[456]. Baumkultus, chapters 3, 4, and 5, which should be used by all who wish to form some idea of the amount of evidence collected on this one head.
[457]. Our Jack-in-the-Green is probably a survival of this kind of rite.
[458]. Nearly all these customs occur either at Whitsuntide or harvest. Mannhardt conjectured that the Argei-rite was originally a harvest custom (A. W. F. 269); quite needlessly, I think.
[459]. Baumkultus, 331.
[460]. Mannhardt allows this, Baumkultus, 336 note.
[461]. Baumkultus, 358 foll. His theory is expressed in judicious and by no means dogmatic language. It may be that he runs his Vegetation-spirit somewhat too hard—and no mythologist is free from the error of seeing his own discovery exemplified wherever he turns. But the spirit of vegetation had been found at Rome long before Mannhardt’s time (see e. g. Preller’s account of Mars and the deities related to him).
[462]. Baumkultus, 359, 420; Korndämonen, 24.
[463]. Baumkultus, 349 foll., 365, 414.
[464]. Cp. the root cas-, which (according to Corssen, Aussprache, i. 652 note), appears both in canus and cascus, and also in the Oscan casnar = ‘an old man.’ The word casnar is used by Varro (ap. Nonium, 86) for sexagenarius, or possibly argeus: ‘Vix ecfatus erat cum more maiorum carnales (= casnales) arripiunt et de ponte deturbant.’ Cf. Varro, L. L. 7. 73; Mommsen, Unteritalische Dialekten, p. 268. The root arg may perhaps have meant holy as well as old or white, like the Welsh gwen (Rhys, Celtic Mythology, 527 note).
[465]. Baumkultus, 214-16, 355, &c. On p. 356 is a valuable note giving examples from America, India, &c. For a remarkable case from ancient Egypt, of which the object is not rain, but inundation, see Tylor, Prim. Cult. ii. 368. See also Grimm, Teutonic Mythology (E. T.), p. 593 foll.