9. The same facts mark the Pondo feast of first fruits.[9]
10. In Ashanti the harvest feast is in September. 'During its continuance the grossest licence prevails; theft, intrigue, and assault go unpunished, and both sexes abandon themselves to their passions.'[10] By an extraordinary coincidence, which Mr. Frazer does not quote, 'on the fifth day' of the Ashanti harvest festival 'a criminal is sacrificed,' says Sir A. B. Ellis, 'sent as a messenger to the deceased kings.' Is the criminal attired as a mock-king?
I would venture to suggest, as a conclusion, that people indulge in these lawless excesses not so much to improve the prospects of farming as because they are 'full of devilry,' and that often they are full of devilry because they have ended their labours and are full of meat and drink. Sine Bacche et Cerere friget Venus. They therefore permit themselves a regular debauch; ranks are reversed, slaves lord it over their masters, laws are in abeyance; in Tonquin reviving law only takes notice of treason and murder. In Borne, at the Saturnalia, and at Purim among the Jews, however, a kind of Dickensite Christianicy prevailed at the period of licence; also in Persia, at the period called Purdaghân, which Hyde compares to the Sacæa and Purim: as does Lagarde, in writing on Purim.[11]
The reader will have observed that at not one of these many periods of licence, in widely severed regions and grades of civilisation, is a mock-king put to death. Indeed, nobody is put to death, except in Ashanti, and nobody is scourged. Thus, as I remarked before, the case of the mock-king at the Babylonian Sacæa is isolated, as far as our knowledge goes.
II. THE DIVINE SCAPEGOAT
In many cases, however, at expulsion of the devils, the part of devil is played by a man who is driven away, often he is beaten away. Now I have already said that, by Mr. Frazer's theory (as I understand it), the mock-king at the Sacæa was 'sacrificed' in a double rôle; namely both as the king's proxy (the king being a god) and also as Tammuz, not to speak of Marduk and Humman. To this, of course, I replied (1) that no case seemed to be given of killing a king yearly to benefit a god; (2) that I could find no case of a king being killed by proxy; (3) that when kings really were killed, it was not annually nor by the infamous death of a malefactor (hanging); (4) that there was no proof of a man being killed as Tammuz; (5) that Tammuz is nowhere said to have been hanged, or crucified, or scourged; (6) that in no case known to me is sacrifice performed by hanging, still less (if possible) by hanging after a whipping. These arguments convince me that Mr. Frazer's theory (if it is his theory) is unconvincing.
But I am not quite sure that Mr. Frazer really holds his Sacæan victim to have played two parts, at two distinct times of year. Now, however, in connection with human scapegoats, our author does certainly make a victim 'double a part.' First, it was usual to kill a beast-god or man-god 'to save his divine life from being weakened by the inroads of age.' Next, there were human scapegoats, driven away with all evil on their heads. But, suggests Mr. Frazer, 'if it occurred to people to combine these two customs, the result would be the employment of the dying god' (god-man, king, or his proxy) 'as a scapegoat. He was killed, not originally to take away sin, but to save the divine life from the degeneracy of old age; but, since he had to be killed at any rate, people may have thought that they might as well seize the opportunity to lay upon him the burden of their sufferings and sin in order that he might bear it away with him to the unknown world beyond the grave.'[12]
Even so, when a Dublin mob was about to throw a man over from the gallery of the theatre, some economist cried, 'Don't waste him: kill a fiddler with him'!
As proof that people might reason in this thrifty way we learn that, on March 15, a scapegoat man, called 'Old Mars,' was beaten at Borne and expelled. Mars, of course, was a god of vegetation, and here the man-god, 'Old Mars,' is both god and scapegoat. But he is not sacrificed, nor even hanged.[13]
In Athens during plague, drought, or famine two human scapegoats were done to death, and Mr. Frazer infers, but doubtfully, were stoned to death. This also occurred yearly at the Thargelia; the stoning is a conjecture. In Greek cities of Asia Minor, in times of calamity, an ugly or deformed man was made to eat dried figs, a barley loaf, and cheese. Then he was beaten seven times in a special manner, with squills and myrtle boughs, was burned, and the ashes were thrown into the sea. The beating at once expelled evil influences and was good for the crops. So in this ugly poor devil 'we must recognise a representative of the creating and fertilising god of vegetation.' I really must try to save him from this general doom! These stupid cruelties, if they had the usual agricultural motive, worked magically not religiously, worked by sympathetic magic, not by divine interference. This creature, though supposed to be a god of vegetation, was confessedly in appearance no Adonis![14]