The man who could only be killed by a splinter of bamboo.
Miss Alice Werner, who kindly called my attention to this and the following cases of African Balders, tells me that this worshipful ghost in the cave appears to have been in his time a real man. Again, she was assured by some natives that “Chikumbu, a Yao chief, who at one time gave the Administration some trouble, was invulnerable by shot or steel; the only thing that could kill him—since he had not been fortified against it by the proper medicine—was a sharp splinter of bamboo. This reminds one of Balder and the mistletoe.”[772] Again, a Nyanja chief named Chibisa, who was a great man in this part of Africa when Livingstone travelled in it,[773] “stood firm upon his ant-heap, while his men fell round him, shouting his war-song, until one who knew the secret of a sand-bullet brought him down.”[774]
The man who could only be killed by a copper needle.
Once more the Swahili tell a story of an African Samson named Liongo who lived in Shanga, while it was a flourishing city. By reason of his great strength he oppressed the people exceedingly, and they sought to kill him, but all in vain. At last they bribed his nephew, saying, “Go and ask your father what it is that will kill him. When you know, come and tell us, and when he is dead we will give you the kingdom.” So the treacherous nephew went to his uncle and asked him, “Father, what is it that can kill you?” And his uncle said, “A copper needle. If any one stabs me in the navel, I die.” So the nephew went to the town and said to the people, “It is a copper needle that will kill him.” And they gave him a needle, and he went back to his uncle; and while his uncle slept the wicked nephew stabbed him with the needle in the navel. So he died, and they buried him, and his grave is to be seen at Ozi to this day. But they seized the nephew and killed him; they did not give the kingdom to that bad young man.[775]
These stories confirm the view that Balder may have been a real man who was deified after death.
When we compare the story of Balder with these African stories, the heroes of which were probably all real men, and when further we remember the similar tale told of the Persian hero Isfendiyar, who may well have been an historical personage,[776] we are confirmed [pg 315] in the suspicion that Balder himself may have been a real man, admired and beloved in his lifetime and deified after his death, like the African sorcerer, who is now worshipped in a cave and bestows rain or sunshine on his votaries. On the whole I incline to regard this solution of the Balder problem as more probable than the one I have advocated in the text, namely that Balder was a mythical personification of a mistletoe-bearing oak. The facts which seem to incline the balance to the side of Euhemerism reached me as my book was going to press and too late to be embodied in their proper place in the volumes. The acceptance of this hypothesis would not necessarily break the analogy which I have traced between Balder in his sacred grove on the Sogne fiord of Norway and the priest of Diana in the sacred grove of Nemi; indeed, it might even be thought rather to strengthen the resemblance between the two, since there is no doubt at all that the priests of Diana at Nemi were men who lived real lives and died real deaths.
IV. The Mistletoe and the Golden Bough.
Two species of mistletoe, the Viscum albumand the Loranthus europaeus. Common mistletoe (Viscum album).
That Virgil compares the Golden Bough to the mistletoe[777] is certain and admitted on all hands. The only doubt that can arise is whether the plant to which he compares the mystic bough is the ordinary species of mistletoe (Viscum album) or the species known to botanists as Loranthus europaeus. The common mistletoe (Viscum album, L.) “lives as a semi-parasite (obtaining carbon from the air, but water, nitrogen, and mineral matter from the sap of its host) on many conifers and broadleaved trees, and chiefly on their branches. The hosts, or trees on which it lives, are, most frequently, the apple tree, both wild and cultivated varieties; next, the silver-fir; frequently, birches, poplars (except aspen), limes, willows, Scots pine, mountain-ash, and hawthorn; occasionally, robinia, maples, horse-chestnut, hornbeam, and aspen. It is very rarely found on oaks, but has been observed on pedunculate oak at Thornbury, Gloucestershire, and elsewhere in Europe, also on Quercus coccinea, Moench., and Q. palustris, Moench. The alders, beech and spruce appear to be always free from mistletoe, and it very rarely attacks pear-trees. It is commoner in Southern Europe than in the North, [pg 316] and is extremely abundant where cider is made. In the N.-W. Himalayan districts, it is frequently found on apricot-trees, which are the commonest fruit-trees there. Its white berries are eaten by birds, chiefly by the missel-thrush (Turdus viscivorus, L.), and the seeds are either rubbed by the beak against branches of trees, or voided on to them; the seeds, owing to the viscous nature of the pulp surrounding them, then become attached to the branches.”[778] The large smooth pale-green tufts of the parasite, clinging to the boughs of trees, are most conspicuous in winter, when they assume a yellowish hue.[779] In Greece at the present time mistletoe grows most commonly on firs, especially at a considerable elevation (three thousand feet or more) above the level of the sea.[780] Throughout Italy mistletoe now grows on fruit-trees, almond-trees, hawthorn, limes, willows, black poplars, and firs, but never, it is said, on oaks.[781] In England seven authentic cases of mistletoe growing on oaks are said to be reported.[782] In Gloucestershire mistletoe grows on the Badham Court oak, Sedbury Park, Chepstow, and on the Frampton-on-Severn oak.[783] Branches of oak with mistletoe growing on them were exhibited to more than one learned society in France during the nineteenth century; one of the branches was cut in the forest of Jeugny.[784] It is a popular French superstition that mandragora or “the hand of glory,” as it is called by the people, may be found by digging at the root of a mistletoe-bearing oak.[785]