Meanwhile let us study in various regions the periods of licence. It seems as if human nature needed an annual 'burst.' Mr. Frazer suggests, as a magical motive, that the farmers thought by swilling and guzzling just before they proceeded to sow the fields that they thereby imparted additional vigour to the seed.[4] In fact, whether men fasted or feasted, were chaste or amorous, in all cases they acted for the benefit of the crops. Be it so, but why should non-agricultural savages have periods of licence? I venture to suggest that the agricultural motive in religion and ritual is at present rather over-worked. It is becoming as common an explanation of custom and belief as the recognition of the sun and the dawn everywhere used to be in mythology. To show that a period of licence with express and purposeful breach of the most sacred laws may exist without an agricultural motive, I shall prove later that it occurs among a non-agricultural set of savages, and, consequently, when found among agricultural peoples, may descend from some non-agricultural motive. Mr. Frazer himself elsewhere assigns a motive, not necessarily agricultural, for these chartered explosions of unlaw.
1. On the Gold Coast the period of licence precedes the annual ceremony of 'banishing the devil.' The season of the year is not given.
2. The feast of licence of the Hos of North-East India is called by Dalton 'a saturnale.' It is held in January, 'when the granaries are full of grain, and the people, to use their own expression, are full of devilry.' With prayers for a good new year the devil is beaten out of the bounds.
3. At the similar Mundari festival 'the servants are feasted by their masters.' So far nothing is noted about swilling for the good of the crops; that is not 'an excuse for the glass.'
4. In the Hindoo Koosh a little licence exists at the end of harvest: devils are driven out, and then seed is sown.
5. In Tonquin from January 25 to February 25 was a season of dormant law: 'only treason and murder were taken account of, and the malefactors detained till the great seal should come into operation again.' Then offerings were made to evil spirits, for 'it is usual and customary among them to feast the condemned before their execution.' The devils were then expelled.[5]
6. In Cambodia, after the expulsion of devils (diabolo-fugium), gambling is universal.
7. In Nepaul, in October, feasting and drinking occur, and presents are made by masters to slaves. There may be, perhaps, expulsion of devils; for the army fire salutes.[6]
In these cases of licence Mr. Frazer thinks that men rejoice either before the expulsion of devils, because that ceremony will carry off their sins, or after the expulsion, when their minds are at ease.[7] Thus men enjoy these bursts either, by the first hypothesis, to improve the prospects of agriculture; or, on the second theory, because a ceremony will cleanse the sins of the 'burst;' or because a ceremony has freed their minds from fear of devils. When the harvest is just in, then, in fact, men have plenty of food, and, as we saw, are 'full of devilry.' So they play it off. In at least four out of our seven cases fulness of bread and drink appears to me to account for the 'burst.'
This also explains (8) the Zulu licence at the rejoicing for the first fruits, 'a saturnalia, people are not supposed to be responsible for what they say or do.'[8]