The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 09 of 12)

(Innsbruck, 1871), pp. 138 sq.; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 542 sq.; J. M. Ritter von Alpenburg, Mythen und Sagen Tirols (Zürich, 1857), pp. 50 sq.; K. Weinhold, Weinacht-Spiele und Lieder aus Süddeutschland und Schlesien (Vienna, 1875), pp. 21 sqq.]

The Ugly Perchten in Salzburg.

In the province of Salzburg the Perchten mummers are also divided into two sets, the Beautiful Perchten and the Ugly Perchten. The Ugly Perchten are properly speaking twelve young men dressed in black sheepskins and wearing hoods of badger-skins and grotesque wooden masks, which represent either coarse human features with long teeth and horns, or else the features of fabulous animals with beaks and bristles or movable jaws. They all carry bells, both large and small, fastened to broad leathern girdles. The procession was headed by a man with a big drum, and after him came lads bearing huge torches and lanterns fastened to tall poles; for in Salzburg or some parts of it these mummers played their pranks by night. Behind the torchbearers came two Fools, a male and a female, the latter acted by a lad in woman's clothes. The male Fool carried a sausage-like roll, with which he struck at all women or girls of his acquaintance when they shewed themselves at the open doors or windows. Along with the Perchten themselves went a train of young fellows cracking whips, blowing horns, or jingling bells. The ways might be miry and the night pitch dark, but with flaring lights the procession swept rapidly by, the men leaping along with the help of their long sticks and waking the echoes of the slumbering valley by their loud uproar. From time to time they stopped at a farm, danced and cut their capers before the house, for which they were rewarded by presents of food and strong drink; to offer them money would have been an insult. By midnight the performance came to an end, and the tired maskers dispersed to their homes.

The Beautiful Perchten in Salzburg.

The Beautiful Perchten in Salzburg are attired very differently from the Ugly Perchten, but their costume varies with the district. Thus in the Pongau district the distinctive feature of their costume is a tall and heavy framework covered with bright red cloth and decorated with a profusion of silver jewelry and filagree work. This framework is sometimes nine or ten feet high and forty or fifty pounds in weight. The performer carries it above his head by means of iron supports resting on his shoulders or his back. To run or jump under the weight of such an encumbrance is impossible; the dancer has to content himself with turning round and round slowly and clumsily. Very different is the headdress of the Beautiful Perchten in the Pinzgau district of Salzburg. There the performers are dressed in scarlet and wear straw hats, from which bunches of white feathers, arranged like fans, nod and flutter in the wind. Red shoes and white stockings complete their attire. Thus lightly equipped they hop and jump and stamp briskly in the dance. Unlike their Ugly namesakes, who seem now to be extinct, the Beautiful Perchten still parade from time to time among the peasantry of the Salzburg highlands; but the intervals between their appearances are irregular, varying from four to seven years or more. Unlike the Ugly Perchten, they wear no masks and appear in full daylight, always on Perchta's Day (Twelfth Night, the sixth of January) and the two following Sundays. They are attended by a train of followers who make a great din with bells, whips, pipes, horns, rattles, and chains. Amongst them one or two clowns, clothed in white and wearing tall pointed hats of white felt with many jingling bells attached to them, play a conspicuous part. They carry each a sausage-shaped roll stuffed with tow, and with this instrument they strike lightly such women and girls among the spectators as they desire particularly to favour. Another attendant carries the effigy of a baby in swaddling bands, made of linen rags, and fastened to a string; this effigy he throws at women and girls and then pulls back again, but he does this only to women and girls whom he respects and to whom he wishes well. At St. Johann the Perchten carry drawn swords; each is attended by a lad dressed as a woman; and they are followed by men clad in black sheepskins, wearing the masks of devils, and holding chains in their hands.[585 - Marie Andree-Eysn, Volkskundliches aus dem bayrisch-österreichischen Alpengebiet (Brunswick, 1910), pp. 156-175.]

Mrs. Andree-Eysn on the Perchten; according to her, the processions of Perchten are intended to promote fertility by banishing the demons that would thwart it.

What is the meaning of the quaint performances still enacted by the Perchten and their attendants in the Austrian highlands? The subject has been carefully investigated by a highly competent enquirer, Mrs. Andree-Eysn. She has visited the districts, witnessed the performances, collected information, and studied the costumes. It may be well to quote her conclusion: “If we enquire into the inner meaning which underlies the Perchten-race and kindred processions, we must confess that it is not at first sight obvious, and that the original meaning appears blurred and indistinct. Nevertheless from many features which they present in common it can be demonstrated that the processions were held for the purpose of driving away demons and had for their object to promote fertility. In favour of this view it may be urged, first of all, that their appearance is everywhere greeted with joy, because it promises fertility and a good harvest. ‘It is a good year,’ they say in Salzburg. If the processions are prevented from taking place, dearth and a bad harvest are to be apprehended. The peasants of the Tyrol still believe that the more Perchten run about, the better will the year be, and therefore they treat them to brandy and cakes. In Lienz, when the harvest turns out ill, they say that they omitted to let the Perchten run over the fields, and for that reason the peasant in the Sarn valley gets the Perchten to leap about on his fields, for then there will be a good year.

“If fertility and blessing are to be poured out on field, house, and homestead, it is obvious that everything that could hinder or harm must be averted and driven away. When we consider how even at the present time, and still more in times gone by, much that is harmful is attributed to the malevolence of invisible powers, we can readily understand why people should resort to measures which they deem effective for the purpose of disarming these malevolent beings. Now it is a common belief that certain masks possess the virtue of banning demons, and that loud noise and din are a means of keeping off evil spirits or hindering their activity. In the procession of the Perchten we see the principle of the banishment of evil carried out in practice. The people attack the evil spirits and seek to chase them away by putting on frightful masks, with which they confront the demon. For one sort of malevolent spirits one kind of mask appears suitable, and for another another; this spirit is daunted by this mask, and that spirit by that; and so they came to discriminate. Originally, particular masks may have been used against particular evil spirits, but in course of time they were confused, the individual taste of the maker of the mask counted for something, and so gradually it resulted in carving all kinds of horrible, fantastic, and hideous masks which had nothing in common but their general tendency to frighten away all evil spirits.”[586 - Marie Andree-Eysn, Volkskundliches aus dem bayrisch-österreichischen Alpengebiet (Brunswick, 1910), pp. 179 sq. The authoress kindly presented me with a copy of her valuable work in May 1910, when I had the pleasure of visiting her and her husband, the eminent anthropologist, the late Dr. Richard Andree, in their home at Munich.]

The bells worn by the Perchtenmummers may be intended to ban demons. Bells rung to make the grass grow in spring. Bells rung to make the flax grow. Whips cracked to make the flax grow.

In support of her view that the procession of the Perchten aims chiefly at banishing demons who might otherwise blight the crops, Mrs. Andree-Eysn lays stress on the bells which figure so prominently in the costume of these maskers; for the sound of bells, as she reminds us, is commonly believed to be a potent means of driving evil spirits away. The notion is too familiar to call for proof,[587 - See P. Sartori, “Glockensagen und Glockenaberglaube,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde, vii. (1897) pp. 360 sqq. The use in classical antiquity of bells, gongs, and the clash of bronze generally to ban the demon host has been learnedly illustrated by Mr. A. B. Cook in his article, “The Gong at Dodona,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxii. (1902) pp. 14 sqq.] but a single case from Central Africa may be cited as an illustration. The Teso people, who inhabit a land of rolling plains between Mount Elgon and Lake Kioga, “make use of bells to exorcise the storm fiend; a person who has been injured by a flash or in the resulting fire wears bells round his ankles for weeks afterwards. Whenever rain threatens, and rain in Uganda almost always comes in company with thunder and lightning, this person will parade the village for an hour, with the jingling bells upon his legs and a wand of papyrus in his hand, attended by as many of his family as may happen to be at hand and not employed in necessary duties.”[588 - Rev. A. L. Kitching, On the Backwaters of the Nile (London, 1912), p. 264. As to the country of the Teso people, who do not belong to the Bantu stock, see id., pp. 26 sq.] The resemblance of such men, with their bells and wands, to the Austrian Perchten with their bells and wands is, on the theory in question, fairly close; both of them go about to dispel demons by the sound of their bells and probably also by the blows of their rods. Whatever may be thought of their efficacy in banning fiends, certain it is that in the Tyrol, where the Perchten play their pranks, the chime of bells is used for the express purpose of causing the grass to grow in spring. Thus in the lower valley of the Inn, especially at Schwaz, on the twenty-fourth of April (there reckoned St. George's Day) troops of young fellows go about ringing bells, some of which they hold in their hands, while others are attached to their persons; and the peasants say, “Wherever the Grass-ringers come, there the grass grows well, and the corn bears abundant fruit.” Hence the bell-ringers are welcomed and treated wherever they go. Formerly, it is said, they wore masks, like the Perchten, but afterwards they contented themselves with blackening their faces with soot.[589 - Marie Andree-Eysn, op. cit. pp. 180-182. As to the custom of “ringing-out the grass,” see further W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 540; The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 343 sq.] In other parts of the Tyrol the bell-ringing processions take place at the Carnival, but their object is the same; for “it is believed that by this noisy procession growth in general, but especially the growth of the meadows, is promoted.”[590 - Marie Andree-Eysn, op. cit. p. 182.] Again, at Bergell, in the Swiss canton of the Grisons, children go in procession on the first of March ringing bells, “in order that the grass may grow.”[591 - Marie Andree-Eysn, l. c.] So in Hildesheim, on the afternoon of Ascension Day, young girls ascend the church tower and ring all the church bells, “in order that they may get a good harvest of flax; the girl who, hanging on to the bell-rope, is swung highest by the swing of the bell, will get the longest flax.”[592 - K. Seifart, Sagen, Märchen, Schwänke und Gebräuche aus Stadt und Stift Hildesheim

(Hildesheim, 1889), p. 180. For more evidence of the supposed fertilizing influence of bells, see P. Sartori, “Glockensagen und Glockenaberglaube,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde, vii. (1897) pp. 363 sq.] Here the sound of the bells as a means of promoting the growth of the flax is reinforced by the upward swing of the bell, which, carrying with it the bell-ringer at the end of the rope, naturally causes the flax in like manner to rise high in the air. It is a simple piece of imitative magic, like the leaps and bounds which the peasants of Central Europe often execute for precisely the same purpose. Once more, in various parts of the Tyrol on Senseless Thursday, which is the last Thursday in Carnival, young men in motley attire, with whips and brooms, run about cracking their whips and making believe to sweep away the onlookers with their brooms. They are called Huttler or Huddler. The people say that if these fellows do not run about, the flax will not thrive, and that on the contrary the more of them run about, the better will the flax grow. And where there are many of them, there will be much maize.[593 - I. V. Zingerle, Sitten, Bräuche und Meinungen des Tiroler Volkes

(Innsbruck, 1871), pp. 135 sq., 139, § 1196, 1211, 1212.] In this custom the cracking of the whips may be supposed to serve the same purpose as the ringing of the bells by frightening and banishing the demons of infertility and dearth. About Hall, in the northern Tyrol, the ceremony of the Hudel-running, as it is called, is or used to be as follows. A peasant-farmer, generally well-to-do and respected, rigs himself out in motley and hides his face under a mask; round his waist he wears a girdle crammed with rolls, while in his hand he wields a long whip, from which more than fifty cracknels dangle on a string. Thus arrayed he suddenly bursts from the ale-house door into the public view, solicited thereto by the cries of the street urchins, who have been anxiously waiting for his appearance. He throws amongst them the string of cracknels, and while they are scrambling for these dainties, he lays on to them most liberally with his whip. Having faithfully discharged this public duty, he marches down between rows of peasants, who have meantime taken up their position in a long street. Amongst them he picks out one who is to run before him. The man selected for the honour accordingly takes to his heels, hotly pursued by the other with the whip, who lashes the feet of the fugitive till he comes up with him. Having run him down, he leads him back to the alehouse, where he treats him to a roll and a glass of wine. After that the masker runs a similar race with another man; and so it goes on, one race after another, till the sun sets. Then the mummer doffs his mask and leads the dance in the alehouse. The object of these races is said to be to ensure a good crop of flax and maize.[594 - W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 268 sq.]

Certain features in these processions or races of mummers seem to shew that the mummers represent beneficent spirits of fertility, who quicken the seed in the ground and offspring in the wombs of women. The view of W. Mannhardt.

In these races of mummers, whether known as Perchten or Huttler, there are certain features which it is difficult to explain on the theory that the aim of the performers is simply to drive away demons, and that the hideous masks which they assume have no other intention than that of frightening these uncanny beings. For observe that in the last example the blows of the whip fall not on the airy swarms of invisible spirits, but on the solid persons of street urchins and sturdy yokels, who can hardly be supposed to receive the chastisement vicariously for the demons. Again, what are we to make of the rolls and cracknels with which in this case the mummer is laden, and which he distributes among his victims, as if to console them in one part of their person for the pain which he has inflicted on another? Surely this bounty seems to invest him with something more than the purely negative character of an exorciser of evil; it appears to raise him to the positive character of a dispenser of good. The same remark applies to the action of the Perchten who strike women lightly, as a mark of friendship and regard, with the sausage-like rolls which they carry in their hands, or throw them, as a mark of favour, the effigy of a baby. The only probable explanation of these practices, as Mrs. Andree-Eysn rightly points out, is that the mummers thereby intend to fertilize the women whom they honour by these attentions.[595 - Marie Andree-Eysn, op. cit. pp. 182 sq.] Here, again, therefore the maskers appear as the actual dispensers of good, the bestowers of fruitfulness, not merely the averters of evil. If that is so, we seem bound to infer that these masked men represent or embody the spirits who quicken the seed both in the earth and in the wombs of women. That was the view of W. Mannhardt, the highest authority on the agricultural superstitions of European peasantry. After reviewing these and many more similar processions, he concludes that if the comparison which he has instituted between them holds good, all these various mummers “were intended by the original founders of the processions to represent demons of vegetation, who by their mere appearance and cries drove away the powers that hinder growth and woke to new life the slumbering spirits of the grasses and corn-stalks.”[596 - W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 548.] Thus Mannhardt admitted that these noisy processions of masked men are really supposed to dispel the evil spirits of blight and infertility, while at the same time he held that the men themselves originally personated vegetation-spirits. And he thought it probable that the original significance of these performances was in later times misunderstood and interpreted as a simple expulsion of witches and other uncanny beings that haunt the fields.[597 - W. Mannhardt, l. c.]

Confirmations of this view. The use of bells and swords in these ceremonies.

On the whole this conclusion of an enquirer remarkable for a rare combination of learning, sobriety, and insight, is perhaps the most probable that can now be reached with the evidence at our disposal. It is confirmed by some of the savage masquerades in which the maskers definitely represent spirits of fertility in order to promote the fruitfulness of the earth and of women;[598 - See above, p. 236 (#x_20_i11).] and it is supported by the evidence of many other rustic mummeries in Europe, for example, by the English rites of Plough Monday, in which the dancers, or rather jumpers, who wore bunches of corn in their hats as they leaped into the air, are most naturally interpreted as agents or representatives of the corn-spirit.[599 - Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, ii. 325 sqq.] It is, therefore, worth observing that in some places the dancers of Plough Monday, who attended the plough in its peregrinations through the streets and fields, are described as morris-dancers.[600 - T. F. Thiselton Dyer, British Popular Customs (London, 1876), p. 32; County Folk-lore, Printed Extracts, No. 3, Leicestershire and Rutlandshire, collected and edited by C. J. Billson (London, 1895), pp. 93 sq.] If the description is correct, it implies that they had bells attached to their costume, which would further assimilate them to the Perchten and other masqueraders of Central Europe; for the chief characteristic of the morris-dance is that the performers wear bells fastened to their legs which jingle at every step.[601 - Mrs. Lilly Grove (Mrs. J. G. Frazer), Dancing (London, 1895), pp. 147 sqq.; E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage (Oxford, 1903), i. 195 sqq.] We may suppose that if the men who ran and capered beside the plough on Plough Monday really wore bells, the original intention of this appendage to their costume was either to dispel the demons who might hinder the growth of the corn, or to waken the spirits of vegetation from their long winter sleep. In favour of the view which sees in all these dances and mummeries rather the banishment of what is evil than the direct promotion of what is good, it may be urged that some of the dancers wear swords,[602 - As to the swords carried by the Perchten see above, p. 245 (#x_20_i27); as to those carried by the dancers on Plough Monday, see J. Brand, Popular Antiquities of Great Britain (London, 1882-1883), i. 505. As to the sword-dance in general, see K. Müllenhoff, “Über den Schwerttanz,” in Festgaben für Gustav Homeyer (Berlin, 1871), pp. 111-147 (who compares the dances of the Salii); Mrs. Lilly Grove, op. cit. pp. 189 sqq., 211 sqq.; E. K. Chambers, op. cit. i. 182 sqq.] a weapon which certainly seems better fitted to combat demons than to prune fruit-trees or turn up the sod. Further, it deserves to be noted that many of the performances take place either on Twelfth Day or, like the celebration of Plough Monday, very shortly after it; and that in the Lord of Misrule, who reigned from Christmas to Twelfth Day,[603 - See below, pp. 331 (#x_24_i30)sqq.] we have a clear trace of one of those periods of general licence and suspension of ordinary government, which so commonly occur at the end of the old year or the beginning of the new one in connexion with a general expulsion of evils.

These masquerades originally intended both to stimulate vegetation in spring and to expel demons.

Surveying these masquerades and processions, as they have been or still are celebrated in modern Europe, we may say in general that they appear to have been originally intended both to stimulate the growth of vegetation in spring and to expel the demoniac or other evil influences which were thought to have accumulated during the preceding winter or year; and that these two motives of stimulation and expulsion, blended and perhaps confused together, appear to explain the quaint costumes of the mummers, the multitudinous noises which they make, and the blows which they direct either at invisible foes or at the visible and tangible persons of their fellows. In the latter case the beating may be supposed to serve as a means of forcibly freeing the sufferers from the demons or other evil things that cling to them unseen.

Application of these conclusions to the expulsion of “the Old Mars”in ancient Rome.

To apply these conclusions to the Roman custom of expelling Mamurius Veturius or “the Old Mars” every year in spring, we may say that they lend some support to the theory which sees in “the Old Mars” the outworn deity of vegetation driven away to make room, either for a younger and more vigorous personification of vernal life, or perhaps for the return of the same deity refreshed and renovated by the treatment to which he had been subjected, and particularly by the vigorous application of the rod to his sacred person. For, as we shall see presently, King Solomon was by no means singular in his opinion of the refreshing influence of a sound thrashing. So far as “the Old Mars” was supposed to carry away with him the accumulated weaknesses and other evils of the past year, so far would he serve as a public scapegoat, like the effigy in the Slavonic custom of “Carrying out Death,” which appears not only to represent the vegetation-spirit of the past year, but also to act as a scapegoat, carrying away with it a heavy load of suffering, misfortune, and death.

§ 2. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Greece

Human scapegoats in ancient Greece. The “Expulsion of Hunger”at Chaeronea.

The ancient Greeks were also familiar with the use of a human scapegoat. In Plutarch's native town of Chaeronea a ceremony of this kind was performed by the chief magistrate at the Town Hall, and by each householder at his own home. It was called the “expulsion of hunger.” A slave was beaten with rods of the agnus castus, and turned out of doors with the words, “Out with hunger, and in with wealth and health.” When Plutarch held the office of chief magistrate of his native town he performed this ceremony at the Town Hall, and he has recorded the discussion to which the custom afterwards gave rise.[604 - Plutarch, Quaest. conviv. vi. 8.] The ceremony closely resembles the Japanese, Hindoo, and Highland customs already described.[605 - See above, pp. 143 (#x_14_i1)sqq., 209.]

Human scapegoats at Marseilles. Human scapegoats put to death at Athens. Human scapegoats annually stoned to death at Abdera.

But in civilized Greece the custom of the scapegoat took darker forms than the innocent rite over which the amiable and pious Plutarch presided. Whenever Marseilles, one of the busiest and most brilliant of Greek colonies, was ravaged by a plague, a man of the poorer classes used to offer himself as a scapegoat. For a whole year he was maintained at the public expense, being fed on choice and pure food. At the expiry of the year he was dressed in sacred garments, decked with holy branches, and led through the whole city, while prayers were uttered that all the evils of the people might fall on his head. He was then cast out of the city or stoned to death by the people outside of the walls.[606 - Servius on Virgil, Aen. iii. 57, following Petronius; Lactantius Placidius, Commentarii in Statii Thebaida x. 793, p. 452, ed. R. Jahnke (Leipsic, 1898). According to the former writer, the scapegoat was cast out (“projiciebatur”); according to the latter, he was stoned to death by the people outside of the walls (“extra pomeria saxis occidebatur a populo”). The statement of some modern writers that he was killed by being hurled from a height rests on a reading (“praecipitabatur” for “projiciebatur”) in the text of Servius, which appears to have no manuscript authority and to be merely a conjecture of R. Stephan's. Yet the conjecture has been inserted in the text by F. Buecheler in his edition of Petronius (Third Edition, Berlin, 1882, p. 109) without any intimation that all the MSS. present a different reading. See the critical edition of Servius edited by G. Thilo and H. Hagen, vol. i. (Leipsic, 1881), p. 346.] The Athenians regularly maintained a number of degraded and useless beings at the public expense; and when any calamity, such as plague, drought, or famine, befell the city, they sacrificed two of these outcasts as scapegoats. One of the victims was sacrificed for the men and the other for the women. The former wore round his neck a string of black, the latter a string of white figs. Sometimes, it seems, the victim slain on behalf of the women was a woman. They were led about the city and then sacrificed, apparently by being stoned to death outside the city.[607 - Helladius, in Photius, Bibliotheca, p. 534 A, ed. Im. Bekker (Berlin, 1824); Scholiast on Aristophanes, Frogs, 734, and on Knights, 1136; Hesychius, Lexicon, s. v. φαρμακοὶ; compare Suidas, Lexicon, s. vv. κάθαρμα, φαρμακός, and φαρμακούς; Lysias, Orat. vi. 53. That they were stoned is an inference from Harpocration. See next note. When the people of Cyrene sacrificed to Saturn (Cronus), they wore crowns of fresh figs on their heads. See Macrobius, Saturn, i. 7. 25.] But such sacrifices were not confined to extraordinary occasions of public calamity; it appears that every year, at the festival of the Thargelia in May, two victims, one for the men and one for the women, were led out of Athens and stoned to death.[608 - Harpocration, Lexicon, s. v. φαρμακός, who says δύο ἄνδρας ᾽Αθήνησιν ἐξῆγον καθάρσια ἐσομένους τῆς πόλεως ἐν τοῖς Θαργηλίοις, ἕνα μὲν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀνδρῶν, ἕνα δὲ ὑπὲρ τῶν γυναικῶν. He does not expressly state that they were put to death; but as he says that the ceremony was an imitation of the execution of a mythical Pharmacus who was stoned to death, we may infer that the victims were killed by being stoned. Suidas (s. v. φαρμακός) copies Harpocration. As to the human scapegoats employed by the Greeks at the Thargelia and on other occasions see W. Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen (Strasburg, 1884), pp. 124 sqq.; J. Töpffer, Beiträge zur griechischen Altertumswissenschaft (Berlin, 1897), pp. 130 sqq.; August Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 468 sqq.; Miss J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Second Edition (Cambridge, 1908), pp. 95 sqq.; M. P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste (Leipsic, 1906), pp. 105 sqq.; W. R. Paton, “The φαρμακοί and the Story of the Fall,” Revue Archéologique, iv. Série ix. (1907) pp. 51-57.] The city of Abdera in Thrace was publicly purified once a year, and one of the burghers, set apart for the purpose, was stoned to death as a scapegoat or vicarious sacrifice for the life of all the others; six days before his execution he was excommunicated, “in order that he alone might bear the sins of all the people.”[609 - Ovid, Ibis, 467 sq.:“Aut te devoveat certis Abdera diebusSaxaque devotum grandine plura petant,”with the two scholia quoted respectively by M. P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste, p. 108 note 6, and by O. Schneider, in his Callimachea (Leipsic, 1870-1873), ii. 684. The scholiast refers to Callimachus as his authority.]

Annual human scapegoats in Leucadia. Human scapegoats annually put to death at the festival of the Thargelia in Asia Minor.

From the Lover's Leap, a white bluff at the southern end of their island, the Leucadians used annually to hurl a criminal into the sea as a scapegoat. But to lighten his fall they fastened live birds and feathers to him, and a flotilla of small boats waited below to catch him and convey him beyond the boundary. Probably these humane precautions were a mitigation of an earlier custom of flinging the scapegoat into the sea to drown, just as in Kumaon the custom of letting a man slide down a rope from the top of a cliff appears to be a modification of an older practice of putting him to death. The Leucadian ceremony took place at the time of a sacrifice to Apollo, who had a temple or sanctuary on the spot.[610 - Strabo, x. 2. 9, p. 542; Photius, Lexicon, s. v. Λευκάτης; L. Ampelius, Liber Memorialis, viii. 4; Servius, on Virgil, Aen. iii. 279; Ptolemaeus Hephaest., Nov. Histor. in Photius, Bibliotheca, cod. 190, p. 153, ed. Im. Bekker; Mythographi Graeci, ed. A. Westermann (Brunswick, 1843), pp. 198 sq. According to the manuscript reading in Photius, l. c., the priests flung themselves into the sea; but the reading has been altered by the editors. As to the Kumaon ceremony see above, pp. 196 (#x_17_i69)sq.] Elsewhere it was customary to cast a young man every year into the sea, with the prayer, “Be thou our offscouring.” This ceremony was supposed to rid the people of the evils by which they were beset, or according to a somewhat different interpretation it redeemed them by paying the debt they owed to the sea-god.[611 - Suidas and Photius, Lexicon, s. v. περίψημα. The word which I have translated “offscouring” (περίψημα) occurs in 1 Corinthians iv. 13, where it is similarly translated in the English version. It means properly that on which something is wiped off, like a sponge or a duster.] As practised by the Greeks of Asia Minor in the sixth century before our era, the custom of the scapegoat was as follows. When a city suffered from plague, famine, or other public calamity, an ugly or deformed person was chosen to take upon himself all the evils which afflicted the community. He was brought to a suitable place, where dried figs, a barley loaf, and cheese were put into his hand. These he ate. Then he was beaten seven times upon his genital organs with squills and branches of the wild fig and other wild trees, while the flutes played a particular tune. Afterwards he was burned on a pyre built of the wood of forest trees; and his ashes were cast into the sea.[612 - J. Tzetzes, Chiliades, v. 726-761 (ed. Th. Kiesseling, Leipsic, 1826). Tzetzes's authority is the satirical poet Hipponax. The tune which was played by the flutes while the man was being beaten is mentioned by Hesychius, s. v. Κραδίης νόμος. Compare id., s. v. Κραδησίτης; Plutarch, De musica, 8.] A similar custom appears to have been annually celebrated by the Asiatic Greeks at the harvest festival of the Thargelia.[613 - This may be inferred from the verse of Hipponax, quoted by Athenaeus, ix. 9, p. 370 b, where for φαρμάκου we should perhaps read φαρμακοῦ with Schneidewin (Poetae lyrici Graeci,

ed. Th. Bergk, ii. 763).]

Mannhardt's interpretation of the custom of beating the human scapegoat on the genitals: it was intended to free his reproductive energies from any restraint laid on them by demoniacal or other malignant agency.

In the ritual just described the scourging of the victim with squills, branches of the wild fig, and so forth, cannot have been intended to aggravate his sufferings, otherwise any stick would have been good enough to beat him with. The true meaning of this part of the ceremony has been explained by W. Mannhardt.[614 - W. Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen (Strasburg, 1884), pp. 113 sqq., especially 123 sq., 133.] He points out that the ancients attributed to squills a magical power of averting evil influences, and that accordingly they hung them up at the doors of their houses and made use of them in purificatory rites.[615 - Pliny, Nat. Hist. xx. 101; Dioscorides, De materia medica, ii. 202; Lucian, Necyom. 7; id., Alexander, 47; Theophrastus, Superstitious Man.] Hence the Arcadian custom of whipping the image of Pan with squills at a festival, or whenever the hunters returned empty-handed,[616 - Theocritus, vii. 106 sqq. with the scholiast.] must have been meant, not to punish the god, but to purify him from the harmful influences which were impeding him in the exercise of his divine functions as a god who should supply the hunter with game. Similarly the object of beating the human scapegoat on the genital organs with squills and so on, must have been to release his reproductive energies from any restraint or spell under which they might be laid by demoniacal or other malignant agency; and as the Thargelia at which he was annually sacrificed was an early harvest festival celebrated in May,[617 - Compare Aug. Mommsen, Heortologie (Leipsic, 1864), pp. 414 sqq., id., Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 468 sq., 479 sqq.; M. P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste (Leipsic, 1906), pp. 105, iii sqq.; W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und Feldkulte (Berlin, 1877), p. 215.] we must recognize in him a representative of the creative and fertilizing god of vegetation. The representative of the god was annually slain for the purpose I have indicated, that of maintaining the divine life in perpetual vigour, untainted by the weakness of age; and before he was put to death it was not unnatural to stimulate his reproductive powers in order that these might be transmitted in full activity to his successor, the new god or new embodiment of the old god, who was doubtless supposed immediately to take the place of the one slain.[618 - At certain sacrifices in Yucatan blood was drawn from the genitals of a human victim and smeared on the face of the idol. See Diego de Landa, Relation des choses de Yucatan, texte espagnol et traduction française par l'Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg (Paris, 1864), p. 167. Was the original intention of this rite to transfuse into the god a fresh supply of reproductive energy?] Similar reasoning would lead to a similar treatment of the scapegoat on special occasions, such as drought or famine. If the crops did not answer to the expectation of the husbandman, this would be attributed to some failure in the generative powers of the god whose function it was to produce the fruits of the earth. It might be thought that he was under a spell or was growing old and feeble. Accordingly he was slain in the person of his representative, with all the ceremonies already described, in order that, born young again, he might infuse his own youthful vigour into the stagnant energies of nature. On the same principle we can understand why Mamurius Veturius was beaten with rods, why the slave at the Chaeronean ceremony was beaten with the agnus castus (a tree to which magical properties were ascribed),[619 - Aelian, Nat. Anim. ix. 26.] why the effigy of Death in some parts of Europe is assailed with sticks and stones,[620 - The Dying God, pp. 239 sq.] and why at Babylon the criminal who played the god was scourged before he was crucified.[621 - The Dying God, p. 114.] The purpose of the scourging was not to intensify the agony of the divine sufferer, but on the contrary to dispel any malignant influences by which at the supreme moment he might conceivably be beset.

W. R. Paton's view that the human scapegoats at the Thargelia personated the spirits of fig-trees, and that the ceremony was a magical rite for the fertilization of fig-trees, being copied from the process of caprification.

Thus far I have assumed that the human victims at the Thargelia represented the spirits of vegetation in general,[622 - On the other hand, W. Mannhardt regarded the victims as representing the demons of infertility, dearth, and sickness, who in the persons of their representatives were thus hounded with blows out of the city. See his Mythologische Forschungen, p. 129.] but it has been well remarked by Mr. W. R. Paton that these poor wretches seem to have masqueraded as the spirits of fig-trees in particular. He points out that the process of caprification, as it is called, that is, the artificial fertilization of the cultivated fig-trees by hanging strings of wild figs among the boughs, takes place in Greece and Asia Minor in June about a month after the date of the Thargelia, and he suggests that the hanging of the black and white figs round the necks of the two human victims, one of whom represented the men and the other the women, may have been a direct imitation of the process of caprification designed, on the principle of imitative magic, to assist the fertilization of the fig-trees. And since caprification is in fact a marriage of the male fig-tree with the female fig-tree, Mr. Paton further supposes that the loves of the trees may, on the same principle of imitative magic, have been simulated by a mock or even a real marriage between the two human victims, one of whom appears sometimes to have been a woman. On this view the practice of beating the human victims on their genitals with branches of wild fig-trees and with squills was a charm intended to stimulate the generative powers of the man and woman who for the time being personated the male and the female fig-trees respectively, and who by their union in marriage, whether real or pretended, were believed to help the trees to bear fruit.[623 - W. R. Paton, “The φαρμακοί and the Story of the Fall,” Revue Archéologique, iv. Série, ix. (1907) pp. 51 sqq.]

This theory is confirmed by a comparison with the Roman rites of the Nonae Caprotinae.

The theory is ingenious and attractive; and to some extent it is borne out by the Roman celebration of the Nonae Caprotinae, which I have described in an earlier part of this work.[624 - The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 313 sqq.] For on the Nonae Caprotinae, the ninth of July, the female slaves, in the attire of free women, feasted under a wild fig-tree, cut a rod from the tree, beat each other, perhaps with the rod, and offered the milky juice of the tree to the goddess Juno Caprotina, whose surname seems to point her out as the goddess of the wild fig-tree (caprificus). Here the rites performed in July by women under the wild fig-tree, which the ancients rightly regarded as a male and employed to fertilize the cultivated female fig-tree, can hardly be dissociated from the caprification or artificial marriage of the fig-trees which, according to Columella, was best performed in July; and if the blows which the women gave each other on this occasion were administered, as seems highly probable, by the rod which they cut from the wild fig-tree, the parallel between the Roman and the Greek ceremony would be still closer; since the Greeks, as we saw, beat the genitals of the human victims with branches of wild fig-trees. It is true that the human sacrifices, which formed so prominent a feature in the Greek celebration of the Thargelia, do not figure in the Roman celebration of the Nonae Caprotinae within historical times; yet a trace of them may perhaps be detected in the tradition that Romulus himself mysteriously disappeared on that very day in the midst of a tremendous thunder-storm, while he was reviewing his army outside the walls of Rome at the Goat's Marsh (“ad Caprae paludem”), a name which suggests that the place was not far distant from the wild fig-tree or the goat-fig (caprificus), as the Romans called it, where the slave women performed their curious ceremonies. The legend that he was cut in pieces by the patricians, who carried away the morsels of his body under their robes and buried them in the earth,[625 - Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquitates Romanae, ii. 56. 4. Compare Livy, i. 16. 4; Plutarch, Romulus, 27.] exactly describes the treatment which the Khonds used to accord to the bodies of the human victims for the purpose of fertilizing their fields.[626 - Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, i. 248. Compare Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 331 sqq.] Can the king have played at Rome the same fatal part in the fertilization of fig-trees which, if Mr. Paton is right, was played in Greece by the male victim? The traditionary time, place, and manner of his death all suggest it. So many coincidences between the Greek and Roman ceremonies and traditions can hardly be wholly accidental; and accordingly I incline to think that there may well be an element of truth in Mr. Paton's theory, though it must be confessed that the ancient writers who describe the Greek custom appear to regard it merely as a purification of the city and not at all as a mode of fertilizing fig-trees.[627 - See, for example, Helladius, cited by Photius, Bibliotheca, p. 534 a, ed. Im. Bekker, καὶ ἐκράτει τὸ ἔθος ἀεὶ καθαίρειν τὴν πόλιν τοῖς φαρμακοῖς; Harpocration, s. v. φαρμακός (vol. i. p. 298, ed. G. Dindorf), δύο ἄνδρας Ἀθήνησιν ἐξῆγον καθάρσια ἐσομένους τῆς πόλεως; Scholiast on Aristophanes, Knights, 1136, δημοσίους δέ, τοὺς λεγομένους φαρμακούς, οἵπερ καθαίρουσι τὰς πόλεις τῷ ἑαυτῶν φόνῳ.] In similar ceremonies, which combine the elements of purification and fertilization, the notion of purification apparently tends gradually to overshadow the notion of fertilization in the minds of those who practise the rites. It seems to have been so in the case of the annual expulsion of Mamurius Veturius from ancient Rome and in the parallel processions of the Perchten in modern Europe; it may have been so also in the case of the human sacrifices at the Thargelia.[628 - Mr. Paton ingeniously suggests that in the Biblical narrative of Adam and Eve, who for eating a particular fruit were condemned to death and driven out of the happy garden with aprons of fig-leaves about their loins (Genesis iii.), we have a reminiscence of a custom of fertilizing fig-trees by a pair of human scapegoats, who, like the victims at the Thargelia, assimilated themselves to the tree by wearing its foliage or fruit. See W. R. Paton, “The φαρμακοί and the Story of the Fall,” Revue Archéologique, iv. Série, ix. (1907) pp. 55 sq.]

Beating as a mode of dispelling evil influences.

The interpretation which I have adopted of the custom of beating the human scapegoat with certain plants is supported by many analogies. We have already met with examples of a practice of beating sick people with the leaves of certain plants or with branches in order to rid them of noxious influences.[629 - Above, pp. 2 (#x_4_i5), 186 (#x_17_i34). Compare Plutarch, Parallela, 35, where a woman is represented as going from house to house striking sick people with a hammer and bidding them be whole.] Some of the Dravidian tribes of Northern India, who attribute epilepsy, hysteria, and similar maladies to demoniacal possession, endeavour to cure the sufferer by thrashing him soundly with a sacred iron chain, which is believed to have the effect of immediately expelling the demon.[630 - W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), i. 99, 155; id., Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh (Calcutta, 1896), iii. 333, 441, 445.] When a herd of camels refuses to drink, the Arabs will sometimes beat the male beasts on the back to drive away the jinn who are riding them and frightening the females.[631 - A. Certeux et E. H. Carnoy, L'Algérie Traditionnelle (Paris and Algiers, 1884), p. 189.] In Bikol, the south-western part of Luzon, it was generally believed that if the evil spirit Aswang were not properly exorcised he took possession of the bodies of the dead and tormented them. Hence to deliver a corpse from his clutches the native priestesses used to beat it with a brush or whisk made of the leaves of the aromatic China orange, while they chanted a certain song, throwing their bodies into contortions and uttering shrill cries, as if the evil spirit had entered into themselves. The soul of the deceased, thus delivered from the cruel tyranny of Aswang, was then free to roam at pleasure along the charming lanes or in the thick shade of the forest.[632 - H. Kern, “Een Spanisch schrijver over den godsdienst der heidensche Bikollers,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, xlvii. (1897) pp. 232 sq. The Spanish authority is Father José Castaño. An ancient Egyptian relief from Saqqarah represents a mummy at the entrance of the tomb, while the women tear out their hair and the men wave palm-branches, apparently to drive evil spirits away. The custom has been inherited by the modern Arabs, who similarly beat off the invisible foes with palm-branches. See A. Wiedemann, Herodots Zweites Buch (Leipsic, 1890), p. 347. However, in these cases the blows seem to be administered to the demons and not to the corpse.]

Beating people to rid them of clinging ghosts. Exorcism of ghosts by means of leaves and pig's blood.

Sometimes it appears that a beating is administered for the purpose of ridding people of a ghost who may be clinging too closely to their persons; in such cases the blows, though they descend on the bodies of the living, are really aimed at the spirit of the dead, and have no other object than to drive it away, just as a coachman will flick the back of a horse with his whip to rid the beast of a fly. At a funeral in the island of Halmahera, before the coffin is lowered into the grave, all the relations whip themselves on the head and shoulders with wands made of plants which are believed to possess the power of keeping off evil spirits. The intention of the custom is said to be to bring back their own spectres or souls and to prevent them from following the ghost; but this may fairly be interpreted to mean that the blows are directed to brushing off the ghost, who would otherwise abstract the soul of the person on whose body he was allowed to settle. This interpretation is strongly confirmed by the practice, observed by the same people on the same occasion, of throwing the trunk of a banana-tree into the grave, and telling the dead man that it is a companion for him; for this practice is expressly intended to prevent the deceased from feeling lonely, and so coming back to fetch away a friend.[633 - J. M. van Baarda, “Ile de Halmaheira,” Bulletins de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, Quatrième Série, iii. (1892) p. 545. As to throwing a banana-trunk into the grave, see Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, ii. 97.] When Mr. Batchelor returned to a hut after visiting the grave of an old Aino woman, her relations brought him a bowl of water to the door and requested him to wash his face and hands. While he did so, the women beat him and brushed him down with sacred whittled sticks (inao). On enquiring into the meaning of this treatment, he discovered that it was intended to purify him from all uncleanness contracted at the grave through contact with the ghost of the deceased, and that the beating and brushing with the whittled sticks had for its object to drive away all evil influences and diseases with which the ghost of the old woman might have attempted to infect him out of spite for his trespassing on her domain.[634 - Rev. J. Batchelor, The Ainu and their Folk-lore (London, 1901), p. 550.] The Banmanas of Senegambia think that the soul of a dead infant becomes for a time a wandering and maleficent spirit. Accordingly when a baby dies, all the uncircumcised children of the same sex in the village run about the streets in a band, each armed with three or four supple rods. Some of them enter every house to beg, and while they are doing so, one of the troop, propping himself against the wall with his hands, is lashed by another of the children on his back or legs till the blood flows. Each of the children takes it in turn to be thus whipped. The object of the whipping, we are told, “appears to be to preserve the uncircumcised child from being carried off by its comrade who has just died.”[635 - Revue d'Ethnographie, iii. (1885) pp. 395 sq.] The severe scourgings inflicted on each other by some South American Indians at ceremonies connected with the dead may be similarly intended to chase away the dangerous ghost, who is conceived as sticking like a leech or a bur to the skin of the living.[636 - R. Schomburgk, Reisen in Britisch-Guiana (Leipsic, 1847-1848), ii. 457 sqq.; Rev. J. H. Bernau, Missionary Labours in British Guiana (London, 1847), p. 52; C. F. Ph. von Martius, Zur Ethnographie Amerika's, zumal Brasiliens (Leipsic, 1867), pp. 694 sq.; J. Crevaux, Voyages dans l'Amérique du Sud (Paris, 1883), p. 548.] The ancient Greeks employed the laurel very commonly as an instrument of ceremonial purification;[637 - Servius, on Virgil, Aen. i. 329. For more evidence see C. Boetticher, Der Baumkultus der Hellenen (Berlin, 1856), pp. 369 sqq.] and from the monuments which represent the purgation of Orestes from the guilt of matricide[638 - See my note on Pausanias, ii. 31. 8, vol. ii. pp. 276 sqq.] it seems probable that the regular rite of cleansing a homicide consisted essentially in sprinkling him with pig's blood and beating him with a laurel bough, for the purpose, as we may conjecture, of whisking away the wrathful ghost of his victim, who was thought to buzz about him like an angry wasp in summer. If that was so, the Greek ritual of purification singularly resembles the Nicobarese ceremony of exorcism; for when a man is supposed to be possessed by devils, the Nicobarese rub him all over with pig's blood and beat him with bunches of certain leaves, to which a special power of exorcising demons is attributed. As fast as each devil is thus disengaged from his person, it is carefully folded up in leaves, to be afterwards thrown into the sea at daybreak.[639 - V. Solomon, “Extracts from Diaries kept in Car Nicobar,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) p. 227.]

Beating practised by South American Indians and others as a mode of conveying good qualities.

At the autumn festival in Peru people used to strike each other with torches, saying, “Let all harm go away.”[640 - J. de Acosta, History of the Indies, vol. ii. p. 375 (Hakluyt Society, London, 1880). See above, pp. 128 (#x_13_i11)sqq.] Every year when the Pleiades reappeared in the sky, the Guaycurus, an Indian nation of the Gran Chaco, held a festival of rejoicing, at which men, women, and children all thrashed each other, expecting thereby to procure health, abundance, and victory over their enemies.[641 - P. Lozano, Descripcion Chorographica del terreno, rios, arboles, y animales de las dilatadissimas provincias del Gran Chaco, Gualamba, etc. (Cordova, 1733), p. 67. The reappearance of the Pleiades probably marked the beginning of the year for these people. See Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, i. 307 sqq.] Indians of the Quixos, in South America, before they set out on a long hunting expedition, cause their wives to whip them with nettles, believing that this renders them fleeter, and helps them to overtake the peccaries. They resort to the same proceeding as a cure for sickness.[642 - G. Osculati, Esplorazione delle regioni equatoriali lungo il Napo ed il fiume delle Amazzoni (Milan, 1850), p. 118.] The Roocooyen Indians of French Guiana train up young people in the way they should go by causing them to be stung by ants and wasps; and at the ceremony held for this purpose the grown-up people improve the occasion by allowing themselves to be whacked by the chief with a stick over the arms, the legs, and the chest. They appear to labour under an impression that this conveys to them all sorts of moral and physical excellences. One of the tribe, ambitious of acquiring the European virtues, begged a French traveller to be so kind as to give him a good hiding. The traveller obligingly did his best to gratify him, and the face of the Indian beamed with gratitude as the blows fell on his naked back.[643 - H. Coudreau, Chez nos Indiens: quatre années dans la Guyane Française (Paris, 1895), p. 544.] The Delaware Indians had two sovereign remedies for sin; one was an emetic, the other a thrashing. In the latter case, the remedy was administered by means of twelve different sticks, with which the sinner was belaboured from the soles of his feet up to his neck. In both cases the sins were supposed to be expelled from the body, and to pass out through the throat.[644 - G. H. Loskiel, History of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Indians in North America (London, 1794), Part i. p. 37.] At the inauguration of a king in ancient India it was customary for the priests to strike him lightly on the back with sticks. “By beating him with sticks,” it was said, “they guide him safely over judicial punishment; whence the king is exempt from punishment, because they guide him safely over judicial punishment.”[645 - The Satapatha Brahmana, v. 4. 4. 7, translated by J. Eggeling, Part iii. (Oxford, 1894) p. 108 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xli.).] On the thirtieth of December the heathen of Harran used to receive three, five, or seven blows apiece from a priest with a tamarisk branch. After the beating had been duly administered the priest on behalf of the whole community prayed for long life, much offspring, power and glory over all peoples, and the restoration of their ancient kingdom.[646 - D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus (St. Petersburg, 1856), ii. 34.]

Beating people with instruments which possess and impart special virtues.

Sometimes, in the opinion of those who resort to it, the effect of a beating is not merely the negative one of dispelling demoniac or other baneful influences; it confers positive benefits by virtue of certain useful properties supposed to inhere in the instrument with which the beating is administered.[647 - On the positive benefits supposed in certain cases to flow from a beating compare S. Reinach, “La flagellation rituelle,” Cultes, Mythes et Religions, i. (Paris, 1905) pp. 180 sqq.; E. S. Hartland, Primitive Paternity (London, 1909-1910), i. 102 sqq.] Thus among the Kai of German New Guinea, when a man wishes to make his banana shoots bear fruit quickly, he beats them with a stick cut from a banana-tree which has already borne fruit.[648 - Ch. Keysser, “Aus dem Leben der Kaileute,” in R. Neuhauss's Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. (Berlin, 1911) p. 124.] Here it is obvious that fruitfulness is believed to inhere in a stick cut from a fruitful tree and to be imparted by contact to the young banana plants. Similarly in New Caledonia a man will beat his taro plants lightly with a branch, saying as he does so, “I beat this taro that it may grow,” after which he plants the branch in the ground at the end of the field.[649 - Father Lambert, “Mœurs et Superstitions de la tribu Bélep,” Les Missions Catholique, xii. (1880) p. 273; id., Mœurs et Superstitions des Néo-Calédoniens (Nouméa, 1900), p. 218.] Among the Indians of Brazil at the mouth of the Amazon, when a man wishes to increase the size of his generative organ, he strikes it with the fruit of a white aquatic plant called an aninga, which grows luxuriantly on the banks of the river. The fruit, which is inedible, resembles a banana, and is clearly chosen for this purpose on account of its shape. The ceremony should be performed three days before or after the new moon.[650 - F. J. de Santa-Anna Nery, Folk-lore Brésilien (Paris, 1889), p. 253.] In the county of Bekes, in Hungary, barren women are fertilized by being struck with a stick which has first been used to separate pairing dogs.[651 - R. Temesváry, Volksbräuche und Aberglauben in der Geburtshilfe und der Pflege des Neugeborenen in Ungarn (Leipsic, 1900), p. 8. Compare E. S. Hartland, Primitive Paternity (London, 1909-1910), i. 106.] Here a fertilizing virtue is clearly supposed to be inherent in the stick and to be conveyed by contact to the women. The Toradjas of Central Celebes think that the plant Dracaena terminalis has a strong soul, because when it is lopped, it soon grows up again. Hence when a man is ill, his friends will sometimes beat him on the crown of the head with Dracaena leaves in order to strengthen his weak soul with the strong soul of the plant.[652 - A. C. Kruyt, “Het koppensnellen der Toradja's van Midden-Celebes, en zijne beteekenis,” Verslagen en Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afdeeling Letterkunde, iv. Reeks, iii. (Amsterdam, 1899) p. 199.] At Mowat in British New Guinea small boys are beaten lightly with sticks during December “to make them grow strong and hardy.”[653 - E. Beardmore, “The Natives of Mowat, Daudai, New Guinea,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xix. (1890) p. 464.]

Custom in Morocco of beating people with the skins of sacrificed sheep or goats.

Among the Arabs of Morocco the Great Feast, which is the annual sacrificial festival of Mohammedan peoples, is the occasion when men go about beating people with the kindly intention of healing or preventing sickness and benefiting the sufferers generally. In some tribes the operator is muffled in the bloody skins of sacrificed sheep, and he strikes everybody within reach of him with a flap of the skin or a foot of the sheep which dangles loose from his arm; sick people present themselves to him in order to receive the health-giving blows, and mothers bring their little children to him for the same purpose. Anybody whom he hits on the head will be free from headache. Nor does he confine his attention to people; he goes about striking the tents also, in order that they too may receive their share of the blessed influence (baraka) that radiates like sunshine from a bloody sheepskin. From the costume which he wears the masker is known as the “Lion with Sheepskins”; and he himself participates in the blessings which he diffuses so liberally around him. Hence in at least one tribe he is generally a person who suffers from some illness, because he expects to be healed by the magic virtue or holiness of the bloody skins.[654 - E. Westermarck, “The Popular Ritual of the Great Feast in Morocco,” Folk-lore, xxii. (1911) pp. 163-165.] Similarly, as we shall see presently, in ancient Mexico the men who masqueraded in the skins of the human victims were commonly persons who suffered from skin disease, because they thought that the bleeding skin of a man who had been killed in the character of a god must surely possess a sovereign virtue for the healing of disease.[655 - See below, pp. 298 (#x_22_i36), 302 (#x_22_i42), 304 (#x_22_i46).] In Morocco the skin-clad mummer sometimes operates with sticks instead of a flap of the skin, and sometimes the skins in which he is muffled are those of goats instead of sheep, but in all cases the effect, or at least the intention, is probably the same.[656 - E. Westermarck, op. cit. pp. 165 sq., 170, 178. The purificatory character of the rite is duly recognised by Dr. Westermarck (op. cit. p. 178).]

European custom of beating cattle with branches to make them healthy or drive away the witches from them. The rowan-tree as a protection against witchcraft.

In some parts of Eastern and Central Europe a similar custom is very commonly observed in spring. On the first of March the Albanians strike men and beast with cornel branches, believing that this is very good for their health.[657 - J. G. v. Hahn, Albanesische Studien (Jena, 1854), i. 155.] In March the Greek peasants of Cos switch their cattle, saying, “It is March, and up with your tail!” They think that the ceremony benefits the animals, and brings good luck. It is never observed at any other time of the year.[658 - W. H. D. Rouse, “Folk-lore from the Southern Sporades,” Folk-lore, x. (1899) p. 179.] In some parts of Mecklenburg it is customary to beat the cattle before sunrise on the morning of Good Friday with rods of buckthorn, which are afterwards concealed in some secret place where neither sun nor moon can shine on them. The belief is that though the blows light upon the animals, the pain of them is felt by the witches who are riding the beasts.[659 - K. Bartsch, Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Mecklenburg (Vienna, 1879-1880), ii. p. 258, § 1348.] In the neighbourhood of Iserlohn, in Westphalia, the herdsman rises at peep of dawn on May morning, climbs a hill, and cuts down the young rowan-tree which is the first to catch the beams of the rising sun. With this he returns to the farm-yard. The heifer which the farmer desires to “quicken” is then led to the dunghill, and the herdsman strikes it over the hind-quarters, the haunches, and the udders with a branch of the rowan-tree, saying,

“Quick, quick, quick!
Bring milk into the dugs.
The sap is in the birches.
The heifer receives a name.

“Quick, quick, quick!
Bring milk into the dugs.
The sap comes in the beeches,