Balder the Beautiful Part 1

Balder The Beautiful.

by Sir James George Frazer.

PREFACE

In this concluding part of _The Golden Bough_ I have discussed the problem which gives its t.i.tle to the whole work. If I am right, the Golden Bough over which the King of the Wood, Diana's priest at Aricia, kept watch and ward was no other than a branch of mistletoe growing on an oak within the sacred grove; and as the plucking of the bough was a necessary prelude to the slaughter of the priest, I have been led to inst.i.tute a parallel between the King of the Wood at Nemi and the Norse G.o.d Balder, who was worshipped in a sacred grove beside the beautiful Sogne fiord of Norway and was said to have perished by a stroke of mistletoe, which alone of all things on earth or in heaven could wound him. On the theory here suggested both Balder and the King of the Wood personified in a sense the sacred oak of our Aryan forefathers, and both had deposited their lives or souls for safety in the parasite which sometimes, though rarely, is found growing on an oak and by the very rarity of its appearance excites the wonder and stimulates the devotion of ignorant men. Though I am now less than ever disposed to lay weight on the a.n.a.logy between the Italian priest and the Norse G.o.d, I have allowed it to stand because it furnishes me with a pretext for discussing not only the general question of the external soul in popular superst.i.tion, but also the fire-festivals of Europe, since fire played a part both in the myth of Balder and in the ritual of the Arician grove.

Thus Balder the Beautiful in my hands is little more than a stalking-horse to carry two heavy pack-loads of facts. And what is true of Balder applies equally to the priest of Nemi himself, the nominal hero of the long tragedy of human folly and suffering which has unrolled itself before the readers of these volumes, and on which the curtain is now about to fall. He, too, for all the quaint garb he wears and the gravity with which he stalks across the stage, is merely a puppet, and it is time to unmask him before laying him up in the box.

To drop metaphor, while nominally investigating a particular problem of ancient mythology, I have really been discussing questions of more general interest which concern the gradual evolution of human thought from savagery to civilization. The enquiry is beset with difficulties of many kinds, for the record of man's mental development is even more imperfect than the record of his physical development, and it is harder to read, not only by reason of the incomparably more subtle and complex nature of the subject, but because the reader's eyes are apt to be dimmed by thick mists of pa.s.sion and prejudice, which cloud in a far less degree the fields of comparative anatomy and geology. My contribution to the history of the human mind consists of little more than a rough and purely provisional cla.s.sification of facts gathered almost entirely from printed sources. If there is one general conclusion which seems to emerge from the ma.s.s of particulars, I venture to think that it is the essential similarity in the working of the less developed human mind among all races, which corresponds to the essential similarity in their bodily frame revealed by comparative anatomy. But while this general mental similarity may, I believe, be taken as established, we must always be on our guard against tracing to it a mult.i.tude of particular resemblances which may be and often are due to simple diffusion, since nothing is more certain than that the various races of men have borrowed from each other many of their arts and crafts, their ideas, customs, and inst.i.tutions. To sift out the elements of culture which a race has independently evolved and to distinguish them accurately from those which it has derived from other races is a task of extreme difficulty and delicacy, which promises to occupy students of man for a long time to come; indeed so complex are the facts and so imperfect in most cases is the historical record that it may be doubted whether in regard to many of the lower races we shall ever arrive at more than probable conjectures.

Since the last edition of _The Golden Bough_ was published some thirteen years ago, I have seen reason to change my views on several matters discussed in this concluding part of the work, and though I have called attention to these changes in the text, it may be well for the sake of clearness to recapitulate them here.

In the first place, the arguments of Dr. Edward Westermarck have satisfied me that the solar theory of the European fire-festivals, which I accepted from W. Mannhardt, is very slightly, if at all, supported by the evidence and is probably erroneous. The true explanation of the festivals I now believe to be the one advocated by Dr. Westermarck himself, namely that they are purificatory in intention, the fire being designed not, as I formerly held, to reinforce the sun's light and heat by sympathetic magic, but merely to burn or repel the noxious things, whether conceived as material or spiritual, which threaten the life of man, of animals, and of plants. This aspect of the fire-festivals had not wholly escaped me in former editions; I pointed it out explicitly, but, bia.s.sed perhaps by the great authority of Mannhardt, I treated it as secondary and subordinate instead of primary and dominant. Out of deference to Mannhardt, for whose work I entertain the highest respect, and because the evidence for the purificatory theory of the fires is perhaps not quite conclusive, I have in this edition repeated and even reinforced the arguments for the solar theory of the festivals, so that the reader may see for himself what can be said on both sides of the question and may draw his own conclusion; but for my part I cannot but think that the arguments for the purificatory theory far outweigh the arguments for the solar theory. Dr. Westermarck based his criticisms largely on his own observations of the Mohammedan fire-festivals of Morocco, which present a remarkable resemblance to those of Christian Europe, though there seems no reason to a.s.sume that herein Africa has borrowed from Europe or Europe from Africa. So far as Europe is concerned, the evidence tends strongly to shew that the grand evil which the festivals aimed at combating was witchcraft, and that they were conceived to attain their end by actually burning the witches, whether visible or invisible, in the flames. If that was so, the wide prevalence and the immense popularity of the fire-festivals provides us with a measure for estimating the extent of the hold which the belief in witchcraft had on the European mind before the rise of Christianity or rather of rationalism; for Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, accepted the old belief and enforced it in the old way by the f.a.ggot and the stake. It was not until human reason at last awoke after the long slumber of the Middle Ages that this dreadful obsession gradually pa.s.sed away like a dark cloud from the intellectual horizon of Europe.

Yet we should deceive ourselves if we imagined that the belief in witchcraft is even now dead in the ma.s.s of the people; on the contrary there is ample evidence to show that it only hibernates under the chilling influence of rationalism, and that it would start into active life if that influence were ever seriously relaxed. The truth seems to be that to this day the peasant remains a pagan and savage at heart; his civilization is merely a thin veneer which the hard knocks of life soon abrade, exposing the solid core of paganism and savagery below. The danger created by a bottomless layer of ignorance and superst.i.tion under the crust of civilized society is lessened, not only by the natural torpidity and inertia of the bucolic mind, but also by the progressive decrease of the rural as compared with the urban population in modern states; for I believe it will be found that the artisans who congregate in towns are far less retentive of primitive modes of thought than their rustic brethren. In every age cities have been the centres and as it were the lighthouses from which ideas radiate into the surrounding darkness, kindled by the friction of mind with mind in the crowded haunts of men; and it is natural that at these beacons of intellectual light all should partake in some measure of the general illumination. No doubt the mental ferment and unrest of great cities have their dark as well as their bright side; but among the evils to be apprehended from them the chances of a pagan revival need hardly be reckoned.

Another point on which I have changed my mind is the nature of the great Aryan G.o.d whom the Romans called Jupiter and the Greeks Zeus. Whereas I formerly argued that he was primarily a personification of the sacred oak and only in the second place a personification of the thundering sky, I now invert the order of his divine functions and believe that he was a sky-G.o.d before he came to be a.s.sociated with the oak. In fact, I revert to the traditional view of Jupiter, recant my heresy, and am gathered like a lost sheep into the fold of mythological orthodoxy. The good shepherd who has brought me back is my friend Mr. W. Warde Fowler.

He has removed the stone over which I stumbled in the wilderness by explaining in a simple and natural way how a G.o.d of the thundering sky might easily come to be afterwards a.s.sociated with the oak. The explanation turns on the great frequency with which, as statistics prove, the oak is struck by lightning beyond any other tree of the wood in Europe. To our rude forefathers, who dwelt in the gloomy depths of the primaeval forest, it might well seem that the riven and blackened oaks must indeed be favourites of the sky-G.o.d, who so often descended on them from the murky cloud in a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder.

This change of view as to the great Aryan G.o.d necessarily affects my interpretation of the King of the Wood, the priest of Diana at Aricia, if I may take that discarded puppet out of the box again for a moment.

On my theory the priest represented Jupiter in the flesh, and accordingly, if Jupiter was primarily a sky-G.o.d, his priest cannot have been a mere incarnation of the sacred oak, but must, like the deity whose commission he bore, have been invested in the imagination of his worshippers with the power of overcasting the heaven with clouds and eliciting storms of thunder and rain from the celestial vault. The attribution of weather-making powers to kings or priests is very common in primitive society, and is indeed one of the princ.i.p.al levers by which such personages raise themselves to a position of superiority above their fellows. There is therefore no improbability in the supposition that as a representative of Jupiter the priest of Diana enjoyed this reputation, though positive evidence of it appears to be lacking.

Lastly, in the present edition I have shewn some grounds for thinking that the Golden Bough itself, or in common parlance the mistletoe on the oak, was supposed to have dropped from the sky upon the tree in a flash of lightning and therefore to contain within itself the seed of celestial fire, a sort of smouldering thunderbolt. This view of the priest and of the bough which he guarded at the peril of his life has the advantage of accounting for the importance which the sanctuary at Nemi acquired and the treasure which it ama.s.sed through the offerings of the faithful; for the shrine would seem to have been to ancient what Loreto has been to modern Italy, a place of pilgrimage, where princes and n.o.bles as well as commoners poured wealth into the coffers of Diana in her green recess among the Alban hills, just as in modern times kings and queens vied with each other in enriching the black Virgin who from her Holy House on the hillside at Loreto looks out on the blue Adriatic and the purple Apennines. Such pious prodigality becomes more intelligible if the greatest of the G.o.ds was indeed believed to dwell in human shape with his wife among the woods of Nemi.

These are the princ.i.p.al points on which I have altered my opinion since the last edition of my book was published. The mere admission of such changes may suffice to indicate the doubt and uncertainty which attend enquiries of this nature. The whole fabric of ancient mythology is so foreign to our modern ways of thought, and the evidence concerning it is for the most part so fragmentary, obscure, and conflicting that in our attempts to piece together and interpret it we can hardly hope to reach conclusions that will completely satisfy either ourselves or others. In this as in other branches of study it is the fate of theories to be washed away like children's castles of sand by the rising tide of knowledge, and I am not so presumptuous as to expect or desire for mine an exemption from the common lot. I hold them all very lightly and have used them chiefly as convenient pegs on which to hang my collections of facts. For I believe that, while theories are transitory, a record of facts has a permanent value, and that as a chronicle of ancient customs and beliefs my book may retain its utility when my theories are as obsolete as the customs and beliefs themselves deserve to be.

I cannot dismiss without some natural regret a task which has occupied and amused me at intervals for many years. But the regret is tempered by thankfulness and hope. I am thankful that I have been able to conclude at least one chapter of the work I projected a long time ago. I am hopeful that I may not now be taking a final leave of my indulgent readers, but that, as I am sensible of little abatement in my bodily strength and of none in my ardour for study, they will bear with me yet a while if I should attempt to entertain them with fresh subjects of laughter and tears drawn from the comedy and the tragedy of man's endless quest after happiness and truth.

J.G. FRAZER.

CAMBRIDGE, 17_th October_ 1913.

CHAPTER I

BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH

-- 1. _Not to touch the Earth_

[The priest of Aricia and the Golden Bough]

We have travelled far since we turned our backs on Nemi and set forth in quest of the secret of the Golden Bough. With the present volume we enter on the last stage of our long journey. The reader who has had the patience to follow the enquiry thus far may remember that at the outset two questions were proposed for answer: Why had the priest of Aricia to slay his predecessor? And why, before doing so, had he to pluck the Golden Bough?[1] Of these two questions the first has now been answered.

The priest of Aricia, if I am right, was one of those sacred kings or human divinities on whose life the welfare of the community and even the course of nature in general are believed to be intimately dependent. It does not appear that the subjects or worshippers of such a spiritual potentate form to themselves any very clear notion of the exact relationship in which they stand to him; probably their ideas on the point are vague and fluctuating, and we should err if we attempted to define the relationship with logical precision. All that the people know, or rather imagine, is that somehow they themselves, their cattle, and their crops are mysteriously bound up with their divine king, so that according as he is well or ill the community is healthy or sickly, the flocks and herds thrive or languish with disease, and the fields yield an abundant or a scanty harvest. The worst evil which they can conceive of is the natural death of their ruler, whether he succ.u.mb to sickness or old age, for in the opinion of his followers such a death would entail the most disastrous consequences on themselves and their possessions; fatal epidemics would sweep away man and beast, the earth would refuse her increase, nay the very frame of nature itself might be dissolved. To guard against these catastrophes it is necessary to put the king to death while he is still in the full bloom of his divine manhood, in order that his sacred life, transmitted in unabated force to his successor, may renew its youth, and thus by successive transmissions through a perpetual line of vigorous incarnations may remain eternally fresh and young, a pledge and security that men and animals shall in like manner renew their youth by a perpetual succession of generations, and that seedtime and harvest, and summer and winter, and rain and sunshine shall never fail. That, if my conjecture is right, was why the priest of Aricia, the King of the Wood at Nemi, had regularly to perish by the sword of his successor.

[What was the Golden Bough?]

But we have still to ask, What was the Golden Bough? and why had each candidate for the Arician priesthood to pluck it before he could slay the priest? These questions I will now try to answer.

[Sacred kings and priests forbidden to touch the ground with their feet.]

It will be well to begin by noticing two of those rules or taboos by which, as we have seen, the life of divine kings or priests is regulated. The first of the rules to which I desire to call the reader's attention is that the divine personage may not touch the ground with his foot. This rule was observed by the supreme pontiff of the Zapotecs in Mexico; he profaned his sanct.i.ty if he so much as touched the ground with his foot.[2] Montezuma, emperor of Mexico, never set foot on the ground; he was always carried on the shoulders of n.o.blemen, and if he lighted anywhere they laid rich tapestry for him to walk upon.[3] For the Mikado of j.a.pan to touch the ground with his foot was a shameful degradation; indeed, in the sixteenth century, it was enough to deprive him of his office. Outside his palace he was carried on men's shoulders; within it he walked on exquisitely wrought mats.[4] The king and queen of Tahiti might not touch the ground anywhere but within their hereditary domains; for the ground on which they trod became sacred. In travelling from place to place they were carried on the shoulders of sacred men. They were always accompanied by several pairs of these sanctified attendants; and when it became necessary to change their bearers, the king and queen vaulted on to the shoulders of their new bearers without letting their feet touch the ground.[5] It was an evil omen if the king of Dosuma touched the ground, and he had to perform an expiatory ceremony.[6] Within his palace the king of Persia walked on carpets on which no one else might tread; outside of it he was never seen on foot but only in a chariot or on horseback.[7] In old days the king of Siam never set foot upon the earth, but was carried on a throne of gold from place to place.[8] Formerly neither the kings of Uganda, nor their mothers, nor their queens might walk on foot outside of the s.p.a.cious enclosures in which they lived. Whenever they went forth they were carried on the shoulders of men of the Buffalo clan, several of whom accompanied any of these royal personages on a journey and took it in turn to bear the burden. The king sat astride the bearer's neck with a leg over each shoulder and his feet tucked under the bearer's arms.

When one of these royal carriers grew tired he shot the king on to the shoulders of a second man without allowing the royal feet to touch the ground. In this way they went at a great pace and travelled long distances in a day, when the king was on a journey. The bearers had a special hut in the king's enclosure in order to be at hand the moment they were wanted.[9] Among the Bakuba or rather Bushongo, a nation in the southern region of the Congo, down to a few years ago persons of the royal blood were forbidden to touch the ground; they must sit on a hide, a chair, or the back of a slave, who crouched on hands and feet; their feet rested on the feet of others. When they travelled they were carried on the backs of men; but the king journeyed in a litter supported on shafts.[10] Among the Ibo people about Awka, in Southern Nigeria, the priest of the Earth has to observe many taboos; for example, he may not see a corpse, and if he meets one on the road he must hide his eyes with his wristlet. He must abstain from many foods, such as eggs, birds of all sorts, mutton, dog, bush-buck, and so forth. He may neither wear nor touch a mask, and no masked man may enter his house. If a dog enters his house, it is killed and thrown out. As priest of the Earth he may not sit on the bare ground, nor eat things that have fallen on the ground, nor may earth be thrown at him.[11] According to ancient Brahmanic ritual a king at his inauguration trod on a tiger's skin and a golden plate; he was shod with shoes of boar's skin, and so long as he lived thereafter he might not stand on the earth with his bare feet.[12]

[Certain persons on certain occasions forbidden to touch the ground with their feet.]

But besides persons who are permanently sacred or tabooed and are therefore permanently forbidden to touch the ground with their feet, there are others who enjoy the character of sanct.i.ty or taboo only on certain occasions, and to whom accordingly the prohibition in question only applies at the definite seasons during which they exhale the odour of sanct.i.ty. Thus among the Kayans or Bahaus of Central Borneo, while the priestesses are engaged in the performance of certain rites they may not step on the ground, and boards are laid for them to tread on.[13] At a funeral ceremony observed by night among the Michemis, a Tibetan tribe near the northern frontier of a.s.sam, a priest fantastically bedecked with tiger's teeth, many-coloured plumes, bells, and sh.e.l.ls, executed a wild dance for the purpose of exorcising the evil spirits; then all fires were extinguished and a new light was struck by a man suspended by his feet from a beam in the ceiling; "he did not touch the ground," we are told, "in order to indicate that the light came from heaven."[14]

Again, newly born infants are strongly tabooed; accordingly in Loango they are not allowed to touch the earth.[15] Among the Iluvans of Malabar the bridegroom on his wedding-day is bathed by seven young men and then carried or walks on planks from the bathing-place to the marriage booth; he may not touch the ground with his feet.[16] With the Dyaks of Landak and Tajan, two districts of Dutch Borneo, it is a custom that for a certain time after marriage neither bride nor bridegroom may tread on the earth.[17] Warriors, again, on the war-path are surrounded, so to say, by an atmosphere of taboo; hence some Indians of North America might not sit on the bare ground the whole time they were out on a warlike expedition.[18] In Laos the hunting of elephants gives rise to many taboos; one of them is that the chief hunter may not touch the earth with his foot. Accordingly, when he alights from his elephant, the others spread a carpet of leaves for him to step upon.[19] German wiseacres recommended that when witches were led to the block or the stake, they should not be allowed to touch the bare earth, and a reason suggested for the rule was that if they touched the earth they might make themselves invisible and so escape. The sagacious author of _The Striped-petticoat Philosophy_ in the eighteenth century ridicules the idea as mere silly talk. He admits, indeed, that the women were conveyed to the place of execution in carts; but he denies that there is any deep significance in the cart, and he is prepared to maintain this view by a chemical a.n.a.lysis of the timber of which the cart was built. To clinch his argument he appeals to plain matter of fact and his own personal experience. Not a single instance, he a.s.sures us with apparent satisfaction, can be produced of a witch who escaped the axe or the fire in this fashion. "I have myself," says he, "in my youth seen divers witches burned, some at Arnstadt, some at Ilmenau, some at Schwenda, a n.o.ble village between Arnstadt and Ilmenau, and some of them were pardoned and beheaded before being burned. They were laid on the earth in the place of execution and beheaded like any other poor sinner; whereas if they could have escaped by touching the earth, not one of them would have failed to do so."[20]

[Sacred or tabooed persons apparently thought to be charged with a mysterious virtue like a fluid, which will run to waste or explode if it touches the ground.]

Apparently holiness, magical virtue, taboo, or whatever we may call that mysterious quality which is supposed to pervade sacred or tabooed persons, is conceived by the primitive philosopher as a physical substance or fluid, with which the sacred man is charged just as a Leyden jar is charged with electricity; and exactly as the electricity in the jar can be discharged by contact with a good conductor, so the holiness or magical virtue in the man can be discharged and drained away by contact with the earth, which on this theory serves as an excellent conductor for the magical fluid. Hence in order to preserve the charge from running to waste, the sacred or tabooed personage must be carefully prevented from touching the ground; in electrical language he must be insulated, if he is not to be emptied of the precious substance or fluid with which he, as a vial, is filled to the brim. And in many cases apparently the insulation of the tabooed person is recommended as a precaution not merely for his own sake but for the sake of others; for since the virtue of holiness or taboo is, so to say, a powerful explosive which the smallest touch may detonate, it is necessary in the interest of the general safety to keep it within narrow bounds, lest breaking out it should blast, blight, and destroy whatever it comes into contact with.

[Things as well as persons can be charged with the mysterious quality of holiness or taboo; and when so charged they must be kept from contact with the ground.]

But things as well as persons are often charged with the mysterious quality of holiness or taboo; hence it frequently becomes necessary for similar reasons to guard them also from coming into contact with the ground, lest they should in like manner be drained of their valuable properties and be reduced to mere commonplace material objects, empty husks from which the good grain has been eliminated. Thus, for example, the most sacred object of the Arunta tribe in Central Australia is, or rather used to be, a pole about twenty feet high, which is completely smeared with human blood, crowned with an imitation of a human head, and set up on the ground where the final initiatory ceremonies of young men are performed. A young gum-tree is chosen to form the pole, and it must be cut down and transported in such a way that it does not touch the earth till it is erected in its place on the holy ground. Apparently the pole represents some famous ancestor of the olden time.[21]

[Festival of the wild manog tree in British New Guinea.]

Again, at a great dancing festival celebrated by the natives of Bartle Bay, in British New Guinea, a wild mango tree plays a prominent part.

The tree must be self-sown, that is, really wild and so young that it has never flowered. It is chosen in the jungle some five or six weeks before the festival, and a circle is cleared round its trunk. From that time the master of the ceremonies and some eight to twenty other men, who have aided him in choosing the tree and in clearing the jungle, become strictly holy or tabooed. They sleep by themselves in a house into which no one else may intrude: they may not wash or drink water, nor even allow it accidentally to touch their bodies: they are forbidden to eat boiled food and the fruit of mango trees: they may drink only the milk of a young coco-nut which has been baked, and they may eat certain fruits and vegetables, such as paw-paws (_Carica papaya_) and sugar-cane, but only on condition that they have been baked. All refuse of their food is kept in baskets in their sleeping-house and may not be removed from it till the festival is over. At the time when the men begin to observe these rules of abstinence, some six to ten women, members of the same clan as the master of the ceremonies, enter on a like period of mortification, avoiding the company of the other s.e.x, and refraining from water, all boiled food, and the fruit of the mango tree.

These fasting men and women are the princ.i.p.al dancers at the festival.

The dancing takes place on a special platform in a temporary village which has been erected for the purpose. When the platform is about to be set up, the fasting men rub the stepping posts and then suck their hands for the purpose of extracting the ghost of any dead man that might chance to be in the post and might be injured by the weight of the platform pressing down on him. Having carefully extracted these poor souls, the men carry them away tenderly and set them free in the forest or the long gra.s.s.

[The wild mango tree not allowed to touch the ground.]

On the day before the festival one of the fasting men cuts down the chosen mango tree in the jungle with a stone adze, which is never afterwards put to any other use; an iron tool may not be used for the purpose, though iron tools are now common enough in the district. In cutting down the mango they place nets on the ground to catch any leaves or twigs that might fall from the tree as it is being felled and they surround the trunk with new mats to receive the chips which fly out under the adze of the woodman; for the chips may not drop on the earth.

Once the tree is down, it is carried to the centre of the temporary village, the greatest care being taken to prevent it from coming into contact with the ground. But when it is brought into the village, the houses are connected with the top of the mango by means of long vines decorated with the streamers. In the afternoon the fasting men and women begin to dance, the men bedizened with gay feathers, armlets, streamers, and anklets, the women flaunting in parti-coloured petticoats and sprigs of croton leaves, which wave from their waistbands as they dance. The dancing stops at sundown, and when the full moon rises over the shoulder of the eastern hill (for the date of the festival seems to be determined with reference to the time of the moon), two chiefs mount the gables of two houses on the eastern side of the square, and, their dusky figures standing sharply out against the moonlight, pray to the evil spirits to go away and not to hurt the people. Next morning pigs are killed by being speared as slowly as possible in order that they may squeal loud and long; for the people believe that the mango trees hear the squealing, and are pleased at the sound, and bear plenty of fruit, whereas if they heard no squeals they would bear no fruit. However, the trees have to content themselves with the squeals; the flesh of the pigs is eaten by the people. This ends the festival.

[Final disposition of the wild mango tree.]

Next day the mango is taken down from the platform, wrapt in new mats, and carried by the fasting men to their sleeping house, where it is hung from the roof. But after an interval, it may be of many months, the tree is brought forth again. As to the reason for its reappearance in public opinions are divided; but some say that the tree itself orders the master of the ceremonies to bring it forth, appearing to him in his dreams and saying, "Let me smell the smoking fat of pigs. So will your pigs be healthy and your crops will grow." Be that as it may, out it comes, conducted by the fasting men in their dancing costume; and with it come in the solemn procession all the pots, spoons, cups and so forth used by the fasting men during their period of holiness or taboo, also all the refuse of their food which has been collected for months, and all the fallen leaves and chips of the mango in their bundles of mats.

These holy relics are carried in front and the mango tree itself brings up the rear of the procession. While these sacred objects are being handed out of the house, the men who are present rush up, wipe off the hallowed dust which has acc.u.mulated on them, and smear it over their own bodies, no doubt in order to steep themselves in their blessed influence. Thus the tree is carried as before to the centre of the temporary village, care being again taken not to let it touch the ground. Then one of the fasting men takes from a basket a number of young green mangoes, cuts them in pieces, and places them with his own hands in the mouths of his fellows, the other fasting men, who chew the pieces small and turning round spit the morsels in the direction of the setting sun, in order that "the sun should carry the mango bits over the whole country and everyone should know." A portion of the mango tree is then broken off and in the evening it is burnt along with the bundles of leaves, chips, and refuse of food, which have been stored up. What remains of the tree is taken to the house of the master of the ceremonies and hung over the fire-place; it will be brought out again at intervals and burned bit by bit, till all is consumed, whereupon a new mango will be cut down and treated in like manner. The ashes of the holy fire on each occasion are gathered by the people and preserved in the house of the master of the ceremonies.[22]

[The ceremony apparently intended to fertilize the mango trees.]

The meaning of these ceremonies is not explained by the authorities who describe them; but we may conjecture that they are intended to fertilize the mango trees and cause them to bear a good crop of fruit. The central feature of the whole ritual is a wild mango tree, so young that it has never flowered: the men who cut it down, carry it into the village, and dance at the festival, are forbidden to eat mangoes: pigs are killed in order that their dying squeals may move the mango trees to bear fruit: at the end of the ceremonies pieces of young green mangoes are solemnly placed in the mouths of the fasting men and are by them spurted out towards the setting sun in order that the luminary may carry the fragments to every part of the country; and finally when after a longer or shorter interval the tree is wholly consumed, its place is supplied by another. All these circ.u.mstances are explained simply and naturally by the supposition that the young mango tree is taken as a representative of mangoes generally, that the dances are intended to quicken it, and that it is preserved, like a May-pole of old in England, as a sort of general fund of vegetable life, till the fund being exhausted by the destruction of the tree it is renewed by the importation of a fresh young tree from the forest. We can therefore understand why, as a storehouse of vital energy, the tree should be carefully kept from contact with the ground, lest the pent-up and concentrated energy should escape and dribbling away into the earth be dissipated to no purpose.

[Sacred objects of various sorts not allowed to touch the ground.]

To take other instances of what we may call the conservation of energy in magic or religion by insulating sacred bodies from the ground, the natives of New Britain have a secret society called the Duk-duk, the members of which masquerade in petticoats of leaves and tall headdresses of wickerwork shaped like candle extinguishers, which descend to the shoulders of the wearers, completely concealing their faces. Thus disguised they dance about to the awe and terror, real or a.s.sumed, of the women and uninitiated, who take, or pretend to take, them for spirits. When lads are being initiated into the secrets of this august society, the adepts cut down some very large and heavy bamboos, one for each lad, and the novices carry them, carefully wrapt up in leaves, to the sacred ground, where they arrive very tired and weary, for they may not let the bamboos touch the ground nor the sun shine on them. Outside the fence of the enclosure every lad deposits his bamboo on a couple of forked sticks and covers it up with nut leaves.[23] Among the Carrier Indians of North-Western America, who burned their dead, the ashes of a chief used to be placed in a box and set on the top of a pole beside his hut: the box was never allowed to touch the ground.[24] In the Omaha tribe of North American Indians the sacred clam sh.e.l.l of the Elk clan was wrapt up from sight in a mat, placed on a stand, and never suffered to come in contact with the earth.[25] The Cherokees and kindred Indian tribes of the United States used to have certain sacred boxes or arks, which they regularly took with them to war. Such a holy ark consisted of a square wooden box, which contained "certain consecrated vessels made by beloved superannuated women, and of such various antiquated forms, as would have puzzled Adam to have given significant names to each." The leader of a war party and his attendant bore the ark by turns, but they never set it on the ground nor would they themselves sit on the bare earth while they were carrying it against the enemy. Where stones were plentiful they rested the ark on them; but where no stones were to be found, they deposited it on short logs. "The Indian ark is deemed so sacred and dangerous to be touched, either by their own sanctified warriors, or the spoiling enemy, that they durst not touch it upon any account. It is not to be meddled with by any, except the war chieftain and his waiter, under the penalty of incurring great evil. Nor would the most inveterate enemy touch it in the woods, for the very same reason."

After their return home they used to hang the ark on the leader's red-painted war pole.[26] At Sipi, near Simla, in Northern India, an annual fair is held, at which men purchase wives. A square box with a domed top figures prominently at the fair. It is fixed on two poles to be carried on men's shoulders, and long heavily-plaited petticoats hang from it nearly to the ground. Three sides of the box are adorned with the head and shoulders of a female figure and the fourth side with a black yak's tail. Four men bear the poles, each carrying an axe in his right hand. They dance round, with a swinging rhythmical step, to the music of drums and a pipe. The dance goes on for hours and is thought to avert ill-luck from the fair. It is said that the box is brought to Simla from a place sixty miles off by relays of men, who may not stop nor set the box on the ground the whole way.[27] In Scotland, when water was carried from sacred wells to sick people, the water-vessel might not touch the earth.[28] In some parts of Aberdeenshire the last bunch of standing corn, which is commonly viewed as very sacred, being the last refuge of the corn-spirit retreating before the reapers, is not suffered to touch the ground; the master or "gueedman" sits down and receives each handful of corn as it is cut on his lap.[29]

[Sacred food not allowed to touch the earth.]