Probably, therefore, the alternative explanation of Dr. Frazer’s own facts given by Dr. Jevons is preferable. According to this the death of the human victim arises out of the circumstances of the animal sacrifice. The slaying of the divine animal is an act approached by the tribe with mingled feelings. It is necessary, in order to renew the all-essential blood-bond between the god and his worshippers. And at the same time it is an act of sacrilege; it is killing the god. There is some hesitation amongst the assembled worshippers. Who will dare the deed and face its consequences? ‘The clansman,’ says Dr. Jevons, ‘whose religious conviction of the clan’s need of communion with the god was deepest, would eventually and after long waiting be the one to strike, and take upon himself the issue, for the sake of his fellow men.’ This issue would be twofold. The slayer would be exalted in the eyes of his fellows. He would naturally be the first to drink the shed blood of the god. A double portion of the divine spirit would enter into him. He would become, for a while, the leader, the priest-king, of the community. At the same time he would incur blood-guiltiness. And in a year’s time, when his sanctity was exhausted, the penalty would have to be paid. His death would accompany the renewal of the bond by a fresh sacrifice, implying in its turn the self-devotion of a fresh annual king[444].
These theories belong to a region of somewhat shadowy conjecture. If Dr. Jevons is right, it would seem to follow that, as has already been suggested, the human death at an annual festival was not initially sacrifice. It accompanied, but did not replace the sacramental slaughter of a divine animal. But when the animal sacrifice had itself changed its character, and was looked upon, no longer as an act of communion with the god, but as an offering or bribe made to him, then a new conception of the human death also was required. When the animal ceased to be recognized as the god, the need of a punishment for slaying it disappeared. But the human death could not be left meaningless, and its meaning was assimilated to that of the animal sacrifice itself. It also became an oblation, the greatest that could be offered by the tribe to its protector and its judge. And no doubt this was the conscious view taken of the matter by Kelts and Teutons at the time when they appear in history. The human sacrifice was on the same footing as the animal sacrifice, but it was a more binding, a more potent, a more solemn appeal.
In whatever way human sacrifice originated, it was obviously destined, with the advance of civilization, to undergo modification. Not only would the growing moral sense of mankind learn to hold it a dark and terrible thing, but also to go on killing the leading man of the tribe, the king-priest, would have its obvious practical inconveniences. At first, indeed, these would not be great. The king-priest would be little more than a rain-maker, a rex sacrorum, and one man might perform the ceremonial observances as well as another. But as time went on, and the tribe settled down to a comparatively civilized life, the serious functions of its leader would increase. He would become the arbiter of justice, the adviser in debate; above all, when war grew into importance, the captain in battle. And to spare and replace, year by year, the wisest councillor and the bravest warrior would grow into an intolerable burden. Under some such circumstances, one can hardly doubt, a process of substitution set in. Somebody had to die for the king. At first, perhaps, the substitute was an inferior member of the king’s own house, or even an ordinary tribesman, chosen by lot. But the process, once begun, was sure to continue, and presently it was sufficient if a life of little value, that of a prisoner, a slave, a criminal, a stranger within the gates, was sacrificed[445]. The common belief in madness or imbecility as a sign of divine possession may perhaps have contributed to make the village fool or natural seem a particularly suitable victim. But to the very end of Teutonic and Keltic heathenism, the sense that the substitute was, after all, only a substitute can be traced. In times of great stress or danger, indeed, the king might still be called upon to suffer in person[446]. And always a certain pretence that the victim was the king was kept up. Even though a slave or criminal, he was for a few days preceding the sacrifice treated royally. He was a temporary king, was richly dressed and feasted, had a crown set on his head, and was permitted to hold revel with his fellows. The farce was played out in the sight of men and gods[447]. Ultimately, of course, the natural growth of the sanctity of human life in a progressive people, or in an unprogressive people the pressure of outside ideals[448], forbids the sacrifice of a man at all. Perhaps the temporary king is still chosen, and even some symbolic mimicked slaying of him takes place; but actually he does not die. An animal takes his place upon the altar; or more strictly speaking, an animal remains the last victim, as it had been the first, and in myth is regarded as a substitute for the human victim which for a time had shared its fate. Of such a myth the legends of Abraham and Isaac and of Iphigeneia at Aulis are the classical examples.
There is another group of myths for which, although they lack this element of a substituted victim, mythologists find an origin in a reformation of religious sentiment leading to the abolition of human sacrifice. The classical legend of Perseus and Andromeda, the hagiological legend of St. George and the Dragon, the Teutonic legend of Beowulf and Grendel, are only types of innumerable tales in which the hero puts an end to the periodical death of a victim by slaying the monster who has enforced and profited by it[449]. What is such a story but the imaginative statement of the fact that such sacrifices at one time were, and are not? It is, however, noticeable, that in the majority of these stories, although not in all, the dragon or monster slain has his dwelling in water, and this leads to the consideration of yet another sophistication of the primitive notion of sacrifice. According to this notion sacrifice was necessarily bloody; in the shedding of blood and in the sacrament of blood partaken of by the worshippers, lay the whole gist of the rite: a bloodless sacrifice would have no raison d’être. On the other hand, the myths just referred to seem to imply a bloodless sacrifice by drowning, and this notion is confirmed by an occasional bit of ritual, and by the common superstition which represents the spirits of certain lakes and rivers as claiming a periodical victim in the shape of a drowned person[450]. Similarly there are traces of sacrifices, which must have been equally bloodless, by fire. At the Beltane festival, for instance, one member of the party is chosen by lot to be the ‘victim,’ is made to jump over the flames and is spoken of in jest as ‘dead[451].’ Various Roman writers, who apparently draw from the second-century B.C. Greek explorer Posidonius, ascribe to the Druids of Gaul a custom of burning human and other victims at quinquennial feasts in colossal images of hollow wickerwork; and squirrels, cats, snakes and other creatures are frequently burnt in modern festival-fires[452]. The constant practice, indeed, of burning bones in such fires has given them the specific name of bonfires, and it may be taken for granted that the bones are only representatives of more complete victims. I would suggest that such sacrifices by water and fire are really developments of the water-and fire-charms described in the last chapter; and that just as the original notion of sacrifice has been extended to give a new significance to the death of a human being at a religious festival, when the real reason for that death had been forgotten, so it has been still further extended to cover the primitive water-and fire-charms when they too had become meaningless. I mean that at a festival the victims, like the image and the worshippers, were doubtless habitually flung into water or passed through fire as part of the charm; and that, at a time when sacrifice had grown into mere oblation and the shedding of blood was therefore no longer essential, these rites were adapted and given new life as alternative methods of effecting the sacrifice.
It is not surprising that there should be but few direct and evident survivals of sacrifice in English village custom. For at the time of the conversion the rite must have borne the whole brunt of the missionary attack. The other elements of the festivals, the sacred garlands, the water-and fire-charms, had already lost much of their original significance. A judgement predisposed to toleration might plausibly look upon them as custom rather than worship. It was not so with sacrifice. This too had had its history, and in divers ways changed its character. But it was still essentially a liturgy. Oblation or sacrament, it could not possibly be dissociated from a recognition of the divine nature of the power in whose honour it took place. And therefore it must necessarily be renounced, as a condition of acceptance in the Church at all, by the most weak-kneed convert. What happened was precisely that to which Gregory the Great looked forward. The sacrificial banquet, the great chines of flesh, and the beakers of ale, cider, and mead, endured, but the central rite of the old festival, the ceremonial slaying of the animal, vanished. The exceptions, however, are not so rare as might at first sight be thought, and naturally they are of singular interest. It has already been pointed out that in times of stress and trouble, the thinly veneered heathenism of the country folk long tended to break out, and in particular that up to a very late date the primitive need-fire was occasionally revived to meet the exigencies of a cattle-plague. Under precisely similar circumstances, and sometimes in immediate connexion with the need-fire, cattle have been known, even during the present century, to be sacrificed[453]. Nor are such sporadic instances the only ones that can be adduced. Here and there sacrifice, in a more or less modified form, remains an incident in the village festival. The alleged custom of annually sacrificing a sheep on May-day at Andreas in the Isle of Man rests on slight evidence[454]; but there is a fairly well authenticated example in the ‘ram feast’ formerly held on the same day in the village of Holne in Devonshire. A ram was slain at a granite pillar or ancient altar in the village ‘ploy-field,’ and a struggle took place for slices which were supposed to bring luck[455]. Still more degenerate survivals are afforded by the Whitsun feast at King’s Teignton, also in Devonshire[456], and by the Whitsun ‘lamb feast’ at Kidlington[457], the Trinity ‘lamb ale’ at Kirtlington[458], and the ‘Whit hunt’ in Wychwood Forest[459], all three places lying close together in Oxfordshire. These five cases have been carefully recorded and studied; but they do not stand alone; for the folk-calendar affords numerous examples of days which are marked, either universally or locally, by the ceremonial hunting or killing of some wild or domestic animal, or by the consumption of a particular dish which readily betrays its sacrificial origin[460]. The appearance of animals in ecclesiastical processions in St. Paul’s cathedral[461] and at Bury St. Edmunds[462] is especially significant; and it is natural to find an origin for the old English sport of bull-baiting rather in a survival of heathen ritual than in any reminiscence of the Roman amphitheatre[463]. Even where sacrifice itself has vanished, the minor rites which once accompanied it are still perpetuated in the superstitions or the festival customs of the peasantry. The heads and hides of horses or cattle, like the exuviae of the sacrificial victims, are worn or carried in dance, procession or quête[464]. The dead bodies of animals are suspended by shepherds or game-keepers upon tree and barn-door, from immemorial habit or from some vague suspicion of the luck they will bring. Although inquiry will perhaps elicit the fallacious explanation that they are there pour encourager les autres[465]. In the following chapters an attempt will be made to show how widely sacrifice is represented in popular amusements and ludi. Here it will be sufficient to call attention to two personages who figure largely in innumerable village festivals. One is the ‘hobby-horse,’ not yet, though Shakespeare will have it so, ‘forgot[466]’: the other the ‘fool’ or ‘squire,’ a buffoon with a pendent cow’s tail, who is in many places de rigueur in Maying or rushbearing[467]. Both of these grotesques seem to be at bottom nothing but worshippers careering in the skins of sacrificed animals.
The cereal or liquor sacrifice is of less importance. Sugar and water, which may be conjectured to represent mead, is occasionally drunk beside a sacred well, and in one instance, at least, bread and cheese are thrown into the depths. Sometimes also a ploughman carries bread and cheese in his pocket when he goes abroad to cut the first furrow[468]. But the original rite is probably most nearly preserved in the custom of ‘youling’ fruit-trees to secure a good crop. When this is done, at Christmas or Ascension-tide, ale or cider is poured on the roots of the trees, and a cake placed in a fork of the boughs. Here and there a cake is also hung on the horn of an ox in the stall[469]. Doubtless the ‘feasten’ cake, of traditional shape and composition, which pervades the country, is in its origin sacramental[470]. Commonly enough, it represents an animal or human being, and in such cases it may be held, while retaining its own character of a cereal sacrifice, to be also a substitute for the animal or human sacrifice with which it should by rights be associated[471].
An unauthenticated and somewhat incredible story has been brought from Italy to the effect that the mountaineers of the Abruzzi are still in the habit of offering up a human sacrifice in Holy week[472]. In these islands a reminiscence of the observance is preserved in the ‘victim’ of the Beltane festival[473], and a transformation of it in the whipping of lads when the bounds are beaten in the Rogations[474]. Some others, less obvious, will be suggested in the sequel. In any case one ceremony which, as has been seen, grew out of human sacrifice, has proved remarkably enduring. This is the election of the temporary king. Originally chosen out of the lowest of the people for death, and fêted as the equivalent or double of the real king-priest of the community, he has survived the tragic event which gave him birth, and plays a great part as the master of the ceremonies in many a village revel. The English ‘May-king,’ or ‘summer-king,’ or ‘harvest-lord[475],’ or ‘mock-mayor[476],’ is a very familiar personage, and can be even more abundantly paralleled from continental festivals[477]. To the May-king in particular we shall return. But in concluding this chapter it is worth while to point out and account for two variants of the custom under consideration. In many cases, probably in the majority of cases so far as the English May-day is concerned, the king is not a king, but a queen. Often, indeed, the part is played by a lad in woman’s clothes, but this seems only to emphasize the fact that the temporary ruler is traditionally regarded as a female one[478]. It is probable that we have here no modern development, but a primitive element in the agricultural worship. Tacitus records the presence amongst the Germans of a male priest ‘adorned as women use[479],’ while the exchange of garments by the sexes is included amongst festival abuses in the ecclesiastical discipline-books[480]. Occasionally, moreover, the agricultural festivals, like those of the Bona Dea at Rome, are strictly feminine functions, from which all men are excluded[481]. Naturally I regard these facts as supporting my view of the origin of the agricultural worship in a women’s cult, upon which the pastoral cult of the men was afterwards engrafted. And finally, there are cases in which not a king alone nor a queen alone is found, but a king and a queen[482]. This also would be a reasonable outcome of the merging of the two cults. Some districts know the May-queen as the May-bride, and it is possible that a symbolical wedding of a priest and priestess may have been one of the regular rites of the summer festivals. For this there seem to be some parallels in Greek and Roman custom, while the myth which represents the heaven as the fertilizing husband of the fruitful earth is of hoar antiquity amongst the Aryan-speaking peoples. The forces which make for the fertility of the fields were certainly identified in worship with those which make for human fertility. The waters of the sacred well or the blaze of the festival fire help the growth of the crops; they also help women in their desire for a lover and for motherhood. And it may be taken for granted that the summer festivals knew from the beginning that element of sexual licence which fourteen centuries of Christianity have not wholly been able to banish[483].
CHAPTER VII
FESTIVAL PLAY
[Bibliographical Note.—A systematic revision of J. Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801, ed. W. Hone, 1830), is, as in the case of Brand’s book, much needed. On the psychology of play should be consulted K. Groos, Die Spiele der Thiere (1896, transl. 1898), and Die Spiele der Menschen (1899, transl. 1901). Various anthropological aspects of play are discussed by A. C. Haddon, The Study of Man (1898), and the elaborate dictionary of The Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland by Mrs. A. B. Gomme (1894-8) may be supplemented from W. W. Newell, Games and Songs of American Children (1884), H. C. Bolton, The Counting-Out Rhymes of Children (1888), E. W. B. Nicholson, Golspie (1897), and R. C. Maclagan, The Games and Diversions of Argyleshire (F.L.S. 1901). The charivari is treated by C. R. B. Barrett, Riding Skimmington and Riding the Stang in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association, N. S. i. 58, and C. Noirot, L’Origine des Masques (1609), reprinted with illustrative matter by C. Leber, Dissertations relatives à l’Histoire de France, vol. ix. The account of the Coventry Hox Tuesday Play given in Robert Laneham’s Letter (1575) will be found in Appendix H.]
The charms, the prayer, the sacrifice, make up that side of the agricultural festival which may properly be regarded as cult: they do not make up the whole of it. It is natural to ask whether, side by side with the observances of a natural religion, there were any of a more spiritual type; whether the village gods of our Keltic and Teutonic ancestors were approached on festival occasions solely as the givers of the good things of earth, or whether there was also any recognition of the higher character which in time they came to have as the guardians of morality, such as we can trace alike in the ritual of Eleusis and in the tribal mysteries of some existing savage peoples. It is not improbable that this was so; but it may be doubted whether there is much available evidence on the matter, and, in any case, it cannot be gone into here[484]. There is, however, a third element of the village festival which does demand consideration, and that is the element of play. The day of sacrifice was also a day of cessation from the ordinary toil of the fields, a holiday as well as a holy day. Sacred and secular met in the amorous encounters smiled upon by the liberal wood-goddess, and in the sacramental banquet with its collops of flesh and spilth of ale and mead. But the experience of any bank holiday will show that, for those who labour, the suspension of their ordinary avocations does not mean quiescence. When the blood is heated with love and liquor, the nervous energies habitually devoted to wielding the goad and guiding the plough must find vent in new and for the nonce unprofitable activities. But such activities, self-sufficing, and primarily at least serving no end beyond themselves, are, from pushpin to poetry, exactly what is meant by play[485].