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Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton - "The Doomswoman"

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Various - "The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893"

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

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




[Attempt of the Bushmen to warm up the fire of Sirius in midwinter by
kindling sticks.]

The idea that by lighting a log on earth you can rekindle a fire in
heaven or fan it into a brighter blaze, naturally seems to us absurd;
but to the savage mind it wears a different aspect, and the institution
of the great fire-festivals which we are considering probably dates from
a time when Europe was still sunk in savagery or at most in barbarism.
Now it can be shewn that in order to increase the celestial source of
heat at midwinter savages resort to a practice analogous to that of our
Yule log, if the kindling of the Yule log was originally a magical rite
intended to rekindle the sun. In the southern hemisphere, where the
order of the seasons is the reverse of ours, the rising of Sirius or the
Dog Star in July marks the season of the greatest cold instead of, as
with us, the greatest heat; and just as the civilized ancients ascribed
the torrid heat of midsummer to that brilliant star,[804] so the modern
savage of South Africa attributes to it the piercing cold of midwinter
and seeks to mitigate its rigour by warming up the chilly star with the
genial heat of the sun. How he does so may be best described in his own
words as follows:--[805]

"The Bushmen perceive Canopus, they say to a child: 'Give me yonder
piece of wood, that I may put the end of it in the fire, that I may
point it burning towards grandmother, for grandmother carries Bushman
rice; grandmother shall make a little warmth for us; for she coldly
comes out; the sun[806] shall warm grandmother's eye for us.' Sirius
comes out; the people call out to one another: 'Sirius comes yonder;'
they say to one another: 'Ye must burn a stick for us towards Sirius.'
They say to one another: 'Who was it who saw Sirius?' One man says to
the other: 'Our brother saw Sirius,' The other man says to him: 'I saw
Sirius.' The other man says to him: 'I wish thee to burn a stick for us
towards Sirius; that the sun may shining come out for us; that Sirius
may not coldly come out' The other man (the one who saw Sirius) says to
his son: 'Bring me the small piece of wood yonder, that I may put the
end of it in the fire, that I may burn it towards grandmother; that
grandmother may ascend the sky, like the other one, Canopus.' The child
brings him the piece of wood, he (the father) holds the end of it in the
fire. He points it burning towards Sirius; he says that Sirius shall
twinkle like Canopus. He sings; he sings about Canopus, he sings about
Sirius; he points to them with fire,[807] that they may twinkle like
each other. He throws fire at them. He covers himself up entirely
(including his head) in his kaross and lies down. He arises, he sits
down; while he does not again lie down; because he feels that he has
worked, putting Sirius into the sun's warmth; so that Sirius may warmly
come out. The women go out early to seek for Bushman rice; they walk,
sunning their shoulder blades."[808] What the Bushmen thus do to temper
the cold of midwinter in the southern hemisphere by blowing up the
celestial fires may have been done by our rude forefathers at the
corresponding season in the northern hemisphere.

[The burning wheels and discs of the fire-festivals may be direct
imitations of the sun.]

Not only the date of some of the festivals but the manner of their
celebration suggests a conscious imitation of the sun. The custom of
rolling a burning wheel down a hill, which is often observed at these
ceremonies, might well pass for an imitation of the sun's course in the
sky, and the imitation would be especially appropriate on Midsummer Day
when the sun's annual declension begins. Indeed the custom has been thus
interpreted by some of those who have recorded it.[809] Not less
graphic, it may be said, is the mimicry of his apparent revolution by
swinging a burning tar-barrel round a pole.[810] Again, the common
practice of throwing fiery discs, sometimes expressly said to be shaped
like suns, into the air at the festivals may well be a piece of
imitative magic. In these, as in so many cases, the magic force may be
supposed to take effect through mimicry or sympathy: by imitating the
desired result you actually produce it: by counterfeiting the sun's
progress through the heavens you really help the luminary to pursue his
celestial journey with punctuality and despatch. The name "fire of
heaven," by which the midsummer fire is sometimes popularly known,[811]
clearly implies a consciousness of a connexion between the earthly and
the heavenly flame.

[The wheel sometimes used to kindle the fire by friction may also be an
imitation of the sun.]

Again, the manner in which the fire appears to have been originally
kindled on these occasions has been alleged in support of the view that
it was intended to be a mock-sun. As some scholars have perceived, it is
highly probable that at the periodic festivals in former times fire was
universally obtained by the friction of two pieces of wood.[812] We have
seen that it is still so procured in some places both at the Easter and
the midsummer festivals, and that it is expressly said to have been
formerly so procured at the Beltane celebration both in Scotland and
Wales.[813] But what makes it nearly certain that this was once the
invariable mode of kindling the fire at these periodic festivals is the
analogy of the need-fire, which has almost always been produced by the
friction of wood, and sometimes by the revolution of a wheel. It is a
plausible conjecture that the wheel employed for this purpose represents
the sun,[814] and if the fires at the regularly recurring celebrations
were formerly produced in the same way, it might be regarded as a
confirmation of the view that they were originally sun-charms. In point
of fact there is, as Kuhn has indicated,[815] some evidence to shew that
the midsummer fire was originally thus produced. We have seen that many
Hungarian swineherds make fire on Midsummer Eve by rotating a wheel
round a wooden axle wrapt in hemp, and that they drive their pigs
through the fire thus made.[816] At Obermedlingen, in Swabia, the "fire
of heaven," as it was called, was made on St. Vitus's Day (the fifteenth
of June) by igniting a cartwheel, which, smeared with pitch and plaited
with straw, was fastened on a pole twelve feet high, the top of the pole
being inserted in the nave of the wheel. This fire was made on the
summit of a mountain, and as the flame ascended, the people uttered a
set form of words, with eyes and arms directed heavenward.[817] Here the
fixing of a wheel on a pole and igniting it suggests that originally the
fire was produced, as in the case of the need-fire, by the revolution of
a wheel. The day on which the ceremony takes place (the fifteenth of
June) is near midsummer; and we have seen that in Masuren fire is, or
used to be, actually made on Midsummer Day by turning a wheel rapidly
about an oaken pole,[818] though it is not said that the new fire so
obtained is used to light a bonfire. However, we must bear in mind that
in all such cases the use of a wheel may be merely a mechanical device
to facilitate the operation of fire-making by increasing the friction;
it need not have any symbolical significance.

[The influence which the fires 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.]

Further, the influence which these fires, whether periodic or
occasional, are supposed to exert on the weather and vegetation may be
cited in support of the view that they are sun-charms, since the effects
ascribed to them resemble those of sunshine. Thus, the French belief
that in a rainy June the lighting of the midsummer bonfires will cause
the rain to cease[819] appears to assume that they can disperse the dark
clouds and make the sun to break out in radiant glory, drying the wet
earth and dripping trees. Similarly the use of the need-fire by Swiss
children on foggy days for the purpose of clearing away the mist[820]
may very naturally be interpreted as a sun-charm. Again, we have seen
that in the Vosges Mountains the people believe that the midsummer fires
help to preserve the fruits of the earth and ensure good crops.[821] In
Sweden the warmth or cold of the coming season is inferred from the
direction in which the flames of the May Day bonfire are blown; if they
blow to the south, it will be warm, if to the north, cold.[822] No doubt
at present the direction of the flames is regarded merely as an augury
of the weather, not as a mode of influencing it. But we may be pretty
sure that this is one of the cases in which magic has dwindled into
divination. So in the Eifel Mountains, when the smoke blows towards the
corn-fields, this is an omen that the harvest will be abundant.[823] But
the older view may have been not merely that the smoke and flames
prognosticated, but that they actually produced an abundant harvest, the
heat of the flames acting like sunshine on the corn. Perhaps it was with
this view that people in the Isle of Man lit fires to windward of their
fields in order that the smoke might blow over them.[824] So in South
Africa, about the month of April, the Matabeles light huge fires to the
windward of their gardens, "their idea being that the smoke, by passing
over the crops, will assist the ripening of them."[825] Among the Zulus
also "medicine is burned on a fire placed to windward of the garden, the
fumigation which the plants in consequence receive being held to improve
the crop."[826] Again, the idea of our European peasants that the corn
will grow well as far as the blaze of the bonfire is visible,[827] may
be interpreted as a remnant of the belief in the quickening and
fertilizing power of the bonfires. The same belief, it may be argued,
reappears in the notion that embers taken from the bonfires and inserted
in the fields will promote the growth of the crops,[828] and it may be
thought to underlie the customs of sowing flax-seed in the direction in
which the flames blow,[829] of mixing the ashes of the bonfire with the
seed-corn at sowing,[830] of scattering the ashes by themselves over the
field to fertilize it,[831] and of incorporating a piece of the Yule log
in the plough to make the seeds thrive.[832] The opinion that the flax
or hemp will grow as high as the flames rise or the people leap over
them[833] belongs clearly to the same class of ideas. Again, at Konz, on
the banks of the Moselle, if the blazing wheel which was trundled down
the hillside reached the river without being extinguished, this was
hailed as a proof that the vintage would be abundant. So firmly was this
belief held that the successful performance of the ceremony entitled the
villagers to levy a tax upon the owners of the neighbouring
vineyards.[834] Here the unextinguished wheel might be taken to
represent an unclouded sun, which in turn would portend an abundant
vintage. So the waggon-load of white wine which the villagers received
from the vineyards round about might pass for a payment for the sunshine
which they had procured for the grapes. Similarly we saw that in the
Vale of Glamorgan a blazing wheel used to be trundled down hill on
Midsummer Day, and that if the fire were extinguished before the wheel
reached the foot of the hill, the people expected a bad harvest; whereas
if the wheel kept alight all the way down and continued to blaze for a
long time, the farmers looked forward to heavy crops that summer.[835]
Here, again, it is natural to suppose that the rustic mind traced a
direct connexion between the fire of the wheel and the fire of the sun,
on which the crops are dependent.

[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.]

But in popular belief the quickening and fertilizing influence of the
bonfires is not limited to the vegetable world; it extends also to
animals. This plainly appears from the Irish custom of driving barren
cattle through the midsummer fires,[836] from the French belief that the
Yule-log steeped in water helps cows to calve,[837] from the French and
Servian notion that there will be as many chickens, calves, lambs, and
kids as there are sparks struck out of the Yule log,[838] from the
French custom of putting the ashes of the bonfires in the fowls' nests
to make the hens lay eggs,[839] and from the German practice of mixing
the ashes of the bonfires with the drink of cattle in order to make the
animals thrive.[840] Further, there are clear indications that even
human fecundity is supposed to be promoted by the genial heat of the
fires. In Morocco the people think that childless couples can obtain
offspring by leaping over the midsummer bonfire.[841] It is an Irish
belief that a girl who jumps thrice over the midsummer bonfire will soon
marry and become the mother of many children;[842] in Flanders women
leap over the Midsummer fires to ensure an easy delivery;[843] and in
various parts of France they think that if a girl dances round nine
fires she will be sure to marry within the year.[844] On the other hand,
in Lechrain people say that if a young man and woman, leaping over the
midsummer fire together, escape unsmirched, the young woman will not
become a mother within twelve months:[845] the flames have not touched
and fertilized her. In parts of Switzerland and France the lighting of
the Yule log is accompanied by a prayer that the women may bear
children, the she-goats bring forth kids, and the ewes drop lambs.[846]
The rule observed in some places that the bonfires should be kindled by
the person who was last married[847] seems to belong to the same class
of ideas, whether it be that such a person is supposed to receive from,
or to impart to, the fire a generative and fertilizing influence. The
common practice of lovers leaping over the fires hand in hand may very
well have originated in a notion that thereby their marriage would be
blessed with offspring; and the like motive would explain the custom
which obliges couples married within the year to dance to the light of
torches.[848] And the scenes of profligacy which appear to have marked
the midsummer celebration among the Esthonians,[849] as they once marked
the celebration of May Day among ourselves, may have sprung, not from
the mere license of holiday-makers, but from a crude notion that such
orgies were justified, if not required, by some mysterious bond which
linked the life of man to the courses of the heavens at this
turning-point of the year.

[The custom of carrying lighted torches about the country at the
festival may be explained as an attempt to diffuse the Sun's heat.]

At the festivals which we are considering the custom of kindling
bonfires is commonly associated with a custom of carrying lighted
torches about the fields, the orchards, the pastures, the flocks and the
herds; and we can hardly doubt that the two customs are only two
different ways of attaining the same object, namely, the benefits which
are believed to flow from the fire, whether it be stationary or
portable. Accordingly if we accept the solar theory of the bonfires, we
seem bound to apply it also to the torches; we must suppose that the
practice of marching or running with blazing torches about the country
is simply a means of diffusing far and wide the genial influence of the
sunshine, of which these flickering flames are a feeble imitation. In
favour of this view it may be said that sometimes the torches are
carried about the fields for the express purpose of fertilizing
them,[850] and for the same purpose live coals from the bonfires are
sometimes placed in the fields "to prevent blight."[851] On the Eve of
Twelfth Day in Normandy men, women, and children run wildly through the
fields and orchards with lighted torches, which they wave about the
branches and dash against the trunks of the fruit-trees for the sake of
burning the moss and driving away the moles and field mice. "They
believe that the ceremony fulfils the double object of exorcizing the
vermin whose multiplication would be a real calamity, and of imparting
fecundity to the trees, the fields, and even the cattle"; and they
imagine that the more the ceremony is prolonged, the greater will be the
crop of fruit next autumn.[852] In Bohemia they say that the corn will
grow as high as they fling the blazing besoms into the air.[853] Nor are
such notions confined to Europe. In Corea, a few days before the New
Year festival, the eunuchs of the palace swing burning torches, chanting
invocations the while, and this is supposed to ensure bountiful crops
for the next season.[854] The custom of trundling a burning wheel over
the fields, which used to be observed in Poitou for the express purpose
of fertilizing them,[855] may be thought to embody the same idea in a
still more graphic form; since in this way the mock-sun itself, not
merely its light and heat represented by torches, is made actually to
pass over the ground which is to receive its quickening and kindly
influence. Once more, the custom of carrying lighted brands round
cattle[856] is plainly equivalent to driving the animals through the
bonfire; and if the bonfire is a sun-charm, the torches must be so also.


Sec. 3. _The Purificatory Theory of the Fire-festivals_


[Theory that the fires at the festivals are purificatory, being intended
to burn up all harmful things.]

Thus far we have considered what may be said for the theory that at the
European fire-festivals the fire is kindled as a charm to ensure an
abundant supply of sunshine for man and beast, for corn and fruits. It
remains to consider what may be said against this theory and in favour
of the view that in these rites fire is employed not as a creative but
as a cleansing agent, which purifies men, animals, and plants by burning
up and consuming the noxious elements, whether material or spiritual,
which menace all living things with disease and death.

[The purificatory or destructive effect of the fires is often alleged by
the people who light them; the great evil against which the fire at the
festivals is directed appears to be witchcraft.]

First, then, it is to be observed that the people who practise the
fire-customs appear never to allege the solar theory in explanation of
them, while on the contrary they do frequently and emphatically put
forward the purificatory theory. This is a strong argument in favour of
the purificatory and against the solar theory; for the popular
explanation of a popular custom is never to be rejected except for grave
cause. And in the present case there seems to be no adequate reason for
rejecting it. The conception of fire as a destructive agent, which can
be turned to account for the consumption of evil things, is so simple
and obvious that it could hardly escape the minds even of the rude
peasantry with whom these festivals originated. On the other hand the
conception of fire as an emanation of the sun, or at all events as
linked to it by a bond of physical sympathy, is far less simple and
obvious; and though the use of fire as a charm to produce sunshine
appears to be undeniable,[857] nevertheless in attempting to explain
popular customs we should never have recourse to a more recondite idea
when a simpler one lies to hand and is supported by the explicit
testimony of the people themselves. Now in the case of the
fire-festivals the destructive aspect of fire is one upon which the
people dwell again and again; and it is highly significant that the
great evil against which the fire is directed appears to be witchcraft.
Again and again we are told that the fires are intended to burn or repel
the witches;[858] and the intention is sometimes graphically expressed
by burning an effigy of a witch in the fire.[859] Hence, when we
remember the great hold which the dread of witchcraft has had on the
popular European mind in all ages, we may suspect that the primary
intention of all these fire-festivals was simply to destroy or at all
events get rid of the witches, who were regarded as the causes of nearly
all the misfortunes and calamities that befall men, their cattle, and
their crops.[860]

[Amongst 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.]

This suspicion is confirmed when we examine the evils for which the
bonfires and torches were supposed to provide a remedy. Foremost,
perhaps, among these evils we may reckon the diseases of cattle; and of
all the ills that witches are believed to work there is probably none
which is so constantly insisted on as the harm they do to the herds,
particularly by stealing the milk from the cows.[861] Now it is
significant that the need-fire, which may perhaps be regarded as the
parent of the periodic fire-festivals, is kindled above all as a remedy
for a murrain or other disease of cattle; and the circumstance suggests,
what on general grounds seems probable, that the custom of kindling the
need-fire goes back to a time when the ancestors of the European peoples
subsisted chiefly on the products of their herds, and when agriculture
as yet played a subordinate part in their lives. Witches and wolves are
the two great foes still dreaded by the herdsman in many parts of
Europe;[862] and we need not wonder that he should resort to fire as a
powerful means of banning them both. Among Slavonic peoples it appears
that the foes whom the need-fire is designed to combat are not so much
living witches as vampyres and other evil spirits,[863] and the
ceremony, as we saw, aims rather at repelling these baleful beings than
at actually consuming them in the flames. But for our present purpose
these distinctions are immaterial. The important thing to observe is
that among the Slavs the need-fire, which is probably the original of
all the ceremonial fires now under consideration, is not a sun-charm,
but clearly and unmistakably nothing but a means of protecting man and
beast against the attacks of maleficent creatures, whom the peasant
thinks to burn or scare by the heat of the fire, just as he might burn
or scare wild animals.

[Again, the bonfires are thought to avert hail, thunder, lightning, and
other maladies, all of which are attributed to the maleficent arts of
witches.]

Again, the bonfires are often supposed to protect the fields against
hail[864] and the homestead against thunder and lightning.[865] But both
hail and thunderstorms are frequently thought to be caused by
witches;[866] hence the fire which bans the witches necessarily serves
at the same time as a talisman against hail, thunder, and lightning.
Further, brands taken from the bonfires are commonly kept in the houses
to guard them against conflagration;[867] and though this may perhaps be
done on the principle of homoeopathic magic, one fire being thought to
act as a preventive of another, it is also possible that the intention
may be to keep witch-incendiaries at bay. Again, people leap over the
bonfires as a preventive of colic,[868] and look at the flames steadily
in order to preserve their eyes in good health;[869] and both colic and
sore eyes are in Germany, and probably elsewhere, set down to the
machinations of witches.[870] Once more, to leap over the Midsummer
fires or to circumambulate them is thought to prevent a person from
feeling pains in his back at reaping;[871] and in Germany such pains are
called "witch-shots" and ascribed to witchcraft.[872]

[The burning wheels rolled down hills and the burning discs and brooms
thrown into the air may be intended to burn the invisible witches.]

But if the bonfires and torches of the fire-festivals are to be regarded
primarily as weapons directed against witches and wizards, it becomes
probable that the same explanation applies not only to the flaming discs
which are hurled into the air, but also to the burning wheels which are
rolled down hill on these occasions; discs and wheels, we may suppose,
are alike intended to burn the witches who hover invisible in the air or
haunt unseen the fields, the orchards, and the vineyards on the
hillside.[873] Certainly witches are constantly thought to ride through
the air on broomsticks or other equally convenient vehicles; and if they
do so, how can you get at them so effectually as by hurling lighted
missiles, whether discs, torches, or besoms, after them as they flit
past overhead in the gloom? The South Slavonian peasant believes that
witches ride in the dark hail-clouds; so he shoots at the clouds to
bring down the hags, while he curses them, saying, "Curse, curse
Herodias, thy mother is a heathen, damned of God and fettered through
the Redeemer's blood." Also he brings out a pot of glowing charcoal on
which he has thrown holy oil, laurel leaves, and wormwood to make a
smoke. The fumes are supposed to ascend to the clouds and stupefy the
witches, so that they tumble down to earth. And in order that they may
not fall soft, but may hurt themselves very much, the yokel hastily
brings out a chair and tilts it bottom up so that the witch in falling
may break her legs on the legs of the chair. Worse than that, he cruelly
lays scythes, bill-hooks and other formidable weapons edge upwards so as
to cut and mangle the poor wretches when they drop plump upon them from
the clouds.[874]