[351] Pearson, ii. 1 (Essay on Woman as Witch); cf. A.-S. spells in Kemble, i. 528, and Cockayne, Leechdoms (R. S.), iii. 35, 55. Early and mediaeval Christianity did not deny the existence of the heathen gods, but treated them as evil spirits, demons.
[352] An Essex case of 664 has just been quoted. Kemble, i. 358, gives two later ones from the Chronicle of Lanercost. In 1268 ‘cum hoc anno in Laodonia pestis grassaretur in pecudes armenti, quam vocant usitate Lungessouth, quidam bestiales, habitu claustrales non animo, docebant idiotas patriae ignem confrictione de lignis educere et simulachrum Priapi statuere, et per haec bestiis succurrere.’ In 1282 ‘sacerdos parochialis, nomine Johannes, Priapi prophana parans, congregatis ex villa puellulis, cogebat eis, choreis factis, Libero patri circuire.’ By Priapus-Liber is probably meant Freyr, the only Teutonic god known to have had Priapic characteristics (Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis Eccles. Pontif. iv. 26 in M. G. H. Script. vii. 267).
[353] Grimm, i. 5, 11, 64, 174; iii. xxxiv-xlv; Keary, 90; Pearson, ii. 16, 32, 42, 243, 285, 350. The Virgin Mary succeeds to the place of the old Teutonic goddess of fertility, Freyja, Nerthus. So elsewhere does St. Walpurg. The toasts or minni drunk to Odin and Freyja are transferred to St. John and St. Gertrude. The travels of Odin and Loki become the travels of Christ and St. Peter. Many examples of the adaptation of pre-existing customs to Christianity will be found in the course of this book. A capitulary of Karlmann, drawn up in 742 after the synod of Ratisbon held by Boniface in Germany, speaks of ‘hostias immolatitias, quas stulti homines iuxta ecclesias ritu pagano faciunt sub nomine sanctorum martyrum vel confessorum’ (Boretius, Capitularia Reg. Franc. i. 24 in M. G. H.; Mansi, xii. 367). At Kirkcudbright in the twelfth century bulls were killed ‘as an alms and oblation to St. Cuthbert’ (F. L. x. 353).
[354] In the present state of Gaulish and still more of Irish studies, only a glimmering of possible equations between Teutonic and Keltic gods is apparent.
[355] Recent ethnological research is summed up in G. Vacher de Lapouge, L’Aryen (1899); W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe (1900); A. H. Keane, Ethnology (1896); Man, Past and Present (1899); J. Deniker, The Races of Man (1900); G. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race (1901). The three racial types that, in many pure and hybrid forms, mainly compose the population of Europe may be distinguished as (1) Homo Europaeus, the tall blonde long-headed (dolichocephalic) race of north Europe, (including Teutons and red-haired ‘Kelts’), to which the Aryan speech seems primarily to have belonged; (2) Homo alpinus, the medium coloured and sized brachycephalic (round-headed) race of central Europe; (3) Homo meridionalis (Lapouge) or mediterranensis (Keane), the small dark dolichocephalic race of the Mediterranean basin and the western isles (including dark ‘Kelts’). During the formative period of European culture (2) was probably of little importance, and (1) and (3) are possibly of closer racial affinity to each other than either of them is to (2).
[356] Gomme, Ethnology in Folk-lore, 21; Village Community, 69; Report of Brit. Ass. (1896), 626; F. L. Congress, 348; F. L. x. 129, ascribes the fire customs of Europe to Aryans and the water customs to the pre-Aryans. A. Bertrand, Religion des Gaulois, 68, considers human sacrifice characteristically pre-Aryan. There seems to me more hope of arriving at a knowledge of specific Mediterranean cults, before the Aryan intermixture, from a study of the stone amulets and cup-markings of the megaliths (Bertrand, op. cit. 42) or from such investigations into ‘Mycenaean’ antiquity as that of A. J. Evans, Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult (1901). The speculations of Nietzsche, in A Genealogy of Morals and elsewhere, as to the altruistic ‘slave’ morality of the pre-Aryan and the self-regarding morality of the conquering Aryan ‘blond beast’ are amusing or pitiful reading, according to one’s mood.
[357] Frazer, G. B. i. 9 ‘The fundamental principles on which it [savage magic] is based would seem to be reducible to two: first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and second, that things which have once been in contact, but have ceased to be so, continue to act upon each other as if the contact still persisted. From the first of these principles, the savage infers that he can produce any desired effect merely by imitating it; from the second he concludes that he can influence at pleasure and at any distance any person of whom, or any thing of which, he possesses a particle. Magic of the latter sort, resting as it does on the belief in a certain secret sympathy which unites indissolubly things that have once been connected with each other may appropriately be termed sympathetic in the strict sense of the term. Magic of the former kind, in which the supposed cause resembles or simulates the supposed effect, may conveniently be described as imitative or mimetic.’ Cf. Jevons, 31 ‘The savage makes the generalization that like produces like; and then he is provided with the means of bringing about anything he wishes, for to produce an effect he has only to imitate it. To cause a wind to blow, he flaps a blanket, as the sailor still whistles to bring a whistling gale.... If the vegetation requires rain, all that is needed is to dip a branch in water, and with it to sprinkle the ground. Or a spray of water squirted from the mouth will produce a mist sufficiently like the mist required to produce the desired effect; or black clouds of smoke will be followed by black clouds of rain.’ I do not feel that magic is altogether a happy term for this sort of savage science. In its ordinary sense (the ‘black art’), it certainly contains a large element of what Dr. Frazer distinguishes from magic as religion, ‘a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.’ True, these powers are not to whom the orthodox religion is directed, but the approach to them is religious in the sense of the above definition. Such magic is in fact an amalgam of charms, which are Dr. Frazer’s ‘magic,’ and spells, which are his ‘religion.’ But so are many more recognized cults.
[358] Some facts of European animal worship are dealt with in two important recent papers, one by S. Reinach in Revue celtique, xxi. 269, the other by N. W. Thomas, in F. L. xi. 227. The relation of such worship to the group of savage social institutions classed as totemism is a difficult and far from solved problem, which cannot be touched upon here.
[359] Gummere, 39; Caesar, de B. G. iv. 1. 7; vi. 22. 2; Tacitus, Germ. 26.
[360] Schräder-Jevons, 281, says that the Indo-Europeans begin their history ‘acquainted with the rudiments of agriculture,’ but ‘still possessed with nomadic tendencies.’ He adds that considerable progress must have been made before the dispersion of the European branches, and points out that agriculture would naturally develop when the migratory hordes from the steppes reached the great forests of central Europe. For this there would be two reasons, the greater fertility of the soil and the narrowed space for pasturage. On the other hand, V. Hehn, Culturpflanzen und Haustiere, and Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, i. 16, find the traces of agriculture amongst the undivided Indo-Europeans very slight; the word yáva-ζέα, which is common to the tongues, need mean nothing more than a wild cereal.