[765]. W. R. S. Ralston, The Songs of the Russian People, pp. 120 sq. Ralston held that the Russian house-spirit Domovoy, who is supposed to live behind the stove, is the modern representative of an ancestral spirit. Compare ibid. pp. 84, 86, 119.
[766]. Evidence of this view will be adduced later on. See The Golden Bough, Second Edition, iii. 456.
[767]. See above, pp. [185] sq.
[768]. L. v. Schroeder, Die Hochzeitsbräuche der Esten (Berlin, 1888), pp. 129 sq.
[770]. Th. Mommsen, History of Rome, New Edition (London, 1894), i. 215 sq.; J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii. 2nd Ed., p. 326; W. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, p. 147. For another derivation of their name see below, p. [247].
[772]. H. Vaughan Stevens, “Mitteilungen aus dem Frauenleben der Ôrang Belendas, der Ôrang Djâkun und der Ôrang Lâut,” bearbeitet von Dr. Max Bartels, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xxviii. (1896) pp. 168 sq. The writer adds that any person, boy, man, or woman (provided she was not menstruous) might light the fire, if it were more convenient that he or she should do so. Thus the co-operation of a married man and an unmarried girl, though apparently deemed the best, was not the only permissible way of igniting the wood. The good faith or at all events the accuracy of the late German traveller H. Vaughan Stevens is not, I understand, above suspicion; but Mr. Nelson Annandale, joint author of Fasciculi Malayenses, writes to me of him that “he certainly had a knowledge and experience of the wild tribes of the Malay region which few or none have excelled, for he lived literally as one of themselves.”
[773]. Prof. Vl. Titelbach, “Das heilige Feuer bei den Balkanslaven,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, xiii. (1900) pp. 2-4. The ceremony witnessed by Prof. Titelbach will be described later on in this work. Kinglake rode through the great Servian forest on his way from Belgrade to Constantinople, and from his description (Eothen, ch. ii.) we gather that it is chiefly composed of oak. He says: “Endless and endless now on either side the tall oaks closed in their ranks, and stood gloomily lowering over us.”
[774]. Ch. Gilhodes, “La Culture matérielle des Katchins (Birmanie),” Anthropos, v. (1910) p. 629.