Human sacrifices to water were certainly not unknown among the ancient Greeks. I need not cite more than two examples. Athenæus quotes Anticlides, an Athenian writer, as recording that certain colonists of Lesbos were directed by an oracle to throw a virgin into the sea as an offering to Poseidon. This was accordingly done; but Enalos, one of the chiefs of the expedition, being in love with the maiden, leaped after her to save her, and disappeared with her in the depths. The colonists founded Methymna; and in later years when the town had grown populous he was said to have shown himself to them again, swimming to land on a great wave with a wondrous cup of gold in his hand, and to have related that the lady was dwelling beneath the sea with the Nereids, while he himself had become Master of the Horse to Poseidon.[79.1] Such a legend as this could only have arisen where sacrifices of the kind had been practised. In historical times the Greeks performed the rites of Adonis, originally, it would seem, a Semitic cult. Adonis, the beloved of Aphrodite, according to his story, was slain by a boar. “His death was annually lamented with bitter wailing, chiefly by women; images of him, dressed to resemble corpses, were carried out as to burial, and then thrown into the sea or into springs; and in some places his revival was celebrated on the following day.”[79.2] If not in Greece, at all events in Syria, whence perhaps it was borrowed, the ceremony here described was doubtless performed with a human being. Mr. Frazer, from whom I take the foregoing description, has made a large collection of cases in which an effigy is prepared and, after the performance of certain rites, is slain and buried, or thrown into the water. We may put aside the instances of burial, only noting them as evidence that the intention is to put some living victim, represented by the effigy, to death. At Altdorf and Weingarten, villages of Swabia, a straw man is made on Ash Wednesday and called the “Carnival Fool.” He is carried round and then thrown with mournful music into the water.[80.1] At Balwe, in Westphalia, on the contrary, the straw-man is thrown into the river Hönne with shouts of joy on Shrove Tuesday. In both instances the ceremony is called “burying the Carnival.”[80.2] In the Thuringian villages of Oberhain and Maukenbach the children used to “carry out Death” in the shape of a puppet of birchen twigs, on Mid-Lent Sunday, and throw it into a pool.[80.3] “At Tabor, in Bohemia, the figure of Death is carried out of the town and flung from a high rock into the water, while” the following song is sung:
“Death swims on the water,
Summer will soon be here,
We have carried Death away for you,
We have brought the Summer.
And do thou, O holy Marketa
Give us a good year
For wheat and for rye.”[80.4]
Passing over a number of similar observances in German and Slavonic lands, I need only mention the “Funeral of Kostroma” as celebrated in Russia on Saint Peter’s day, the 29th June. “In the Murom district, Kostroma was represented by a straw figure dressed in woman’s clothes and flowers. This was laid in a trough and carried with songs to the bank of a lake or river. Here the crowd divided into two sides, of which the one attacked and the other defended the figure. At last the assailants gained the day, stripped the figure of its dress and ornaments, trod the straw of which it was made under foot, and flung it into the stream, while the defenders of the figure hid their faces in their hands, and pretended to bewail the death of Kostroma.” Elsewhere a maiden plays the part of Kostroma. She is treated with reverence, carried to the brink of a stream and there bathed.[81.1] In some Swabian villages, where the Carnival Fool is represented by a living man, he is treated less gently, being at last thrown into the water.[81.2]
All these customs are perfectly unambiguous. Whatever their agricultural significance (and I see no reason to doubt that the sense attached to them by Mannhardt and Frazer is accurate) they are unquestionably relics of human sacrifice to water. The victim may have been identified with the spirit of vegetation or with some more concrete expression of the same idea, and the ceremonies themselves may have been dramatic in character; but that is in no way inconsistent with their being also sacrificial. Moreover, we have other traces of the same kind of oblation, in the superstition so widely prevalent in this island, as well as in Germany, of the periodical victim demanded by a river or lake. On the banks of the Saal in Thuringia, especially among the fisher-folk of Jena, it is even yet believed that the Saal-nixe requires a sacrifice every year; and the lake at Salzungen boils with rage unless it obtain its yearly offering.[81.3] On the island of Rügen there is a vague tradition of a lake which would rise and overwhelm the entire country, unless a maiden were offered to it every year. At Trampke in Pomerania a peasant was once ploughing near the Lake of Madüe, when he heard a voice out of the pool cry: “Now, come! Now is the time!” He looked around him puzzled, and again the voice exclaimed in more imperious tones: “Now, come! Now is the time!” Thereupon, mastered by an uncontrollable impulse, he left the plough, rushed to the mere and flung himself in. His farm-servant, who was spreading manure, ran to his assistance and drew him out of the water; but an instant later he plunged in again and was dragged by the water-maiden down to the bottom.[82.1] Always before anybody is drowned in the Lahn near Giessen there is heard—the millers and bleachers engaged on the river are ready to vouch for it—between eleven and twelve o’clock in the day a loud cry: “The time is here, the hour is here; where is the man?” It is said that two lads were one evening by the Mümmling, not far from Michelstadt, when a voice called from under the bridge: “The hour is here, but not the man!” At that moment a man hurried down the hill and was about to jump into the river. The lads caught him, held him back, and spoke to him; but he answered never a word. They took him to the inn and pressed some wine upon him. His head, however, sank forward on the table; and he was dead. Among other German rivers which demand an annual human victim are the Fulda and the Neckar.[82.2] The Lorelei is a nixe of the Rhine, famous for the number of her slain. Nor is she alone in her misdeeds; but the legends of sirens haunting German rivers are too numerous and too well known to require illustration. An old spring at Friedberg used every year to require an offering, and if it happened that no one fell in during the year, it cried out: “Come down, come down!” and anybody who was in the neighbourhood and heard the voice would be irresistibly drawn into the fountain.[83.1] The Drome in Normandy, according to a local proverb, has every year horse or man.[83.2] Peg Powler, Nanny Powler, Peg o’ Nell, and Jenny Greenteeth, are spirits that haunt various rivers and pools in the north of England; and they are not less bloodthirsty;[83.3] while in Scotland, the kelpie and his congeners are familiar.
Among Europeans the superstition seems in this form to belong especially to Teutonic peoples. In other parts of the world, however, not a few examples are to be gleaned. The Indians of Guiana “firmly believe in the reality of” certain “mermaids, or ‘water māmās,’ as they are called in Dutch-creole; and where they are supposed to have their caves or nests, there great danger awaits the traveller. Some are related to be extremely beautiful and possessing long golden hair, like the Lorelei, and whoever casts his eye on them is seized with madness, jumps into the deep water, and never returns. Others are hideous, snakes being twined about them, and with their long white talons they drag boats under the surface and devour their occupants. On the Orinoco and Amazon similar creatures are supposed to exist; but these are capable of drawing their prey into their mouths at a distance of a hundred yards. In order to avoid such a calamity, the natives always blow a horn before entering a creek or lagoon in which one of these monsters may be living; if it happens to be there, it will immediately answer the horn, and thus give warning to the intruder.”[84.1] The people of Guiana having come under the influence of the Dutch, may be supposed to have learned the superstition from them; but this can hardly be thought of the natives of the banks of the Orinoco and the Amazons. In like manner the belief in South Africa that rivers call their victims, who cannot resist the fascination, may be attributed to the Dutch colonists. Here again the ascription of such an origin must be very doubtful, though it is perhaps right to take note of the same intrusive Teutons. The Rev. James Macdonald, who laboured for twelve years among various Bantu tribes, says that “to the Bathlapin the crocodile is sacred, and by all it is revered, but rather under the form of fear than affection”; and he regards the superstition (which reigns even where there are no crocodiles) as “the survival of an ancient recollection of the time when the ancestors of the present Kaffirs dwelt on the margin of rivers infested by these murderous brutes, and where they often saw their women drawn underneath when going to the river to fetch water.”[84.2] There may be some reason for this conjecture. It probably expresses, however, only half the truth, since if the crocodile were revered, offerings would naturally be made to it, as in fact we have seen to be the case in other parts of Africa. In Senegal the water-spirits appear in crocodile form. A legend is told of a girl to whom the spirit presented himself as a fair youth; but when she listened to his overtures he turned into a horrible cayman.[85.1] The Bantu tribes are believers also in a mysterious being called an “incanti” which often inhabits rivers, and whose glance is fatal. “While we were living at Duff,” says the writer just cited, “a man was found dead one morning close by the river’s bank, not far from the mission. It was clearly a case of suicide by poisoning, but our native neighbours regarded it as a case of having seen an incanti, and no one would approach the spot for months. The pools were bewitched, haunted, bedevilled.”[85.2] The Zulus tell of a bloated, squatting, bearded monster dwelling in rivers. It steals the clothing and ornaments of girls who come to bathe, and is capable of swallowing men and beasts. Happily, however, it is amenable to prayers.[85.3] Another “imaginary amphibious creature, mostly abiding in the deep portions of the rivers,” is the subject of Zulu superstition. It is universally believed that “aided by some mysterious and evil influence, the nature of which no one can define or explain, bad persons may enter into a league with” it, as they can also with wolves, baboons, and jackals.[86.1] On the whole it is impossible in the present state of our knowledge to lay much emphasis on the superstitions mentioned in the present paragraph, since we lack the independent evidence which we have concerning the Teutons and Slavs, of customs pointing to human sacrifices to water.
The ancient Mexicans, however, were innocent of Dutch influence. Yet, if we may believe Sahagun, they had their water-monsters as malignant as those of the Bantus. Among these monsters, and by no means the only one, was the Ahuizotl, pictorially represented as a smooth, rat-like animal with a long prehensile tail, accompanied by the sign for water. The tail was believed to be furnished at its extremity with a hand, wherewith it dragged down into the depths of the pool where it abode any person who approached the banks. A few days afterwards, the body was cast up again, and then found to be deprived of eyes, teeth, and nails. No one dared to touch it, but the priests, who, when informed of its presence, would fetch it “on a litter with great reverence and bury it in one of the oratories called Ayauhcalco—literally house in, or surrounded by, water. For it was said that the Tlalocs (or rain-gods) had sent his soul to the terrestrial paradise. They adorned the litter with mace-reeds, and it was preceded by musicians playing on flutes.” The reasons assigned for such a death were that “either the deceased had been very good, and therefore the rain-gods desired his company in the terrestrial paradise; or he had perchance certain precious stones in his possession. This would give offence to the rain-gods, who do not wish that persons should possess precious stones, and for this reason they may have killed him in anger, but nevertheless taken him to the terrestrial paradise.” His relatives found consolation, not merely in the belief that he was with the gods in paradise, but also that through him they themselves would become rich and prosperous.[87.1] Here the sacred character of the corpse, its place and manner of burial, and the superstitions concerning the departed point with tolerable certainty to a religious offering; and the conclusion is altogether in harmony with what we know of the bloodthirsty Aztec rites.
Passing with these illustrations away from sacrifices to water, and from legends of water-monsters, we may note that another object with which the sagas of dragons are connected is a hill, often shown as the creature’s resting-place. He lies curled upon it, or around it, or dwells in a cave or den. Thus the Lambton Worm lay coiled thrice about the base of an oval hill on the northern bank of the Wear. I am not aware what this oval hill may be; but some of the hills mentioned in these stories are prehistoric barrows. Mr. Andrew Lang published some years ago a story from Galloway of a snake that used to lie twined round the tumulus at Dalry. “In colour it was snow-white, and the thickest part of its body was as thick as three bags of meal. This creature was a terror to all the neighbourhood, as it not only destroyed cattle and men, but had an ugly habit of going at night to the neighbouring churchyard, digging up coffins with its claws, and devouring the newly dead.” The Lord of Galloway offered a reward for its destruction. But one of his knights was swallowed up by the serpent, horse and armour and all; and another was deterred by evil omens. The adventure was then undertaken, as at Deerhurst, by a smith, who devised a suit of armour for himself covered with long sharp spikes which could be drawn in or thrust out at the wearer’s will. Scarcely was his armour completed when the smith’s young and beautiful wife died, and was buried in the churchyard. The night after the funeral the smith came upon the brute scraping the earth from the newly-made grave, and attacked it vigorously. The snake swallowed him whole; but as he slipped down its throat he suddenly shot out his spikes, rolling about violently inside. This was more than the creature had bargained for; and in a short time the smith by strenuous efforts tore his way through his enemy’s carcase. There lay the serpent quite dead, and for three days following the river Ken ran red with its blood. “Here,” says Mr. Andrew Lang, “the story should properly end; but a later and more romantic fancy has added that at the very moment of victory the second knight arrived on the spot, and, in a fury of disappointed ambition, attacked the smith, who of course was as victorious in the second fight as he had been in the first.”[88.1] With all deference to Mr. Lang’s great authority, I venture to think that the second knight’s attack was part of the original story, embodying as it seems to do the germ of the Impostor incident so common in Rescue tales. Be this, however, as it may, the point whereto I desire to direct attention is that the connection of the snake with a prehistoric tumulus, and that of other dragons with hills or mounds, both in this country and on the Continent, is probably not without its significance. There, if anywhere, sacrifices would have been offered in early times; and their memory, transformed by the popular imagination into the form of a dragon with a propensity for human flesh, may have lingered for many a century after their abolition. But to raise this beyond the value of a conjecture careful inquiry and comparison of instances, for which I have no opportunity at present, would be required. I may point out, however, that the conjecture is countenanced by analogous legends of dragons haunting other sacred spots. At Aarhuus in Denmark, for instance, bodies placed overnight for the funeral solemnities in the cathedral frequently disappeared by the morning. A dragon whose lair was near the cathedral had eaten them. At length a strolling glazier devised a coffin of mirrors, pierced by one hole just large enough to thrust a sword through; and he caused himself to be laid within it in the cathedral. Around the coffin stood four tapers, which he lighted at midnight. When the prowling dragon beheld its reflection in the mirrors it drew nigh, deeming the image to be its mate. The glazier instantly thrust his sword through the hole of the coffin into his enemy’s throat; but he himself perished in the floods of blood and venom that spouted from the body of the dying monster. An ancient image in the church is said to preserve the memory of the heroic act, as at Mansfeld, Deerhurst, and elsewhere.[89.1]
It is hardly necessary for the completion of the argument to enumerate any stories of rescue of human sacrifices to beings confessedly worshipped as divine, or at least superhuman. Yet one or two specimens may not be without interest. They cannot be numerous, because the rescue itself implies an insult to, and almost a denial of, the divinity. Wherefore we must look for them only, or chiefly, among races who practise a tolerant religion like the Buddhist, which whithersoever its conquests extended, permitted the continuance of offerings to the overshadowed and indigenous gods. We will begin with Japan, where we have already found legends corresponding to that of Andromeda. A young warrior wandering in the northern province one evening lost his way in the mountains; and reaching at length a small secluded shrine, where there was only just room for him to lie down, he took shelter within it and soon fell fast asleep. About midnight he was awakened by a noise. Peeping through the interstices of the timber walls of his refuge, he espied a troop of cats engaged in a wild, unnatural dance by the light of the moon, and yelling in fiendish tones. As he kept perfectly still in his hiding-place and listened, he could distinguish, incessantly repeated amid their shrieks, the words: “Don’t tell Shippei Taro! Keep it secret! Don’t tell Shippei Taro!” The midnight hour passed away, and with it the mysterious cats, leaving him in peace for the rest of the night. In the morning he found a path leading to a village. As he drew near he heard a sound of weeping, and entering the nearest hut, he inquired what was the matter. He was told that the mountain-spirit required the sacrifice of a maiden every year, and the very next night was the appointed time. On further inquiry he learnt that the shrine he had just left was the scene of the offering, and that it was customary to place the victim in a cage in the immediate neighbourhood. Recalling the incidents of the past night he next inquired who Shippei Taro was, and was told that Shippei Taro was the name of the great dog belonging to the chief officer of the prince who lived not very far away. To this personage accordingly he went, and asked for the loan of the dog for the following night. After hearing his story the dog’s master consented and handed over Shippei Taro to the stranger. To arrange with the girl’s parents to keep her safely at home, and to put Shippei Taro into the cage in her stead was the next business. Having accomplished these things the youth betook himself to the shrine and awaited what would happen. At midnight when the moon had risen over the mountains the cats returned in full cry led by a gigantic black tom-cat, in whom our adventurer without difficulty recognised the dreaded mountain-spirit. The tom-cat approached the cage with hideous shrieks of delight and danced around it. At length he opened it and peered in, searching for his victim. In an instant Shippei Taro leaped upon him and held him with his teeth, while the warrior with one well-aimed blow put an end to the brute. Turning then on the other cats, hound and man speedily put them to flight and destroyed not a few. The rout was complete; and from that time no more human sacrifices have been offered to the mountain-spirit.[91.1]
One of the aboriginal tribes of India, now Buddhist, has preserved a somewhat similar instance of the abolition of these offerings. “The early religion of Láhaul is still known under the name of Lung pe Chhoi, that is, the religion of the valley. When it was flourishing many bloody, and even human, sacrifices seem to have been regularly offered up to certain Chá, that is, gods or evil spirits residing in or near old pencil cedar-trees, rocks, caves, etc. This cruel custom disappeared gradually after the doctrine of the Buddhists had influenced for a time the minds of the people. There is a story which I shall relate, as it seems to show that this was the case. Near the village of Kailang a large dry pencil cedar-tree was standing till last year, when we felled it for firewood: the story goes that before this tree in ancient times a child of eight years old was annually sacrificed to make the spirit who resided in it well disposed towards the inhabitants of Kailang. The children seem to have been supplied in turn by the different families of the village. It happened one year to be a widow who had to give up an only child of the required age of eight years. The day before her only one was to be taken from her, she was crying loudly, when a travelling Láma from Tibet met her, and asked the cause of her distress. Having heard her story, the Láma said: ‘Well, I will go instead of your child.’ He did so, but did not allow himself to be killed. ‘The spirit must kill me himself if he wants human flesh,’ said he: so saying, he sat down before the tree and waited for a long time, but as the demon made no attack on him he became angry, took down from the tree the signs and effigies, and threw them into the Bhága river, telling the people not to sacrifice any more human beings, which advice was followed from that time forward. The demon fled and settled on the top of the Koko Pass, where it still dwells under the name of Kailang Chá, or god of Kailang, getting now only the annual sacrifice of a sheep supplied by the shepherds.” The writer from whom I quote goes on to state that (contrary to the principles of Buddhism) sheep and goats are yearly killed near not a few villages in Láhaul, and offered up to the Chá, and he hazards the opinion these animals have taken the place of men.[93.1] I am not aware what evidence there may be for this substitution beyond the foregoing tradition. At Manáli in Kúlú, also in Northern India, is a temple of some antiquity to Manú Rikhi. In front of it stands an altar of stone, supporting a pile of spruce logs, which are replaced, three at a time, every three years. An annual fair is held on the spot, at which a keprá (literally, evil form) or mask of Tundi is carried about. Tundi Bhút was a local dait or demon who conquered the deotas or gods, and demanded one of their sisters in marriage. Manú in turn vanquished him at Khoksar in Lahul and compelled him to marry instead “the daughter of a Tháwi or mason, named Túnar Sháchká, who appears in other stories as a Rakhsháin.” The temple was erected to commemorate Manú’s success; but the tale does not account for the spruce logs. To explain these it is popularly said that Tundi devoured men and that Manú, having conquered him, put the logs into his mouth and killed him.[93.2] Whatever the real significance of the logs may be, it is probable that we have here a legend of the suppression of human sacrifice. Other stories of substitution have been mentioned in the course of the foregoing pages. And the legend of Abraham, which will occur to every reader, points back to a period when the fathers of the Hebrew nation, in common with the surrounding peoples, practised human sacrifices. But with substitution, as distinguished from rescue, we are hardly concerned.
Still less need we discuss the revolting subject of human sacrifice in general. The stories I have cited (and they could easily be multiplied) are intended to confirm the hypothesis that we have in the incident of the Rescue of Andromeda a reminiscence of the abolition of human sacrifices to deities in the shape of the lower animals. I have shown that in certain stages of civilisation sacrifices of the kind are practised, and that they are frequently offered to water-spirits conceived in animal form. In offerings to water, and in traditions of water-spirits, we have the product of savage animism. And it may, of course, be that the monster sent to devour Andromeda, and that which appears so often in the legend of Saint George, are to be regarded simply as the personification of water, or of specific rivers and pools, in their sinister aspect. Strictly speaking, however, personification belongs to a higher plane of thought than that which finds the spirit embodied as an actual living creature. Moreover, the dragon is by no means invariably connected with water; and in estimating the probability of this explanation we must not overlook the tales which represent it as having its abode on a hill or mound, or in a cave.