Apart from all consideration of the origin of maypoles, some faint traces of a surviving belief in holy trees have been found in recent years in Yorkshire.[370] In Switzerland it is a common belief of the people that walnut-trees are tenanted by spirits.[371] Dr. Frazer tells us that "down to 1859 there stood a sacred larch-tree at Nauders in the Tyrol which was thought to bleed whenever it was cut.... So sacred was the tree that no one would gather fuel or cut timber near it; and to curse, scold or quarrel in its neighbourhood was regarded as a crying sin which would be supernaturally punished on the spot. Angry disputants were often hushed with the whisper, 'Don't, the sacred tree is here.'"[372] The belief in trees animated by some kind of divinity or inhabited by spirits is parallel with many other ancient animistic beliefs. Just as the sea has its mermaids and nymphs and the streams have their naiads and water-kelpies and the mountains their gnomes and elves, so groves and single trees have their haunting spirits, dryads or gods. At the present day the popular faith in the existence of tree-spirits is exceedingly strong in such countries as Burma, the Shan States and Siam; indeed Buddhism was obliged to compromise with the pre-Buddhistic animism of those lands to the extent of finding a place for tree-nats or tree-spirits—as well as water-nats and numerous other fairy-like beings—in its general scheme of the cosmos.
THE HAUNTED TREE OF LIN-CHIA-YÜAN (see p. [381]).
In view of the almost universal prevalence of tree-worship of some kind or other it would be strange indeed if no trace of it could be found in China. It has been said by a writer on the subject that "there is very little evidence of the existence of tree-worship among Chinese,"[373] but as a matter of fact the evidence for its existence (though perhaps it is not to be found to any great extent in books) is abundant and conclusive. I have myself seen "sacred trees" in at least seven provinces of China—Chihli, Shansi, Honan, Shensi, Ssŭch'uan, Fuhkien and Shantung—and I have good reason to believe they are to be found in other provinces as well.[374] The trees are generally seen in the neighbourhood of a village or sometimes in the middle of a village-street; their branches are usually hung with votive-offerings and lettered scrolls, and below them are sometimes placed little altars with incense-burners and small dishes of sacrificial food. Such trees are regarded with veneration, and their decay or accidental destruction is looked upon as a public calamity. In north China the sacred tree seems generally though not always to be a Sophora tree, known by the Chinese as huai.[375] But any one who wishes to be convinced that tree-worship is still a living faith in China need not travel so far as the inland provinces: it is unnecessary to go further than Weihaiwei. Close to the picturesque village of Lin-chia-yüan (The Garden of the Lin Family) is a fine old specimen of the Ginkgo or Maidenhair tree,[376] known by the Chinese as the pai kuo or "white-fruit tree." It is believed in the neighbourhood to be inhabited by the spirit of a Buddha or Bodhisatva.
Here we have an interesting example of how Buddhism utilised local legends for its own purposes and for the advancement of its own interests. Close by the tree stands an old Buddhist temple that dates from the T'ang dynasty. Had there been no priests to mould the religious ideas of the neighbouring villages into a Buddhistic form the tree would still have been regarded as the abode of a spirit, but no one would have thought of suggesting that the spirit was that of a Buddha. The devout Christian need not jeer at the harmless wiles of the Buddhist priests in this little matter, for the European monks of the Middle Ages were equally ready to seize upon local superstitions and give them a Christian interpretation. "The peasant folk-lore of Europe still knows," says Dr. Tylor, "of that old tree on the Heinzenberg near Zell, which uttered its complaint when the woodman cut it down, for in it was Our Lady, whose chapel now stands upon the spot."[377] Exactly the same procedure was adopted, as is well known, with regard to the sacred wells and springs of our European forefathers. It was found a simpler matter to substitute the name of a Christian saint for that of a heathen divinity than to crush the popular superstitions altogether. "With a varnish of Christianity and sometimes the substitution of a saint's name," says the writer just quoted,[378] "water-worship has held its own to this day. The Bohemians will go to pray on the river-bank where a man has been drowned, and there they will cast in an offering, a loaf of new bread and a pair of wax candles." The bread, no doubt, represented the old heathen offering to the water-spirit, the candles represented the compromise with Christianity. But let us refrain from ridiculing the superstitions of "the heathen Chinee" so long as we possess such obvious relics of heathendom in our own quarter of the globe.
A VILLAGE