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Various - "Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859"

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

S >> Sir James George Frazer >> Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I.




[Some Mohammedans of North Africa kindle fires and observe water
ceremonies at their movable New Year; water ceremonies at New Year in
Morocco; the rites of fire and water at Midsummer and New Year in
Morocco seem to be identical in character; the duplication of the
festival is probably due to a conflict between the solar calendar of the
Romans and the lunar calendar of the Arabs.]

The celebration of a midsummer festival by Mohammedan peoples is
particularly remarkable, because the Mohammedan calendar, being purely
lunar and uncorrected by intercalation, necessarily takes no note of
festivals which occupy fixed points in the solar year; all strictly
Mohammedan feasts, being pinned to the moon, slide gradually with that
luminary through the whole period of the earth's revolution about the
sun. This fact of itself seems to prove that among the Mohammedan
peoples of Northern Africa, as among the Christian peoples of Europe,
the midsummer festival is quite independent of the religion which the
people publicly profess, and is a relic of a far older paganism. There
are, indeed, independent grounds for thinking that the Arabs enjoyed the
advantage of a comparatively well-regulated solar year before the
prophet of God saddled them with the absurdity and inconvenience of a
purely lunar calendar.[557] Be that as it may, it is notable that some
Mohammedan people of North Africa kindle fires and bathe in water at the
movable New Year of their lunar calendar instead of at the fixed
Midsummer of the solar year; while others again practise these
observances at both seasons. New Year's Day, on which the rites are
celebrated, is called _Ashur_; it is the tenth day of Moharram, the
first month of the Mohammedan calendar. On that day bonfires are kindled
in Tunis and also at Merrakech and among some tribes of the
neighbourhood.[558] At Demnat, in the Great Atlas mountains, people
kindle a large bonfire on New Year's Eve and leap to and fro over the
flames, uttering words which imply that by these leaps they think to
purify themselves from all kinds of evil. At Aglu, in the province of
Sus, the fire is lighted at three different points by an unmarried girl,
and when it has died down the young men leap over the glowing embers,
saying, "We shook on you, O Lady Ashur, fleas, and lice, and the
illnesses of the heart, as also those of the bones; we shall pass
through you again next year and the following years with safety and
health." Both at Aglu and Glawi, in the Great Atlas, smaller fires are
also kindled, over which the animals are driven. At Demnat girls who
wish to marry wash themselves in water which has been boiled over the
New Year fire; and in Dukkala people use the ashes of that fire to rub
sore eyes with. New Year fires appear to be commonly kindled among the
Berbers who inhabit the western portion of the Great Atlas, and also
among the Arabic-speaking tribes of the plains; but Dr. Westermarck
found no traces of such fires among the Arabic-speaking mountaineers of
Northern Morocco and the Berbers of the Rif province. Further, it should
be observed that water ceremonies like those which are practised at
Midsummer are very commonly observed in Morocco at the New Year, that
is, on the tenth day of the first month. On the morning of that day
(_Ashur_) all water or, according to some people, only spring water is
endowed with a magical virtue (_baraka_), especially before sunrise.
Hence at that time the people bathe and pour water over each other; in
some places they also sprinkle their animals, tents, or rooms. In
Dukkala some of the New Year water is preserved at home till New Year's
Day (_Ashur_) of next year; some of it is kept to be used as medicine,
some of it is poured on the place where the corn is threshed, and some
is used to water the money which is to be buried in the ground; for the
people think that the earth-spirits will not be able to steal the buried
treasures which have thus been sanctified with the holy water.[559]

[The Midsummer festival in Morocco seems to be of Berber origin.]

Thus the rites of fire and water which are observed in Morocco at
Midsummer and New Year appear to be identical in character and
intention, and it seems certain that the duplication of the rites is due
to a conflict between two calendars, namely the old Julian calendar of
the Romans, which was based on the sun, and the newer Mohammedan
calendar of the Arabs, which is based on the moon. For not only was the
Julian calendar in use throughout the whole of Northern Africa under the
Roman Empire; to this day it is everywhere employed among Mohammedans
for the regulation of agriculture and all the affairs of daily life; its
practical convenience has made it indispensable, and the lunar calendar
of orthodox Mohammedanism is scarcely used except for purposes of
chronology. Even the old Latin names of the months are known and
employed, in slightly disguised forms, throughout the whole Moslem
world; and little calendars of the Julian year circulate in manuscript
among Mohammedans, permitting them to combine the practical advantages
of pagan science with a nominal adherence to orthodox absurdity.[560]
Thus the heathen origin of the midsummer festival is too palpable to
escape the attention of good Mohammedans, who accordingly frown upon the
midsummer bonfires as pagan superstitions, precisely as similar
observances in Europe have often been denounced by orthodox
Christianity. Indeed, many religious people in Morocco entirely
disapprove of the whole of the midsummer ceremonies, maintaining that
they are all bad; and a conscientious schoolmaster will even refuse his
pupils a holiday at midsummer, though the boys sometimes offer him a
bribe if he will sacrifice his scruples to his avarice.[561] As the
midsummer customs appear to flourish among all the Berbers of Morocco
but to be unknown among the pure Arabs who have not been affected by
Berber influence, it seems reasonable to infer with Dr. Westermarck that
the midsummer festival has belonged from time immemorial to the Berber
race, and that so far as it is now observed by the Arabs of Morocco, it
has been learned by them from the Berbers, the old indigenous
inhabitants of the country. Dr. Westermarck may also be right in holding
that, in spite of the close similarity which obtains between the
midsummer festival of Europe and the midsummer festival of North Africa,
the latter is not a copy of the former, but that both have been handed
down independently from a time beyond the purview of history, when such
ceremonies were common to the Mediterranean race.[562]


Sec. 5. _The Autumn Fires_


[Festivals of fire in August; Russian feast of Florus and Laurus on
August 18th; "Living fire" made by the friction of wood.]

In the months which elapse between midsummer and the setting in of
winter the European festivals of fire appear to be few and unimportant.
On the evening of the first day of August, which is the Festival of the
Cross, bonfires are commonly lit in Macedonia and boys jump over them,
shouting, "Dig up! bury!" but whom or what they wish to dig up or bury
they do not know.[563] The Russians hold the feast of two martyrs,
Florus and Laurus, on the eighteenth day of August, Old Style. "On this
day the Russians lead their horses round the church of their village,
beside which on the foregoing evening they dig a hole with two mouths.
Each horse has a bridle made of the bark of the linden-tree. The horses
go through this hole one after the other, opposite to one of the mouths
of which the priest stands with a sprinkler in his hand, with which he
sprinkles them. As soon as the horses have passed by their bridles are
taken off, and they are made to go between two fires that they kindle,
called by the Russians _Givoy Agon_, that is to say, living fires, of
which I shall give an account. I shall before remark, that the Russian
peasantry throw the bridles of their horses into one of these fires to
be consumed. This is the manner of their lighting these _givoy agon_, or
living fires. Some men hold the ends of a stick made of the plane-tree,
very dry, and about a fathom long. This stick they hold firmly over one
of birch, perfectly dry, and rub with violence and quickly against the
former; the birch, which is somewhat softer than the plane, in a short
time inflames, and serves them to light both the fires I have
described."[564]

[Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin on the eighth of September at Capri
and Naples.]

The Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin on the eighth day of September
is celebrated at Naples and Capri with fireworks, bonfires, and
assassinations. On this subject my friend Professor A. E. Housman, who
witnessed the celebration in different years at both places, has kindly
furnished me with the following particulars: "In 1906 I was in the
island of Capri on September the eighth, the feast of the Nativity of
the Virgin. The anniversary was duly solemnised by fire-works at nine or
ten in the evening, which I suppose were municipal; but just after
sundown the boys outside the villages were making small fires of
brushwood on waste bits of ground by the wayside. Very pretty it looked,
with the flames blowing about in the twilight; but what took my
attention was the listlessness of the boys and their lack of interest in
the proceeding. A single lad, the youngest, would be raking the fire
together and keeping it alight, but the rest stood lounging about and
looking in every other direction, with the air of discharging
mechanically a traditional office from which all zest had evaporated."
"The pious orgy at Naples on September the eighth went through the
following phases when I witnessed it in 1897. It began at eight in the
evening with an illumination of the facade of Santa Maria Piedigrotta
and with the whole population walking about blowing penny trumpets.
After four hours of this I went to bed at midnight, and was lulled to
sleep by barrel-organs, which supersede the trumpets about that hour. At
four in the morning I was waked by detonations as if the British fleet
were bombarding the city, caused, I was afterwards told, by dynamite
rockets. The only step possible beyond this is assassination, which
accordingly takes place about peep of day: I forget now the number of
the slain, but I think the average is eight or ten, and I know that in
honour of my presence they murdered a few more than usual."

[The Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin may have replaced a pagan
festival; the coincidence of the Midsummer festival with the summer
solstice implies that the founders of the festival regulated their
calendar by observation of the sun.]

It is no doubt possible that these illuminations and fireworks, like the
assassinations, are merely the natural and spontaneous expressions of
that overflowing joy with which the thought of the birth of the Virgin
must fill every pious heart; but when we remember how often the Church
has skilfully decanted the new wine of Christianity into the old bottles
of heathendom, we may be allowed to conjecture that the ecclesiastical
authorities adroitly timed the Nativity of the Virgin so as to coincide
with an old pagan festival of that day, in which fire, noise, and
uproar, if not broken heads and bloodshed, were conspicuous features.
The penny trumpets blown on this occasion recall the like melodious
instruments which figure so largely in the celebration of Befana (the
Eve of Epiphany) at Rome.[565]


Sec. 6. _The Hallowe'en Fires_


[On the other hand the Celts divided their year, not by the solstices,
but by the beginning of summer (the first of May) and the beginning of
winter (the first of November).]

From the foregoing survey we may infer that among the heathen
forefathers of the European peoples the most popular and widespread
fire-festival of the year was the great celebration of Midsummer Eve or
Midsummer Day. The coincidence of the festival with the summer solstice
can hardly be accidental. Rather we must suppose that our pagan
ancestors purposely timed the ceremony of fire on earth to coincide with
the arrival of the sun at the highest point of his course in the sky. If
that was so, it follows that the old founders of the midsummer rites had
observed the solstices or turning-points of the sun's apparent path in
the sky, and that they accordingly regulated their festal calendar to
some extent by astronomical considerations.

[The division seems to have been neither astronomical nor agricultural
but pastoral, being determined by the times when cattle are driven to
and from their summer pasture.]

But while this may be regarded as fairly certain for what we may call
the aborigines throughout a large part of the continent, it appears not
to have been true of the Celtic peoples who inhabited the Land's End of
Europe, the islands and promontories that stretch out into the Atlantic
ocean on the North-West. The principal fire-festivals of the Celts,
which have survived, though in a restricted area and with diminished
pomp, to modern times and even to our own day, were seemingly timed
without any reference to the position of the sun in the heaven. They
were two in number, and fell at an interval of six months, one being
celebrated on the eve of May Day and the other on Allhallow Even or
Hallowe'en, as it is now commonly called, that is, on the thirty-first
of October, the day preceding All Saints' or Allhallows' Day. These
dates coincide with none of the four great hinges on which the solar
year revolves, to wit, the solstices and the equinoxes. Nor do they
agree with the principal seasons of the agricultural year, the sowing in
spring and the reaping in autumn. For when May Day comes, the seed has
long been committed to the earth; and when November opens, the harvest
has long been reaped and garnered, the fields lie bare, the fruit-trees
are stripped, and even the yellow leaves are fast fluttering to the
ground. Yet the first of May and the first of November mark
turning-points of the year in Europe; the one ushers in the genial heat
and the rich vegetation of summer, the other heralds, if it does not
share, the cold and barrenness of winter. Now these particular points of
the year, as has been well pointed out by a learned and ingenious
writer,[566] while they are of comparatively little moment to the
European husbandman, do deeply concern the European herdsman; for it is
on the approach of summer that he drives his cattle out into the open to
crop the fresh grass, and it is on the approach of winter that he leads
them back to the safety and shelter of the stall. Accordingly it seems
not improbable that the Celtic bisection of the year into two halves at
the beginning of May and the beginning of November dates from a time
when the Celts were mainly a pastoral people, dependent for their
subsistence on their herds, and when accordingly the great epochs of the
year for them were the days on which the cattle went forth from the
homestead in early summer and returned to it again in early winter.[567]
Even in Central Europe, remote from the region now occupied by the
Celts, a similar bisection of the year may be clearly traced in the
great popularity, on the one hand, of May Day and its Eve (Walpurgis
Night), and, on the other hand, of the Feast of All Souls at the
beginning of November, which under a thin Christian cloak conceals an
ancient pagan festival of the dead.[568] Hence we may conjecture that
everywhere throughout Europe the celestial division of the year
according to the solstices was preceded by what we may call a
terrestrial division of the year according to the beginning of summer
and the beginning of winter.

[The two great Celtic festivals, Beltane and Hallowe'en.]

Be that as it may, the two great Celtic festivals of May Day and the
first of November or, to be more accurate, the Eves of these two days,
closely resemble each other in the manner of their celebration and in
the superstitions associated with them, and alike, by the antique
character impressed upon both, betray a remote and purely pagan origin.
The festival of May Day or Beltane, as the Celts called it, which
ushered in summer, has already been described;[569] it remains to give
some account of the corresponding festival of Hallowe'en, which
announced the arrival of winter.

[Hallowe'en (the evening of October 31st) seems to have marked the
beginning of the Celtic year; the many forms of divination resorted to
at Hallowe'en are appropriate to the beginning of a New Year; Hallowe'en
also a festival of the dead.]

Of the two feasts Hallowe'en was perhaps of old the more important,
since the Celts would seem to have dated the beginning of the year from
it rather than from Beltane. In the Isle of Man, one of the fortresses
in which the Celtic language and lore longest held out against the siege
of the Saxon invaders, the first of November, Old Style, has been
regarded as New Year's day down to recent times. Thus Manx mummers used
to go round on Hallowe'en (Old Style), singing, in the Manx language, a
sort of Hogmanay song which began "To-night is New Year's Night,
_Hog-unnaa_!"[570] One of Sir John Rhys's Manx informants, an old man of
sixty-seven, "had been a farm servant from the age of sixteen till he
was twenty-six to the same man, near Regaby, in the parish of Andreas,
and he remembers his master and a near neighbour of his discussing the
term New Year's Day as applied to the first of November, and explaining
to the younger men that it had always been so in old times. In fact, it
seemed to him natural enough, as all tenure of land ends at that time,
and as all servant men begin their service then."[571] In ancient
Ireland, as we saw, a new fire used to be kindled every year on
Hallowe'en or the Eve of Samhain, and from this sacred flame all the
fires in Ireland were rekindled.[572] Such a custom points strongly to
Samhain or All Saints' Day (the first of November) as New Year's Day;
since the annual kindling of a new fire takes place most naturally at
the beginning of the year, in order that the blessed influence of the
fresh fire may last throughout the whole period of twelve months.
Another confirmation of the view that the Celts dated their year from
the first of November is furnished by the manifold modes of divination
which, as we shall see presently, were commonly resorted to by Celtic
peoples on Hallowe'en for the purpose of ascertaining their destiny,
especially their fortune in the coming year; for when could these
devices for prying into the future be more reasonably put in practice
than at the beginning of the year? As a season of omens and auguries
Hallowe'en seems to have far surpassed Beltane in the imagination of the
Celts; from which we may with some probability infer that they reckoned
their year from Hallowe'en rather than Beltane. Another circumstance of
great moment which points to the same conclusion is the association of
the dead with Hallowe'en. Not only among the Celts but throughout
Europe, Hallowe'en, the night which marks the transition from autumn to
winter, seems to have been of old the time of year when the souls of the
departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm
themselves by the fire and to comfort themselves with the good cheer
provided for them in the kitchen or the parlour by their affectionate
kinsfolk.[573] It was, perhaps, a natural thought that the approach of
winter should drive the poor shivering hungry ghosts from the bare
fields and the leafless woodlands to the shelter of the cottage with its
familiar fireside.[574] Did not the lowing kine then troop back from the
summer pastures in the forests and on the hills to be fed and cared for
in the stalls, while the bleak winds whistled among the swaying boughs
and the snow drifts deepened in the hollows? and could the good-man and
the good-wife deny to the spirits of their dead the welcome which they
gave to the cows?

[Fairies and Hobgoblins let loose at Hallowe'en.]

But it is not only the souls of the departed who are supposed to be
hovering unseen on the day "when autumn to winter resigns the pale
year." Witches then speed on their errands of mischief, some sweeping
through the air on besoms, others galloping along the roads on
tabby-cats, which for that evening are turned into coal-black
steeds.[575] The fairies, too, are all let loose, and hobgoblins of
every sort roam freely about In South Uist and Eriskay there is a
saying:--

"_Hallowe'en will come, will come,
Witchcraft [or divination] will be set agoing,
Fairies will be at full speed,
Running in every pass.
Avoid the road, children, children_."[576]

[Dancing with the fairies at Hallowe'en.]

In Cardiganshire on November Eve a bogie sits on every stile.[577] On
that night in Ireland all the fairy hills are thrown wide open and the
fairies swarm forth; any man who is bold enough may then peep into the
open green hills and see the treasures hidden in them. Worse than that,
the cave of Cruachan in Connaught, known as "the Hell-gate of Ireland,"
is unbarred on Samhain Eve or Hallowe'en, and a host of horrible fiends
and goblins used to rush forth, particularly a flock of copper-red
birds, which blighted crops and killed animals by their poisonous
breath.[578] The Scotch Highlanders have a special name _Samhanach_
(derived from _Samhain_, "All-hallows") for the dreadful bogies that go
about that night stealing babies and committing other atrocities.[579]
And though the fairies are a kindlier folk, it is dangerous to see even
them at their revels on Hallowe'en. A melancholy case of this sort is
reported from the Ferintosh district of the Highlands, though others say
that it happened at the Slope of Big Stones in Harris. Two young men
were coming home after nightfall on Hallowe'en, each with a jar of
whisky on his back, when they saw, as they thought, a house all lit up
by the roadside, from which proceeded the sounds of music and dancing.
In reality it was not a house at all but a fairy knoll, and it was the
fairies who were jigging it about there so merrily. But one of the young
men was deceived and stepping into the house joined in the dance,
without even stopping to put down the jar of whisky. His companion was
wiser; he had a shrewd suspicion that the place was not what it seemed,
and on entering he took the precaution of sticking a needle in the door.
That disarmed the power of the fairies, and he got away safely. Well,
that day twelve months he came back to the spot and what should he see
but his poor friend still dancing away with the jar of whisky on his
back? A weary man was he, as you may well believe, but he begged to be
allowed to finish the reel which he was in the act of executing, and
when they took him out into the open air, there was nothing of him left
but skin and bones.[580] Again, the wicked fairies are apt to carry off
men's wives with them to fairyland; but the lost spouses can be
recovered within a year and a day when the procession of the fairies is
defiling past on Hallowe'en, always provided that the mortals did not
partake of elfin food while they were in elfinland.[581]

[Guleesh and the revels of the fairies at Hallowe'en.]

Sometimes valuable information may be obtained from the fairies on
Hallowe'en. There was a young man named Guleesh in the County of Mayo.
Near his house was a _rath_ or old fort with a fine grass bank running
round it. One Hallowe'en, when the darkness was falling, Guleesh went to
the rath and stood on a gray old flag. The night was calm and still;
there was not a breath of wind stirring, nor a sound to be heard except
the hum of the insects flitting past, or the whistle of the plovers, or
the hoarse scream of the wild geese as they winged their way far
overhead. Above the white fog the moon rose like a knob of fire in the
east, and a thousand thousand stars were twinkling in the sky. There was
a little frost in the air, the grass was white and crisp and crackled
under foot. Guleesh expected to see the fairies, but they did not come.
Hour after hour wore away, and he was just bethinking him of going home
to bed, when his ear caught a sound far off coming towards him, and he
knew what it was in a moment. The sound grew louder and louder; at first
it was like the beating of waves on a stony shore, then it was like the
roar of a waterfall, at last it was like a mighty rushing wind in the
tops of the trees, then the storm burst upon the rath, and sure enough
the fairies were in it. The rout went by so suddenly that Guleesh lost
his breath; but he came to himself and listened. The fairies were now
gathered within the grassy bank of the rath, and a fine uproar they
made. But Guleesh listened with all his ears, and he heard one fairy
saying to another that a magic herb grew by Guleesh's own door, and that
Guleesh had nothing to do but pluck it and boil it and give it to his
sweetheart, the daughter of the King of France, and she would be well,
for just then she was lying very ill. Guleesh took the hint, and
everything went as the fairy had said. And he married the daughter of
the King of France; and they had never a cark nor a care, a sickness nor
a sorrow, a mishap nor a misfortune to the day of their death.[582]