The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 11 of 12)

But as time goes on this explanation in its turn proves to be unsatisfactory. For it assumes that the succession of natural events is not determined by immutable laws, but is to some extent variable and irregular, and this assumption is not borne out by closer observation. On the contrary, the more we scrutinize that succession the more we are struck by the rigid uniformity, the punctual precision with which, wherever we can follow them, the operations of nature are carried on. Every great advance in knowledge has extended the sphere of order and correspondingly restricted the sphere of apparent disorder in the world, till now we are ready to anticipate that even in regions where chance and confusion appear still to reign, a fuller knowledge would everywhere reduce the seeming chaos to cosmos. Thus the keener minds, still pressing forward to a deeper solution of the mysteries of the universe, come to reject the religious theory of nature as inadequate, and to revert in a measure to the older standpoint of magic by postulating explicitly, what in magic had only been implicitly assumed, to wit, an inflexible regularity in the order of natural events, which, if carefully observed, enables us to foresee their course with certainty and to act accordingly. In short, religion, regarded as an explanation of nature, is displaced by science.

Contrast between the views of natural order postulated by magic and by science respectively.

But while science has this much in common with magic that both rest on a faith in order as the underlying principle of all things, readers of this work will hardly need to be reminded that the order presupposed by magic differs widely from that which forms the basis of science. The difference flows naturally from the different modes in which the two orders have been reached. For whereas the order on which magic reckons is merely an extension, by false analogy, of the order in which ideas present themselves to our minds, the order laid down by science is derived from patient and exact observation of the phenomena themselves. The abundance, the solidity, and the splendour of the results already achieved by science are well fitted to inspire us with a cheerful confidence in the soundness of its method. Here at last, after groping about in the dark for countless ages, man has hit upon a clue to the labyrinth, a golden key that opens many locks in the treasury of nature. It is probably not too much to say that the hope of progress – moral and intellectual as well as material – in the future is bound up with the fortunes of science, and that every obstacle placed in the way of scientific discovery is a wrong to humanity.

The scientific theory of the world not necessarily final.

Yet the history of thought should warn us against concluding that because the scientific theory of the world is the best that has yet been formulated, it is necessarily complete and final. We must remember that at bottom the generalizations of science or, in common parlance, the laws of nature are merely hypotheses devised to explain that ever-shifting phantasmagoria of thought which we dignify with the high-sounding names of the world and the universe. In the last analysis magic, religion, and science are nothing but theories of thought; and as science has supplanted its predecessors, so it may hereafter be itself superseded by some more perfect hypothesis, perhaps by some totally different way of looking at the phenomena – of registering the shadows on the screen – of which we in this generation can form no idea. The advance of knowledge is an infinite progression towards a goal that for ever recedes. We need not murmur at the endless pursuit: —

“Fatti non foste a viver come bruti
Ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza.”

The shadow across the path.

Great things will come of that pursuit, though we may not enjoy them. Brighter stars will rise on some voyager of the future – some great Ulysses of the realms of thought – than shine on us. The dreams of magic may one day be the waking realities of science. But a dark shadow lies athwart the far end of this fair prospect. For however vast the increase of knowledge and of power which the future may have in store for man, he can scarcely hope to stay the sweep of those great forces which seem to be making silently but relentlessly for the destruction of all this starry universe in which our earth swims as a speck or mote. In the ages to come man may be able to predict, perhaps even to control, the wayward courses of the winds and clouds, but hardly will his puny hands have strength to speed afresh our slackening planet in its orbit or rekindle the dying fire of the sun.[762 - “I quite agree how humiliating the slow progress of man is, but every one has his own pet horror, and this slow progress or even personal annihilation sinks in my mind into insignificance compared with the idea or rather I presume certainty of the sun some day cooling and we all freezing. To think of the progress of millions of years, with every continent swarming with good and enlightened men, all ending in this, and with probably no fresh start until this our planetary system has been again converted into red-hot gas. Sic transit gloria mundi, with a vengeance” (More Letters of Charles Darwin, edited by Francis Darwin, London, 1903, i. 260 sq.).] Yet the philosopher who trembles at the idea of such distant catastrophes may console himself by reflecting that these gloomy apprehensions, like the earth and the sun themselves, are only parts of that unsubstantial world which thought has conjured up out of the void, and that the phantoms which the subtle enchantress has evoked to-day she may ban to-morrow. They too, like so much that to common eyes seems solid, may melt into air, into thin air.[763 - Since this passage was written the hope which it expresses has been to some extent strengthened by the discovery of radium, which appears to prolong indefinitely the prospect of the duration of the sun's heat, and with it the duration of life on its attendant planets. See (Sir) George Howard Darwin's Presidential Address to the British Association, Report of the 75th Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (South Africa, 1905), pp. 28 sq.; F. Soddy, The Interpretation of Radium, Third Edition (London, 1912), pp. 240 sqq.; E. Rutherford, Radio-active Substances and their Radiations (Cambridge, 1913), pp. 653-656. At the same time it should be borne in mind that even if the atomic disintegration and accompanying liberation of energy, which characterize radium and kindred elements, should prove to be common in different degrees to all the other elements and to form a vast and till lately unsuspected store of heat to the sun, this enormous reserve of fuel would only defer but could not avert that final catastrophe with which the solar system and indeed the whole universe is remorselessly threatened by the law of the dissipation of energy.]

The web of thought.

Without dipping so far into the future, we may illustrate the course which thought has hitherto run by likening it to a web woven of three different threads – the black thread of magic, the red thread of religion, and the white thread of science, if under science we may include those simple truths, drawn from observation of nature, of which men in all ages have possessed a store. Could we then survey the web of thought from the beginning, we should probably perceive it to be at first a chequer of black and white, a patchwork of true and false notions, hardly tinged as yet by the red thread of religion. But carry your eye further along the fabric and you will remark that, while the black and white chequer still runs through it, there rests on the middle portion of the web, where religion has entered most deeply into its texture, a dark crimson stain, which shades off insensibly into a lighter tint as the white thread of science is woven more and more into the tissue. To a web thus chequered and stained, thus shot with threads of diverse hues, but gradually changing colour the farther it is unrolled, the state of modern thought, with all its divergent aims and conflicting tendencies, may be compared. Will the great movement which for centuries has been slowly altering the complexion of thought be continued in the near future? or will a reaction set in which may arrest progress and even undo much that has been done? To keep up our parable, what will be the colour of the web which the Fates are now weaving on the humming loom of time? will it be white or red? We cannot tell. A faint glimmering light illumines the backward portion of the web. Clouds and thick darkness hide the other end.

Nemi at evening: the Ave Maria bell.

Our long voyage of discovery is over and our bark has drooped her weary sails in port at last. Once more we take the road to Nemi. It is evening, and as we climb the long slope of the Appian Way up to the Alban Hills, we look back and see the sky aflame with sunset, its golden glory resting like the aureole of a dying saint over Rome and touching with a crest of fire the dome of St. Peter's. The sight once seen can never be forgotten, but we turn from it and pursue our way darkling along the mountain side, till we come to Nemi and look down on the lake in its deep hollow, now fast disappearing in the evening shadows. The place has changed but little since Diana received the homage of her worshippers in the sacred grove. The temple of the sylvan goddess, indeed, has vanished and the King of the Wood no longer stands sentinel over the Golden Bough. But Nemi's woods are still green, and as the sunset fades above them in the west, there comes to us, borne on the swell of the wind, the sound of the church bells of Ariccia ringing the Angelus. Ave Maria! Sweet and solemn they chime out from the distant town and die lingeringly away across the wide Campagnan marshes. Le roi est mort, vive le roi! Ave Maria!

Notes

I. Snake Stones.[764 - See above, vol. i. pp. 15 sq.]

Snake Stones in the Highlands.

The belief of the Scottish Highlanders as to the so-called Snake Stones has been recorded as follows by a good authority at the end of the nineteenth century: —

“A product called clach-nathrach, serpent stone, is found on the root of the long ling. It is of steel-grey colour, has the consistency of soft putty when new and of hard putty when old, and is as light as pumice-stone, which it resembles. It is of a globular form, and from one to three inches in diameter. There is a circular hole, about a quarter of an inch in width, through the centre. This substance is said to be produced by the serpent emitting spume round the root of a twig of heather. The clach-nathrach is greatly prized by the people, who transmit it as a talisman to their descendants.”[765 - Alexander Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica, Hymns and Incantations with Illustrative Notes on Words, Rites, and Customs, dying and obsolete: orally collected in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and translated into English (Edinburgh, 1900), ii. 312.]

II. The Transformation of Witches Into Cats

Witches as cats among the Oraons.

The European belief that witches can turn themselves into cats, and that any wounds inflicted on the witch-cat will afterwards be found on the body of the witch herself,[766 - Above, vol. i. pp. 315 sqq.] has its exact parallel among the Oraons or Uraons, a primitive hill tribe of Bengal. The following is the account given of the Oraon belief by a Jesuit missionary, who laboured for years among these savages and was intimately acquainted with their superstitions: —

“Chordewa is a witch rather than a bhut [demon]. It is believed that some women have the power to change their soul into a black cat, who then goes about in the houses where there are sick people. Such a cat has a peculiar way of mewing quite different from its brethren, and is easily recognised. It steals quietly into the house, licks the lips of the sick man and eats of the food that has been prepared for him. The sick man soon gets worse and dies. They say it is very difficult to catch the cat, as it has all the nimbleness of its nature and the cleverness of a bhut. However, they sometimes succeed, and then something wonderful happens. The woman out of whom the cat has come remains insensible, as it were in a state of temporary death, until the cat re-enters her body. Any wound inflicted on the cat will be inflicted on her; if they cut its ears or break its legs or put out its eyes the woman will suffer the same mutilation. The Uraons say that formerly they used to burn any woman that was suspected to be a Chordewa.”[767 - The late Rev. P. Dehon, S.J., “Religion and Customs of the Uraons,” Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. i. No. 9 (Calcutta, 1906), p. 141.]

III. African Balders

African parallels to Balder.

In various parts of Africa stories are told of men who could only be killed, like Balder, by the stroke of an apparently insignificant weapon; and some at least of these men were not mythical beings but real men of flesh and blood who lived not long ago and whose memory is still comparatively fresh among their people. The Wadoe of German East Africa tell such a story of a great sorcerer, whom they now worship as a dispenser of sunshine and rain. The legend and the worship are reported as follows by a native African traveller: —

The worshipful ghost in the cave.

“If drought sets in, all the chiefs meet in council and resolve: ‘This year we have had nothing but sunshine; when we plant, the fruits will not ripen; therefore we must betake ourselves to our spirits of the dead (mizimu).’ Then they take some woollen stuff dyed blue and a red cloth, and set out together on the way and go to the district Nguu, where their principal ghost (mzimu) resides, in order to lay the matter before him. The ghost dwells in a very spacious cave. On their coming the chiefs greet him. His answer consists in a humming noise, which sounds like the patter of rain. If one among them is a bad man, the ghost says to them, ‘There is come with you in the caravan a rascal who wears such and such clothes.’ If such a man there is, he is driven away. Now they tell the ghost all that they wish to say, to wit: ‘This year thou hast given us much sunshine; the fruits in the fields do not grow tall, everywhere there is sickness, therefore we beg thee, give us rain.’ Thereupon the ghost hums a second time, and all are glad, because he has answered them. But if the ghost is angry, he does not answer but holds his peace. If he has made them glad and given an answer, much rain will fall; otherwise they return as they went in sunshine.

The man who could only be killed by the stalk of a gourd.

“Originally this ghost was a man, a village elder (jumbe) of Ukami. He was a great sorcerer. One day people wished to conquer him, but they could do him no harm, for neither lead nor sword nor arrow could pierce his body. But he lived at strife with his wife. She said to his enemies, ‘If you would kill my husband, I will tell you how it can be done.’ They asked her, ‘How can it be done?’ She answered, ‘My husband is a great sorcerer; you all know that.’ They answered, ‘That is true.’ Then she said further, ‘If you would kill him so that he dies on the spot, seek a stalk of a gourd and smite him with it; then he will die at once, for that has always been to him a forbidden thing.’[768 - “Every clan (Familienstamm) has a definite thing which is forbidden to all the members of the clan, whether it be a particular kind of meat, or a certain fish, or as here the stalk of a gourd.”] They sought the stalk of a gourd, and when they smote him with it, he died at once without so much as setting one foot from the spot. But of him and his departure there was nothing more to be seen, for suddenly a great storm blew, and no man knew whither he had gone. The storm is said to have carried him to that cave which is still there to this day. After some days people saw in the cave his weapons, clothes, and turban lying, and they brought word to the folk in the town, ‘We have seen the clothes of the elder in the cave, but of himself we have perceived nothing.’ The folk went thither to look about, and they found that it was so. So the news of this ghost spread, all the more because people had seen the marvel that a man died and nobody knew where he had gone. The wonderful thing in this wood is that the spirits dwell in the midst of the wood and that everywhere a bright white sand lies on the ground, as if people had gone thither for the purpose of keeping everything clean. On many days they hear a drumming and shouts of joy in this wood, as if a marriage feast were being held there. That is the report about the ghost of Kolelo.[769 - “The place in Nguu, where the ghost is said to dwell.”] All village elders, who dwell in the interior, see in this ghost the greatest ghost of all. All the chiefs (mwene) and headmen (pazi) and the village elders (jumben) of the clan Kingaru[770 - “In Ukami.”] respect that ghost.”[771 - C. Velten, Schilderungen der Suaheli (Göttingen, 1901), pp. 195-197.]

The man who could only be killed by a splinter of bamboo.

Miss Alice Werner, who kindly called my attention to this and the following cases of African Balders, tells me that this worshipful ghost in the cave appears to have been in his time a real man. Again, she was assured by some natives that “Chikumbu, a Yao chief, who at one time gave the Administration some trouble, was invulnerable by shot or steel; the only thing that could kill him – since he had not been fortified against it by the proper medicine – was a sharp splinter of bamboo. This reminds one of Balder and the mistletoe.”[772 - Miss Alice Werner, The Natives of British Central Africa (London, 1906), p. 82. In a letter Miss Werner tells me that she learned these particulars at Blantyre in 1893, and that the chief lived in the neighbourhood of Mlanje.] Again, a Nyanja chief named Chibisa, who was a great man in this part of Africa when Livingstone travelled in it,[773 - Rev. Henry Rowley, Twenty Years in Central Africa (London, N.D.), pp. 36 sqq. For a reference to this and all the other works cited in this Note I am indebted to the kindness of Miss Alice Werner.] “stood firm upon his ant-heap, while his men fell round him, shouting his war-song, until one who knew the secret of a sand-bullet brought him down.”[774 - Rev. David Clement Scott, A Cyclopaedic Dictionary of the Mang'anja Language spoken in British Central Africa (Edinburgh, 1892), p. 315.]

The man who could only be killed by a copper needle.

Once more the Swahili tell a story of an African Samson named Liongo who lived in Shanga, while it was a flourishing city. By reason of his great strength he oppressed the people exceedingly, and they sought to kill him, but all in vain. At last they bribed his nephew, saying, “Go and ask your father what it is that will kill him. When you know, come and tell us, and when he is dead we will give you the kingdom.” So the treacherous nephew went to his uncle and asked him, “Father, what is it that can kill you?” And his uncle said, “A copper needle. If any one stabs me in the navel, I die.” So the nephew went to the town and said to the people, “It is a copper needle that will kill him.” And they gave him a needle, and he went back to his uncle; and while his uncle slept the wicked nephew stabbed him with the needle in the navel. So he died, and they buried him, and his grave is to be seen at Ozi to this day. But they seized the nephew and killed him; they did not give the kingdom to that bad young man.[775 - Edward Steere, Swahili Tales (London, 1870), pp. 441-453. The young man in the story is spoken of now as the nephew and now as the son of the man he murdered. Probably he was what we should call a nephew or brother's son of his victim; for under the classificatory system of relationship, which seems to prevail among the Bantu stock, to whom the Swahili belong, a man regularly calls his paternal uncle his father.]

These stories confirm the view that Balder may have been a real man who was deified after death.

When we compare the story of Balder with these African stories, the heroes of which were probably all real men, and when further we remember the similar tale told of the Persian hero Isfendiyar, who may well have been an historical personage,[776 - Above, vol. i. pp. 104 sq.] we are confirmed in the suspicion that Balder himself may have been a real man, admired and beloved in his lifetime and deified after his death, like the African sorcerer, who is now worshipped in a cave and bestows rain or sunshine on his votaries. On the whole I incline to regard this solution of the Balder problem as more probable than the one I have advocated in the text, namely that Balder was a mythical personification of a mistletoe-bearing oak. The facts which seem to incline the balance to the side of Euhemerism reached me as my book was going to press and too late to be embodied in their proper place in the volumes. The acceptance of this hypothesis would not necessarily break the analogy which I have traced between Balder in his sacred grove on the Sogne fiord of Norway and the priest of Diana in the sacred grove of Nemi; indeed, it might even be thought rather to strengthen the resemblance between the two, since there is no doubt at all that the priests of Diana at Nemi were men who lived real lives and died real deaths.

IV. The Mistletoe and the Golden Bough

Two species of mistletoe, the Viscum albumand the Loranthus europaeus. Common mistletoe (Viscum album).

That Virgil compares the Golden Bough to the mistletoe[777 - Virgil, Aen. vi. 205 sqq.: —“Quale solet silvis brumali frigore viscumFronde virere nova, quod non sua seminat arbos,Et croceo fetu teretis circumdare truncos:Talis erat species auri frondentis opacaIlice,sic leni crepitabat bractea vento.”] is certain and admitted on all hands. The only doubt that can arise is whether the plant to which he compares the mystic bough is the ordinary species of mistletoe (Viscum album) or the species known to botanists as Loranthus europaeus. The common mistletoe (Viscum album, L.) “lives as a semi-parasite (obtaining carbon from the air, but water, nitrogen, and mineral matter from the sap of its host) on many conifers and broadleaved trees, and chiefly on their branches. The hosts, or trees on which it lives, are, most frequently, the apple tree, both wild and cultivated varieties; next, the silver-fir; frequently, birches, poplars (except aspen), limes, willows, Scots pine, mountain-ash, and hawthorn; occasionally, robinia, maples, horse-chestnut, hornbeam, and aspen. It is very rarely found on oaks, but has been observed on pedunculate oak at Thornbury, Gloucestershire, and elsewhere in Europe, also on Quercus coccinea, Moench., and Q. palustris, Moench. The alders, beech and spruce appear to be always free from mistletoe, and it very rarely attacks pear-trees. It is commoner in Southern Europe than in the North, and is extremely abundant where cider is made. In the N. – W. Himalayan districts, it is frequently found on apricot-trees, which are the commonest fruit-trees there. Its white berries are eaten by birds, chiefly by the missel-thrush (Turdus viscivorus, L.), and the seeds are either rubbed by the beak against branches of trees, or voided on to them; the seeds, owing to the viscous nature of the pulp surrounding them, then become attached to the branches.”[778 - W. Schlich, Manual of Forestry, vol. iv. Forest Protection, by W. R. Fisher, M.A., Second Edition (London, 1907), p. 412. French peasants about Coulommiers think that mistletoe springs from birds' dung. See H. Gaidoz, “Bulletin critique de la Mythologie Gauloise,” Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, ii. (1880) p. 76. The ancients were well aware that mistletoe is propagated from tree to tree by seeds which have been voided by birds. See Theophrastus, De Causis Plantarum, ii. 17. 5; Pliny, Naturalis Historia, xvi. 247. Pliny tells us that the birds which most commonly deposited the seeds were pigeons and thrushes. Can this have been the reason why Virgil (Aen. vi. 190 sqq.) represents Aeneas led to the Golden Bough by a pair of doves?] The large smooth pale-green tufts of the parasite, clinging to the boughs of trees, are most conspicuous in winter, when they assume a yellowish hue.[779 - James Sowerby, English Botany, xxi. (London, 1805) p. 1470.] In Greece at the present time mistletoe grows most commonly on firs, especially at a considerable elevation (three thousand feet or more) above the level of the sea.[780 - C. Fraas, Synopsis Plantarum Florae Classicae (Munich, 1845), p. 152.] Throughout Italy mistletoe now grows on fruit-trees, almond-trees, hawthorn, limes, willows, black poplars, and firs, but never, it is said, on oaks.[781 - H. O. Lenz, Botanik der alten Griechen und Römer (Gotha, 1859), p. 597, quoting Pollini.] In England seven authentic cases of mistletoe growing on oaks are said to be reported.[782 - J. Lindley and T. Moore, The Treasury of Botany, New Edition (London, 1874), ii. 1220. A good authority, however, observes that mistletoe is “frequently to be observed on the branches of old apple-trees, hawthorns, lime-trees, oaks, etc., where it grows parasitically.” See J. Sowerby, English Botany, xxi. (London, 1805) p. 1470.] In Gloucestershire mistletoe grows on the Badham Court oak, Sedbury Park, Chepstow, and on the Frampton-on-Severn oak.[783 - Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, x. 689, s. v. “Gloucester.”] Branches of oak with mistletoe growing on them were exhibited to more than one learned society in France during the nineteenth century; one of the branches was cut in the forest of Jeugny.[784 - H. Gaidoz, “Bulletin critique de la Mythologie Gauloise,” Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, ii. (1880) pp. 75 sq.] It is a popular French superstition that mandragora or “the hand of glory,” as it is called by the people, may be found by digging at the root of a mistletoe-bearing oak.[785 - Angelo de Gubernatis, La Mythologie des Plantes (Paris, 1878-1882), ii. 216 sq. As to the many curious superstitions that have clustered round mandragora, see P. J. Veth, “De Mandragora,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, vii. (1894) pp. 199-205; C. B. Randolph, “The Mandragora of the Ancients in Folk-lore and Medicine,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. xl. No. 12 (January, 1905), pp. 487-537.]

Loranthus europaeus.

The species of mistletoe known as Loranthus europaeus resembles the ordinary mistletoe in general appearance, but its berries are bright yellow instead of white. “This species attacks chiefly oaks, Quercus cerris, L., Q. sessiliflora, Salisb., less frequently, Q. pedunculata, Ehrh., and Castanea vulgaris, Lam.; also lime. It is found throughout Southern Europe and as far north as Saxony, not in Britain. It grows chiefly on the branches of standards over coppice.” The injury which it inflicts on its hosts is even greater than that inflicted by the ordinary mistletoe; it often kills the branch on which it settles. The seeds are carried to the trees by birds, chiefly by the missel-thrush. In India many kinds of Loranthus grow on various species of forest trees, for example, on teak;[786 - W. Schlich, Manual of Forestry, vol. iv. Forest Protection, Second Edition (London, 1907), pp. 415-417.] one variety (Loranthus vestitus) grows on two species of oak, the Quercus dilatata, Lindl., and the Quercus incana, Roxb.[787 - E. B. Stebbing, “The Loranthus Parasite of the Moru and Ban Oaks,” Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, New Series, v. (Calcutta, 1910) pp. 189-195. The Loranthus vestitus “is a small branching woody plant with dirty yellowish green leaves which are dark shining green above. It grows in great clumps and masses on the trees, resembling a giant mistletoe. The fruit is yellowish and fleshy, and is almost sessile on the stem, which it thickly studs” (ib., p. 192). The writer shews that the parasite is very destructive to oaks in India.] A marked distinction between the two sorts of mistletoe is that whereas ordinary mistletoe (Viscum album) is evergreen, the Loranthus is deciduous.[788 - H. O. Lenz, Botanik der alten Griechen und Römer (Gotha, 1859), p. 598, notes 151 and 152.] In Greece the Loranthus has been observed on many old chestnut-trees at Stheni, near Delphi.[789 - C. Fraas, Synopsis Plantarum Florae Classicae (Munich, 1845), p. 152.] In Italy it grows chiefly on the various species of oaks and also on chestnut-trees. So familiar is it on oaks that it is known as “oak mistletoe” both in popular parlance (visco quercino) and in druggists' shops (viscum quernum). Bird-lime is made from it in Italy.[790 - H. O. Lenz, Botanik der alten Griechen und Römer (Gotha, 1859), pp. 599 sq.]

Both sorts of mistletoe known to the ancients and designated by different words.

Both sorts of mistletoe were known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, though the distinctive terms which they applied to each appear not to be quite certain. Theophrastus, and Pliny after him, seem to distinguish three sorts of mistletoe, to which Theophrastus gives the names of ixia, hyphear, and stelis respectively. He says that the hyphear and the stelis grow on firs and pines, and that the ixia grows on the oak (δρῦς), the terebinth, and many other kinds of trees. He also observes that both the ixia and the hyphear grow on the ilex or holm-oak (πρῖνος), the same tree sometimes bearing both species at the same time, the ixia on the north and the hyphear on the south. He expressly distinguishes the evergreen species of ixia from the deciduous, which seems to prove that he included both the ordinary mistletoe (Viscum album) and the Loranthus under the general name of ixia.[791 - Theophrastus, Historia Plantarum, iii. 7. 5, iii. 16. 1, De Causis Plantarum, ii. 17; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvi. 245-247. Compare Dioscorides, De materia medica, ii. 93 (103), vol. i. pp. 442 sq., ed. C. Sprengel (Leipsic, 1829-1830), who uses the form ixos instead of ixia. Both Dioscorides (l. c.) and Plutarch (Coriolanus, 3) affirm that mistletoe (ixos) grows on the oak (δρῦς); and Hesychius quotes from Sophocles's play Meleager the expression “mistletoe-bearing oaks” (ἰξοφόρους δρύας, Hesychius, s. v.).]

Doubts as to the identification of the ancient names for mistletoe.

Modern writers are not agreed as to the identification of the various species of mistletoe designated by the names ixia, hyphear, and stelis. F. Wimmer, the editor of Theophrastus in the Didot edition, takes hyphear to be common mistletoe (Viscum album), stelis to be Loranthus europaeus, and ixia to be a general name which includes the two species.[792 - Theophrastus, Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. Fr. Wimmer (Paris, 1866), pp. 537, 545, 546, s. vv. ἰξία, στελίς, ὑφέαρ.] On the other hand F. Fraas, while he agrees as to the identification of hyphear and stelis with common mistletoe and Loranthus respectively, inclines somewhat hesitatingly to regard ixia or ixos (as Dioscorides has it) as a synonym for stelis (the Loranthus).[793 - F. Fraas, Synopsis Plantarum Florae Classicae (Munich, 1845), p. 152.] H. O. Lenz, again, regards both hyphear and stelis as synonyms for common mistletoe (Viscum album), while he would restrict ixia to the Loranthus.[794 - H. O. Lenz, Botanik der alten Griechen und Römer (Gotha, 1859), p. 597, notes 147 and 148.] But both these attempts to confine ixia to the single deciduous species Loranthus seem incompatible with the statement of Theophrastus, that ixia includes an evergreen as well as a deciduous species.[795 - Theophrastus, De Causis Plantarum, ii. 17. 2, ἐπεὶ τό γε τὴν μὲν ἀείφυλλον εἶναι τῶν ἰξιῶν (τὴν δὲ φυλλοβόλον) οὐθὲν ἄτοπον, κἂν ἡ μὲν (ἐν) ἀιφύλλοις ἡ δὲ ἐν φυλλοβόλοις ἐμβιῴη.]

Did Virgil compare the Golden Bough to common mistletoe or to Loranthus? Some enquirers decide in favour of Loranthus.

We have now to ask, Did Virgil compare the Golden Bough to the common mistletoe (Viscum album) or to the Loranthus europaeus? Some modern enquirers decide in favour of the Loranthus. Many years ago Sir Francis Darwin wrote to me:[796 - His letter is undated, but the postmark is April 28th, 1889. Sir Francis Darwin has since told me that his authority is Kerner von Marilaun, Pflanzenleben (1888), vol. i. pp. 195, 196. See Anton Kerner von Marilaun, The Natural History of Plants, translated and edited by F. W. Oliver (London, 1894-1895), i. 204 sqq. According to this writer “the mistletoe's favourite tree is certainly the Black Poplar (Populus nigra). It flourishes with astonishing luxuriance on the branches of that tree… Mistletoe has also been found by way of exception upon the oak and the maple, and upon old vines” (op. cit. i. 205).] “I wonder whether Loranthus europaeus would do for your Golden Bough. It is a sort of mistletoe growing on oaks and chestnuts in S. Europe. In the autumn it produces what are described as bunches of pretty yellow berries. It is not evergreen like the mistletoe, but deciduous, and as its leaves appear at the same time as the oak leaves and drop at the same time in autumn, it must look like a branch of the oak, more especially as it has rough bark with lichens often growing on it. Loranthus is said to be a hundred years old sometimes.” Professor P. J. Veth, after quoting the passage from Virgil, writes that “almost all translators (including Vondel) and commentators of the Mantuan bard think that the mistletoe is here meant, probably for the simple reason that it was better known to them than Loranthus europaeus. I am convinced that Virgil can only have thought of the latter. On the other side of the Alps the Loranthus is much commoner than the mistletoe; on account of its splendid red blossoms, sometimes twenty centimetres long, it is a far larger and more conspicuous ornament of the trees; it bears really golden yellow fruit (Croceus fetus), whereas the berries of the mistletoe are almost white; and it attaches itself by preference to the oak, whereas the mistletoe is very seldom found on the oak.”[797 - Prof. P. J. Veth, “De leer der signatuur, III. De mistel en de riembloem,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, vii. (1894) p. 105. The Dutch language has separate names for the two species: mistletoe is mistel, and Loranthus is riembloem.] Again, Mr. W. R. Paton writes to me from Mount Athos:[798 - His letter is dated 18th February, 1908.] “The oak is here called dendron, the tree. As for the mistletoe there are two varieties, both called axo (ancient ἰξός). Both are used to make bird-lime. The real Golden Bough is the variety with yellow berries and no leaves. It is the parasite of the oak and rarely grows on other trees. It is very abundant, and now in winter the oak-trees which have adopted it seem from a distance to be draped in a golden tissue. The other variety is our own mistletoe and is strictly a parasite of the fir (a spruce fir, I don't know its scientific name). It is also very abundant.”

Reason for preferring common mistletoe. Perhaps Virgil confused the two species.

Thus in favour of identifying Virgil's mistletoe (viscum) with Loranthus rather than with common mistletoe it has been urged, first, that the berries of Loranthus are bright yellow, whereas those of the mistletoe are of a greenish white; and, second, that the Loranthus commonly grows on oaks, whereas mistletoe seldom does so, indeed in Italy mistletoe is said never to be found on an oak. Both these circumstances certainly speak strongly in favour of Loranthus; since Virgil definitely describes the berries as of a saffron-yellow (croceus) and says that the plant grew on a holm-oak. Yet on the other hand Virgil tells us that the plant put forth fresh leaves in the depths of winter (brumali frigore, strictly speaking, “the cold of the winter solstice”); and this would best apply to the common mistletoe, which is evergreen, whereas Loranthus is deciduous.[799 - But Sir Francis Darwin writes to me: – “I do not quite see why Loranthus should not put out leaves in winter as easily as Viscum, in both cases it would be due to unfolding leaf buds; the fact that Viscum has adult leaves at the time, while Loranthus has not, does not really affect the matter.” However, Mr. Paton tells us, as we have just seen, that in winter the Loranthus growing on the oaks of Mount Athos has no leaves, though its yellow berries are very conspicuous.] Accordingly, if we must decide between the two species, this single circumstance appears to incline the balance in favour of common mistletoe. But is it not possible that Virgil, whether consciously or unconsciously, confused the two plants and combined traits from both in his description? Both parasites are common in Italy and in appearance they are much alike except for the colour of the berries. As a loving observer of nature, Virgil was probably familiar by sight with both, but he may not have examined them closely; and he might be excused if he thought that the parasite which he saw growing, with its clusters of bright yellow berries, on oaks in winter, was identical with the similar parasite which he saw growing, with its bunches of greenish white berries and its pale green leaves, on many other trees of the forest. The confusion would be all the more natural if the Celts of northern Italy, in whose country the poet was born, resembled the modern Celts of Brittany in attaching bunches of the common mistletoe to their cottages and leaving them there till the revolving months had tinged the pale berries, leaves, and twigs with a golden yellow, thereby converting the branch of mistletoe into a true Golden Bough.

notes

1

Ch. E. Gover, “The Pongol Festival in Southern India,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, N.S., v. (1870) pp. 96 sq.