Swinging as an agricultural charm.
Further, it is to be observed that just as the Kai of New Guinea swing to and fro on reeds suspended from the branches of trees in order to promote the growth of the crops, in like manner Lettish peasants in Russia devote their leisure to swinging in spring and early summer for the express purpose of making the flax grow as high as they swing in the air.[339] And we may suspect that wherever swinging is practised as a ceremony at certain times of the year, particularly in spring and at harvest, the pastime is not so much a mere popular recreation as a magical rite designed to promote the growth of the crops.[340]
With these examples before us we need not hesitate to believe that Dr. Nieuwenhuis is right when he attributes a deep religious or magical significance to the games which the Kayans or Bahaus of central Borneo play at their various agricultural festivals.
Analogy of the Kayans of Borneo to the Greeks of Eleusis in the early time. The Sacred Ploughing at Eleusis.
It remains to point out how far the religious or magical practices of these primitive agricultural peoples of Borneo and New Guinea appear to illustrate by analogy the original nature of the rites of Eleusis. So far as we can recompose, from the broken fragments of tradition, a picture of the religious and political condition of the Eleusinian people in the olden time, it appears to tally fairly well with the picture which Dr. Nieuwenhuis has drawn for us of the Kayans or Bahaus at the present day in the forests of central Borneo. Here as there we see a petty agricultural community ruled by hereditary chiefs who, while they unite religious to civil authority, being bound to preside over the numerous ceremonies performed for the good of [pg 108] the crops,[341] nevertheless lead simple patriarchal lives and are so little raised in outward dignity above their fellows that their daughters do not deem it beneath them to fetch water for the household from the village well.[342] Here as there we see a people whose whole religion is dominated and coloured by the main occupation of their lives; who believe that the growth of the crops, on which they depend for their subsistence, is at the mercy of two powerful spirits, a divine husband and his wife, dwelling in a subterranean world; and who accordingly offer sacrifices and perform ceremonies in order to ensure the favour of these mighty beings and so to obtain abundant harvests. If we knew more about the Rarian plain at Eleusis,[343] we might discover that it was the scene of many religious ceremonies like those which are performed on the little consecrated rice-fields (the luma lali) of the Kayans, where the various operations of the agricultural year are performed in miniature by members of the chief's family before the corresponding operations may be performed on a larger scale by common folk on their fields. Certainly we know that the Rarian plain witnessed one such ceremony in the year. It was a solemn ceremony of ploughing, one of the three Sacred Ploughings which took place annually in various parts of Attica.[344] Probably the rite formed part of the Proerosia or Festival before Ploughing, which was intended to ensure a plentiful crop.[345] Further, it appears that the priests who guided the sacred slow-paced oxen as they dragged the plough down the furrows of the Rarian Plain, were drawn from the old priestly family of Bouzygai or “Ox-yokers,” whose eponymous ancestor is said to have been the first man to yoke oxen and to plough the fields. As they performed this time-honoured ceremony, the priests uttered many quaint curses against all churls who should refuse to lend fire or water to neighbours, or to shew the way to wanderers, or who should [pg 109] leave a corpse unburied.[346] If we had a complete list of the execrations fulminated by the holy ploughmen on these occasions, we might find that some of them were levelled at the impious wretches who failed to keep all the rules of the Sabbath, as we may call those periods of enforced rest and seclusion which the Kayans of Borneo and other primitive agricultural peoples observe for the good of the crops.[347]
The connexion of the Eleusinian games with agriculture, attested by the ancients, is confirmed by modern savage analogies.
Further, when we see that many primitive peoples practise what we call games but what they regard in all seriousness as solemn rites for the good of the crops, we may be the more inclined to accept the view of the ancients, who associated the Eleusinian games directly with the worship of Demeter and Persephone, the Corn Goddesses.[348] One of the contests at the Eleusinian games was in leaping,[349] and we know that even in modern Europe to this day leaping or dancing high is practised as a charm to make the crops grow tall.[350] Again, the bull-roarer was swung so as to produce a humming sound at the Greek mysteries;[351] and when we find the same simple instrument whirled by savages in New Guinea for the sake of ensuring good crops, we may reasonably conjecture that it was whirled with a like intention by the rude forefathers of the Greeks among the cornfields of Eleusis. If that were so—though the conjecture is hardly susceptible of demonstration—it would go some way to confirm the theory that the [pg 111] Eleusinian mysteries were in their origin nothing more than simple rustic ceremonies designed to make the farmer's fields to wave with yellow corn. And in the practice of the Kayans, whose worship of the rice offers many analogies to the Eleusinian worship of the corn, may we not detect a hint of the origin of that rule of secrecy which always characterised the Eleusinian mysteries? May it not have been that, just as the Kayans exclude strangers from their villages while they are engaged in the celebration of religious rites, lest the presence of these intruders should frighten or annoy the shy and touchy spirits who are invoked at these times, so the old Eleusinians may have debarred foreigners from participation in their most solemn ceremonies, lest the coy goddesses of the corn should take fright or offence at the sight of strange faces and so refuse to bestow on men their annual blessing? The admission of foreigners to the privilege of initiation in the mysteries was probably a late innovation introduced at a time when the fame of their sanctity had spread far and wide, and when the old magical meaning of the ritual had long been obscured, if not forgotten.
The sacred drama of the Eleusinian mysteries compared to the masked dances of agricultural savages.
Lastly, it may be suggested that in the masked dances and dramatic performances, which form a conspicuous and popular feature of the Sowing Festival among the Kayans,[352] we have the savage counterpart of that drama of divine death and resurrection which appears to have figured so prominently in the mysteries of Eleusis.[353] If my interpretation of that solemn drama is correct, it represented in mythical guise the various stages in the growth of the corn for the purpose of magically fostering the natural processes which it simulated. In like manner among the Kaua and Kobeua Indians of North-western Brazil, who subsist chiefly by the cultivation of manioc, dances or rather pantomimes are performed by masked men, who represent spirits or demons of fertility, and by imitating the act of procreation are believed to stimulate the growth of plants as well as to quicken the wombs of women and to promote the multiplication of animals. Coarse and grotesque as these dramatic performances may seem to us, they convey no suggestion of [pg 112] indecency to the minds either of the actors or of the spectators, who regard them in all seriousness as rites destined to confer the blessing of fruitfulness on the inhabitants of the village, on their plantations, and on the whole realm of nature.[354] However, we possess so little exact information as to the rites of Eleusis that all attempts to elucidate them by the ritual of savages must necessarily be conjectural. Yet the candid reader may be willing to grant that conjectures supported by analogies like the foregoing do not exceed the limits of a reasonable hypothesis.