On Dionysus in general, see L.
Preller, Griechische
Mythologie,4 i. 659 sqq.;
Fr. Lenormant, s.v.“Bacchus,” in Daremberg and Saglio's
Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et
Romaines, i. 591 sqq.;
Voigt and Thraemer, s.v.“Dionysus,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech.
u. röm. Mythologie, i. 1029 sqq.;
E. Rohde, Psyche3
(Tübingen and Leipsic, 1903), ii. 1 sqq.;
Miss J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek
Religion, Second Edition (Cambridge, 1908), pp. 363
sqq.; Kern, s.v.“Dionysus,” in Pauly-Wissowa's
Real-Encyclopädie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft, v. 1010 sqq.;
M. P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste von religiöser
Bedeutung (Leipsic, 1906), pp. 258 sqq.;
L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States,
v. (Oxford, 1909) pp. 85 sqq. The epithet Bromios
bestowed on Dionysus, and his identification with the Thracian and
Phrygian deity Sabazius, have been adduced as evidence that
Dionysus was a god of beer or of other cereal intoxicants before he
became a god of wine. See W. Headlam, in Classical
Review, xv. (1901) p. 23; Miss J. E. Harrison,
Prolegomena to the Study of Greek
Religion, pp. 414-426.
Plato, Laws,
i. p. 637 e; Theopompus, cited by
Athenaeus, x. 60, p. 442 ef; Suidas, s.v.
κατασκεδάζειν; compare Xenophon, Anabasis, vii. 3. 32. For the
evidence of the Thracian origin of Dionysus, see the writers cited
in the preceding note, especially Dr. L. R. Farnell, op.
cit. v. 85 sqq. Compare W. Ridgeway,
The
Origin of Tragedy (Cambridge, 1910), pp. 10
sqq.
Herodotus, ii. 49; Diodorus Siculus,
i. 97. 4; P. Foucart, Le Culte de Dionyse en Attique
(Paris, 1904), pp. 9 sqq., 159 sqq.
(Mémoires
de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres,
xxxvii.).
See the pictures of his images, drawn
from ancient vases, in C. Bötticher's Baumkultus der
Hellenen (Berlin, 1856), plates 42, 43, 43
a, 43 b, 44; Daremberg et
Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et
Romaines, i. 361, 626 sq.
P. Wendland und O. Kern, Beiträge zur
Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie und Religion
(Berlin, 1895), pp. 79 sqq.; Ch. Michel, Recueil d'
Inscriptions Grecques (Brussels, 1900), No. 856.
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 636, vol. ii. p. 435,
τῶν καρπῶν τῶν ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ. However, the words may equally well
refer to the cereal crops.
Pausanias, ii. 2. 6 sq.
Pausanias does not mention the kind of tree; but from Euripides,
Bacchae, 1064 sqq.,
and Philostratus, Imag. i. 17 (18), we may infer
that it was a pine, though Theocritus (xxvi. 11) speaks of it as a
mastich-tree.
Müller-Wieseler, Denkmäler der alten
Kunst, ii. pll. xxxii. sqq.;
A. Baumeister, Denkmäler des klassischen
Altertums, i. figures 489, 491, 492, 495. Compare F.
Lenormant, in Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des
Antiquités Grecques et Romaines, i. 623; Ch. F.
Lobeck, Aglaophamus (Königsberg, 1829),
p. 700.
Diodorus Siculus, iii. 64. 1-3, iv. 4.
1 sq. On the agricultural aspect
of Dionysus, see L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the
Greek States, v. (Oxford, 1909) pp. 123 sq.
Servius on Virgil, Georg.
i. 166; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35. The literary
and monumental evidence as to the winnowing-fan in the myth and
ritual of Dionysus has been collected and admirably interpreted by
Miss J. E. Harrison in her article “Mystica
Vannus Iacchi,”Journal of Hellenic Studies,
xxiii. (1903) pp. 292-324. Compare her Prolegomena to the
Study of Greek Religion2
(Cambridge, 1908), pp. 517 sqq. I must refer the reader to
these works for full details on the subject. In the passage of
Servius referred to the reading is somewhat uncertain; in his
critical edition G. Thilo reads λικμητὴν and λικμὸς instead of the
usual λικνιτὴν and λικνόν. But the variation does not affect the
meaning.
T. S. Raffles, History of
Java (London, 1817), i. 323; C. F. Winter,
“Instellingen, Gewoontenen Gebruiken der
Javanen te Soerakarta,”Tijdschrift voor
Neêrlands Indie, Vijfde Jaargang, Eerste Deel (1843),
p. 695; P. J. Veth, Java (Haarlem, 1875-1884), i.
639.
Rev. E. M. Gordon, “Some Notes concerning the People of Mungēli Tahsīl,
Bilaspur District,”Journal of the Asiatic Society of
Bengal, lxxi., Part iii. (Calcutta, 1903) p. 74;
id., Indian Folk
Tales (London, 1908), p. 41.
R. C. Temple, “Opprobrious Names,”Indian
Antiquary, x. (1881) pp. 331 sq.
Compare H. A. Rose, “Hindu Birth
Observances in the Punjab,”Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute, xxxvii. (1907) p. 234. See
also Panjab Notes and Queries, vol.
iii. August 1886, § 768, pp. 184 sq.:
“The winnowing fan in which a newly-born
child is laid, is used on the fifth day for the worship of Satwáí.
This makes it impure, and it is henceforward used only for the
house-sweepings.”
J. Richardson, “Tanala Customs, Superstitions, and Beliefs,”Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar Magazine,
Reprint of the First Four Numbers (Antananarivo,
1885), pp. 226 sq.
Rev. J. Doolittle, Social Life of the
Chinese, edited and revised by the Rev. Paxton Hood
(London, 1868), pp. 114 sq. The beans used in the
ceremony had previously been placed before an image of the goddess
of small-pox.
Servius on Virgil, Georg.
i. 166: “Et
vannus Iacchi.... Mystica autem Bacchi ideo ait, quod Liberi patris
sacra ad purgationem animae pertinebant: et sic homines ejus
mysteriis purgabantur, sicut vannis frumenta
purgantur.”
W. Mannhardt, op.
cit. p. 372, citing A. Wuttke, Der deutsche
Volks-aberglaube2 (Berlin, 1869), p. 339, §
543; L. Strackerjan, Aberglaube und Sagen aus dem Herzogthum
Oldenburg (Oldenburg, 1867), i. 81.
Miss J. E. Harrison, “Mystica Vannus Iacchi,”Journal of Hellenic
Studies, xxiii. (1903) pp. 296 sqq.;
id., Prolegomena to the
Study of Greek Religion,2
pp. 518 sqq.; L. R. Farnell,
The Cults
of the Greek States, v. (Oxford, 1909) p. 243.
Herodotus, ii. 48, 49; Clement of
Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 34, pp. 29-30, ed.
Potter; Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 19, vol. i. p. 32; M.
P. Nilsson, Studia de Dionysiis Atticis
(Lund, 1900), pp. 90 sqq.; L. R. Farnell,
The Cults
of the Greek States, v. 125, 195, 205.
Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 18; Proclus on
Plato's Timaeus, iii. p. 200
d, quoted by Lobeck,
Aglaophamus, p. 562, and by
Abel, Orphica, p. 234. Others said
that the mangled body was pieced together, not by Apollo but by
Rhea (Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium,
30).
Ch. A. Lobeck, Aglaophamus, pp. 572
sqq. See The Dying
God, p. 3. For a conjectural restoration of the
temple, based on ancient authorities and an examination of the
scanty remains, see an article by J. H. Middleton, in Journal of Hellenic
Studies, ix. (1888) pp. 282 sqq.
The ruins of the temple have now been completely excavated by the
French.
Macrobius, Comment. in Somn.
Scip. i. 12. 12; Scriptores rerum
mythicarum Latini tres Romae nuper reperti (commonly
referred to as Mythographi Vaticani), ed. G. H.
Bode (Cellis, 1834), iii. 12. 5, p. 246; Origen, Contra
Celsum, iv. 17 (vol. i. p. 286, ed. P.
Koetschau).
The festivals of Dionysus were
biennial in many places. See G. F. Schömann, Griechische
Alterthümer,4 ii. 524 sqq.
(The terms for the festival were τριετηρίς, τριετηρικός, both terms
of the series being included in the numeration, in accordance with
the ancient mode of reckoning.) Perhaps the festivals were formerly
annual and the period was afterwards lengthened, as has happened
with other festivals. See W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 172, 175, 491,
533 sq., 598. Some of the festivals
of Dionysus, however, were annual. Dr. Farnell has conjectured that
the biennial period in many Greek festivals is to be explained by
“the original shifting of land-cultivation
which is frequent in early society owing to the backwardness of the
agricultural processes; and which would certainly be consecrated by
a special ritual attached to the god of the soil.” See L. R.
Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States,
v. 180 sq.
For Dionysus in this capacity see F.
Lenormant in Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des
Antiquités Grecques et Romaines, i. 632. For Osiris,
see Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second
Edition, pp. 344 sq.
Plutarch, Isis et
Osiris, 35; id., Quaest.
Graec. 36; Athenaeus, xi. 51, p. 476 a; Clement of Alexandria,
Protrept. ii. 16; Orphica, Hymn xxx. vv. 3,
4, xlv. 1, lii. 2, liii. 8; Euripides, Bacchae, 99; Scholiast on
Aristophanes, Frogs, 357; Nicander,
Alexipharmaca, 31; Lucian,
Bacchus, 2. The title Εἰραφιώτης
applied to Dionysus (Homeric Hymns, xxxiv. 2;
Porphyry, De abstinentia, iii. 17;
Dionysius, Perieg. 576; Etymologicum
Magnum, p. 371. 57) is etymologically equivalent to
the Sanscrit varsabha,
“a bull,” as I was informed by my
lamented friend the late R. A. Neil of Pembroke College,
Cambridge.
Müller-Wieseler, Denkmäler der alten
Kunst, ii. pl. xxxiii.; Daremberg et Saglio,
Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et
Romaines, i. 619 sq.,
631; W. H. Roscher, Lexikon d. griech. u. röm.
Mythologie, i. 1149 sqq.;
F. Imhoof-Blumer, “Coin-types of some
Kilikian Cities,”Journal of Hellenic Studies,
xviii. (1898) p. 165.
Hesychius, s.v.
Ἔριφος ὁ Διόνυσος, on which there is a marginal gloss ὁ μικρὸς αἴξ,
ὁ ἐν τῷ ἔαρι φαινόμενος, ἤγουν ὁ πρώϊμος; Stephanus Byzantius,
s.v. Ἀκρώρεια.
Pausanias, ii. 35. 1; Scholiast on
Aristophanes, Acharn. 146; Etymologicum
Magnum, s.v. Ἀπατούρια, p. 118. 54
sqq.; Suidas, s.vv.
Ἀπατούρια and μελαναίγιδα Διόνυσον; Nonnus, Dionys.
xxvii. 302. Compare Conon, Narrat. 39, where for Μελανθίδῃ
we should perhaps read Μελαναίγιδι.
Pausanias, ii. 13. 6. On their return
from Troy the Greeks are said to have found goats and an image of
Dionysus in a cave of Euboea (Pausanias, i. 23. 1).
Arnobius, Adversus
nationes, v. 19. Compare Suidas, s.v.
αἰγίζειν. As fawns appear to have been also torn in pieces at the
rites of Dionysus (Photius, Lexicon, s.v.
νεβρίζειν; Harpocration, s.v. νεβρίζων), it is probable
that the fawn was another of the god's embodiments. But of this
there seems no direct evidence. Fawn-skins were worn both by the
god and his worshippers (Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae
Compendium, 30). Similarly the female Bacchanals wore
goat-skins (Hesychius, s.v. τραγηφόροι).
Mr. Duncan, quoted by Commander R. C.
Mayne, Four Years in British Columbia and Vancouver
Island (London, 1862), pp. 284-288. The instrument
which made the screeching sound was no doubt a bull-roarer, a flat
piece of stick whirled at the end of a string so as to produce a
droning or screaming note according to the speed of revolution.
Such instruments are used by the Koskimo Indians of the same region
at their cannibal and other rites. See Fr. Boas, “The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of
the Kwakiutl Indians,”Report of the U.S. National Museum for
1895 (Washington, 1897), pp. 610, 611.
Fr. Boas, op.
cit. pp. 437-443, 527 sq.,
536, 537 sq., 579, 664; id., in
“Fifth Report on the North-western Tribes
of Canada,”Report of the British Association for
1889, pp. 54-56 (separate reprint); id., in
“Sixth Report on the North-western Tribes
of Canada,”Report of the British Association for
1890, pp. 62, 65 sq.
(separate reprint). As to the rules observed after the eating of
human flesh, see Taboo and the Perils of the
Soul, pp. 188-190.
Fr. Boas, “The
Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl
Indians,”Report of the U.S. National Museum for
1895 (Washington, 1897), pp. 649 sq.,
658 sq.; id., in
“Sixth Report on the North-western Tribes
of Canada,”Report of the British Association for
1890, p. 51; (separate reprint); id.,
“Seventh Report on the North-western Tribes
of Canada,”Report of the British Association for
1891, pp. 10 sq. (separate reprint);
id., “Tenth Report on the North-western Tribes of
Canada,”Report of the British Association for
1895, p. 58 (separate reprint).
J. R. Swanton, Contributions to the
Ethnology of the Haida (Leyden and New York, 1905),
pp. 156, 160 sq., 170 sq.,
181 (The
Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Memoir of the American Museum of
Natural History). For details as to the practice of
these savage rites among the Indian coast tribes of British
Columbia, see my Totemism and Exogamy (London,
1910), iii. pp. 501, 511 sq., 515 sq.,
519, 521, 526, 535 sq., 537, 539 sq.,
542 sq., 544, 545.
A. Leared, Morocco and the
Moors (London, 1876), pp. 267-269. Compare Budgett
Meakin, The Moors (London, 1902), pp.
331 sq. The same order of fanatics
also exists and holds similar orgies in Algeria, especially at the
town of Tlemcen. See E. Doutté, Les Aïssâoua à
Tlemcen (Châlons-sur-Marne, 1900), p. 13.
Varro, Rerum
rusticarum, i. 2. 19; Virgil, Georg.
ii. 376-381, with the comments of Servius on the passage and on
Aen. iii. 118; Ovid,
Fasti, i. 353 sqq.;
id., Metamorph. xv. 114 sq.;
Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium,
30.
Hera αἰγοφάγος at Sparta, Pausanias,
iii. 15. 9; Hesychius, s.v. αἰγοφάγος (compare the
representation of Hera clad in a goat's skin, with the animal's
head and horns over her head, Müller-Wieseler, Denkmäler der alten
Kunst, i. No. 229 b; and the similar
representation of the Lanuvinian Juno, W. H. Roscher, Lexikon d. griech. u.
röm. Mythologie, ii. 605 sqq.);
Zeus αἰγοφάγος, Etymologicum Magnum,
s.v. αἰγοφάγος, p. 27. 52
(compare Scholiast on Oppianus, Halieut. iii. 10; L. Stephani,
in Compte-Rendu de la Commission Impériale
Archéologique pour l'année 1869 (St. Petersburg,
1870), pp. 16-18); Apollo ὀψοφάγος at Elis, Athenaeus, viii. 36, p.
346 b; Artemis καπροφάγος in
Samos, Hesychius, s.v. καπροφάγος; compare
id., s.v.
κριοφάγος. Divine titles derived from killing animals are probably
to be similarly explained, as Dionysus αἰγόβολος (Pausanias, ix. 8.
2); Rhea or Hecate κυνοσφαγής (J. Tzetzes, Scholia on
Lycophron, 77); Apollo λυκοκτόνος (Sophocles,
Electra, 6); Apollo σαυροκτόνος
(Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxiv. 70).
Herodotus, vii. 197; Apollodorus,
Bibliotheca, i. 9. 1
sq.; Scholiast on Aristophanes,
Clouds, 257; J. Tzetzes,
Schol. on
Lycophron, 21; Hyginus, Fabulae, 1-5. See The Dying
God, pp. 161-163.
Euripides, Bacchae, 43 sqq.,
1043 sqq.; Theocritus, Idyl.
xxvi.; Pausanias, ii. 2. 7. Strictly speaking, the murder of
Pentheus is said to have been perpetrated not at Thebes, of which
he was king, but on Mount Cithaeron.
See Mr. R. M. Dawkins, “The Modern Carnival in Thrace and the Cult of
Dionysus,”Journal of Hellenic Studies,
xxvi. (1906) pp. 191-206. Mr. Dawkins describes the ceremonies
partly from his own observation, partly from an account of them
published by Mr. G. M. Vizyenos in a Greek periodical Θρακικὴ
Ἐπετηρίς, of which only one number was published at Athens in 1897.
From his personal observations Mr. Dawkins was able to confirm the
accuracy of Mr. Vizyenos's account.
They have been clearly indicated by
Mr. R. M. Dawkins, op. cit. pp. 203 sqq.
Compare W. Ridgeway, The Origin of Tragedy
(Cambridge, 1910), pp. 15 sqq., who fully recognises the
connexion of the modern Thracian ceremonies with the ancient rites
of Dionysus.
The passages of ancient authors which
refer to the Anthesteria are collected by Professor Martin P.
Nilsson, Studia de Dionysiis Atticis
(Lund, 1900), pp. 148 sqq. As to the festival, which
has been much discussed of late years, see August Mommsen,
Heortologie (Leipsic, 1864), pp.
345 sqq.; id.,
Feste der
Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 384
sqq.; G. F. Schoemann,
Griechische
Alterthümer4 (Berlin, 1902), ii. 516
sqq.; E. Rohde, Psyche3
(Tübingen and Leipsic, 1903), i. 236 sqq.;
Martin P. Nilsson, op. cit. pp. 115 sqq.;
P. Foucart, Le Culte de Dionysos en Attique
(Paris, 1904), pp. 107 sqq.; Miss J. E. Harrison,
Prolegomena to the Study of Greek
Religion2 (Cambridge, 1908), pp. 32
sqq.; L. R. Farnell,
The Cults
of the Greek States, v. (Oxford, 1909) pp. 214
sqq. As to the marriage of
Dionysus to the Queen of Athens, see The Magic Art and the
Evolution of Kings, i. 136 sq.
By Professor U. von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Aristoteles und Athen (Berlin,
1893), ii. 42; and afterwards by Miss J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the
Study of Greek Religion,2 p.
536.
August Mommsen, Heortologie, pp. 371
sqq.; id.,
Feste der
Stadt Athen im Altertum, pp. 398 sqq.;
P. Foucart, Le Culte de Dionysos en Attique,
pp. 138 sqq.
The resurrection of Osiris is not
described by Plutarch in his treatise Isis et
Osiris, which is still our principal source for the
myth of the god; but it is fortunately recorded in native Egyptian
writings. See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second
Edition, p. 274. P. Foucart supposes that the resurrection of
Dionysus was enacted at the Anthesteria; August Mommsen prefers to
suppose that it was enacted in the following month at the Lesser
Mysteries.
R. Foerster, Der Raub und die
Rückkehr der Persephone (Stuttgart, 1874), pp. 37-39;
The
Homeric Hymns, edited by T. W. Allen and E. E. Sikes
(London, 1904), pp. 10 sq. A later date—the age of the
Pisistratids—is assigned to the hymn by A. Baumeister (Hymni
Homerici, Leipsic, 1860, p. 280).
Hymn to Demeter, 310
sqq. With the myth as set forth
in the Homeric hymn may be compared the accounts of Apollodorus
(Bibliotheca, i. 5) and Ovid
(Fasti, iv. 425-618; Metamorphoses, v. 385
sqq.).
Hymn to Demeter, 47-50, 191-211,
292-295, with the notes of Messrs. Allen and Sikes in their edition
of the Homeric Hymns (London, 1904). As to representations of the
candidates for initiation seated on stools draped with sheepskins,
see L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States,
iii. (Oxford, 1907) pp. 237 sqq., with plate xv a. On a
well-known marble vase there figured the stool is covered with a
lion's skin and one of the candidate's feet rests on a ram's skull
or horns; but in two other examples of the same scene the ram's
fleece is placed on the seat (Farnell, op.
cit. p. 240 note a), just as it is said to have been
placed on Demeter's stool in the Homeric hymn. As to the form of
communion in the Eleusinian mysteries, see Clement of Alexandria,
Protrept. 21, p. 18 ed. Potter;
Arnobius, Adversus nationes, v. 26; L. R.
Farnell, op. cit. iii. 185 sq.,
195 sq. For discussions of the
ancient evidence bearing on the Eleusinian mysteries it may suffice
to refer to Chr. A. Lobeck, Aglaophamus (Königsberg, 1829),
pp. 3 sqq.; G. F. Schoemann,
Griechische
Alterthümer,4 ii. 387 sqq.;
Aug. Mommsen, Heortologie (Leipsic, 1864), pp.
222 sqq.; id.,
Feste der
Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 204
sqq.; P. Foucart, Recherches sur
l'Origine et la Nature des Mystères d'Eleusis (Paris,
1895) (Mémoires de l'Académie des
Inscriptions, xxxv.); id.,
Les
grands Mystères d'Eleusis (Paris, 1900) (Mémoires de
l'Académie des Inscriptions, xxxvii.); F. Lenormant
and E. Pottier, s.v.“Eleusinia,” in Daremberg et Saglio,
Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et
Romaines, ii. 544 sqq.;
L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States,
iii. 126 sqq.
Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium
Haeresium, v. 8, p. 162, ed. L. Duncker et F. G.
Schneidewin (Göttingen, 1859). The word which the poet uses to
express the revelation (δεῖξε, Hymn to
Demeter, verse 474) is a technical one in the
mysteries; the full phrase was δεικνύναι τὰ ἱερά. See Plutarch,
Alcibiades, 22; Xenophon,
Hellenica, vi. 3. 6; Isocrates,
Panegyricus, 6; Lysias,
Contra
Andocidem, 51; Chr. A. Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 51.
Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 12, p. 12 ed.
Potter: Δηὼ δὲ καὶ Κόρη δρᾶμα ἤδη ἐγενέσθην μυστικόν; καὶ τὴν
πλάνην καὶ τὴν ἀρπαγὴν καὶ τὸ πένθος αὐταῖν Ἐλευσὶς δᾳδουχεῖ.
Compare F. Lenormant, s.v.“Eleusinia,” in Daremberg et Saglio,
Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et
Romaines iii. 578: “Que le drame mystique des
aventures de Déméter et de Coré constituât le spectacle essentiel
de l'initiation, c'est ce dont il nous semble impossible de
douter.” A similar view is expressed by G. F.
Schoemann (Griechische
Alterthümer,4 ii. 402); Preller-Robert
(Griechische Mythologie, i. 793);
P. Foucart (Recherches sur l'Origine et la Nature des
Mystères d'Eleusis, Paris, 1895, pp. 43 sqq.;
id., Les Grands Mystères
d'Eleusis, Paris, 1900, p. 137); E. Rohde
(Psyche,3 i.
289); and L. R. Farnell (The Cults of the Greek States,
iii. 134, 173 sqq.).
On Demeter and Proserpine as goddesses
of the corn, see L. Preller, Demeter und Persephone (Hamburg,
1837), pp. 315 sqq.; and especially W.
Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen
(Strasburg, 1884), pp. 202 sqq.
According to the author of the Homeric
Hymn to Demeter (verses 398 sqq., 445 sqq.)
and Apollodorus (Bibliotheca, i. 5. 3) the time
which Persephone had to spend under ground was one third of the
year; according to Ovid (Fasti, iv. 613 sq.;
Metamorphoses, v. 564
sqq.) and Hyginus (Fabulae, 146) it was one
half.
See, for example, Firmicus Maternus,
De errore
profanarum religionum, 17. 3: “Frugum substantiam volunt
Proserpinam dicere, quia fruges hominibus cum seri coeperint
prosunt. Terram ipsam Cererem nominant, nomen hoc a gerendis
fructibus mutuati”; L. Preller, Demeter und
Persephone, p. 128, “Der Erdboden wird Demeter, die Vegetation
Persephone.” François Lenormant, again, held
that Demeter was originally a personification of the earth regarded
as divine, but he admitted that from the time of the Homeric poems
downwards she was sharply distinguished from Ge, the earth-goddess
proper. See Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des
Antiquités Grecques et Romaines, s.v.“Ceres,” ii. 1022 sq.
Some light might be thrown on the question whether Demeter was an
Earth Goddess or a Corn Goddess, if we could be sure of the
etymology of her name, which has been variously explained as
“Earth Mother” (Δῆ μήτηρ equivalent
to Γῆ μήτηρ) and as “Barley Mother”
(from an alleged Cretan word δηαί “barley”: see Etymologicum
Magnum, s.v. Δηώ, pp. 263 sq.).
The former etymology has been the most popular; the latter is
maintained by W. Mannhardt. See L. Preller, Demeter und
Persephone, pp. 317, 366 sqq.;
F. G. Welcker, Griechische Götterlehre, i. 385
sqq.; Preller-Robert,
Griechische Mythologie, i. 747
note 6; Kern, in Pauly-Wissowa's Real-Encyclopädie der
classischen Altertumswissenschaft, iv. 2713; W.
Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen, pp.
281 sqq. But my learned friend the
Rev. Professor J. H. Moulton informs me that both etymologies are
open to serious philological objections, and that no satisfactory
derivation of the first syllable of Demeter's name has yet been
proposed. Accordingly I prefer to base no argument on an analysis
of the name, and to rest my interpretation of the goddess entirely
on her myth, ritual, and representations in art. Etymology is at
the best a very slippery ground on which to rear mythological
theories.
Pausanias, i. 22. 3 with my note;
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 615; J. de Prott et L.
Ziehen, Leges Graecorum Sacrae,
Fasciculus I. (Leipsic, 1896) p. 49; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae
Compendium, 28; Scholiast on Sophocles, Oedipus
Colon. 1600; L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the
Greek States, iii. 312 sq.
Herodotus, i. 193, iv. 198; Xenophon,
Hellenica, vi. 3. 6; Aelian,
Historia
Animalium, xvii. 16; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae
Compendium, 28; Geoponica, i. 12. 36;
Paroemiographi Graeci, ed.
Leutsch et Schneidewin, Appendix iv. 20 (vol. i. p. 439).
Libanius, ed. J. J. Reiske, vol. iv.
p. 367, Corinth. Oratio: Οὐκ αὖθις ἡμῶν
ακαρποσ ἡ γῆ δοκεῖ γεγονέναι? οὐ πάλιν ὁ πρὸ Δήμητρος εἶναι βίος?
καί τοι καὶ πρὸ Δήμητρος αἱ γεωργίαι μὲν οὐκ ἦσαν; οὐδὲ ἄροτοι,
αὐτόφυτοι δὲ βοτάναι καὶ πόαι; καὶ πολλὰ εἶχεν εἰς σωτηρίαν
ἀνθρώπων αὐτοσχέδια ἄνθη ἡ γῆ ὠδίνουσα καὶ κύουσα πρὸ τῶν ἡμέρων τὰ
ἄγρια. Ἐπλανῶντο μὲν, ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐπ᾽ ἀλλήλους; ἄλση καὶ ὄρη περιῄσαν,
ζητοῦντες αὐτόματον τροφήν. In this passage, which no doubt
represents the common Greek view on the subject, the earth is
plainly personified (ὠδίνουσα καὶ κύουσα), which points the
antithesis between her and the goddess of the corn. Diodorus
Siculus also says (v. 68) that corn grew wild with the other plants
before Demeter taught men to cultivate it and to sow the seed.
Eusebius, Praeparatio
Evangelii, iii. 11. 5; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae
Compendium, 28, p. 56, ed. C. Lang; Virgil,
Georg. i. 212, with the comment
of Servius.
See the references to the works of
Overbeck and Farnell above. For example, a fine statue at
Copenhagen, in the style of the age of Phidias, represents Demeter
holding poppies and ears of corn in her left hand. See Farnell,
op.
cit. iii. 268, with plate xxviii.
Hesiod, Works and
Days, 448-474; Epictetus, Dissertationes, iii. 21. 12. For
the autumnal migration and clangour of the cranes as the signal for
sowing, see Aristophanes, Birds, 711; compare Theognis,
1197 sqq. But the Greeks also
ploughed in spring (Hesiod, op. cit. 462; Xenophon,
Oeconom. 16); indeed they
ploughed thrice in the year (Theophrastus, Historia
Plantarum, vii. 13. 6). At the approach of autumn the
cranes of northern Europe collect about rivers and lakes, and after
much trumpeting set out in enormous bands on their southward
journey to the tropical regions of Africa and India. In early
spring they return northward, and their flocks may be descried
passing at a marvellous height overhead or halting to rest in the
meadows beside some broad river. The bird emits its trumpet-like
note both on the ground and on the wing. See Alfred Newton,
Dictionary of Birds (London,
1893-1896), pp. 110 sq.
Hesiod, Works and
Days, 383 sq., 615-617; Aratus,
Phaenomena, 254-267; L. Ideler,
Handbuch
der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie
(Berlin, 1825-1826), i. 241 sq. According to Pliny
(Nat.
Hist. xviii. 49) wheat, barley, and all other cereals
were sown in Greece and Asia from the time of the autumn setting of
the Pleiades. This date for ploughing and sowing is confirmed by
Hippocrates and other medical writers. See W. Smith's Dictionary of Greek
and Roman Antiquities,3 i.
234. Latin writers prescribe the same date for the sowing of wheat.
See Virgil, Georg. i. 219-226; Columella,
De re
rustica, ii. 8; Pliny, Nat.
Hist. xviii. 223-226. In Columella's time the
Pleiades, he tells us (l.c.), set in the morning of
October 24th of the Julian calendar, which would correspond to the
October 16th of our reckoning.
Plutarch, Isis et
Osiris, 70. Similarly Cornutus says that “Hades is fabled to have carried off Demeter's daughter
because the seed vanishes for a time under the earth,” and
he mentions that a festival of Demeter was celebrated at the time
of sowing (Theologiae Graecae Compendium,
28, pp. 54, 55 ed. C. Lang). In a fragment of a Greek calendar
which is preserved in the Louvre “the
ascent (ἀναβάσις) of the goddess” is dated the seventh day
of the month Dius, and “the descent or
setting (δύσις) of the goddess” is dated the fourth day of
the month Hephaestius, a month which seems to be otherwise unknown.
See W. Froehner, Musée Nationale du Louvre, Les Inscriptions
Grecques (Paris, 1880), pp. 50 sq.
Greek inscriptions found at Mantinea refer to a worship of Demeter
and Persephone, who are known to have had a sanctuary there
(Pausanias, viii. 9. 2). The people of Mantinea celebrated
“mysteries of the goddess” and a
festival called the koragia, which seems to have
represented the return of Persephone from the lower world. See W.
Immerwahr, Die Kulte und Mythen Arkadiens
(Leipsic, 1891), pp. 100 sq.; S. Reinach, Traité d'Epigraphie
Grecque (Paris, 1885), pp. 141 sqq.;
Hesychius, s.v. κοράγειν.
In ancient Greece the vintage seems to
have fallen somewhat earlier; for Hesiod bids the husbandman gather
the ripe clusters at the time when Arcturus is a morning star,
which in the poet's age was on the 18th of September. See Hesiod,
Works and
Days, 609 sqq.; L. Ideler, Handbuch der
mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i.
247.
Scholiast on Aristophanes,
Knights, 720; Suidas,
s.vv. εἰρεσιώνη and προηροσίαι;
Etymologicum Magnum, Hesychius,
and Photius, Lexicon, s.v.
προηρόσια; Plutarch, Septem Sapientum Convivium, 15;
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 521, line 29, and No.
628; Aug. Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im
Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 192 sqq.
The inscriptions prove that the Proerosia was held at Eleusis and
that it was distinct from the Great Mysteries, being mentioned
separately from them. Some of the ancients accounted for the origin
of the festival by a universal plague instead of a universal
famine. But this version of the story no doubt arose from the
common confusion between the similar Greek words for plague and
famine (λοιμός and λιμός). That in the original version famine and
not plague must have been alleged as the reason for instituting the
Proerosia, appears plainly from the reference of the name to
ploughing, from the dedication of the festival to Demeter, and from
the offerings of first-fruits; for these circumstances, though
quite appropriate to ceremonies designed to stay or avert dearth
and famine, would be quite inappropriate in the case of a
plague.
The view that the Festival before
Ploughing (Proerosia) fell
in Pyanepsion is accepted by W. Mannhardt and W. Dittenberger. See
W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und Feldkulte
(Berlin, 1877), pp. 238 sq.; id.,
Mythologische Forschungen, p.
258; Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 note 2 on Inscr. No. 628
(vol. ii. pp. 423 sq.). The view that the Festival
before Ploughing fell in Boedromion is maintained by August
Mommsen. See his Heortologie (Leipsic, 1864), pp.
218 sqq.; id.,
Feste der
Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 192
sqq.
L. Ideler, Handbuch der
mathematischen und technischen Chronologie (Berlin,
1825-1826), i. 292 sq.; compare August Mommsen,
Chronologie (Leipsic, 1883), pp.
58 sq.
For example, Theophrastus notes that
squills flowered thrice a year, and that each flowering marked the
time for one of the three ploughings. See Theophrastus,
Historia
Plantarum, vii. 13. 6.
Hesiod, Works and
Days, 383 sqq. The poet indeed refers
(vv. 765 sqq.)
to days of the month as proper times for engaging in certain tasks;
but such references are always simply to days of the lunar month
and apply equally to every month; they are never to days as dates
in the solar year.
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 20 (vol. i. pp. 33
sqq.); E. S. Roberts and E. A.
Gardner, An Introduction to Greek
Epigraphy, Part ii. (Cambridge, 1905) No. 9, pp. 22
sqq.
Diodorus Siculus, v. 2 and 4; Cicero,
In C.
Verrem, act. ii. bk. iv. chapters 48 sq.
Both writers mention that the whole of Sicily was deemed sacred to
Demeter and Persephone, and that corn was said to have grown in the
island before it appeared anywhere else. In support of the latter
claim Diodorus Siculus (v. 2. 4) asserts that wheat grew wild in
many parts of Sicily.
This legend, which is mentioned also
by Cicero (In C. Verrem, act. ii. bk. iv.
ch. 48), was no doubt told to explain the use of torches in the
mysteries of Demeter and Persephone. The author of the Homeric
Hymn to
Demeter tells us (verses 47 sq.)
that Demeter searched for her lost daughter for nine days with
burning torches in her hands, but he does not say that the torches
were kindled at the flames of Etna. In art Demeter and Persephone
and their attendants were often represented with torches in their
hands. See L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States,
iii. (Oxford, 1907) plates xiii., xv. a,
xvi., xvii., xviii., xix., xx., xxi. a,
xxv., xxvii. b. Perhaps the legend of the
torchlight search for Persephone and the use of the torches in the
mysteries may have originated in a custom of carrying fire about
the fields as a charm to secure sunshine for the corn. See
The
Golden Bough,2 iii. 313.
The words which I have translated
“the bringing home of the Maiden”
(τῆς Κόρης τὴν καταγωγήν) are explained with great probability by
Professor M. P. Nilsson as referring to the bringing of the ripe
corn to the barn or the threshing-floor (Griechische
Feste, Leipsic, 1906, pp. 356 sq.).
This interpretation accords perfectly with a well-attested sense of
καταγωγή and its cognate verb κατάγειν, and is preferable to the
other possible interpretation “the bringing
down,” which would refer to the descent of Persephone into
the nether world; for such a descent is hardly appropriate to a
harvest festival.
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 20, lines 25
sqq.; E. S. Roberts and E. A.
Gardner, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy,
ii. (Cambridge, 1905) No. 9, lines 25 sqq.,
κελευέτω δὲ καί ὁ ἱεροφάντης καὶ ὁ δᾳδοῦχος μυστηρίοις ἀπάρχεσθαι
τοὺς Ἔλληνας τοῦ καρποῦ κατὰ τὰ πάτρια καὶ τὴν μαντείαν τὴν ἐγ
Δελφῶν. By coupling μυστηρίοις with ἀπάρχεσθαι instead of with
κελεύετω, Miss J. E. Harrison understands the offering instead of
the exhortation to have been made at the mysteries (Prolegomena to the
Study of Greek Religion, Second Edition, p. 155,
“Let the Hierophant and the Torchbearer
command that at the mysteries the Hellenes should offer
first-fruits of their crops,” etc.). This interpretation is
no doubt grammatically permissible, but the context seems to plead
strongly, if not to be absolutely decisive, in favour of the other.
It is to be observed that the exhortation was addressed not to the
Athenians and their allies (who were compelled to make the
offering) but only to the other Greeks, who might make it or not as
they pleased; and the amount of such voluntary contributions was
probably small compared to that of the compulsory contributions, as
to the date of which nothing is said. That the proclamation to the
Greeks in general was an exhortation (κελευέτω), not a command, is
clearly shewn by the words of the decree a few lines lower down,
where commissioners are directed to go to all Greek states
exhorting but not commanding them to offer the first-fruits
(ἐκείνοις δὲ μὴ ἐπιτάττοντας, κελεύοντας δὲ ἀπάρχεσθαι ἐὰν
βούλωνται κατὰ τὰ πάτρια καὶ τὴν μαντείαν ἐγ Δελφῶν). The Athenians
could not command free and independent states to make such
offerings, still less could they prescribe the exact date when the
offerings were to be made. All that they could and did do was,
taking advantage of the great assembly of Greeks from all quarters
at the mysteries, to invite or exhort, by the mouth of the great
priestly functionaries, the foreigners to contribute.
Eustathius on Homer, Iliad,
ix. 534, p. 772; Im. Bekker, Anecdota Graeca, i. 384
sq., s.v.
Ἁλῶα. Compare O. Rubensohn, Die Mysterienheiligtümer in Eleusis und
Samothrake (Berlin, 1892), p. 116.
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 Nos. 192, 246, 587, 640;
Ἐφημερὶς Ἀρχαιολογική, 1884, coll. 135 sq. The
passages of inscriptions and of ancient authors which refer to the
festival are collected by Dr. L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the
Greek States, iii. (Oxford, 1907) pp. 315
sq. For a discussion of the
evidence see August Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im
Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 359 sqq.;
Miss J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek
Religion, Second Edition (Cambridge, 1908), pp. 145
sqq.
The threshing-floor of Triptolemus at
Eleusis (Pausanias, i. 38. 6) is no doubt identical with the Sacred
Threshing-floor mentioned in the great Eleusinian inscription of
329 b.c. (Dittenberger,
Sylloge
Inscriptionum Graecarum,2
No. 587, line 234). We read of a hierophant who, contrary to
ancestral custom, sacrificed a victim on the hearth in the Hall at
Eleusis during the Festival of the Threshing-floor, “it being unlawful to sacrifice victims on that
day” (Demosthenes, Contra Neaeram, 116, pp. 1384
sq.), but from such an unlawful
act no inference can be drawn as to the place where the festival
was held. That the festival probably had special reference to the
threshing-floor of Triptolemus has already been pointed out by O.
Rubensohn (Die Mysterienheiligtümer in Eleusis und
Samothrake, Berlin, 1892, p. 118).
See above, pp. 41sq., 43. Maximus Tyrius observes (Dissertat. xxx. 5) that
husbandmen were the first to celebrate sacred rites in honour of
Demeter at the threshing-floor.
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 587, lines 124, 144,
with the editor's notes; August Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen
im Altertum, p. 360.
This is recognised by Professor M. P.
Nilsson. See his Studia de Dionysiis Atticis
(Lund, 1900), pp. 95 sqq., and his Griechische
Feste, p. 329. To explain the lateness of the
festival, Miss J. E. Harrison suggests that “the shift of date is due to Dionysos. The rival
festivals of Dionysos were in mid-winter. He possessed himself of
the festivals of Demeter, took over her threshing-floor and
compelled the anomaly of a winter threshing festival”
(Prolegomena to the Study of Greek
Religion, Second Edition, p. 147).
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 640; Ch. Michel,
Recueil
d'Inscriptions Grecques (Brussels, 1900), No. 135, p.
145. To be exact, while the inscription definitely mentions the
sacrifices to Demeter and Persephone at the Green Festival, it does
not record the deities to whom the sacrifice at the Festival of the
Cornstalks (τὴν τῶν Καλαμαίων θυσίαν) was offered. But mentioned as
it is in immediate connexion with the sacrifices to Demeter and
Persephone at the Green Festival, we may fairly suppose that the
sacrifice at the Festival of the Cornstalks was also offered to
these goddesses.
This title she shared with Persephone
at Tegea (Pausanias, viii. 53. 7), and under it she received annual
sacrifices at Ephesus (Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 655). It was applied to
her also at Epidaurus (Ἐφημ. Ἀρχ., 1883, col. 153) and at Athens
(Aristophanes, Frogs, 382), and appears to have
been a common title of the goddess. See L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the
Greek States, iii. 318 note 30.
E. Dodwell, A Classical and
Topographical Tour through Greece (London, 1819), i.
583. E. D. Clarke found the image “on the
side of the road, immediately before entering the village, and in
the midst of a heap of dung, buried as high as the neck, a little
beyond the farther extremity of the pavement of the temple. Yet
even this degrading situation had not been assigned to it wholly
independent of its antient history. The inhabitants of the small
village which is now situated among the ruins of Eleusis still
regarded this statue with a very high degree of superstitious
veneration. They attributed to its presence the fertility of their
land; and it was for this reason that they heaped around it the
manure intended for their fields. They believed that the loss of it
would be followed by no less a calamity than the failure of their
annual harvests; and they pointed to the ears of bearded wheat,
upon the sculptured ornaments upon the head of the figure, as a
never-failing indication of the produce of the soil.” When
the statue was about to be removed, a general murmur ran among the
people, the women joining in the clamour. “They had been always,” they said, “famous for their corn; and the fertility of the land
would cease when the statue was removed.” See E. D. Clarke,
Travels
in various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa,
iii. (London, 1814) pp. 772-774, 787 sq.
Compare J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek
Religion (Cambridge, 1910), p. 80, who tells us that
“the statue was regularly crowned with
flowers in the avowed hope of obtaining good harvests.”
This view was expressed by my friend
Professor Ridgeway in a paper which I had the advantage of hearing
him read at Cambridge in the early part of 1911. Compare
The
Athenaeum, No. 4360, May 20th, 1911, p. 576.
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 20; E. S. Roberts and
E. A. Gardner, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy,
ii. (Cambridge, 1905) No. 9, pp. 22 sq. See
above, pp. 55sq.
See L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the
Greek States, iii. (Oxford, 1907), p. 259,
“It was long before the mother could be
distinguished from the daughter by any organic difference of form
or by any expressive trait of countenance. On the more ancient
vases and terracottas they appear rather as twin-sisters, almost as
if the inarticulate artist were aware of their original identity of
substance. And even among the monuments of the transitional period
it is difficult to find any representation of the goddesses in
characters at once clear and impressive. We miss this even in the
beautiful vase of Hieron in the British Museum, where the divine
pair are seen with Triptolemos: the style is delicate and stately,
and there is a certain impression of inner tranquil life in the
group, but without the aid of the inscriptions the mother would not
be known from the daughter”; id.,
vol. iii. 274, “But it would be wrong to
give the impression that the numismatic artists of this period were
always careful to distinguish—in such a manner as the above works
indicate—between mother and daughter. The old idea of their unity
of substance still seemed to linger as an art-tradition: the very
type we have just been examining appears on a fourth-century coin
of Hermione, and must have been used here to designate Demeter
Chthonia who was there the only form that the corn-goddess assumed.
And even at Metapontum, where coin-engraving was long a great art,
a youthful head crowned with corn, which in its own right and on
account of its resemblance to the masterpiece of Euainetos could
claim the name of Kore [Persephone], is actually inscribed
‘Damater.’ ” Compare J.
Overbeck, Griechische Kunstmythologie,
iii. (Leipsic, 1873-1878), p. 453. In regard, for example, to the
famous Eleusinian bas-relief, one of the most beautiful monuments
of ancient religious art, which seems to represent Demeter giving
the corn-stalks to Triptolemus, while Persephone crowns his head,
there has been much divergence of opinion among the learned as to
which of the goddesses is Demeter and which Persephone. See J.
Overbeck, op. cit. iii. 427 sqq.;
L. R. Farnell, op. cit. iii. 263 sq. On
the close resemblance of the artistic types of Demeter and
Persephone see further E. Gerhard, Gesammelte
akademische Abhandlungen (Berlin, 1866-1868), ii. 357
sqq.; F. Lenormant, in Daremberg
et Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et
Romaines, i. 2, s.v.“Ceres,” p. 1049.
Proclus, on Plato, Timaeus, p. 293 c, quoted by L.
F. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States,
iii. 357, where Lobeck's emendation of ὔε, κύε for υἶε, τοκυῖε
(Aglaophamus, p. 782) may be
accepted as certain, confirmed as it is by Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium
Haeresium, v. 7, p. 146, ed. Duncker and Schneidewin
(Göttingen, 1859), τὸ μέγα καὶ ἄρρητον Ἐλευσινίων μυστήριον ὔε
κύε.
As to the Eleusinian games see August
Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im
Altertum, pp. 179-204; P. Foucart, Les Grands Mystères
d'Éleusis (Paris, 1900), pp. 143-147; P. Stengel, in
Pauly-Wissowa's Real-Encyclopädie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft, v. coll. 2330 sqq.
The quadriennial celebration of the Eleusinian Games is mentioned
by Aristotle (Constitution of Athens, 54), and
in the great Eleusinian inscription of 329 b.c., which is also our
only authority for the biennial celebration of the games. See
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 587, lines 258
sqq. The regular and official
name of the games was simply Eleusinia (τὰ Ἐλευσίνια), a name which
late writers applied incorrectly to the Mysteries. See August
Mommsen, op. cit. pp. 179 sqq.;
Dittenberger, op. cit. No. 587, note 171.
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 246, lines 25
sqq. The editor rightly points
out that the Great Eleusinian Games are identical with the games
celebrated every fourth year, which are mentioned in the decree of
329 b.c. (Dittenberger,
Sylloge
Inscriptionum Graecarum,2
No. 587, lines 260 sq.).
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 587, lines 259
sqq. From other Attic
inscriptions we learn that the Eleusinian games comprised a long
foot-race, a race in armour, and a pancratium. See Dittenberger,
op.
cit. No. 587 note 171 (vol. ii. p. 313). The Great
Eleusinian Games also included the pentathlum (Dittenberger,
op.
cit. No. 678, line 2). The pancratium included
wrestling and boxing; the pentathlum included a foot-race, leaping,
throwing the quoit, throwing the spear, and wrestling. See W.
Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Antiquities, Third Edition, s.vv.“Pancratium” and “Pentathlon.”
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 246, lines 46
sqq.; Ch. Michel, Recueil
d'Inscriptions Grecques, No. 609. See above, p.
61. The identification
lies all the nearer to hand because the inscription records a
decree in honour of a man who had sacrificed to Demeter and
Persephone at the Great Eleusinian Games, and a provision is
contained in the decree that the honour should be proclaimed
“at the Ancestral Contest of the Festival
of the Threshing-floor.” The same Ancestral Contest at the
Festival of the Threshing-floor is mentioned in another Eleusinian
inscription, which records honours decreed to a man who had
sacrificed to Demeter and Persephone at the Festival of the
Threshing-floor. See Ἐφημερὶς Ἀρχαιολογική, 1884, coll. 135
sq.
Diodorus Siculus, v. 68; Arrian,
Indic. 7; Lucian, Somnium, 15; id.,
Philopseudes, 3; Plato,
Laws, vi. 22, p. 782;
Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 5. 2; Cornutus,
Theologiae Graecae Compendium,
28, p. 53, ed. C. Lang; Pausanias, i. 14. 2, vii. 18. 2, viii. 4.
1; Aristides, Eleusin. vol. i. pp. 416
sq., ed. G. Dindorf; Hyginus,
Fabulae, 147, 259, 277; Ovid,
Fasti, iv. 549 sqq.;
id., Metamorph. v. 645 sqq.;
Servius, on Virgil, Georg. i. 19. See also above, p.
54. As to Triptolemus, see L. Preller, Demeter und
Persephone (Hamburg, 1837), pp. 282 sqq.;
id., Griechische
Mythologie,4 i. 769 sqq.
C. Strube, Studien über den
Bilderkreis von Eleusis (Leipsic, 1870), pp. 4
sqq.; J. Overbeck, Griechische
Kunstmythologie, iii. (Leipsic, 1873-1880), pp. 530
sqq.; A. Baumeister,
Denkmäler
des classischen Altertums, iii. 1855 sqq.
That Triptolemus sowed the earth with corn from his car is
mentioned by Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 5. 2; Cornutus,
Theologiae Graecae Compendium,
28, pp. 53 sq., ed. C. Lang; Hyginus,
Fabulae, 147; and Servius, on
Virgil, Georg. i. 19.
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 20, lines 37
sqq.; E. S. Roberts and E. A.
Gardner, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy,
ii. (Cambridge, 1905), No. 9, p. 24.
Scholiast on Homer, Iliad,
xviii. 483; L. Preller, Demeter und Persephone, p. 286;
F. A. Paley on Hesiod, Works and Days, 460. The custom
of ploughing the land thrice is alluded to by Homer (Iliad,
xviii. 542, Odyssey, v. 127) and Hesiod
(Theogony, 971), and is expressly
mentioned by Theophrastus (Historia Plantarum, vii. 13.
6).
J. Toepffer, Attische
Genealogie (Berlin, 1889), pp. 138 sq.
However, the Eleusinian Torchbearer Callias apparently claimed to
be descended from Triptolemus, for in a speech addressed to the
Lacedaemonians he is said by Xenophon (Hellenica, vi. 3. 6) to have
spoken of Triptolemus as “our
ancestor” (ὁ ἡμέτερος πρόγονος). See above, p. 54. But it is possible that
Callias was here speaking, not as a direct descendant of
Triptolemus, but merely as an Athenian, who naturally ranked
Triptolemus among the most illustrious of the ancestral heroes of
his people. Even if he intended to claim actual descent from the
hero, this would prove nothing as to the historical character of
Triptolemus, for many Greek families boasted of being descended
from gods.
The prize of barley is mentioned by
the Scholiast on Pindar, Olymp. ix. 150. The Scholiast on
Aristides (vol. iii. pp. 55, 56, ed. G. Dindorf) mentions ears of
corn as the prize without specifying the kind of corn. In the
official Athenian inscription of 329 b.c., though the amount of
corn distributed in prizes both at the quadriennial and at the
biennial games is stated, we are not told whether the corn was
barley or wheat. See Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 587, lines 259
sqq. According to Aristides
(Eleusin. vol. i. p. 417, ed. G.
Dindorf, compare p. 168) the prize consisted of the corn which had
first appeared at Eleusis.
Marmor
Parium, in Fragmenta Historicorum
Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, i. 544. That the Rarian
plain was the first to be sown and the first to bear crops is
affirmed by Pausanias (i. 38. 6).
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 587, lines 119
sq. In the same inscription, a
few lines lower down, mention is made of two pigs which were used
in purifying the sanctuary at Eleusis. On the pig in Greek
purificatory rites, see my notes on Pausanias, ii. 31. 8 and v. 16.
8.
The games are assigned to Metageitnion
by P. Stengel (Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft, v. 2. coll. 2331 sq.)
and to Boedromion by August Mommsen and W. Dittenberger. The
last-mentioned scholar supposes that the games immediately followed
the Mysteries, and August Mommsen formerly thought so too, but he
afterwards changed his view and preferred to suppose that the games
preceded the Mysteries. See Aug. Mommsen, Heortologie (Leipsic, 1864), p.
263; id., Feste der Stadt Athen
im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 182 sqq.;
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 No. 587, note 171 (vol. ii.
pp. 313 sq.). The dating of the games in
Metageitnion or in the early part of Boedromion depends on little
more than a series of conjectures, particularly the conjectural
restoration of an inscription and the conjectural dating of a
certain sacrifice to Democracy.
A. de Candolle, Origin of Cultivated
Plants (London, 1884), pp. 354 sq.,
367 sqq.; R. Munro, The Lake-dwellings of
Europe (London, Paris, and Melbourne, 1890), pp. 497
sqq.; O. Schrader, Reallexikon der
indogermanischen Altertumskunde (Strasburg, 1901),
pp. 8 sqq.; id.,
Sprachvergleichung und
Urgeschichte (Jena, 1906-1907), ii. 185 sqq.;
H. Hirt, Die Indogermanen (Strasburg,
1905-1907), i. 254 sqq., 273 sq.,
276 sqq., ii. 640 sqq.;
M. Much, Die Heimat der Indogermanen
(Jena and Berlin, 1904), pp. 221 sqq.;
T. E. Peet, The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy and
Sicily (Oxford, 1909), p. 362.
Aristotle, Constitution of
Athens, 54, where the quadriennial (penteteric)
festival of the Eleusinian Games is mentioned along with the
quadriennial festivals of the Panathenaica, the Delia, the
Brauronia, and the Heraclea. The biennial (trieteric) festival of
the Eleusinian Games is mentioned only in the inscription of 329
b.c. (Dittenberger,
Sylloge
Inscriptionum Graecarum,2
No. 587, lines 259 sq.). As to the identity of the
Great Eleusinian Games with the quadriennial games see
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,
No. 246 note 9, No. 587 note 171.
Strabo, vii. 7. 6, p. 325; Suetonius,
Augustus, 18; Dio Cassius, li.
1; Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et
Romaines, s.v.“Actia.”
Scholiast on Pindar, Pyth.,
Argument, p. 298, ed. Aug. Boeckh; Censorinus, De die
natali, xviii. 6. According to the scholiast on
Pindar (l.c.) the change from the
octennial to the quadriennial period was occasioned by the nymphs
of Parnassus bringing ripe fruits in their hands to Apollo, after
he had slain the dragon at Delphi.
Scholiast on Pindar, Olymp.
iii. 35 (20), p. 98, ed. Aug. Boeckh. Compare Boeckh's commentary
on Pindar (vol. iii. p. 138 of his edition); L. Ideler,
Handbuch
der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i.
366 sq., ii. 605 sqq.
Censorinus, De die
natali, xviii. 5. As Eudoxus flourished in the fourth
century b.c., some sixty or
seventy years after Meton, who introduced the nineteen years' cycle
to remedy the defects of the octennial cycle, the claim of Eudoxus
to have instituted the latter cycle may at once be put out of
court. The claim of Cleostratus, who seems to have lived in the
sixth or fifth century b.c., cannot be dismissed
so summarily; but for the reasons given in the text he can hardly
have done more than suggest corrections or improvements of the
ancient octennial cycle.
Geminus, Elementa
Astronomiae, viii. 27. With far less probability
Censorinus (De die natali, xviii. 2-4)
supposes that the octennial cycle was produced by the successive
duplication of biennial and quadriennial cycles. See below, pp. 86
sq.
The Dying God, pp. 58
sqq. Speaking of the octennial
cycle Censorinus observes that “Ob hoc in Graecia multae religiones hoc
intervallo temporis summa caerimonia coluntur”
(De die
natali, xviii. 6). Compare L. Ideler, op.
cit. ii. 605 sq.; G. F. Unger, “Zeitrechnung der Griechen und Römer,” in Iwan
Müller's Handbuch der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft, i.2
732 sq. The great age and the wide
diffusion of the octennial cycle in Greece are rightly maintained
by A. Schmidt (Handbuch der griechischen
Chronologie, Jena, 1888, pp. 61 sqq.),
who suggests that the cycle may have owed something to the
astronomy of the Egyptians, with whom the inhabitants of Greece are
known to have had relations from a very early time.
Macrobius, Saturnalia, i. 15. 9
sqq.; Livy, ix. 46. 5; Valerius
Maximus, ii. 5. 2; Cicero, Pro Muraena, xi. 25;
id., De
legibus, ii. 12. 29; Suetonius, Divus
Iulius, 40; Plutarch, Caesar,
59.
Pausanias, iv. 5. 10; compare
Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, iii. 1;
G. Gilbert, Handbuch der griechischen
Staatsalterthumer, i.2
(Leipsic, 1893) pp. 122 sq.
Augustine, De civitate
Dei, vii. 20. “In Cereris autem sacris praedicantur illa
Eleusinia, quae apud Athenienses nobilissima fuerunt. De quibus
iste [Varro] nihil interpretatur, nisi quod attinet ad frumentum,
quod Ceres invenit, et ad Proserpinam, quam rapiente Orco perdidit.
Et hanc ipsam dicit significare foecunditatem seminum.... Dicit
deinde multa in mysteriis ejus tradi, quae nisi ad frugum
inventionem non pertineant.”
A. Baumeister, Denkmäler des
classischen Altertums, i. 577 sq.;
Drexler, s.v. "Gaia," in W. H. Roscher's
Lexikon
der griech. und röm. Mythologie, i. 1574 sqq.;
L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States,
iii. (Oxford, 1907) p. 27.
Pausanias, vii. 21. 11. At Athens
there was a sanctuary of Earth the Nursing-Mother and of Green
Demeter (Pausanias, i. 22. 3), but we do not know how the goddesses
were represented.
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum,2 Nos. 20, 408, 411, 587,
646, 647, 652, 720, 789. Compare the expression διώνυμοι θέαι
applied to them by Euripides, Phoenissae, 683, with the
Scholiast's note.
The substantial identity of Demeter
and Persephone has been recognised by some modern scholars, though
their interpretations of the myth do not altogether agree with the
one adopted in the text. See F. G. Welcker, Griechische
Götterlehre (Göttingen, 1857-1862), ii. 532; L.
Preller, in Pauly's Realencyclopädie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft, vi. 106 sq.; F.
Lenormant, in Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des
Antiquités Grecques et Romaines, i. 2. pp. 1047
sqq.
Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 480
sqq.; Pindar, quoted by Clement
of Alexandria, Strom. iii. 3. 17, p. 518, ed.
Potter; Sophocles, quoted by Plutarch, De audiendis
poetis, 4; Isocrates, Panegyricus, 6; Cicero,
De
legibus, ii. 14. 36; Aristides, Eleusin. vol. i. p. 421, ed. G.
Dindorf.
A learned German professor has thought
it worth while to break the poor butterfly argument on the wheel of
his inflexible logic. The cruel act, while it proves the hardness
of the professor's head, says little for his knowledge of human
nature, which does not always act in strict accordance with the
impulse of the syllogistic machinery. See Erwin Rohde, Psyche3
(Tübingen and Leipsic, 1903), i. 290 sqq.
A. W. Nieuwenhuis, op.
cit. i. 163. The motive assigned for the exclusion of
strangers at the sowing festival applies equally to all religious
rites. “In all religious
observances,” says Dr. Nieuwenhuis, “the Kayans fear the presence of strangers, because
these latter might frighten and annoy the spirits which are
invoked.” On the periods of seclusion and quiet observed in
connexion with agriculture by the Kayans of Sarawak, see W. H.
Furness, Home-life of Borneo Head-hunters
(Philadelphia, 1902), pp. 160 sqq.
A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch
Borneo, ii. 130 sq. The game as to the religious
significance of which Dr. Nieuwenhuis has no doubt is the
masquerade performed by the Kayans of the Mahakam river, where
disguised men personate spirits and pretend to draw home the souls
of the rice from the far countries to which they may have wandered.
See below, pp. 186 sq.
On the principles of homoeopathic or
imitative magic, see The Magic Art and the Evolution of
Kings, i. 52 sqq. The Esquimaux play cat's
cradle as a charm to catch the sun in the meshes of the string and
so prevent him from sinking below the horizon in winter. See
The Magic
Art and the Evolution of Kings, i. 316 sq.
Cat's cradle is played as a game by savages in many parts of the
world, including the Torres Straits Islands, the Andaman Islands,
Africa, and America. See A. C. Haddon, The Study of
Man (London and New York, 1898), pp. 224-232; Miss
Kathleen Haddon, Cat's Cradles from Many Lands
(London, 1911). For example, the Indians of North-western Brazil
play many games of cat's cradle, each of which has its special
name, such as the Bow, the Moon, the Pleiades, the Armadillo, the
Spider, the Caterpillar, and the Guts of the Tapir. See Th.
Koch-Grünberg, Zwei Jahre unter den Indianern
(Berlin, 1909-1910), i. 120, 123, 252, 253, ii. 127, 131. Finding
the game played as a magical rite to stay the sun or promote the
growth of the crops among peoples so distant from each other as the
Esquimaux and the natives of New Guinea, we may reasonably surmise
that it has been put to similar uses by many other peoples, though
civilised observers have commonly seen in it nothing more than a
pastime. Probably many games have thus originated in magical rites.
When their old serious meaning was forgotten, they continued to be
practised simply for the amusement they afforded the players.
Another such game seems to be the “Tug of
War.” See The Golden Bough,2
iii. 95.
A. C. Haddon, in Reports of the
Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres
Straits, v. (Cambridge, 1904) pp. 218, 219. Compare
id., Head-hunters, Black,
White, and Brown (London, 1901) p. 104.
A. W. Howitt, “The Dieri and other kindred Tribes of Central
Australia,”Journal of the Anthropological
Institute, xx. (1891) p. 83; id.,
Native
Tribes of South-East Australia (London, 1904), p.
660. The first, I believe, to point out the fertilising power
ascribed to the bull-roarer by some savages was Dr. A. C. Haddon.
See his essay, “The Bull-roarer,” in
The Study
of Man (London and New York, 1898), pp. 277-327. In
this work Dr. Haddon recognises the general principle of the
possible derivation of many games from magical rites. As to the
bull-roarer compare my paper “On some
Ceremonies of the Central Australian Tribes,” in the
Report of
the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science for the
year 1900 (Melbourne, 1901), pp. 313-322.
Plutarch, Praecepta
Conjugalia, 42. Another of these Sacred Ploughings
was performed at Scirum, and the third at the foot of the Acropolis
at Athens; for in this passage of Plutarch we must, with the latest
editor, read ὑπὸ πόλιν for the ὑπὸ πέλιν of the manuscripts.
Such Sabbaths are very commonly and
very strictly observed in connexion with the crops by the
agricultural hill tribes of Assam. The native name for such a
Sabbath is genna. See T. C. Hodson,
“The Genna amongst the Tribes of
Assam,”Journal of the Anthropological
Institute, xxxvi. (1906) pp. 94 sq.:
“Communal tabus are observed by the whole
village.... Those which are of regular occurrence are for the most
part connected with the crops. Even where irrigated terraces are
made, the rice plant is much affected by deficiencies of rain and
excess of sun. Before the crop is sown, the village is tabu or
genna. The gates are closed and
the friend without has to stay outside, while the stranger that is
within the gates remains till all is ended. The festival is marked
among some tribes by an outburst of licentiousness, for, so long as
the crops remain ungarnered, the slightest incontinence might ruin
all. An omen of the prosperity of the crops is taken by a mock
contest, the girls pulling against the men. In some villages the
gennas last for ten days, but
the tenth day is the crowning day of all. The men cook, and eat
apart from the women during this time, and the food tabus are
strictly enforced. From the conclusion of the initial crop
genna to the commencement of the
genna which ushers in the
harvest-time, all trade, all fishing, all hunting, all cutting
grass and felling trees is forbidden. Those tribes which specialise
in cloth-weaving, salt-making or pottery-making are forbidden the
exercise of these minor but valuable industries. Drums and bugles
are silent all the while.... Between the initial crop genna and the harvest-home, some
tribes interpose a genna day which depends on the
appearance of the first blade of rice. All celebrate the
commencement of the gathering of the crops by a genna, which lasts at least two
days. It is mainly a repetition of the initial genna and, just as the first
seed was sown by the gennabura, the religious head of
the village, so he is obliged to cut the first ear of rice before
any one else may begin.” On such occasions among the Kabuis,
in spite of the licence accorded to the people generally, the
strictest chastity is required of the religious head of the village
who initiates the sowing and the reaping, and his diet is extremely
limited; for example, he may not eat dogs or tomatoes. See T. C.
Hodson, “The Native Tribes of
Manipur,”Journal of the Anthropological
Institute, xxxi. (1901) pp. 306 sq.;
and for more details, id., The Naga Tribes of
Manipur (London, 1911), pp. 168 sqq.
The resemblance of some of these customs to those of the Kayans of
Borneo is obvious. We may conjecture that the “tug of war” which takes place between the sexes
on several of these Sabbaths was originally a magical ceremony to
ensure good crops rather than merely a mode of divination to
forecast the coming harvest. Magic regularly dwindles into
divination before it degenerates into a simple game. At one of
these taboo periods the men set up an effigy of a man and throw
pointed bamboos at it. He who hits the figure in the head will kill
an enemy; he who hits it in the belly will have plenty of food. See
T. C. Hodson, in Journal of the Anthropological
Institute, xxxvi. (1906) p. 95; id.,
The Naga
Tribes of Manipur, p. 171. Here also we probably have
an old magical ceremony passing through a phase of divination
before it reaches the last stage of decay. On Sabbaths observed in
connexion with agriculture in Borneo and Assam, see further Hutton
Webster, Rest Days, a Sociological Study,
pp. 11 sqq. (University
Studies, Lincoln, Nebraska, vol. xi. Nos. 1-2,
January-April, 1911).
See the old Greek scholiast on Clement
of Alexandria, quoted by Chr. Aug. Lobeck, Aglaophamus (Königsberg, 1829),
p. 700; Andrew Lang, Custom and Myth (London, 1884),
p. 39. It is true that the bull-roarer seems to have been
associated with the rites of Dionysus rather than of Demeter;
perhaps the sound of it was thought to mimick the bellowing of the
god in his character of a bull. But the worship of Dionysus was
from an early time associated with that of Demeter in the
Eleusinian mysteries; and the god himself, as we have seen, had
agricultural affinities. See above, p. 5. An annual festival of swinging (which, as we
have seen, is still practised both in New Guinea and Russia for the
good of the crops) was held by the Athenians in antiquity and was
believed to have originated in the worship of Dionysus. See
The Dying
God, pp. 281 sq.
Th. Koch-Grünberg, Zwei Jahre unter den
Indianern (Berlin, 1909-1910), i. 137-140, ii.
193-196. As to the cultivation of manioc among these Indians see
id. ii. 202 sqq.
Rev. J. Shooter, The Kafirs of Natal
and the Zulu Country (London, 1857), pp. 17
sq. Speaking of the Zulus
another writer observes: “In gardening, the
men clear the land, if need be, and sometimes fence it in; the
women plant, weed, and harvest” (Rev. L. Grout, Zulu-land, Philadelphia,
n.d., p. 110).
In order to guard against any breach
of the rule they strewed Agnus castus and other plants,
which were esteemed anaphrodisiacs, under their beds. See
Dioscorides, De Materia Medica, i. 134 (135),
vol. i. p. 130, ed. C. Sprengel (Leipsic, 1829-1830); Pliny,
Nat.
Hist. xxiv. 59; Aelian, De Natura
Animalium, ix. 26; Hesychius, s.v.
κνέωρον; Scholiast on Theocritus, iv. 25; Scholiast on Nicander,
Ther. 70 sq.
Scholiast on Aristophanes,
Thesmophor. 80; Plutarch,
Demosthenes, 30; Aug. Mommsen,
Feste der
Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 310
sq. That Pyanepsion was the
month of sowing is mentioned by Plutarch (Isis et
Osiris, 69). See above, pp. 45sq.
Dudley Kidd, The Essential
Kaffir (London, 1904), p. 323. Compare B. Ankermann,
“L'Ethnographie actuelle de l'Afrique
méridionale,”Anthropos, i. (1906) pp. 575
sq. As to the use of the
Pleiades to determine the time of sowing, see note at the end of
the volume, “The Pleiades in Primitive
Calendars.”
A. C. Hollis, The
Nandi (Oxford, 1909), p. 19. However, among the Bantu
Kavirondo, an essentially agricultural people of British East
Africa, both men and women work in the fields with large iron hoes.
See Sir Harry Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate (London,
1904), ii. 738.
Rev. J. H. Weeks, “Anthropological Notes on the Bangala of the Upper
Congo River,”Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute, xxxix. (1909) pp. 117, 128.
Le Sieur de la Borde, “Relation de l'Origine, Mœurs, Coustumes, Religion,
Guerres et Voyages des Caraibes Sauvages des Isles Antilles de
l'Amerique,” pp. 21-23, in Recueil de divers
Voyages faits en Afrique et en l'Amerique (Paris,
1684).
C. F. Phil. v. Martius, Zur Ethnographie
Amerika's, zumal Brasiliens (Leipsic, 1867), pp.
486-489. On the economic importance of the manioc or cassava plant
in the life of the South American Indians, see further E. J. Payne,
History
of the New World called America, i. (Oxford, 1892)
pp. 310 sqq., 312 sq.
A. R. Wallace, Narrative of Travels
on the Amazon and Rio Negro (London, 1889), pp. 336,
337 (The
Minerva Library). Mr. Wallace's account of the
agriculture of these tribes is entirely confirmed by the
observations of a recent explorer in north-western Brazil. See Th.
Koch-Grünberg, Zwei Jahre unter den Indianern
(Berlin, 1909-1910), ii. 202-209; id.,
“Frauenarbeit bei den Indianern
Nordwest-Brasiliens,”Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen
Gesellschaft in Wien, xxxviii. (1908) pp. 172-174.
This writer tells us (Zwei Jahre unter den Indianern,
ii. 203) that these Indians determine the time for planting by
observing certain constellations, especially the Pleiades. The
rainy season begins when the Pleiades have disappeared below the
horizon. See Note at end of the volume.
P. A. Kleintitschen, Die Küstenbewohner
der Gazellehalbinsel (Hiltrup bei Münster, preface
dated Christmas, 1906), pp. 60 sq.; G.
Brown, D.D., Melanesians and Polynesians
(London, 1910), pp. 324 sq.
A. C. Kruijt, “Een en ander aangaande het geestelijk en
maatschappelijk leven van den Poso-Alfoer,”Mededeelingen van
wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xxxix.
(1895) pp. 132, 134; J. Boot, “Korte schets
der noordkust van Ceram,”Tijdschrift van het
Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, Tweede
Serie, x. (1893) p. 672; E. H. Gomes, Seventeen Years among
the Sea Dyaks of Borneo (London, 1911), p. 46; E.
Modigliani, Un Viaggio a Nías (Milan, 1890),
pp. 590 sq.; K. Vetter, Komm herüber und hilf
uns! Heft 2 (Barmen, 1898), pp. 6 sq.;
Ch. Keysser, “Aus dem Leben der
Kaileute,” in R. Neuhauss, Deutsch
Neu-Guinea, iii. (Berlin, 1911) pp. 14, 85.
J. Gumilla, Histoire Naturelle,
Civile et Géographique de l'Orénoque (Avignon, 1758),
ii. 166 sqq., 183 sqq.
Compare The Magic Art and the Evolution of
Kings, i. 139 sqq.
Father Geronimo Boscana, “Chinigchinich,” in [A. Robinson's] Life in
California (New York, 1846), p. 287. Elsewhere the
same well-informed writer observes of these Indians that
“they neither cultivated the ground, nor
planted any kind of grain; but lived upon the wild seeds of the
field, the fruits of the forest, and upon the abundance of
game” (op. cit. p. 285).
Father Geronimo Boscana, op.
cit. pp. 302-305. As to the puplem, see id. p.
264. The writer says that criers informed the people “when to cultivate their fields” (p. 302). But
taken along with his express statement that they “neither cultivated the ground, nor planted any kind of
grain” (p. 285, see above, p. 125 note 2), this expression
“to cultivate their fields” must be
understood loosely to denote merely the gathering of the wild seeds
and fruits.
(Sir) George Grey, Journals of Two
Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western
Australia (London, 1841), ii. 292 sq. The
women also collect the nuts from the palms in the month of March
(id. ii. 296).
P. Beveridge, “Of the Aborigines inhabiting the Great Lacustrine and
Riverine Depression of the Lower Murray, Lower Murrumbidgee, Lower
Lachlan, and Lower Darling,”Journal and
Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales for
1883, vol. xvii. (Sydney, 1884) p. 36.
W. Stanbridge, “Some Particulars of the General Characteristics,
Astronomy, and Mythology of the Tribes in the Central Part of
Victoria, South Australia,”Transactions of the
Ethnological Society of London, N.S., i. (1861) p.
291.
O. Schrader, Reallexikon der
indogermanischen Altertumskunde (Strasburg, 1901),
pp. 6 sqq., 630 sqq.;
id., Sprachvergleichung
und Urgeschichte3 (Jena, 1905-1907), ii. 201
sqq.; H. Hirt, Die
Indogermanen, i. 251 sqq.,
263, 274. The use of oxen to draw the plough is very ancient in
Europe. On the rocks at Bohuslän in Sweden there is carved a rude
representation of a plough drawn by oxen and guided by a ploughman:
it is believed to date from the Bronze Age. See H. Hirt,
op.
cit. i. 286.
O. Schrader, Reallexikon der
indogermanischen Altertumskunde (Strasburg, 1901),
pp. 11, 289; id., Sprachvergleichung
und Urgeschichte2 (Jena, 1890), pp. 409, 422;
id., Sprachvergleichung
und Urgeschichte3 (Jena, 1905-1907), ii. 188
sq. Compare V. Hehn,
Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere in ihrem
Uebergang aus Asien7
(Berlin, 1902), pp. 58 sq.
Hesiod, Theog.
969 sqq.; F. Lenormant, in Daremberg
et Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et
Romaines, i. 2, p. 1029; Kern, in Pauly-Wissowa's
Real-Encyclopädie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft, iv. 2, coll. 2720 sq.
My friend Professor J. H. Moulton
tells me that there is great doubt as to the existence of a word
δηαί, “barley” (Etymologicum
Magnum, p. 264, lines 12 sq.),
and that the common form of Demeter's name, Dâmâter (except in Ionic and
Attic) is inconsistent with η in the supposed Cretan form.
“Finally if δηαί = ζειαί, you are bound to
regard her as a Cretan goddess, or as arising in some other area
where the dialect changed Indogermanic y
into δ and not ζ: since Ionic and Attic have ζ, the two crucial
letters of the name tell different tales” (Professor J. H.
Moulton, in a letter to me, dated 19 December 1903).
A. Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des
Feuers und des Göttertranks2
(Gütersloh, 1886), pp. 68 sq.; O. Schrader, Reallexikon der
indogermanischen Altertumskunde, pp. 11, 12, 289;
id., Sprachvergleichung
und Urgeschichte,3
ii. 189, 191, 197 sq.; H. Hirt, Die
Indogermanen (Strasburg, 1905-1907), i. 276
sqq. In the oldest Vedic ritual
barley and not rice is the cereal chiefly employed. See H.
Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda (Berlin,
1894), p. 353. For evidence that barley was cultivated in Europe by
the lake-dwellers of the Stone Age, see A. de Candolle,
Origin of
Cultivated Plants (London, 1884), pp. 368, 369; R.
Munro, The Lake-dwellings of Europe
(London, Paris, and Melbourne, 1890), pp. 497 sq.
According to Pliny (Nat. Hist. xviii. 72) barley was
the oldest of all foods.
W. Mannhardt, Mythologische
Forschungen (Strasburg, 1884), p. 296. Compare O.
Hartung, “Zur Volkskunde aus
Anhalt,”Zeitschrift des Vereins für
Volkskunde, vii. (1897) p. 150.
A. Kuhn and W. Schwartz, Norddeutsche Sagen,
Märchen und Gebräuche (Leipsic, 1848), pp. 396
sq., 399; K. Bartsch,
Sagen,
Märchen und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg (Vienna,
1879-1880), ii. 309, § 1494.
Ibid. p. 325. The author of
Die
gestriegelte Rockenphilosophie (Chemnitz, 1759)
mentions (p. 891) the German superstition that the last sheaf
should be made large in order that all the sheaves next year may be
of the same size; but he says nothing as to the shape or name of
the sheaf. Compare A. John, Sitte, Brauch und Volksglaube im deutschen
Westböhmen (Prague, 1905), p. 188.
J. Jamieson, Dictionary of the
Scottish Language, New Edition (Paisley, 1879-1882),
iii. 206, s.v.“Maiden”; W. Mannhardt, Mythologische
Forschungen, p. 326.
D. Jenkyn Evans, in an article
entitled “The Harvest Customs of
Pembrokeshire,”Pembroke County Guardian, 7th
December 1895. In a letter to me, dated 23 February 1901, Mr. E. S.
Hartland was so good as to correct the Welsh words in the text. He
tells me that they mean literally, “I rose
early, I pursued late on her neck,” and he adds:
“The idea seems to be that the man has
pursued the Hag or Corn-spirit to a later refuge, namely, his
neighbour's field not yet completely reaped, and now he leaves her
for the other reapers to catch. The proper form of the Welsh word
for Hag is Gwrach. That is the radical from
gwr, man; gwraig, woman. Wrach is the ‘middle mutation.’ ”
E. D. Clarke, Travels in Various
Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa, Part ii.,
Section First, Second Edition (London, 1813), p. 229. Perhaps
Morgay (which Clarke absurdly
explains as μητὴρ γῆ) is a mistake for Hawkie or Hockey. The waggon in which the
last corn was brought from the harvest field was called the
hockey cart or hock cart. In a poem called
“The Hock-cart or Harvest Home”
Herrick has described the joyous return of the laden cart drawn by
horses swathed in white sheets and attended by a merry crowd, some
of whom kissed or stroked the sheaves, while others pranked them
with oak leaves. See further J. Brand, Popular
Antiquities, ii. 22 sq.,
Bohn's edition. The name Hockey or Hawkie is no doubt the same with
the German hokelmei,
hörkelmei, or harkelmei, which in Westphalia
is applied to a green bush or tree set up in the field at the end
of harvest and brought home in the last waggon-load; the man who
carries it into the farmhouse is sometimes drenched with water. See
A. Kuhn, Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen aus
Westfalen (Leipsic, 1859), ii. 178-180, §§ 494-497.
The word is thought to be derived from the Low German hokk (plural hokken), “a heap of sheaves.” See Joseph Wright,
English
Dialect Dictionary, iii. (London, 1902) p. 190,
s.v.“Hockey,” from which it appears that in England
the word has been in use in Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire, and
Suffolk.
Joseph Wright, English Dialect
Dictionary, vol. i. (London, 1898) p. 605
s.v.“Churn”; id., vol. iii. (London, 1902) p.
453 s.v.“Kirn”; id. vol. iv. (London, 1903) pp.
82 sq. Sir James Murray, editor of
the New
English Dictionary, kindly informs me that the
popular etymology which identifies kern or kirn in this sense with
corn is entirely mistaken; and
that “baby” or “babbie” in the same phrase means only
“doll,” not “infant.” He writes, “Kirn-babbie does not mean
‘corn-baby,’ but merely kirn-doll, harvest-home
doll. Bab, babbie was even in my youth the
regular name for ‘doll’ in the
district, as it was formerly in England; the only woman who sold
dolls in Hawick early in the [nineteenth] century, and whose
toy-shop all bairns knew, was known as ‘Betty o' the Babs,’ Betty of the
dolls.”
W. Henderson, Folk-lore of the
Northern Counties of England (London, 1879), pp. 88
sq.; M. C. F. Morris,
Yorkshire
Folk-talk, pp. 212-214. Compare F. Grose,
Provincial Glossary (London,
1811), s.v.“Mell-supper”; J. Brand, Popular
Antiquities, ii. 27 sqq.,
Bohn's edition; The Denham Tracts, edited by Dr.
James Hardy (London, 1892-1895), ii. 2 sq. The
sheaf out of which the Mell-doll was made was no doubt the
Mell-sheaf, though this is not expressly said. Dr. Joseph Wright,
editor of The English Dialect Dictionary,
kindly informs me that the word mell is
well known in these senses in all the northern counties of England
down to Cheshire. He tells me that the proposals to connect
mell with “meal” or with “maiden” (through a form like the German
Mädel) are inadmissible.
R. Chambers, The Book of
Days (Edinburgh, 1886), ii. 377 sq. The
expression “Corn Baby” used by the
writer is probably his interpretation of the correct expression
kirn or kern baby. See above, p.
151, note 3. It is not
clear whether the account refers to England or Scotland. Compare F.
Grose, Provincial Glossary (London
1811), s.v.“Kern-baby,”“an image
dressed up with corn, carried before the reapers to their
mell-supper, or harvest-home”; J. Brand, Popular
Antiquities, ii. 20; W. Henderson, Folk-lore of the
Northern Counties of England, p. 87.
(Rev.) H. W. Lett, “Winning the Churn (Ulster),”Folk-lore, xvi. (1905) p. 185.
My friend Miss Welsh, formerly Principal of Girton College,
Cambridge, told me (30th May 1901) that she remembers the custom of
the churn being observed in the
north of Ireland; the reapers cut the last handful of standing corn
(called the churn) by throwing their sickles
at it, and the corn so cut was taken home and kept for some
time.
J. Jamieson, Dictionary of the
Scottish Language, New Edition (Paisley, 1879-1882),
iii. 206, s.v.“Maiden.” An old Scottish name for the Maiden
(autumnalis nymphula) was
Rapegyrne. See Fordun,
Scotichren. ii. 418, quoted by
J. Jamieson, op. cit. iii. 624, s.v.“Rapegyrne.”
Rev. M. MacPhail (Free Church Manse,
Kilmartin, Lochgilphead), “Folk-lore from
the Hebrides,”Folk-lore, xi. (1900) p. 441.
That the Maiden, hung up in the house, is thought to keep out
witches till the next harvest is mentioned also by the Rev. J. G.
Campbell, Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of
Scotland (Glasgow, 1900), p. 20. So with the
churn (above, p. 153).
Sir John Sinclair, Statistical Account
of Scotland, xix. (Edinburgh, 1797), pp. 550
sq. Compare Miss E. J. Guthrie,
Old
Scottish Customs (London and Glasgow, 1885), pp. 130
sq.
The late Mrs. Macalister, wife of
Professor Alexander Macalister, Cambridge. Her recollections
referred especially to the neighbourhood of Glen Farg, some ten or
twelve miles to the south of Perth.
From information supplied by Archie
Leitch, late gardener to my father at Rowmore, Garelochhead. The
Kirn was the name of the harvest festivity in the south of Scotland
also. See Lockhart's Life of Scott, ii. 184 (first
edition); Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle,
ed. Norton, ii. 325 sq.
A slightly different mode of making up
the clyack sheaf is described by the
Rev. Walter Gregor elsewhere (Notes on the Folk-lore of the North-east of
Scotland, London, 1881, pp. 181 sq.): “The clyack sheaf was cut by the
maidens on the harvest field. On no account was it allowed to touch
the ground. One of the maidens seated herself on the ground, and
over her knees was the band of the sheaf laid. Each of the maidens
cut a handful, or more if necessary, and laid it on the band. The
sheaf was then bound, still lying over the maiden's knees, and
dressed up in woman's clothing.”
W. Gregor, “Quelques coutumes du Nord-est du Comté
d'Aberdeen,”Revue des Traditions populaires,
iii. (October, 1888) pp. 484-487 (wrong pagination; should be
532-535). This account, translated into French by M. Loys Brueyre
from the author's English and translated by me back from French
into English, is fuller than the account given by the same writer
in his Notes on the Folk-lore of the North-east of
Scotland (London, 1881), pp. 181-183. I have
translated “une jument ayant son
poulain” by “a mare in
foal,” and “la
plus ancienne vache ayant son veau” by
“the oldest cow in calf,” because in
the author's Notes on the Folk-lore of the North-east of
Scotland (p. 182) we read that the last sheaf was
“carefully preserved till Christmas or New
Year morning. On that morning it was given to a mare in
foal,” etc. Otherwise the French words might naturally be
understood of a mare with its foal and a cow with its calf.
The drinking of the draught (called
the κυκεών) as a solemn rite in the Eleusinian mysteries is
mentioned by Clement of Alexandria (Protrept. 21, p. 18, ed. Potter)
and Arnobius (Adversus Nationes, v. 26). The
composition of the draught is revealed by the author of the Homeric
Hymn to
Demeter (verses 206-211), where he represents Demeter
herself partaking of the sacred cup. That the compound was a kind
of thick gruel, half-solid, half-liquid, is mentioned by Eustathius
(on Homer, Iliad, xi. 638, p. 870). Compare
Miss J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek
Religion, Second Edition (Cambridge, 1908), pp. 155
sqq.
As to Inverness-shire my old friend
Mr. Hugh E. Cameron, formerly of Glen Moriston, Inverness-shire,
wrote to me many years ago: “As a boy, I
remember the last bit of corn cut was taken home, and neatly tied
up with a ribbon, and then stuck up on the wall above the kitchen
fire-place, and there it often remained till the ‘maiden’ of the following year took its place.
There was no ceremony about it, beyond often a struggle as to who
would get, or cut, the last sheaf to select the ‘maiden’ from” (The Folk-lore
Journal, vii. 1889, pp. 50 sq.).
As to Sutherlandshire my mother was told by a servant, Isabella
Ross, that in that county “they hang up the
‘maiden’ generally over the
mantel-piece (chimney-piece) till the next harvest. They have
always a kirn, whipped cream, with often a ring in it, and
sometimes meal sprinkled over it. The girls must all be dressed in
lilac prints, they all dance, and at twelve o'clock they eat
potatoes and herrings” (op.
cit. pp. 53 sq.).
J. E. Waldfreund, “Volksgebräuche und Aberglaube in Tirol und dem
Salzburger Gebirg,”Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie und
Sittenkunde, iii. (1855) p. 340.
Above, p. 146. The common custom of wetting the last sheaf
and its bearer is no doubt also a rain-charm; indeed the intention
to procure rain or make the corn grow is sometimes avowed. See
above, pp. 134, 137, 143, 144, 145; Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second
Edition, pp. 195-197.
J. de Acosta, Natural and Moral
History of the Indies, bk. v. ch. 28, vol. ii. p. 374
(Hakluyt Society, London, 1880). In quoting the passage I have
modernised the spelling. The original Spanish text of Acosta's work
was reprinted in a convenient form at Madrid in 1894. See vol. ii.
p. 117 of that edition.
W. Mannhardt, Mythologische
Forschungen, pp. 342 sq.
Mannhardt's authority is a Spanish tract (Carta pastorale de
exortacion e instruccion contra las idolatrias de los Indios del
arçobispado de Lima) by Pedro de Villagomez,
Archbishop of Lima, published at Lima in 1649, and communicated to
Mannhardt by J. J. v. Tschudi. The Carta
Pastorale itself seems to be partly based on an
earlier work, the Extirpacion de la Idolatria del Piru. Dirigido
al Rey N.S. en Su real conseio de Indias, por el Padre Pablo Joseph
de Arriaga de la Compañia de Jesus (Lima, 1621). A
copy of this work is possessed by the British Museum, where I
consulted it. The writer explains (p. 16) that the Maize-mothers
(Zaramamas) are of three sorts,
namely (1) those which are made of maize stalks, dressed up like
women, (2) those which are carved of stone in the likeness of cobs
of maize, and (3) those which consist simply of fruitful stalks of
maize or of two maize-cobs naturally joined together. These last,
the writer tells us, were the principal Zaramamas, and were revered by
the natives as Mothers of the Maize. Similarly, when two potatoes
were found growing together the Indians called them Potato-mothers
(Axomamas) and kept them in order
to get a good crop of potatoes. As Arriaga's work is rare, it may
be well to give his account of the Maize-mothers, Coca-mothers, and
Potato-mothers in his own words. He says (p. 16): “Zaramamas, son de tres
maneras, y son las que se quentan entre las cosas halladas en los
pueblos. La primera es una como muñeca hecha de cañas de maiz,
vestida como muger con su anaco, y llicilla, y sus topos de plata,
y entienden, que como madre tiene virtud de engendrar, y parir
mucho maiz. A este modo tienen tambien Cocamamas para augmento de
la coca. Otras son de piedra labradas como choclos, o mazorcas de
maiz, con sus granos relevados, y de estas suelen tener muchas en
lugar de Conopas [household gods]. Otras son algunas cañas fertiles de maiz, que
con la fertilidad de la tierra dieron muchas maçorcas, y grandes, o
quando salen dos maçorcas juntas, y estas son las principales,
Zaramamas, y assi las reverencian como a madres del maiz, a estas
llaman tambien Huantayzara, o Ayrihuayzara. A este tercer genero no
le dan la adoracion que a Huaca, ni Conopa, sino que le tienen
supersticiosamente como una cosa sagrada, y colgando estas cañas
con muchos choclos de unos ramos de sauce bailen con ellas el
bayle, que llaman Ayrihua, y acabado el bayle, las queman, y
sacrifican a Libiac para que les de buena cosecha. Con la misma
supersticion guardan las mazorcas del maiz, que salen muy pintadas,
que llaman Micsazara, o Mantayzara, o Caullazara, y otros que
llaman Piruazara, que son otras maçorcas en que van subiendo los
granos no derechos sino haziendo caracol. Estas Micsazara, o
Piruazara, ponen supersticiosamente en los montones de maiz, y en
las Piruas (que son donde guardan el maiz) paraque se las guarde, y
el dia de las exhibiciones se junta tanto de estas maçorcas, que
tienen bien que comer las mulas. La misma supersticion tienen con
las que llaman Axomamas, que son quando salen algunas papas juntas,
y las guardan para tener buena cosecha de
papas.” The exhibiciones here referred to
are the occasions when the Indians brought forth their idols and
other relics of superstition and delivered them to the
ecclesiastical visitors. At Tarija in Bolivia, down to the present
time, a cross is set up at harvest in the maize-fields, and on it
all maize-spadices growing as twins are hung. They are called
Pachamamas (Earth-mothers) and are thought to bring good harvests.
See Baron E. Nordenskiöld, “Travels on the
Boundaries of Bolivia and Argentina,”The Geographical
Journal, xxi. (1903) pp. 517, 518. Compare E. J.
Payne, History of the New World called
America (Oxford, 1892), i. 414 sq.
Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des Nations
civilisées du Mexique et de l'Amérique Centrale
(Paris 1857-1859), iii. 40 sqq. Compare id.,
iii. 505 sq.; E. J. Payne, History of the New
World called America, i. 419 sq.
E. Seler, “Altmexikanische Studien, ii.,”Veröffentlichungen
aus dem königlichen Museum für Völkerkunde, vi.
(Berlin, 1899) 2/4 Heft, pp. 67 sqq.
Another chapter of Sahagun's work, describing the costumes of the
Mexican gods, has been edited and translated into German by
Professor E. Seler in the same series of publications (“Altmexikanische Studien,”Veröffentlichungen
aus dem königlichen Museum für Völkerkunde, i. 4
(Berlin, 1890) pp. 117 sqq.). Sahagun's work as a whole
is known to me only in the excellent French translation of Messrs.
D. Jourdanet and R. Simeon (Histoire Générale des choses de la
Nouvelle-Espagne par le R. P. Fray Bernardino de
Sahagun, Paris, 1880). As to the life and character
of Sahagun see M. R. Simeon's introduction to the translation, pp.
vii. sqq.
B. de Sahagun, Aztec text of book ii.,
translated by Professor E. Seler, “Altmexikanische Studien, ii.,”Veröffentlichungen
aus dem königlichen Museum für Völkerkunde, vi. 2/4
Heft (Berlin, 1899), pp. 188-194. The account of the ceremonies
given in the Spanish version of Sahagun's work is a good deal more
summary. See B. de Sahagun, Histoire Générale des choses de la Nouvelle
Espagne (Paris, 1880), pp. 94-96.
J. Mooney, “Myths of the Cherokee,”Nineteenth Annual
Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Part I.
(Washington, 1900) pp. 423, 432. See further Adonis, Attis,
Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 296 sq.
L. H. Morgan, League of the
Iroquois (Rochester, 1851), pp. 161 sq.,
199. According to the Iroquois the corn plant sprang from the bosom
of the mother of the Great Spirit after her burial (L. H. Morgan,
op.
cit. p. 199 note 1).
R. J. Wilkinson (of the Civil Service
of the Federated Malay States), Malay
Beliefs (London and Leyden, 1906), pp. 49-51. On the
conception of the soul as a bird, see Taboo and the Perils
of the Soul, pp. 33 sqq.
The Toradjas of Central Celebes think that the soul of the rice is
embodied in a pretty little blue bird, which builds its nest in the
rice-field when the ears are forming and vanishes after harvest.
Hence no one may drive away, much less kill, these birds; to do so
would not only injure the crop, the sacrilegious wretch himself
would suffer from sickness, which might end in blindness. See A. C.
Kruyt, “De Rijstmoeder in den Indischen
Archipel,” p. 374 (see the full reference in the next
note).
A. C. Kruyt, “De Rijstmoeder in den Indischen Archipel,”Verslagen
en Mededeelingen der koninklijke Akademie van
Wetenschappen, Afdeeling Letterkunde, Vierde Reeks,
v. part 4 (Amsterdam, 1903), pp. 361 sq.
This essay (pp. 361-411) contains a valuable collection of facts
relating to what the writer calls the Rice-mother in the East
Indies. But it is to be observed that while all the Indonesian
peoples seem to treat a certain portion of the rice at harvest with
superstitious respect and ceremony, only a part of them actually
call it “the Rice-mother.” Mr. Kruyt
prefers to speak of “soul-stuff”
rather than of “a soul,” because,
according to him, in living beings the animating principle is
conceived, not as a tiny being confined to a single part of the
body, but as a sort of fluid or ether diffused through every part
of the body. See his work, Het Animisme in den Indischen
Archipel (The Hague, 1906), pp. 1 sqq. In
the latter work (pp. 145-150) the writer gives a more summary
account of the Indonesian theory of the rice-soul.
A similar belief probably explains the
masked dances and pantomimes of many savage tribes. If that is so,
it shews how deeply the principle of imitative magic has influenced
savage religion.
A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch
Borneo, i. 322-330. Compare id.,
In
Centraal Borneo, i. 185 sq. As
to the masquerades performed and the taboos observed at the sowing
season by the Kayans of the Mendalam river, see above, pp. 94sqq.
Spenser St. John, Life in the Forests
of the Far East2 (London, 1863), i. 187, 192
sqq.; W. Chalmers, quoted in H.
Ling Roth's Natives of Sarawak and British North
Borneo (London, 1896), i. 412-414.
J. Mooney, “Myths of the Cherokee,”Nineteenth Annual
Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Part i.
(Washington, 1900) p. 423. Compare Adonis, Attis,
Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 296 sq.
From a letter written to me by Mr. J.
S. Furnivall and dated Pegu Club, Rangoon, 6/6 (sic).
Mr. Furnivall adds that in Upper Burma the custom of the
Bonmagyi sheaf is unknown.
J. L. van der Toorn, “Het animisme bij den Minangkabauer der Padangsche
Bovenlanden,”Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde
van Nederlandsch Indië, xxxix. (1890) pp. 63-65. In
the charm recited at sowing the Rice-mother in the bed, I have
translated the Dutch word stoel
as “root,” but I am not sure of its
precise meaning in this connexion. It is doubtless identical with
the English agricultural term “to
stool,” which is said of a number of stalks sprouting from a
single seed, as I learn from my friend Professor W. Somerville of
Oxford.
A. C. Kruijt, “Eenige ethnografische aanteekeningen omtrent de
Toboengkoe en de Tomori,”Mededeelingen van
wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xliv.
(1900) pp. 227, 230 sq.
A. C. Kruijt, “Een en ander aangaande het geestelijk en
maatschapelijk leven van den Poso-Alfoer,”Mededeelingen van
wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xxxix.
(1895) pp. 142 sq.
G. Maan, “Eenige mededeelingen omtrent de zeden en gewoonten der
Toerateya ten opzichte van den rijstbouw,”Tijdschrift voor
Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xlvi. (1903) pp.
330-337. The writer dates his article from Tanneteya (in Celebes?),
but otherwise gives no indication of the geographical position of
the people he describes. A similar omission is common with Dutch
writers on the geography and ethnology of the East Indies, who too
often appear to assume that the uncouth names of these barbarous
tribes and obscure hamlets are as familiar to European readers as
Amsterdam or the Hague. The Toerateyas whose customs Mr. Maan
describes in this article are the inland inhabitants of Celebes.
Their name Toerateyas or Toradjas signifies simply “inlanders” and is applied to them by their
neighbours who live nearer the sea; it is not a name used by the
people themselves. The Toradjas include many tribes and the
particular tribe whose usages in regard to the Rice-mother are
described in the text is probably not one of those whose customs
and beliefs have been described by Mr. A. C. Kruijt in many
valuable papers. See above, p. 183 note 1, and The Magic Art and the
Evolution of Kings, i. 109 note 1.
J. H. Neumann, “Iets over den landbouw bij de Karo-Bataks,”Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche
Zendelinggenootschap, xlvi. (1902) pp. 380
sq. As to the employment in
ritual of young people whose parents are both alive, see
Adonis,
Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 413 sqq.
A. L. van Hasselt, “Nota, betreffende de rijstcultuur in de Residentie
Tapanoeli,”Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en
Volkenkunde, xxxvi. (1893) pp. 526-529; Th. A. L.
Heyting, “Beschrijving der Onderafdeeling
Groot- mandeling en Batangnatal,”Tijdschrift van het
Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, Tweede
Serie, xiv. (1897) pp. 290 sq. As to the rule of sowing
seed on a full stomach, which is a simple case of homoeopathic or
imitative magic, see further The Magic Art and the Evolution of
Kings, i. 136.
P. J. Veth, Java
(Haarlem, 1875-1884), i. 524-526. The ceremony has also been
described by Miss Augusta de Wit (Facts and Fancies
about Java, Singapore, 1898, pp. 229-241), who lays
stress on the extreme importance of the rice-harvest for the
Javanese. The whole island of Java, she tells us, “is one vast rice-field. Rice on the swampy plains,
rice on the rising ground, rice on the slopes, rice on the very
summits of the hills. From the sod under one's feet to the verge of
the horizon, everything has one and the same colour, the
bluish-green of the young, or the gold of the ripened rice. The
natives are all, without exception, tillers of the soil, who reckon
their lives by seasons of planting and reaping, whose happiness or
misery is synonymous with the abundance or the dearth of the
precious grain. And the great national feast is the harvest home,
with its crowning ceremony of the Wedding of the Rice”
(op.
cit. pp. 229 sq.). I have to thank my friend
Dr. A. C. Haddon for directing my attention to Miss de Wit's
book.
A. C. Kruijt, “Gebruiken bij den rijstoogst in enkele streken op
Oost-Java,”Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche
Zendelinggenootschap, xlvii. (1903) pp. 132-134.
Compare id., “De
rijst-moeder in den Indischen Archipel,”Verslagen en
Mededeelingen der koninklijke Akademie van
Wetenschappen, Afdeeling Letterkunde, Vierde Reeks,
v. part 4 (Amsterdam, 1903), pp. 398 sqq.
J. C. van Eerde, “Gebruiken bij den rijstbouw en rijstoogst op
Lombok,”Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en
Volkenkunde, xlv. (1902) pp. 563-565 note.
B. A. Gupte, “Harvest Festivals in honour of Gauri and
Ganesh,”Indian Antiquary, xxxv. (1906)
p. 61. For details see The Magic Art and the Evolution of
Kings, ii. 77 sq.
It is possible that the image of
Demeter with corn and poppies in her hands, which Theocritus (vii.
155 sqq.) describes as standing on a
rustic threshing-floor (see above, p. 47), may have been a Corn-mother or a Corn-maiden
of the kind described in the text. The suggestion was made to me by
my learned and esteemed friend Dr. W. H. D. Rouse.
It is possible that a ceremony
performed in a Cyprian worship of Ariadne may have been of this
nature: at a certain annual sacrifice a young man lay down and
mimicked a woman in child-bed. See Plutarch, Theseus, 20: ἐν δὴ τῇ θυσίᾳ τοῦ
Γορπιαίου μηνὸς ἰσταμένου δευτέρᾳ κατακλινόμενόν τινα τῶν νεανίσκων
φθέγγεσθαι καὶ ποιεῖν ἅπερ ὠδινοῦσαι γυναῖκες. We have already seen
grounds for regarding Ariadne as a goddess or spirit of vegetation.
See The
Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 138.
Amongst the Minnitarees in North America, the Prince of Neuwied saw
a tall strong woman pretend to bring up a stalk of maize out of her
stomach; the object of the ceremony was to secure a good crop of
maize in the following year. See Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied,
Reise in
das innere Nord-America (Coblenz, 1839-1841), ii.
269.
According to Augustine (De civitate
Dei, iv. 8) the Romans imagined a whole series of
distinct deities, mostly goddesses, who took charge of the corn at
all its various stages from the time when it was committed to the
ground to the time when it was lodged in the granary. Such a
multiplication of mythical beings to account for the process of
growth is probably late rather than early.
In some places it was customary to
kneel down before the last sheaf, in others to kiss it. See W.
Mannhardt, Korndämonen, p. 26; id.,
Mythologische Forschungen, p.
339. The custom of kneeling and bowing before the last corn is said
to have been observed, at least occasionally, in England. See
Folk-lore
Journal, vii. (1888) p. 270; and Herrick's evidence,
above, p. 147, note 1. The
Malay sorceress who cut the seven ears of rice to form the
Rice-child kissed the ears after she had cut them (W. W. Skeat,
Malay
Magic, p. 241).
Even in one of the oldest documents,
the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Demeter is
represented as the goddess who controls the growth of the corn
rather than as the spirit who is immanent in it. See above, pp.
36sq.
Diodorus Siculus, i. 14, ἔτι γὰρ καὶ
νῦν κατὰ τὸν θερισμὸν τοὺς πρώτους ἀμηθέντας στάχυς θέντας τοὺς
ἀνθρώπους κόπτεσθαι πλησίον τοῦ δράγματοσ καὶ τὴν Ἶσιν ἀνακαλεῖσθαι
κτλ. For θέντας we should perhaps read σύνθεντας, which is
supported by the following δράγματος.
H. Brugsch, Die Adonisklage und
das Linoslied (Berlin, 1852), p. 24. According to
another interpretation, however, Maneros is the Egyptian
manurosh, “Let us be merry.” See Lauth, “Über den ägyptischen Maneros,”Sitzungsberichte der
königl. bayer.Akademie der Wissenschaften zu
München, 1869, ii. 163-194.
Homer, Iliad,
xviii. 570; Herodotus, ii. 79; Pausanias, ix. 29. 6-9; Conon,
Narrat. 19. For the form Ailinus
see Suidas, s.v.; Euripides, Orestes, 1395; Sophocles,
Ajax, 627. Compare Moschus,
Idyl. iii. 1; Callimachus,
Hymn to
Apollo, 20. See Greve, s.v.“Linos,” in W. H. Roscher's
Ausführliches Lexikon der griech, und röm.
Mythologie, ii. 2053 sqq.
F. C. Movers, Die
Phönizier, i. (Bonn, 1841), p. 246; W. Mannhardt,
Antike
Wald- und Feldkulte (Berlin, 1877), p. 281. In Hebrew
the expression would be oï
lanu (אוי לנו), which occurs in 1 Samuel, iv. 7 and
8; Jeremiah, iv. 13, vi. 4. However, the connexion of the Linus
song with the lament for Adonis is regarded by Baudissin as very
doubtful. See W. W. Graf Baudissin, Adonis und
Esmun (Leipsic, 1911), p. 360, note 3.
The story was told by Sositheus in his
play of Daphnis. His verses have been
preserved in the tract of an anonymous writer. See Scriptores rerum
mirabilium Graeci, ed. A. Westermann (Brunswick,
1839), pp. 220 sq.; also Athenaeus, x. 8, p.
415 b; Scholiast on
Theocritus, x. 41; Photius, Lexicon, Suidas, and Hesychius,
s.v.“Lityerses”; Apostolius, Centur.
x. 74; Servius, on Virgil, Bucol. viii. 68. Photius
mentions the sickle with which Lityerses beheaded his victims.
Servius calls Lityerses a king and says that Hercules cut off his
head with the sickle that had been given him to reap with.
Lityerses is the subject of a special study by W. Mannhardt
(Mythologische Forschungen, pp. 1
sqq.), whom I follow. Compare O.
Crusius, s.v.“Lityerses,” in W. H. Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon
der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 2065
sqq.
Compare above, pp. 134, 136, 137sq., 140, 142, 143, 144, 145, 147sq., 149, 164sq. On the other hand, the last
sheaf is sometimes an object of desire and emulation. See above,
pp. 136, 141, 153, 154sq., 156, 162
note 3, 165. It is so at
Balquhidder also (Folk-lore Journal, vi. 269); and
it was formerly so on the Gareloch, Dumbartonshire, where there was
a competition for the honour of cutting it, and handfuls of
standing corn used to be hidden under sheaves in order that the
last to be uncovered should form the Maiden.—(From the information
of Archie Leitch. See pp. 157 sq.)
W. Mannhardt, Mythologische
Forschungen, p. 20; F. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen
Mythologie (Munich, 1848-1855), ii. p. 217, § 397; A.
Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus
Thüringen (Vienna, 1878), p. 222, § 69.
C. A. Elliot, Hoshangábád
Settlement Report, p. 178, quoted in Panjab Notes and
Queries, iii. §§ 8, 168 (October and December, 1885);
W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern
India (Westminster, 1896), ii. 306.
J. Nicholson, Folk-lore of East
Yorkshire (London, Hull, and Driffield, 1890), p. 28,
supplemented by a letter of the author's addressed to Mr. E. S.
Hartland and dated 33 Leicester Street, Hull, 11th September, 1890.
I have to thank Mr. E. S. Hartland for calling my attention to the
custom and allowing me to see Mr. Nicholson's letter.
W. Mannhardt, Mythologische
Forschunge pp. 32 sqq.
Compare K. Bartsch, Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus
Meklenburg (Vienna, 1879-1880), ii. 296 sq.; P.
Drechsler, Sitte, Brauch und Volksglaube in
Schlesien (Leipsic, 1903-1906), ii. 62 sq.; A.
John, Sitte, Brauch und Volksglaube im deutschen
Westböhmen (Prague, 1905), p. 193; A. Witzschel,
Sagen,
Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen (Vienna, 1878), p.
221, § 61; R. Krause, Sitten, Gebräuche und Aberglauben in
Westpreussen (Berlin, preface dated March, 1904), p.
51; Revue
des Traditions populaires, iii. (1888) p. 598.
For the evidence, see ibid.
p. 36, note 2. The “key” in the
European custom is probably intended to serve the same purpose as
the “knot” in the Cingalese custom,
as to which see Taboo and the Perils of the
Soul, pp. 308 sq.
A. C. Kruijt, “Een en ander aangaande het geestelijk en
maatschappelijk leven van den Poso-Alfoer,”Mededeelingen van
wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xxxix.
(1895) p. 137. As to influence which the spirits of the dead are
thought to exercise on the growth of the crops, see above, pp.
103sq.,
and below, vol. ii. pp. 109 sqq.
Ibid. p. 40. For the speeches
made by the woman who binds the stranger or the master, see
ibid. p. 41; C. Lemke,
Volksthümliches in Ostpreussen
(Mohrungen, 1884-1887), i. 23 sq.
W. Mannhardt, op.
cit. p. 42. See above, p. 149. In Thüringen a being called the Rush-cutter
(Binsenschneider) used to be much
dreaded. On the morning of St. John's Day he was wont to walk
through the fields with sickles tied to his ankles cutting avenues
in the corn as he walked. To detect him, seven bundles of brushwood
were silently threshed with the flail on the threshing-floor, and
the stranger who appeared at the door of the barn during the
threshing was the Rush-cutter. See A. Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und
Gebräuche aus Thüringen (Vienna, 1878), p. 221. With
the Binsenschneider
compare the Bilschneider
and Biberschneider
(F. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen
Mythologie, Munich, 1848-1855, ii. pp. 210
sq., §§ 372-378).
W. R. S. Ralston, Songs of the Russian
People, Second Edition (London, 1872), pp. 251
sq. As to Perun, the old
Slavonic thunder-god, see The Magic Art and the Evolution of
Kings, ii. 365.
J. Spieth, Die
Ewe-Stämme (Berlin, 1906), p. 303. In the Central
Provinces of India “sometimes the oldest
man in the house cuts the first five bundles of the crop and they
are afterwards left in the fields for the birds to eat. And at the
end of harvest the last one or two sheaves are left standing in the
field and any one who likes can cut and carry them away. In some
localities the last sheaves are left standing in the field and are
known as barhona, or the giver of
increase. Then all the labourers rush together at this last patch
of corn and tear it up by the roots; everybody seizes as much as he
can [and] keeps it, the master having no share in this patch. After
the barhona has been torn up all the
labourers fall on their faces to the ground and worship the
field” (A. E. Nelson, Central Provinces Gazetteers, Bilaspur
District, vol. A, 1910, p. 75). This quotation was
kindly sent to me by Mr. W. Crooke; I have not seen the original.
It seems to shew that in the Central Provinces the last corn is
left standing on the field as a portion for the corn-spirit, and
that he is believed to be immanent in it; hence the name of
“the giver of increase” bestowed on
it, and the eagerness with which other people, though not the owner
of the land, seek to appropriate it.
W. Mannhardt, Mythologische
Forschungen, pp. 49 sq.; A.
Wuttke, Der deutsche
Volksaberglaube2 (Berlin, 1869), p. 254, §
400; M. Töppen, Aberglaube aus
Masuren2 (Danzig, 1867), p. 57. The
same belief is held and acted upon in Japan (L. Hearn, Glimpses of
Unfamiliar Japan, London, 1904, ii. 603).
Juan de Velasco, Histoire du Royaume
de Quito, i. (Paris, 1840) pp. 121 sq.
(Ternaux-Compans, Voyages, Relations et Mémoires Originaux pour
servir à l'Histoire de la Découverte de l'Amérique,
vol. xviii.).
Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des Nations
civilisées du Mexique et de l'Amérique Centrale
(Paris, 1857-1859), i. 274; H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the
Pacific States (London, 1875-1876), ii. 340.
Brasseur de Bourbourg, “Aperçus d'un voyage dans les États de San-Salvador et
de Guatemala,”Bulletin de la Société de
Géographie (Paris), IVème Série, xiii. (1857) pp. 278
sq.
E. James, Account of an
Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains
(London, 1823), ii. 80 sq.; H. R. Schoolcraft,
Indian
Tribes of the United States (Philadelphia,
1853-1856), v. 77 sqq.; J. De Smet, in
Annales
de la Propagation de la Foi, xi. (1838) pp. 493
sq.; id., in
Annales
de la Propagation de la Foi, xv. (1843) pp. 277-279;
id., Voyages aux Montagnes
Rocheuses, Nouvelle Edition (Paris and Brussels,
1873), pp. 121 sqq. The accounts by Schoolcraft
and De Smet of the sacrifice of the Sioux girl are independent and
supplement each other. According to De Smet, who wrote from the
descriptions of four eye-witnesses, the procession from hut to hut
for the purpose of collecting wood took place on the morning of the
sacrifice. Another description of the sacrifice is given by Mr. G.
B. Grinnell from the recollection of an eye-witness (Pawnee Hero Stories
and Folk-tales, New York, 1889, pp. 362-369).
According to this last account the victim was shot with arrows and
afterwards burnt. Before the body was consumed in the fire a man
pulled out the arrows, cut open the breast of the victim, and
having smeared his face with the blood ran away as fast as he
could.
T. Arbousset et F. Daumas,
Voyage
d'exploration au Nord-est de la Colonie du Cap de
Bonne-Espérance (Paris, 1842), pp. 117 sq. The
custom has probably long been obsolete.
A. Schadenberg, “Beiträge zur Kenntniss der im Innern Nordluzons
lebenden Stämme,”Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für
Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte, 1888, p.
(39) (bound with Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xx.
1888).
Schadenberg, in Verhandlungen der
Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und
Urgeschichte, 1889, p. (681) (bound with Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie, xxi. 1889).
Col. R. G. Woodthorpe, “Some Account of the Shans and Hill Tribes of the
States on the Mekong,”Journal of the Anthropological
Institute, xxvi. (1897) p. 24.
For a general description of the
country and the tribes see L. A. Waddell, “The Tribes of the Brahmaputra Valley,”Journal
of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, lxix. Part iii.
(Calcutta, 1901), pp. 1-127.
Major S. C. Macpherson, Memorials of Service
in India (London, 1865), pp. 113-131; Major-General
John Campbell, Wild Tribes of Khondistan
(London, 1864), pp. 52-58, etc. Compare Mgr. Neyret, Bishop of
Vizagapatam, in Annales de la Propagation de la
Foi, xxiii. (1851) pp. 402-404; E. Thurston,
Ethnographic Notes on Southern
India (Madras, 1906), pp. 510-519; id.,
Castes
and Tribes of Southern India (Madras, 1909), iii.
371-385.
S. C. Macpherson, op.
cit. p. 127. Instead of the branch of a green tree,
Campbell mentions two strong planks or bamboos (p. 57) or a slit
bamboo (p. 182).
J. Campbell, op.
cit. p. 126. The elephant represented the Earth
Goddess herself, who was here conceived in elephant-form (Campbell,
op.
cit. pp. 51, 126). In the hill tracts of Goomsur she
was represented in peacock-form, and the post to which the victim
was bound bore the effigy of a peacock (Campbell, op.
cit. p. 54).
S. C. Macpherson, op.
cit. p. 130. In Mexico also the tears of the human
victims were sometimes regarded as an omen of rain (B. de Sahagun,
Histoire
générale des Choses de la Nouvelle Espagne, traduite
par D. Jourdanet et R. Simeon, Paris, 1880, bk. ii. ch. 20, p.
86).
I do not know when the corn is reaped
in Phrygia; but the high upland character of the country makes it
likely that harvest is later there than on the coasts of the
Mediterranean.
See above, pp. 240sqq.; and Adonis, Attis,
Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 247-249. As to
head-hunting in British Borneo see H. L. Roth, The Natives of
Sarawak and British North Borneo (London, 1896), ii.
140 sqq.; in Central Celebes, see A.
C. Kruijt, “Het koppensnellen der Toradja's
van Midden-Celebes, en zijne Beteekenis,”Verslagen en
Mededeelingen der koninklijke Akademie van
Wetenschappen, Afdeelung Letterkunde, Vierde Reeks,
iii. part 2 (Amsterdam, 1899), pp. 147-229; among the Igorot of
Bontoc in Luzon, see A. E. Jenks, The Bontoc
Igorot (Manilla, 1905), pp. 172 sqq.;
among the Naga tribes of Assam, see Miss G. M. Godden, “Naga and other Frontier Tribes of North-East
India”, Journal of the Anthropological
Institute, xxvii. (1898) pp. 12-17. It must not,
however, be thought that among these tribes the custom of procuring
human heads is practised merely as a means to ensure the growth of
the crops; it is apparently supposed to exert a salutary influence
on the whole life of the people by providing them with guardian
spirits in the shape of the ghosts of the men to whom in their
lifetime the heads belonged. The Scythians of Central Europe in
antiquity set great store on the heads of the enemies whom they had
slain in war. See Herodotus, iv. 64 sq.
There are traces in Greece itself of
an old custom of sacrificing human victims to promote the fertility
of the earth. See Pausanias, vii. 19. 3 sq.
compared with vii. 20. 1; id., viii. 53. 3; L. R. Farnell,
The Cults
of the Greek States, ii. (Oxford, 1896) p. 455; and
The Dying
God, pp. 161 sq.
The scurrilities exchanged both in
ancient and modern times between vine-dressers, vintagers, and
passers-by seem to belong to a different category. See W.
Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen, pp.
53 sq.
The probable correspondence of the
months, which supplies so welcome a confirmation of the conjecture
in the text, was pointed out to me by my friend W. Robertson Smith,
who furnished me with the following note: “In the Syro-Macedonian calendar Lous represents Ab,
not Tammuz. Was it different in Babylon? I think it was, and one
month different, at least in the early times of the Greek monarchy
in Asia. For we know from a Babylonian observation in the Almagest
(Ideler, i. 396) that in 229
b.c. Xanthicus began on
February 26. It was therefore the month before the equinoctial
moon, not Nisan but Adar, and consequently Lous answered to the
lunar month Tammuz.”
Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, ii. 5. 11;
Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius, Argon.
iv. 1396; Plutarch, Parall. 38. Herodotus (ii. 45)
discredits the idea that the Egyptians ever offered human
sacrifices. But his authority is not to be weighed against that of
Manetho (Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 73), who affirms
that they did. See further Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the
Egyptian Resurrection (London and New York, 1911), i.
210 sqq., who says (pp. 210, 212):
“There is abundant proof for the statement
that the Egyptians offered up sacrifices of human beings, and that,
in common with many African tribes at the present day, their
customs in dealing with vanquished enemies were bloodthirsty and
savage.... The passages from Egyptian works quoted earlier in this
chapter prove that human sacrifices were offered up at Heliopolis
as well as at Tetu, or Busiris, and the rumour of such sacrifices
has found expression in the works of Greek writers.”
E. Meyer, Geschichte des
Altertums,2 i. 2 (Stuttgart and Berlin,
1909), p. 97; G. Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient
Classique, Les Origines (Paris, 1895), pp. 129
sqq. Both these eminent
historians have abandoned their former theory that Osiris was the
Sun-god. Professor E. Meyer now speaks of Osiris as “the great vegetation god” and, on the same
page, as “an earth-god”
(op.
cit. i. 2. p. 70). I am happy to find the view of the
nature of Osiris, which I advocated many years ago, supported by
the authority of so distinguished an Oriental scholar. Dr. E. A.
Wallis Budge holds that Busiris was the oldest shrine of Osiris in
the north of Egypt, but that it was less ancient than his shrine at
Abydos in the south. See E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the
Egyptian Resurrection (London and New York, 1911),
ii. 1.
Margaret A. Murray, The Osireion at
Abydos (London, 1904), p. 30, referring to Mariette,
Dendereh, iv. plates xxxi.,
lvi., and lxxxi. The passage of Diodorus Siculus referred to is i.
62. 4. As to masks of animals worn by Egyptian men and women in
religious rites see The Magic Art and the Evolution of
Kings, ii. 133; The Dying God, p. 72.
Festus, s.v.Catularia, p. 45 ed. C. O.
Müller. Compare id., s.v.Rutilae
canes, p. 285; Columella, De re
rustica, x. 342 sq.; Ovid, Fasti,
iv. 905 sqq.; Pliny, Nat.
Hist. xviii. 14.
D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der
Ssabismus (St. Petersburg, 1856), ii. 388
sq. Compare ibid.,
pp. 384 sq., 386 sq.,
391, 393, 395, 397. For other instances of the assimilation of the
victim to the god, see H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des
Veda (Berlin, 1894), pp. 77 sq.,
357-359.
The Rev. Sydney Cooper, of 80
Gloucester Street, Cirencester, wrote to me (4th February 1893)
that his wife remembers the “neck”
being kept on the mantelpiece of the parlour in a Cornish
farmhouse; it generally stayed there throughout the year.
Frances Hoggan, M.D., “The Neck Feast,”Folk-lore, iv. (1893) p. 123. In
Pembrokeshire the last sheaf of corn seems to have been commonly
known as “the Hag” (wrach) rather than as
“the Neck.” See above, pp. 142-144.
E. Meier, in Zeitschrift für
deutsche Mythologie und Sittenkunde, i. (1853) pp.
170-173; U. Jahn, Die deutschen Opfergebräuche bei Ackerbau und
Viehzucht (Breslau, 1884), pp. 166-169; H.
Pfannenschmid, Germanische Erntefeste (Hanover,
1878), pp. 104 sq.; A. Kuhn, Sagen, Gebräuche und
Märchen aus Westfalen (Leipsic, 1859), ii. pp. 177
sq., §§ 491, 492; A. Kuhn und W.
Schwartz, Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und
Gebräuche (Leipsic, 1848), p. 395), § 97; K. Lynker,
Deutsche
Sagen und Sitten in hessischen Gauen (Cassel and
Göttingen, 1860), p. 256, § 340.
W. Mannhardt, Roggenwolf und
Roggenhund2 (Danzig, 1866), pp. 6
sqq.; id.,
Antike
Wald- und Feldkulte (Berlin, 1877), pp. 318
sq.; id.,
Mythologische Forschungen, p.
103; A. Witzchel, Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus
Thüringen (Vienna, 1878), p. 213; O. Hartung,
“Zur Volkskunde aus Anhalt,”Zeitschrift des Vereins für
Volkskunde, vii. (1897) p. 150; W. Müller,
Beiträge
zur Volkskunde der Deutschen in Mähren (Vienna and
Olmütz, 1893), p. 327; P. Drechsler, Sitte, Brauch und
Volksglaube in Schlesien (Leipsic, 1903-1906), ii,
60.
W. Mannhardt, Roggenwolf und
Roggenhund,2 pp. 33, 39; K. Bartsch,
Sagen,
Märchen und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg (Vienna,
1879-1880), ii. p. 309, § 1496, p. 310, §§ 1497, 1498.
W. Mannhardt, l.c.;
J. H. Schmitz, Sitten und Sagen, Lieder, Sprüchwörter und
Rathsel des Eifler Volkes (Treves, 1856-1858), i. 95;
A. Kuhn und W. Schwartz, Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und
Gebräuche (Leipsic, 1848), p. 398.
W. Mannhardt, Die
Korndämonen, pp. 13 sq.; J.
H. Schmitz, Sitten und Sagen, Lieder, Sprüchwörter und
Räthsel des Eifler Volkes (Treves, 1856-1858), i. 95;
A. Kuhn, Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen aus
Westfalen (Leipsic, 1859), ii. 180 sq.; H.
Pfannenschmid, Germanische Erntefeste (Hanover,
1878), p. 110.
W. Mannhardt, Die
Korndämonen, p. 15. So in Shropshire, where the
corn-spirit is conceived in the form of a gander (see above, p.
268), the expression for
overthrowing a load at harvest is “to lose
the goose,” and the penalty used to be the loss of the goose
at the harvest-supper (C. S. Burne and G. F. Jackson, Shropshire
Folk-lore, London, 1883, p. 375); and in some parts
of England the harvest-supper was called the Harvest Gosling, or
the Inning Goose (J. Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 23, 26,
Bohn's edition).
W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und
Feldkulte, pp. 172-174; id.,
Mythologische Forschungen, p.
30; P. Drechsler, Sitte, Brauch und Volksglaube in
Schlesien (Leipsic, 1903-1906), ii. 64, 65.
F. Panzer, op.
cit. ii. pp. 228 sq., §
422; W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, p.
163; Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde des
Königreichs Bayern, iii. (Munich, 1865) p. 344.
G. A. Heinrich, Agrarische Sitten und
Gebräuche unter den Sachsen Siebenbürgens
(Hermannstadt, 1880), p. 19. Compare W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 482 sqq.
A. C. Kruijt, “Eenige ethnografische aanteekeningen omtrent de
Toboengkoe en de Tomori,”Mededeelingen van
wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xliv.
(1900) p. 241.
E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen,
Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben (Stuttgart, 1852),
pp. 440 sq., §§ 151, 152, 153; F.
Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen
Mythologie, ii. p. 234, § 428; W. Mannhardt,
Mythologische Forschungen, p.
59.
W. Mannhardt, Mythologische
Forschungen, p. 167. We may compare the Scotch custom
of giving the last sheaf to a horse or mare to eat. See above, pp.
141, 156, 158, 160sq., 162.
Laisnel de la Salle, Croyances et Légendes
du Centre de la France (Paris, 1875), ii. 133; W.
Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen, pp.
167 sq. We have seen (above, p.
267) that in South
Pembrokeshire the man who cut the “Neck” used to be “shod,” that is, to have the soles of his feet
severely beaten with sods. Perhaps he was thus treated as
representing the corn-spirit in the form of a horse.
A. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volks
aberglaube2 (Berlin, 1869), p. 189, §
277; Chr. Schneller, Märchen und Sagen aus
Wälschtirol (Innsbruck, 1867), p. 238; Rev. Ch.
Swainson, The Folk Lore and Provincial Names of British
Birds (London, 1886), p. 173.
A. C. Kruijt, “Eenige ethnografische aanteekeningen omtrent de
Toboengkoe en de Tomori,”Mededeelingen van
wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xliv.
(1900) pp. 228, 229; id., “De
rijstmoeder in den Indischen Archipel,”Verslagen en
Mededeelingen van der koninklijke Akademie van
Wetenschappen, Afdeeling Letterkunde, Vierde Reeks,
v., part 3 (Amsterdam, 1903), pp. 374 sq.
Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of
Unfamiliar Japan (London, 1894), ii. 312 sqq.;
W. G. Aston, Shinto (London, 1905), pp. 162
sq. At the festival of the Roman
corn-goddess Ceres, celebrated on the nineteenth of April, foxes
were allowed to run about with burning torches tied to their tails,
and the custom was explained as a punishment inflicted on foxes
because a fox had once in this way burned down the crops (Ovid,
Fasti, iv. 679 sqq.).
Samson is said to have burned the crops of the Philistines in a
similar fashion (Judges xv. 4 sq.). Whether the custom and the
tradition are connected with the idea of the fox as an embodiment
of the corn-spirit is doubtful. Compare W. Mannhardt, Mythologische
Forschungen, pp. 108 sq.; W.
Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals of the Period of the
Republic (London, 1899), pp. 77-79.
A. Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und
Gebräuche aus Thüringen (Vienna, 1878), p. 213, § 4.
So at Klepzig, in Anhalt (Zeitschrift des Vereins für
Volkskunde, vii. (1897) p. 150).
J. B. Holzmayer, “Osiliana,”Verhandlungen der
gelehrten Estnischen Gesellschaft zu Dorpat, vii.
Heft 2 (Dorpat, 1872), p. 107; W. Mannhardt, Mythologische
Forschungen, p. 187.
W. Mannhardt, op.
cit. pp. 187 sq.; A. Witzschel, Sagen, Sitten und
Gebräuche aus Thüringen, pp. 189, 218; W. Kolbe,
Hessische
Volks-Sitten und Gebräuche (Marburg, 1888), p.
35.
W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und
Feldkulte, pp. 197 sq.; F.
Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen
Mythologie, ii. 491; J. Jamieson, Etymological
Dictionary of the Scottish Language, New Edition
(Paisley, 1879-1882), vol. iii. pp. 206 sq.,
s.v.“Maiden”; Arv. Aug. Afzelius, Volkssagen und
Volkslieder aus Schwedens älterer und neuerer Zeit,
übersetzt von F. H. Ungewitter (Leipsic, 1842), i. 9.
Mr. McKellar, quoted by the Rev. W.
Ridley, “Report on Australian Languages and
Traditions,”Journal of the Anthropological
Institute, ii. (1873) p. 279; id.,
Kamilaroi (Sydney, 1875), p.
138. Mr. McKellar's evidence was given before a Select Committee of
the Legislative Council of Victoria in 1858; from which we may
perhaps infer that his statement refers especially to the tribes of
Victoria or at all events of south-eastern Australia. It seems to
be a common belief among the aborigines of central and
south-eastern Australia that the Pleiades are women who once lived
on earth but afterwards went up into the sky. See W. E. Stanbridge,
in Transactions of the Ethnological Society of
London, N.S. i. (1861) p. 302; P. Beveridge,
“Of the Aborigines inhabiting the great
Lacustrine and Riverine Depression of the Lower Murray,”
etc., Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society
of New South Wales, xvii. (Sydney, 1884) p. 61;
Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, Native Tribes of
Central Australia (London, 1899), p. 566;
id., Northern Tribes of
Central Australia (London, 1904), p. 628; A. W.
Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East
Australia (London, 1904), pp. 429 sq.
Some tribes of Victoria believed that the Pleiades were originally
a queen and six of her attendants, but that the Crow (Waa) fell in
love with the queen and ran away with her, and that since then the
Pleiades have been only six in number. See James Dawson,
Australian Aborigines
(Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide, 1881), p. 100.
Pedro de Angelis, Coleccion de Obras y
Documentes relativos a la Historia antigua y moderna de las
Provincias del Rio de la Plata (Buenos Ayres,
1836-1837), iv. 15.
Th. Waitz, Anthropologie der
Naturvölker, iii. (Leipsic, 1862) p. 418, referring
to Marcgrav de Liebstadt, Hist. rerum naturalium Brasil.
(Amsterdam, 1648), viii. 5 and 12.
Garcilasso de la Vega, First Part of the
Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, translated by (Sir)
Clements R. Markham (London, 1869-1871, Hakluyt Society), i. 275.
Compare J. de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the
Indies (London, 1880, Hakluyt Society), ii. 304.
E. Seler, Alt-Mexikanische
Studien, ii. (Berlin, 1899) pp. 166 sq.,
referring to Petrus Martyr, De nuper sub D. Carolo repertis
insulis (Basileae, 1521), p. 15.
B. de Sahagun, Histoire Générale des
choses de la Nouvelle Espagne (Paris, 1880), pp. 288
sq., 489 sqq.;
A. de Herrera, General History of the Vast Continent and
Islands of America, translated by Capt. J. Stevens
(London, 1725-1726), iii. 222; F. S. Clavigero, History of
Mexico, translated by C. Cullen (London, 1807), i.
315 sq.; J. G. Müller, Geschichte der
amerikanischen Urreligionen (Bâle, 1867), pp. 519
sq.; H. H. Bancroft,
The
Native Races of the Pacific States of North America
(London, 1875-1876), iii. 393-395.
Jean l'Heureux, “Ethnological Notes on the Astronomical Customs and
Religious Ideas of the Chokitapia or Blackfeet Indians,”Journal
of the Anthropological Institute, xv. (1886) pp.
301-303.
The United States Exploring Expedition,
Ethnography and Philology, by Horatio Hale
(Philadelphia, 1846), p. 170; E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian
Comparative Dictionary (Wellington, N.Z., 1891), p.
226.
Rev. R. H. Codrington, The
Melanesians (Oxford, 1891), p. 348. In the island of
Florida the Pleiades are called togo ni
samu, “the company of
maidens” (op. cit. p. 349).
A. F. van Spreeuwenberg, “Een blik op de Minahassa,”Tijdschrift voor
Neerlands Indië, Vierde Deel (Batavia, 1845), p. 316;
J. G. F. Riedel, “De landschappen
Holontalo, Limoeto, Bone, Boalemo, en Kattinggola, of
Andagile,”Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en
Volkenkunde, xix. (1869) p. 140; id., in
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, iii.
(1871) p. 404.
Dr. Charles Hose, “Various Modes of computing the Time for Planting among
the Races of Borneo,”Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal
Asiatic Society, No. 42 (Singapore, 1905), pp. 1
sq. Compare Charles Brooke,
Ten Years
in Sarawak (London, 1866), i. 59; Rev. J. Perham,
“Sea Dyak Religion,”Journal of the
Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. 10
(Singapore, 1883), p. 229.
Dr. Charles Hose, op.
cit. p. 4. Compare id.,
“The Natives of Borneo,”Journal
of the Anthropological Institute, xxiii. (1894) pp.
168 sq., where the writer tells us
that the Kayans and many other races in Borneo sow the rice when
the Pleiades appear just above the horizon at daybreak, though the
Kayans more usually determine the time for sowing by observation of
the sun. As to the Kayan mode of determining the time for sowing by
the length of shadow cast by an upright pole, see also W.
Kükenthal, Forschungsreise in den Molukken und in
Borneo (Frankfort, 1896), pp. 292 sq.
Some Dyaks employ a species of sun-dial for dating the twelve
months of the year. See H. E. D. Engelhaard, “Aanteekeningen betreffende de Kindjin Dajaks in het
Landschap Baloengan,”Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en
Volkenkunde, xxxix. (1897) pp. 484-486.
R. Friederich, “Voorloopig Verslag van het eiland Bali,”Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap
van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, xxiii. (1849) p.
49.
J. T. Nieuwenhuisen en H. C. B. von
Rosenberg, “Verslag omtrent het eiland Nias
en deszelfs Bewoners,”Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap
van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, xxx. (Batavia, 1863) p.
119.
Rev. J. Macdonald, Light in
Africa, Second Edition (London, 1890), pp. 194
sq. Compare J. Sechefo,
“The Twelve Lunar Months among the
Basuto,”Anthropos, iv. (1909) p.
931.
G. McCall Theal, Records of
South-Eastern Africa, vii. (1901) p. 418. Compare G.
Thompson, Travels and Adventures in Southern
Africa (London, 1827), ii. 359.
Theophilus Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, the
Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi (London, 1881), p. 43,
quoting the Moravian missionary George Schmidt, who was sent out to
the Cape of Good Hope in 1737.
A. C. Hollis, The
Masai (Oxford, 1905), p. 275, compare p. 333. The
“season of showers” seems to be a
name for the dry season (June, July, August), when rain falls only
occasionally; it is thus distinguished from the rainy season of
winter, which begins after the reappearance of the Pleiades in
September.
C. W. Hobley, “Further Researches into Kikuyu and Kamba Religious
Beliefs and Customs,”Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute, xli. (1911) p. 442.
Aratus, Phaenomena, 264-267; Pliny,
Nat.
Hist. ii. 123, 125, xviii. 280, “Vergiliae privatim attinent
ad fructus, ut quarum exortu aestas incipiat, occasu hiems,
semenstri spatio intra se messes vindemiasque et omnium maturitatem
conplexae.” Compare L. Ideler, Handbuch der
mathematischen und technischen Chronologie (Berlin,
1825-1826), i. 241 sq. Pliny dated the rising of
the Pleiades on the 10th of May and their setting on the 11th of
November (Nat. Hist. ii. 123, 125).
Geminus, Elementa
Astronomiae, xvii. 10 sqq. If
“the sweet influences of the
Pleiades” in the Authorised Version of the English Bible
were an exact translation of the corresponding Hebrew words in Job
xxxviii. 31, we should naturally explain the “sweet influences” by the belief that the
autumnal setting of the constellation is the cause of rain. But the
rendering of the words is doubtful; it is not even certain that the
constellation referred to is the Pleiades. See the commentaries of
A. B. Davidson and Professor A. S. Peak on the passage. The Revised
English Version translates the words in question “the cluster of the Pleiades.” Compare H.
Grimme, Das israelitische Pfingstfest und der
Plejadenkult (Paderborn, 1907), pp. 61 sqq.