|The ancient lake dwellings of Europe were built to a great extent on oaken piles.| Unequivocal proof of the prevalence of the oak and its usefulness to man in early times is furnished by the remains of the pile villages which have been discovered in many of the lakes of Europe. In the British Islands the piles and the platforms on which these crannogs or lake dwellings rested appear to have been generally of oak, though fir, birch, and other trees were sometimes used in their construction. Speaking of the Irish and Scotch crannogs a learned antiquary remarks: “Every variety of structure observed in the one country is to be found in the other, from the purely artificial island, framed of oak-beams, mortised together, to the natural island, artificially fortified or enlarged by girdles of oak-piles or ramparts of loose stones.”[[1120]] Canoes hollowed out of trunks of oak have been found both in the Scotch and in the Irish crannogs.[[1121]] In the lake dwellings of Switzerland and Central Europe the piles are very often of oak, but by no means as uniformly so as in the British Islands; fir, birch, alder, ash, elm, and other timber were also employed for the purpose.[[1122]] That the inhabitants of these villages subsisted partly on the produce |The inhabitants of the lake dwellings subsisted partly on acorns.| of the oak, even after they had adopted agriculture, is proved by the acorns which have been found in their dwellings along with wheat, barley, and millet, as well as beech-nuts, hazel-nuts, and the remains of chestnuts and cherries.[[1123]] In the valley of the Po the framework of logs and planks which supports the prehistoric villages is most commonly of elm wood, but evergreen oak and chestnut were also used; and the abundance of oaks is attested by the great quantities of acorns which were dug up in these settlements. As the acorns were sometimes found stored in earthenware vessels, it appears that they were eaten by the people as well as by their pigs.[[1124]]
|Evidence of classical writers as to the oak forests of Europe.| The evidence of classical writers proves that great oak forests still existed down to their time in various parts of Europe. Thus the Veneti on the Atlantic coast of Brittany made their flat-bottomed boats out of oak timber, of which, we are told, there was abundance in their country.[[1125]] Pliny informs us that, while the whole of Germany was covered with cool and shady woods, the loftiest trees were to be seen not far from the country of the Chauci, who inhabited the coast of the North Sea. Among these giants of the forest he speaks especially of the oaks which grew on the banks of two lakes. When the waves had undermined their roots, the oaks are said to have torn away great portions of the bank and floated like islands on the lakes.[[1126]] The same |The oak woods of Germany.| writer speaks of the vast Hercynian wood of Germany as an oak forest, old as the world, untouched for ages, and passing wonderful in its immortality. So huge were the trees, he says, that when their roots met they were forced up above ground in the shape of arches, through which a troop of horse could ride as through an open gate.[[1127]] His testimony as to the kind of trees which composed this famous forest is confirmed by its name, which seems to mean no more than “oak wood.”[[1128]] In the second century before our era oak forests were still so common in the valley of the Po that the herds of swine which browsed on the acorns sufficed to |The oak woods of ancient Italy and Greece.| supply the greater part of the demand for pork throughout Italy, although nowhere in the world, according to Polybius, were more pigs butchered to feed the gods, the people, and the army.[[1129]] Elsewhere the same historian describes the immense herds of swine which roamed the Italian oak forests, especially on the coasts of Tuscany and Lombardy. In order to sort out the different droves when they mingled with each other in the woods, each swineherd carried a horn, and when he wound a blast on it all his own pigs came trooping to him with such vehemence that nothing could stop them; for all the herds knew the note of their own horn. In the oak forests of Greece this device was unknown, and the swineherds there had harder work to come by their own when the beasts had strayed far in the woods, as they were apt to do in autumn while the acorns were falling.[[1130]] Down to the beginning of our era oak woods were interspersed among the olive groves and vineyards of the Sabine country in central Italy.[[1131]] Among the beautiful woods which clothed the Heraean mountains in Sicily the oaks were particularly remarked for their stately growth and the great size of their acorns.[[1132]] In the second century after Christ the oak forests of Arcadia still harboured wild boars, bears, and huge tortoises in their dark recesses.[[1133]]
|The oak still the chief forest tree of Europe.| Even now the predominance of the oak as the principal forest tree of Europe has hardly passed away. Thus we are told that among the leaf-bearing trees of Greece, as opposed to the conifers, the oak still plays by far the most important part in regard both to the number of the individuals and the number of the species.[[1134]] And the British oak in particular (Quercus robur) is yet the prevailing tree in most of the woods of France, Germany, and southern Russia, while in England the coppice and the few fragments of natural forest still left are mainly composed of this species.[[1135]]
|In Europe acorns have been used as human food both in ancient and modern times.| Thus the old classical tradition that men lived upon acorns before they learned to till the ground[[1136]] may very well be founded on fact. Indeed acorns were still an article of diet in some parts of southern Europe within historical times. Speaking of the prosperity of the righteous, Hesiod declares that for them the earth bears much substance, and the oak on the mountains puts forth acorns.[[1137]] The Arcadians in their oak-forests were proverbial for eating acorns,[[1138]] but not the acorns of all oaks, only those of a particular sort.[[1139]] Pliny tells us that in his day acorns still constituted the wealth of many nations, and that in time of dearth they were ground and baked into bread.[[1140]] According to Strabo, the mountaineers of Spain subsisted on acorn bread for two-thirds of the year;[[1141]] and in that country acorns were served up as a second course even at the meals of the well-to-do.[[1142]] In the same regions the same practice |Acorns as food in modern Europe.| has survived to modern times. The commonest and finest oak of modern Greece is the Quercus Aegilops, with a beautiful crown of leaves, and the peasants eat its acorns both roasted and raw.[[1143]] The sweeter acorns of the Quercus Ballota also serve them as food, especially in Arcadia.[[1144]] In Spain people eat the acorns of the evergreen oak (Quercus Ilex), which are known as bellotas, and are said to be much larger and more succulent than the produce of the British oak. The duchess in Don Quixote writes to Sancho’s wife to send her some of them. But oaks are now few and far between in La Mancha.[[1145]] Even in England and France acorns have been boiled and eaten by the poor as a substitute for bread in time of dearth.[[1146]] And naturally the use of acorns as food for swine has also lasted into modern times. It is on acorns that those hogs are fattened in Estremadura which make the famous Montanches hams.[[1147]] Large herds of swine in all the great oak woods of Germany depend on acorns for their autumn subsistence; and in the remaining royal forests of England the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages still claim their ancient right of pannage, turning their hogs into the woods in October and November.[[1148]]
§ 2. The Aryan God of the Oak and the Thunder[[1149]]
|The many benefits received by the ancient Aryans from the oak naturally led them to worship the tree.| Thus we may conclude that the primitive Aryans of Europe lived among oak woods, used oak sticks for the lighting of their fires, and oak timber for the construction of their villages, their roads, their canoes, fed their swine on acorns, and themselves subsisted in part on the same simple diet. No wonder, then, if the tree from which they received so many benefits should play an important part in their religion, and should be invested with a sacred character. We have seen that the worship of trees has been world-wide, and that, beginning with a simple reverence and dread of the tree as itself animated by a powerful spirit, it has |The worship of the tree itself gradually grew into a worship of the god of the tree, but no sharp line of distinction can be drawn between the two.| gradually grown into a cult of tree gods and tree goddesses, who with the advance of thought become more and more detached from their old home in the trees, and assume the character of sylvan deities and powers of fertility in general, to whom the husbandman looks not merely for the prosperity of his crops, but for the fecundity of his cattle and his women. Where this evolution has taken place it has necessarily been slow and long. Though it is convenient to distinguish in theory between the worship of trees and the worship of gods of the trees, it is impossible to draw a hard and fast line between them in practice, and to say, “Here the one begins and the other ends.” Such distinctions, however useful they may be as heads of classification to the student, evade in general the duller wit of the tree worshipper. We cannot therefore hope to lay our finger on that precise point in the history of the Aryans when they ceased to worship the oak for its own sake, and began to worship a god of the oak. That point, if it were ideally possible to mark it, had doubtless been left far behind them by the more intelligent, at least, of our forefathers before they emerged into the light of history. We must be content for the most part to find among them gods of whom the oak was an attribute or sacred adjunct rather than the essence. If we wish to find the original worship of the tree itself we must go for it to the ignorant peasantry of to-day, not to the enlightened writers of antiquity. Further, it is to be borne in mind that while all oaks were probably the object of superstitious awe, so that the felling of any of them for timber or firewood would be attended with ceremonies designed to appease the injured spirit of the tree,[[1150]] only certain particular groves or individual oaks would in general receive that measure of homage which we should term worship. The reasons which led men to venerate some trees more than others might be various. Amongst them the venerable age and imposing size of a giant oak would naturally count for much. And any other striking peculiarity which marked a tree off from its fellows would be apt to attract the attention, and to concentrate on itself the vague superstitious awe of the savage. We know, for example, that with the Druids the growth of mistletoe on an oak was a sign that the tree was especially sacred; and the rarity of this feature—for mistletoe does not commonly grow on oaks—would enhance the sanctity and mystery of the tree. For it is the strange, the wonderful, the rare, not the familiar and commonplace, which excites the religious emotions of mankind.
|The worship of the oak tree or of the oak god seems to have been common to all the Aryans of Europe.| The worship of the oak tree or of the oak god appears to have been shared by all the branches of the Aryan stock in Europe. Both Greeks and Italians associated the tree |Worship of the oak in Greece; its association with Zeus.| with their highest god, Zeus or Jupiter, the divinity of the sky, the rain, and the thunder.[[1151]] Perhaps the oldest and certainly one of the most famous sanctuaries in Greece was that of Dodona, where Zeus was revered in the oracular oak.[[1152]] The thunder-storms which are said to rage at Dodona more frequently than anywhere else in Europe,[[1153]] would render the spot a fitting home for the god whose voice was heard alike in the rustling of the oak leaves and in the crash of thunder. Perhaps the bronze gongs which kept up a humming in the wind round the sanctuary[[1154]] were meant to mimick the thunder that might so often be heard rolling and rumbling in the coombs of the stern and barren mountains which shut in the gloomy valley.[[1155]] In Boeotia, as we have seen, the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera, the oak god and the oak goddess, was celebrated with much pomp by a religious federation of states.[[1156]] And on Mount Lycaeus in Arcadia the character of Zeus as god both of the oak and of the rain comes out clearly in the rain charm practised by the priest of Zeus, who dipped an oak branch in a sacred spring.[[1157]]
|Zeus as the rain god of the Greeks.| In his latter capacity Zeus was the god to whom the Greeks regularly prayed for rain. Nothing could be more natural; for often, though not always, he had his seat on the mountains where the clouds gather and the oaks grow. On the acropolis at Athens there was an image of Earth praying to Zeus for rain.[[1158]] And in time of drought the Athenians themselves prayed, “Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, on the cornland of the Athenians and on the plains.”[[1159]] The mountains which lay round their city, and to which they looked through the clear Attic air for signs of the weather, were associated by them with the worship of the weather-god Zeus. It was a sign of rain when, away to sea, a cloud rested on the sharp peak of Aegina, which cuts the sky-line like a blue horn.[[1160]] On this far-seen peak Panhellenian Zeus was worshipped,[[1161]] and legend ran that once, when all Greece was parched with drought, envoys assembled in Aegina from every quarter and entreated Aeacus, the king of the island, that he would intercede with his father Zeus for rain. The king complied with the request, and by sacrifices and prayers wrung the needed showers from his sire the sky-god.[[1162]]
|Zeus as the god of fertility.| Again, it was a sign of rain at Athens when clouds in summer lay on the top or the sides of Hymettus,[[1163]] the chain of barren mountains which bounds the Attic plain on the east, facing the westering sun and catching from his last beams a solemn glow of purple light. If during a storm a long bank of clouds was seen lowering on the mountain, it meant that the storm would increase in fury.[[1164]] Hence an altar of Showery Zeus stood on Hymettus.[[1165]] Again, omens of weather were drawn when lightning flashed or clouds hung on the top of Mount Parnes to the north of Athens;[[1166]] and there accordingly an altar was set up to sign-giving Zeus.[[1167]] The climate of eastern Argolis is dry, and the rugged mountains are little better than a stony waterless wilderness. On one of them, named Mount Arachnaeus, or the Spider Mountain, stood altars of Zeus and Hera, and when rain was wanted the people sacrificed there to the god and goddess.[[1168]] On the ridge of Mount Tmolus, near Sardes, there was a spot called the Birthplace of Rainy Zeus,[[1169]] probably because clouds resting on it were observed to presage rain. The members of a religious society in the island of Cos used to go in procession and offer sacrifices on an altar of Rainy Zeus, when the thirsty land stood in need of refreshing showers.[[1170]] Thus conceived as the source of fertility, it was not unnatural that Zeus should receive the title of the Fruitful One,[[1171]] and that at Athens he should be worshipped under the surname of the Husbandman.[[1172]]
|Zeus as the god of thunder and lightning.| Again, Zeus wielded the thunder and lightning as well as the rain.[[1173]] At Olympia and elsewhere he was worshipped under the surname of Thunderbolt;[[1174]] and at Athens there was a sacrificial hearth of Lightning Zeus on the city wall, where some priestly officials watched for lightning over Mount Parnes at certain seasons of the year.[[1175]] Further, spots which had been struck by lightning were regularly fenced in by the Greeks and consecrated to Zeus the Descender, that is, to the god who came down in the flash from heaven. Altars were set up within these enclosures and sacrifices offered on them. Several such places are known from inscriptions to have existed in Athens.[[1176]]