Cultus Arborum Part 8

'More serpents lie Under Yggdrasill's ash Than simpletons think of; Goinn and Moinn, The sons of Grafvitnir, Grabak and Grafyollud, Ofnir and Svafnir, Must for aye, methinks, Gnaw the roots of that tree.'

"It is also said that the Norns who dwell by the Urdar-fount draw, every day, water from the spring, and with it and the clay that lies around the fount sprinkle the ash, in order that its branches may not rot and wither away. This water is so holy that everything that is placed in the spring becomes as white as the film within an eggsh.e.l.l. As it is said in the Voluspa

'An ash know I standing Named Yggdrasill, A stately tree sprinkled With water the purest Hence come the dewdrops That fall in the dales; Ever blooming, it stands O'er the Urdar-fountain.'

"The dew that falls thence on the earth men call honey-dew, and it is the food of the bees. Two fowls are fed in the Urdar-fount; they are called swans, and from them are descended all the birds of this species."

"The Yggdrasill myth, with its three aborescent roots, three fountains, and three destinies, is one of the most significant and poetical to be found in any system of mythology, but its explanation has, as usual, given rise to the most conflicting theories. Grater and Finn Magnusen offer a physical, Trautwetter an astronomical, Mone an ethical explanation, and Grundtvig applies his favourite theory of the "heroic theory of the north"

(Norden's Kaempe Aand)--pugnacious spirit would be a more appropriate designation--to this, as indeed to every other myth which he treats of, in that most singular and rather too crotchety work of his ent.i.tled "Norden's Mythologi."

"According to Finn Magnusen, Yggdrasill is the symbol of universal nature.

One of its stems (so he terms the roots) springs from the central primordial abyss--from the subterranean source of matter as it might be termed (Hvergelmir)--runs up through the earth, which it supports, and issuing out of the world's centre, "called Asgard, Caucasus, Borz," &c., spreads its branches over the entire universe. These wide-spreading branches are the ethereal or celestial regions; their leaves, the clouds; their buds or fruits, the stars; the four harts are the four cardinal winds; the eagle is a symbol of the air; the hawk of the wind-still ether; and the squirrel signifies hailstones, snow flakes, vapourous agglomerations, and similar atmospherical phenomona.

"Another stem springs in the warm south over the ethereal Urdar-fountain, the swans swimming in which denote the sun and moon. The third stem takes its rise in the cold and cheerless regions of the north, over the source of the ocean, typified by Mimir's well. The myth of Odin leaving his eye as a pledge to Mimir, signifies the descent of the sun every evening into the sea--to learn wisdom from Mimir during the night; the mead quaffed by Mimir every morning being the ruddy dawn that, spreading over the sky, exhilarates all nature. Nidhogg, and the other monsters that gnaw the fruits of the mundane tree, are the volcanic and other violent torrents that are constantly striving to consume or destroy the earth's foundations.

"Although we agree with Finn Magnusen in regarding Yggdrasill as the symbol of universal nature, we think that in attempting to explain the myth in all its details, he has let his imagination, as usual, get the better of his judgment, and lead him into the most palpable inconsistencies; insomuch so, in fact, that when we begin to examine his theory we are almost tempted to exclaim, with Grundting, "one would think it was meant for a joke." Jacob Grimm--how refreshing it always is to turn to his admirable pages--very justly observes that the whole myth of Yggdrasill bears the stamp of a very high antiquity, but does not appear to be fully unfolded. "We learn," he says, "something respecting the enmity between the eagle and the snake, and that it is kept up by Ratatosk, but nothing as to the destination of the hawk and the four harts." These remarks of Grimm are fully borne out by the very meagre account given of the Yggdrasill myth in the Voluspa, and the Grimnis-mal, the only Eddaic poems that make mention of it. In order that the reader may be aware on what very slight foundations Finn Magnusen can construct an elaborate theory, we subjoin a literal translation of all the Eddaic strophes that relate to the myth, the words in brackets being inserted to render the obscure pa.s.sages more intelligible.

"From the Voluspa:--

"St. 17.--'An ash know I standing, called Yggdrasill. A high tree sprinkled with the purest water. Thence comes the dew that falls in the dales. It (the ash) stands ever-green over the Urdar-fountain.'

"18.--'Thence come the much-knowing maidens--three from that lake (fountain) which is under the tree. One is called Urd, another Verdani, and the third Skuld. They engraved (Runic inscriptions, _i.e._, recorded events) on tablets. They laid down laws; they determined (determine) the life of the sons of men; they tell (fix) the destinies (of men).'

"From Grimnis-mal:--

"St. 29.--'Kormt and rmt, and the two Kerlangar--these rivers must Thor wade through every day as he fares to the doomstead under Yggdrasill's ash, otherwise the aesir-bridge would be in flames, and boiling hot would become the holy waters.'

"30.--'(The horses), Gladr, Gyllir, Glaer, Skeidbrimir, Silfirintoppr, Synir, Falhofnir, Gulltoppr, and Lettfetti, are ridden by the aesir every day when they go to the doomstead under the ash Yggdrasill.'

"31.--'Three roots stand in three ways (extend to three regions) under the ash Yggdrasill. Hela dwells under one; (under) another (dwell) the Forest-giants; (under) the third (dwell) mortal men' (literally human men).

"32.--'Ratatosk is called the squirrel that shall run (that runs) on the ash Yggdrasill. The eagle's words he shall bear (he bears) downwards, and shall tell (tells) them to Nidhogg below.'

"33.--'There are also four harts that on the summit (of the ash), with bent necks, bite (the leaves), Dain, Dvalin, Duneyr and Durathror are their names.'

"We think that all that can be gathered from this account of the ash Yggdrasill, and that given in the Prose Edda, is that the mundane tree is represented as embracing with its three roots the whole universe; for one of these roots springs from Hvergelmir in Niflheim, another from Mimir's well, situated somewhere or other in the region of the Forest-giants, and the third from the Urdar-fount, which is obviously placed in the celestial regions. We have thus a super-terrestial or supernal (the Urdar) root; a terrestial (the Mimir) root; and a sub-terrestial or infernal (the Hvergelmir) root. That the fountain of the Norns was supposed to be in the ethereal regions is unquestionable; for we are told in Grimnis-mal that man-kind dwelt under it, and the Prose Edda expressly states that it is "in heaven," and it would appear above Asgard, for the aesir are described as riding up to the Urdar-fountain. Finn Magnusen, as we have seen, places this fountain and roots issuing from it in the warm south. In his _Eddalren_ he gives us, in fact, to understand that the fountain springs from a high and steep cliff at the south pole, though he admits, for once, that nothing respecting such a cliff is to be found in the Eddaic Poems; the only authority he is able to adduce in support of this strange hypothesis being a figurative expression made use of by a Skald, in a poem written after his conversion to Christianity. Finn Magnusen is also of opinion that the pure water with which the tree is sprinkled by the Norns means "the snow agglomerated in the northern sky," and that "dew that falls in the dales," signifies the ever verdant aspect of the southern parts of the earth, as well as the clear azure sky by which this perennial verdure is canopied.

Mone regards the ash as the emblem of human life. Man is born of water; the swan is therefore the infantile soul that swims on the water: but the eagle, the mature experienced mind that soars aloft; the hawk perched between the eagle's eyes being eternal sensation. The snakes that gnaw the root of life are the vices and pa.s.sions; the squirrel, the double-tongued flatterer, constantly running between these pa.s.sions and the mind (the eagle) which has raised itself above their control. The harts denote the pa.s.sions of the mind, folly, madness, terror and disquietude, and therefore feed on the healthy thoughts (the green leaves). But as man in his levity remarks not what enemies threaten his existence, the stem rots on the side, and many a one dies before he attains to wisdom, or figuratively before the bird of his soul (the eagle) is seated amidst the perennial verdure of the mundane tree.

Ling supposes Yggdrasill to be the symbol both of universal and human life, and its three roots to signify the physical, the intellectual, and the moral principles.

Other writers cited by Finn Magnusen take these roots to have been meant for matter, organization and spirit, and the ash itself for the symbol of universal primordial vitality.

The translator of Mallet adds in a note: "The ash was the most appropriate tree that could have been chosen for such an emblem. Virgil describes it with its outspreading branches as enduring for centuries, and it is a singular coincidence that he should have represented it as a tree that reaches with its roots as far downwards as it does upwards with its branches. We may here remark that the maypole and the German _Christbaum_ have a Pagan origin, the type of both being the ash Yggdrasill."

Strahlenberg informs us that the Czeremisi or Scheremissi were a Pagan people under the government of Casan. Those who lived on the right side of the Wolga were called Sanagornya, and those on the left side of that river Lugowija. These people had no idols of wood or stone, but directed their prayers to heaven in the open air, and near great trees to which they paid honour, holding their a.s.semblies about them. The hides and bones of the cattle they sacrificed they hung about these holy trees to rot, by way of sacrifice to the air.

The Jakuhti were a Pagan people under the Russian Government, along the river Lena and about the city of Jakutskoi.

While not actually worshipping idols carved in wood, like the Ostiaks and Tungusu, they had a type or image of their invisible G.o.d stuffed out with a body like a bag, with monstrous head and eyes of coral. This image they hung upon a tree and round it the furs of sables and other animals. They had many superst.i.tious customs in common with other nations, which they celebrated about certain trees regarded as sacred. When they met with a fine tree they hung all manner of nick-nacks about it--of iron, bra.s.s copper, &c. They are said to have carried nine different sorts of things for offerings to their Hayns or idolatrous groves.

Their priests, when they performed their rites, put on garments trimmed with bits of iron, rattles and bells. As soon as the fields began to be green, each generation gathered together at a place where there was a fine tree and a pleasant spot of ground. There they sacrificed horses and oxen, the heads of which they stuck up round the trees.

Strahlenberg, speaking of the Pagans in Russia (of 150 years ago), says: "In general it may be said of them all, that they believe one Eternal Being, who created all things, and whom they pretend to worship under the form of many sorts of strange things. Some of them have taken a fancy to many sorts of images; some to animals, birds, and stars; they set apart for their offerings, which they make to heaven, certain places or holy groves, and have regard to fire and other elements."[30]

In the interesting dictionary of Mr. Peter Bayle, under Rubenus (Leonard), we have a notice of Tree Worship which may very well be introduced here as a.s.sisting generally with our discussion of the subject.

Rubenus was a native of Essen in Germany, and entered the order of St.

Benedict at Cologne in the year 1596. He was in Transylvania in the year 1588, and he there published theses concerning idolatry, dedicating them to Prince Sigismund Battori. He relates a thing which shews that Livonia was still infected with heathenish idolatry. Having received an order from his superiors to go to Dorpat, which is almost the outmost town of Livonia, in his way he pa.s.sed through the sacred woods of the Esthonians.

He saw there a pine tree of an extraordinary height and size, the branches whereof were full of divers pieces of old cloth, and its roots covered with many bundles of straw and hay. He asked a man of the neighbourhood what was the meaning of it; he answered that the inhabitants adored that tree, and that the women after a safe delivery brought thither these bundles of hay; that they also had a custom to offer at a certain time a tun of beer, and to throw a tun of it into the lake of Mariemburg when it thundered, and that they thought the thunder was the son of G.o.d, and that he was appeased by the effusion of that liquor. He desired they would bring him a good hatchet, for that which he had in his chariot was not sharp; and when they asked him what he designed to do with it, I will show you, said he, the weakness of what you worship. The Esthonians replied that they could not do what he desired without the utmost danger, and cried to him to take care of going under the tree, and if he did both he and his chariot would be taken up into the air. However, he made his horses go under it; and, taking his hatchet, in a devout manner he cut the figure of a cross on the pine, and lest that figure made by a man, whom they honoured with the appellation of the great temple of G.o.d, should increase their superst.i.tion, he cut a gibbet on the same tree, and, in derision, said--behold your G.o.d.

"There is no mistake," says a writer in Fraser (1871), "as to our old Tree and Serpent faiths. Each hamlet (he is speaking of his visit to Ammer in Bavaria) has its Maienbaum--a long pole, one hundred feet or more in height, with alternate blue and white stripes coiling round it. The May-pole is intersected by seven or sometimes nine bars, beginning at about ten feet from the ground and running to the top, which is adorned with streamers. On these bars are various emblematic figures. The one at Murau had on the lower limb a small tree and a nail with circular n.o.b; on the next a small house, a horseshoe and wheel on one side; a hammer crossed by a pair of pincers on the other, a broom, perhaps Ceres as a sheaf of corn; below this was seen the Lingam, with Maya's symbols, the cup and c.o.c.k or the bird of desire sacred to her. Elsewhere we see a heart, fire, pyramid, and inverted pyramid, anchor and water as in Egypt, and a circle pierced by a line, &c. Can any Phallic tale be more complete?

We must be here content with our general knowledge that the Maienbaum was a Pagan object, and that its decorations were originally symbols of the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses. Christian significance is given to all these; for as the priest could not efface the old faiths he told his credulous herd that this hammer is that which nailed Christ to the cross, that the tree is the conventional olive of church pictures, and that the cross, the c.o.c.k, the cup and sacred heart are all connected with the "Pa.s.sion of Christ."

The broom represents witches, and the horseshoe the corona or Mary's head dress; it is also Maiya's sign, and is there as a charm to hold witches at bay like the Ephod of old. He who may, I fancy, be taken as one great tree of life.

"On May-day it is festooned with branches, for the Bavarian peasants keep up, in many ways, the ancient reverence for sacred trees.

"When a house is finished it is consecrated by having a birch sapling stuck into the roof, and in a thousand tales the poor and ignorant are still taught to fear trees. One story says that before a large fir tree King Ludwig's horse fell three times forward on his knees, and here he built a celebrated church, taking care that the fir tree should be in its very centre."

"The most interesting feature of the Pa.s.sion Play to me," continues the writer, "was that nine young birch trees, reaching from floor to ceiling, had been set along the walls inside, at intervals of ten to fifteen feet.

That the sacred tree of ancient Germany and even of ancient Greece, which has so long been held as a charm against witches, against lightning and other evils, should be here overshadowing Christian worshippers was curious enough. The enclosure was also surrounded by birch trees, regularly planted. Like our remote ancestors who worshipped Odin, we sat amidst the sacred grove. There are some remote corners of these mountains, it is said, where one who has a fever still goes to a birch tree and shakes it, with the words: 'Birch, a fever plagues me; G.o.d grant it may pa.s.s from me to thee!' and where one subject to cramp takes a broom made of birch switches into his bed. The presence of these trees is one among the features of the Ammergau Play which justify antiquaries in tracing its origin to a period far anterior to that with which it is connected in the records of the village. The story has often been told of how, nearly two and a half centuries ago, a pilgrim came to some sacred festival in the village and brought with him a plague which devastated it; how the people got together and united in a holy vow, that if their village were spared further ravages they would, every tenth year, represent solemnly the sufferings and death of Christ; and how immediately the scourge was removed, not another person dying even of those who lay sick when the vow was made. But though the villagers do not care to look beyond this story on their records, the legend itself suggests that there was already some festival there which had attracted the pilgrim who brought them so much woe. Professor von Loher informed me that there is some evidence, not only that somewhat similar dramatic performances occurred occasionally at Oberammergau before the period mentioned in the village tradition, but that even far away in Pagan times it was one of the spots where the people represented the deeds of their G.o.ds and heroes theatrically. It is well known that in many regions the early Christians avoided all interference with such Pagan customs when they found them preferring to subst.i.tute their own sacred characters for those of heathenism. There are probabilities, therefore, that the sacred birches which now surround the scenes of Christian story once witnessed the life and death of Baldur; or that later still, the birch boughs which the children now strew in the path of Christ as he enters Jerusalem, were once cast before the chariot of the Sun-G.o.d, to symbolize the fresh foliage with which his warm beams invested the earth."

The same writer adds: "With the birch trees waving around, and these old symbols of once great religions before me, I felt thrilled by an impression of having reached a spot where the prehistoric religion could be traced visibly blending with Christianity."

Tree and Serpent worship is the theme of many an ancient Greek myth. The destruction of the dragon Python by Apollo, who takes possession of the oracle which the serpent guarded; the conversion of Cadmus and his wife into serpents when they were regarded as objects of veneration; the story of the Argonautic expedition, which was undertaken to recover a fleece that hung on a tree guarded by a dragon; the strangling of serpents by Hercules; his adventure in the garden of the Hesperides, which reminds us of the garden of Eden, though with a different moral; his fight with Lernaean hydra; on the other hand, his intercourse with the serpent Echidna, through whom he is said to have become the progenitor of the whole race of serpent-worshipping Scythians; the keeping of serpents at Delphi and other places for oracular purposes; the serpent worship at Epidaurus, where stood the temple of aesculapius and the grove attached to it; the contention between Athene and Poseidon for the guardianship of the city of Athens when the G.o.ddess created the olive, planting it on the Acropolis, and handed over the care of it to the serpent-G.o.d Ericthonius; the statement that when the Persians were approaching Athens the Athenians, though warned by the oracle, refused to leave their homes till they learned that the great serpent, the guardian of the city, had refused its food and left its place; the curious record concerning the descent of Alexander the Great from a serpent; the part which snakes played in the Bacchic cultus--all these tales show the tenacity of that early form of worship.

Fergusson adds to this summary of his words by an American writer:--"The traces of Tree Worship in Greece are even fuller and more defined than those of the Serpent Cultus just alluded to. As each succeeding Buddha in the Indian mythology had a separate and different Bo-tree a.s.signed to him, so each G.o.d of the cla.s.sical Pantheon seems to have had some tree appropriated as his emblem or representative. Among the most familiar are the oak or beech of Jupiter, the laurel of Apollo, the vine of Bacchus.

The olive is the well-known tree of Minerva. The myrtle was sacred to Aphrodite. The apple or orange of the Hesperides belonged to Juno. The populus was the tree of Hercules, and the plane-tree was the "numen of Atridae."

We have now presented a view of this interesting cultus extending over the princ.i.p.al nations of the Eastern and Western worlds, and reaching from the remotest ages to modern times. In doing so, many curious legends and superst.i.tious customs have been described upon the best authority, and, in most instances, upon the testimony of actual eye witnesses. The story must now stop as our usual limits have been reached; it will probably be resumed again in a future volume, which it is hoped will, in conjunction with its predecessors, form a complete exposition of the mysteries of what is called Phallic Worship.

Bibliography of Authorities consulted and referred to in the preparation of these volumes.

CLa.s.s I.

SPECIAL WORKS UPON THE PHALLIC CULTUS.

BOUDIN (J. C.) Etudes Anthropologiques, Considerations sur le Culte et les pratiques religieuses de divers peuples anciens et modernes; Culte du Phallus; Culte du Serpent; 8vo, pp. 88 _Paris_, 1864

CAMPBELL (R. A.) Phallic Worship, an Outline of the Worship of the Generative Organs, as being or as representing the Divine Creator, with Suggestions as to the influence of the Phallic idea on religious Creeds, Ceremonies, Customs, and Symbolism, past and present; 200 ill.u.s.trations _St. Louis, U.S.A._, 1887

DAVENPORT (J.) Aphrodisiacs and Anti-Aphrodisiacs, three essays on the Phallic Worship and Powers of Reproduction; ill.u.s.trated, 4to _Privately printed_, 1869

DAVENPORT (J.) Curiositates Eroticae Physiologie, or a Tabooed Subject freely treated; 4to _Privately Printed_, 1869