Ancient Art and Ritual Part 5

We have dwelt long on the Bull-driving Dithyramb, because it was not obvious on the face of it how driving a bull could help the coming of spring. We understand now why, on the day before the tragedies were performed at Athens, the young men (_epheboi_) brought in not only the human figure of the G.o.d, but also a Bull "worthy" of the G.o.d. We understand, too, why in addition to the tragedies performed at the great festival, Dithyrambs were also sung--"Bull-driving Dithyrambs."

We come next to a third aspect of the Dithyramb, and one perhaps the most important of all for the understanding of art, and especially the drama. _The Dithyramb was the Song and Dance of the New Birth._

Plato is discussing various sorts of odes or songs. "Some," he says, "are prayers to the G.o.ds--these are called _hymns_; others of an opposite sort might best be called _dirges_; another sort are _paeans_, and another--the birth of Dionysos, I suppose--is called _Dithyramb_."

Plato is not much interested in Dithyrambs. To him they are just a particular kind of choral song; it is doubtful if he even knew that they were Spring Songs; but this he did know, though he throws out the information carelessly--the Dithyramb had for its proper subject the birth or coming to be, the _genesis_ of Dionysos.

The common usage of Greek poetry bears out Plato's statement. When a poet is going to describe the birth of Dionysos he calls the G.o.d by the t.i.tle _Dithyrambos_. Thus an inscribed hymn found at Delphi[28] opens thus:

"Come, O Dithyrambos, Bacchos, come.

Bromios, come, and coming with thee bring Holy hours of thine own holy spring.

All the stars danced for joy. Mirth Of mortals hailed thee, Bacchos, at thy birth."

The Dithyramb is the song of the birth, and the birth of Dionysos is in the spring, the time of the maypole, the time of the holy Bull.

And now we come to a curious thing. We have seen how a spirit, a daemon, and perhaps ultimately a G.o.d, develops out of an actual rite. Dionysos the Tree-G.o.d, the Spirit of Vegetation, is but a maypole once _per_ceived, then remembered and _con_ceived. Dionysos, the Bull-G.o.d, is but the actual holy Bull himself, or rather the succession of annual holy Bulls once perceived, then remembered, generalized, conceived. But the G.o.d conceived will surely always be made in the image, the mental image, of the fact perceived. If, then, we have a song and dance of the _birth_ of Dionysos, shall we not, as in the Christian religion, have a child-G.o.d, a holy babe, a Saviour in the manger; at first in original form as a calf, then as a human child? Now it is quite true that in Greek religion there is a babe Dionysos called _Liknites_, "Him of the Cradle."[29] The rite of waking up, or bringing to light, the child Liknites was performed each year at Delphi by the holy women.

But it is equally clear and certain that _the_ Dionysos of Greek worship and of the drama was not a babe in the cradle. He was a goodly youth in the first bloom of manhood, with the down upon his cheek, the time when, Homer says, "youth is most gracious." This is the Dionysos that we know in statuary, the fair, dreamy youth sunk in reverie; this is the Dionysos whom Pentheus despised and insulted because of his young beauty like a woman's. But how could such a Dionysos arise out of a rite of birth? He could not, and he did not. The Dithyramb is also the song of the second or new birth, the Dithyrambos is the twice-born.

This the Greeks themselves knew. By a false etymology they explained the word _Dithyrambos_ as meaning "He of the double door," their word _thyra_ being the same as our _door_. They were quite mistaken; _Dithyrambos_, modern philology tells us, is the Divine Leaper, Dancer, and Lifegiver. But their false etymology is important to us, because it shows that they believed the Dithyrambos was the twice-born. Dionysos was born, they fabled, once of his mother, like all men, once of his father's thigh, like no man.

But if the Dithyrambos, the young Dionysos, like the Bull-G.o.d, the Tree-G.o.d, arises from a _dromenon_, a rite, what is the rite of second birth from which it arises?

We look in vain among our village customs. If ever rite of second birth existed, it is dead and buried. We turn to anthropology for help, and find this, the rite of the second birth, widespread, universal, over half the savage world.

With the savage, to be twice born is the rule, not the exception. By his first birth he comes into the world, by his second he is born into his tribe. At his first birth he belongs to his mother and the women-folk; at his second he becomes a full-fledged man and pa.s.ses into the society of the warriors of his tribe. This second birth is a little difficult for us to realize. A boy with us pa.s.ses very gradually from childhood to manhood, there is no definite moment when he suddenly emerges as a man.

Little by little as his education advances he is admitted to the social privileges of the circle in which he is born. He goes to school, enters a workshop or a university, and finally adopts a trade or a profession.

In the case of girls, in whose upbringing primitive savagery is apt to linger, there is still, in certain social strata a ceremony known as Coming Out. A girl's dress is suddenly lengthened, her hair is put up, she is allowed to wear jewels, she kisses her sovereign's hand, a dance is given in her honour; abruptly, from her seclusion in the coc.o.o.n state of the schoolroom, she emerges full-blown into society. But the custom, with its half-realized savagery, is already dying, and with boys it does not obtain at all. Both s.e.xes share, of course, the religious rite of Confirmation.

To avoid harsh distinctions, to bridge over abrupt transitions, is always a mark of advancing civilization; but the savage, in his ignorance and fear, lamentably over-stresses distinctions and transitions. The long process of education, of pa.s.sing from child to man, is with him condensed into a few days, weeks, or sometimes months of tremendous educational emphasis--of what is called "initiation,"

"going in," that is, entering the tribe. The ceremonies vary, but the gist is always substantially the same. The boy is to put away childish things, and become a grown and competent tribesman. Above all he is to cease to be a woman-thing and become a man. His initiation prepares him for his two chief functions as a tribesman--to be a warrior, to be a father. That to the savage is the main if not the whole Duty of Man.

This "initiation" is of tremendous importance, and we should expect, what in fact we find, that all this emotion that centres about it issues in _dromena_, "rites done." These rites are very various, but they all point one moral, that the former things are pa.s.sed away and that the new-born man has entered on a new life.

Simplest perhaps of all, and most instructive, is the rite practised by the Kikuyu of British East Africa,[30] who require that every boy, just before circ.u.mcision, must be born again. "The mother stands up with the boy crouching at her feet; she pretends to go through all the labour pains, and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe and is washed."

More often the new birth is simulated, or imagined, as a death and a resurrection, either of the boys themselves or of some one else in their presence. Thus at initiation among some tribes of South-east Australia,[31] when the boys are a.s.sembled an old man dressed in stringy bark fibre lies down in a grave. He is covered up lightly with sticks and earth, and the grave is smoothed over. The buried man holds in his hand a small bush which seems to be growing from the ground, and other bushes are stuck in the ground round about. The novices are then brought to the edge of the grave and a song is sung. Gradually, as the song goes on, the bush held by the buried man begins to quiver. It moves more and more and bit by bit the man himself starts up from the grave.

The Fijians have a drastic and repulsive way of simulating death. The boys are shown a row of seemingly dead men, their bodies covered with blood and entrails, which are really those of a dead pig. The first gives a sudden yell. Up start the men, and then run to the river to cleanse themselves.

Here the death is vicarious. Another goes through the simulated death that the initiated boy may have new life. But often the mimicry is practised on the boys themselves. Thus in West Ceram[32] boys at p.u.b.erty are admitted to the Kakian a.s.sociation. The boys are taken blindfold, followed by their relations, to an oblong wooden shed under the darkest trees in the depths of the forest. When all are a.s.sembled the high priest calls aloud on the devils, and immediately a hideous uproar is heard from the shed. It is really made by men in the shed with bamboo trumpets, but the women and children think it is the devils. Then the priest enters the shed with the boys, one at a time. A dull thud of chopping is heard, a fearful cry rings out, and a sword dripping with blood is thrust out through the roof. This is the token that the boy's head has been cut off, and that the devil has taken him away to the other world, whence he will return born again. In a day or two the men who act as sponsors to the boys return daubed with mud, and in a half-fainting state like messengers from another world. They bring the good news that the devil has restored the boys to life. The boys themselves appear, but when they return they totter as they walk; they go into the house backwards. If food is given them they upset the plate.

They sit dumb and only make signs. The sponsors have to teach them the simplest daily acts as though they were new-born children. At the end of twenty to thirty days, during which their mothers and sisters may not comb their hair, the high priest takes them to a lonely place in the forest and cuts off a lock of hair from the crown of each of their heads. At the close of these rites the boys are men and may marry.

Sometimes the new birth is not simulated but merely suggested. A new name is given, a new language taught, a new dress worn, new dances are danced. Almost always it is accompanied by moral teaching. Thus in the Kakian ceremony already described the boys have to sit in a row cross-legged, without moving a muscle, with their hands stretched out.

The chief takes a trumpet, and placing the mouth of it on the hand of each lad, he speaks through it in strange tones, imitating the voice of spirits. He warns the boys on pain of death to observe the rules of the society, and never to reveal what they have seen in the Kakian house.

The priests also instruct the boys on their duty to their blood relations, and teach them the secrets of the tribe.

Sometimes it is not clear whether the new birth is merely suggested or represented in pantomime. Thus among the Binbinga of North Australia it is generally believed that at initiation a monstrous being called Katajalina, like the Kronos of the Greeks, swallows the boys and brings them up again initiated; but whether there is or is not a _dromenon_ or rite of swallowing we are not told.

In totemistic societies, and in the animal secret societies that seem to grow out of them, the novice is born again as the sacred animal. Thus among the Carrier Indians[33] when a man wants to become a _Lulem_, or Bear, however cold the season, he tears off his clothes, puts on a bearskin and dashes into the woods, where he will stay for three or four days. Every night his fellow-villagers will go out in search parties to find him. They cry out _Yi! Kelulem_ ("Come on, Bear") and he answers with angry growls. Usually they fail to find him, but he comes back at last himself. He is met and conducted to the ceremonial lodge, and there, in company with the rest of the Bears, dances solemnly his first appearance. Disappearance and reappearance is as common a rite in initiation as simulated killing and resurrection, and has the same object. Both are rites of transition, of pa.s.sing from one state to another. It has often been remarked, by students of ancient Greek and other ceremonies, that the rites of birth, marriage, and death, which seem to us so different, are to primitive man oddly similar. This is explained if we see that in intent they _are_ all the same, all a pa.s.sing from one social state to another. There are but two factors in every rite, the putting off of the old, the putting on of the new; you carry out Winter or Death, you bring in Summer or Life. Between them is a midway state when you are neither here nor there, you are secluded, under a _taboo_.

To the Greeks and to many primitive peoples the rites of birth, marriage, and death were for the most part family rites needing little or no social emphasis. But _the_ rite which concerned the whole tribe, the essence of which was entrance into the tribe, was the rite of initiation at p.u.b.erty. This all-important fact is oddly and significantly enshrined in the Greek language. The general Greek word for rite was _telete_. It was applied to all mysteries, and sometimes to marriages and funerals. But it has nothing to do with death. It comes from a root meaning "to grow up." The word _telete_ means _rite of growing up_, becoming complete. It meant at first maturity, then rite of maturity, then by a natural extension any rite of initiation that was mysterious. The rites of p.u.b.erty were in their essence mysterious, because they consisted in initiation into the sanct.i.ties of the tribe, the things which society sanctioned and protected, excluding the uninitiated, whether they were young boys, women, or members of other tribes. Then, by contagion, the mystery notion spread to other rites.

We understand now who and what was the G.o.d who arose out of the rite, the _dromenon_ of tribal initiation, the rite of the new, the second birth. He was Dionysos. His name, according to recent philology, tells us--Dio_nysos_, "Divine Young Man."

When once we see that out of the emotion of the rite and the facts of the rite arises that remembrance and shadow of the rite, that _image_ which is the G.o.d, we realize instantly that the G.o.d of the spring rite _must_ be a young G.o.d, and in primitive societies, where young women are but of secondary account, he will necessarily be a young _man_. Where emotion centres round tribal initiation he will be a young man just initiated, what the Greeks called a _kouros_, or _ephebos_, a youth of quite different social status from a mere _pais_ or boy. Such a youth survives in our King of the May and Jack-in-the-Green. Old men and women are for death and winter, the young for life and spring, and most of all the young man or bear or bull or tree just come to maturity.

And because life is one at the Spring Festival, the young man carries a blossoming branch bound with wool of the young sheep. At Athens in spring and autumn alike "they carry out the _Eiresione_, a branch of olive wound about with wool ... and laden with all sorts of firstfruits, _that scarcity may cease_, and they sing over it:

"Eiresione brings Figs and fat cakes, And a pot of honey and oil to mix, And a wine-cup strong and deep, That she may drink and sleep."

The Eiresione had another name that told its own tale. It was called _Korythalia_,[34] "Branch of blooming youth." The young men, says a Greek orator, are "the Spring of the people."

The excavations of Crete have given to us an ancient inscribed hymn, a Dithyramb, we may safely call it, that is at once a spring-song and a young man-song. The G.o.d here invoked is what the Greeks call a _kouros_, a young man. It is sung and danced by young warriors:

"Ho! Kouros, most Great, I give thee hail, Lord of all that is wet and gleaming; thou art come at the head of thy Daimones. To Dikte for the Year, Oh, march and rejoice in the dance and song."

The leader of the band of _kouroi_, of young men, the real actual leader, has become by remembrance and abstraction, as we noted, a daimon, or spirit, at the head of a band of spirits, and he brings in the new year at spring. The real leader, the "first kouros" as the Greeks called him, is there in the body, but from the succession of leaders year by year they have imaged a spirit leader greatest of all.

He is "lord of all that is wet and gleaming," for the May bough, we remember, is drenched with dew and water that it may burgeon and blossom. Then they chant the tale of how of old a child was taken away from its mother, taken by armed men to be initiated, armed men dancing their tribal dance. The stone is unhappily broken here, but enough remains to make the meaning clear.

And because this boy grew up and was initiated into manhood:

"The Horae (Seasons) began to be fruitful year by year and Dike to possess mankind, and all wild living things were held about by wealth-loving Peace."

We know the Seasons, the fruit and food bringers, but Dike is strange.

We translate the word "Justice," but Dike means, not Justice as between man and man, but the order of the world, the _way_ of life. It is through this way, this order, that the seasons go round. As long as the seasons observe this order there is fruitfulness and peace. If once that order were overstepped then would be disorder, strife, confusion, barrenness. And next comes a mandate, strange to our modern ears:

"To us also leap for full jars, and leap for fleecy flocks, and leap for fields of fruit and for hives to bring increase."

And yet not strange if we remember the Macedonian farmer (p. 32), who throws his spade into the air that the wheat may be tall, or the Russian peasant girls who leap high in the air crying, "Flax, grow." The leaping of the youths of the Cretan hymn is just the utterance of their tense desire. They have grown up, and with them all live things must grow. By their magic year by year the fruits of the earth come to their annual new birth. And that there be no mistake they end:

"Leap for our cities, and leap for our sea-borne ships, _and for our young citizens_, and for goodly Themis."

They are now young citizens of a fenced city instead of young tribesmen of the bush, but their magic is the same, and the strength that holds them together is the bond of social custom, social structure, "goodly Themis." No man liveth to himself.