away, and made smooth the path for the footsteps of returning spring. If we find it hard to throw ourselves even in fancy into a mental condition in which such things seem possible, we can more easily picture to ourselves the anxiety which the savage, when he first began to lift his thoughts above the satisfaction of his merely animal wants, and to meditate on the causes of things, may have felt as to the continued operation of what we now call the laws of nature. To us, familiar as we are with the conception of the uniformity and regularity with which the great cosmic phenomena succeed each other, there seems little ground for apprehension that the causes which produce these effects will cease to operate, at least within the near future. But this confidence in the stability of nature is bred only by the experience which comes of wide observation and long tradition; and the savage, with his narrow sphere of observation and his short-lived tradition, lacks the very elements of that experience which alone could set his mind at rest in face of the ever-changing and often menacing aspects of nature. No wonder, therefore, that he is thrown into a panic by an eclipse, and thinks that the sun or the moon would surely perish, if he did not raise a clamour and shoot his puny shafts into the air to defend the luminaries from the monster who threatens to devour them. No wonder he is terrified when in the darkness of night a streak of sky is suddenly illumined by the flash of a meteor, or the whole expanse of the celestial arch glows with the fitful light of the Northern Streamers.[722] Even phenomena which recur at [pg 268] fixed and uniform intervals may be viewed by him with apprehension, before he has come to recognise the orderliness of their recurrence. The speed or slowness of his recognition of such periodic or cyclic changes in nature will depend largely on the length of the particular cycle. The cycle, for example, of day and night is everywhere, except in the polar regions, so short and hence so frequent that men probably soon ceased to discompose themselves seriously as to the chance of its failing to recur, though the ancient Egyptians, as we have seen, daily wrought enchantments to bring back to the east in the morning the fiery orb which had sunk at evening in the crimson west. But it was far otherwise with the annual cycle of the seasons. To any man a year is a considerable period, seeing that the number of our years is but few at the best. To the primitive savage, with his short memory and imperfect means of marking the flight of time, a year may well have been so long that he failed to recognise it as a cycle at all, and watched the changing aspects of earth and heaven with a perpetual wonder, alternately delighted and alarmed, elated and cast down, according as the vicissitudes of light and heat, of plant and animal life, ministered to his comfort or threatened his existence. In autumn when the withered leaves were whirled about the forest by the nipping blast, and he looked up at the bare boughs, could he feel sure that they would ever be green again? As day by day the sun sank lower and lower in the sky, could he be certain that the luminary would ever retrace his heavenly road? Even the waning moon, whose pale sickle rose thinner and thinner every night over the rim of the eastern horizon, may have excited in his mind a fear lest, when it had wholly vanished, there should be moons no more.
In modern Europe the old magical rites for the revival of nature in spring have degenerated into mere pageants and pastimes.
These and a thousand such misgivings may have thronged the fancy and troubled the peace of the man who first began to reflect on the mysteries of the world he lived in, and to take thought for a more distant future than the morrow. It was natural, therefore, that with such thoughts and fears he should have done all that in him lay to bring back the faded blossom to the bough, to swing the low sun of winter up to his old place in the summer sky, and to restore its orbed fulness to [pg 269] the silver lamp of the waning moon. We may smile at his vain endeavours if we please, but it was only by making a long series of experiments, of which some were almost inevitably doomed to failure, that man learned from experience the futility of some of his attempted methods and the fruitfulness of others. After all, magical ceremonies are nothing but experiments which have failed and which continue to be repeated merely because, for reasons which have already been indicated,[723] the operator is unaware of their failure. With the advance of knowledge these ceremonies either cease to be performed altogether or are kept up from force of habit long after the intention with which they were instituted has been forgotten. Thus fallen from their high estate, no longer regarded as solemn rites on the punctual performance of which the welfare and even the life of the community depend, they sink gradually to the level of simple pageants, mummeries, and pastimes, till in the final stage of degeneration they are wholly abandoned by older people, and, from having once been the most serious occupation of the sage, become at last the idle sport of children. It is in this final stage of decay that most of the old magical rites of our European forefathers linger on at the present day, and even from this their last retreat they are fast being swept away by the rising tide of those multitudinous forces, moral, intellectual, and social, which are bearing mankind onward to a new and unknown goal. We may feel some natural regret at the disappearance of quaint customs and picturesque ceremonies, which have preserved to an age often deemed dull and prosaic something of the flavour and freshness of the olden time, some breath of the springtime of the world; yet our regret will be lessened when we remember that these pretty pageants, these now innocent diversions, had their origin in ignorance and superstition; that if they are a record of human endeavour, they are also a monument of fruitless ingenuity, of wasted labour, and of blighted hopes; and that for all their gay trappings—their flowers, their ribbons, and their music—they partake far more of tragedy than of farce.
Parallel to the spring customs of Europe in the magical rites of the Central Australian aborigines.
The interpretation which, following in the footsteps of [pg 270] W. Mannhardt, I have attempted to give of these ceremonies has been not a little confirmed by the discovery, made since this book was first written, that the natives of Central Australia regularly practise magical ceremonies for the purpose of awakening the dormant energies of nature at the approach of what may be called the Australian spring. Nowhere apparently are the alternations of the seasons more sudden and the contrasts between them more striking than in the deserts of Central Australia, where at the end of a long period of drought the sandy and stony wilderness, over which the silence and desolation of death appear to brood, is suddenly, after a few days of torrential rain, transformed into a landscape smiling with verdure and peopled with teeming multitudes of insects and lizards, of frogs and birds. The marvellous change which passes over the face of nature at such times has been compared even by European observers to the effect of magic;[724] no wonder, then, that the savage should regard it as such in very deed. Now it is just when there is promise of the approach of a good season that the natives of Central Australia are wont especially to perform those magical ceremonies of which the avowed intention is to multiply the plants and animals they use as food.[725] These ceremonies, therefore, present a close analogy to the spring customs of our European peasantry not only in the time of their celebration, but also in their aim; for we can hardly doubt that in instituting rites designed to assist the revival of plant life in spring our primitive forefathers were moved, not by any sentimental wish to smell at early violets, or pluck the rathe primrose, or watch yellow daffodils dancing in the breeze, but by the very practical consideration, certainly not formulated in abstract terms, that the life of man is inextricably bound up with that of plants, and that if they were to perish he could not survive. And as the faith of the Australian savage in the efficacy of his magic rites is confirmed by observing that their performance is invariably followed, sooner or later, by that increase of vegetable and animal life which it is their [pg 271] object to produce, so, we may suppose, it was with European savages in the olden time. The sight of the fresh green in brake and thicket, of vernal flowers blowing on mossy banks, of swallows arriving from the south, and of the sun mounting daily higher in the sky, would be welcomed by them as so many visible signs that their enchantments were indeed taking effect, and would inspire them with a cheerful confidence that all was well with a world which they could thus mould to suit their wishes. Only in autumn days, as summer slowly faded, would their confidence again be dashed by doubts and misgivings at symptoms of decay, which told how vain were all their efforts to stave off for ever the approach of winter and of death.
Note A. Chinese Indifference To Death.
Letter of Mr. M. W. Lampson.
Lord Avebury kindly allows me to print the letter of Mr. M. W. Lampson, referred to above (p. [146], note 1). It runs as follows:—
Foreign Office, August 7, 1903.
Dear Lord Avebury—As the result of enquiries I hear from a Mr. Eames, a lawyer who practised for some years at Shanghai and has considerable knowledge of Chinese matters, that for a small sum a substitute can be found for execution. This is recognised by the Chinese authorities, with certain exceptions, as for instance parricide. It is even asserted that the local Taotai gains pecuniarily by this arrangement, as he is as a rule not above obtaining a substitute for the condemned man for a less sum than was paid him by the latter.
It is, I believe, part of the doctrine of Confucius that it is one of the highest virtues to increase the family prosperity at the expense of personal suffering. According to Eames, the Chinamen [sic] looks upon execution in another man's stead in this light, and consequently there is quite a competition for such a “substitution.”
Should you wish to get more definite information, the address is: W. Eames, Esq., c/o Norman Craig, Inner Temple, E.C.
The only man in this department who has actually been out to China is at present away. But on his return I will ask him about it.—
Yours sincerely,
Miles W. Lampson.
Lord Avebury's statement.
On this subject Lord Avebury had stated: “It is said that in China, if a rich man is condemned to death, he can sometimes purchase a willing substitute at a very small expense.”[726] In regard to his authority for this statement Lord Avebury wrote to me (August 10, 1903): “I believe my previous information came from Sir T. Wade, but I have been unable to lay my hand on his letter, and do not therefore like to state it as a fact.” Sir Thomas Wade [pg 274] was English Ambassador at Peking, and afterwards Professor of Chinese at Cambridge.
Opinions of various authorities.
On the same subject Mr. Valentine Chirol, editor of the foreign department of The Times, wrote to me as follows:—
Queen Anne's Mansions, Westminster, S.W.,
August 21st, 1905.
Dear Sir—I shall be very glad to do what I can to obtain for you the information you require. It was a surprise to me to hear that the accuracy of the statement was called in question. It is certainly a matter of common report in China that the practice exists. The difficulty, I conceive, will be to obtain evidence enabling one to quote concrete cases. My own impression is that the practice is quite justifiable according to Chinese ethics when life is given up from motives of filial piety, that is to say in order to relieve the wants of indigent parents, or to defray the costs of ancestral rights [sic]. Your general thesis that life is less valued and more readily sacrificed by some races than by modern Europeans seems to be beyond dispute. Surely the Japanese practice of sepuku, or harikari, as it is vulgarly called, is a case in point. Life is risked, as in duelling, by Europeans, for the mere point of honour, but it is never deliberately laid down in satisfaction of the exigencies of the social code. I will send you whatever information I can obtain when it reaches me, but that will not of course be for some months.—Yours truly,
Valentine Chirol.
P.S.—A friend of mine who has just been here entirely confirms my own belief as to the accuracy of your statement, and tells me he has himself seen several Imperial Decrees in the Peking Gazette, calling provincial authorities to order for having allowed specific cases of substitution to occur, and ordering the death penalty to be carried out in a more severe form on the original culprits as an extra punishment for obtaining substitutes. He has promised to look up some of these Impe. Decrees on his return to China, and send me translations. I am satisfied personally that his statement is conclusive.
V. C.
On the same subject I have received the following letter from Mr. J. O. P. Bland, for fourteen years correspondent of The Times in China:—
The Clock House, Shepperton,
March 22nd, 1911.
Dear Professor Frazer—My friend Mr. Valentine Chirol, writing the other day from Crete on his way East, asked me to communicate with you on the subject of your letter of the 3rd ulto., namely, the custom, alleged to exist in China, of procuring substitutes for persons condemned to death, the substitutes' families or relatives receiving compensation in cash.
To speak of this as a custom is to exaggerate the frequency of a class of incident which has undoubtedly been recorded in China and [pg 275]of which there has been mention in Imperial Decrees. I am sorry to say that I have not my file of the Peking Gazette here, for immediate reference, but I am writing to my friend Mr. Backhouse in Peking, and have no doubt but that he will be able to give chapter and verse of instances thus recorded. I had expected to find cases of the kind recorded in Mr. Werner's recently-published “Descriptive Sociology”of the Chinese (Spencerian publications), but have not been able to do so in the absence of an index to that voluminous work. More than one of the authors whom he quotes have certainly referred to cases of substitution for death-sentence prisoners. Parker, for instance (“China Past and Present,” page 378), asserts that substitutes were to be had in Canton at the reasonable price of fifty taels (say £10). Dr. Matignon (in “Superstition, Crime et Misère en Chine,” page 113) says that filial piety is a frequent motive. The negative opinion of Professors Giles and de Groot is entitled to consideration, but cannot be regarded as any more conclusive than the views expressed by Professor Giles on the question of infanticide which are outweighed by a mass of direct proof of eye-witnesses.
In a country where men submit voluntarily to mutilation and grave risk of death for a comparatively small gain to themselves and their relatives, where women commit suicide in hundreds to escape capture by invaders or strangers, where men and women alike habitually sacrifice their life for the most trivial motives of revenge or distress, it need not greatly surprise us that some should be found, especially among the wretchedly poor class, willing to give up their life in order to relieve their families of want or otherwise to “acquire merit.”
The most important thing, I think, in expressing any opinion about the Chinese, is to remember the great extent and heterogeneous elements of the country, and to abstain from any sweeping generalisations based on isolated acts or events.—Yours very truly,
J. O. P. Bland.
As the practice in question involves a grave miscarriage of justice, the discovery of which might entail serious consequences on the magistrate who connived at it, we need not wonder that it is generally hushed up, and that no instances of it should come to the ears of many Europeans resident in China. My friend Professor H. A. Giles of Cambridge in conversation expressed himself quite incredulous on the subject, and Professor J. J. M. de Groot of Leyden wrote to me (January 31, 1902) to the same effect. The Rev. Dr. W. T. A. Barber, Headmaster of the Leys School, Cambridge, and formerly a missionary in China, wrote to me (January 30, 1902): “As to the possibility that a man condemned to death may secure a substitute on payment of a moderate sum of money, we used to hear that this was the case; but I have no proof that would justify you in using the fact.” Another experienced missionary, the Rev. W. A. Cornaby, wrote to Dr. Barber: “I have heard of no such custom in capital crimes. The man in whose house a fire starts may, and often does, pay another to receive the blows and three [pg 276] days in a cangue. But unless where ‘foreign riots’ were the case, and a previously condemned criminal handy, I should hardly think it possible. Every precaution is taken that no one is beheaded but the man who cannot possibly be let off. The expense on the county mandarin is over £100 in ‘stationery expenses’ with higher courts.” On this I would observe that if every execution costs the local mandarin so dear, he must be under a strong temptation to get the expenses out of the prisoner whenever he can do so without being detected.
Substitutes for corporal punishment in China.
With regard to the custom, mentioned by Mr. Cornaby, of procuring substitutes for corporal punishment, we are told that in China there are men who earn a livelihood by being thrashed instead of the real culprits. But they bribe the executioner to lay on lightly; otherwise their constitution could not long resist the tear and wear of so exhausting a profession.[727] Thus the theory and practice of vicarious suffering are well understood in China.
Note B. Swinging As A Magical Rite.
The custom of swinging practised for various reasons. Swinging at harvest.
The custom of swinging has been practised as a religious or rather magical rite in various parts of the world, but it does not seem possible to explain all the instances of it in the same way. People appear to have resorted to the practice from different motives and with different ideas of the benefit to be derived from it. In the text we have seen that the Letts, and perhaps the Siamese, swing to make the crops grow tall.[728] The same may be the intention of the ceremony whenever it is specially observed at harvest festivals. Among the Buginese and Macassars of Celebes, for example, it used to be the custom for young girls to swing one after the other on these occasions.[729] At the great Dassera festival of Nepaul, which immediately precedes the cutting of the rice, swings and kites come into fashion among the young people of both sexes. The swings are sometimes hung from boughs of trees, but generally from a cross-beam supported on a framework of tall bamboos.[730] Among the Dyaks of Sarawak a feast is held at the end of harvest, when the soul of the rice is secured to prevent the crops from rotting away. On this occasion a number of old women rock to and fro on a rude swing suspended from the rafters.[731] A traveller in Sarawak has described how he saw many tall swings erected and Dyaks swinging to and fro on them, sometimes ten or twelve men together on one swing, while they chanted in monotonous, dirge-like tones an invocation to the spirits that they would be pleased to grant a plentiful harvest of sago and fruit and a good fishing season.[732]
Swinging for fish and game.
In the East Indian island of Bengkali elaborate and costly ceremonies [pg 278] are performed to ensure a good catch of fish. Among the rest an hereditary priestess, who bears the royal title of Djindjang Rajah, works herself up by means of the fumes of incense and so forth into that state of mental disorder which with many people passes for a symptom of divine inspiration. In this pious frame of mind she is led by her four handmaids to a swing all covered with yellow and hung with golden bells, on which she takes her seat amid the jingle of the bells. As she rocks gently to and fro in the swing, she speaks in an unknown tongue to each of the sixteen spirits who have to do with the fishing.[733] In order to procure a plentiful supply of game the Tinneh Indians of North-West America perform a magical ceremony which they call “the young man bounding or tied.” They pinion a man tightly, and having hung him by the head and heels from the roof of the hut, rock him backwards and forwards.[734]
Indian custom of swinging on hooks. Swinging in the rainy season. Swinging in honour of Krishna. Esthonian custom of swinging at the summer solstice.
Thus we see that people swing in order to procure a plentiful supply of fish and game as well as good crops. In such cases the notion seems to be that the ceremony promotes fertility, whether in the vegetable or the animal kingdom; though why it should be supposed to do so, I confess myself unable to explain. There seem to be some reasons for thinking that the Indian rite of swinging on hooks run through the flesh of the performer is also resorted to, at least in some cases, from a belief in its fertilising virtue. Thus Hamilton tells us that at Karwar, on the west coast of India, a feast is held at the end of May or beginning of June in honour of the infernal gods, “with a divination or conjuration to know the fate of the ensuing crop of corn.” Men were hung from a pole by means of tenter-hooks inserted in the flesh of their backs; and the pole with the men dangling from it was then dragged for more than a mile over ploughed ground from one sacred grove to another, preceded by a young girl who carried a pot of fire on her head. When the second grove was reached, the men were let down and taken off the hooks, and the girl fell into the usual prophetic frenzy, after which she unfolded to the priests the revelation with which she had just been favoured by the terrestrial gods. In each of the groves a shapeless black stone, daubed with red lead to stand for a mouth, eyes, and ears, appears to have represented the indwelling divinity.[735] Sometimes this custom of swinging on hooks, which is known among the Hindoos as Churuk Puja, seems to be intended [pg 279] to propitiate demons. Some Santals asked Mr. V. Ball to be allowed to perform it because their women and children were dying of sickness, and their cattle were being killed by wild beasts; they believed that these misfortunes befell them because the evil spirits had not been appeased.[736] These same Santals celebrate a swinging festival of a less barbarous sort about the month of February. Eight men sit in chairs and rotate round posts in a sort of revolving swing, like the merry-go-rounds which are so dear to children at English fairs.[737] At the Nauroz and Eed festivals in Dardistan the women swing on ropes suspended from trees.[738] During the rainy season in Behar young women swing in their houses, while they sing songs appropriate to the season. The period during which they indulge in this pastime, if a mere pastime it be, is strictly limited; it begins with a festival which usually falls on the twenty-fifth of the month Jeyt and ends with another festival which commonly takes place on the twenty-fifth of the month Asin. No one would think of swinging at any other time of the year.[739] It is possible that this last custom may be nothing more than a pastime meant to while away some of the tedious hours of the inclement season; but its limitation to a certain clearly-defined portion of the year seems rather to point to a religious or magical origin. Possibly the intention may once have been to drive away the rain. We shall see immediately that swinging is sometimes resorted to for the purpose of expelling the powers of evil. About the middle of March the Hindoos observe a swinging festival of a different sort in honour of the god Krishna, whose image is placed in the seat or cradle of a swing and then, just when the dawn is breaking, rocked gently to and fro several times. The same ceremony is repeated at noon and at sunset.[740] In the Rigveda the sun is called, by a natural metaphor, “the golden swing in the sky,” and the expression helps us to understand a ceremony of Vedic India. A priest sat in a swing and touched with the span of his right hand at once the seat of the swing and the ground. In doing so he said, “The [pg 280] great lord has united himself with the great lady, the god has united himself with the goddess.” Perhaps he meant to indicate in a graphic way that the sun had reached that lowest point of its course where it was nearest to the earth.[741] In this connexion it is of interest to note that in the Esthonian celebration of St. John's Day or the summer solstice swings play, along with bonfires, the most prominent part. Girls sit and swing the whole night through, singing old songs to explain why they do so. For legend tells of an Esthonian prince who wooed and won an Islandic princess. But a wicked enchanter spirited away the lover to a desert island, where he languished in captivity, till his lady-love contrived to break the magic spell that bound him. Together they sailed home to Esthonia, which they reached on St. John's Day, and burnt their ship, resolved to stray no longer in far foreign lands. The swings in which the Esthonian maidens still rock themselves on St. John's Day are said to recall the ship in which the lovers tossed upon the stormy sea, and the bonfires commemorate the burning of it. When the fires have died out, the swings are laid aside and never used again either in the village or at the solitary alehouse until spring comes round once more.[742] Here it is natural to connect both swings and bonfires with the apparent course of the sun, who reaches the highest and turning point of his orbit on St. John's Day. Bonfires and swings perhaps were originally charms intended to kindle and speed afresh on its heavenly road “the golden swing in the sky.” Among the Letts of South Livonia and Curland the summer solstice is the occasion of a great festival of flowers, at which the people sing songs with the constant refrain of lihgo, lihgo. It has been proposed to derive the word lihgo from the Lettish verb ligot, “to swing,” with reference to the sun swinging in the sky at this turning-point of his course.[743]
Swinging for inspiration.
At Tengaroeng, in Eastern Borneo, the priests and priestesses receive the inspiration of the spirits seated in swings and rocking themselves to and fro. Thus suspended in the air they appear to be in a peculiarly favourable position for catching the divine afflatus. One end of the plank which forms the seat of the priest's swing is carved in the rude likeness of a crocodile's head; the swing of the priestess is similarly ornamented with a serpent's head.[744]
Swinging as a cure for sickness.
Again, swings are used for the cure of sickness, but it is the doctor who rocks himself in them, not the patient. In North Borneo the Dyak medicine man will sometimes erect a swing in [pg 281] front of the sick man's house and sway backwards and forwards on it for the purpose of kicking away the disease, frightening away evil spirits, and catching the stray soul of the sufferer.[745] Clearly in his passage through the air the physician is likely to collide with the disease and the evil spirits, both of which are sure to be loitering about in the neighbourhood of the patient, and the rude shock thus given to the malady and the demons may reasonably be expected to push or hustle them away. At Tengaroeng, in Eastern Borneo, a traveller witnessed a ceremony for the expulsion of an evil spirit in which swinging played a part. After four men in blue shirts bespangled with stars, and wearing coronets of red cloth decorated with beads and bells, had sought diligently for the devil, grabbling about on the floor and grunting withal, three hideous hags dressed in faded red petticoats were brought in with great pomp, carried on the shoulders of Malays, and took their seats, amid solemn silence, on the cradle of a swing, the ends of which were carved to represent the head and tail of a crocodile. Not a sound escaped from the crowd of spectators during this awe-inspiring ceremony; they regarded the business as most serious. The venerable dames then rocked to and fro on the swing, fanning themselves languidly with Chinese paper fans. At a later stage of the performance they and three girls discharged burning arrows at a sort of altar of banana leaves, maize, and grass. This completed the discomfiture of the devil.[746]
Athenian festival of swinging.
The Athenians in antiquity celebrated an annual festival of swinging. Boards were hung from trees by ropes, and people sitting on them swung to and fro, while they sang songs of a loose or voluptuous character. The swinging went on both in public and private. Various explanations were given of the custom; the most generally received was as follows. When Bacchus came among men to make known to them the pleasures of wine, he lodged with a certain Icarus or Icarius, to whom he revealed the precious secret and bade him go forth and carry the glad tidings to all the world. So Icarus loaded a waggon with wine-skins, and set out on his travels, the dog Maera running beside him. He came to Attica, and there fell in with shepherds tending their sheep, to whom he gave of the wine. They drank greedily, but when some of them fell down dead drunk, their companions thought the stranger had poisoned them with intent to steal the sheep; so they knocked him on the head. The faithful dog ran home and guided his master's daughter Erigone to the body. At sight of it she was smitten with [pg 282] despair and hanged herself on a tree beside her dead father, but not until she had prayed that, unless the Athenians should avenge her sire's murder, their daughters might die the same death as she. Her curse was fulfilled, for soon many Athenian damsels hanged themselves for no obvious reason. An oracle informed the Athenians of the true cause of this epidemic of suicide; so they sought out the bodies of the unhappy pair and instituted the swinging festival to appease Erigone; and at the vintage they offered the first of the grapes to her and her father.[747]
Swinging as a mode of expiation and purification.
Thus the swinging festival at Athens was regarded by the ancients as an expiation for a suicide or suicides by hanging. This opinion is strongly confirmed by a statement of Varro, that it was unlawful to perform funeral rites in honour of persons who had died by hanging, but that in their case such rites were replaced by a custom of swinging images, as if in imitation of the death they had died.[748] Servius says that the Athenians, failing to find the bodies of Icarius and Erigone on earth, made a pretence of seeking them in the air by swinging on ropes hung from trees; and he seems to have regarded the custom of swinging as a purification by means of air.[749] This explanation probably comes very near the truth; indeed if we substitute “souls” for “bodies” in the wording of it we may almost accept it as exact. It might be thought that the souls of persons who had died by hanging were, more than the souls of the other dead, hovering in the air, since their bodies were suspended in air at the moment of death. Hence it would be considered needful to purge the air of these vagrant spirits, and this might be done by swinging persons or things to and fro, in order that by their impact they might disperse and drive away the baleful ghosts. Thus the custom would be exactly analogous, on the one hand, to the practice of the Malay medicine-man, who swings to and fro in front of the patient's house in order to chase away the disease, or to frighten away evil spirits, or to catch the stray soul of the sick man, and, on the other hand, to the practice of the Central Australian [pg 283] aborigines who beat the air with their weapons and hands in order to drive the lingering ghost away to the grave.[750] At Rome swinging seems to have formed part of the great Latin festival (Feriae Latinae), and its origin was traced to a search in the air for the body or even the soul of King Latinus, who had disappeared from earth after the battle with Mezentius, King of Caere.[751]
Swinging to promote the growth of plants.
Yet on the other hand there are circumstances which point to an intimate association, both at Athens and Rome, of these swinging festivals with an intention of promoting the growth of cultivated plants. Such circumstances are the legendary connexion of the Athenian festival with Bacchus, the custom of offering the first-fruits of the vintage to Erigone and Icarius,[752] and at Rome the practice of hanging masks on trees at the time of sowing[753] and in order to make the grapes grow better.[754] Perhaps we can reconcile the two apparently discrepant effects attributed to swinging as a means of expiation on the one side and of fertilisation on the other, by supposing that in both cases the intention is to clear the air of dangerous influences, whether these are ghosts of the unburied dead or spiritual powers inimical to the growth of plants. Independent of both appears to be the notion that the higher you swing the higher will grow the crops.[755] This last is homoeopathic or imitative magic pure and simple, without any admixture of the ideas of purification or expiation.
Swinging as a festal rite in modern Greece and Italy.
In modern Greece and Italy the custom of swinging as a festal rite, whatever its origin may be, is still observed in some places. At the small village of Koukoura in Elis an English traveller observed peasants swinging from a tree in honour of St. George, whose festival it was.[756] On the Tuesday after Easter the maidens of Seriphos play their favourite game of the swing. They hang a rope from one wall to another of the steep, narrow, filthy street, and putting some clothes on it swing one after the other, singing as they swing. Young men who try to pass are called upon to pay toll in the shape of a penny, a song, and a swing. The words which the youth sings are generally these: “The gold is swung, the silver is swung, and swung too is my love with the golden hair”; to [pg 284] which the girl replies, “Who is it that swings me that I may gild him with my favour, that I may work him a fez all covered with pearls?”[757] In the Greek island of Karpathos the villagers assemble at a given place on each of the four Sundays before Easter, a swing is erected, and the women swing one after the other, singing death wails such as they chant round the mimic tombs in church on the night of Good Friday.[758] On Christmas Day peasant girls in some villages of Calabria fasten ropes to iron rings in the ceiling and swing on them, while they sing certain songs prescribed by custom for the occasion. The practice is regarded not merely as an amusement but also as an act of devotion.[759] “It is a custom in Cadiz, when Christmas comes, to fasten swings in the courtyards of houses, and even in the houses themselves when there is no room for them outside. In the evenings lads and lasses assemble round the swings and pass the time happily in swinging amid joyous songs and cries. The swings are taken down when Carnival is come.”[760] The observance of the custom at Christmas, that is, at the winter solstice, suggests that in Calabria and Spain, as in Esthonia, the pastime may originally have been a magical rite designed to assist the sun in climbing the steep ascent to the top of the summer sky. If this were so, we might surmise that the gold and the golden hair mentioned by youths and maidens of Seriphos as they swing refer to “the golden swing in the sky,” in other words to the sun whose golden lamp swings daily across the blue vault of heaven.
Swinging at festivals in spring.
However that may be, it would seem that festivals of swinging are especially held in spring. This is true, for example, of North Africa, where such festivals are common. At some places in that part of the world the date of the swinging is the time of the apricots; at others it is said to be the spring equinox. In some places the festival lasts three days, and fathers who have had children born to them within the year bring them and swing them in the swings.[761] In Corea “the fifth day of the fifth moon is called Tano-nal. Ancestors are then worshipped, and swings are put up in the yards of most houses for the amusement of the people. The women on this day may go about the streets; during the rest of the year they may go out only after dark. Dressed in their prettiest clothes, they visit the various houses and amuse themselves swinging. The swing is said to convey the idea of keeping cool in the approaching summer. It is one of [pg 285] the most popular feasts of the year.”[762] Perhaps the reason here assigned for swinging may explain other instances of the custom; on the principles of homoeopathic magic the swinging may be regarded as a means of ensuring a succession of cool refreshing breezes during the oppressive heat of the ensuing summer.