There was another English pastime, “Throwing at Shrove-Cocks,” much of the same nature.—(See idem, vol. i. p. 101, article “Ash-Wednesday,” and p. 72, article “Shrove-Tuesday.”)
Grimm describes the “heathen custom of tying cocks to the tops of holy-trees,” which prevailed very generally over Europe in Pagan times. “The Wends erected cross-trees, but still secretly heathen at heart, they contrived to fix at the very top of the poles a weather-cock.”—(Grimm, “Teutonic Mythology,” London, vol. ii. p. 672.)
“In parts of Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Picardy, the reapers place a live cock in the corn which is to be cut last, and chase it over the field, or bury it up to the neck in the ground; afterwards they strike off its neck with a sickle or a scythe.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. ii. p. 9. He gives still other examples from Westphalia, Transylvania, etc.)
See also Grose, “Dictionary of Buckish Slang,” London, 1811, article “Goose Riding,” in which it is stated that this game was practised “in Derbyshire within the memory of persons now living.”
THE SCARABÆUS OF EGYPT.
The radical divergence of opinion among scholars as to the basis of the veneration accorded by the inhabitants of the Nile delta to the scarabæus has been an occasion of much perplexity; no two authors can be found to agree upon the subject.
In the absence of anything which can be considered conclusive, it is not worth while to more than allude to the fact that it was the dung-beetle to which this adoration was manifested, and possibly because it associated itself with material so intimately connected with the living organism.
The dung-beetle “scarabæus ... worn as an amulet for the cure of fever.”—(Pliny, lib. xxx. cap. 30.)
See also “Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 16, in which the preceding paragraph from Pliny is quoted.