Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. by Sir James George Frazer

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Sec. 5. _The Autumn Fires_, pp. 220-222.--Festivals of fire in August, 220;
"living fire" made by the friction of wood, 220; feast of the Nativity
of the Virgin on the eighth of September at Capri and Naples, 220-222.

Sec. 6. _The Halloween Fires_, pp. 222-246.--While the Midsummer festival
implies observation of the solstices, the Celts appear to have divided
their year, without regard to the solstices, by the times when they
drove their cattle to and from the summer pasture on the first of May
and the last of October (Hallowe'en), 222-224; the two great Celtic
festivals of Beltane (May Day) and Hallowe'en (the last of October),
224; Hallowe'en seems to have marked the beginning of the Celtic year,
224 _sq._; it was a season of divination and a festival of the dead, 225
_sq._; fairies and hobgoblins let loose at Hallowe'en, 226-228;
divination in Celtic countries at Hallowe'en, 228 _sq._; Hallowe'en
bonfires in the Highlands of Scotland, 229-232; Hallowe'en fires in
Buchan to burn the witches, 232 _sq._; processions with torches at
Hallowe'en in the Braemar Highlands, 233 _sq._; divination at Hallowe'en
in the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland, 234-239; Hallowe'en fires in
Wales, omens drawn from stones cast into the fires, 239 _sq._;
divination at Hallowe'en in Wales, 240 _sq._; divination at Hallowe'en
in Ireland, 241-243; Hallowe'en fires and divination in the Isle of Man,
243 _sq._; Hallowe'en fires and divination in Lancashire, 244 _sq._;
marching with lighted candles to keep off the witches, 245; divination
at Hallowe'en in Northumberland, 245; Hallowe'en fires in France, 245
_sq._

Sec. 7. _The Midwinter Fires_, pp. 246-269.--Christmas the continuation of
an old heathen festival of the sun, 246; the Yule log the Midwinter
counterpart of the Midsummer bonfire, 247; the Yule log in Germany,
247-249; in Switzerland, 249; in Belgium, 249; in France, 249-255;
French superstitions as to the Yule log, 250; the Yule log at Marseilles
and in Perigord, 250 _sq._; in Berry, 251 _sq._; in Normandy and
Brittany, 252 _sq._; in the Ardennes, 253 _sq._; in the Vosges, 254; in
Franche-Comte, 254 _sq._; the Yule log and Yule candle in England,
255-258; the Yule log in the north of England and Yorkshire, 256 _sq._;
in Lincolnshire, Warwickshire, Shropshire, and Herefordshire, 257 _sq._;
in Wales, 258; in Servia, 258-262; among the Servians of Slavonia, 262
_sq._; among the Servians of Dalmatia, Herzegovina, and Montenegro, 263
_sq._; in Albania, 264; belief that the Yule log protects against fire
and lightning, 264 _sq._; public fire-festivals at Midwinter, 265-269;
Christmas bonfire at Schweina in Thuringia, 265 _sq._; Christmas
bonfires in Normandy, 266; bonfires on St. Thomas's Day in the Isle of
Man, 266; the "Burning of the Clavie" at Burghead on the last day of
December, 266-268; Christmas procession with burning tar-barrels at
Lerwick, 268 _sq._

Sec. 8. _The Need-fire_, pp. 269-300.--Need-fire kindled not at fixed
periods but on occasions of distress and calamity, 269; the need-fire in
the Middle Ages and down to the end of the sixteenth century, 270 _sq._;
mode of kindling the need-fire by the friction of wood, 271 _sq_.; the
need-fire in Central Germany, particularly about Hildesheim, 272 _sq._;
the need-fire in the Mark, 273; in Mecklenburg, 274 _sq._; in Hanover,
275 _sq._; in the Harz Mountains, 276 _sq._; in Brunswick, 277 _sq._; in
Silesia and Bohemia, 278 _sq._; in Switzerland, 279 _sq._; in Sweden and
Norway, 280; among the Slavonic peoples, 281-286; in Russia and Poland,
281 _sq._; in Slavonia, 282; in Servia, 282-284; in Bulgaria, 284-286;
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 286; in England, 286-289; in Yorkshire,
286-288; in Northumberland, 288 _sq._; in Scotland, 289-297; Martin's
account of it in the Highlands, 289; the need-fire in Mull, 289 _sq._;
in Caithness, 290-292; W. Grant Stewart's account of the need-fire, 292
_sq._; Alexander Carmichael's account, 293-295; the need-fire in
Aberdeenshire, 296; in Perthshire, 296 _sq._; in Ireland, 297; the use
of need-fire a relic of the time when all fires were similarly kindled
by the friction of wood, 297 _sq._; the belief that need-fire cannot
kindle if any other fire remains alight in the neighbourhood, 298 _sq._;
the need-fire among the Iroquois of North America, 299 _sq._

Sec. 9. _The Sacrifice of an Animal to stay a Cattle-plague_, pp.
300-327.--The burnt sacrifice of a calf in England and Wales, 300 _sq._;
burnt sacrifices of animals in Scotland, 301 _sq._; calf burnt in order
to break a spell which has been cast on the herd, 302 _sq._; mode in
which the burning of a bewitched animal is supposed to break the spell,
303-305; in burning the bewitched animal you burn the witch herself,
305; practice of burning cattle and sheep as sacrifices in the Isle of
Man, 305-307; by burning a bewitched animal you compel the witch to
appear, 307; magic sympathy between the witch and the bewitched animal,
308; similar sympathy between a were-wolf and his or her human shape,
wounds inflicted on the animal are felt by the man or woman, 308;
were-wolves in Europe, 308-310; in China, 310 _sq._; among the Toradjas
of Central Celebes, 311-313 _sq._; in the Egyptian Sudan, 313 _sq._; the
were-wolf story in Petronius, 313 _sq._; witches like were-wolves can
temporarily transform themselves into animals, and wounds inflicted on
the transformed animals appear on the persons of the witches, 315 _sq._;
instances of such transformations and wounds in Scotland, England,
Ireland, France, and Germany, 316-321; hence the reason for burning
bewitched animals is either to burn the witch herself or at all events
to compel her to appear, 321 _sq._; the like reason for burning
bewitched things, 322 _sq._; similarly by burning alive a person whose
likeness a witch has assumed you compel the witch to disclose herself,
323; woman burnt alive as a witch in Ireland at the end of the
nineteenth century, 323 _sq._; bewitched animals sometimes buried alive
instead of being burned, 324-326; calves killed and buried to save the
rest of the herd, 326 _sq_.

CHAPTER V.--THE INTERPRETATION OF THE FIRE-FESTIVALS, Pp. 328-346

Sec. 1. _On the Fire-festivals in general_ pp. 328-331.--General
resemblance of the fire-festivals to each other, 328 _sq._; two
explanations of the festivals suggested, one by W. Mannhardt that they
are sun-charms, the other by Dr. E. Westermarck that they are
purificatory, 329 _sq._; the two explanations perhaps not mutually
exclusive, 330 _sq._

Sec. 2. _The Solar Theory of the Fire-festivals_, pp. 331-341.--Theory that
the fire-festivals are charms to ensure a supply of sunshine, 331;
coincidence of two of the festivals with the solstices, 331 _sq._;
attempt of the Bushmen to warm up the fire of Sirius in midwinter by
kindling sticks, 332 _sq._; the burning wheels and discs of the
fire-festivals may be direct imitations of the sun, 334; the wheel which
is sometimes used to kindle the fire by friction may also be an
imitation of the sun, 334-336; the influence which the bonfires are
supposed to exert on the weather and vegetation may be thought to be due
to an increase of solar heat produced by the fires, 336-338; the effect
which the bonfires are supposed to have in fertilizing cattle and women
may also be attributed to an increase of solar heat produced by the
fires, 338 _sq._; the carrying of lighted torches about the country at
the festivals may be explained as an attempt to diffuse the sun's heat,
339-341.

Sec. 3. _The Purificatory Theory of the Fire-festivals_, pp.
341-346.--Theory that the fires at the festivals are purificatory, being
intended to burn up all harmful things, 341; the purificatory or
destructive effect of the fires is often alleged by the people who light
them, and there is no reason to reject this explanation, 341 _sq._; the
great evil against which the fire at the festivals appears to be
directed is witchcraft, 342; among the evils for which the
fire-festivals are deemed remedies the foremost is cattle-disease, and
cattle-disease is often supposed to be an effect of witchcraft, 343
_sq._; again, the bonfires are thought to avert hail, thunder,
lightning, and various maladies, all of which are attributed to the
maleficent arts of witches, 344 _sq._; the burning wheels rolled down
hill and the burning discs thrown into the air may be intended to burn
the invisible witches, 345 _sq._; on this view the fertility supposed to
follow the use of fire results indirectly from breaking the spells of
witches, 346; on the whole the theory of the purificatory or destructive
intention of the fire-festivals seems the more probable, 346.

[Transcriber's Note: The brief descriptions often found enclosed in
square brackets are "sidenotes", which appeared in the original book in
the margins of the paragraph following the "sidenote." Footnotes were
originally at the bottoms of the printed pages.]

CHAPTER I

BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH

Sec. 1. _Not to touch the Earth_

[The priest of Aricia and the Golden Bough]

We have travelled far since we turned our backs on Nemi and set forth in
quest of the secret of the Golden Bough. With the present volume we
enter on the last stage of our long journey. The reader who has had the
patience to follow the enquiry thus far may remember that at the outset
two questions were proposed for answer: Why had the priest of Aricia to
slay his predecessor? And why, before doing so, had he to pluck the
Golden Bough?[1] Of these two questions the first has now been answered.
The priest of Aricia, if I am right, was one of those sacred kings or
human divinities on whose life the welfare of the community and even the
course of nature in general are believed to be intimately dependent. It
does not appear that the subjects or worshippers of such a spiritual
potentate form to themselves any very clear notion of the exact
relationship in which they stand to him; probably their ideas on the
point are vague and fluctuating, and we should err if we attempted to
define the relationship with logical precision. All that the people
know, or rather imagine, is that somehow they themselves, their cattle,
and their crops are mysteriously bound up with their divine king, so
that according as he is well or ill the community is healthy or sickly,
the flocks and herds thrive or languish with disease, and the fields
yield an abundant or a scanty harvest. The worst evil which they can
conceive of is the natural death of their ruler, whether he succumb to
sickness or old age, for in the opinion of his followers such a death
would entail the most disastrous consequences on themselves and their
possessions; fatal epidemics would sweep away man and beast, the earth
would refuse her increase, nay the very frame of nature itself might be
dissolved. To guard against these catastrophes it is necessary to put
the king to death while he is still in the full bloom of his divine
manhood, in order that his sacred life, transmitted in unabated force to
his successor, may renew its youth, and thus by successive transmissions
through a perpetual line of vigorous incarnations may remain eternally
fresh and young, a pledge and security that men and animals shall in
like manner renew their youth by a perpetual succession of generations,
and that seedtime and harvest, and summer and winter, and rain and
sunshine shall never fail. That, if my conjecture is right, was why the
priest of Aricia, the King of the Wood at Nemi, had regularly to perish
by the sword of his successor.

[What was the Golden Bough?]

But we have still to ask, What was the Golden Bough? and why had each
candidate for the Arician priesthood to pluck it before he could slay
the priest? These questions I will now try to answer.

[Sacred kings and priests forbidden to touch the ground with their
feet.]

It will be well to begin by noticing two of those rules or taboos by
which, as we have seen, the life of divine kings or priests is
regulated. The first of the rules to which I desire to call the reader's
attention is that the divine personage may not touch the ground with his
foot. This rule was observed by the supreme pontiff of the Zapotecs in
Mexico; he profaned his sanctity if he so much as touched the ground
with his foot.[2] Montezuma, emperor of Mexico, never set foot on the
ground; he was always carried on the shoulders of noblemen, and if he
lighted anywhere they laid rich tapestry for him to walk upon.[3] For
the Mikado of Japan to touch the ground with his foot was a shameful
degradation; indeed, in the sixteenth century, it was enough to deprive
him of his office. Outside his palace he was carried on men's shoulders;
within it he walked on exquisitely wrought mats.[4] The king and queen
of Tahiti might not touch the ground anywhere but within their
hereditary domains; for the ground on which they trod became sacred. In
travelling from place to place they were carried on the shoulders of
sacred men. They were always accompanied by several pairs of these
sanctified attendants; and when it became necessary to change their
bearers, the king and queen vaulted on to the shoulders of their new
bearers without letting their feet touch the ground.[5] It was an evil
omen if the king of Dosuma touched the ground, and he had to perform an
expiatory ceremony.[6] Within his palace the king of Persia walked on
carpets on which no one else might tread; outside of it he was never
seen on foot but only in a chariot or on horseback.[7] In old days the
king of Siam never set foot upon the earth, but was carried on a throne
of gold from place to place.[8] Formerly neither the kings of Uganda,
nor their mothers, nor their queens might walk on foot outside of the
spacious enclosures in which they lived. Whenever they went forth they
were carried on the shoulders of men of the Buffalo clan, several of
whom accompanied any of these royal personages on a journey and took it
in turn to bear the burden. The king sat astride the bearer's neck with
a leg over each shoulder and his feet tucked under the bearer's arms.
When one of these royal carriers grew tired he shot the king on to the
shoulders of a second man without allowing the royal feet to touch the
ground. In this way they went at a great pace and travelled long
distances in a day, when the king was on a journey. The bearers had a
special hut in the king's enclosure in order to be at hand the moment
they were wanted.[9] Among the Bakuba or rather Bushongo, a nation in
the southern region of the Congo, down to a few years ago persons of the
royal blood were forbidden to touch the ground; they must sit on a hide,
a chair, or the back of a slave, who crouched on hands and feet; their
feet rested on the feet of others. When they travelled they were carried
on the backs of men; but the king journeyed in a litter supported on
shafts.[10] Among the Ibo people about Awka, in Southern Nigeria, the
priest of the Earth has to observe many taboos; for example, he may not
see a corpse, and if he meets one on the road he must hide his eyes with
his wristlet. He must abstain from many foods, such as eggs, birds of
all sorts, mutton, dog, bush-buck, and so forth. He may neither wear nor
touch a mask, and no masked man may enter his house. If a dog enters his
house, it is killed and thrown out. As priest of the Earth he may not
sit on the bare ground, nor eat things that have fallen on the ground,
nor may earth be thrown at him.[11] According to ancient Brahmanic
ritual a king at his inauguration trod on a tiger's skin and a golden
plate; he was shod with shoes of boar's skin, and so long as he lived
thereafter he might not stand on the earth with his bare feet.[12]

[Certain persons on certain occasions forbidden to touch the ground with
their feet.]

But besides persons who are permanently sacred or tabooed and are
therefore permanently forbidden to touch the ground with their feet,
there are others who enjoy the character of sanctity or taboo only on
certain occasions, and to whom accordingly the prohibition in question
only applies at the definite seasons during which they exhale the odour
of sanctity. Thus among the Kayans or Bahaus of Central Borneo, while
the priestesses are engaged in the performance of certain rites they may
not step on the ground, and boards are laid for them to tread on.[13] At
a funeral ceremony observed by night among the Michemis, a Tibetan tribe
near the northern frontier of Assam, a priest fantastically bedecked
with tiger's teeth, many-coloured plumes, bells, and shells, executed a
wild dance for the purpose of exorcising the evil spirits; then all
fires were extinguished and a new light was struck by a man suspended by
his feet from a beam in the ceiling; "he did not touch the ground," we
are told, "in order to indicate that the light came from heaven."[14]
Again, newly born infants are strongly tabooed; accordingly in Loango
they are not allowed to touch the earth.[15] Among the Iluvans of
Malabar the bridegroom on his wedding-day is bathed by seven young men
and then carried or walks on planks from the bathing-place to the
marriage booth; he may not touch the ground with his feet.[16] With the
Dyaks of Landak and Tajan, two districts of Dutch Borneo, it is a custom
that for a certain time after marriage neither bride nor bridegroom may
tread on the earth.[17] Warriors, again, on the war-path are surrounded,
so to say, by an atmosphere of taboo; hence some Indians of North
America might not sit on the bare ground the whole time they were out on
a warlike expedition.[18] In Laos the hunting of elephants gives rise to
many taboos; one of them is that the chief hunter may not touch the
earth with his foot. Accordingly, when he alights from his elephant, the
others spread a carpet of leaves for him to step upon.[19] German
wiseacres recommended that when witches were led to the block or the
stake, they should not be allowed to touch the bare earth, and a reason
suggested for the rule was that if they touched the earth they might
make themselves invisible and so escape. The sagacious author of _The
Striped-petticoat Philosophy_ in the eighteenth century ridicules the
idea as mere silly talk. He admits, indeed, that the women were conveyed
to the place of execution in carts; but he denies that there is any deep
significance in the cart, and he is prepared to maintain this view by a
chemical analysis of the timber of which the cart was built. To clinch
his argument he appeals to plain matter of fact and his own personal
experience. Not a single instance, he assures us with apparent
satisfaction, can be produced of a witch who escaped the axe or the fire
in this fashion. "I have myself," says he, "in my youth seen divers
witches burned, some at Arnstadt, some at Ilmenau, some at Schwenda, a
noble village between Arnstadt and Ilmenau, and some of them were
pardoned and beheaded before being burned. They were laid on the earth
in the place of execution and beheaded like any other poor sinner;
whereas if they could have escaped by touching the earth, not one of
them would have failed to do so."[20]

[Sacred or tabooed persons apparently thought to be charged with a
mysterious virtue like a fluid, which will run to waste or explode if it
touches the ground.]

Apparently holiness, magical virtue, taboo, or whatever we may call that
mysterious quality which is supposed to pervade sacred or tabooed
persons, is conceived by the primitive philosopher as a physical
substance or fluid, with which the sacred man is charged just as a
Leyden jar is charged with electricity; and exactly as the electricity
in the jar can be discharged by contact with a good conductor, so the
holiness or magical virtue in the man can be discharged and drained away
by contact with the earth, which on this theory serves as an excellent
conductor for the magical fluid. Hence in order to preserve the charge
from running to waste, the sacred or tabooed personage must be carefully
prevented from touching the ground; in electrical language he must be
insulated, if he is not to be emptied of the precious substance or fluid
with which he, as a vial, is filled to the brim. And in many cases
apparently the insulation of the tabooed person is recommended as a
precaution not merely for his own sake but for the sake of others; for
since the virtue of holiness or taboo is, so to say, a powerful
explosive which the smallest touch may detonate, it is necessary in the
interest of the general safety to keep it within narrow bounds, lest
breaking out it should blast, blight, and destroy whatever it comes into
contact with.

[Things as well as persons can be charged with the mysterious quality of
holiness or taboo; and when so charged they must be kept from contact
with the ground.]

But things as well as persons are often charged with the mysterious
quality of holiness or taboo; hence it frequently becomes necessary for
similar reasons to guard them also from coming into contact with the
ground, lest they should in like manner be drained of their valuable
properties and be reduced to mere commonplace material objects, empty
husks from which the good grain has been eliminated. Thus, for example,
the most sacred object of the Arunta tribe in Central Australia is, or
rather used to be, a pole about twenty feet high, which is completely
smeared with human blood, crowned with an imitation of a human head, and
set up on the ground where the final initiatory ceremonies of young men
are performed. A young gum-tree is chosen to form the pole, and it must
be cut down and transported in such a way that it does not touch the
earth till it is erected in its place on the holy ground. Apparently the
pole represents some famous ancestor of the olden time.[21]

[Festival of the wild manog tree in British New Guinea.]

Again, at a great dancing festival celebrated by the natives of Bartle
Bay, in British New Guinea, a wild mango tree plays a prominent part.
The tree must be self-sown, that is, really wild and so young that it
has never flowered. It is chosen in the jungle some five or six weeks
before the festival, and a circle is cleared round its trunk. From that
time the master of the ceremonies and some eight to twenty other men,
who have aided him in choosing the tree and in clearing the jungle,
become strictly holy or tabooed. They sleep by themselves in a house
into which no one else may intrude: they may not wash or drink water,
nor even allow it accidentally to touch their bodies: they are forbidden
to eat boiled food and the fruit of mango trees: they may drink only the
milk of a young coco-nut which has been baked, and they may eat certain
fruits and vegetables, such as paw-paws (_Carica papaya_) and
sugar-cane, but only on condition that they have been baked. All refuse
of their food is kept in baskets in their sleeping-house and may not be
removed from it till the festival is over. At the time when the men
begin to observe these rules of abstinence, some six to ten women,
members of the same clan as the master of the ceremonies, enter on a
like period of mortification, avoiding the company of the other sex, and
refraining from water, all boiled food, and the fruit of the mango tree.
These fasting men and women are the principal dancers at the festival.
The dancing takes place on a special platform in a temporary village
which has been erected for the purpose. When the platform is about to be
set up, the fasting men rub the stepping posts and then suck their hands
for the purpose of extracting the ghost of any dead man that might
chance to be in the post and might be injured by the weight of the
platform pressing down on him. Having carefully extracted these poor
souls, the men carry them away tenderly and set them free in the forest
or the long grass.

[The wild mango tree not allowed to touch the ground.]

On the day before the festival one of the fasting men cuts down the
chosen mango tree in the jungle with a stone adze, which is never
afterwards put to any other use; an iron tool may not be used for the
purpose, though iron tools are now common enough in the district. In
cutting down the mango they place nets on the ground to catch any leaves
or twigs that might fall from the tree as it is being felled and they
surround the trunk with new mats to receive the chips which fly out
under the adze of the woodman; for the chips may not drop on the earth.
Once the tree is down, it is carried to the centre of the temporary
village, the greatest care being taken to prevent it from coming into
contact with the ground. But when it is brought into the village, the
houses are connected with the top of the mango by means of long vines
decorated with the streamers. In the afternoon the fasting men and women
begin to dance, the men bedizened with gay feathers, armlets, streamers,
and anklets, the women flaunting in parti-coloured petticoats and sprigs
of croton leaves, which wave from their waistbands as they dance. The
dancing stops at sundown, and when the full moon rises over the shoulder
of the eastern hill (for the date of the festival seems to be determined
with reference to the time of the moon), two chiefs mount the gables of
two houses on the eastern side of the square, and, their dusky figures
standing sharply out against the moonlight, pray to the evil spirits to
go away and not to hurt the people. Next morning pigs are killed by
being speared as slowly as possible in order that they may squeal loud
and long; for the people believe that the mango trees hear the
squealing, and are pleased at the sound, and bear plenty of fruit,
whereas if they heard no squeals they would bear no fruit. However, the
trees have to content themselves with the squeals; the flesh of the pigs
is eaten by the people. This ends the festival.

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