I follow the exposition of E. Doutté, whose account of the sanctity or magical influence (baraka) ascribed to the persons of living Mohammedan saints (marabouts) is very instructive. See his Magie et Religion dans l'Afrique du Nord, pp. 438 sqq. Mr. E. S. Hartland had previously explained the custom of throwing stones and sticks on cairns as acts of ceremonial union with the spirit who is supposed to reside in the cairn. See his Legend of Perseus, ii. (London, 1895) p. 128. While this theory offers a plausible explanation of some cases of the custom, I do not think that it will cover them all. M. René Dussaud argues that the stones deposited at shrines of holy men are simply material embodiments of the prayers which at the same time the suppliants address to the saints; and he holds that the practice of depositing stones at such places rests on a principle entirely different from that of throwing stones for the purpose of repelling evil spirits. See René Dussaud, “La matérialisation de la prière en Orient,” Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d' Anthropologie de Paris, V. Série, vii. (1906) pp. 213-220. If I am right, the fundamental idea in these customs is neither that the stones or sticks are offerings presented to good spirits nor that they are missiles hurled at bad ones, but that they embody the evil, whether disease, misfortune, fear, horror, or what not, of which the person attempts to rid himself by transferring it to a material vehicle. But I am far from confident that this explanation applies to all cases. In particular it is difficult to reconcile it with the custom, described in the text, of throwing a marked stone at a holy man and then recovering it. Are we to suppose that the stone carries away the evil to the good man and brings back his blessing instead? The idea is perhaps too subtle and far-fetched.
The word baraka, which in North Africa describes the powerful and in general beneficent, yet dangerous, influence which emanates from holy persons and things, is no doubt identical with the Hebrew bĕrakhah (ברכה) “blessing.” The importance which the ancient Hebrews ascribed to the blessing or the curse of a holy man is familiar to us from many passages in the Old Testament. See, for example, Genesis xxvii., xlviii. 8 sqq.; Deuteronomy xxvii. 11 sqq., xxviii. 1 sqq.
The Shetland News, February 1st, 1913, p. 5. As January 5th is reckoned Christmas in Shetland, the celebration of Up-helly-a' falls on January 29th. See J. Nicolson, in The World's Work and Play, February, 1906, pp. 283 sqq. For further information relating to the ceremony I am indebted to the kindness of Sheriff-Substitute David J. Mackenzie (formerly of Lerwick, now of Kilmarnock). According to one of his correspondents, the Rev. Dr. J. Willcock of Lerwick, the present elaborate form of the ceremony dates only from 1882, when the Duke of Edinburgh visited Lerwick on naval business, and Up-helly-a' was celebrated in his honour on a grander scale than ever before. Yet Dr. Willcock apparently does not deny the antiquity of the festival in a simpler form, for in his letter he says: “In former times an old boat filled with tar was set on fire and dragged about, as were also lighted tar-barrels.” Another authority on Shetland antiquities, Mr. Gilbert Goudie, writes to Sheriff Mackenzie that “the kicking about and burning a tar-barrel is very old in Lerwick.” Compare County Folk-lore, iii. Orkney and Shetland Islands, collected by G. F. Black (London, 1903), p. 205: “Formerly, blazing tar-barrels were dragged about the town, and afterwards, with the first break of morning, dashed over the knab into the sea.” Up-helly-a', the Shetland name for Antinmas, is no doubt the same with Uphalyday, which Dr. J. Jamieson (Dictionary of the Scottish Language, New Edition, iv. 676) defines as “the first day after the termination of the Christmas holidays,” quoting two official documents of a.d. 1494 and 1541 respectively.
I have to thank my friend Miss Anderson of Barskimming, Mauchline, Ayrshire, for kindly calling my attention to this interesting relic of the past.
Ovid, Ibis, 467 sq.:
“Aut te devoveat certis Abdera
diebus
Saxaque devotum grandine plura
petant,”
with the two scholia quoted respectively by M. P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste, p. 108 note 6, and by O. Schneider, in his Callimachea (Leipsic, 1870-1873), ii. 684. The scholiast refers to Callimachus as his authority.
J. A. MacCulloch, in Dr. J. Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, iii. (Edinburgh, 1910) pp. 78 sqq. Compare S. de Ricci, “Le calendrier Gaulois de Coligny,” Revue Celtique, xix. (1898) pp. 213-223; id., “Le calendrier Celtique de Coligny,” Revue Celtique, xxi. (1900) pp. 10-27; id., “Un passage remarquable du calendrier de Coligny,” Revue Celtique, xxiv. (1903) pp. 313-316; J. Loth, “L'année Celtique,” Revue Celtique, xxv. (1904) pp. 113-162; Sir John Rhys, “The Coligny Calendar”, Proceedings of the British Academy, 1909-1910, pp. 207 sqq. As the calendar stands, the number of days in the ordinary year is 355, not 354, seven of the months having thirty days and five of them twenty-nine days. But the month Equos has attached to it the sign ANM, which is attached to all the months of twenty-nine days but to none of the months of thirty days except Equos, all of which, except Equos, are marked with the sign MAT. Hence, following a suggestion of M. S. de Ricci (Revue Celtique, xxi. 25), I suppose that the month Equos had regularly twenty-nine days instead of thirty, and that the attribution of thirty days to it is an error of the scribe or mason who engraved the calendar.
In the Coligny calendar the summer solstice seems to be marked by the word trinouxtion affixed to the seventeenth day of the first month (Samonios, nearly equivalent to our June). As interpreted by Sir John Rhys (op. cit. p. 217), the word means “a period of three nights of equal length.” If he is right, it follows that the Celts who constructed the calendar had observed the summer solstice.
P. Jensen, “Elamitische Eigennamen,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vi. (1892) pp. 47-70; compare ib. pp. 209-212. All Jensen's etymologies are accepted by W. Nowack (Lehrbuch der hebräischen Archäologie, Freiburg i. Baden and Leipsic, 1894, ii. 199 sq.); H. Gunkel (Schöpfung und Chaos, Göttingen, 1895, pp. 310 sq.); D. G. Wildeboer (in his commentary on Esther, pp. 173 sqq., forming part of K. Marti's Kurzer Hand-Commentar zum alten Testament, Freiburg i. B. 1898); Th. Nöldeke (s.v. “Esther,” Encyclopaedia Biblica, vol. ii. coll. 1404 sq.); and H. Zimmern (in E. Schrader's Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament,3 Berlin, 1902, pp. 485, 516 sq.). On the other hand, Br. Meissner (Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, I. (1896) p. 301) and M. Jastrow (The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 686, note 2) suspend their judgment as to the identification of Haman and Vashti with Elamite deities, though they apparently regard the identification of Mordecai and Esther with Marduk and Ishtar as quite certain. The doubt which these scholars felt as to the derivation of one at least of these names (Vashti) is now known to be well founded. See below, p. 367, note 3.
It deserves to be noted that on the twenty-seventh day of the month Tammuz the heathen of Harran used to sacrifice nine male lambs to Haman, “the supreme God, the father of the gods,” and they ate and drank on that day. Chwolsohn suggests a comparison of the festival with the Athenian Cronia. See D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus (St. Petersburg, 1856), ii. 27 sq., 211 sqq.
Sophocles, Trachiniae, 1195 sqq.:
πολλὴν μὲν ὕλην τῆς βαθυρρίζου δρυὸς κείραντα πολλὸν δ᾽ ἄρσεν ἐκτεμόνθ᾽ ὁμοῦ ἄγριον ἔλαιον, σῶμα τουμὸν ἐμβαλεῖν.
The passage was pointed out to me by my friend the late Dr. A. W. Verrall. The poet's language suggests that of old a sacred fire was kindled by the friction of oak and wild olive wood, and that in accordance with a notion common among rude peoples, one of the pieces of wood (in this case the wild olive) was regarded as male and the other (the oak) as female. On this hypothesis, the fire was kindled by drilling a hole in a piece of oak with a stick of wild olive. As to the different sorts of wood used by the ancients in making fire by friction, see A. Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertranks2 (Gütersloh, 1886), pp. 35 sqq.; The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 249 sqq. In South Africa a special fire is procured for sacrifices by the friction of two pieces of the Uzwati tree, which are known respectively as husband and wife. See Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, ii. 65.
The goddess Ishtar certainly seems to have embodied the principle of fertility in animals as well as in plants; for in the poem which describes her descent into the world of the dead it is said that
“After the mistress Ishtar had descended to
the land of No-Return,
The bull did not mount the cow,
nor did the ass leap upon the she-ass,
The man did not approach the
maid in the street,
The man lay down to sleep upon
his own couch,
While the maid slept by
herself.”
See C. F. Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian Literature (New York, 1901), pp. 410 sq.; P. Jensen, Assyrisch-Babylonische Mythen und Epen (Berlin, 1900), p. 87.