Magic and Religion

by Andrew Lang

Mr. Frazer says: 'The mistletoe was viewed as the seat of the life of the oak, and, so long as it was uninjured, nothing could kill or even wound the oak.' He shows how this idea might arise. 'The oak, so people might think, was invulnerable,' so long as the mistletoe remained intact.[30] But did the people think so? Pliny says a great deal about the Druidical gathering of mistletoe, which, on oaks, 'is very rarely to be met with.' The Druids, I presume, never observed that oaks in general, in fact by an overwhelming majority, lived very well without having any seat of life (mistletoe) at all. Not noticing this obvious fact, they reckoned, it would appear, that an oak with mistletoe on it con Id not be cut till the mistletoe was removed. Perhaps they never tried. Pliny does not say that when the Druid had climbed the tree and removed the mistletoe, he next cut down the tree.[31] It does seem desirable to prove that people thought the life of an oak was in the mistletoe (which they might gather without hurting the oak), before we begin to build another theory on our theory that they did hold this opinion.[32]

This new theory Mr. Frazer goes forth to erect on the basis of the first theory. The theory, in brief, comes to this: that as Balder was the spirit of the oak, and was sacrificed (of which I see no proof), so human beings, representing Balder and the oak, were sacrificed, to reinvigorate vegetation. The mistletoe which slew Balder was the soul-box of both Balder and of the oak, and of the human victims who represented, yearly, the oak and Balder.

About all this much might be said. The killing of 'divine kings,' Balder and others,[33] seems to me, as I have already said, in the majority of cases, to be a mere rude form of superannuation. We do not kill a commander-in-chief, or an old professor; we pension them off. But it is not so easy to pension off a king. I think that most of the cases cited mean superannuation, or dissatisfaction with the ruler, not a magical ceremony to improve vegetation. Regicide is, or was, common. Says Birrel (1560-1605): 'There has beine in this Kingdome of Scotland, are hundereth and five Kings, of quhilk there was slaine fifty-sex,' often succeeded by their slayers, like the ghastly priest. I am not convinced that the ghastly priest represented vegetation, and endured the duel ordeal as a commutation of yearly sacrifice, though there is a kind of parallel in the case of the king of Calicut. But that modern mummers are put to death, in a mock ceremony (as Mr. Frazer holds, to quicken vegetation), is proved by much folklore evidence.[34]

If we admit (which I think far from inevitable) that the ghastly priest was once a kind of May King, periodically slain, and was analogous to Balder, and represented the life of an oak, we are next invited to suppose that the tree at Aricia was also an oak, that the only branch on it to be plucked by the would-be successor was mistletoe, and that the mistletoe was the soul-box of the tree and of the ghastly priest, who could more easily be killed when his life-box (the mistletoe) was damaged.[35]

There is hardly a link in this chain of reasoning which to me seems strong. I do not see that Balder, in the Edda, was sacrificed. I do not see that the mistletoe was his soul-box. I conceive that the use of so feeble a weapon to kill him is analogous to the slaying of an invulnerable hero, in North American myth, by the weapon of a bulrush: an example of the popular liking for weakness that overcomes strength. I find no evidence that the mistletoe was ever thought to be the soul-box of the oak; none to prove that the tree at Aricia was an oak; nothing to show that the branch to be plucked was the branch of gold in Virgil, and nothing to indicate that Virgil's branch was the mistletoe. To reach Mr. Frazer's solution—that the ghastly priest was an incarnate spirit of vegetation, slain, after the plucking of mistletoe, in order that he might be succeeded by a stronger soul, more apt to increase the life of vegetation—we have to cross at least six 'light bridges' of hypothesis, 'built to connect isolated facts.'[36] To me these hypotheses seem more like the apparently solid spots in a peat-bog, on which whoso alights is let into the morass. I feel like Mr. Frazer's 'cautious inquirer,' who is 'brought up sharp on the edge of some yawning chasm.'[37]

I ought to propose an hypothesis myself. In doing so I shall confine myself (the limitation is not unscientific) to the known facts of the problem. In the grove of Diana (a goddess of many various attributes) was a priest of whom we know nothing but that he was (1) a fugitive slave, (2) called King of the Grove, (3) might be slain and succeeded by any other fugitive slave, (4) who broke a bough of the tree which the priest's only known duty was to protect. These are all the ascertained facts.

Why had the priest to be a runaway slave? Mr. Frazer says: 'He had to be a runaway slave in memory of the flight of Orestes, the traditional founder of the worship....'[38] But the Greek story of Orestes, and its doublette as to Hippolytus, are only ætiological myths, fanciful' reasons why,' attached to a Latin usage. Neither Orestes nor Hippolytus was a slave, like the ghastly priest. The story about Orestes, a fugitive, arises out of the custom of Aricia, and does not explain that custom. Mr. Frazer, I presume, admits this, but thinks that the ghastly priest might perhaps, at one time, save himself by being a runaway. But why a slave? If I might guess, I would venture to suggest that the grove near Aricia may have been an asylum for fugitives, as they say that Borne originally was. There are such sanctuaries in Central Australia.

Here, fortunately, Mr. Frazer himself supplies me with the very instances which my conjecture craves. He cites Mr. Turner's 'Samoa' for trees which were sanctuaries for fugitives. These useful examples are given, not in 'The Golden Bough,' but in an essay on 'The Origin of Totemism.'[39]

'In Upolu, one of the Samoan islands, a certain god, Vave, had his abode in an old tree, which served as an asylum for murderers and other offenders who had incurred the penalty of death.'

I gather from Mr. Turner's 'Nineteen Years in Polynesia' (p. 285) that the death penalty was that of the blood feud. In his 'Samoa,' Mr. Turner writes concerning trees which were sanctuaries: