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

(Tübingen and Leipsic, 1903), i. 290 sqq.] But drowning men clutch at straws, and we need not wonder that the Greeks, like ourselves, with death before them and a great love of life in their hearts, should not have stopped to weigh with too nice a hand the arguments that told for and against the prospect of human immortality. The reasoning that satisfied Saint Paul[311 - 1 Corinthians xv. 35 sqq.] and has brought comfort to untold thousands of sorrowing Christians, standing by the deathbed or the open grave of their loved ones, was good enough to pass muster with ancient pagans, when they too bowed their heads under the burden of grief, and, with the taper of life burning low in the socket, looked forward into the darkness of the unknown. Therefore we do no indignity to the myth of Demeter and Persephone – one of the few myths in which the sunshine and clarity of the Greek genius are crossed by the shadow and mystery of death – when we trace its origin to some of the most familiar, yet eternally affecting aspects of nature, to the melancholy gloom and decay of autumn and to the freshness, the brightness, and the verdure of spring.

Chapter III. Magical Significance of Games in Primitive Agriculture

Games played as magical ceremonies to promote the growth of the crops. The Kayans of central Borneo, a primitive agricultural people. The sacred rice-fields (luma lali) on which all religious ceremonies requisite for agriculture are performed.

In the preceding chapter we saw that among the rites of Eleusis were comprised certain athletic sports, such as foot-races, horse-races, leaping, wrestling, and boxing, the victors in which were rewarded with measures of barley distributed among them by the priests.[312 - See above, p. 71 (#x_10_i1), with the footnote 5.] These sports the ancients themselves associated with the worship of Demeter and Persephone, the goddesses of the corn, and strange as such an association may seem to us, it is not without its analogy among the harvest customs of modern European peasantry.[313 - See above, pp. 74 (#x_10_i3)sqq.] But to discover clear cases of games practised for the express purpose of promoting the growth of the crops, we must turn to more primitive agricultural communities than the Athenians of classical antiquity or the peoples of modern Europe. Such communities may be found at the present day among the savage tribes of Borneo and New Guinea, who subsist mainly by tilling the ground. Among them we take the Kayans or Bahaus of central Borneo as typical. They are essentially an agricultural people, and devote themselves mainly to the cultivation of rice, which furnishes their staple food; all other products of the ground are of subordinate importance. Hence agriculture, we are told, dominates the whole life of these tribes: their year is the year of the cultivation of the rice, and they divide it into various periods which are determined by the conditions necessary for the tilling of the fields and the manipulation of the rice. “In tribes whose thoughts are so much engrossed by agriculture it is no wonder that they associate with it their ideas of the powers which rule them for good or evil. The spirit-world stands in close connexion with the agriculture of the Bahaus; without the consent of the spirits no work in the fields may be undertaken. Moreover, all the great popular festivals coincide with the different periods of the cultivation of the rice. As the people are in an unusual state of affluence after harvest, all family festivals which require a large outlay are for practical reasons deferred till the New Year festival at the end of harvest. The two mighty spirits Amei Awi and his wife Buring Une, who, according to the belief of the Kayans, live in a world under ground, dominate the whole of the tillage and determine the issue of the harvest in great measure by the behaviour of the owner of the land, not so much by his moral conduct, as by the offerings he has made to the spirits and the attention he has paid to their warnings. An important part in agriculture falls to the chief: at the festivals he has, in the name of the whole tribe, to see to it that the prescribed conjurations are carried out by the priestesses. All religious ceremonies required for the cultivation of the ground take place in a small rice-field specially set apart for that purpose, called luma lali: here the chief's family ushers in every fresh operation in the cultivation of the rice, such as sowing, hoeing, and reaping: the solemn actions there performed have a symbolical significance.”[314 - A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch Borneo (Leyden, 1904-1907), i. 156 sq.]

Ceremonies observed at the sowing festival. Taboos observed at the sowing festival.

Not only the chief's family among the Kayans has such a consecrated field; every family possesses one of its own. These little fields are never cultivated for the sake of their produce: they serve only as the scene of religious ceremonies and of those symbolical operations of agriculture which are afterwards performed in earnest on the real rice-fields.[315 - A. W. Nieuwenhuis, op. cit. i. 164.] For example, at the festival before sowing a priestess sows some rice on the consecrated field of the chief's family and then calls on a number of young men and girls to complete the work; the young men then dig holes in the ground with digging-sticks, and the girls come behind them and plant the rice-seed in the holes. Afterwards the priestesses lay offerings of food, wrapt in banana-leaves, here and there on the holy field, while they croon prayers to the spirits in soft tones, which are half drowned in the clashing music of the gongs. On another day women gather all kinds of edible leaves in their gardens and fields, boil them in water, and then sprinkle the water on the consecrated rice-field. But on that and other days of the festival the people attend also to their own wants, banqueting on a favourite species of rice and other dainties. The ceremonies connected with sowing last several weeks, and during this time certain taboos have to be observed by the people. Thus on the first day of the festival the whole population, except the very old and the very young, must refrain from bathing; after that there follows a period of rest for eight nights, during which the people may neither work nor hold intercourse with their neighbours. On the tenth day the prohibition to bathe is again enforced; and during the eight following days the great rice-field of the village, where the real crops are raised, is sowed.[316 - A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch Borneo, i. 164-167.] The reason for excluding strangers from the village at these times is a religious one. It is a fear lest the presence of strangers might frighten the spirits or put them in a bad humour, and so defeat the object of the ceremony; for, while the religious ceremonies which accompany the cultivation of the rice differ somewhat from each other in different tribes, the ideas at the bottom of them, we are told, are everywhere the same: the aim always is to appease and propitiate the souls of the rice and the other spirits by sacrifices of all sorts.[317 - A. W. Nieuwenhuis, op. cit. i. 163. The motive assigned for the exclusion of strangers at the sowing festival applies equally to all religious rites. “In all religious observances,” says Dr. Nieuwenhuis, “the Kayans fear the presence of strangers, because these latter might frighten and annoy the spirits which are invoked.” On the periods of seclusion and quiet observed in connexion with agriculture by the Kayans of Sarawak, see W. H. Furness, Home-life of Borneo Head-hunters (Philadelphia, 1902), pp. 160 sqq.]

Games played at the sowing festival. Masquerade at the sowing festival.

However, during this obligatory period of seclusion and rest the Kayans employ themselves in various pursuits, which, though at first sight they might seem to serve no other purpose than that of recreation, have really in the minds of the people a much deeper significance. For example, at this time the men often play at spinning tops. The tops are smooth, flat pieces of wood weighing several pounds. Each man tries to spin his own top so that it knocks down those of his neighbours and continues itself to revolve triumphantly. New tops are commonly carved for the festival. The older men sometimes use heavy tops of iron-wood. Again, every evening the young men assemble in the open space before the chief's house and engage in contests of strength and agility, while the women watch them from the long gallery or verandah of the house. Another popular pastime during the festival of sowing is a masquerade. It takes place on the evening of the tenth day, the day on which, for the second time, the people are forbidden to bathe. The scene of the performance is again the open space in front of the chief's house. As the day draws towards evening, the villagers begin to assemble in the gallery or verandah of the house in order to secure good places for viewing the masquerade. All the maskers at these ceremonies represent evil spirits. The men wear ugly wooden masks on their faces, and their bodies are swathed in masses of slit banana leaves so as to imitate the hideous faces and hairy bodies of the demons. The young women wear on their heads cylindrical baskets, which conceal their real features, while they exhibit to the spectators grotesque human faces formed by stitches on pieces of white cotton, which are fastened to the baskets. On the occasion when Dr. Nieuwenhuis witnessed the ceremony, the first to appear on the scene were some men wearing wooden masks and helmets and so thickly wrapt in banana leaves that they looked like moving masses of green foliage. They danced silently, keeping time to the beat of the gongs. They were followed by other figures, some of whom executed war-dances; but the weight of their leafy envelope was such that they soon grew tired, and though they leaped high, they uttered none of the wild war-whoops which usually accompany these martial exercises. When darkness fell, the dances ceased and were replaced by a little drama representing a boar brought to bay by a pack of hounds. The part of the boar was played by an actor wearing a wooden boar's head mask, who ran about on all fours and grunted in a life-like manner, while the hounds, acted by young men, snarled, yelped, and made dashes at him. The play was watched with lively interest and peals of laughter by the spectators. Later in the evening eight disguised girls danced, one behind the other, with slow steps and waving arms, to the glimmering light of torches and the strains of a sort of jew's harp.[318 - A. W. Nieuwenhuis, op. cit. i. 167-169.]

Rites at hoeing.

The rites which accompany the sowing of the fields are no sooner over than those which usher in the hoeing begin. Like the sowing ceremonies, they are inaugurated by a priestess, who hoes the sacred field round about a sacrificial stage and then calls upon other people to complete the work. After that the holy field is again sprinkled with a decoction of herbs.[319 - A. W. Nieuwenhuis, op. cit. i. 169.]

The Kayan New Year festival. Offerings and addresses to the spirits. Sacrifice of pigs.

But the crowning point of the Kayan year is the New Year festival. The harvest has then been fully housed: abundance reigns in every family, and for eight days the people, dressed out in all their finery, give themselves up to mirth and jollity. The festival was witnessed by the Dutch explorer Dr. Nieuwenhuis. To lure the good spirits from the spirit land baskets filled with precious objects were set out before the windows, and the priestesses made long speeches, in which they invited these beneficent beings to come to the chief's house and to stay there during the whole of the ceremonies. Two days afterwards one of the priestesses harangued the spirits for three-quarters of an hour, telling them who the Kayans were, from whom the chief's family was descended, what the tribe was doing, and what were its wishes, not forgetting to implore the vengeance of the spirits on the Batang-Lupars, the hereditary foes of the Kayans. The harangue was couched in rhyming verse and delivered in sing-song tones. Five days later eight priestesses ascended a sacrificial stage, on which food was daily set forth for the spirits. There they joined hands and crooned another long address to the spirits, marking the time with their hands. Then a basket containing offerings of food was handed up to them, and one of the priestesses opened it and invited the spirits to enter the basket. When they were supposed to have done so, the lid was shut down on them, and the basket with the spirits in it was conveyed into the chief's house. As the priestesses in the performance of the sacred ceremonies might not touch the ground, planks were cut from a fruit-tree and laid on the ground for them to step on. But the great feature of the New Year festival is the sacrifice of pigs, of which the spiritual essence is appropriately offered to the spirits, while their material substance is consumed by the worshippers. In carrying out this highly satisfactory arrangement, while the live pigs lay tethered in a row on the ground, the priestesses danced solemnly round a sacrificial stage, each of them arrayed in a war-mantle of panther-skin and wearing a war-cap on her head, and on either side two priests armed with swords executed war dances for the purpose of scaring away evil spirits. By their gesticulations the priestesses indicated to the powers above that the pigs were intended for their benefit. One of them, a fat but dignified lady, dancing composedly, seemed by her courteous gestures to invite the souls of the pigs to ascend up to heaven; but others, not content with this too ideal offering, rushed at the pigs, seized the smallest of them by the hind legs, and exerting all their strength danced with the squealing porker to and from the sacrificial stage. In the evening, before darkness fell, the animals were slaughtered and their livers examined for omens: if the under side of the liver was pale, the omen was good; but if it was dark, the omen was evil. On the last day of the festival one of the chief priestesses, in martial array, danced round the sacrificial stage, making passes with her old sword as if she would heave the whole structure heavenward; while others stabbed with spears at the foul fiends that might be hovering in the air, intent on disturbing the sacred ministers at their holy work.[320 - A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch Borneo, i. 171-182.]

Dr. Nieuwenhuis on the games played by the Kayans in connexion with agriculture.

“Thus,” says Dr. Nieuwenhuis, reviewing the agricultural rites which he witnessed among the Kayans on the Mendalam river, “every fresh operation on the rice-field was ushered in by religious and culinary ceremonies, during which the community had always to observe taboos for several nights and to play certain definite games. As we saw, spinning-top games and masquerades were played during the sowing festival: at the first bringing in of the rice the people pelted each other with clay pellets discharged from small pea-shooters, but in former times sham fights took place with wooden swords; while during the New Year festival the men contend with each other in wrestling, high leaps, long leaps, and running. The women also fight each other with great glee, using bamboo vessels full of water for their principal weapons.”[321 - A. W. Nieuwenhuis, op. cit. i. 169 sq.]

Serious religious or magical significance of the games.

What is the meaning of the sports and pastimes which custom prescribes to the Kayans on these occasions? Are they mere diversions meant to while away the tedium of the holidays? or have they a serious, perhaps a religious or magical significance? To this question it will be well to let Dr. Nieuwenhuis give his answer. “The Kayans on the Mendalam river,” he says, “enjoy tolerably regular harvests, and their agricultural festivals accordingly take place every year; whereas the Kayans on the Mahakam river, on account of the frequent failure of the harvests, can celebrate a New Year's festival only once in every two or three years. Yet although these festivities are celebrated more regularly on the Mendalam river, they are followed on the Mahakam river with livelier interest, and the meaning of all ceremonies and games can also be traced much better there. On the Mendalam river I came to the false conclusion that the popular games which take place at the festivals are undertaken quite arbitrarily at the seasons of sowing and harvest; but on the Mahakam river, on the contrary, I observed that even the masquerade at the sowing festival is invested with as deep a significance as any of the ceremonies performed by the priestesses.”[322 - A. W. Nieuwenhuis, op. cit. i. 163 sq.]

“The influence of religious worship, which dominates the whole life of the Dyak tribes, manifests itself also in their games. This holds good chiefly of pastimes in which all adults take part together, mostly on definite occasions; it is less applicable to more individual pastimes which are not restricted to any special season. Pastimes of the former sort are very rarely indulged in at ordinary times, and properly speaking they attain their full significance only on the occasion of the agricultural festivals which bear a strictly religious stamp. Even then the recreations are not left to choice, but definite games belong to definite festivals; thus at the sowing festivals other amusements are in vogue than at the little harvest festival or the great harvest festival at the beginning of the reaping, and at the New Year festival… Is this connexion between festivals and games merely an accidental one, or is it based on a real affinity? The latter seems to me the more probable view, for in the case of one of the most important games played by men I was able to prove directly a religious significance; and although I failed to do so in the case of the others, I conjecture, nevertheless, that a religious idea lies at the bottom of all other games which are connected with definite festivals.”[323 - A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch Borneo, ii. 130 sq. The game as to the religious significance of which Dr. Nieuwenhuis has no doubt is the masquerade performed by the Kayans of the Mahakam river, where disguised men personate spirits and pretend to draw home the souls of the rice from the far countries to which they may have wandered. See below, pp. 186 sq.]

The Kai, an agricultural people of German New Guinea. Superstitious practices observed by the Kai for the good of the crops.

If the reader should entertain any doubt on the subject, and should suspect that in arriving at this conclusion the Dutch traveller gave the reins to his fancy rather than followed the real opinion of the people, these doubts and suspicions will probably be dispelled by comparing the similar games which another primitive agricultural people avowedly play for the purpose of ensuring good crops. The people in question are the Kai of German New Guinea, who inhabit the rugged, densely wooded mountains inland from Finsch Harbour. They subsist mainly on the produce of the taro and yams which they cultivate in their fields, though the more inland people also make much use of sweet potatoes. All their crops are root crops. No patch of ground is cultivated for more than a year at a time. As soon as it has yielded a crop, it is deserted for another and is quickly overgrown with rank weeds, bamboos, and bushes. In six or eight years, when the undergrowth has died out under the shadow of the taller trees which have shot up, the land may again be cleared and brought under cultivation. Thus the area of cultivation shifts from year to year; and the villages are not much more permanent; for in the damp tropical climate the wooden houses soon rot and fall into ruins, and when this happens the site of the village is changed.[324 - Ch. Keysser, “Aus dem Leben der Kaileute,” in R. Neuhauss, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. (Berlin, 1911) pp. 3, 9 sq., 12 sq.] To procure good crops of the taro and yams, on which they depend for their subsistence, the Kai resort to many superstitious practices. For example, in order to make the yams strike deep roots, they touch the shoots with the bone of a wild animal that has been killed in the recesses of a cave, imagining that just as the creature penetrated deep into the earth, so the shoots that have been touched with its bone will descend deep into the ground. And in order that the taro may bear large and heavy fruit, they place the shoots, before planting them, on a large and heavy block of stone, believing that the stone will communicate its valuable properties of size and weight to the future fruit. Moreover, great use is made of spells and incantations to promote the growth of the crops, and all persons who utter such magical formulas for this purpose have to abstain from eating certain foods until the plants have sprouted and give promise of a good crop. For example, they may not eat young bamboo shoots, which are a favourite article of diet with the people. The reason is that the young shoots are covered with fine prickles, which cause itching and irritation of the skin; from which the Kai infer that if an enchanter of field fruits were to eat bamboo shoots, the contagion of their prickles would be conveyed through him to the fruits and would manifest itself in a pungent disagreeable flavour. For a similar reason no charmer of the crops who knows his business would dream of eating crabs, because he is well aware that if he were to do so the leaves and stalks of the plants would be dashed in pieces by a pelting rain, just like the long thin brittle legs of a dead crab. Again, were such an enchanter to eat any of the edible kinds of locusts, it seems obvious to the Kai that locusts would devour the crops over which the imprudent wizard had recited his spells. Above all, people who are concerned in planting fields must on no account eat pork; because pigs, whether wild or tame, are the most deadly enemies of the crops, which they grub up and destroy; from which it follows, as surely as the night does the day, that if you eat pork while you are at work on the farm, your fields will be devastated by inroads of pigs.[325 - Ch. Keysser, op. cit. pp. 123-125.]

Games played by the Kai people to promote the growth of the yams and taro. Tales and legends told by the Kai to cause the fruits of the earth to thrive.

However, these precautions are not the only measures which the Kai people adopt for the benefit of the yams and the taro. “In the opinion of the natives various games are important for a proper growth of the field-fruits; hence these games may only be played in the time after the work on the fields has been done. Thus to swing on a long Spanish reed fastened to a branch of a tree is thought to have a good effect on the newly planted yams. Therefore swinging is practised by old and young, by men and women. No one who has an interest in the growth of his crop in the field leaves the swing idle. As they swing to and fro they sing swing-songs. These songs often contain only the names of the kinds of yams that have been planted, together with the joyous harvest-cry repeated with variations, ‘I have found a fine fruit!’ In leaping from the swing, they cry ‘Kakulili!’ By calling out the name of the yams they think to draw their shoots upwards out of the ground. A small bow with a string, on which a wooden flag adorned with a feather is made to slide down (the Kai call the instrument tawatawa), may only be used when the yams are beginning to wind up about their props. The tender shoots are then touched with the bow, while a song is sung which is afterwards often repeated in the village. It runs thus: ‘Mama gelo, gelowaineja, gelowaineja; kikí tambai, kíki tambai.’ The meaning of the words is unknown. The intention is to cause a strong upward growth of the plants. In order that the foliage of the yams may sprout luxuriantly and grow green and spread, the Kai people play cat's cradle. Each of the intricate figures has a definite meaning and a name to match: for example ‘the flock of pigeons’ (Hulua), ‘the Star,’ ‘the Flying Fox,’ ‘the Sago-palm Fan,’ ‘the Araucaria,’ ‘the Lizard and the Dog,’ ‘the Pig,’ ‘the Sentinel-box in the Fields,’ ‘the Rat's Nest,’ ‘the Wasp's Nest in the Bamboo-thicket,’ ‘the Kangaroo,’ ‘the Spider's Web,’ ‘the Little Children,’ ‘the Canoe,’ ‘Rain and Sunshine,’ ‘the Pig's Pitfall,’ ‘the Fish-spawn,’ ‘the Two Cousins, Kewâ and Imbiâwâ, carrying their dead Mother to the Grave,’ etc. By spinning large native acorns or a sort of wild fig they think that they foster the growth of the newly-planted taro; the plants will ‘turn about and broaden.’ The game must therefore only be played at the time when the taro is planted. The same holds good of spearing at the stalks of taro leaves with the ribs of sago leaves used as miniature spears. This is done when the taro leaves have unfolded themselves, but when the plants have not yet set any tubers. A single leaf is cut from a number of stems, and these leaves are brought into the village. The game is played by two partners, who sit down opposite to each other at a distance of three or four paces. A number of taro stalks lie beside each. He who has speared all his adversary's stalks first is victor; then they change stalks and the game begins again. By piercing the leaves they think that they incite the plants to set tubers. Almost more remarkable than the limitation of these games to the time when work on the fields is going forward is the custom of the Kai people which only permits the tales of the olden time or popular legends to be told at the time when the newly planted fruits are budding and sprouting.”[326 - Ch. Keysser, op. cit. iii. 125 sq.] At the end of every such tale the Kai story-teller mentions the names of the various kinds of yams and adds, “Shoots (for the new planting) and fruits (to eat) in abundance!” “From their concluding words we see that the Kai legends are only told for a quite definite purpose, namely, to promote the welfare of the yams planted in the field. By reviving the memory of the ancient beings, to whom the origin of the field-fruits is referred, they imagine that they influence the growth of the fruits for good. When the planting is over, and especially when the young plants begin to sprout, the telling of legends comes to an end. In the villages it is always only a few old men who as good story-tellers can hold the attention of their hearers.”[327 - Ch. Keysser, op. cit. iii. 161.]

Thus among these New Guinea people games are played and stories told as charms to ensure good crops.

Thus with these New Guinea people the playing of certain games and the recital of certain legends are alike magical in their intention; they are charms practised to ensure good crops. Both sets of charms appear to be based on the principles of sympathetic magic. In playing the games the players perform acts which are supposed to mimic or at all events to stimulate the corresponding processes in the plants: by swinging high in the air they make the plants grow high; by playing cat's cradle they cause the leaves of the yams to spread and the stalks to intertwine, even as the players spread their hands and twine the string about their fingers; by spinning fruits they make the taro plants to turn and broaden; and by spearing the taro leaves they induce the plants to set tubers.[328 - On the principles of homoeopathic or imitative magic, see The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, i. 52 sqq. The Esquimaux play cat's cradle as a charm to catch the sun in the meshes of the string and so prevent him from sinking below the horizon in winter. See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, i. 316 sq. Cat's cradle is played as a game by savages in many parts of the world, including the Torres Straits Islands, the Andaman Islands, Africa, and America. See A. C. Haddon, The Study of Man (London and New York, 1898), pp. 224-232; Miss Kathleen Haddon, Cat's Cradles from Many Lands (London, 1911). For example, the Indians of North-western Brazil play many games of cat's cradle, each of which has its special name, such as the Bow, the Moon, the Pleiades, the Armadillo, the Spider, the Caterpillar, and the Guts of the Tapir. See Th. Koch-Grünberg, Zwei Jahre unter den Indianern (Berlin, 1909-1910), i. 120, 123, 252, 253, ii. 127, 131. Finding the game played as a magical rite to stay the sun or promote the growth of the crops among peoples so distant from each other as the Esquimaux and the natives of New Guinea, we may reasonably surmise that it has been put to similar uses by many other peoples, though civilised observers have commonly seen in it nothing more than a pastime. Probably many games have thus originated in magical rites. When their old serious meaning was forgotten, they continued to be practised simply for the amusement they afforded the players. Another such game seems to be the “Tug of War.” See The Golden Bough,

iii. 95.] In telling the legends the story-tellers mention the names of the powerful beings who first created the fruits of the earth, and the mere mention of their names avails, on the principle of the magical equivalence of names and persons or things, to reproduce the effect.[329 - See Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, pp. 318 sqq.] The recitation of tales as a charm to promote the growth of the crops is not peculiar to the Kai. It is practised also by the Bakaua, another tribe of German New Guinea, who inhabit the coast of Huon Gulf, not far from the Kai. These people tell stories in the evening at the time when the yams and taro are ripe, and the stories always end with a prayer to the ancestral spirits, invoked under various more or less figurative designations, such as “a man” or “a cricket,” that they would be pleased to cause countless shoots to sprout, the great tubers to swell, the sugar-cane to thrive, and the bananas to hang in long clusters. “From this we see,” says the missionary who reports the custom, “that the object of telling the stories is to prove to the ancestors, whose spirits are believed to be present at the recitation of the tales which they either invented or inherited, that people always remember them; for which reason they ought to be favourable to their descendants, and above all to bestow their blessings on the shoots which are ready to be planted or on the plants already in the ground.” As the story-teller utters the prayer, he looks towards the house in which the young shoots ready for planting or the ripe fruits are deposited.[330 - Stefan Lehner, "Bukaua," in R. Neuhauss, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. (Berlin, 1911) pp. 478 sq.]

The Yabim of German New Guinea also tell tales on purpose to obtain abundant crops.

Similarly, the Yabim, a neighbouring tribe of German New Guinea, at the entrance to Huon Gulf, tell tales for the purpose of obtaining a plentiful harvest of yams, taro, sugar-cane, and bananas.[331 - See Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, p. 386.] They subsist chiefly by the fruits of the earth which they cultivate, and among which taro, yams, and sugar-cane supply them with their staple food.[332 - H. Zahn, “Die Jabim,” in R. Neuhauss, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. (Berlin, 1911) p. 290.] In their agricultural labours they believe themselves to be largely dependent on the spirits of their dead, the balum, as they call them. Before they plant the first taro in a newly cleared field they invoke the souls of the dead to make the plants grow and prosper; and to propitiate these powerful spirits they bring valuable objects, such as boar's tusks and dog's teeth, into the field, in order that the ghosts may deck themselves with the souls of these ornaments, while at the same time they minister to the grosser appetites of the disembodied spirits by offering them a savoury mess of taro porridge. Later in the season they whirl bull-roarers in the fields and call out the names of the dead, believing that this makes the crops to thrive.[333 - H. Zahn, op. cit. pp. 332 sq.]

Specimens of Yabim tales told as charms to procure a good harvest. Such tales may be called narrative spells.

But besides the prayers which they address to the spirits of the dead for the sake of procuring an abundant harvest, the Yabim utter spells for the same purpose, and these spells sometimes take the form, not of a command, but of a narrative. Here, for instance, is one of their spells: “Once upon a time a man laboured in his field and complained that he had no taro shoots. Then came two doves flying from Poum. They had devoured much taro, and they perched on a tree in the field, and during the night they vomited all the taro up. Thus the man got so many taro shoots that he was even able to sell some of them to other people.” Or, again, if the taro will not bud, the Yabim will have recourse to the following spell: “A muraena lay at ebb-tide on the shore. It seemed to be at its last gasp. Then the tide flowed on, and the muraena came to life again and plunged into the deep water.” This spell is pronounced over twigs of a certain tree (kalelong), while the enchanter smites the ground with them. After that the taro is sure to bud.[334 - H. Zahn, op. cit. p. 333.] Apparently the mere recitation of such simple tales is thought to produce the same effect as a direct appeal, whether in the shape of a prayer or a command, addressed to the spirits. Such incantations may be called narrative spells to distinguish them from the more familiar imperative spells, in which the enchanter expresses his wishes in the form of direct commands. Much use seems to be made of such narrative spells among the natives of this part of German New Guinea. For example, among the Bukaua, who attribute practically boundless powers to sorcerers in every department of life and nature, the spells by which these wizards attempt to work their will assume one of two forms: either they are requests made to the ancestors, or they are short narratives, addressed to nobody in particular, which the sorcerer mutters while he is performing his magical rites.[335 - Stefan Lehner, “Bukaua,” in R. Neuhauss, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. (Berlin, 1911) p. 448.] It is true, that here the distinction is drawn between narratives and requests rather than between narratives and commands; but the difference of a request from a command, though great in theory, may be very slight in practice; so that prayer and spell, in the ordinary sense of the words, may melt into each other almost imperceptibly. Even the priest or the enchanter who utters the one may be hardly conscious of the hairbreadth that divides it from the other. In regard to narrative spells, it seems probable that they have been used much more extensively among mankind than the evidence at our disposal permits us positively to affirm; in particular we may conjecture that many ancient narratives, which we have been accustomed to treat as mere myths, used to be regularly recited in magical rites as spells for the purpose of actually producing events like those which they describe.

Use of the bull-roarer to quicken the fruits of the earth.

The use of the bull-roarer to quicken the fruits of the earth is not peculiar to the Yabim. On the other side of New Guinea the instrument is employed for the same purpose by the natives of Kiwai, an island at the mouth of the Fly River. They think that by whirling bull-roarers they produce good crops of yams, sweet potatoes, and bananas; and in accordance with this belief they call the implement “the mother of yams.”[336 - A. C. Haddon, in Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, v. (Cambridge, 1904) pp. 218, 219. Compare id., Head-hunters, Black, White, and Brown (London, 1901) p. 104.] Similarly in Mabuiag, an island in Torres Straits, the bull-roarer is looked upon as an instrument that can be used to promote the growth of garden produce, such as yams and sweet potatoes; certain spirits were supposed to march round the gardens at night swinging bull-roarers for this purpose.[337 - A. C. Haddon, in Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, v. (Cambridge, 1904) pp. 346 sq.] Indeed a fertilising or prolific virtue appears to be attributed to the instrument by savages who are totally ignorant of agriculture. Thus among the Dieri of central Australia, when a young man had undergone the painful initiatory ceremony of having a number of gashes cut in his back, he used to be given a bull-roarer, whereupon it was believed that he became inspired by the spirits of the men of old, and that by whirling it, when he went in search of game before his wounds were healed, he had power to cause a good harvest of lizards, snakes, and other reptiles. On the other hand, the Dieri thought that if a woman were to see a bull-roarer that had been used at the initiatory ceremonies and to learn its secret, the tribe would ever afterwards be destitute of snakes, lizards, and other such food.[338 - A. W. Howitt, “The Dieri and other kindred Tribes of Central Australia,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xx. (1891) p. 83; id., Native Tribes of South-East Australia (London, 1904), p. 660. The first, I believe, to point out the fertilising power ascribed to the bull-roarer by some savages was Dr. A. C. Haddon. See his essay, “The Bull-roarer,” in The Study of Man (London and New York, 1898), pp. 277-327. In this work Dr. Haddon recognises the general principle of the possible derivation of many games from magical rites. As to the bull-roarer compare my paper “On some Ceremonies of the Central Australian Tribes,” in the Report of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science for the year 1900 (Melbourne, 1901), pp. 313-322.] It may very well be that a similar power to fertilise or multiply edible plants and animals has been ascribed to the bull-roarer by many other peoples who employ the implement in their mysteries.

Swinging as an agricultural charm.

Further, it is to be observed that just as the Kai of New Guinea swing to and fro on reeds suspended from the branches of trees in order to promote the growth of the crops, in like manner Lettish peasants in Russia devote their leisure to swinging in spring and early summer for the express purpose of making the flax grow as high as they swing in the air.[339 - J. G. Kohl, Die deutsch-russischen Ostseeprovinzen (Dresden and Leipsic, 1841), ii. 25.] And we may suspect that wherever swinging is practised as a ceremony at certain times of the year, particularly in spring and at harvest, the pastime is not so much a mere popular recreation as a magical rite designed to promote the growth of the crops.[340 - For the evidence see The Dying God, pp. 277-285.]

With these examples before us we need not hesitate to believe that Dr. Nieuwenhuis is right when he attributes a deep religious or magical significance to the games which the Kayans or Bahaus of central Borneo play at their various agricultural festivals.

Analogy of the Kayans of Borneo to the Greeks of Eleusis in the early time. The Sacred Ploughing at Eleusis.

It remains to point out how far the religious or magical practices of these primitive agricultural peoples of Borneo and New Guinea appear to illustrate by analogy the original nature of the rites of Eleusis. So far as we can recompose, from the broken fragments of tradition, a picture of the religious and political condition of the Eleusinian people in the olden time, it appears to tally fairly well with the picture which Dr. Nieuwenhuis has drawn for us of the Kayans or Bahaus at the present day in the forests of central Borneo. Here as there we see a petty agricultural community ruled by hereditary chiefs who, while they unite religious to civil authority, being bound to preside over the numerous ceremonies performed for the good of the crops,[341 - On the Kayan chiefs and their religious duties, see A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch Borneo, i. 58-60.] nevertheless lead simple patriarchal lives and are so little raised in outward dignity above their fellows that their daughters do not deem it beneath them to fetch water for the household from the village well.[342 - See above, p. 36 (#x_8_i5).] Here as there we see a people whose whole religion is dominated and coloured by the main occupation of their lives; who believe that the growth of the crops, on which they depend for their subsistence, is at the mercy of two powerful spirits, a divine husband and his wife, dwelling in a subterranean world; and who accordingly offer sacrifices and perform ceremonies in order to ensure the favour of these mighty beings and so to obtain abundant harvests. If we knew more about the Rarian plain at Eleusis,[343 - See above, p. 74 (#x_10_i3).] we might discover that it was the scene of many religious ceremonies like those which are performed on the little consecrated rice-fields (the luma lali) of the Kayans, where the various operations of the agricultural year are performed in miniature by members of the chief's family before the corresponding operations may be performed on a larger scale by common folk on their fields. Certainly we know that the Rarian plain witnessed one such ceremony in the year. It was a solemn ceremony of ploughing, one of the three Sacred Ploughings which took place annually in various parts of Attica.[344 - Plutarch, Praecepta Conjugalia, 42. Another of these Sacred Ploughings was performed at Scirum, and the third at the foot of the Acropolis at Athens; for in this passage of Plutarch we must, with the latest editor, read ὑπὸ πόλιν for the ὑπὸ πέλιν of the manuscripts.] Probably the rite formed part of the Proerosia or Festival before Ploughing, which was intended to ensure a plentiful crop.[345 - See above, pp. 50 (#x_8_i27)sqq.] Further, it appears that the priests who guided the sacred slow-paced oxen as they dragged the plough down the furrows of the Rarian Plain, were drawn from the old priestly family of Bouzygai or “Ox-yokers,” whose eponymous ancestor is said to have been the first man to yoke oxen and to plough the fields. As they performed this time-honoured ceremony, the priests uttered many quaint curses against all churls who should refuse to lend fire or water to neighbours, or to shew the way to wanderers, or who should leave a corpse unburied.[346 - Etymologicum Magnum, s. v. Βουζυγία, p. 206, lines 47 sqq.; Im. Bekker, Anecdota Graeca (Berlin, 1814-1821), i. 221; Pliny, Nat. Hist. vii. 199; Hesychius, s. v. Βουζύγης; καθίστατο δὲ παρ᾽ αὐτοῖς καὶ ὁ τοὺς ἱεροὺς ἀρότους ἐπιτελῶν Βουζύγης; Paroemiographi Graeci, ed. E. L. Leutsch und F. G. Schneidewin (Göttingen, 1839-1851), i. 388, Βουζύγης; ἐπὶ τῶν πολλὰ ἀρωμένων. Ὁ γὰρ Βουζύγης Ἀθήνησιν ὁ τὸν ἱερὸν ἄροτον ἐπιτελῶν … ἄλλα τε πολλὰ ἀρᾶται καὶ τοῖς μὴ κοινωνοῦσι κατὰ τὸν Βίον ὕδατος ἢ πυρὸς ἢ μὴ ὑποφαίνουσιν ὁδὸν πλανωμένοις; Scholiast on Sophocles, Antigone, 255, λόγος δὲ ὅτι Βουζύγης Ἀθήνησι κατηράσατο τοῖς περιορῶσιν ἄταφον σῶμα. The Sacred Ploughing at the foot of the Acropolis was specially called bouzygios (Plutarch, Praecepta Conjugalia, 42). Compare J. Toepffer, Attische Genealogie (Berlin, 1889) pp. 136 sqq.] If we had a complete list of the execrations fulminated by the holy ploughmen on these occasions, we might find that some of them were levelled at the impious wretches who failed to keep all the rules of the Sabbath, as we may call those periods of enforced rest and seclusion which the Kayans of Borneo and other primitive agricultural peoples observe for the good of the crops.[347 - Such Sabbaths are very commonly and very strictly observed in connexion with the crops by the agricultural hill tribes of Assam. The native name for such a Sabbath is genna. See T. C. Hodson, “The Genna amongst the Tribes of Assam,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxvi. (1906) pp. 94 sq.: “Communal tabus are observed by the whole village… Those which are of regular occurrence are for the most part connected with the crops. Even where irrigated terraces are made, the rice plant is much affected by deficiencies of rain and excess of sun. Before the crop is sown, the village is tabu or genna. The gates are closed and the friend without has to stay outside, while the stranger that is within the gates remains till all is ended. The festival is marked among some tribes by an outburst of licentiousness, for, so long as the crops remain ungarnered, the slightest incontinence might ruin all. An omen of the prosperity of the crops is taken by a mock contest, the girls pulling against the men. In some villages the gennas last for ten days, but the tenth day is the crowning day of all. The men cook, and eat apart from the women during this time, and the food tabus are strictly enforced. From the conclusion of the initial crop genna to the commencement of the genna which ushers in the harvest-time, all trade, all fishing, all hunting, all cutting grass and felling trees is forbidden. Those tribes which specialise in cloth-weaving, salt-making or pottery-making are forbidden the exercise of these minor but valuable industries. Drums and bugles are silent all the while… Between the initial crop genna and the harvest-home, some tribes interpose a genna day which depends on the appearance of the first blade of rice. All celebrate the commencement of the gathering of the crops by a genna, which lasts at least two days. It is mainly a repetition of the initial genna and, just as the first seed was sown by the gennabura, the religious head of the village, so he is obliged to cut the first ear of rice before any one else may begin.” On such occasions among the Kabuis, in spite of the licence accorded to the people generally, the strictest chastity is required of the religious head of the village who initiates the sowing and the reaping, and his diet is extremely limited; for example, he may not eat dogs or tomatoes. See T. C. Hodson, “The Native Tribes of Manipur,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxi. (1901) pp. 306 sq.; and for more details, id., The Naga Tribes of Manipur (London, 1911), pp. 168 sqq. The resemblance of some of these customs to those of the Kayans of Borneo is obvious. We may conjecture that the “tug of war” which takes place between the sexes on several of these Sabbaths was originally a magical ceremony to ensure good crops rather than merely a mode of divination to forecast the coming harvest. Magic regularly dwindles into divination before it degenerates into a simple game. At one of these taboo periods the men set up an effigy of a man and throw pointed bamboos at it. He who hits the figure in the head will kill an enemy; he who hits it in the belly will have plenty of food. See T. C. Hodson, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxvi. (1906) p. 95; id., The Naga Tribes of Manipur, p. 171. Here also we probably have an old magical ceremony passing through a phase of divination before it reaches the last stage of decay. On Sabbaths observed in connexion with agriculture in Borneo and Assam, see further Hutton Webster, Rest Days, a Sociological Study, pp. 11 sqq. (University Studies, Lincoln, Nebraska, vol. xi. Nos. 1-2, January-April, 1911).]

The connexion of the Eleusinian games with agriculture, attested by the ancients, is confirmed by modern savage analogies.

Further, when we see that many primitive peoples practise what we call games but what they regard in all seriousness as solemn rites for the good of the crops, we may be the more inclined to accept the view of the ancients, who associated the Eleusinian games directly with the worship of Demeter and Persephone, the Corn Goddesses.[348 - See above, p. 71 (#x_10_i1).] One of the contests at the Eleusinian games was in leaping,[349 - See above, p. 71 (#x_10_i1) note 5.] and we know that even in modern Europe to this day leaping or dancing high is practised as a charm to make the crops grow tall.[350 - See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, i. 137-139.] Again, the bull-roarer was swung so as to produce a humming sound at the Greek mysteries;[351 - See the old Greek scholiast on Clement of Alexandria, quoted by Chr. Aug. Lobeck, Aglaophamus (Königsberg, 1829), p. 700; Andrew Lang, Custom and Myth (London, 1884), p. 39. It is true that the bull-roarer seems to have been associated with the rites of Dionysus rather than of Demeter; perhaps the sound of it was thought to mimick the bellowing of the god in his character of a bull. But the worship of Dionysus was from an early time associated with that of Demeter in the Eleusinian mysteries; and the god himself, as we have seen, had agricultural affinities. See above, p. 5 (#x_4_i7). An annual festival of swinging (which, as we have seen, is still practised both in New Guinea and Russia for the good of the crops) was held by the Athenians in antiquity and was believed to have originated in the worship of Dionysus. See The Dying God, pp. 281 sq.] and when we find the same simple instrument whirled by savages in New Guinea for the sake of ensuring good crops, we may reasonably conjecture that it was whirled with a like intention by the rude forefathers of the Greeks among the cornfields of Eleusis. If that were so – though the conjecture is hardly susceptible of demonstration – it would go some way to confirm the theory that the Eleusinian mysteries were in their origin nothing more than simple rustic ceremonies designed to make the farmer's fields to wave with yellow corn. And in the practice of the Kayans, whose worship of the rice offers many analogies to the Eleusinian worship of the corn, may we not detect a hint of the origin of that rule of secrecy which always characterised the Eleusinian mysteries? May it not have been that, just as the Kayans exclude strangers from their villages while they are engaged in the celebration of religious rites, lest the presence of these intruders should frighten or annoy the shy and touchy spirits who are invoked at these times, so the old Eleusinians may have debarred foreigners from participation in their most solemn ceremonies, lest the coy goddesses of the corn should take fright or offence at the sight of strange faces and so refuse to bestow on men their annual blessing? The admission of foreigners to the privilege of initiation in the mysteries was probably a late innovation introduced at a time when the fame of their sanctity had spread far and wide, and when the old magical meaning of the ritual had long been obscured, if not forgotten.

The sacred drama of the Eleusinian mysteries compared to the masked dances of agricultural savages.

Lastly, it may be suggested that in the masked dances and dramatic performances, which form a conspicuous and popular feature of the Sowing Festival among the Kayans,[352 - See above, pp. 95 (#x_12_i8)sq., and below, pp. 186 (#x_18_i43)sq.] we have the savage counterpart of that drama of divine death and resurrection which appears to have figured so prominently in the mysteries of Eleusis.[353 - See above, p. 39 (#x_8_i9).] If my interpretation of that solemn drama is correct, it represented in mythical guise the various stages in the growth of the corn for the purpose of magically fostering the natural processes which it simulated. In like manner among the Kaua and Kobeua Indians of North-western Brazil, who subsist chiefly by the cultivation of manioc, dances or rather pantomimes are performed by masked men, who represent spirits or demons of fertility, and by imitating the act of procreation are believed to stimulate the growth of plants as well as to quicken the wombs of women and to promote the multiplication of animals. Coarse and grotesque as these dramatic performances may seem to us, they convey no suggestion of indecency to the minds either of the actors or of the spectators, who regard them in all seriousness as rites destined to confer the blessing of fruitfulness on the inhabitants of the village, on their plantations, and on the whole realm of nature.[354 - Th. Koch-Grünberg, Zwei Jahre unter den Indianern (Berlin, 1909-1910), i. 137-140, ii. 193-196. As to the cultivation of manioc among these Indians see id. ii. 202 sqq.] However, we possess so little exact information as to the rites of Eleusis that all attempts to elucidate them by the ritual of savages must necessarily be conjectural. Yet the candid reader may be willing to grant that conjectures supported by analogies like the foregoing do not exceed the limits of a reasonable hypothesis.

Chapter IV. Woman's Part in Primitive Agriculture

Theory that the personification of corn as feminine was suggested by the part played by women in primitive agriculture.

If Demeter was indeed a personification of the corn, it is natural to ask, why did the Greeks personify the corn as a goddess rather than a god? why did they ascribe the origin of agriculture to a female rather than to a male power? They conceived the spirit of the vine as masculine; why did they conceive the spirit of the barley and wheat as feminine? To this it has been answered that the personification of the corn as feminine, or at all events the ascription of the discovery of agriculture to a goddess, was suggested by the prominent part which women take in primitive agriculture.[355 - F. B. Jevons, Introduction to the History of Religion (London, 1896), p. 240; H. Hirt, Die Indogermanen (Strasburg, 1905-1907), i. 251 sqq.] The theory illustrates a recent tendency of mythologists to explain many myths as reflections of primitive society rather than as personifications of nature. For that reason, apart from its intrinsic interest, the theory deserves to be briefly considered.

Among many savage tribes the labour of hoeing the ground and sowing the seed devolves on women. Agricultural work done by women among the Zulus and other tribes of South Africa.

Before the invention of the plough, which can hardly be worked without resort to the labour of men, it was and still is customary in many parts of the world to break up the soil for cultivation with hoes, and among not a few savage peoples to this day the task of hoeing the ground and sowing the seed devolves mainly or entirely upon the women, while the men take little or no part in cultivation beyond clearing the land by felling the forest trees and burning the fallen timber and brushwood which encumber the soil. Thus, for example, among the Zulus, “when a piece of land has been selected for cultivation, the task of clearing it belongs to the men. If the ground be much encumbered, this becomes a laborious undertaking, for their axe is very small, and when a large tree has to be encountered, they can only lop the branches; fire is employed when it is needful to remove the trunk. The reader will therefore not be surprised that the people usually avoid bush-land, though they seem to be aware of its superior fertility. As a general rule the men take no further share in the labour of cultivation; and, as the site chosen is seldom much encumbered and frequently bears nothing but grass, their part of the work is very slight. The women are the real labourers; for (except in some particular cases) the entire business of digging, planting, and weeding devolves on them; and, if we regard the assagai and shield as symbolical of the man, the hoe may be looked upon as emblematic of the woman… With this rude and heavy instrument the woman digs, plants, and weeds her garden. Digging and sowing are generally one operation, which is thus performed; the seed is first scattered on the ground, when the soil is dug or picked up with the hoe, to the depth of three or four inches, the larger roots and tufts of grass being gathered out, but all the rest left in or on the ground.”[356 - Rev. J. Shooter, The Kafirs of Natal and the Zulu Country (London, 1857), pp. 17 sq. Speaking of the Zulus another writer observes: “In gardening, the men clear the land, if need be, and sometimes fence it in; the women plant, weed, and harvest” (Rev. L. Grout, Zulu-land, Philadelphia, n. d., p. 110).] A special term of contempt is applied to any Zulu man, who, deprived of the services of his wife and family, is compelled by hard necessity to handle the hoe himself.[357 - A. Delegorgue, Voyage dans l'Afrique Australe (Paris, 1847), ii. 225.] Similarly among the Baronga of Delagoa Bay, “when the rains begin to fall, sometimes as early as September but generally later, they hasten to sow. With her hoe in her hands, the mistress of the field walks with little steps; every time she lifts a clod of earth well broken up, and in the hole thus made she plants three or four grains of maize and covers them up. If she has not finished clearing all the patch of the bush which she contemplated, she proceeds to turn up again the fields she tilled last year. The crop will be less abundant than in virgin soil, but they plant three or four years successively in the same field before it is exhausted. As for enriching the soil with manure, they never think of it.”[358 - H. A. Junod, Les Ba-Ronga (Neuchatel, 1908), pp. 195 sq.] Among the Barotsé, who cultivate millet, maize, and peas to a small extent and in a rudimentary fashion, women alone are occupied with the field-work, and their only implement is a spade or hoe.[359 - L. Decle, Three Years in Savage Africa (London, 1898), p. 85.] Of the Matabelé we are told that “most of the hard work is performed by the women; the whole of the cultivation is done by them. They plough with short spades of native manufacture; they sow the fields, and they clear them of weeds.”[360 - L. Decle, op. cit. p. 160.] Among the Awemba, to the west of Lake Tanganyika, the bulk of the work in the plantations falls on the women; in particular the men refuse to hoe the ground. They have a saying, “Is not each male child born for the axe and each female child for the hoe?”[361 - C. Gouldsbury and H. Sheane, The Great Plateau of Northern Rhodesia (London, 1911), p. 302.]

Chastity required in the sowers of seed.

The natives of the Tanganyika plateau “cultivate the banana, and have a curious custom connected with it. No man is permitted to sow; but when the hole is prepared a little girl is carried to the spot on a man's shoulders. She first throws into the hole a sherd of broken pottery, and then scatters the seed over it.”[362 - L. Decle, op. cit. p. 295.] The reason of the latter practice has been explained by more recent observers of these natives. “Young children, it may here be noted, are often employed to administer drugs, remedies, even the Poison Ordeal, and to sow the first seeds. Such acts, the natives say, must be performed by chaste and innocent hands, lest a contaminated touch should destroy the potency of the medicine or of the seedlings planted. It used to be a very common sight upon the islands of Lake Bangweolo to watch how a Bisa woman would solve the problem of her own moral unfitness by carrying her baby-girl to the banana-plot, and inserting seedlings in the tiny hands for dropping into the holes already prepared.”[363 - C. Gouldsbury and H. Sheane, The Great Plateau of Northern Nigeria (London, 1911), p. 179.] Similarly among the people of the Lower Congo “women must remain chaste while planting pumpkin and calabash seeds, they are not allowed to touch any pig-meat, and they must wash their hands before touching the seeds. If a woman does not observe all these rules, she must not plant the seeds, or the crop will be bad; she may make the holes, and her baby girl, or another who has obeyed the restrictions, can drop in the seeds and cover them over.”[364 - Rev. J. H. Weeks, “Notes on some Customs of the Lower Congo People,” Folk-lore, xx. (1909) p. 311.] We can now perhaps understand why Attic matrons had to observe strict chastity when they celebrated the festival of the Thesmophoria.[365 - In order to guard against any breach of the rule they strewed Agnus castus and other plants, which were esteemed anaphrodisiacs, under their beds. See Dioscorides, De Materia Medica, i. 134 (135), vol. i. p. 130, ed. C. Sprengel (Leipsic, 1829-1830); Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxiv. 59; Aelian, De Natura Animalium, ix. 26; Hesychius, s. v. κνέωρον; Scholiast on Theocritus, iv. 25; Scholiast on Nicander, Ther. 70 sq.] In Attica that festival was held in honour of Demeter in the month of Pyanepsion, corresponding to October,[366 - Scholiast on Aristophanes, Thesmophor. 80; Plutarch, Demosthenes, 30; Aug. Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 310 sq. That Pyanepsion was the month of sowing is mentioned by Plutarch (Isis et Osiris, 69). See above, pp. 45 (#x_8_i21)sq.] the season of the autumn sowing; and the rites included certain ceremonies which bore directly on the quickening of the seed.[367 - See below, vol. ii. p. 17 sq.] We may conjecture that the rule of chastity imposed on matrons at this festival was a relic of a time when they too, like many savage women down to the present time, discharged the important duty of sowing the seed and were bound for that reason to observe strict continence, lest any impurity on their part should defile the seed and prevent it from bearing fruit.

Woman's part in agriculture among the Caffres of South Africa in general.

Of the Caffres of South Africa in general we read that “agriculture is mainly the work of the women, for in olden days the men were occupied in hunting and fighting. The women do but scratch the land with hoes, sometimes using long-handled instruments, as in Zululand, and sometimes short-handled ones, as above the Zambesi. When the ground is thus prepared, the women scatter the seed, throwing it over the soil quite at random. They know the time to sow by the position of the constellations, chiefly by that of the Pleiades. They date their new year from the time they can see this constellation just before sunrise.”[368 - Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kaffir (London, 1904), p. 323. Compare B. Ankermann, “L'Ethnographie actuelle de l'Afrique méridionale,” Anthropos, i. (1906) pp. 575 sq. As to the use of the Pleiades to determine the time of sowing, see note at the end of the volume, “The Pleiades in Primitive Calendars.”] In Basutoland, where the women also till the fields, though the lands of chiefs are dug and sowed by men, an attempt is made to determine the time of sowing by observation of the moon, but the people generally find themselves out in their reckoning, and after much dispute are forced to fall back upon the state of the weather and of vegetation as better evidence of the season of sowing. Intelligent chiefs rectify the calendar at the summer solstice, which they call the summer-house of the sun.[369 - Rev. E. Casalis, The Basutos (London, 1861), pp. 143 (with plate), pp. 162-165.]

Agricultural work done by women among the Nandi, Baganda, the Congo, and other tribes of Central and Western Africa.

Among the Nandi of British East Africa “the rough work of clearing the bush for plantations is performed by the men, after which nearly all work in connexion with them is done by the women. The men, however, assist in sowing the seed, and in harvesting some of the crops. As a rule trees are not felled, but the bark is stripped off for about four feet from the ground and the trees are then left to die. The planting is mostly, if not entirely, done during the first half of the Kiptamo moon (February), which is the first month of the year, and when the Iwat-kut moon rises (March) all seed should be in the ground. The chief medicine man is consulted before the planting operations begin, but the Nandi know by the arrival in the fields of the guinea-fowl, whose song is supposed to be, O-kol, o-kol; mi-i tokoch (Plant, plant; there is luck in it), that the planting season is at hand. When the first seed is sown, salt is mixed with it, and the sower sings mournfully: Ak o-siek-u o-chok-chi (And grow quickly), as he sows. After fresh ground has been cleared, eleusine grain is planted. This crop is generally repeated the second year, after which millet is sown, and finally sweet potatoes or some other product. Most fields are allowed to lie fallow every fourth or fifth year. The Nandi manure their plantations with turf ashes… The eleusine crops are harvested by both men and women. All other crops are reaped by the women only, who are at times assisted by the children. The corn is pounded and winnowed by the women and girls.”[370 - A. C. Hollis, The Nandi (Oxford, 1909), p. 19. However, among the Bantu Kavirondo, an essentially agricultural people of British East Africa, both men and women work in the fields with large iron hoes. See Sir Harry Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate (London, 1904), ii. 738.] Among the Suk and En-jemusi of British East Africa it is the women who cultivate the fields and milk the cows.[371 - M. W. H. Beech, The Suk (Oxford, 1911), p. 33.] Among the Wadowe of German East Africa the men clear the forest and break up the hard ground, but the women sow and reap the crops.[372 - F. Stuhlmann, Mit Emin Pascha ins Herz von Afrika (Berlin, 1894), p. 36.] So among the Wanyamwezi, who are an essentially agricultural people, to the south of Lake Victoria Nyanza, the men cut down the bush and hoe the hard ground, but leave the rest of the labour of weeding, sowing, and reaping to the women.[373 - F. Stuhlmann, op. cit. p. 75.] The Baganda of Central Africa subsist chiefly on bananas, and among them “the garden and its cultivation have always been the woman's department. Princesses and peasant women alike looked upon cultivation as their special work; the garden with its produce was essentially the wife's domain, and she would under no circumstances allow her husband to do any digging or sowing in it. No woman would remain with a man who did not give her a garden and a hoe to dig it with; if these were denied her, she would seek an early opportunity to escape from her husband and return to her relations to complain of her treatment, and to obtain justice or a divorce. When a man married he sought a plot of land for his wife in order that she might settle to work and provide food for the household… In initial clearing of the land it was customary for the husband to take part; he cut down the tall grass and shrubs, and so left the ground ready for his wife to begin her digging. The grass and the trees she heaped up and burned, reserving only so much as she needed for firewood. A hoe was the only implement used in cultivation; the blade was heart-shaped with a prong at the base, by which it was fastened to the handle. The hoe-handle was never more than two feet long, so that a woman had to stoop when using it.”[374 - Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda (London, 1911), pp. 426, 427; compare pp. 5, 38, 91 sq., 93, 94, 95, 268.] In Kiziba, a district immediately to the south of Uganda, the tilling of the soil is exclusively the work of the women. They turn up the soil with hoes, make holes in the ground with digging-sticks or their fingers, and drop a few seeds into each hole.[375 - H. Rehse, Kiziba, Land und Leute (Stuttgart, 1910), p. 53.] Among the Niam-Niam of Central Africa “the men most studiously devote themselves to their hunting, and leave the culture of the soil to be carried on exclusively by the women”;[376 - G. Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa