The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 07 of 12)

Ceremonies preliminary to the sacrifice.

The mode of performing these tribal sacrifices was as follows. Ten or twelve days before the sacrifice, the victim was devoted by cutting off his hair, which, until then, had been kept unshorn. Crowds of men and women assembled to witness the sacrifice; none might be excluded, since the sacrifice was declared to be for all mankind. It was preceded by several days of wild revelry and gross debauchery.[752 - S. C. Macpherson, op. cit. pp. 117 sq.] On the day before the sacrifice the victim, dressed in a new garment, was led forth from the village in solemn procession, with music and dancing, to the Meriah grove, a clump of high forest trees standing a little way from the village and untouched by the axe. There they tied him to a post, which was sometimes placed between two plants of the sankissar shrub. He was then anointed with oil, ghee, and turmeric, and adorned with flowers; and “a species of reverence, which it is not easy to distinguish from adoration,” was paid to him throughout the day. A great struggle now arose to obtain the smallest relic from his person; a particle of the turmeric paste with which he was smeared, or a drop of his spittle, was esteemed of sovereign virtue, especially by the women.[753 - S. C. Macpherson, op. cit. p. 118.] The crowd danced round the post to music, and, addressing the earth, said, “O God, we offer this sacrifice to you; give us good crops, seasons, and health”; then speaking to the victim they said, “We bought you with a price, and did not seize you; now we sacrifice you according to custom, and no sin rests with us.”[754 - J. Campbell, op. cit. pp. 54 sq.]

Consummation of the sacrifice.

On the last morning the orgies, which had been scarcely interrupted during the night, were resumed, and continued till noon, when they ceased, and the assembly proceeded to consummate the sacrifice. The victim was again anointed with oil, and each person touched the anointed part, and wiped the oil on his own head. In some places they took the victim in procession round the village, from door to door, where some plucked hair from his head, and others begged for a drop of his spittle, with which they anointed their heads.[755 - J. Campbell, op. cit. pp. 55, 112.] As the victim might not be bound nor make any show of resistance, the bones of his arms and, if necessary, his legs were broken; but often this precaution was rendered unnecessary by stupefying him with opium.[756 - S. C. Macpherson, op. cit. p. 119; J. Campbell, op. cit. p. 113.] The mode of putting him to death varied in different places. One of the commonest modes seems to have been strangulation, or squeezing to death. The branch of a green tree was cleft several feet down the middle; the victim's neck (in other places, his chest) was inserted in the cleft, which the priest, aided by his assistants, strove with all his force to close.[757 - 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).] Then he wounded the victim slightly with his axe, whereupon the crowd rushed at the wretch and hewed the flesh from the bones, leaving the head and bowels untouched. Sometimes he was cut up alive.[758 - J. Campbell, op. cit. pp. 56, 58, 120.] In Chinna Kimedy he was dragged along the fields, surrounded by the crowd, who, avoiding his head and intestines, hacked the flesh from his body with their knives till he died.[759 - E. T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal (Calcutta, 1872), p. 288, quoting Colonel Campbell's Report.] Another very common mode of sacrifice in the same district was to fasten the victim to the proboscis of a wooden elephant, which revolved on a stout post, and, as it whirled round, the crowd cut the flesh from the victim while life remained. In some villages Major Campbell found as many as fourteen of these wooden elephants, which had been used at sacrifices.[760 - 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).] In one district the victim was put to death slowly by fire. A low stage was formed, sloping on either side like a roof; upon it they laid the victim, his limbs wound round with cords to confine his struggles. Fires were then lighted and hot brands applied, to make him roll up and down the slopes of the stage as long as possible; for the more tears he shed the more abundant would be the supply of rain. Next day the body was cut to pieces.[761 - 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).]

Flesh of the victim used to fertilise the fields.

The flesh cut from the victim was instantly taken home by the persons who had been deputed by each village to bring it. To secure its rapid arrival, it was sometimes forwarded by relays of men, and conveyed with postal fleetness fifty or sixty miles.[762 - E. T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, p. 288, referring to Colonel Campbell's Report.] In each village all who stayed at home fasted rigidly until the flesh arrived. The bearer deposited it in the place of public assembly, where it was received by the priest and the heads of families. The priest divided it into two portions, one of which he offered to the Earth Goddess by burying it in a hole in the ground with his back turned, and without looking. Then each man added a little earth to bury it, and the priest poured water on the spot from a hill gourd. The other portion of flesh he divided into as many shares as there were heads of houses present. Each head of a house rolled his shred of flesh in leaves, and buried it in his favourite field, placing it in the earth behind his back without looking.[763 - S. C. Macpherson, op. cit. p. 129. Compare J. Campbell, op. cit. pp. 55, 58, 113, 121, 187.] In some places each man carried his portion of flesh to the stream which watered his fields, and there hung it on a pole.[764 - J. Campbell, op. cit. p. 182.] For three days thereafter no house was swept; and, in one district, strict silence was observed, no fire might be given out, no wood cut, and no strangers received. The remains of the human victim (namely, the head, bowels, and bones) were watched by strong parties the night after the sacrifice; and next morning they were burned, along with a whole sheep, on a funeral pile. The ashes were scattered over the fields, laid as paste over the houses and granaries, or mixed with the new corn to preserve it from insects.[765 - S. C. Macpherson, op. cit. p. 128; E. T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, p. 288.] Sometimes, however, the head and bones were buried, not burnt.[766 - J. Campbell, op. cit. pp. 55, 182.] After the suppression of the human sacrifices, inferior victims were substituted in some places; for instance, in the capital of Chinna Kimedy a goat took the place of a human victim.[767 - J. Campbell, op. cit. p. 187.] Others sacrifice a buffalo. They tie it to a wooden post in a sacred grove, dance wildly round it with brandished knives, then, falling on the living animal, hack it to shreds and tatters in a few minutes, fighting and struggling with each other for every particle of flesh. As soon as a man has secured a piece he makes off with it at full speed to bury it in his fields, according to ancient custom, before the sun has set, and as some of them have far to go they must run very fast. All the women throw clods of earth at the rapidly retreating figures of the men, some of them taking very good aim. Soon the sacred grove, so lately a scene of tumult, is silent and deserted except for a few people who remain to guard all that is left of the buffalo, to wit, the head, the bones, and the stomach, which are burned with ceremony at the foot of the stake.[768 - E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India (Madras, 1909), iii. 381-385.]

In these Khond sacrifices the human victims appear to have been regarded as divine.

In these Khond sacrifices the Meriahs are represented by our authorities as victims offered to propitiate the Earth Goddess. But from the treatment of the victims both before and after death it appears that the custom cannot be explained as merely a propitiatory sacrifice. A part of the flesh certainly was offered to the Earth Goddess, but the rest was buried by each householder in his fields, and the ashes of the other parts of the body were scattered over the fields, laid as paste on the granaries, or mixed with the new corn. These latter customs imply that to the body of the Meriah there was ascribed a direct or intrinsic power of making the crops to grow, quite independent of the indirect efficacy which it might have as an offering to secure the good-will of the deity. In other words, the flesh and ashes of the victim were believed to be endowed with a magical or physical power of fertilising the land. The same intrinsic power was ascribed to the blood and tears of the Meriah, his blood causing the redness of the turmeric and his tears producing rain; for it can hardly be doubted that, originally at least, the tears were supposed to bring down the rain, not merely to prognosticate it. Similarly the custom of pouring water on the buried flesh of the Meriah was no doubt a rain-charm. Again, magical power as an attribute of the Meriah appears in the sovereign virtue believed to reside in anything that came from his person, as his hair or spittle. The ascription of such power to the Meriah indicates that he was much more than a mere man sacrificed to propitiate a deity. Once more, the extreme reverence paid him points to the same conclusion. Major Campbell speaks of the Meriah as “being regarded as something more than mortal,”[769 - J. Campbell, op. cit. p. 112.] and Major Macpherson says, “A species of reverence, which it is not easy to distinguish from adoration, is paid to him.”[770 - S. C. Macpherson, op. cit. p. 118.] In short, the Meriah seems to have been regarded as divine. As such, he may originally have represented the Earth Goddess or, perhaps, a deity of vegetation; though in later times he came to be regarded rather as a victim offered to a deity than as himself an incarnate god. This later view of the Meriah as a victim rather than a divinity may perhaps have received undue emphasis from the European writers who have described the Khond religion. Habituated to the later idea of sacrifice as an offering made to a god for the purpose of conciliating his favour, European observers are apt to interpret all religious slaughter in this sense, and to suppose that wherever such slaughter takes place, there must necessarily be a deity to whom the carnage is believed by the slayers to be acceptable. Thus their preconceived ideas may unconsciously colour and warp their descriptions of savage rites.

Traces of an identification of the human victim with the god in other sacrifices.

The same custom of killing the representative of a god, of which strong traces appear in the Khond sacrifices, may perhaps be detected in some of the other human sacrifices described above. Thus the ashes of the slaughtered Marimo were scattered over the fields; the blood of the Brahman lad was put on the crop and field; the flesh of the slain Naga was stowed in the corn-bin; and the blood of the Sioux girl was allowed to trickle on the seed.[771 - Above, pp. 239 (#x_22_i5), 240 (#x_22_i7), 244 (#x_22_i13).] Again, the identification of the victim with the corn, in other words, the view that he is an embodiment or spirit of the corn, is brought out in the pains which seem to be taken to secure a physical correspondence between him and the natural object which he embodies or represents. Thus the Mexicans killed young victims for the young corn and old ones for the ripe corn; the Marimos sacrifice, as “seed,” a short, fat man, the shortness of his stature corresponding to that of the young corn, his fatness to the condition which it is desired that the crops may attain; and the Pawnees fattened their victims probably with the same view. Again, the identification of the victim with the corn comes out in the African custom of killing him with spades and hoes, and the Mexican custom of grinding him, like corn, between two stones.

One more point in these savage customs deserves to be noted. The Pawnee chief devoured the heart of the Sioux girl, and the Marimos and Gonds ate the victim's flesh. If, as we suppose, the victim was regarded as divine, it follows that in eating his flesh his worshippers believed themselves to be partaking of the body of their god.

§ 4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives

Analogy of these barbarous rites to the harvest customs of Europe.

The barbarous rites just described offer analogies to the harvest customs of Europe. Thus the fertilising virtue ascribed to the corn-spirit is shewn equally in the savage custom of mixing the victim's blood or ashes with the seed-corn and the European custom of mixing the grain from the last sheaf with the young corn in spring.[772 - Above, p. 134 (#x_14_i8).] Again, the identification of the person with the corn appears alike in the savage custom of adapting the age and stature of the victim to the age and stature, whether actual or expected, of the crop; in the Scotch and Styrian rules that when the corn-spirit is conceived as the Maiden the last corn shall be cut by a young maiden, but when it is conceived as the Corn-mother it shall be cut by an old woman;[773 - Above, pp. 134 (#x_14_i8), 157 (#x_15_i30)sqq.] in the Lothringian warning given to old women to save themselves when the Old Woman is being killed, that is, when the last corn is being threshed;[774 - Above, p. 223 (#x_21_i35).] and in the Tyrolese expectation that if the man who gives the last stroke at threshing is tall, the next year's corn will be tall also.[775 - Above, p. 224 (#x_21_i37).] Further, the same identification is implied in the savage custom of killing the representative of the corn-spirit with hoes or spades or by grinding him between stones, and in the European custom of pretending to kill him with the scythe or the flail. Once more the Khond custom of pouring water on the buried flesh of the victim is parallel to the European customs of pouring water on the personal representative of the corn-spirit or plunging him into a stream.[776 - Above, p. 170 (#x_16_i41), with the references in note 1; Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 195-197.] Both the Khond and the European customs are rain-charms.

Human representative of the corn-spirit slain on the harvest-field.

To return now to the Lityerses story. It has been shewn that in rude society human beings have been commonly killed to promote the growth of the crops. There is therefore no improbability in the supposition that they may once have been killed for a like purpose in Phrygia and Europe; and when Phrygian legend and European folk-custom, closely agreeing with each other, point to the conclusion that men were so slain, we are bound, provisionally at least, to accept the conclusion. Further, both the Lityerses story and European harvest-customs agree in indicating that the victim was put to death as a representative of the corn-spirit, and this indication is in harmony with the view which some savages appear to take of the victim slain to make the crops flourish. On the whole, then, we may fairly suppose that both in Phrygia and in Europe the representative of the corn-spirit was annually killed upon the harvest-field. Grounds have been already shewn for believing that similarly in Europe the representative of the tree-spirit was annually slain. The proofs of these two remarkable and closely analogous customs are entirely independent of each other. Their coincidence seems to furnish fresh presumption in favour of both.

The victim who represented the corn-spirit may have been a passing stranger or the reaper, binder, or thresher of the last corn.

To the question, How was the representative of the corn-spirit chosen? one answer has been already given. Both the Lityerses story and European folk-custom shew that passing strangers were regarded as manifestations of the corn-spirit escaping from the cut or threshed corn, and as such were seized and slain. But this is not the only answer which the evidence suggests. According to the Phrygian legend the victims of Lityerses were not simply passing strangers, but persons whom he had vanquished in a reaping contest and afterwards wrapt up in corn-sheaves and beheaded.[777 - See above, p. 217 (#x_21_i17).] This suggests that the representative of the corn-spirit may have been selected by means of a competition on the harvest-field, in which the vanquished competitor was compelled to accept the fatal honour. The supposition is countenanced by European harvest-customs. We have seen that in Europe there is sometimes a contest amongst the reapers to avoid being last, and that the person who is vanquished in this competition, that is, who cuts the last corn, is often roughly handled. It is true we have not found that a pretence is made of killing him; but on the other hand we have found that a pretence is made of killing the man who gives the last stroke at threshing, that is, who is vanquished in the threshing contest.[778 - Above, p. 224 (#x_21_i37).] Now, since it is in the character of representative of the corn-spirit that the thresher of the last corn is slain in mimicry, and since the same representative character attaches (as we have seen) to the cutter and binder as well as to the thresher of the last corn, and since the same repugnance is evinced by harvesters to be last in any one of these labours, we may conjecture that a pretence has been commonly made of killing the reaper and binder as well as the thresher of the last corn, and that in ancient times this killing was actually carried out. This conjecture is corroborated by the common superstition that whoever cuts the last corn must die soon.[779 - W. Mannhardt, Die Korndämonen, p. 5.] Sometimes it is thought that the person who binds the last sheaf on the field will die in the course of next year.[780 - H. Pfannenschmid, Germanische Erntefeste (Hanover, 1878), p. 98.] The reason for fixing on the reaper, binder, or thresher of the last corn as the representative of the corn-spirit may be this. The corn-spirit is supposed to lurk as long as he can in the corn, retreating before the reapers, the binders, and the threshers at their work. But when he is forcibly expelled from his refuge in the last corn cut or the last sheaf bound or the last grain threshed, he necessarily assumes some other form than that of the corn-stalks which had hitherto been his garment or body. And what form can the expelled corn-spirit assume more naturally than that of the person who stands nearest to the corn from which he (the corn-spirit) has just been expelled? But the person in question is necessarily the reaper, binder, or thresher of the last corn. He or she, therefore, is seized and treated as the corn-spirit himself.

Perhaps the victim annually sacrificed in the character of the corn-spirit may have been the king himself.

Thus the person who was killed on the harvest-field as the representative of the corn-spirit may have been either a passing stranger or the harvester who was last at reaping, binding, or threshing. But there is a third possibility, to which ancient legend and modern folk-custom alike point. Lityerses not only put strangers to death; he was himself slain, and apparently in the same way as he had slain others, namely, by being wrapt in a corn-sheaf, beheaded, and cast into the river; and it is implied that this happened to Lityerses on his own land.[781 - Above, p. 217 (#x_21_i17). It is not expressly said that he was wrapt in a sheaf.] Similarly in modern harvest-customs the pretence of killing appears to be carried out quite as often on the person of the master (farmer or squire) as on that of strangers.[782 - Above, pp. 225 (#x_21_i37)sq., 229 (#x_21_i41)sq.] Now when we remember that Lityerses was said to have been a son of the King of Phrygia, and that in one account he is himself called a king, and when we combine with this the tradition that he was put to death, apparently as a representative of the corn-spirit, we are led to conjecture that we have here another trace of the custom of annually slaying one of those divine or priestly kings who are known to have held ghostly sway in many parts of Western Asia and particularly in Phrygia. The custom appears, as we have seen,[783 - See The Dying God, pp. 160 sqq.] to have been so far modified in places that the king's son was slain in the king's stead. Of the custom thus modified the story of Lityerses would be, in one version at least, a reminiscence.

Relation of Lityerses to Attis: both may have been originally corn-spirits, or the one a corn-spirit and the other a tree-spirit. Human representatives both of Lityerses and Attis annually slain.

Turning now to the relation of the Phrygian Lityerses to the Phrygian Attis, it may be remembered that at Pessinus – the seat of a priestly kingship – the high-priest appears to have been annually slain in the character of Attis, a god of vegetation, and that Attis was described by an ancient authority as “a reaped ear of corn.”[784 - See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 231 sqq., 239 sq.] Thus Attis, as an embodiment of the corn-spirit, annually slain in the person of his representative, might be thought to be ultimately identical with Lityerses, the latter being simply the rustic prototype out of which the state religion of Attis was developed. It may have been so; but, on the other hand, the analogy of European folk-custom warns us that amongst the same people two distinct deities of vegetation may have their separate personal representatives, both of whom are slain in the character of gods at different times of the year. For in Europe, as we have seen, it appears that one man was commonly slain in the character of the tree-spirit in spring, and another in the character of the corn-spirit in autumn. It may have been so in Phrygia also. Attis was especially a tree-god, and his connexion with corn may have been only such an extension of the power of a tree-spirit as is indicated in customs like the Harvest-May.[785 - See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 47 sqq.] Again, the representative of Attis appears to have been slain in spring; whereas Lityerses must have been slain in summer or autumn, according to the time of the harvest in Phrygia.[786 - 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.] On the whole, then, while we are not justified in regarding Lityerses as the prototype of Attis, the two may be regarded as parallel products of the same religious idea, and may have stood to each other as in Europe the Old Man of harvest stands to the Wild Man, the Leaf Man, and so forth, of spring. Both were spirits or deities of vegetation, and the personal representatives of both were annually slain. But whereas the Attis worship became elevated into the dignity of a State religion and spread to Italy, the rites of Lityerses seem never to have passed the limits of their native Phrygia, and always retained their character of rustic ceremonies performed by peasants on the harvest-field. At most a few villages may have clubbed together, as amongst the Khonds, to procure a human victim to be slain as representative of the corn-spirit for their common benefit. Such victims may have been drawn from the families of priestly kings or kinglets, which would account for the legendary character of Lityerses as the son of a Phrygian king or as himself a king. When villages did not so club together, each village or farm may have procured its own representative of the corn-spirit by dooming to death either a passing stranger or the harvester who cut, bound, or threshed the last sheaf. Perhaps in the olden time the practice of head-hunting as a means of promoting the growth of the corn may have been as common among the rude inhabitants of Europe and Western Asia as it still is, or was till lately, among the primitive agricultural tribes of Assam, Burma, the Philippine Islands, and the Indian Archipelago.[787 - See above, pp. 240 (#x_22_i7)sqq.; 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.] It is hardly necessary to add that in Phrygia, as in Europe, the old barbarous custom of killing a man on the harvest-field or the threshing-floor had doubtless passed into a mere pretence long before the classical era, and was probably regarded by the reapers and threshers themselves as no more than a rough jest which the license of a harvest-home permitted them to play off on a passing stranger, a comrade, or even on their master himself.[788 - 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.]

Similarity of the Bithynian Bormus to the Phrygian Attis.

I have dwelt on the Lityerses song at length because it affords so many points of comparison with European and savage folk-custom. The other harvest songs of Western Asia and Egypt, to which attention has been called above,[789 - Above, pp. 215 (#x_21_i7)sq.] may now be dismissed much more briefly. The similarity of the Bithynian Bormus[790 - Above, p. 216 (#x_21_i9).] to the Phrygian Lityerses helps to bear out the interpretation which has been given of the latter. Bormus, whose death or rather disappearance was annually mourned by the reapers in a plaintive song, was, like Lityerses, a king's son or at least the son of a wealthy and distinguished man. The reapers whom he watched were at work on his own fields, and he disappeared in going to fetch water for them; according to one version of the story he was carried off by the nymphs, doubtless the nymphs of the spring or pool or river whither he went to draw water.[791 - Hesychius, s. v. Βῶρμον.] Viewed in the light of the Lityerses story and of European folk-custom, this disappearance of Bormus may be a reminiscence of the custom of binding the farmer himself in a corn-sheaf and throwing him into the water. The mournful strain which the reapers sang was probably a lamentation over the death of the corn-spirit, slain either in the cut corn or in the person of a human representative; and the call which they addressed to him may have been a prayer that he might return in fresh vigour next year.

The Phoenician Linus song at the vintage. Linus identified with Adonis, who may have been annually represented by a human victim.

The Phoenician Linus song was sung at the vintage, at least in the west of Asia Minor, as we learn from Homer; and this, combined with the legend of Syleus, suggests that in ancient times passing strangers were handled by vintagers and vine-diggers in much the same way as they are said to have been handled by the reaper Lityerses. The Lydian Syleus, so ran the legend, compelled passers-by to dig for him in his vineyard, till Hercules came and killed him and dug up his vines by the roots.[792 - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, ii. 6. 3.] This seems to be the outline of a legend like that of Lityerses; but neither ancient writers nor modern folk-custom enable us to fill in the details.[793 - 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.] But, further, the Linus song was probably sung also by Phoenician reapers, for Herodotus compares it to the Maneros song, which, as we have seen, was a lament raised by Egyptian reapers over the cut corn. Further, Linus was identified with Adonis, and Adonis has some claims to be regarded as especially a corn-deity.[794 - See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 188 sqq.] Thus the Linus lament, as sung at harvest, would be identical with the Adonis lament; each would be the lamentation raised by reapers over the dead spirit of the corn. But whereas Adonis, like Attis, grew into a stately figure of mythology, adored and mourned in splendid cities far beyond the limits of his Phoenician home, Linus appears to have remained a simple ditty sung by reapers and vintagers among the corn-sheaves and the vines. The analogy of Lityerses and of folk-custom, both European and savage, suggests that in Phoenicia the slain corn-spirit – the dead Adonis – may formerly have been represented by a human victim; and this suggestion is possibly supported by the Harran legend that Tammuz (Adonis) was slain by his cruel lord, who ground his bones in a mill and scattered them to the wind. For in Mexico, as we have seen, the human victim at harvest was crushed between two stones; and both in Africa and India the ashes or other remains of the victim were scattered over the fields.[795 - Above, pp. 236 (#x_21_i73)sq., 240 (#x_22_i7), 243 (#x_22_i11), 244 (#x_22_i13), 248 (#x_22_i19)sq.] But the Harran legend may be only a mythical way of expressing the grinding of corn in the mill and the scattering of the seed. It seems worth suggesting that the mock king who was annually killed at the Babylonian festival of the Sacaea on the sixteenth day of the month Lous may have represented Tammuz himself. For the historian Berosus, who records the festival and its date, probably used the Macedonian calendar, since he dedicated his history to Antiochus Soter; and in his day the Macedonian month Lous appears to have corresponded to the Babylonian month Tammuz.[796 - 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.”] If this conjecture is right, the view that the mock king at the Sacaea was slain in the character of a god would be established. But to this point we shall return later on.

The corn-spirit in Egypt (Osiris) annually represented by a human victim.

There is a good deal more evidence that in Egypt the slain corn-spirit – the dead Osiris – was represented by a human victim, whom the reapers slew on the harvest-field, mourning his death in a dirge, to which the Greeks, through a verbal misunderstanding, gave the name of Maneros.[797 - Above, p. 215 (#x_21_i7).] For the legend of Busiris seems to preserve a reminiscence of human sacrifices once offered by the Egyptians in connexion with the worship of Osiris. Busiris was said to have been an Egyptian king who sacrificed all strangers on the altar of Zeus. The origin of the custom was traced to a dearth which afflicted the land of Egypt for nine years. A Cyprian seer informed Busiris that the dearth would cease if a man were annually sacrificed to Zeus. So Busiris instituted the sacrifice. But when Hercules came to Egypt, and was being dragged to the altar to be sacrificed, he burst his bonds and slew Busiris and his son.[798 - 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.”] Here then is a legend that in Egypt a human victim was annually sacrificed to prevent the failure of the crops, and a belief is implied that an omission of the sacrifice would have entailed a recurrence of that infertility which it was the object of the sacrifice to prevent. So the Pawnees, as we have seen, believed that an omission of the human sacrifice at planting would have been followed by a total failure of their crops. The name Busiris was in reality the name of a city, pe-Asar, “the house of Osiris,”[799 - E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, i. (Stuttgart, 1884), § 57, p. 68.] the city being so called because it contained the grave of Osiris. Indeed some high modern authorities believe that Busiris was the original home of Osiris, from which his worship spread to other parts of Egypt.[800 - E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums,

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.] The human sacrifices were said to have been offered at his grave, and the victims were red-haired men, whose ashes were scattered abroad by means of winnowing-fans.[801 - Diodorus Siculus, i. 88; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 73, compare 30, 33.] This tradition of human sacrifices offered at the tomb of Osiris is confirmed by the evidence of the monuments; for “we find in the temple of Dendereh a human figure with a hare's head and pierced with knives, tied to a stake before Osiris Khenti-Amentiu, and Horus is shown in a Ptolemaic sculpture at Karnak killing a bound hare-headed figure before the bier of Osiris, who is represented in the form of Harpocrates. That these figures are really human beings with the head of an animal fastened on is proved by another sculpture at Dendereh, where a kneeling man has the hawk's head and wings over his head and shoulders, and in another place a priest has the jackal's head on his shoulders, his own head appearing through the disguise. Besides, Diodorus tells us that the Egyptian kings in former times had worn on their heads the fore-part of a lion, or of a bull, or of a dragon, showing that this method of disguise or transformation was a well-known custom.”[802 - 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.]

Assimilation of human victims to the corn which they represent.

In the light of the foregoing discussion the Egyptian tradition of Busiris admits of a consistent and fairly probable explanation. Osiris, the corn-spirit, was annually represented at harvest by a stranger, whose red hair made him a suitable representative of the ripe corn. This man, in his representative character, was slain on the harvest-field, and mourned by the reapers, who prayed at the same time that the corn-spirit might revive and return (mââ-ne-rha, Maneros) with renewed vigour in the following year. Finally, the victim, or some part of him, was burned, and the ashes scattered by winnowing-fans over the fields to fertilise them. Here the choice of the victim on the ground of his resemblance to the corn which he was to represent agrees with the Mexican and African customs already described.[803 - Above, pp. 237 (#x_22_i3)sq., 240 (#x_22_i7), 251 (#x_22_i23).] Similarly the woman who died in the character of the Corn-mother at the Mexican midsummer sacrifice had her face painted red and yellow in token of the colours of the corn, and she wore a pasteboard mitre surmounted by waving plumes in imitation of the tassel of the maize.[804 - E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America, i. (Oxford, 1892) p. 422.] On the other hand, at the festival of the Goddess of the White Maize the Mexicans sacrificed lepers.[805 - Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des Nations civilisées du Mexique et de l'Amérique Centrale (Paris, 1857-1859), iii. 535.] The Romans sacrificed red-haired puppies in spring to avert the supposed blighting influence of the Dog-star, believing that the crops would thus grow ripe and ruddy.[806 - 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.] The heathen of Harran offered to the sun, moon, and planets human victims who were chosen on the ground of their supposed resemblance to the heavenly bodies to which they were sacrificed; for example, the priests, clothed in red and smeared with blood, offered a red-haired, red-cheeked man to “the red planet Mars” in a temple which was painted red and draped with red hangings.[807 - 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.] These and the like cases of assimilating the victim to the god, or to the natural phenomenon which he represents, are based ultimately on the principle of homoeopathic or imitative magic, the notion being that the object aimed at will be most readily attained by means of a sacrifice which resembles the effect that it is designed to bring about.

Remains of victims scattered over the fields to fertilise them.

Again, the scattering of the Egyptian victim's ashes over the fields resembles the Marimo and Khond custom,[808 - Above, pp. 240 (#x_22_i7), 249 (#x_22_i21).] and the use of winnowing-fans for the purpose is another hint of his identification with the corn. So in Vendée a pretence is made of threshing and winnowing the farmer's wife, regarded as an embodiment of the corn-spirit; in Mexico the victim was ground between stones; and in Africa he was slain with spades and hoes.[809 - Above, pp. 149 (#x_15_i16)sq., 237 (#x_22_i3)sq., 239 (#x_22_i5).] The story that the fragments of Osiris's body were scattered up and down the land, and buried by Isis on the spots where they lay,[810 - Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 18.] may very well be a reminiscence of a custom, like that observed by the Khonds, of dividing the human victim in pieces and burying the pieces, often at intervals of many miles from each other, in the fields.[811 - See above, p. 248 (#x_22_i19); and compare Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 331 sqq.] However, it is possible that the story of the dismemberment of Osiris, like the similar story told of Tammuz, may have been simply a mythical expression for the scattering of the seed. Once more, the legend that the body of Osiris enclosed in a coffer was thrown by Typhon into the Nile, perhaps points to a custom of casting the body of the victim, or at least a portion of it, into the Nile as a rain-charm, or rather to make the river rise. For a similar purpose Phrygian reapers seem to have flung the headless bodies of their victims, wrapt in corn-sheaves, into a river, and the Khonds poured water on the buried flesh of the human victim. Probably when Osiris ceased to be represented by a human victim, an image of him was annually thrown into the Nile, just as the effigy of his Syrian counterpart, Adonis, used to be cast into the sea at Alexandria. Or water may have been simply poured over it, as on the monument already mentioned[812 - See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, p. 323.] a priest is seen pouring water over the body of Osiris, from which corn-stalks are sprouting. The accompanying legend, “This is Osiris of the mysteries, who springs from the returning waters,” bears out the view that at the mysteries of Osiris a charm to make rain fall or the river rise was regularly wrought by pouring water on his effigy or flinging it into the Nile.

The black and green Osiris like the black and green Demeter.

It may be objected that the red-haired victims were slain as representatives, not of Osiris, but of his enemy Typhon; for the victims were called Typhonian, and red was the colour of Typhon, black the colour of Osiris.[813 - Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 22, 30, 31, 33, 73.] The answer to this objection must be reserved for the present. Meantime it may be pointed out that if Osiris is often represented on the monuments as black, he is still more commonly depicted as green,[814 - Sir J. G. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (ed. 1878), iii. 81.] appropriately enough for a corn-god, who may be conceived as black while the seed is under ground, but as green after it has sprouted. So the Greeks recognised both a Green and a Black Demeter,[815 - Pausanias, i. 22. 3, viii. 5. 8, viii. 42. i.] and sacrificed to the Green Demeter in spring with mirth and gladness.[816 - Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium, 28. See above, p. 42 (#x_8_i13).]

The key to the mysteries of Osiris furnished by the lamentations of the reapers for the annual death of the corn-spirit.

Thus, if I am right, the key to the mysteries of Osiris is furnished by the melancholy cry of the Egyptian reapers, which down to Roman times could be heard year after year sounding across the fields, announcing the death of the corn-spirit, the rustic prototype of Osiris. Similar cries, as we have seen, were also heard on all the harvest-fields of Western Asia. By the ancients they are spoken of as songs; but to judge from the analysis of the names Linus and Maneros, they probably consisted only of a few words uttered in a prolonged musical note which could be heard for a great distance. Such sonorous and long-drawn cries, raised by a number of strong voices in concert, must have had a striking effect, and could hardly fail to arrest the attention of any wayfarer who happened to be within hearing. The sounds, repeated again and again, could probably be distinguished with tolerable ease even at a distance; but to a Greek traveller in Asia or Egypt the foreign words would commonly convey no meaning, and he might take them, not unnaturally, for the name of some one (Maneros, Linus, Lityerses, Bormus) upon whom the reapers were calling. And if his journey led him through more countries than one, as Bithynia and Phrygia, or Phoenicia and Egypt, while the corn was being reaped, he would have an opportunity of comparing the various harvest cries of the different peoples. Thus we can readily understand why these harvest cries were so often noted and compared with each other by the Greeks. Whereas, if they had been regular songs, they could not have been heard at such distances, and therefore could not have attracted the attention of so many travellers; and, moreover, even if the wayfarer were within hearing of them, he could not so easily have picked out the words.

Crying “the neck”at harvest in Devonshire.

Down to recent times Devonshire reapers uttered cries of the same sort, and performed on the field a ceremony exactly analogous to that in which, if I am not mistaken, the rites of Osiris originated. The cry and the ceremony are thus described by an observer who wrote in the first half of the nineteenth century. “After the wheat is all cut, on most farms in the north of Devon, the harvest people have a custom of ‘crying the neck.’ I believe that this practice is seldom omitted on any large farm in that part of the country. It is done in this way. An old man, or some one else well acquainted with the ceremonies used on the occasion (when the labourers are reaping the last field of wheat), goes round to the shocks and sheaves, and picks out a little bundle of all the best ears he can find; this bundle he ties up very neat and trim, and plats and arranges the straws very tastefully. This is called ‘the neck’ of wheat, or wheaten-ears. After the field is cut out, and the pitcher once more circulated, the reapers, binders, and the women stand round in a circle. The person with ‘the neck’ stands in the centre, grasping it with both his hands. He first stoops and holds it near the ground, and all the men forming the ring take off their hats, stooping and holding them with both hands towards the ground. They then all begin at once in a very prolonged and harmonious tone to cry ‘The neck!’ at the same time slowly raising themselves upright, and elevating their arms and hats above their heads; the person with ‘the neck’ also raising it on high. This is done three times. They then change their cry to ‘Wee yen!’ – ‘Way yen!’ – which they sound in the same prolonged and slow manner as before, with singular harmony and effect, three times. This last cry is accompanied by the same movements of the body and arms as in crying ‘the neck.’… After having thus repeated ‘the neck’ three times, and ‘wee yen,’ or ‘way yen’ as often, they all burst out into a kind of loud and joyous laugh, flinging up their hats and caps into the air, capering about and perhaps kissing the girls. One of them then gets 'the neck' and runs as hard as he can down to the farmhouse, where the dairymaid, or one of the young female domestics, stands at the door prepared with a pail of water. If he who holds ‘the neck’ can manage to get into the house, in any way unseen, or openly, by any other way than the door at which the girl stands with the pail of water, then he may lawfully kiss her; but, if otherwise, he is regularly soused with the contents of the bucket. On a fine still autumn evening the ‘crying of the neck’ has a wonderful effect at a distance, far finer than that of the Turkish muezzin, which Lord Byron eulogises so much, and which he says is preferable to all the bells in Christendom. I have once or twice heard upwards of twenty men cry it, and sometimes joined by an equal number of female voices. About three years back, on some high grounds, where our people were harvesting, I heard six or seven ‘necks’ cried in one night, although I know that some of them were four miles off. They are heard through the quiet evening air at a considerable distance sometimes.”[817 - W. Hone, Every-day Book (London, n. d.), ii. coll. 1170 sq.] Again, Mrs. Bray tells how, travelling in Devonshire, “she saw a party of reapers standing in a circle on a rising ground, holding their sickles aloft. One in the middle held up some ears of corn tied together with flowers, and the party shouted three times (what she writes as) ‘Arnack, arnack, arnack, we haven, we haven, we haven.’ They went home, accompanied by women and children carrying boughs of flowers, shouting and singing. The manservant who attended Mrs. Bray said ‘it was only the people making their games, as they always did, to the spirit of harvest.’ ”[818 - Miss C. S. Burne and Miss G. F. Jackson, Shropshire Folk-lore (London, 1883), pp. 372 sq., referring to Mrs. Bray's Traditions of Devon, i. 330.] Here, as Miss Burne remarks, “ ‘arnack, we haven!’ is obviously in the Devon dialect, ‘a neck (or nack)! we have un!’ ” “The neck” is generally hung up in the farmhouse, where it sometimes remains for two or three years.[819 - W. Hone, op. cit. ii. 1172.] A similar custom is still observed in some parts of Cornwall, as I was told by my lamented friend J. H. Middleton. “The last sheaf is decked with ribbons. Two strong-voiced men are chosen and placed (one with the sheaf) on opposite sides of a valley. One shouts, ‘I've gotten it.’ The other shouts, ‘What hast gotten?’ The first answers, ‘I'se gotten the neck.’ ”[820 - 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.]

Other accounts of cutting and crying “the neck”in Devonshire.

Another account of this old custom, written at Truro in 1839, runs thus: “Now, when all the corn was cut at Heligan, the farming men and maidens come in front of the house, and bring with them a small sheaf of corn, the last that has been cut, and this is adorned with ribbons and flowers, and one part is tied quite tight, so as to look like a neck. Then they cry out ‘Our (my) side, my side,’ as loud as they can; then the dairymaid gives the neck to the head farming-man. He takes it, and says, very loudly three times, ‘I have him, I have him, I have him.’ Then another farming-man shouts very loudly, ‘What have ye? what have ye? what have ye?’ Then the first says, ‘A neck, a neck, a neck.’ And when he has said this, all the people make a very great shouting. This they do three times, and after one famous shout go away and eat supper, and dance, and sing songs.”[821 - “Old Harvest Customs in Devon and Cornwall,” Folk-lore, i. (1890) p. 280.] According to another account, “all went out to the field when the last corn was cut, the ‘neck’ was tied with ribbons and plaited, and they danced round it, and carried it to the great kitchen, where by-and-by the supper was. The words were as given in the previous account, and ‘Hip, hip, hack, heck, I have 'ee, I have 'ee, I have 'ee.’ It was hung up in the hall.” Another account relates that one of the men rushed from the field with the last sheaf, while the rest pursued him with vessels of water, which they tried to throw over the sheaf before it could be brought into the barn.[822 - Ibid.]

Cutting “the neck”in Pembrokeshire.

Similar customs appear to have been formerly observed in Pembrokeshire, as appears from the following account, in which, however, nothing is said of the sonorous cries raised by the reapers when their work was done: “At harvest-time, in South Pembrokeshire, the last ears of corn left standing in the field were tied together, and the harvesters then tried to cut this neck by throwing their hatchets at it. What happened afterwards appears to have varied somewhat. I have been told by one old man that the one who got possession of the neck would carry it over into some neighbouring field, leave it there, and take to his heels as fast as he could; for, if caught, he had a rough time of it. The men who caught him would shut him up in a barn without food, or belabour him soundly, or perhaps shoe him, as it was called, beating the soles of his feet with rods – a very severe and much-dreaded punishment. On my grandfather's farm the man used to make for the house as fast as possible, and try to carry in the neck. The maids were on the look-out for him, and did their best to drench him with water. If they succeeded, they got the present of half-a-crown, which my grandfather always gave, and which was considered a very liberal present indeed. If the man was successful in dodging the maids, and getting the neck into the house without receiving the wetting, the half-crown became his. The neck was then hung up, and kept until the following year, at any rate, like the bunches of flowers or boughs gathered at the St. Jean, in the south of France. Sometimes the necks of many successive years were to be found hanging up together. In these two ways of disposing of the neck one sees the embodiment, no doubt, of the two ways of looking at the corn-spirit, as good (to be kept) or as bad (to be passed on to the neighbour).”[823 - 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 (#x_14_i24).]

Cutting “the neck”in Shropshire. Why the last corn cut is called “the neck.”

In the foregoing customs a particular bunch of ears, generally the last left standing,[824 - J. Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 20 (Bohn's edition); Miss C. S. Burne and Miss G. F. Jackson, Shropshire Folk-lore, p. 371.] is conceived as the neck of the corn-spirit, who is consequently beheaded when the bunch is cut down. Similarly in Shropshire the name “neck,” or “the gander's neck,” used to be commonly given to the last handful of ears left standing in the middle of the field when all the rest of the corn was cut. It was plaited together, and the reapers, standing ten or twenty paces off, threw their sickles at it. Whoever cut it through was said to have cut off the gander's neck. The “neck” was taken to the farmer's wife, who was supposed to keep it in the house for good luck till the next harvest came round.[825 - Burne and Jackson, l. c.] Near Trèves, the man who reaps the last standing corn “cuts the goat's neck off.”[826 - W. Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen, p. 185.] At Faslane, on the Gareloch (Dumbartonshire), the last handful of standing corn was sometimes called the “head.”[827 - See above, p. 158 (#x_15_i32).] At Aurich, in East Friesland, the man who reaps the last corn “cuts the hare's tail off.”[828 - W. Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen, p. 185.] In mowing down the last corner of a field French reapers sometimes call out, “We have the cat by the tail.”[829 - Ibid.] In Bresse (Bourgogne) the last sheaf represented the fox. Beside it a score of ears were left standing to form the tail, and each reaper, going back some paces, threw his sickle at it. He who succeeded in severing it “cut off the fox's tail,” and a cry of “You cou cou!” was raised in his honour.[830 - Revue des Traditions populaires, ii. (1887) p. 500.] These examples leave no room to doubt the meaning of the Devonshire and Cornish expression “the neck,” as applied to the last sheaf. The corn-spirit is conceived in human or animal form, and the last standing corn is part of its body – its neck, its head, or its tail. Sometimes, as we have seen, the last corn is regarded as the navel-string.[831 - Above, p. 150 (#x_15_i16).] Lastly, the Devonshire custom of drenching with water the person who brings in “the neck” is a rain-charm, such as we have had many examples of. Its parallel in the mysteries of Osiris was the custom of pouring water on the image of Osiris or on the person who represented him.

Cries of the reapers in Germany.

In Germany cries of Waul! or Wol! or Wôld! are sometimes raised by the reapers at cutting the last corn. Thus in some places the last patch of standing rye was called the Waul-rye; a stick decked with flowers was inserted in it, and the ears were fastened to the stick. Then all the reapers took off their hats and cried thrice, “Waul!Waul!Waul!” Sometimes they accompanied the cry by clashing with their whetstones on their scythes.[832 - 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.]

Chapter VIII. The Corn-Spirit as an Animal

§ 1. Animal Embodiments of the Corn-spirit

The corn-spirit as an animal.