The circumstantiality of this story suggests that it belongs to the extensive class of myths which are invented [pg 246] to explain ritual. For a myth is never so graphic and precise in its details as when it is a simple transcript of a ceremony which the author of the myth witnessed with his eyes. At all events, if it can be made probable that rites like those described in the Balder myth have been practised by Norsemen and by other European peoples, we shall be justified in inferring that the ritual gave birth to the myth, not the myth to the ritual. For while many cases can be shown in which a myth has been invented to explain a rite, it would be hard to point to a single case in which a myth has given rise to a rite. Ritual may be the parent of myth, but can never be its child.[652]
The main incidents in the myth of Balder's death are two; first, the pulling of the mistletoe, and second, the death and burning of the god. Now both these incidents appear to have formed parts of an annual ceremony once observed by Celts and Norsemen, probably also by Germans and Slavs.
In most parts of Europe the peasants have been accustomed from time immemorial to kindle bonfires on certain days of the year, and to dance round them or leap over them. Customs of this kind can be traced back on historical evidence to the Middle Ages,[653] and their analogy to similar customs observed in antiquity goes with strong internal evidence to prove that their origin must be sought in a period long [pg 247] prior to the spread of Christianity. Indeed the earliest evidence of their observance in Northern Europe is furnished by the attempts made by Christian synods in the eighth century to put them down as heathenish rites.[654] Not uncommonly effigies are burned in these fires, or a pretence is made of burning a living person in them; and there are grounds for believing that anciently human beings were actually burned on these occasions. A brief review of the customs in question will bring out the traces of human sacrifice, and will serve at the same time to throw light on their meaning.[655]
The seasons of the year at which these bonfires are most commonly lit are spring and midsummer, but in some places they are kindled at Hallow E'en (October 31st) and Christmas. In spring the first Sunday in Lent (Quadragesima) and Easter Eve are the days on which in different places the ceremony is observed. Thus in the Eifel Mountains, Rhenish Prussia, on the first Sunday in Lent young people used to collect straw and brushwood from house to house. These they carried to an eminence and piled them up round a tall, slim, beech-tree, to which a piece of wood was fastened at right angles to form a cross. The structure was known as the “hut” or “castle.” Fire was set to it and the young people marched round the blazing “castle” bareheaded, each carrying a lighted torch and praying aloud. Sometimes a straw man was burned in the “hut.” People observed the direction in which the smoke blew from the fire. If it blew towards the corn-fields, it was a sign that the [pg 248] harvest would be abundant. On the same day, in some parts of the Eifel, a great wheel was made of straw and dragged by three horses to the top of a hill. Thither the village boys marched at nightfall, set fire to the wheel, and sent it rolling down the slope. Two lads followed it with levers to set it in motion again, in case it should anywhere meet with a check.[656] About Echternach the same ceremony is called “burning the witch.”[657] At Voralberg in the Tyrol on the first Sunday in Lent a slender young fir-tree is surrounded with a pile of straw and fire-wood. At the top of the tree is fastened a human figure called the “witch”; it is made of old clothes and stuffed with gunpowder. At night the whole is set on fire and boys and girls dance round it, swinging torches and singing rhymes in which the words “corn in the winnowing-basket, the plough in the earth” may be distinguished.[658] In Swabia on the first Sunday in Lent a figure called the “witch” or the “old wife” or “winter's grandmother” is made up of clothes and fastened to a pole. This is stuck in the middle of a pile of wood, to which fire is applied. While the “witch” is burning the young people throw blazing discs into the air. The discs are thin round pieces of wood, a few inches in diameter, with notched edges to imitate the rays of the sun or stars. They have a hole in the middle, by which they are attached to the end of a wand. Before the disc is thrown it is set on fire, the wand is swung to and fro, and the impetus thus communicated to the disc is augmented by dashing the rod sharply against a sloping board. The burning disc is thus thrown off, and mounting [pg 249] high into the air, describes a long curve before it reaches the ground. A single lad may fling up forty or fifty of these discs, one after the other. The object is to throw them as high as possible. The wand by which they are hurled must, at least in some parts of Swabia, be of hazel. Sometimes the lads also leap over the fire brandishing blazing torches of pine-wood. The charred embers of the burned “witch” and discs are taken home and planted in the flax-fields the same night, in the belief that they will keep vermin from the fields.[659] In the Rhön Mountains, Bavaria, on the first Sunday in Lent the people used to march to the top of a hill or eminence. Children and lads carried torches, brooms daubed with tar, and poles swathed in straw. A wheel, wrapt in combustibles, was kindled and rolled down the hill; and the young people rushed about the fields with their burning torches and brooms, till at last they flung them in a heap, and standing round them, struck up a hymn or a popular song. The object of running about the fields with the blazing torches was to “drive away the wicked sower.” Or it was done in honour of the Virgin, that she might preserve the fruits of the earth throughout the year and bless them.[660]
It seems hardly possible to separate from these bonfires, kindled on the first Sunday in Lent, the fires in which, about the same season, the effigy called Death is burned as part of the ceremony of “carrying out Death.” We have seen that at Spachendorf, [pg 250] Austrian Silesia, on the morning of Rupert's Day (Shrove Tuesday?) a straw-man, dressed in a fur coat and a fur cap, is laid in a hole outside the village and there burned, and that while it is blazing every one seeks to snatch a fragment of it, which he fastens to a branch of the highest tree in his garden or buries in his field, believing that this will make the crops to grow better. The ceremony is known as the “burying of Death.”[661] Even when the straw-man is not designated as Death, the meaning of the observance is probably the same; for the name Death, as I have tried to show, does not express the original intention of the ceremony. At Cobern in the Eifel Mountains the lads make up a straw-man on Shrove Tuesday. The effigy is formally tried and accused of having perpetrated all the thefts that have been committed in the neighbourhood throughout the year. Being condemned to death, the straw-man is led through the village, shot, and burned upon a pyre. They dance round the blazing pile, and the last bride must leap over it.[662] In Oldenburg on the evening of Shrove Tuesday people used to make long bundles of straw, which they set on fire, and then ran about the fields waving them, shrieking, and singing wild songs. Finally they burnt a straw-man on the field.[663] In the district of Düsseldorf the straw-man burned on Shrove Tuesday was made of an unthreshed sheaf of corn.[664] On the first Monday after the spring equinox the urchins of Zurich drag a straw-man on a little cart through the streets, while at the same time the girls [pg 251] carry about a May-tree. When vespers ring, the straw-man is burned.[665] In the district of Aachen on Ash Wednesday a man used to be encased in peas-straw and taken to an appointed place. Here he slipped quietly out of his straw casing, which was then burned, the children thinking that it was the man who was being burned.[666] In the Val di Ledro (Tyrol) on the last day of the Carnival a figure is made up of straw and brushwood and then burned. The figure is called the Old Woman, and the ceremony “burning the Old Woman.”[667]
Another occasion on which these fire-festivals are held is Easter Eve, the Saturday before Easter Sunday. On that day it has been customary in Catholic countries to extinguish all the lights in the churches, and then to make a new fire, sometimes with flint and steel, sometimes with a burning-glass. At this fire is lit the Easter candle, which is then used to rekindle all the extinguished lights in the church. In many parts of Germany a bonfire is also kindled, by means of the new fire, on some open space near the church. It is consecrated, and the people bring sticks of oak, walnut, and beech, which they char in the fire, and then take home with them. Some of these charred sticks are thereupon burned at home in a newly-kindled fire, with a prayer that God will preserve the homestead from fire, lightning, and hail. Thus every house receives “new fire.” Some of the sticks are placed in the fields, gardens, and meadows, with a prayer that God will keep them from blight and hail. Such fields and gardens are thought to thrive more than others; the corn and the plants that grow in them are not beaten [pg 252] down by hail, nor devoured by mice, vermin, and beetles, no witch harms them, and the ears of corn stand close and full. The charred sticks are also applied to the plough. The ashes of the Easter bonfire, together with the ashes of the consecrated palm-branches, are mixed with the seed at sowing. A wooden figure called Judas is sometimes burned in the consecrated bonfire.[668]
Sometimes instead of the consecrated bonfire a profane fire used to be kindled on Easter Eve. In the afternoon the lads of the village collected firewood and carried it to a corn-field or to the top of a hill. Here they piled it together and fastened in the midst of it a pole with a cross-piece, all wrapt in straw, so that it looked like a man with outstretched arms. This figure was called the Easter-man, or the Judas. In the evening the lads lit their lanterns at the new holy fire in the church, and ran at full speed to the pile. The one who reached it first set fire to it and to the effigy. No women or girls might be present, though they were allowed to watch the scene from a distance. Great was the joy while the effigy was burning. The ashes were collected and thrown at sunrise into running water, or were scattered over the fields on Easter Monday. At the same time the palm branches which had been consecrated on Palm Sunday, and sticks which had been charred in the fire and consecrated on Good Friday, were also stuck up in the fields. The object was to preserve the fields from hail.[669] In Münsterland, these Easter fires are always kindled upon [pg 253] certain definite hills, which are hence known as Easter or Pascal Mountains. The whole community assembles about the fire. Fathers of families form an inner circle round it. An outer circle is formed by the young men and maidens, who, singing Easter hymns, march round and round the fire in the direction of the sun, till the blaze dies down. Then the girls jump over the fire in a line, one after the other, each supported by two young men who hold her hands and run beside her. When the fire has burned out, the whole assemblage marches in solemn procession to the church, singing hymns. They march thrice round the church, and then break up. In the twilight boys with blazing bundles of straw run over the fields to make them fruitful.[670] In Holland, also, Easter fires used to be kindled on the highest eminences, the people danced round them, and leaped through the flames.[671] In Schaumburg, the Easter bonfires may be seen blazing on all the mountains around for miles. They are made with a tar barrel fastened to a pine-tree, which is wrapt in straw. The people dance singing round them.[672] Easter bonfires are also common in the Harz Mountains and in Brunswick, Hanover, and Westphalia. They are generally lit upon particular heights and mountains which are hence called Easter Mountains. In the Harz the fire is commonly made by piling brushwood about a tree and setting it on fire, and blazing tar barrels are often rolled down into the valley. In Osterode, every one tries to snatch a brand from the bonfire and rushes about with it; the better it burns, the more lucky it is. In Grund there are torch [pg 254] races.[673] In the Altmark, the Easter bonfires are composed of tar barrels, bee-hives, etc., piled round a pole. The young folk dance round the fire; and when it has died out, the old folk come and collect the ashes, which they preserve as a remedy for the ailments of bees. It is also believed that as far as the blaze of the bonfire is visible, the corn will grow well throughout the year, and no conflagration will break out.[674] In some parts of Bavaria, bonfires were kindled at Easter upon steep mountains, and burning arrows or discs of wood were shot high into the air, as in the Swabian custom already described. Sometimes, instead of the discs, an old waggon wheel was wrapt in straw, set on fire, and sent rolling down the mountain. The lads who hurled the discs received painted Easter eggs from the girls.[675] In some parts of Swabia the Easter fires might not be kindled with iron or flint or steel; but only by the friction of wood.[676] At Braunröde in the Harz Mountains it was the custom to burn squirrels in the Easter bonfire.[677] In the Altmark, bones were burned in it.[678]
In the central Highlands of Scotland bonfires, known as the Beltane fires, were formerly kindled with great ceremony on the 1st of May, and the traces of human sacrifices at them were particularly clear and unequivocal. In the neighbourhood of Callander, in Perthshire, the custom lasted down to [pg 255] the close of last century. The fires were lit by the people of each hamlet on a hill or knoll round which their cattle were pasturing. Hence various eminences in the Highlands are known as “the hill of the fires,” just as in Germany some mountains take their name from the Easter fires which are kindled upon them. On the morning of May Day the people repaired to a hill or knoll and cut a round trench in the green sod, leaving in the centre a platform of turf large enough to contain the whole company. On this turf they seated themselves, and in the middle was placed a pile of wood or other fuel, which of old they kindled with tein-eigin—that is, forced fire or need-fire. The way of making the need-fire was this: “The night before, all the fires in the country were carefully extinguished, and next morning the materials for exciting this sacred fire were prepared. The most primitive method seems to be that which was used in the islands of Skye, Mull, and Tiree. A well-seasoned plank of oak was procured, in the midst of which a hole was bored. A wimble of the same timber was then applied, the end of which they fitted to the hole. But in some parts of the mainland the machinery was different. They used a frame of green wood, of a square form, in the centre of which was an axle-tree. In some places three times three persons, in others three times nine, were required for turning round, by turns, the axle-tree or wimble. If any of them had been guilty of murder, adultery, theft, or other atrocious crime, it was imagined either that the fire would not kindle, or that it would be devoid of its usual virtue. So soon as any sparks were emitted by means of the violent friction, they applied a species of agaric which grows on old birch-trees, [pg 256] and is very combustible. This fire had the appearance of being immediately derived from heaven, and manifold were the virtues ascribed to it. They esteemed it a preservative against witchcraft, and a sovereign remedy against malignant diseases, both in the human species and in cattle; and by it the strongest poisons were supposed to have their nature changed.” For many years, however, before the close of last century, the Beltane fires were kindled in the usual way. The fire being lit, the company prepared a custard of eggs and milk, which they ate. Afterwards they amused themselves a while by singing and dancing round the fire. Then “they knead a cake of oatmeal, which is toasted at the embers against a stone. After the custard is eaten up they divide the cake into so many portions, as similar as possible to one another in size and shape, as there are persons in the company. They daub one of these portions all over with charcoal until it be perfectly black. They put all the bits of cake into a bonnet. Every one, blindfold, draws out a portion. He who holds the bonnet is entitled to the last bit. Whoever draws the black bit is the devoted person who is to be sacrificed to Baal, whose favour they mean to implore, in rendering the year productive of the sustenance of man and beast.” The victim thus selected “was called cailleach bealtine—i.e. the Beltane carline, a term of great reproach. Upon his being known, part of the company laid hold of him, and made a show of putting him into the fire; but, the majority interposing, he was rescued. And in some places they laid him flat on the ground, making as if they would quarter him. Afterwards he was pelted with eggshells, and retained the odious appellation during the [pg 257] whole year. And, while the feast was fresh in people's memory, they affected to speak of the cailleach bealtine as dead.” He had to leap thrice through the flames, and this concluded the ceremony.[679]
Another account of the Beltane festival, written in the latter half of last century, is as follows: “On the 1st of May the herdsmen of every village hold their Beltien, a rural sacrifice. They cut a square trench on the ground, leaving the turf in the middle; on that they make a fire of wood, on which they dress a large caudle of eggs, butter, oatmeal, and milk, and bring, besides the ingredients of the caudle, plenty of beer and whisky; for each of the company must contribute something. The rites begin with spilling some of the caudle on the ground, by way of libation; on that every one takes a cake of oatmeal, upon which are raised nine square knobs, each dedicated to some particular being, the supposed preserver of their flocks and herds, or to some particular animal, the real destroyer of them; each person then turns his face to the fire, breaks off a knob, and, flinging it over his shoulder, says, ‘This I give to thee, preserve thou my horses; this to thee, preserve thou my sheep; and so on.’ After that they use the same ceremony to the noxious animals: ‘This I give to thee, O fox! spare thou my lambs; this to thee, O hooded crow! this to thee, O eagle!’ When the ceremony is over they dine on the caudle; and, after the feast is finished, what is left is hid by two persons deputed for that purpose; but on the next Sunday they reassemble, and finish the reliques of the [pg 258] first entertainment.”[680] The 1st of May is a great popular festival in the more midland and southern parts of Sweden. On the preceding evening huge bonfires, which should be lighted by striking two flints together, blaze on all the hills and knolls. Every large hamlet has its own fire, round which the young people dance in a ring. The old folk notice whether the flames incline to the north or to the south. In the former case the spring will be cold and backward; in the latter mild and genial.[681]
But the season at which these fire-festivals are most generally held all over Europe is the summer solstice, that is, Midsummer Eve (23d June) or Midsummer Day (24th June). According to a mediæval writer the three great features of this festival were the bonfires, the procession with torches round the fields, and the custom of rolling a wheel. The writer adds that the smoke drives away harmful dragons which cause sickness, and he explains the custom of rolling the wheel to mean that the sun has now reached the highest point in the ecliptic, and begins thenceforward to descend.[682] From his description, which is still applicable, we see that the main features of the midsummer fire-festival are identical with those which characterise the spring festivals. In Swabia lads and lasses, hand in hand, leap over the midsummer bonfire, praying that the hemp may grow three ells high, and they set fire to wheels of straw and send them rolling down the hill.[683] In Lechrain bonfires are kindled on [pg 259] the mountains on Midsummer Day; and besides the bonfire a tall beam, thickly wrapt in straw, and surmounted by a cross-piece, is burned in many places. Round this cross, as it burns, the lads dance; and when the flames have subsided, the young people leap over the fire in pairs, a young man and a young woman together. It is believed that the flax will grow that year as high as they leap over the fire; and that if a charred billet be taken from the fire and stuck in a flax field it will promote the growth of the flax.[684] At Deffingen, as they jumped over the midsummer bonfire, they cried out, “Flax, flax! may the flax this year grow seven ells high!”[685] In Bohemia bonfires are kindled on many of the mountains on Midsummer Eve; boys and girls, hand in hand, leap over them; cart-wheels smeared with resin are ignited and sent rolling down the hill; and brooms covered with tar and set on fire are swung about or thrown high into the air. The handles of the brooms or embers from the fire are preserved and stuck in gardens to protect the vegetables from caterpillars and gnats. Sometimes the boys run down the hillside in troops, brandishing the blazing brooms and shouting. The bonfire is sometimes made by stacking wood and branches round the trunk of a tree and setting the whole on fire.[686]