The money payment, whether large or small, was in the Byblian rite, as in the Babylonian and (if I interpret correctly) in the Cypriote rites, consecrated to the goddess. We may infer that the same was the case wherever else the rite was performed. At Byblus it was the alternative to the consecration of the woman’s hair. Prostitution—that is, sexual intercourse for hire—is not a primitive practice. The appearance of prostitution in connection with religion may be accounted for by the influence upon the religious practice of the general practice of harlots. Analogy would suggest that intercourse other than conjugal or the satisfaction of the genuine passion of love demanded a monetary consideration. But when that intercourse was the performance of a religious duty the money was not kept as gain by the woman. It was not earned for herself, but devoted to the goddess. Where bands of “harlots” were attached to a temple their earnings probably went to swell the temple funds out of which they were supported.274.1 It may accordingly be suggested that the hire was not an essential part of the rite, but merely an aftergrowth in the process of adapting an older custom to the changing manners and religious ideas of a growing civilization.274.2

Assuming, therefore, that the rite was a sacrifice of virginity to which every woman was subjected, it would probably be performed either on the attainment of puberty or as a preliminary to the marriage ceremonies. But we gather from the historian’s account of the sale of the village maidens around Babylon that the auction followed almost immediately after the attainment of puberty, or within (say) a year at the furthest. The practice of most ancient nations, as of nearly all barbarous and savage peoples, and indeed of many in a high stage of civilization, would lead us to expect that marriage would be entered into within a very short time of the bride’s puberty. Sometimes marriage even precedes puberty. Where, as more usual, it follows that epoch of life, the rites incident to puberty must first be completed. Among such rites defloration is not infrequently found. In this respect the Australian tribes are notorious. In the Boulia district of Northern Queensland the girl is compelled to intercourse with a number of men.275.1 Among the Dieri of South Australia a ceremony called Wilpadrina is performed on the young women when they come to maturity, in which the elder men claim and exercise a right to them, and that in the presence of the other women.275.2 The Arunta and Ilpirra tribes in the centre of the continent perform a ceremony on every girl when she arrives at a marriageable age, but before she has been taken over by the husband to whom she has been allotted. As part of that ceremony a number of men have access to her in ritual order; and the intercourse is often repeated the following day.276.1 Analogous proceedings are known in other parts of the world. The central tribes of New Ireland have a women’s house in every village. When a girl attains puberty she withdraws into a small house, called mbak, built inside it. There it is said she has to remain for ten months, only going outside at night. During this period she is waited upon by the old women, and through their intervention every man who chooses has access to her. On leaving the mbak she belongs only to the husband to whom she has probably been betrothed since infancy.276.2 In the west of the island of Serang between Celebes and New Guinea, a girl after ceremonial bathing goes round clothed with a sarong woven of the fibre of the Pandanus repens, at the service of every man until her family have collected the necessary materials for a feast. In certain districts, however, before actual puberty the teeth are filed. When this operation is completed, a feast is prepared of which the novice must taste everything. Further, an earthen pot filled with spring-water is covered with a fresh pisang-leaf. One of the old women then taking the index-finger of the girl’s right hand thrusts it through the leaf as “a symbol of the rupture of the hymen, or to show that the possession of virginity means nothing for her.” The leaf is then displayed on the ridge of the roof. This done, the women fall to eating and drinking. When they have finished they begin singing to the accompaniment of drums. The men are then admitted to the house. In some villages the old men have free access that evening to the room of the girl in whose honour the feast is given, while the other guests amuse themselves with singing outside. After this celebration the girl is entitled to free intercourse with men, even before puberty.277.1 In East-Central Africa the Azimba maiden is artificially deflowered during a period of retirement and instruction in the forest. When the retirement is over she celebrates her attainment of puberty by a dance in which only women take part. That night a man, hired by her father for the purpose, sleeps with her, and once this is done she is supposed to have no further intercourse with him. Often, however, she is already married before puberty, and consequently no longer a maiden. None the less is she taken from her husband that the puberty customs may be performed. When she is brought back he himself sleeps with her apparently as a ritual act, without the necessity of hiring a man for the purpose.277.2 Among the Wanyasa, or Mang’anja, at the southern end of Lake Nyasa, ceremonies are performed similar to those of the Intonjane (girls’ puberty ceremonies) of South Africa, and every girl on her return after the initiation must find some man “to be with her,” otherwise she will die.277.3 The Intonjane among the Kaffirs is well known to be an occasion of sexual indulgence. It may be surmised that the ceremonies of the Suahili on the east coast were originally similar to those just mentioned. But the Suahili have become partially Arabized, though their Mohammedanism is little more than a veneer over their heathen customs and belief. Among them now a girl returns from her seclusion in silence and gives her hand to every man she meets, receiving from him in return a few small coins.277.4 It is said that the girls of the Wamegi, also a tribe near the coast, are artificially deflowered at puberty by certain old women.278.1 Artificial defloration at puberty is also practised by the Sawu Islanders. The Sakalava girls in Madagascar perform it on themselves in case their parents have not previously taken the trouble.278.2 Other examples could be cited, but the subject need not be pursued.

I would venture to suggest then that the Babylonian rite was a puberty rite, and that a maiden was not admitted to the status and privileges of adult life until she had thus been ceremonially deflowered. Among those privileges, and the chief of them, was the gratification of the sexual instinct. It was, therefore, a prerequisite to marriage. Ceremonial defloration of the bride by others than her husband has prevailed in many places. When marriage follows closely after puberty it is difficult to determine whether the custom really belongs to the puberty rites, or to those of marriage. I am not concerned here to deny that among many peoples who practise it as part of the marriage rites it may have been such ab initio. The determination of this question would involve an examination of marriage customs extending far beyond the space at my disposal. But it will be admitted that as puberty rites gradually became simplified or altogether obsolete such a custom could only maintain existence as part of the marriage rites. It is then usually (but, as we shall see, not always) performed by one or more of the bridegroom’s friends or by an appointed official, and ultimately degenerates into the jus primæ noctis vested in some powerful personage, as a lord or priest. Nothing of the sort appears in the accounts which have come down to us of the ancient rite in Western Asia. In all of them (save among the Lydians) emphasis is laid on the performance by a stranger. At Babylon our information does not connect the rite with marriage at all. Elsewhere it is referred to not as part of the marriage rites, but as a preliminary to marriage.

That such a rite should be found annexed to the temple and worship of a luxurious goddess causes no surprise; on the contrary, it is what might have been anticipated. Every reader will call to mind numerous examples of archaic rites which have become attached to Christian festivals, and of Christian shrines which are simply shrines of an earlier religion adapted and consecrated afresh under Christian names. The difficulty of uprooting old customs, and their consequent incorporation and adaptation by advancing culture or a new religion, are phenomena too well known to be insisted on here. Probably the Cypriote mysteries were adapted to the worship of Aphrodite from a ruder stage in which no divinity was invoked. And if this could happen once in Western Asia, it might have happened also at Babylon, at Heliopolis and elsewhere. It is possible that other practices, such as the prostitution of the Armenian girls at the temple of Anaitis, or that of the Lydian and Paphian girls to earn their dowries, are no more than the adaptation of a custom common enough in the lower barbarism, by which unmarried girls have unfettered liberty in their sexual relations. The Armenian maidens, at all events, though spoken of as harlots by Strabo, do not seem to have exercised their calling for money, nor to have admitted indiscriminately to their favours all who offered. They reserved themselves for their equals in rank, and entertained them in their dwellings with more hospitality than in a spinsters’ house in the Pacific Islands. The surmise may be indulged that it was in fact originally, if not in later times, their way of choosing husbands. The Lydian girls are expressly said to have bestowed themselves in marriage.

Mannhardt contended (and his opinion is so far endorsed by Dr Frazer) that the maidens who surrendered their virginity in connection with the cult of a goddess like Aphrodite did so in imitation of their divinity, as her representatives, the human players of her part.280.1 This may have been the mode by which the ancient custom was adapted to the newer order of things. But it is submitted that it is a very insufficient account of it. The custom must have been older than any definite belief in the goddess’s habits or any story of her various intrigues. Are we then to suppose that it was a magical rite designed to promote the fertility of animal and vegetable life? Such rites are known in both hemispheres. The great goddess worshipped under different names throughout Western Asia personified, we may concede, the reproductive energies of Nature. Many of the rites employed in her cult are in the last analysis magical, and had for their purpose to assist those energies. By a well-known mental process magical efficacy is often ascribed to acts and usages not essentially of a magical, nor indeed of a ritual, character. Thus the general prostitution of young girls to earn their dowries, and that of widows—customs which are probably of quite a different origin—are among certain tribes of Morocco held to be not without their effect on the abundance of the crops.281.1 Such a belief may have consecrated lives of habitual harlotry in Armenia, in Lydia, and in Cyprus. It by no means follows that every rite performed in the name of the goddess acquired that meaning, still less that that was its primitive meaning. Many such rites would be wholly personal. They would be intended to secure personal blessings to the worshipper, and nothing more, though everyone might have been required to perform them. It is needless to suppose without express evidence that the rite described by Herodotus as taking place at the temple of Mylitta had more than a personal reference. The most obvious personal blessing to be secured from such a goddess would be fertility. It is possible that this was the intention here. Puberty customs are doubtless performed for the good of the individual, and of the tribe or nationality through the individual. We must not infer, however, that the personal blessing of fertility was held to be the natural and direct outcome of the sacrifice of virginity. That was not the way in which it would be envisaged, however logical such an outcome may seem to us. The savage would not expect the natural result, but one that we call magical. At the stage represented by the Babylonian custom the blessing was invoked from the goddess, and was her gift. In other words, it was not that specific ritual act of coition, but future acts rendered licit and consecrated by it which were expected to bear fruit. This interpretation is perhaps strengthened by a rite said to have been regularly performed in the Troad. “Every maiden on the approach of her marriage was required to go and bathe in the Skamandros, and standing in the water to pronounce the sacred formula: ‘Skamandros, take my maidenhood as a gift.’” Dr Farnell, citing the fictitious letter of Aischines on which the evidence for the custom rests, observes: “The letter narrates how a mortal assumed the human form of the god and took a treacherous advantage; but originally, we may suppose, the rite of consecration was not associated with any anthropomorphic divinity, but was performed in the hope that the spirit of the river might enter into the maiden, and that the child she might afterwards bear to her wedded husband might thus be mystically akin to the guardian of the land. The many early myths concerning heroines and princesses being made pregnant by river-gods suggest that the ritual just described was once prevalent in primitive Greece; for such myths could arise naturally from such a custom.”282.1 But the ritual itself suggests that it is a relic of a still older rite parallel with the rite at the temple of Mylitta.

The last of the problems connected with the rite is to explain why it must be accomplished with a stranger. If, as has been alleged, the act of defloration of a maiden were held to be in itself dangerous, it is not easy to say why anyone, even a stranger, should undertake it, unless he were strangely ignorant of the risk or strangely careless. In some places, indeed, a maiden who had come to submit to the rite may have been outwardly indistinguishable from one of the hierai; and hence the man may have been unconscious of his risk, or may have been willing to undertake a risk thus diminished. But at Babylon the women who came thus to offer themselves wore a distinctive head-dress of cords, the emblem, perhaps, of their condition of virginity. Moreover, they seem to have been penned in enclosures divided from each other by ropes, which were broken to let them out for the accomplishment of the rite. There was therefore no mistake as to their status or object.283.1 On the other hand, if the defloration simply involved ritual impurity such as could be removed by the proper ceremonies, it must be asked why the task was left to a stranger. None of our ancient authorities have condescended to define a stranger. We are probably to understand by that term one who was not an inhabitant of the town or who was not a member of the community. The analogy of certain Australian rites already referred to, and of rites of marriage in some other parts of the world, would lead us to suppose that what was really intended in the first instance was one who was not eligible for sexual relations with the woman in the ordinary course. Thus in Peru and New Granada “the nearest relations of the bride and her most intimate friends” are said to have performed the corresponding rite283.2; and even her father is credited with the labour among the Orang-Sakai of the Malay Peninsula, the Battas of Sumatra, the Alfoers of Celebes, and on the Island of Ceylon and the eastern Moluccas.284.1 From this the more developed morality of the Babylonians would recoil. Mr Crawley, commenting on the Australian rite, surmises that in it “initiation” and marriage are one, and that “initiation” ceremonies (that is to say, puberty ceremonies) “of this kind are marriages to the other sex in abstract.”284.2 The surmise follows from his theory of the danger of human contact, and especially of marriage, and the importance of ceremonies to avert the peril. The theory itself—at all events pushed to the length to which Mr Crawley pushes it—is very questionable. But defloration at puberty, whether natural or artificial, is undoubtedly (whatever else it may be) a formal introduction to sexual life. Such introduction might be the more authoritative and emphatic if given by one (or more) with whom sexual relations would not in future be sustained. It is a ritual act. Ritual acts are acts out of the ordinary course—often clean contrary to the ordinary course. Therein consists their essence, their virtue. But in the growth of civilization, with the emergence of a new religion or different customs, the real meaning of a traditional rite is obscured, the rite itself becomes decadent, and a new meaning is assigned to it. Hence a puberty rite might easily become part of the cult of a goddess like Mylitta.

Moreover, at the stage of decay which the rite had reached at Babylon and elsewhere in Western Asia, the proviso that the person with whom the act was performed must be a stranger might be intended to prevent an assignation. When the act had to be performed as a sacrifice in honour of the goddess it might be regarded as a profanation to perform it as an act of inclination with a favoured lover. The best way to prevent this would be to require that it should be performed with a chance stranger, who might further be looked upon, if Mannhardt’s interpretation be correct, as a representative sent by the goddess to play Adonis to the maiden’s Aphrodite. The rite at Byblus lends countenance to this conjecture. It is supported also by the artificial defloration enacted only in symbol by Roman brides, but in grim earnest at the temples of Siva by brides in Southern India.

But we are able to carry the conjecture a step beyond this. Here I am glad to avail myself of the criticism of Professor Westermarck, who has pointed out that a semi-supernatural character is very generally ascribed to strangers, and that intercourse with a stranger would thus be productive of blessings—especially the blessing of fertility—to the woman.285.1 From the large collections on the subject of relations with strangers brought together by Professor Frazer and Professor Westermarck himself it results that a stranger is regarded as uncanny. He is a being possessed of unknown powers for good or ill. His orenda, as we have seen, is incalculable.285.2 He must therefore be either repulsed at once as a foe or received and treated with extraordinary respect. The former course is not usually adopted unless the strangers come in force or there are other circumstances that suggest hostile intent. The latter course has given birth to laws of hospitality recognized all over the world, however the exact procedure may differ among different peoples. But even in this case the stranger is looked upon with suspicion until he has undergone what M. van Gennep calls rites of aggregation to the group or society to which he has come. These rites may be of the most simple character, such as spitting upon his host or drinking a cup of water or coffee from his host’s hand; or they may involve a trial of strength, an exchange of gifts, the offering of sacrifices or entry into a blood-covenant.286.1

The uncanny character thus attributed to a stranger includes not merely the possession of magical powers. In a society where everyone, or at least a large and unknown number of persons, is believed to be endowed more or less with magical powers, this is a matter of course. But a halo of still more mysterious possibility encircles a stranger: he may be a superhuman Power, a dead man, or even a god. Hence arise the numerous stories, many of which have been collected by Mr Gerould in his monograph on The Grateful Dead, published by the Folk-Lore Society in 1908. These stories usually represent the stranger as a dead man to whom the hero has rendered some service, such as that of burying his corpse. But perhaps the best known, and among the most ancient is that found in the book of Tobit, where the stranger is the angel Raphael. A tale even older and more widespread is preserved among the Hebrew traditions as that of Lot and the two angels who visited him in Sodom. Probably it was part of the common Semitic stock, and as such would have been known at Babylon. Substantially the same story is that of Baucis and Philemon reported by Ovid; and the tale of Demeter’s wanderings and many another in Greek legend rest on a common basis of belief. Continental folklore down to modern days identifies the unknown beggar as Jesus Christ Himself or, if a woman, his Mother. The Bantu of South-West Africa tell of the great goddess Nzambi who begs in disguise for a little palm-wine to slake the thirst of her child. Refusal is followed in the night by punishment; the smiling valley, like that of Sodom, is covered by the waters of a lake; and the only person saved is he who had taken compassion and granted the poor old mendicant’s request.287.1 Lest this be thought a tale imported from Europe, let me add that in Annam a similar tale is told to account for three lakes in the province of Thay Nguyen. There a beggar-woman is repulsed by all save an old widow and her son, who give of their poverty food and a night’s lodging to the miserable and unattractive creature. She turns out to be a supernatural personage. She has come down to test the hearts of the devotees who have flocked to a great religious festival periodically held in the place. The hypocrites who repulsed her are all overwhelmed in a deluge of waters; only the widow and her son are saved.287.2

To labour the proof is unnecessary. It is abundantly clear that a stranger may be far more than mortal, and that this possibility has deeply affected the evolution of hospitality. The stranger must be conciliated. He must be bound by sacred ties to the host—ties which he cannot break so long as he remains under the host’s protection. Among the rites of aggregation—the rites effecting this union—M. van Gennep reckons the use of the women frequently accorded to visitors in the lower culture; and he suggests that the rite at the temple of Mylitta was such a rite of aggregation. It may have been so. It may have been expected of all masculine strangers at Babylon to unite themselves with the natives by means of this homage to the goddess. All that can be said is that Herodotus gives no hint of it. According to him it was only on the women that the duty lay—and that no more than once in their lives—of submitting to the rite. The mystery attaching to a stranger and involving the expectation of divine blessing is a sufficient reason for the performance of the rite with one who might be a god in person, and in any event must have been held to be divinely sent; for chance is the servant of the gods. Thence it is but a step (and the step was taken elsewhere, if not at Babylon) to the substitution of the priest for the stranger or the god; and the way is opened to the abuses of the jus primæ noctis.288.1

Before dismissing the subject reference may be made to Professor Cumont’s note on the subject of religious prostitution in Les Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme Romain (Paris, 1907), pp. 143, 286, as showing the facility with which a learned and highly distinguished scholar may fail to appreciate the complexity of the problem. He makes no distinction between the three customs of sacrifice of virginity, prostitution to earn a dowry, and a life of religious prostitution in the service of the goddess. He refers them all to the primitive constitution of the Semitic tribe, and explains them as a modified form, become utilitarian, of an ancient exogamy. Mating with a virgin, he holds, resulted in defilement; therefore she was given first to a stranger; only after that could she be married to a man of her own race. I pass by the confusion between the three customs in question, to all of which his explanation will not equally apply. But if the explanation be correct for any of them, either the ancient exogamy of the Semites must have been quite different from exogamy as generally understood, or it must have been not merely modified but transformed. Exogamy, as generally understood, has nothing to do with race or nationality. It is simply the savage rule corresponding to our table of prohibited degrees.289.1 A man may not marry or have sexual relations with one who is akin to him; every member of his clan (not of his tribe or his race) is akin to him; therefore, he cannot marry or have sexual relations with any member of his clan. The origin of this rule is still disputed by anthropologists, and we need not here discuss it. But since exogamy bars a man from sexual relations with every member of his kin, it is obvious that it cannot be merely a preliminary to marriage within the kin. Where exogamy is the law, the bar is absolute; it is the law for the whole of life; it is not intended to provide for a temporary union outside the kin in order to prepare the way for a permanent union within the kin. Exogamy, therefore, I submit, cannot explain these customs.

THE VOICE OF THE STONE OF
DESTINY

In the following pages I propose to consider some of the auguries which have been deemed necessary to the choice of a king. Kingship is not found in the most archaic forms of society known to us. But where the community is organized on the basis of monarchy the king tends to be regarded as something more than ordinary humanity. He has powers and privileges denied to other mortals. These very powers and privileges and the sanctity of which they are the appanage entail, however, taboos and penalties of the most burdensome description. Professor Frazer has abundantly illustrated this side of royalty, and has also fully discussed some of the means whereby pretensions to the throne are enforced. But there remain others witnessing not less than those he has described to the extraordinary position of a king. Some of these and their echoes in folk-tale and romance will repay a little attention.

The famous Coronation Stone has an authentic history of six hundred years. At the time of the conquest of Scotland by Edward I., it was the stone on which the kings of the Scots were, according to immemorial custom, installed. Regarded by the Scots as sacred, it was therefore removed by Edward’s order from Scone, where it stood, to Westminster, and was enclosed in what is now, and has been ever since, the Coronation Chair. Its earlier history, as distinguished from conjecture and legend, goes no further back than the middle of the thirteenth century, or something less than half a century before its removal to Westminster, when it is recorded by Fordun that Alexander III. was solemnly placed upon it and hallowed to king by the Bishop of St. Andrews (1249). But what is wanting in authentic history has been abundantly made up in legend. The tale, of which there are two versions, is the creation of a literary age. The Irish version brings it, with the Tuatha Dé Danann, from Lochlann, or Scandinavia, to Ireland. The Scottish version traces it on the other hand from Egypt, whence it was carried by the Milesians. This was improved upon, to the extent of identifying the stone with that used by Jacob as a pillow on his journey from Beersheba to Haran. The attempt was thus made, by connecting the ruling race in Scotland with the legends of the Hebrew patriarchs, to confer upon the stone the united sanctity of religion, of antiquity, and of patriotism.

In the course of its wanderings the stone is said to have reached Tara; and it is declared to be the famous Lia Fáil, or Stone of Destiny, one of the two wonders of Tara celebrated in Irish sagas. We are indebted to the Book of Lismore, a fifteenth-century manuscript, for an enumeration of the wonderful properties of the Lia Fáil. The Colloquy with the Ancients, which is comprised in this precious manuscript, records a number of Irish traditions, some of which would else in all probability have perished beyond recovery. There we learn—the account is put into the mouth of no less a personage than Ossian himself—that “Anyone of all Ireland on whom an ex parte imputation rested was set upon that stone: then if the truth were in him he would turn pink and white; but if otherwise, it was a black spot that in some conspicuous place would appear on him. Further, when Ireland’s monarch stepped on to it the stone would cry out under him, and her three arch-waves would boom in answer: as the wave of Cleena, the wave of Ballintoy, and the wave of Loch Rury; when a provincial king went on it the flag would rumble under him; when a barren woman trod it, it was a dew of dusky blood that broke out on it; when one that would bear children tried it, it was a ‘nursing drop’”—that is, says Mr Standish O’Grady, from whose translation I quote, semblance of milk—“that it sweated.”292.1 The Colloquy is imperfect, the legible portion of the manuscript ceasing a line or two further on, just as we are about to be told how it was that the stone left Ireland.292.2 Its subsequent adventures are related by Keating, who says that it was sent to Feargus the Great, “to sit upon, for the purpose of being proclaimed king of Scotland.” However, it is not to the adventures of the stone, but to its properties that I wish now to direct attention. With regard to the former, all that I need add is that the legend has been subjected by Skene, and more recently by Mr P. J. O’Reilly, to an exhaustive analysis, which renders it clear that there is no trustworthy evidence that the stone of Tara is the Coronation Stone. The antecedent improbability is great; and even if it were indisputable that the stone in question was no longer at Tara in the eleventh century, the chasm between that period and Fergus, whose very existence only rested on legend, would still have to be bridged, and the variants of the story would need to be reconciled.293.1

The properties of the stone of Tara were oracular; and the stone itself was one of a large class of stones endowed in popular opinion with divining powers, and actually resorted to for the purpose of enquiry. When the reputation of an oracle is once established, it is consulted for many purposes. Not only political, but juridical and domestic purposes are enumerated by the author of the Colloquy in regard to the Lia Fáil. Among these functions is the recognition of the monarch. The phrase used in the Colloquy is ambiguous. It is not stated why, or on what occasion, the stone was expected to make its voice heard. In practice the only object of obtaining such a recognition would be that of determining the succession to the throne. Keating supplies the missing explanation. “It was a stone,” he says, “on which were enchantments, for it used to roar under the person who had the best right to obtain the sovereignty of Ireland at the time of the men of Ireland being in assembly at Tara to choose a king over them.”293.2 Whether as a matter of fact the stone ever was consulted with this object is another question. It is enough at present to know that Irish tradition asserted this use of the oracle. In a semi-civilized community a disputed succession is of frequent occurrence. To prevent a dispute, and to settle it when it arises, various means are adopted. The usual Irish plan seems to have been the custom of Tanistry. “During the lifetime of a chief,” Sullivan tells us, “his successor was elected under the name of Tanaiste; and on the death of the former the latter succeeded him. The Tanaiste was not necessarily the son of the chief: he might be his brother or nephew; but he should belong to his Fine,” or family.294.1

That this mode of election was not always successful we may easily believe. That it was the gradual outcome of the experience of a long series of generations is probable. Where for one cause or another it failed, how would the succession be determined? The most obvious means would be either conflict or divination. According to the legends, divination was sometimes actually used to determine the appointment of king. On one occasion in the days of Conchobar, the famous King of Ulster, the monarchy of Ireland had been vacant for seven years. This state of things being found intolerable, a general assembly was held at Tara to choose a king. The royal houses of Connaught, South Munster, North Munster, and Leinster were there, but the Ulstermen were absent; for there was bitter feud between Ulster and the rest of Ireland, and they would not hold kingly counsel together. The mode of election adopted was divination by means of a dream induced by certain ceremonies. The ceremonies began with a bull-feast. A bull was killed, and a man was gorged with its flesh and broth. We are told “he slept under that meal.” It is not incredible. Then “a true oration,” which I understand to mean an incantation, was pronounced over him by four Druids. He dreamed, and screamed out of his sleep, and related to the assembled kings that he had seen in his dream “a soft youth, noble, and powerfully made, with two red stripes on his skin around his body, and he standing at the pillow of a man who was lying in a decline at Emain Macha,” the royal palace of Ulster. Messengers were accordingly sent thither, and the description was found to correspond with that of Lugaidh Reo-derg, the pupil of Cuchulainn, who was then lying ill. Lugaidh was brought to Tara, recognized as the subject of the vision, and proclaimed as monarch of Ireland.295.1

This is not the only instance in Irish legend of election to the throne by incubatio, or divination by means of a dream. Conaire, whose tale is filled with incidents explicable only by the comparative studies of ethnologists, was thus elected. Though really begotten by a supernatural bird-man, he was regarded as the son of his predecessor, Eterscéle. But this does not seem to have given him any title to succeed. A bull-feast was accordingly given; and the bull-feaster in his sleep at the end of the night beheld a man stark-naked, passing along the road of Tara with a stone in his sling. Warned and counselled by his bird-relatives, Conaire fulfilled these requirements. He found three kings (doubtless of the under-kings of Ireland) awaiting him, with royal raiment to clothe his nakedness, and a chariot to convey him to Tara. It was a disappointment to the folk of Tara to find that their bull-feast and their spell of truth chanted over the feaster had resulted in the selection of a beardless lad. But he convinced them that he was the true successor, and was admitted to the kingship.296.1

A traditional story is not a record of fact. It is a record only of what is believed. Probably both Lugaidh Reo-derg and Conaire are mythical personages, but their stories certainly embody what was thought to be possible. The description of the election by divination is substantially the same in both. It may therefore be taken, if not as approximately correct, at least as showing that election by divination was regarded among the ancient Irish as in the last resort a reasonable and proper manner of ascertaining and appointing a king. In this the Irish were by no means singular. The traditions of other nations point to the same result, and the customs in various parts of the world confirm it. The incident of election by divination is so picturesque and so suitable for the purposes of a story-teller that it is to be expected far more often in a tale than in real life. But that the story-incident is based on actual practice, I think there is sufficient ground for believing.

We will first shortly review a few stories of election by divination. The Saxons of Transylvania tell of a peasant who had three sons, of whom the youngest was despised by the others because he was weak and small while they were tall and strong. In that kingdom God Himself chose the king from time to time. The mode of ascertaining the divine will was to call a general assembly of the people on the king’s meadow in the largest commune of the country, and there to lay the crown at a certain hour on a hillock or mound. All the bells in the town pealed forth together; and the crown slowly raised itself in the air, floated round over the heads of the assembly, and finally alighted on that of the destined sovereign. The two elder brothers made ready to attend the ceremony, but bade the youngest remain at home in the ashes, where his place was. However, he slipped out after them, and, for fear they would see him, crept into a pigsty that stood at the end of the town abutting on the meadow. The crown, passing over all the people present, sank down upon the pigsty. Surprised and curious to know what this strange proceeding meant, the people ran to the pigsty, there found the trembling boy, and drawing him forth bowed the knee and saluted him as the new king, called by God to occupy the throne.297.1

In this Transylvanian märchen the crown is the instrument of divination. Going next to the dim and distant East we find other emblems of royalty thus represented. In the Jātaka, the great book of Buddhist Birth-stories, the supposititious child of a merchant’s wife of Maghada is the hero of a similar adventure. He is, however, no ordinary child but the Bodhisatta, the future Buddha in an earlier birth. He was called Banyan, from having been found under a banyan tree, where his own mother had forsaken him at his birth. Travelling with two faithful companions who had been born on the same day as himself, he came to Benares, and entering the royal park lay down upon a slab of stone with his two companions beside it. The previous night they had slept in the city under a tree at a temple. One of the youths had awakened at dawn and heard some cocks quarrelling in the branches. He listened, and learnt that whoever killed a certain one of these birds and ate of his fat would become king that very day, he who ate the middle flesh would become commander-in-chief, and he who ate the flesh about the bones would become treasurer. He killed the bird, gave the fat to Banyan, the middle flesh to his other friend, and gnawed the bones himself. Now the king of Benares was dead, and that day the festal car was going forth with the five symbols of royalty, the sword, the parasol, the diadem, the slippers, and the fan, within it, to choose the king’s successor. As the three youths lay in the royal park, the ceremonial chariot rolled up and stopped before them. The chaplain (presumably a Brahman) followed. Removing the cloth from Banyan’s feet he examined the marks upon them. “Why!” he exclaimed, “he is destined to be king of all India, let alone Benares!” and he ordered the gongs and the cymbals to strike up. This awoke Banyan, who sat up. The chaplain fell down before him, saying: “Divine being, the kingdom is thine.” “So be it,” quietly answered the youth; the chaplain placed him upon the heap of precious jewels and sprinkled him to be king.298.1

In a Calmuck tale the instrument of divination is not one of the royal insignia, but a sacrificial cake. An assembly of the people is held to choose a new khan; and it is decided to appeal to the judgement of heaven by throwing a sacrificial cake, called Baling, apparently a figure of dough, into the air, at the time of the sacrifice (Streuopfer). On whosesoever head the cake fell, he should be khan.298.2

A tale of the Teleut Tartars tells of a father who was enraged with his son because he interpreted the cry of some birds, declaring that they foretold that he himself would become emperor, and his father would drink his urine. The father, in his anger, struck off his son’s head. He then killed his horse, skinned it, rolled his son’s body in the hide and flung it into the sea. The waves carried the package to a village, where an old woman found it. She opened the leather, and the youth came out alive. The prince of that land had died, leaving no son. His subjects took two golden posts, and fastened on their tops two tapers. They then set up the posts in the middle of the village. Everyone was required to jump through them, and the tapers would fall on him who was to be the prince. But they obstinately remained standing until the destined youth came, when they both fell on his neck and burst into flame. If he had not become an emperor, at least he was now a prince: and with that variation, the whole of the bird’s prophecy was in due course fulfilled.299.1 But we need not follow it further. The hero of a Balochi tale likewise falls under his father’s displeasure. His father was a king, and the son took advantage of his royalty to break the crockery of his father’s subjects. When the people complained, his father drove him away. In the course of his wanderings, he came to a town where the king had just died. The palace door was shut, and upon it was written: “He whose hand shall open this door, shall be king of this city.” The wandering prince, reading this, said: “Bismillah.” He pushed the door: it opened. He entered, seated himself on the throne, and became king.299.2

The Kah-gyur, a sacred work of Tibetan Buddhism dating back to the eleventh century or thereabouts, contains a story of king Ánanda. The name Ánanda is famous in the literature of Buddhism as that of a favourite disciple of the master; but it is here used in the indiscriminate way in which the mediæval friars used the names of Pompey, Titus, Pliny, and other famous Romans, in the Gesta Romanorum. This king had five sons, of whom the youngest was endowed with qualities better suited to a ruler than the others, and to whom accordingly he desired to leave the kingdom. But he feared that if he invested his youngest son with sovereign power, his kinsmen would reproach him for having passed over his elder sons. As a way of escape from the difficulty he decreed that after his death his sons should be tested, and that he should be made king whom the jewel-shoes should fit, under whom the throne should remain steadfast, and on whose head the diadem should rest unshaken, whom the women should recognize, and who should guess six objects to be divined by insight.300.1 There is a triple test here—divination by the royal insignia, the choice of the harem, and the solution of a riddle. I shall return to the two former tests. But before passing to another type of story I may note that in the Bakhtyár-Náma, a Persian romance translated by Sir William Ouseley, who brought it from the East in the early part of the last century, there is a story in which the succession to the throne is made to depend upon the solution of three riddles. The king having died without issue, it was resolved to go to the prison and propound three questions to the criminals confined there. He who answered best was recognized as king.300.2 Riddles are regarded in certain stages of civilization as a test of more than ordinary wisdom. Their position in the evolution of thought and custom is well worth investigation. It is too large a subject for discussion here.

Occasionally the instrument of divination is wholly wanting, and the first man met with is taken for king. Among a tribe in Morocco is told a tale of which the hero is made king, because he is the first man found outside the city-gate when it is opened in the morning.301.1 Another of these stories is that of Ali Shar and Zumurrud in the Arabian Nights. Ali Shar was a prodigal, and Zumurrud was his favourite female slave. By a series of diverting adventures which do not concern us, they are separated. After much suffering, Zumurrud contrives to possess herself of a man’s clothes, horse and sword. In the course of her wanderings she draws nigh to a city-gate, where she finds the emirs and nobles with the troops drawn up and waiting, as Conaire found the three kings waiting on the way to Tara. The soldiery, on seeing her, dash forward. They dismount and prostrate themselves before her, saluting her as lord and sultan. On enquiry she learns that the sultan of the city is dead; and on such occasions it is the custom that the troops sally forth to the suburbs, there to sojourn for three days. Whoever comes during that time from the quarter whence she has come is made king. Being a lady of resource, she accepts the position, administers the kingdom with efficiency, and ultimately finds means to avenge herself on her enemies and to be reunited with her master, Ali Shar.301.2 An Indian folk-tale relates that in a certain city “it was the custom that when the rája died the nobles of the kingdom used to take their seats at the gate of the city, and the first man who appeared before them they made their rája.”301.3

The same tale is told by the Taranchi Tartars, an agricultural people who are now settled in the valley of the Ili, a large river flowing into Lake Balkash, in Central Asia. But it is told with this difference. When the hero draws nigh to the gate of the city, all the people cry out “Cuckoo, cuckoo!” On enquiring why they do this, they reply: “Our ruler has been dead for three days. He had a magical bird, which has been let fly, and on whosesoever head the bird settles, him we raise to be our prince.” Here the augury is drawn from a bird.302.1

In another Tartar märchen, this time from the west of Siberia, the ruler of the town has grown old, and is desirous of retiring. He has a bird which is let fly and chooses a woman. She is immediately accepted as prince and installed in the place of the old man.302.2 In a Kurdish märchen a special bird called “the bird of dominion” is fetched, it is not said whence, for the purpose of the divination.302.3

An animal of some kind is, in fact, the agent in most of these tales. A Buddhist tale from Cambodia tells us that, the royal family having become extinct, it was the custom to ask the royal family of another kingdom to furnish a king. The council of mandarins determined to take this course. Under the advice of an old astrologer horses were harnessed to the carriage—we must understand, no doubt, the royal carriage—and then allowed to go in any direction they pleased, without a driver. This is described as consulting the horses. The first day the horses re-entered the palace. The next day they drew the carriage in the direction of a neighbouring kingdom. Twice, thrice the carriage was turned back; but the horses persisted in drawing it again in the same direction. It was accordingly decided to demand a prince from that kingdom.303.1

In the East, however, as might be expected, it is usually the royal animal, the elephant, which thus confers the kingdom. I have already cited one great collection of Indian tales. There is another, only second to the Jātaka in extent, the Kathá Sarit Ságara, or Ocean of the Streams of Story, translated a few years ago by Dr Tawney. It contains a märchen, perhaps derived from that older and more famous collection, the Panchatantra, of a man who retired with his wife to the forest, to practise austerities. While there he rescued from the river a wretch whose hands and feet had been cut off, and who had been thrown by his enemies into the stream to die. His wife, probably sick of austerities, falls in love with the cripple thus rescued, and plots her husband’s death. She succeeds in precipitating him into the river; but instead of being drowned he is thrown on the bank near a city. “Now it happened that at that time the king of that city had just died, and in that country there was an immemorial custom, that an auspicious elephant was driven about by the citizens, and any man that he took up with his trunk and placed on his back, was anointed king.” The hero of the story, who is “an incarnation of a portion of a Bodhisattva,” is of course chosen; and when he gets the chance he inflicts condign punishment on his wife.303.2 The elephant is here described as “an auspicious elephant.” Sometimes he is called the “crown-elephant,” the special property and symbol of royalty. So in a Tamil story we learn that the king of a certain city dying childless, on his death-bed called his ministers together and directed them “to send his crown-elephant with a flower-wreath in his trunk, and to choose him on whom the elephant throws the garland, as his successor.”304.1 In a folk-tale from the far north of India it is “the sacred elephant” before whom all the inhabitants are required to pass in file, and the animal is expected to elect one of them to the vacant throne “by kneeling down and saluting the favoured individual as he passed by, for in this manner kings were elected in that country.”304.2 In a story which appears to come from Gujerat, the king dies without an heir, and the astrologers prophesy that his heir would be the first who entered the gates of the city on the morrow of the king’s decease, and around whose neck the sacred elephant would throw a garland of flowers.304.3

At other times the elephant alone does not make the choice. With him is conjoined some other animal or symbol of royalty. A tale from Kashmir speaks of a land where, when the king died, his elephant “was driven all over the country and his hawk was made to fly here, there and everywhere in search of a successor; and it came to pass that before whomsoever the elephant bowed and on whosesoever hand the hawk alighted, he was supposed to be the divinely chosen one.”304.4 In the Kathákoça, a collection of stories illustrating the tenets and practice of Jainism, five ordeals, as they are expressly called, are invoked. “The mighty elephant came into the garden outside the city. There the elephant sprinkled Prince Amaradatta [we have already heard of sprinkling as a means of hallowing to kingship], and put him on its back. Then the horse neighed. The two chowries fanned the prince. An umbrella was held over his head. A divine voice was heard in the air: ‘Long live King Amaradatta.’”305.1

In most of these cases the decision is clearly regarded as the judgement of Heaven; and in every case the judgement of Heaven may at least be inferred. The incident is hardly less a favourite in the West than in the East. In the West, too, it is an appeal to the judgement of Heaven. All the European stories, however, in which it occurs have been recorded within the last century; consequently the incident in question appears only in a very late form. Now an appeal to the judgement of Heaven in the selection of a ruler is familiar to the peasant mind of the continent in one solitary instance—that of the choice of a pope. Accordingly this is the favourite, if not the only form of the story as it is told in France, Italy, and Switzerland. The charming collection by the late M. Luzel of religious and quasi-religious tales of Lower Brittany contains one entitled “Pope Innocent.” The hero is a son of the King of France cast off by his parents, who attempt to put him to death. He sets out for Rome to be present at the election of a new pope. On the way he falls in with two Capuchin monks. The elder of them is gentle to him, the other suspicious and hostile. The youth is a bit of a prig. Perhaps this is not to be wondered at, seeing that he is endowed with supernatural knowledge and power. These qualities make his conduct throughout the journey enigmatical to the point of excusing, if not justifying, the attitude of his unfriendly companion. Everyone takes him for a sorcerer; and the younger monk says in so many words to the other, that they will be lucky if he do not bring them to the gallows or the stake before reaching Rome. As they draw near the holy city, the boy hears some birds in a hedge foretell that one of the three will be made pope, just as the cocks were overheard in the story I have cited from the Jātaka. Thereupon he enquires of each of his companions what office he will give him if he (the monk) attain this dignity. The elder monk promises to make him his first cardinal, the younger contemptuously says he will make him beadle in his cathedral. Arrived at Rome, they find that the choice of a pope proceeds in this way: There are to be three days’ processions. Every pilgrim has to carry a candle, not lighted, in his hand; and he whose candle lights of itself is the person designated by God to the office of pope. The youth, however, has no money to buy candles. So he carries merely a white wand which he has cut in the hedge where the birds sang; and people, seeing him, shrug their shoulders and exclaim: “Look at that poor innocent!” It is, however, not the candle of an archbishop, or bishop, or of any great dignitary of the church; it is not that of an abbot, or a monk, or even of a simple priest, which lights; it is the boy Innocent’s white wand. The omen is refused on the first day; nor is it accepted until it has been repeated on the second and third days of the ceremony. At last the premier cardinal kneels before him, acknowledges him as pope and asks for his benediction. Thus Innocent becomes pope at Rome, by the will of God.306.1

The story of Pope Innocent belongs to the cycle of the Outcast Child, a well-known group of folk-tales, of which the examples most familiar to us are the story of King Lear and that of Joseph and his brethren. The hero (or heroine) of these tales is cast off by his relatives for reasons at the least excusable. Sometimes, as in the Teleut tale already mentioned, his life is attempted. But in the end he attains a place and dignity which enable him to compel recognition of his wrongs, and, after the infliction of retributive humiliation, to pardon the offenders. In these märchen the pope is not always chosen by the burning of a taper. In the Italian variants the favourite method is by a dove which alights on the hero’s head. In a Swiss story from the Upper Valais two snow-white doves settle on his shoulders. In a Basque story, as the travellers approach Rome the bells begin to ring of themselves. In a story from Upper Brittany the will of Heaven is declared by a bell, which rings of itself when the destined pope passes beneath it. In a story from Normandy the new pope is indicated by “a portion of Heaven stooping upon him whom Jesus would choose to govern His Church.” The collector, while faithfully recording this singular phrase, is puzzled by it, and suggests that it must mean a cloud resting on him.307.1 In all cases it is quite clear that the falling of the lot, however it may be accomplished, is regarded as a direct expression of the divine will. The sacred character of the Papacy, and the names of historical popes, as Innocent and Gregory, given to the heroes, raise the suspicion that these tales are something more than märchen, and lead directly to the enquiry, not whether such prodigies have in fact been the means of determining the succession to the popedom, but whether they have been believed to have occurred.

Now it happens that this very event was reported in connection with the election of the great Pope Innocent III., in the year 1198. Three doves, it was said, flew about the church during the proceedings, and at last one of them, a white one, came and perched on his right side, which was held to be a favourable omen.308.1 In the atmosphere of the Middle Ages an occurrence of the kind, if it happened, could not fail to make a great impression on the popular mind. The dove would be regarded as no less than the embodiment of the Holy Spirit. Long before Innocent’s day—indeed before the Middle Ages began—something like this would seem to have happened. It is recorded by Eusebius that in the reign of the Emperor Gordian, who ruled from A.D. 238 to 244, when all the brethren were assembled in the church for the purpose of electing a successor to Anteros, Bishop of Rome, suddenly a dove flew down from on high and sat on the head of Fabian. Thereupon the assembly with one voice acclaimed him bishop and seated him on the episcopal throne.308.2

Nor were popes alone thus honoured. Dr Conyers Middleton, in his once famous Letter from Rome, records that “in the cathedral church of Ravenna I saw, in mosaic work, the pictures of those archbishops of the place who, as all their historians affirm, were chosen for several ages successively by the special designation of the Holy Ghost, who in a full assembly of the clergy and people, used to descend visibly on the person elect in the shape of a dove.”308.3 Among the apocryphal stories in The Book of Sir John Maundeville we are told that in the convent on Mount Sinai are many lamps burning. The author, whoever he may have been, writes rather a muddled account of the election of “prelate of the abbey.” I gather from it that each monk has a lamp, and that when a prelate is chosen his lamp will light of itself, if he be a good man and worthy of the office; if otherwise, the lamp, though lighted, will go out. An inconsistent tradition ran that the priest who sang mass for the deceased dignitary found written upon the altar the name of him who was to be chosen in his place. But though the miracle-monger who writes under the name of Sir John Maundeville professes to have been at the monastery and questioned the monks, he admits that he could not induce them to tell him the facts.309.1

The marvels reported of the election of Christian bishops are told with little variation of the election of other rulers. Paulus Diaconus relates that when Liutprand, king of the Lombards, a contemporary of Charles Martel, was thought to be dying, his subjects met outside the walls of his capital, Pavia, at the church of St Mary ad Perticas,309.2 to choose a successor. Their choice fell on the king’s nephew, Hildeprand, in whose hand they formally placed the royal spear. Immediately a cuckoo flew down and settled on the point of the spear, as it will be remembered a cuckoo in the Tartar story settled on the kalender’s head. This, however, was reckoned by Lombard wiseacres as an evil omen. Their augury was so far justified, that King Liutprand did not die after all, but recovered from his sickness and was not well pleased that his subjects had been in such a hurry to find a successor. Yet he did not refuse to recognize his nephew as co-ruler; and when he at last died, Hildeprand succeeded him.310.1 Of another king of the Lombards, Desiderius, a contemporary of Charles the Great, the story is told that the Lombard nobles were meeting to choose a king at Pavia, and Desiderius, a pious man of noble lineage who dwelt at Brescia, journeyed thither to be present, accompanied by a serving man. At Leno, between Brescia and Cremona, being weary, he lay down under a tree to sleep. As he slept his servant beheld a snake crawl forth and wind itself round his head like a crown. The servant was afraid to move, lest the snake might injure his master; but after a while it uncoiled and crept away. Desiderius meanwhile had dreamt that the crown of the Lombards was placed on his head. When he reached Pavia, the dream was fulfilled.310.2

It is said that in Senjero, a petty kingdom in the south of Abyssinia, when the king dies the nobles assemble outside the city in the open plain, and wait until a vulture or an insect settles on one of them, who is then saluted as king.310.3 Everyone is familiar with the story told by Herodotus concerning the election of a successor to Smerdis the Magian, usurper of the throne of Persia, how it was agreed that the successful conspirators should meet at sunrise, and that he whose horse first neighed should be king. According to Herodotus, Darius won by a trick of his groom. That may or may not have been. What interests us in the story is that it was believed that the succession on this occasion to the throne of Persia was determined by an augury drawn from horses, and that the neighing of Darius’ horse was instantly followed by the further manifestation of the will of Heaven in thunder and lightning from a clear sky.311.1 The elephant, the horse and the divine voice of Indian märchen here find their counterpart, if not in actual fact, at least in the serious belief of the venerable historian, and the people whose tradition he reports. In this connection it must not be forgotten that among many peoples, horses were sacred animals. They were sacrificed to the gods; they were looked upon as in the counsels of the gods; their neighing was a favourable omen. It is therefore not at all improbable that Herodotus is here recording the mode of choice actually adopted.311.2

Similarly in the annals of Kedda, a portion of the Malay Peninsula, there is a story of the rajah who was dethroned and fled. His nobles and queen sent to the King of Siam for a new ruler. He, having consulted his astrologers, was advised that the true heir to the throne could only be discovered by a supernaturally intelligent elephant, named Kamala Jauhari, which was wandering about on the confines of Kedda and Patani. When the envoys brought back the message to the Kedda chiefs, they decked the palace for a fête. “Then all the people held a fast for seven days and nights.… On the night of the seventh day the dupa and incense were burned, and all sorts of perfumes were diffused around, and at the same time the name of the super-intelligent elephant was invoked to attend upon the four mantris [ministers]. Immediately almost there was a sound, like the rushing of a coming tempest, from the East, with earthquakes, agitations and terrific sounds. In the midst of all this uproar the terrified spectators were delighted to see Kamala Jauhari standing at the hall, and thrusting up her trunk into it. The four mantris instantly rubbed her with cosmetics and bathed her with lime-juice, while others applied cosmetics and sweet-smelling oils, rubbing these over its whole body. Then a meal was served up to it, and put into its mouth. The state howdah was now placed on its back, along with all its appurtenances, curtains and hangings. Then one of the mantris read the King of Siam’s letter close to the ear of Kamala Jauhari, acquainting her that she was expected to assist in finding out a rajah for Kedda by all means. When Jauhari heard all this, she bowed her head and played her trunk, and then set forth in the direction of the East, followed and attended by from three to four hundred men, having banners and flags streaming in the wind, and being supplied with all necessaries, and armed with various kinds of spears, held in hand.” It is needless to say that the expedition thus pompously described was successful in discovering the boy. The elephant caught him up in her trunk, and, placing him on her back in the howdah, carried him off in triumph to the palace, where he was forthwith clad in royal robes and crowned.312.1

In Indian belief it is not only super-intelligent elephants which can discover the future occupant of a throne. The elephant is the possession and symbol of royalty. But in the stories, other royal properties are also instruments of divination for that purpose. That these stories were founded on current superstitions is shown by the fact that among the ornaments of the throne of the famous Tippoo, conquered by the British at the end of the eighteenth century, was a bird of paradise made of gold and covered with diamonds, rubies and emeralds, and represented in the act of fluttering. Of this bird it was believed that every head it overshadowed would, in time, wear a crown. When Tippoo was defeated and slain, the Marquis Wellesley, at that time governor-general, sent it home to the Court of Directors of the East India Company.313.1 It is now at Windsor.

Coming back to Europe, we find the succession to the throne of one of the Scythian tribes determined by the possession of a certain stone. The author of the work on the names of rivers and mountains attributed to Plutarch relates that in the river Tanais a stone like a crystal grows. It resembles in shape a man wearing a crown. When the king dies, whosoever finds it, and can produce it in the assembly held on the banks of the river to elect a new sovereign, is recognized as the rightful successor.313.2 For this statement Ctesiphon on Plants and Aristobulus on Stones are cited, authors whose works are lost and who are unknown by any other citations. It is, therefore, impossible for us to judge how far they are likely to have known, or with what accuracy they may have presented, the practice of the barbarous tribe referred to. There can, however, be no doubt that election by divination has been resorted to by peoples in many parts of the world. The succession of Grand Lamas of Lhasa supplies examples of both story and custom. The custom used to be to write on slips of paper the names of all likely male children born under miraculous portents (of which anon) just after the death of the preceding Lama, to put these slips into a golden urn and thus ballot for his successor (or, as it is believed, his new incarnation) amid constant prayer. But the Chinese court, which has a considerable stake in the decision, was thought to influence the selection. The state-oracle has therefore predicted disaster by the appearance of a monster as the Dalai or Grand Lama, if the ancient practice were continued; and on a recent vacancy, in 1876, he foretold the discovery, by a pious monk, of the future Grand Lama, announcing that his discovery would be accompanied by horse-neighings. He sent this monk to Chukorgye, where he dreamed that he was to look in a certain lake for the future Dalai. There, pictured in the bosom of the lake, the monk saw the child with his parents in the house where he was born, and at the same instant his horse neighed. In due course the child himself was found, and successfully encountered the usual test, by recognizing the articles which had belonged to him in his previous life. Every child who is a candidate has to pass this test. He is confronted with a duplicate collection of various sacred objects, and he is required to point out among them the genuine possessions of the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is not the only Grand Lama. The head of every lamasery, or convent of lamas, bears this title. When the Grand Lama of such a lamasery dies, his successor, or new incarnation, is sought first of all by divination. A diviner is called in, who, after consulting his books, directs the lamas where to look for the boy. When they have found him, he has to pass a similar test to that just described. In addition he has to submit to cross-examination on the name and situation of the lamasery, and how many lamas reside there, and on the habits of the deceased Grand Lama, and the manner of his death.

The portents at the birth of a Dalai Lama are magnificent. It is not irrelevant to mention them here, as they may be regarded as part of the auguries which decide the succession. An official report from the Chinese Commissioner to the Emperor, on such an occasion in the year 1839, declares, among other things, that it was ascertained that on the night before the boy was born, a brilliant radiance of many colours was manifested in the air, and the water in the well of the temple courtyard changed to a milk-white colour. Seven days later a flame appeared on the rock behind the post-station. When the rock was examined, no trace of fire remained, but a sacred image and characters were found, together with the print of footsteps. Moreover, on the night when the child was born, the sound of music was heard, and milk dropped upon the pillars of the house.315.1