DEMETER.
The figure of Demeter, the mater dolorosa of paganism, the sorrowing mother seated on the stone of lamentation, is the most touching in Greek mythology. The beautiful marble statue found by Mr. Newton at Cnidos, and now in the British Museum, has the sentiment and the expression of a Madonna. Nowhere in ancient religion was human love, regret, hope and desiderium or wistful longing typified so clearly as in the myth and ritual of Demeter. She is severed from her daughter, Persephone, who goes down among the dead, but they are restored to each other in the joy of the spring's renewal. The mysteries of Eleusis, which represented these events in a miracle-play, were certainly understood by Plato and Pindar and Æschylus to have a mystic and pathetic significance. They shadowed forth the consolations that the soul has fancied for herself, and gave promise of renewed and undisturbed existence in the society of all who have been dear on earth. Yet Aristophanes, in the Frogs, ventures even here to bring in his raillery, and makes Xanthias hint that the mystæ, the initiate, "smell of roast-pig". No doubt they had been solemnly sacrificing, and probably tasting the flesh of the pig, the sacred animal of Demeter, whose bones, with clay or marble figurines representing him, are found in the holy soil of her temples. Thus even in the mystery of Demeter the grotesque, the barbaric element appears, and it often declares itself in her legend and in her ritual.
A scientific study of Demeter must endeavour to disentangle the two main factors in her myth and cult, and to hold them apart. For this purpose it is necessary to examine the development of the cult as far as it can be traced.
As to the name of the goddess, for once there is agreement, and even certainty. It seems hardly to be disputed that Demeter is Greek, and means mother-earth or earth the mother.*
* Welcker, Oriech. QML, i. 385-387; Preller, i. 618, note 2;
Maury, Rel. des Grdes, L 69. Apparently "A" still means
earth in Albanian; Max Müller, Selected Essays, ii. 428.
There is his mythological panacea. Mannhardt is all for "Corn-mother," Corn being nothing peculiarly Hellenic or Aryan in the adoration of earth. A comparative study of earth-worship would prove it to be very widely diffused, even among non-European tribes. The Demeter cult, however, is distinct enough from the myth of Gæa, the Earth, considered as, in conjunction with Heaven, the parent of the gods. Demeter is rather the fruitful soil regarded as a person than the elder Titanic formless earth personified as Gæa. Thus conceived as the foster-mother of life, earth is worshipped in America by the Shawnees and Potawatomies as Me-mk-kum-mik-o-kwi, the "mother of earth" It will be shown that this goddess appears casually in a Potawatomie legend, which is merely a savage version of the sacred story of Eleusis.* Tacitus found that Mother Hertha was adored in Germany with rites so mysterious that the slaves who took part in them were drowned. "Whereof ariseth a secret terror and an holy ignorance what that should be which they only see who are a-perishing."** It is curious that in the folk-lore of Europe, up to this century, food-offerings to the earth were buried in Germany and by Gipsies; for the same rite is practised by the Potawatomies.***
* Compare Maury, Religions de la Grece, i. 72.
** Germania, 40, translation of 1622.
*** Compare Tylor, Prim. Cult, ii. 273, with Father De Smet,
Oregon Missions, New York, 1847, p. 351.
The Mexican Demeter, Centeotl, is well known, and Acosta's account of religious ceremonies connected with harvest in Mexico and Peru might almost be taken for a description of the Greek Eiresione. The god of agriculture among the Tongan Islanders has one very curious point of resemblance to Demeter. In the Iliad (v. 505) we read that Demeter presides over the fanning of the grain. "Even as a wind carrieth the chaff about the sacred threshing-floors when men are winnowing, what time golden Demeter, in rush of wind, maketh division of grain and chaff.".... Now the name of the "god of wind, and weather, rain, harvest and vegetation in general" in the Tongan Islands is Alo-Alo, literally "to fan".* One is reminded of Joachim Du Bellay's poem, "To the Winnowers of Corn". Thus from all these widely diffused examples it is manifest that the idea of a divinity of earth, considered as the mother of fruits, and as powerful for good or harm in harvest-time, is anything but peculiar to Greece or to Aryan peoples. In her character as potent over this department of agriculture, the Greek goddess was named "she of the rich threshing-floors," "of the corn heaps," "of the corn in the ear," "of the harvest-home," "of the sheaves," "of the fair fruits," "of the goodly gifts," and so forth.**
* Mariner's Tonga Islands, 1827, ii. 107. The Attic
Eiresioni may be studied in Mannhardt, Wald und Feld Qultus,
it 312, and Aztec and Peruvian harvest rites of a similar
character in Custom and Myth, pp. 17-20. See also Prim.
Quit., ii. 306, for other examples.
** Welcker, ii, 468-470, a collection of such titles.