Similarly, in pagan Europe water claimed its human victims on Midsummer Day. We have already seen that in England the spirits of the River Tees, the Skerne and the Ribble, the Spey and the Dee demand human victims. We have also seen how the river sprites in Germany transcend the rest of the spirits in Europe in their blood-thirstiness. We also learn from Tacitus that the ancient Germans offered human sacrifices. He tells us that the image of the goddess Nerthus, her vestments and chariot were washed in a certain lake, and that immediately afterwards the slaves who ministered to the goddess were swallowed by the lake. The statement may perhaps be understood to mean that the slaves were drowned as a sacrifice to the deity.
The next stage was that of animal sacrifices. It is well known that just as goats and buffaloes were sacrificed in India, so were bulls and calves offered to the deities in Europe. In Bombay cocks and goats are still offered to water. The wells on the continent, however, seldom receive animal offerings in these days. Only in one case, namely in the case of St. Tegla’s Well, which is resorted to for the cure of epilepsy, we find the patient offering a cock or a hen. The usual offerings at other wells are rags and ribbons, pins and needles, nails and shells, buttons and coins, and sometimes bread and cheese. It will, therefore, be news to many that in Great Britain the lamb was the votive offering for water. Sir Laurence Gomme refers to this offering in a chapter on ethnic elements in custom and ritual, in which he compares certain ceremonies prevalent in India and Greece and other parts of Europe and argues from the strong line of parallel between the Indian ceremonies and those still observed in Europe as survivals of a forgotten and unrecognised cult that ceremonies which are demonstrably non-Aryan in India, even in the presence of Aryan people, must in original have been non-Aryan in Europe, though the race from whom they have descended is not at present identified by ethnologists. One of the customs selected by him for comparison is the Whitsuntide custom in the parish of King’s Teignton, Devonshire. Here is a description of that custom:—
“A lamb is drawn about the parish on Whitsun Monday in a cart covered with garlands of lilac, laburnum, and other flowers, when persons are requested to give something towards the animal and attendant expenses; on Tuesday it is then killed and roasted whole in the middle of the village. The lamb is then sold in slices to the poor at a cheap rate.”
The origin of the custom is forgotten, but a tradition, supposed to trace back to heathen days, is to this effect: The village suffered from a dearth of water, when the inhabitants were advised by their priests to pray to the gods for water; whereupon the water sprang up spontaneously in a meadow about a third of a mile above the river, in an estate now called Rydon, amply sufficient to supply the wants of the place, and at present adequate, even in a dry summer, to work three mills. A lamb, it is said, has ever since that time been sacrificed as a votive thank-offering at Whitsuntide in the manner above mentioned.
The same ceremony, in a more primitive form, was observed at the village of Holne. On May-morning, before daybreak, the young men of the village used to assemble at a granite pillar in the centre of a field called the Ploy Field. They then proceeded to the moor, where they selected a ram lamb, and after running it down brought it in triumph to the Ploy Field, fastened it to the pillar, cut its throat, and then roasted it whole, skin, wool, etc. At Midday a struggle took place, at the risk of cut hands, for a slice, it being supposed to confer luck for the ensuing year on the fortunate devourer. As an act of gallantry the young men sometimes fought their way through the crowd to get a slice for the chosen amongst the young women, all of whom, in their best dresses, attended the Ram Feast as it was called.
In one of his odes Horace made a solemn promise that he would make a present of a very fine kid, some sweet wine and flowers to a noble fountain in his own Sabine Villa. We have seen that even to-day the Parsis offer goats and fowl to the spirits of the well. The process of reasoning is the same. The Gujarati Hindu, however, shrinks from such slaughter. Nevertheless, the gods have to be propitiated. He therefore offers acceptable substitutes for animal victims, such as cocoanuts and red lead. Betelnuts, sugar and milk and ghee likewise keep the spirits in good humour.
Offerings of coins to the well-spirits are common in the East as in the West. What can be the explanation? Is the coin offered as a price for the boon that one expects to derive from the healing powers of the wells? That at any rate is the idea prompting the man bitten by a rabid dog when he goes to a well inhabited by a Vâchharo, with two earthen cups filled with milk and with a pice in each, which he empties into the water. But quite a different and curious explanation of the offering is found in the Folklore Notes of Gujarat. “It is a belief among Hindus,” says one of the informants of the late Mr. Jackson, “that to give alms in secret confers a great boon on the donor. Some of the orthodox people, therefore, throw pice into wells, considering it to be a kind of secret charity.”