RITUAL AND MYTH
Ritual is worship organized, the detail and circumstance of adoration. The study of ritual is one of the branches of the science of comparative religion, but much light is often cast upon myth by its consideration, and here we have to discuss it only in its relationship to myth.
This almost resolves itself into an argument upon the vexed question whether myth is a product of ritual or not. As this question has been already fully discussed (pp. [62]-[64]), there is no necessity to renew it here; but it possesses a pendent question. When the original reason for a certain ritual became forgotten and lost, a myth might arise to account for it. Such a myth would, of course, be 'secondary' in its nature, and is, properly speaking, more of the nature of folklore than myth. Ritual thus arises from an original myth and gives birth to secondary myth or folklore.
It is not essential that ritual should originate in a definite original myth—a concrete story having dramatis personæ, plot, and counterplot. The savage may conceive a deity without endowing it with any characteristics. "The sun-being lives up there," says the savage, or "I fear the wind. I will placate him." The only myth created is: "The supernatural wind-being lives on the earth." All the same this statement is myth; it is primitive theobiography.
Marett thinks that primitive religion was something "to be danced out." The religious dance of the savage is both myth and ritual; it combines myth, tale, and worship. Many myths were and are acted in dance, especially among the aborigines of Australia and America. The Eleusinian mysteries of Greece were almost certainly relics of mythic dances such as Red Indians and Black-fellows still participate in. We have then a meeting-place for myth and ritual in the tribal dance, which at the same time as it represents the adventures of the gods chants their praises in psalm and hymn (that is, in ritual) and performs the mystic movements that are the most ancient ritual. Dance itself may be purely ritualistic rather than explanatory. When David "danced before the Lord" he did not 'dance out' a myth. He danced ritualistically, with ritual movements—probably traditional and unchangeable—to suit the cadence of his chant or psalm. It is such ritual movements that mechanics unconsciously employ when at work. The blacksmith when he strikes the anvil with his hammer in the intervals of shaping the shoe he holds between the tongs does not do so because he requires to. The blows are needless and he gives them because all other craftsmen give them; but they were not always unmeaning. Once, perchance, they filled in the lapses of a song (like that of Joe Gargery in Great Expectations), or perhaps he thought they rounded off the music his hammer made on the hot iron he shaped on his stithy. Now they are merely part of the ritual of his craft and he is 'forced' by the immemorial usage of his 'mystery' to employ them, just as we all employ certain stereotyped expressions, for custom's sake.
Lack of originality is the disease of ritual. Dullness, pomposity, or mock piety are the pillars of its falling house. Why does Stiggins state that a certain prayer-meeting will take place "D.V."? Because other Stigginses do so, following a habit started in the dim past by some prudent man. Why do some golfers cut such fantastic capers while 'addressing'? Because other conceited golfers do the same, having originally seen it done with effect. It is part of the ritual of later people to do these things, nor can they tear themselves away from them nor appreciate their absurdity—and man is, above all, an imitative and most unoriginal animal!
Ritual, then, enters as much into life as into religion, and secondary myths may arise concerning craft rituals, just as they do about religious ones.
Traces of early ritual in later folk-belief are by no means rare. Such traces were to be found in the old Scottish festival of Bealltainn which was held on May Day. Of course the pious medieval folk who secured the continuity of the rite did not know that they were celebrating a pagan festival, for the Church, following its age-long policy of propitiating the heathen, tactfully confounded it with the festival of the Rood, the True Cross discovered by the Empress Helena. At Edinburgh and Peebles Bealltainn was held in medieval times on the 3rd of May, the feast day of the Rood, instead of on the first of the month, as at Perth and elsewhere, and the old custom or ritual would unquestionably be superimposed upon the Christian practice of the day. It is notable that two of the Rood churches in Scotland—Holyrood Abbey and Peebles—were reared where the Celtic rite of Bealltainn had been unusually popular—raised, as it were, to confound and supersede the festival. The rite of Bealltainn survived until a generation or two ago, and circumstantial accounts have been bequeathed to us concerning it. Says the parish minister of Callander, writing upon the festival: "In the Parish of Callander, upon the first day of May, all the boys in the town or hamlet meet on the moors. They cut a table on the green sod, of a round shape, to hold the whole company. They kindle the fire, and dress a repast of eggs and milk in the consistence of a custard. They knead a cake of oatmeal, which is baked at the fire upon a stone. After the custard is eaten up, they divide the cake into as many portions, and as similar as possible, as there are persons in the company. They blacken one of these portions with charcoal until it is perfectly black. They put all the bits of cake into a bonnet. Every one blindfolded draws a portion—he who holds the bonnet is entitled to the last. Who draws the black bit is the devoted person to be sacrificed to Baal, whose favour they mean to implore in rendering the year productive of substance for man and beast. There is little doubt of these human sacrifices being once offered in the country, but the youth who has got the black bit must leap through the flame of the fire three times."
In the preceding generations men, not boys, were the celebrants. Thus ritual droops into the hands of the very young, the despised, or the very old. The strong desert it, but the weak pitifully conserve it. "In the Parish of Logierait," says Napier, "Beltane is celebrated by the shepherds and cowherds in the following manner. They assemble in the fields and dress a dinner of milk and eggs. This dish they eat with a sort of cake baked for the occasion, having small lumps or nipples raised all over its surface. These knobs are not eaten, but broken off, and given as offerings to the different supposed powers or influences that protect or destroy their flocks, to the one as a thank-offering, to the other as a peace-offering."
Pennant, in his Tour through Scotland, thus described the Bealltainn observances as they were practised at the end of last century. "The herds of every village hold their Beltane (a rural sacrifice). They cut a square trench in 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, oatmeal, butter, and milk, and bring besides these plenty of beer and whiskey. Each of the company must contribute something towards the feast. The rites begin by pouring a little of the caudle upon the ground, by way of a libation. Every one then takes a cake of oatmeal, on which are raised nine square knobs, each dedicated to some particular being who is supposed to preserve their herds, or to some animal the 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,' naming the being whom he thanks, 'preserver of my sheep,' etc.; or to the destroyer, 'This I give to thee (O fox or eagle), spare my lambs,' etc. When this ceremony is over they all dine on the caudle."
We thus see that Bealltainn was the survival of the sacrifice of a human being to certain animistic spirits, the preservers of the flocks and herds of the celebrants. Later, cattle must have taken the place of the human victim. Jamieson remarks, quoting O'Brien: "Ignis Bei Dei Aseatica ea lineheil, or May-day, so called from large fires which the Druids were used to light on the summits of the highest hills, into which they drove four-footed beasts, using certain ceremonies to expiate for the sins of the people. The Pagan ceremony of lighting these fires in honour of the Asiatic god Belus gave its name to the entire month of May, which to this day is called Me-na-bealtine, in the Irish, Dor Keating." He says again, speaking of these fires of Baal, that the cattle were driven through them and not sacrificed, the chief design being to avert contagious disorders from them for the year. And quoting from an ancient glossary, O'Brien says: "The Druids lighted two solemn fires every year, and drove all four-footed beasts through them, in order to preserve them from contagious distempers during the current year."
Bealltainn was perhaps an adaptation of one of the names of Bilé, a Celtic god of death and the Underworld, one of the Danann or gods imported from Gaul. Thus we may find in the festival the celebration of a propitiatory festival to the god of death and all his devastating crew, the tempest, the fox, the eagle—the pantheon of destroyers, whom it was hoped to placate and soften into protective agencies.
The collection of dew is a notable circumstance in the May Day festival. It is alluded to by Ferguson, who sings in the ancient metre which Scotland took from France:
On May day in a fairy ring
We've seen them round St Anthon's spring
Frae grass the caller dew to wring
To wet their een
And water clear as crystal spring
To synd them clean.
First-of-May dew preserved the skin from wrinkles and freckles, and gave a glow of youth. Dew collected on the morning of the first day of May is supposed to confer witchcraft on the gatherer, and protect against an evil eye. To be seen in a field at daybreak that morning rendered the person seen an object of fear—perhaps as a witch or wizard.
THE RITES OF DIONYSUS
The manner in which a complicated secondary myth may result from ritual is well exemplified by that which sprang from the rites of Dionysus celebrated at Thebes. A branch or some other symbol of vegetation was carried through the cultivated fields in the neighbourhood of the city by a man disguised as a woman. A human image was then attached to the top of a tree-trunk, which was raised from the ground by ropes and held upright. The tree-spirit is then supposed to animate the trunk. Then, as happened in Mexico at the feast of Uitzilopochtli, the image attached to the tree was stoned and its fragments were scrambled and fought for. The woman who secured the head hastened to nail it to the temple or principal house of the community.
The late explanation of these doings, the origin of which became entirely lost, was that, as whatever was done must redound to the honour of Dionysus, the being represented on the top of the tree-trunk was inimical to him. The women, perhaps, supposed themselves to be enacting the part of bacchantes crazed with wine. As Roscher and Jevons have shown, this late story is the framework of the myth of Pentheus as given in the Bacchæ of Euripides, Pentheus, a monarch, refuses to permit the introduction of the worship of Dionysus, who bereaves him of his senses and, having dressed him in woman's garments, leads him through his own town as a laughing-stock. The women of Thebes, led by Agave, the mother of Pentheus, accept Dionysus and become mænads or bacchantes. To enable Pentheus to see their worship, Dionysus bends down a pine-tree, places him on the top and then lets it go. He is then attacked by Agave and the other bacchantes, who tear him limb from limb and set his head on the front of his own palace.
Whatever the significance of this rite—and it would seem to have its origin in priapic and bacchic worship—we cannot fail to observe how far too explanatory and how little ingenious the foregoing tale appears when adapted to it. As Falstaff says of his own excuse: "It will not fadge," It is lame and awkward. Pentheus could have beheld the rites of the bacchantes without the pine-tree being lowered for his convenience; and had he been bereft of his senses, he would probably have joined in the bacchic rout instead of tamely witnessing it. The circumstances point to the real myth behind the ritual being connected with the secret priapic and seasonal rites of a feminine cult—for women have their secret cults as well as men, as has been proved of late by the wonderful and valuable discoveries of Mrs D. Aumary Talbot among the Congo peoples—discoveries which seem destined to throw much light upon a most interesting department of comparative religion.
The student must then be upon his guard against secondary interpretations of ritual, which in most cases can only have reference to an early type of myth.