|The Parilia was perhaps the time when the flocks and herds were turned out for the first time in spring to graze in the open.| The Parilia was generally considered to be the best time for coupling the rams and the ewes;[[1068]] and it has been suggested that it was also the season when the flocks and herds, after being folded and stalled throughout the winter, were turned out for the first time to pasture in spring.[[1069]] The occasion is an anxious one for the shepherd, especially in countries which are infested with wolves, as ancient Italy was.[[1070]] Accordingly the Italian shepherd propitiated Pales with a slaughtered victim before he drove his flocks afield in spring;[[1071]] but it is doubtful whether this sacrifice formed part of the Parilia. None of the ancient authors who expressly describe the Parilia mention the slaughter of a victim; and in Plutarch’s day a tradition ran that of old no blood was shed at the festival.[[1072]] But such a tradition seems to point to a contrary practice in after-times. In the absence of decisive evidence the question must be left open; but modern analogy, as we shall see, strongly supports the opinion that immediately at the close of the Parilia the flocks and herds were driven out to graze in the open pastures for the first time after their long winter confinement. On this view a special significance is seen to attach to some of the features of the festival, such as the prayer for protection against the wolf; for the brute could hardly do the sheep and kine much harm so long as they were safely pent within the walls of the sheepcote and the cattle-stall.
|The Roman kings had perhaps to discharge some important religious function at the Parilia.| As the Parilia is said to have been celebrated by Romulus, who sacrificed to the gods and caused the people to purify themselves by leaping over flames,[[1073]] some scholars have inferred that it was customary for the king, and afterwards for his successor, the chief pontiff, or the King of the Sacred Rites, to offer sacrifices for the people at the Parilia.[[1074]] The inference is reasonable and receives some confirmation, as we shall see presently, from the analogy of modern custom. Further, the tradition that Numa was born on the day of the Parilia may be thought to point in the same way, since it is most naturally explicable on the hypothesis that the king had to discharge some important function at the festival. Still, it must be confessed that the positive evidence for connecting the Roman kings with the celebration of the twenty-first of April is slight and dubious.
|The Parilia intended to ensure the welfare of the cattle and to guard them against witches and wolves.| On the whole the festival of the Parilia, which probably fell at or near the time of turning out the cattle to pasture in spring, was designed to ensure their welfare and increase, and to guard them from the insidious machinations or the open attacks of their various enemies, among whom witches and wolves were perhaps the most dreaded.
|A celebration of the same sort is still held in eastern Europe on the twenty-third of April, the festival of St. George, the patron saint of cattle, horses, and wolves.| Now it can hardly be a mere coincidence that down to modern times a great popular festival of this sort has been celebrated only two days later by the herdsmen and shepherds of eastern Europe, who still cherish a profound belief in witchcraft, and still fear, with far better reason, the raids of wolves on their flocks and herds. The festival falls on the twenty-third of April and is dedicated to St. George, the patron saint of cattle, horses, and wolves. The Esthonians say that on St. George’s morning the wolf gets a ring round his snout and a halter about his neck, whereby he is rendered less dangerous till Michaelmas. But if the day should chance to be a Friday at full moon, or if before the day came round any person should have been so rash as to thump the dirty linen in the wash-tub with two beetles, the cattle will run a serious risk of being devoured by wolves. Many are the precautions taken by the anxious Esthonians |Precautions taken by the Esthonians against wolves and witches on St. George’s Day.| on this day to guard their herds from the ravening beasts. Thus some people gather wolf’s dung on the preceding night, burn it, and fumigate the cattle with it in the morning. Or they collect bones from the pastures and burn them at a cross-road, which serves as a charm against sickness, sorcery, and demons quite as well as against wolves. Others smoke the cattle with asa foetida or sulphur to protect them against witchcraft and noxious exhalations. They think, too, that if you sew stitches on St. George’s morning the cubs of the wolves will be blind, no doubt because their eyes are sewed up by the needle and thread. In order to forecast the fate of their herds the peasants put eggs or a sharp weapon, such as an axe or a scythe, before the doors of the stalls, and the animal which crushes an egg or wounds itself will surely be rent by a wolf or will perish in some other fashion before the year is out. So certain is its fate that many a man prefers to slaughter the doomed beast out of hand for the sake of saving at least the beef.
|The Esthonians generally drive their cattle out to pasture for the first time on St. George’s Day.| As a rule the Esthonians drive their cattle out to pasture for the first time on St. George’s Day, and the herdsman’s duties begin from then. If, however, the herds should have been sent out to graze before that day, the boys who look after them must eat neither flesh nor butter while they are on duty; else the wolves will destroy many sheep, and the cream will not turn to butter in the churn. Further, the boys may not kindle a fire in the wood, or the wolf’s tooth would be fiery and he would bite viciously. By St. George’s Day, the twenty-third of April, there is commonly fresh grass in the meadows. But even if the spring should be late and the cattle should have to return to their stalls hungrier than they went forth, many Esthonian farmers insist on turning out the poor beasts on St. George’s Day in order that the saint may guard them against his creatures the wolves. On this morning the farmer treats the herdsman to a dram of brandy, and gives him two copper kopecks as “tail-money” for every cow in the herd. This money the giver first passes thrice round his head and then lays it on the dunghill; for if the herdsman took it from his hand, it would in some way injure the herd. Were this ceremony omitted, the wolves would prove very destructive, because they had not been appeased on St. George’s Day. After receiving the “tail-money” some herdsmen are wont to collect the herd on the village common. Here they set up their crook in the ground, place their hat on it, and walk thrice round the cattle, muttering spells or the Lord’s Prayer as they do so. The pastoral crook should be cut from the rowan or mountain-ash and consecrated by a wise man, who carves mystic signs on it. Sometimes the upper end of the crook is hollowed out and filled with quicksilver and asa foetida, the aperture being stopped up with resin. Some Esthonians cut a cross with a scythe under the door through which the herd is to be driven, and fill the furrows of the cross with salt to prevent certain evil beings from harming the cattle. Further, it is an almost universal custom in Esthonia not to hang bells on the necks of the kine till St. George’s Day; the few who can give a reason for the rule say that the chiming of the bells before that season would attract the wild beasts.[[1075]]
|Sacrifices for horses offered on St. George’s Day by the Esthonians of Dago.| In the island of Dago down to the early part of the nineteenth century there were certain holy trees from which no one dared to break a bough; in spite of the lack of wood in the island the fallen branches were allowed to rot in heaps on the ground. Under such trees the Esthonians used to offer sacrifices on St. George’s Day for the safety and welfare of their horses. The offerings, which consist of an egg, a piece of money, and a bunch of horse-hair tied up with a red thread, were buried in the earth.[[1076]] The custom is interesting because it exhibits St. George in the two-fold character of a patron of horses and of trees. In the latter capacity he has already met us more than once under the name of Green George.[[1077]]
|St. George as the patron of wolves and cattle in Russia; the herds are driven out to pasture for the first time on his day.| In Russia the saint is known as Yegory or Yury, and here, as in Esthonia, he is a patron of wolves as well as of flocks and herds. Many legends speak of the connexion which exists between St. George and the wolf. In Little Russia the beast is known as “St. George’s Dog,” and the carcases of sheep which wolves have killed are not eaten, it being held that they have been made over by divine command to the beasts of the field.[[1078]] The festival of St. George on the twenty-third of April has a national as well as an ecclesiastical character in Russia, and the mythical features of the songs which are devoted to the day prove that the saint has supplanted some old Slavonian deity who used to be honoured at this season in heathen times. It is not as a slayer of dragons and a champion of forlorn damsels that St. George figures in these songs, but as a patron of farmers and herdsmen who preserves cattle from harm, and on whose day accordingly the flocks and herds are driven out to browse the fresh pastures for the first time after their confinement through the long Russian winter. “What the wolf holds in its teeth, that Yegory has given,” is a proverb which shews how completely he is thought to rule over the fold and the stall. Here is one of the songs:—
“We have gone around the field,
We have called Yegory ...
‘O thou, our brave Yegory,