The rite of the ‘October-horse’ had been adequately described and in some degree explained by Preller, Marquardt, Schwegler, and others[[1060]], before the late Dr. Mannhardt took it in hand not long before his death[[1061]]. Mannhardt studied it in the light of his far-reaching researches in folk-lore, and succeeded in treating it as all such survivals should be treated, i.e. in bringing it into relation with the practices of other peoples—not so much by way of explaining its original meaning precisely, as in order to make some progress by its help towards an understanding of the attitude of primitive man to the supernatural. His conclusions have been generally accepted, and, with very slight modifications, are to be found in Mr. Frazer’s Golden Bough (ii. 64), and in Roscher’s article ‘Mars’ in the Mythological Lexicon (2416). Recently, however, they have been called in question by no less a person than Prof. Wissowa[[1062]] of Berlin, who seems to take a different view of the Mars-cult from that at which we thought we had at last safely arrived: it may be as well therefore to give yet another account of Mannhardt’s treatment of the question, and to follow his track somewhat more elaborately than Mr. Frazer. It does not of course follow that he has said the last word; but it is as well to begin by making clear what he has said.
1. This is the last of the series of harvest festivals, as we may call them generically. We have had the Ambarvalia and the plucking of the first ears by the Vestals in May: the Vestalia in June[[1063]]; the festivals of Consus and Ops Consiva in August; and lastly we find this one coming after all the fruits of the land have been gathered in. In this respect it is parallel to the Pyanepsia and Oschophoria of the Greeks, to the Jewish feast of Tabernacles[[1064]], and to the true Michaelmas harvest-festivals of modern Europe, which follow at an interval the great variety of quaint harvest customs which occur at the actual in-gathering. Even now in the Roman Campagna there is a lively festival of this kind in October.
It should be noticed that the harvest character of the rite was suggested to Mannhardt by the passage from Paulus (220), from which we learn that the head of the sacrificed horse was decked with cakes, like those of the live draught-animals at the Vestalia and Consualia and feriae Sementivae [q. v.]. This, Paulus adds, was done ‘quia id sacrum fiebat ob frugum eventum,’ which last words can hardly mean anything but ‘on account of the past harvest[[1065]].’ There are, I may add, two points open to doubt here, which Mannhardt does not point out: (1) the reason here given may be only a guess of Verrius’, and not one generally understood at Rome[[1066]]. (2) The concluding words of the gloss seem to make no sense, a fact which throws some doubt on the whole passage. The rite is ‘ob frugum eventum,’ yet ‘a horse, and not an ox, is the victim, because a horse is suited for war, and an ox is not[[1067]].’ However this may be understood, we need not quarrel with the conclusion[[1068]], that the real meaning of the adornment was to show that the head was an object possessed of power to procure fertility—an inference confirmed by the eagerness of the rival city-quarters to get possession of it.
2. The sacrificed horse represented a Corn-spirit. The Corn-spirit was Mannhardt’s chief discovery, and its various forms are now familiar to English readers of Frazer’s Golden Bough, and of Farnell’s Cults of the Greek States. Almost every common animal, wild or tame, may be found to represent the Corn-spirit at harvest-time in one locality or another, where the nomadic age has given place to an agricultural one; or a man, woman, boy or puppet represents the animal, and so indirectly the Corn-spirit[[1069]]. Mannhardt produces from his stores of folk-lore many instances in which the horse thus figures, including the hobby-horse which in old England used to prance round the May-pole. Those examples, however, are not strong enough to convince us that the October horse was a Corn-spirit, though they prove well enough that the Corn-spirit often took this shape[[1070]]. But we must remember that he is only suggesting an origin in the simple rites of the farm, indicating a class of ideas to which this survival may be traceable[[1071]].
He does, however, produce an example which has one or two features in common with the Roman rite, only in this case the animal is a goat instead of a horse. In Dauphiné a goat is decked with ribbons and flowers and let loose in the harvest-field. The reapers run after it, and finally the farmer cuts off its head[[1072]], while his wife holds it. Parts of its body (we are not told whether the head is among them) are kept as ‘medicine’ till the next harvest. So too the head, and also the tail and the blood, of the October horse were the seat of some great Power; but whether this was a vegetation-spirit does not seem satisfactorily shown.
3. The chariot-race was an elaborated and perhaps Graecized form or survival of the simple race of men and women so often met with in the harvest-field, often in pursuit of a representative of the Corn-spirit.
Mannhardt gives examples from France and Germany of races in pursuit of cock, calf, kid, sheep, or whatever shape may be the one in vogue for the Corn-spirit; often the animal is in some way decorated for the occasion. Two of a rather different kind may be mentioned here, though they occur, not on the harvest-field, but at Whitsuntide and Easter respectively; but they show how horse-races may originate in the customs of the farm. In the Hartz the farm-horses, gaily decorated, are raced by the labourers for possession of a wreath, which is hung on the neck of the winning horse. In Silesia the finest near horse of the team, decorated by the girls, is ridden (raced?) round the boundary of the farm, and then round a neighbouring village, while Easter hymns are sung. We have already noticed the racing of horses and mules at the Consualia in August: according to Dionysius, these too were decked out with flowers[[1073]]. Mannhardt makes also a somewhat lengthy digression to point out the possibility that in the original form of the Passover (on which was afterwards engrafted the Jahvistic worship and the history of the escape from Egypt) a race or something of the kind may be indicated by the custom of eating the victim with the loins girt.
There is undoubtedly a possible origin for the horse-racing of Greeks and Romans in the customs of the farm at different seasons of the year, and I accept Mannhardt’s view so far, with a probability, not certainty, as to the Corn-spirit. We may perhaps be able to trace the development of the custom a little further in this case.
4. The horse’s head, fixed on the Regia or the turris Mamilia, is the effigy of the Corn-spirit, which is to bring fertility and to keep off evil influences for the year to come.[[1074]]
Examples of this practice of fixing up some object after harvest in a prominent place in farm or village are so numerous as almost to defy selection, and are now familiar to all students of folk-lore[[1075]]. Sometimes it is a bunch of corn or flowers, as in the Greek Eiresione[[1076]], and to this day at Charlton-on-Otmoor, where it is placed over the beautiful rood-screen in the church. Such bunches are often called by the name of some animal; occasionally their place is taken by the effigy of an animal’s head, e. g. that of a horse[[1077]], which in course of time becomes a permanency.