 CHAPTER 64 THE BURNING OF HUMAN BEINGS IN THE FIERS SECTION I THE BURNING OF EFFIGIES IN THE FIERS We have still to ask, what is the meaning of burning effigies in the fire at these festivals? After the preceding investigation, the answer to the question seems obvious. As the fires are often alleged to be kindled for the purpose of burning the witches, and as the effigy burnt in them is sometimes called the witch, we might naturally be disposed to conclude that all the effigies consumed in the flames on these occasions represent witches or warlocks, and that the custom of burning them is merely a substitute for burning the wicked men and women themselves. Since on the principles of homeopathic or imitative magic, you practically destroy the witch herself in destroying her effigy. On the whole, this explanation of burning the straw figures in human shape at the festivals is perhaps the most probable. Yet it may be that this explanation does not apply to all the cases, and that certain of them may admit and even require another interpretation. For the effigies so burned, as I have already remarked, can hardly be separated from the effigies of death which are burned or otherwise destroyed in spring, and grounds have been already given for regarding the so-called effigies of death as really representatives of the tree spirit or spirit of vegetation. Are the other effigies, which are burned in the spring and mid-summer bonfires, susceptible of the same explanation? It would seem so, for just as the fragments of the so-called death are stuck in the fields to make the crops grow, so the charred embers of the figure burned in the spring bonfires are sometimes laid on the fields in the belief that they will keep a vermin from the crop. Again, the rule that the last married bride must leap over the fire in which the straw man is burned on Shrove Tuesday is probably intended to make her fruitful. But as we have seen, the power of blessing women with offspring is a special attribute of tree spirits. It is therefore a fair presumption that the burning effigy over which the bride must leap is a representative of the fertilizing tree spirit or spirit of vegetation. This character of the effigy, as representative of the spirit of vegetation, is almost unmistakable when the figure is composed of an unthreshed sheaf of corn or is covered from head to foot with flowers. Again, it is to be noted that, instead of a puppet, trees, either living or felled, are sometimes burned both in the spring and mid-summer bonfires. Now, considering the frequency with which the tree spirit is represented in human shape, it is hardly rash to suppose that when sometimes a tree and sometimes an effigy is burned in these fires, the effigy and the tree are regarded as equivalent to each other, each being a representative of the tree spirit. This again is confirmed by observing, first, that sometimes the effigy which is to be burned is carried about simultaneously with a May tree, the former being carried by the boys, the latter by the girls, and second, that the effigy is sometimes tied to a living tree and burned with it. In these cases, we can scarcely doubt the tree spirit is representative, as we have found it represented before, in duplicate, both by the tree and by the effigy. That the true character of the effigy as a representative of the beneficent spirit of vegetation should sometimes be forgotten is natural. The custom of burning a beneficent God is too foreign to later modes of thought to escape misinterpretation. Naturally enough, the people who continued to burn his image came in time to identify it as the effigy of persons, whom, on various grounds, they regarded with aversion, such as Judas Iscariot, Luther, and a witch. The general reasons for killing a God or his representative have been examined in a preceding chapter. But when the God happens to be a deity of vegetation, there are special reasons why he should die by fire, for light and heat are necessary to vegetable growth, and on the principle of sympathetic magic, by subjecting the personal representative of vegetation to their influence, you secure a supply of these necessaries for trees and crops. In other words, by burning the spirit of vegetation in a fire which represents the sun, you make sure that, for a time at least, vegetation shall have plenty of sun. It may be objected that, if the intention is simply to secure enough sunshine for vegetation, this end would be better attained, on the principles of sympathetic magic, by merely passing the representative of vegetation through the fire instead of burning him. In point of fact, this is sometimes done. In Russia, as we have seen, the straw figure of Kupalo is not burned in the midsummer fire, but merely carried backwards and forwards across it. But for the reasons already given, it is necessary that the gods should die, so next day, Kupalo is stripped of her ornaments and thrown into a stream. In this Russian custom, the passage of the image through the fire, if it is not simply a purification, may simply be a sun charm. The killing of the god is a separate act, and the mode of killing him, by drowning, is probably a rain charm. But usually, people have not thought it necessary to draw this fine distinction. For the various reasons already assigned, it is advantageous, they think, to expose the god of vegetation to a considerable degree of heat. And it is also advantageous to kill him. And they combine these advantages in a rough and ready way by burning him. Section two, the burning of men and animals in the fires. In the popular customs connected with the fire festivals of Europe, there are certain features which appear to point to a former practice of human sacrifice. We have seen reasons for believing that in Europe, living persons have often acted as representatives of the tree's spirit and corn spirit, and have suffered death as such. There is no reason, therefore, why they should not have been burned, if any special advantages were likely to be attained by putting them to death in that way. The consideration of human suffering is not one which enters into the calculations of primitive man. Now in the fire festivals which we are discussing, the pretense of burning people is sometimes carried so far that it seems reasonable to regard it as a mitigated survival of an older custom of actually burning them. Thus, in Echen, as we saw, the manclad and peas straw act so cleverly that the children really believe he is being burned. At Jumi Edgis in Normandy, the manclad all in green, who bore the title of the green wolf, was pursued by his comrades. And when they caught him, they feigned to fling him upon the midsummer bonfire. Similarly, at the Beltane fires in Scotland, the pretended victim was seized and a show made of throwing him into the flames, and for some time afterwards, people affected to speak of him as dead. Again, in the Halloween bonfires of northeastern Scotland, we may perhaps detect a similar pretense in the custom observed by a lad of lying down as close to the fire as possible and allowing the other lads to leap over him. The titular king at Ikes, who reigned for a year and danced the first dance round the midsummer bonfire, may perhaps, in days of old, have discharged the less agreeable duty of serving as fuel for that fire, which in later times he only kindled. In the following customs, Manhart is probably right in recognizing traces of an old custom of burning a leafclad representative of the spirit of vegetation. At Wolfeck in Austria on midsummer day, a boy completely clad in green fir branches goes from house to house, accompanied by a noisy crew collecting wood for the bonfire. As he gets the wood, he sings, Forest trees I want, no sour milk for me, but beer and wine, so can the woodman be jolly and gay. In some parts of Bavaria also, the boys who go from house to house collecting fuel for the midsummer bonfire, envelope one of their number from head to foot in green branches of furs, and lead him by a rope through the whole village. At Moeschheim in Wurtemberg, the festival of St. John's Fire usually lasted for fourteen days, ending on the second Sunday after midsummer day. On this last day, the bonfire was left in charge of the children, while the older people retired to a wood. Here they encased a young fellow in leaves and twigs, who thus disguised, went to the fire, scattered it, and trod it out. All the people present fled at the sight of him. But it seems possible to go farther than this. Of human sacrifices offered on these occasions, the most unequivocal traces, as we have seen, are those which, about a hundred years ago, still lingered at the Beltane fires in the Highlands of Scotland, that is, among the Celtic people who, situated in a remote corner of Europe and almost completely isolated from foreign influence, had till then conserved their old heathenism better perhaps than any other people in the west of Europe. It is significant, therefore, that human sacrifices by fire are known, on unquestionable evidence, to have been systematically practiced by the Celts. The earliest description of these sacrifices has been bequeathed to us by Julius Caesar. As conqueror of the hitherto independent Celts of Gaul, Caesar had ample opportunity of observing the national Celtic religion and manners, while these were still fresh and crisp from the native mint, and had not yet been fused in the melting pot of Roman civilization. With his own notes, Caesar appears to have incorporated the observations of a Greek explorer, by name Posidonius, who traveled in Gaul about fifty years before Caesar carried the Roman arms to the English Channel. The Greek geographer Strabo and the historian Diodorus seem also to have derived their descriptions of the Celtic sacrifices from the work of Posidonius, but independently of each other, and of Caesar, for each of the three derivative accounts contains some details which are not to be found in either of the others. By combining them, therefore, we can restore the original account of Posidonius with some probability, and thus obtain a picture of the sacrifices offered by the Celts of Gaul at the close of the second century before our era. The following seem to have been the main outlines of the custom. Condemned criminals were reserved by the Celts in order to be sacrificed to the gods at a great festival which took place once in every five years. The more there were of such victims, the greater was believed to be the fertility of the land. If there were not enough criminals to furnish victims, captives taken in war were emulated to supply the deficiency. When the time came, the victims were sacrificed by the druids or priests. Some they shot down with arrows, some they impaled, and some they burned alive in the following manner. Colossal images of wicker work, or of wood and grass, were constructed. These were filled with live men, cattle, and animals of other kinds. There was then applied to the images, and they were burned with their living contents. Such were the great festivals held once every five years. But besides these quinquennial festivals, celebrated on so grand a scale and with apparently so large an expenditure of human life, it seems reasonable to suppose that festivals of the same sort, only on a lesser scale, were held annually, and that from these annual festivals are linearly descended some at least of the fire festivals which, with their traces of human sacrifices, are still celebrated year by year in many parts of Europe. The gigantic images constructed of osiris, or covered with grass in which the druids enclosed their victims, remind us of the leafy framework in which the human representative of the tree spirit is still so often encased. Hence, seeing that the fertility of the land was apparently supposed to depend upon the due performance of these sacrifices, Manhart interpreted the Celtic victims, cased in osiris and grass, as representatives of the tree spirit, or spirit of vegetation. These wicked giants of the druids seem to have had till lately, if not down to the present time, their representatives at the spring and midsummer festivals of modern Europe. At Jeway, down at least to the early part of the 19th century, a procession took place annually on the Sunday nearest to the 7th of July. The great feature of the procession was a colossal figure some 20 or 30 feet high, made of osiris, and called the giant, which was moved through the streets by means of rollers and ropes worked by men who were enclosed within the effigy. The figure was armed as a knight with lance and sword, helmet and shield. Behind him marched his wife and his three children, all constructed of osiris on the same principle, but on a smaller scale. At Dunkirk, the procession of the giants took place on midsummer day, the 24th of June. The festival, which was known as the Follies of Dunkirk, attracted multitudes of spectators. The giant was a huge figure of wicker work, occasionally as much as 45 feet high, dressed in a long blue robe with gold stripes which reached to his feet. Concealing the dozen or more men who made it dance and bob its head to the spectators, this colossal effigy went by the name of Papa Royce and carried in its pocket a bouncing infant of Bromdingnagian proportions. The rear was brought up by the daughter of the giant, constructed like her sire of wicker work, and little, if at all, inferior to him in size. Most towns and even villages of Brabant and Flanders have, or used to have, similar wicker giants which were annually led about to the delight of the populace, who loved these grotesque figures, spoke of them with patriotic enthusiasm, and never worried of gazing at them. At Antwerp, the giant was so big that no gate in the city was large enough to let him go through. Hence, he could not visit his brother giants in neighboring towns, as the other Belgian giants used to do on solemn occasions. In England, artificial giants seem to have been a standing feature of the Midsummer Festival. A writer of the 16th century speaks of, quote, Midsummer pageants in London, where, to make the people wonder, are set forth great and ugly giants, marching as if they were alive, and armed at all points, but within they are stuffed full of brown paper and towel, which the shrewd boys, underpeering, do guilefully discover and turn to a great derision. Close, quote. At Chester, the annual pageant on Midsummer Eve included the effigies of four giants with animals, hobby horses, and other figures. At Coventry, it appears that the giant's wife figured beside the giant. At Burford in Oxfordshire, Midsummer Eve used to be celebrated with great jollity by the carrying of a giant and a dragon up and down the town. The last survivor of these perambulating English giants lingered at Salisbury, where an antiquary found him molding to decay in the neglected hall of the Taylor's Company about the year 1844. His bodily framework was a lathe and hoop, like the one which used to be worn by Jack and the Green on May Day. In these cases, the giants merely figured in the processions, but sometimes they were burned in the summer bonfires. Thus, the people of the Rue ours in Paris used annually to make a great wicker work figure dressed as a soldier, which they promenaded up and down the streets for several days and solemnly burned on the 3rd of July. The crowd of spectators singing Salve Regina. A personage who bore the title of king presided over the ceremony with a lighted torch in his hand. The burning fragments of the image were scattered among the people who eagerly scrambled for them. The custom was abolished in 1743. In Brie, Isle-de-France, a wicker work giant 18 feet high was annually burned on Midsummer Eve. Again, the druidical custom of burning live animals enclosed in wicker work has a counterpart at the Spring and Midsummer Festivals at Lucône in the Pyrenees on Midsummer Eve. Quote, a hollow column composed of strong wicker work is raised to the height of about 60 feet in the center of the principal suburb and interlaced with green foliage up to the very top while the most beautiful flowers and shrubs procurable are artistically arranged in groups below so as to form a sort of background to the scene. The column is then filled with combustible materials ready for ignition. At the appointed hour, about 8 p.m., a grand procession composed of the clergy followed by young men and maidens in holiday attire pour forth from the town chanting hymns and take up their position around the column. Meanwhile, bonfires are lit with beautiful effect in the surrounding hills. As many living serpents as could be collected are now thrown into the column which is set on fire at the base by means of torches armed with which about 50 boys and men dance around with frantic gestures. The serpents, to avoid the flames, wriggle their way to the top. Hence, they are seen lashing out laterally until finally obliged to drop their struggles for life giving rise to enthusiastic delight among the surrounding spectators. This is a favorite annual ceremony for the inhabitants of Lucône and its neighborhood and a local tradition assigns it to a heathen origin. Close quote. In the midsummer fires, formerly kindled on a Placidée Grave at Paris, it was the custom to burn a basket, barrel or sack full of live cats which was hung from a tall mast in the midst of a bonfire. Sometimes a fox was burned. The people collected the embers and ashes of the fire and took them home believing that they brought good luck. The French kings often witnessed these spectacles and even lit the bonfire with their own hands. In 1648, Louis XIV crowned with a wreath of roses and carrying a bunch of roses in his hand, kindled the fire, danced at it and partook of the banquet afterwards in the town hall. But this was the last occasion when a monarch presided at the midsummer bonfire in Paris. At Metz, midsummer fires were lighted with great pomp on the esplanade and a dozen cats enclosed in wicker cages were burned alive in them to the amusement of the people. Similarly, at Gap, in the department of the High Alps, cats used to be roasted over the midsummer bonfire. In Russia, a white cock was sometimes burned in the midsummer bonfire. In Messain or Thuringia, a horse's head used to be thrown into it. Sometimes animals are burned in the spring bonfires. In the Vosges, cats were burned on Shrove Tuesday. In Alsace, they were thrown into the Easter bonfire. In the department of the Andrene, cats were flung into the bonfires kindled on the first Sunday in Lent. Sometimes by a refinement of cruelty, they were hung over the fire by the end of a pole and roasted alive. The cat, which represented the devil, could never suffer enough. While the creatures were perishing in the flames, the shepherds guarded their flocks and forced them to leap over the fire, esteeming this an infallible means of preserving them from disease and witchcraft. We have seen that squirrels were sometimes burned in the Easter fire. Thus it appears that the sacrificial rites of the Celts of ancient Gaul can be traced in the popular festivals of modern Europe. Naturally, it is in France, or rather in the wider area comprised within the limits of ancient Gaul, that these rites have left the clearest traces in the customs of burning giants of wicker work and animals enclosed in wicker work or baskets. These customs, it will have been remarked, are generally observed at or about mid-summer. From this we may infer that the original rites of which these are the degenerate successors were solemnized at mid-summer. This inference harmonizes with the conclusion suggested by a general survey of European folk custom that the mid-summer festival, must, on the whole, have been the most widely diffused and the most solemn of all the yearly festivals celebrated by the primitive Aryans in Europe. At the same time, we must bear in mind that among the British Celts the chief fire festivals of the year appear certainly to have been those of Beltane, or Mayday, and Halloween, or the last day of October. And this suggests a doubt whether the Celts of Gaul also may not have celebrated their principal rites of fire, including their burnt sacrifices of men and animals at the beginning of May or at the beginning of November, rather than at mid-summer. We have still to ask, what is the meaning of such sacrifices? Why were men and animals burnt to death at these festivals? If we are right in interpreting the modern European fire festivals as attempts to break the power of witchcraft by burning the witches and warlocks, it seems to follow that we must explain the human sacrifices of the Celts in the same manner. That is, we must suppose that the men whom the druids burnt in wicker work images were condemned to death on the ground that they were witches or wizards, and that the mode of execution by fire was chosen because burning alive is deemed the surest mode of getting rid of these noxious and dangerous beings. The same explanation would apply to the cattle and wild animals of many kinds which the Celts burned along with the men. They too, we may conjecture, were supposed to be either under the spell of witchcraft or actually to be witches and wizards who had transformed themselves into animals for the purpose of prosecuting their infernal plots against the welfare of their fellow creatures. This conjecture is confirmed by the observation that the victims most commonly burned in modern bonfires have been cats, and that cats are precisely the animals into which with the possible exception of hairs, witches were most usually supposed to transform themselves. Again, we have seen that serpents and foxes used sometimes to be burned in the mid-summer fires, and Welsh and German witches are reported to have assumed to the form both of foxes and serpents. In short, when we remember the great variety of animals whose forms witches can assume at pleasure, it seems easy on this hypothesis to account for the variety of living creatures that have been burnt at festivals both in ancient Gaul and modern Europe. All these victims, we may surmise, were doomed to the flames, not because they were animals, but because they were believed to be witches who had taken the shape of animals for their nefarious purposes. One advantage of explaining the ancient Celtic sacrifices in this way is that it introduces, as it were, a harmony and consistency into the treatment which Europe has meted out to witches from the earliest times down to about two centuries ago, when the growing influence of rationalism discredited the belief in witchcraft and put a stop to the custom of burning witches. Be that as it may, we can now perhaps understand why the Druids believed that the more persons they sentenced to death, the greater would be the fertility of their land. To a modern reader, the connection at first sight may not be obvious between the activity of the hangman and the productivity of the earth. But a little reflection does not satisfy him that when the criminals who perish at the stake or on the gallows are witches, whose delight it is to blight the crops of the farmer or to lay them low under storms of hail, the execution of these witches is really calculated to ensure an abundant harvest by removing one of the principal causes which paralyze the efforts and blast the hopes of the husbandmen. The druidical sacrifices he was considering were explained in a different way by W. Monhart. He supposed that the men whom the druids burned in wicker work images represented the spirits of vegetation and accordingly that the custom of burning them was a magical ceremony intended to secure the necessary sunshine for the crops. Similarly, he seems to have inclined to the view that the animals which used to be burned in the bonfires represented the corn spirit which, as we saw in an earlier part of this work is often supposed to assume the shape of an animal. This theory is no doubt tenable and the great authority of W. Monhart entitles it to careful consideration. I adopted it in former editions of this book but on reconsideration it seems to me on the whole to be less probable that the men and animals burnt in the fires perished in the character of the witches. This latter view is strongly supported by the testimony of the people who celebrate the fire festivals since the popular name for the custom of kindling the fires is burning the witches. Effigies of witches are sometimes consumed in the flames and the fires, their embers or their ashes are supposed to furnish protection from witchcraft. On the other hand, there is little to show that the effigies or the animals burnt in the fires are regarded by the people as representatives of the vegetation spirit and that the bonfires are sun charms. With regard to serpents in particular which used to be burned in the Midsummer Fire at Lucone I am not aware of any certain evidence that in Europe snakes have been regarded as embodiments of the spirit or corn spirit. The conception appears to be not unknown whereas the popular faith in the transformation of witches into animals is so general and deeply rooted and the fear of these uncanny beings is so strong that it seems safer to suppose that the cats and other animals which were burnt in the fire suffered death as embodiments of witches than that they perished as representatives of the vegetation spirits. End of Chapter 64 Chapter 65 of The Golden Bough This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazier Chapter 65 Baldur and the Missalto The reader may remember that the preceding account of the popular fire festivals of Europe was suggested by the myth of the Norse god Baldur who was said to have been slain by a branch of Missalto and burnt in a great fire. We have now to inquire how far the customs which have been passed in review helped to shed light on the myth. In this enquiry it may be convenient to begin with the Missalto the instrument of Baldur's death. From time immemorial the Missalto has been the object of superstitious veneration in Europe. It was worshipped by the Druids as we learn from a famous passage of Pliny. After enumerating the different kinds of Missalto, he proceeds quote, In treating of this subject the admiration in which the Missalto is held throughout Gaul ought not to pass unnoticed. The Druids, for so they call their wizards, esteem nothing more sacred than the Missalto and the tree on which it grows provided only that the tree is an oak. But apart from this they choose oak woods for their sacred groves and perform no sacred rites without oak leaves so that the very name of Druids may be regarded as a Greek appellation derived from their worship of the oak. For they believe that whatever grows on these trees is sent from heaven and is a sign that the tree has been chosen by the God himself. The Missalto is very rarely to be met with, but when it is found they gather it with solemn ceremony. This they do above all on the sixth day of the moon, from whence they date the beginnings of their months, of their years, and of their 30 years cycle, because by the sixth day the moon has plenty of vigor and has not run half its course. After due preparations have been made for a sacrifice and a feast under the tree, they hail it as the universal healer and bring to the spot two white bowls whose horns have never been bound before. A priest clad in a white robe climbs the tree and with a golden sickle cuts the Missalto which is caught in a white cloth. They sacrifice the victims praying that God may make his own gift to prosper with those upon whom he has bestowed it. They believe that a potion prepared from Missalto will make barren animals to bring forth and that the plant is a remedy against all poison. In another passage Pliny tells us that in medicine the Missalto which grows on an oak was esteemed the most precious, and that its efficacy was by some superstitious people supposed to be increased if the plant was gathered on the first day of the moon without the use of iron, and if when gathered it was not allowed to touch the earth, oak Missalto thus obtained was deemed a cure for epilepsy. Carried about by women, it assisted them to conceive, and it healed ulcers most effectually. If only the sufferer chewed a piece of the plant and laid another piece on the sore. Yet again he says that Missalto was supposed, like vinegar and egg, to be an excellent means of extinguishing a fire. If in these later passages, Pliny refers as he apparently does, to the beliefs current among his contemporaries in Italy, it will follow that the Druids and the Italians were to some extent agreed as to the valuable properties by Missalto which grows on an oak. Both of them deemed it an effectual remedy for a number of ailments, and both of them ascribed to it a quickening virtue. The Druids believing that a potion prepared from Missalto would fertilize barren cattle, and the Italians holding that a piece of Missalto carried about by a woman would help her to conceive a child. Further, both peoples thought that if the plant were to exert its medicinal properties, it must be gathered in a certain way and at a certain time. It might not be cut with iron, hence the Druids cut it with gold. It might not touch the earth, hence the Druids caught it in a white cloth. In choosing the time for gathering the plant both peoples were determined by observation of the moon, only they differed as to the particular day of the moon, the first preferring the first, and the Druids the sixth. With these beliefs of the ancient Gauls and Italians as to the wonderful medicinal properties of Missalto, we may compare the similar beliefs of the modern Aino of Japan. We read that they quote, like many nations of the northern origin hold the Missalto in peculiar veneration. They look upon it as a medicine, good in almost every disease, and it is sometimes taken in food and at others separately as a decoction. The leaves are used in preference to the berries, the later being of too sticky a nature for general purpose. But many too suppose this plant to have power of making the gardens bear plentifully. When used for this purpose the leaves are cut up into fine pieces, and after having been prayed over are sown with the millet and other seeds, a little also being eaten with the food. Bear and women have also been known to eat the Missalto in order to be made to bear children. That Missalto which grows upon the Willow is supposed to have the greatest efficacy. This is because the Willow is looked upon by them as being an especially sacred tree. Thus the Aino agree with the Druids in regarding Missalto as a cure for almost every disease, and they agree with the ancient Italians that applied to women it helps them to bear children. Again the druidical notion that the Missalto was an all healer or panacea may be compared with a notion entertained by the Wallows of San Agambia. These people quote, have veneration for a sort of Missalto which they call Tob. They carry leaves of it on their persons when they go to war as a preservative against wounds just as if the leaves were real talismans. The French writer who records this practice adds quote, is it not very curious that the Missalto should be in this part of Africa what it was in the superstitions of the Gauls. This prejudice common to the two countries may have the same origin. Blacks and whites will doubtless have seen each of them for themselves something supernatural in a plant which grows and flourishes without having roots in the earth. May they not have believed in fact that it was a plant fallen from the sky a gift of the divinity. Close quote. This suggestion as to the origin of the superstition strongly confirmed by the Druidical belief, reported by Pliny that whatever grew on an oak was sent from heaven and was a sign that the tree had been chosen by the God himself. Such a belief explains why the Druids cut the Missalto not with a common knife but with a golden sickle and why when cut it was not suffered to touch the earth. Probably they thought that the celestial plant would have been profaned and its marvelous virtue lost by contact with the ground. With the ritual observed by the Druids in cutting the Missalto we may compare the ritual which in Cambodia is prescribed in a similar case. They say that when you see an orchid growing as a parasite on a tamarind tree you should dress in white take a new earthenware pot then climb the tree at noon break off the plant put it in the pot and let the pot fall to the ground. After that you make in the pot a decoction which confers the gift of invulnerability. Thus just as in Africa the leaves of one parasitic plant are supposed to render the wearer invulnerable so in Cambodia a decoction made from another parasitic plant is considered to render the same service to such as make use of it whether by drinking or washing. We may conjecture that in both places the notion of invulnerability is suggested by the position of the plant which occupying a place of comparative security above the ground appears to promise to its fortunate possessor a similar security from some of the ills that beset the life of man on earth. We have already met with examples of the store which the primitive mind sets on such vantage grounds. Whatever may be the origin of these beliefs and practices concerning the mistletoe certain it is that some of them have their analogies in the folklore of modern European peasants. For example it is laid down as a rule in various parts of Europe that mistletoe may not be cut in the ordinary way but must be shot or knocked down by stones from the tree on which it is growing. Thus in the Swiss canton of Ergau quote, all parasitic plants are esteemed in a certain sense wholly by the country folk but most particularly so the mistletoe growing on an oak. They ascribe great powers to it but shrink from cutting it off in the usual manner. Instead of that they procure it in the following manner. The sun is in Sagittarius and the moon is on the wane on the first, third, or fourth day before the new moon one ought to shoot down with an arrow the mistletoe of an oak and to catch it with the left hand as it falls. Such mistletoe is a remedy for every ailment of children. Close quote. Here among the Swiss peasants as among the druids of old special virtue as ascribed mistletoe which grows on an oak it may not be cut in the usual way it must be caught as it falls to the ground and it is esteemed a panacea for all diseases at least of children. In Sweden also it is a popular superstition that if mistletoe was to possess its peculiar virtue it must either be shot down out of the oak or knocked down with stones. Close quote. So late as the early part of the 19th century people in Wales believed that for the mistletoe to have any power it must be shot or struck down with stones off the tree where it grew. Close quote. Again in respect of the healing virtues of mistletoe the opinion of modern peasants and even of the learned has to some extent agreed with that of the ancients. The druids appear to have called or perhaps the oak on which it grew the all healer and all healer is said to be still a name of the mistletoe in modern Celtic speech of Brittany, Wales, Ireland and Scotland. On Saint John's morning or mid-summer morning peasants of Piedmont and Lombardi go out to search the oak leaves for the oil of Saint John which is supposed to heal all wounds made with cutting instruments. Originally perhaps the oil of Saint John was simply the mistletoe or a decoction made from it. For Ed Holstein the mistletoe, especially oak mistletoe is still regarded as a panacea for green wounds and as a sure charm to secure success in hunting and at La Coine in the south of France the old druidical belief in the mistletoe as an antidote to all poisons still survives among the peasantry. They apply the plant to the stomach of the sufferer or give him a decoction of it to drink. Again the ancient belief that mistletoe is a cure for epilepsy has survived in modern times not only among the ignorant but among the learned. Thus in Sweden persons afflicted with the falling sickness think they can ward off attacks of the malady by carrying about with them a knife which has a handle of oak mistletoe. And in Germany for a similar purpose pieces of mistletoe used to be hung around the necks of children. In the French province of Bourbonnet a popular remedy for epilepsy is a decoction of mistletoe which has been gathered on an oak on Saint John's day and boiled with rye flour. So at Botsford in Lincolnshire a decoction of mistletoe is supposed to be a palliative for this terrible disease. Indeed mistletoe was recommended as a remedy for the falling sickness by high medical authorities in England and Holland down to the 18th century. However the opinion of the medical profession as to the curative virtues of mistletoe has undergone a radical alteration. Whereas the druids thought that mistletoe cured everything modern doctors appear to think that it cures nothing. If they are right we must conclude that the ancient and widespread faith in the medicinal virtue of mistletoe is a pure superstition based on nothing better than the fanciful inferences which ignorance has drawn from the parasitic nature of the plant. Its position high up on the branch of a tree seeming to protect it from the dangers to which plants and animals are subject on the surface of the ground. From this point of view we can perhaps understand why mistletoe has so long and so persistently been prescribed as a cure for the falling sickness. As mistletoe cannot fall to the ground because it is rooted on the branch of a tree high above the earth it seems to follow as a necessary consequence that an epileptic patient cannot possibly fall down in a fit so long as he carries in his pocket or a decoction of mistletoe in his stomach. Such a train of reasoning would probably be regarded even now as cogent by a large portion of the human species. Again, the ancient Italian opinion that mistletoe extinguishes fire appears to be shared by Swedish peasants who hang at branches of oak mistletoe on the ceilings of their rooms as a protection against harm in general and flagration in particular. A hint as to the way in which mistletoe comes to be possessed of this property is furnished by the epithet thunderbessum which people of the Aragau Canton in Switzerland apply to the plant. For a thunderbessum is a shaggy, bushy excrescence on branches of trees which is popularly believed to be produced by a flash of fire. Hence, in Bohemia, a thunderbessum burnt in the fire protects the house against being struck by a thunderbolt. Being itself a product of lightning, it naturally serves on homeopathic principles as a protection against lightning, in fact as a kind of lightning conductor. Hence, the fire which mistletoe in Sweden is designed especially to avert the fire kindled by lightning. Though no doubt the plant is equally effective against conflagration in general. Again, mistletoe acts as a master key as well as a lightning conductor for it is said to open all locks. But perhaps the most precious of all the virtues of mistletoe is that it affords efficient protection against sorcery and witchcraft. That, no doubt is the reason why in Austria a twig of mistletoe is laid on the threshold as a preventative of nightmare. And it may be the reason why in the north of England they say that if you wish your dairy to thrive you should give your bunch of mistletoe to the first cow that calves after New Year's Day, for it is well known that nothing is so fatal to milk and butter as witchcraft. Similarly in Wales, for the sake of ensuring good luck to the dairy, people used to give a branch of mistletoe to the first cow that gave birth to a calf after the first hour of the New Year. In the rural districts of Wales where mistletoe abounded, there was always a profusion of it in the farmhouses. When mistletoe was scarce, Welsh farmers used to say no mistletoe, no luck. But if there was a fine crop of mistletoe, they expected a fine crop of corn. In Sweden, mistletoe was diligently sought after on St John's Eve. The people, quote, believing it to be in a high degree, possessed of mystic qualities, and that if a sprig of it be attached to the ceiling of the dwelling house, the horses stall or the cows crib, the troll will then be powerless to injure either man or beast. Close, quote. With regard to the time when the mistletoe should be gathered, opinions have varied. The Druids gathered it, above all on the sixth day of the moon. The ancient Italians, apparently on the first day of the moon. In modern times, some have preferred the full moon of March and others the waning moon of winter when the sun is in Sagittarius. But the favourite time would seem to be mid-summer eve or mid-summer day. We have seen that both in France and Sweden special virtues are ascribed to mistletoe gathered in mid-summer. The rule in Sweden is that, quote, mistletoe must be cut on the night of mid-summer eve when sun and moon stand in the sign of their night. Close, quote. Again, in Wales it was believed that a sprig of mistletoe gathered on St John's eve or mid-summer eve or at any time before the berries appeared would induce dreams of omen, both good and bad, if it were placed under the pillow of the sleeper. Thus mistletoe is one of the many plants whose magical or medicinal virtues are believed to culminate with the culmination of the sun on the longest day of the year. Hence it seems reasonable to conjecture that in the eyes of the druids also, who revered the plant so highly, the sacred mistletoe may have acquired a double portion of its mystic qualities at the solstice of June, and that accordingly they may have regularly cut it with solemn ceremony on mid-summer eve. Be that as it may, certain it is that the mistletoe, the instrument of Baldur's death, has been regularly gathered for the sake of its mystic qualities on mid-summer eve in Scandinavia, Baldur's home. The plant is found commonly growing on pear trees, oaks, and other trees in thick, damp woods throughout the more temperate parts of Sweden. Thus, one of the two main incidents of Baldur's myth is reproduced in the great mid-summer festival of Scandinavia. But the other main incident of the myth, the burning of Baldur's body on a pyre, has also its counterpart in the bonfires which still blaze, or blazed till lately, in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden on mid-summer eve. It does not appear, indeed, that any effigy is burned in these bonfires. But the burning of an effigy is a feature which might easily drop out after its meaning was forgotten. And the name of Baldur's Baal Fires, or Baldur's Balar, by which these mid-summer fires were formerly known in Sweden, puts their connection with Baldur beyond the reach of doubt, and makes it probable that in former times, either a living representative or an effigy of Baldur was annually burned in them. Midsummer was the season sacred to Baldur, and the Swedish poet Tejgner, in placing the burning of Baldur at mid-summer, may very well have followed an old tradition that the more solstice was the time when the good God came to his untimely end. Thus it has been shown that the leading incidents of the Baldur myth have their counterparts in those fire festivals of our European peasantry, which undoubtedly date from a time long prior to the introduction of Christianity. The pretense of throwing the victim chosen by Lot into the Beltane Fire and the similar treatment of the man of the future Green Wolf at the mid-summer bonfire in Normandy may naturally be interpreted as traces of an older custom of actually burning human beings on these occasions. And the green dress of the Green Wolf, coupled with the leafy envelope of the young fellow who trod out in the mid-summer fire at Moosheim, seems to hint that the persons who perished at these festivals did so in the character of tree spirits and the deities of vegetation. From all this we may reasonably infer that in the Baldur myth on the one hand and the fire festivals and custom of gathering mistletoe on the other hand we have, as it were, the two broken and dissevered halves of an original whole. In other words we may assume, with some degree of probability, that the myth of Baldur's death was not merely a myth, that is, a description of physical phenomena in imagery borrowed from human life but that it was, at the same time, the story which people told to explain why they annually burned a human representative of the god and cut the mistletoe with solemn ceremony. If I am right, the story of Baldur's tragic end formed, so to say, the text of the sacred drama which was acted year by year as a magical right to cause the sun to shine, trees to grow, crops to thrive and to guard man and beast from the baleful arts of fairies and trolls of witches and warlocks. The tale belonged, in short, to that class of nature myths which are meant to be supplemented by ritual. Here, as so often, myths stood to magic in the relation of theory to practice. But if the victims the human Baldurs who died by fire whether in spring or at midsummer were put to death as living embodiments of tree spirits or deities of vegetation, it would seem that Baldur himself must have been a tree spirit or deity of vegetation. It becomes desirable, therefore, to determine, if we can, the particular kind of tree or trees of which a personal representative was burned at the festival. For we may be quite sure that it was not as a representative of vegetation in general that the victims suffered death. The idea of vegetation in general is too abstract to be primitive. Most probably, the victim at first represented a particular kind of sacred tree. But of all European trees none has such claims as the oak to be considered as preeminently the sacred tree of the Aryans. We have seen that its worship is attested for all the great branches of the Aryan stock in Europe. Hence we may certainly conclude that the tree was venerated by the Aryans in common before the dispersion and that their primitive home must have lain in the land which was clothed with forests of oak. Now, considering the primitive character and remarkable similarity of the observed by all the branches of the Aryan race in Europe we may infer that these festivals form part of the common stock of religious observances which the various people carried with them in their wanderings from their old home. But, if I am right, an essential feature of those primitive fire festivals was the burning of a man who represented the tree spirit. In view, then, of the place occupied by the oak in the religion of the Aryans, the presumption is that the tree so represented at the fire festivals must originally have been the oak. So far as the Celts and Lithuanians are concerned this conclusion will perhaps hardly be contested. But, both for them and for the Germans it is confirmed by a remarkable piece of religious conservatism. The most primitive method known to man of producing fire is by rubbing two pieces of wood against each other till they ignite. And we have seen that this method is still used in Europe for kindling sacred fires such as the need fire and that most probably it was formally resorted to at all the fire festivals under discussion. Now it is sometimes required that the need fire or other sacred fire should be made by the friction of a particular kind of wood and when the kind of wood is prescribed, whether among Celts, Germans or Slavs that wood appears to be generally the oak. But if the sacred fire was regularly kindled by the friction of oak wood we may infer that originally the fire was also fed with the same material. In point of fact it appears that the perpetual fire of Vesta at Rome was fed with oak wood and that oak wood was the fuel consumed in the perpetual fire which burned under the sacred oak at the Great Lithuanian Sanctuary of Romove. Further that oak wood was formally the fuel burned in the mid-summer fires may perhaps be inferred from the custom said to be still observed by peasants in many mountain districts of Germany of making up the cottage fire on mid-summer day with a heavy block of oak wood. The block is so arranged that it smolders slowly and is not finally reduced to charcoal to the expiry of a year. Then upon next mid-summer day the charred embers of the old log are removed to make room for the new one and are mixed with the seed corn or scattered about the garden. This is believed to guard the food cooked on the hearth from witchcraft, to preserve the luck of the house, to promote the growth of the crops from them from blight and vermin. Thus the custom is almost exactly parallel to that of the eulog which in parts of Germany, France, England, Serbia and other Slavonic lands was commonly of oak wood. The general conclusion is that at those periodic or occasional ceremonies the ancient Aryans both kindled and fed the fire with the sacred oak wood. At these solemn rites the fire was regularly made of oak wood it follows that any man who was burned in it as a personification of the tree spirit could have represented no tree but the oak. The sacred oak was thus burned in duplicate. The wood of the tree was consumed in the fire and along with it was consumed a living man as a personification of the oak spirit. The conclusion thus drawn for the European Aryans general is confirmed in its special application to the Scandinavians by the relation in which amongst them the mistletoe appears to have stood to the burning of the victim in the mid-summer fire. We have seen that among Scandinavians it has been customary to gather the mistletoe at mid-summer but so far as appears on the face of this custom there is nothing to connect it with the mid-summer fires in which human victims and ephegies of them were burned. Even if the fire as seems probable was originally always made with oak wood why should it have been necessary to pull the mistletoe? The last link between the mid-summer customs of gathering the mistletoe and lighting the bonfires is supplied by Baldur's myth which can hardly be disjoined from the customs in question. The myth suggests that the vital connection may once have been believed to subsist between the mistletoe and the human representative of the oak who was burned in the fire. According to the myth Baldur could be killed by nothing in heaven or earth except the mistletoe and so long as the mistletoe remained on the oak he was not only immortal but invulnerable. Now if we suppose that Baldur was the oak the origin of the myth becomes intelligible. The mistletoe was viewed as the seed of life of the oak and so long as it was uninjured nothing could kill or even wound the oak. The conception of the mistletoe as the seed of life of the oak would naturally be suggested to primitive people by the observation that while the oak is deciduous the mistletoe which grows on it is evergreen. In winter the sight of its fresh foliage among the bare branches must have been hailed by the worshipers of the tree as a sign that the divine life which had ceased to animate the branches yet survived in the mistletoe as the heart of a sleeper still beats when his body is motionless. Hence when the god had to be killed when the sacred tree had to be burnt it was necessary to begin by breaking off the mistletoe. For so long as the mistletoe remained intact the oak so people might think was invulnerable. All the blows of their knives and axes would glance harmless from its surface but once tear from the oak its sacred heart the mistletoe and the tree nodded to its fall and when in later times the spirit of the oak came to be represented by a living man it was logically necessary to suppose that like the tree he personated he could neither be killed nor wounded so long as the mistletoe remained uninjured. The pulling of the mistletoe was thus at once the signal and the cause of his death. On this view the invulnerable Balder is neither more nor less than a personification of the mistletoe bearing oak. The interpretation is confirmed by what seems to have been an ancient Italian belief that the mistletoe can be destroyed neither by fire nor water. For if the parasite is thus deemed indestructible it might easily be supposed to communicate its own indestructibility to the tree on which it grows so long as the two remain in conjunction. Or to put the same idea in mythical form we might tell how the kindly god of the oak had its life securely deposited in the imperishable mistletoe which grew among its branches. Accordingly, so long as the mistletoe kept its place there the deity himself remained invulnerable and how at last a cunning foe let into the secret of the god's invulnerability tore the mistletoe from the oak thereby killing the oak god and afterwards burning his body in a fire which could have made no impression on him so long as the incombustible parasite retained its seat among the bows. But since the idea of a being whose life is thus in a sense outside himself must be strange to many readers and has indeed not yet been recognized in its full bearing on primitive superstition it will be worthwhile to illustrate it by examples drawn both from story and custom. The result will be to show that in assuming this idea as the explanation of the welder's relation to the mistletoe I assume a principle which is deeply engraved on the mind of primitive man. End of Chapter 65 Chapter 66 of The Golden Bow This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Golden Bow by Sir James Frazier Chapter 66 The External Soul in Folk Tales In a former part of this work we saw that in the opinion of primitive people the soul may temporarily absent itself from the body without causing death. Such temporary absences of the soul are often believed to involve considerable risk since the wandering soul is liable to a variety of mishaps at the hands of enemies and so forth. But there is another aspect to this power of disengaging the soul from the body. If only the safety of the soul can be ensured during its absence there is no reason why the soul should not continue absent for an indefinite time. Indeed, a man may, on a pure calculation of personal safety, desire that his soul should never return to his body. Unable to conceive of life abstractly as a quote permanent possibility of sensation close quote or a quote continuous adjustment of internal arrangements to external relations close quote. The savage thinks of it as a concrete material thing of a definite bulk capable of being seen and handled kept in a box or jar and liable to be bruised fractured or smashed in pieces. It is not needful that the life so conceived should be in the man it may be absent from his body and still continue to animate him by virtue of a sort of sympathy or action at a distance. So long as this object which he calls his life or soul remains unharmed the man as well if it is injured he suffers if it is destroyed he dies or to put it otherwise when a man is ill or dies the fact is explained by saying that the material object called his life or soul whether it be in his body or out of it has either sustained injury or been destroyed but there may be circumstances in which if the life of the soul remains in the man it stands a greater chance of sustaining injury than if it were stowed away in some safe and secret place accordingly in such circumstances primitive man takes his soul out of his body and deposes it for security in some snug spot intending to replace it in his body when the danger is past or if he should discover some place of absolute security he may be content to leave his soul there permanently the advantage of this is that so long as the soul remains unharmed in the place where he has deposited it the man himself is immortal nothing can kill his body since his life is not in it evidence of this primitive belief is furnished by a class of folk tales of which the Norse story of the giant who had no heart or body is perhaps the best known example stories of this kind are widely diffused over the world and from their number and the variety of incident and of details in which the leading idea is embodied we may infer that the conception of an external soul is one which has had a powerful hold on the minds of men at an early stage of history for folk tales the conception of the world as it appeared to the primitive mind and we may be sure that any idea which commonly occurs in them however absurd it may seem to us must once have been an ordinary article of belief this assurance so far as it concerns the supposed power of disengaging the soul from the body for a longer or shorter time is amply corroborated by a comparison of the folk tales in question with the actual beliefs and practices of savages to this we shall return after some specimens of the tales have been given the specimens will be selected with a view of illustrating both the characteristic features and the wide diffusion of this class of tales in the first place the story of the external soul is told in various forms by all Aryan peoples from Hindustan to the Hebrides a very common form of it is this a warlock, giant or other fairy land being is invulnerable and immortal because he keeps his soul hidden far away in some secret place but a fair princess whom he holds enthralled in his enchanted castle wiles his secrets from him and reveals it to the hero who seeks out the warlock soul heart, life or death as it is variously called and by destroying it simultaneously kills the warlock thus a Hindu story tells how a magician called Punchkin held a queen captive for twelve years and would feign marry her but she would not have him at last the queen's son came to rescue her and brought it together to kill Punchkin so the queen spoke the magician fair and pretended that she had at last made up her mind to marry him and do tell me she said are you quite immortal can death never touch you and are you too great an enchanter ever to feel human suffering it is true that I am not as others far far away hundreds of thousands of miles from this there lies a desolate country covered with thick jungle in the midst of the jungle grows a circle of palm trees and in the center of the circle stands six chatty's full of water piled one above another below the sixth chatty is a small cage with a green parrot on the life of the parrot depends my life and if the parrot is killed I must die it is however he added impossible that the parrot should sustain any injury both on account of the inaccessibility of the country and because by my appointment many thousand genies surround the palm trees who approach the place but the queen's young son overcame all difficulties and got possession of the parrot he brought it to the door of the magician's palace and began playing with it punchkin the magician saw him and coming out tried to persuade the boy to give him the parrot give me my parrot cried punchkin then the boy took hold of the parrot with his wings and as he did so the magician's right arm fell off punchkin then stretched out his left arm crying give me my parrot the prince pulled off the parrot's second wing and the magician's left arm tumbled off give me my parrot cried he and fell on his knees the prince pulled off the magician's right leg fell off the prince pulled off the parrot's left leg down fell the magician's left nothing remained of him except the trunk and the head but still he rolled his eyes and cried give me my parrot take your parrot then cried the boy and with that he rung the bird's neck and threw it at the magician and as he did so he twisted round and with a fearful groan he died in another hindu tale an ogre is asked by his daughter papa where do you keep your soul sixteen miles away from this place he said is a tree round the tree are tigers and bears and scorpions and snakes on top of the tree great fat snake on his head is a little cage in the cage is a bird and my soul is in that bird the end of the ogre is like that of the magician in the previous tale as the bird's wings and legs are torn off the ogre's arms and legs drop off and when its neck is rung he falls down dead in a bengali story it is said that all the ogres dwell in selan and that all their lives are in a single lemon a boy cuts the lemon in pieces and all the ogres die in a sayames or cambodian story probably derived from india we are told that thosakan or ravanna the king of selan was able by magic art to take his soul out of his body in a box at home while he went to the wars thus he was invulnerable in battle when he was about to give battle to rama he deposited his soul with a hermit called fire eye who was to keep it safe for him so in the fight rama was astounded to see that his arrows struck the king without wounding him but one of rama's allies knowing the secret of the king's invulnerability transferred himself by magic into the likeness of the king and going to the hermit asked back his soul on receiving it he soared up into the air and flew to rama brandishing the box and squeezing it so hard that all the breath left the king of selan's body and he died in a bangaliz story a prince going into a far country planted with his own hands a tree in the courtyard of his father's palace and said to his parents this tree is my life when you see the tree green and fresh then know that it is well with me when you see the tree fade in some parts then know that I am in an ill case and when you see the whole tree fade then know that I am dead and gone in another indian tale a prince setting forth on his travels left behind him a barley plant with instructions that it should be carefully tended and watched for if it flourished he would be alive and well but if it drooped then some mischance was about to happen to him and so it fell out for the prince was beheaded and as his head rolled off the barley plant snapped into and the ear of barley fell to the ground in greek tales ancient and modern the idea of an external soul is not uncommon when meliager was seven days old the fates appeared to his mother and told her that meliager would die when the brand which was blazing on the hearth had burned down so his mother snatched the brand from the fire and kept it in a box but in after years being enraged at her son for slaying her brothers she burnt the brand in the fire and meliager expired in agonies as if flames were preying on his vitals again nisas king of migara had a purple or golden hair on the middle of his head and it was faded that whenever the hair was pulled out the king should die when migara was besieged by the cretins king's daughter syla fell in love with minos their king and pulled out the fatal hair from her father's head so he died in a modern greek folktale a man's strength lies in three golden hairs on his head when his mother pulls them out he grows weak and timid and is slain by his enemies in another modern greek story the life of an enchanter is bound up with three doves which are in the belly of a wild boar when the first dove is killed the magician grows sick when the second is killed he grows very sick and when the third is killed he dies in another greek story of the same sort an ogre's strength is in three singing birds which are in a wild boar the hero kills two of the birds and then coming to the ogre's house lying on the ground in great pain he shows the third bird to the ogre who begs that the hero will either let it fly away or give it to him to eat but the hero rings the bird's neck and the ogre dies on the spot in a modern roman version of Aladdin and the wonderful lamp the magician tells the princess whom he holds captive in a floating rock in mid ocean that he will never die the princess reports this to the prince, her husband who has come to rescue her the prince replies it is impossible but that there should be some one thing or other that is fatal to him ask him what that one fatal thing is so the princess asked the magician and he told her that in the wood was a hydra with seven heads in the middle head of the hydra was a leverette in the head of the leverette was a bird in the bird's head was a precious stone and if this stone were put under his pillow he would die the prince procured the stone and the princess laid it under the magician's pillow no sooner did the enchanter lay his head on the pillow than he gave three terrible yells turned himself round and round three times and died stories of the same sort are current among slavonic peoples thus a russian story tells how a warlock called kosche the deathless carried off a princess and kept her prisoner in his golden castle however a prince made up to her one day as she was walking alone and disconsolate in the castle garden and cheered by the prospect of escaping with him she went to the warlock and coaxed him with false and flattering words saying my dearest friend tell me I pray you will you never die certainly not says he well says she and where is your death is it in your dwelling to be sure it is says he it is in the broom under the threshold there upon sees to the broom and threw it on the fire but although the broom burned the deathless kosche remained alive indeed not so much as a hair of him was singed balked in her first attempt the artful hussy pouted and said you do not love me true for you have not told me where your death is yet I am not angry but love you with all my heart with these stunning words she besought the warlock to tell her truly where his death was so he laughed and said why do you wish to know surely then out of love I will tell you where it lies in a certain field there stand three green oaks and under the roots of the largest oak is a worm and if ever this worm is found and crushed that instant I shall die when the princess heard these words she went straight to her lever and told him all and he searched till he found the oaks and dug up the worm and crushed it then he hurried to the warlock's castle but only to learn from the princess that the warlock was still alive then she fell to weadling and coaxing kosche once more and this time overcome by her wiles he opened his heart and told her the truth my death said he is far from here and hard to find on the wide ocean in that sea is an island and on the island there grows a green oak and beneath the oak is an iron chest and in the chest is a small basket and in the basket is a hair and in the hair is a duck and in the duck is an egg and he who finds the egg and breaks it kills me at the same time the prince naturally procured the fateful egg and with it in his hands he confronted the deathless warlock the monster would have killed him but the prince began to squeeze the egg at that the warlock shrieked with pain and turning to the false princess who stood by smirking and smiling was it not out of love for you said he that I told you where my death was and is this the return you make to me with that he grabbed at his sword which hung from a peg on the wall but before he could reach it the prince had crushed the egg and sure enough the deathless warlock found his death at the same moment in one of the descriptions of cosci's death he is said to be killed by a blow on the forehead the mysterious egg that last link in the magic chain by which his life is darkly bound in another version of the same story but told of a snake the fatal blow was struck by a small stone found in the yoke of an egg which is inside a duck which is inside a hare which is inside a stone which is on an island amongst peoples of the teutonic stock stories of the external soul are not wanting in a tale told by the Saxons of Transylvania it is said that a young man shot at a witch again and again the bullets went clean through her but did her no harm and she only laughed and mocked at him silly earthworm she cried shoot as much as you like it does me no harm for know that my life resides not in me but far far away in a mountain is a pond on the pond swims a duck in the duck is an egg in the egg burns a light that light is my life if you could put out that light my life would be at an end but that can never never be however the young man got hold of the egg smashed it and put out the light and with it the witch's life so in a German story a cannibal called body without soul or solace keeps his soul in a box which stands on a rock in the middle of the red sea a soldier gets possession of the box and goes with it to solace who begs the soldier to give him back his soul but the soldier opens the box takes out the soul and flings it backward over his head at the same moment the cannibal drops dead to the ground in another story an old warlock lives with a damsel all alone in the midst of a vast and gloomy wood she fears that being old he may die and leave her alone in the forest but he reassures her dear child he says I cannot die and I have no heart in my breast she importuned him to tell her where his heart was so he said far, far from here in an unknown and lonesome land stands a great church the church is well secured with iron doors and round about it flows a broad deep moat in the church flies a bird and in the bird is my heart so long as the bird lives I live it cannot die of itself I can catch it therefore I cannot die and you need have no anxiety however the young man whose bride the damsel was to have been before the warlock spirited her away contrived to reach the church and catch the bird he brought it to the damsel who stowed him and it away under the warlock's bed soon the old warlock came home and he did so the girl wept and said alas daddy is dying he has a heart in his breast after all child replied the warlock hold your tongue I can't die I will soon pass over at that the young man under the bed gave the bird a gentle squeeze and as he did so the old warlock felt very unwell and sat down and gripped the bird tighter and the warlock fell senseless from his chair now squeeze him dead cried the damsel her lover obeyed and when the bird was dead the old warlock also laid dead on the floor in the Norse tale of the giant who had no heart in his body the giant tells the captive princess far far away in a lake lies an island on that island stands a church in that church is a well in that well swims a duck in that duck there is an egg and in that egg there lies my heart the hero of the tale with the help of some animals to whom he had been kind obtains the egg and squeezes it at which the giant screams piteously and begs for his life but the hero breaks the egg in pieces and the giant at once bursts in another Norse story a hill ogre tells the captive princess that she will never be able to return home unless she finds the grain of sand which lies under the ninth tongue of the ninth head of a certain dragon but if that grain of sand were to come over the rock in which the ogres live they would all burst quote and the rock itself would become a gilded palace and the lake green meadows close quote the hero finds the grain of sand and takes it to the top of a high rock in which the ogres live so all the ogres burst and the rest falls out as one of the ogres had foretold in a Celtic tale recorded in the west highlands of Scotland a giant is questioned by a captive queen as to where he keeps his soul at last after deceiving her several times he confides to her the fatal secret there is a great flagstone under the threshold there is a weather under the flag there is a duck in the weather's belly and an egg in the belly of the duck and it is in the duck that my soul is on the morrow when the giant was gone the queen contrived to get possession of the egg and crushed it in her hands and at that very moment the giant who was coming home in the dusk fell down dead in another Celtic tale a sea beast has carried off a king's daughter but an old smith declares that there is no way of killing the beast but one in the island that is in the midst of the Loch is Eilid Caesion the white-footed hind of the slenderest legs and the swiftest step and though she should be caught there would spring a hoodie out of her and though the hoodie should be caught there would spring a trout out of her but there is an egg in the mouth of the trout and the soul of the beast is in the egg and if the egg breaks the beast is dead as usual the egg is broken and the beast dies in an Irish story we read how a giant kept a beautiful damsel a prisoner in his castle on the top of a hill which was white with the bones of the champions who had tried in vain to rescue the fair captive at last the hero after hewing and slashing at the giant all to no purpose discovered that the only way to kill him was to rub a mole on the giant's right breast with a certain egg which was in a duck which was in a chest which lay locked and bound at the bottom of the sea with the help of some obliging animals the hero made himself master of the precious egg and slew the giant by merely striking it against the mole on his right breast similarly in a Breton story there figures a giant whom neither fire nor water nor steel can harm he tells his seventh wife whom he has just married after murdering all her predecessors I am immortal but no one can hurt me unless he crushes on my breast an egg which is in a pigeon which is in the belly of a hare this hare is in the belly of a wolf and this wolf is in the belly of my brother who dwells a thousand leagues from here so I am quite easy on that score a soldier contrived to obtain the egg and crush it on the breast of the giant who immediately expired in another Breton tale the life of a giant resides in an old box tree which grows in his castle garden and to kill him it is necessary to sever the taproot of the tree at a single blow of an axe without injuring any of the lesser roots this task the hero as usual successfully accomplishes and at the same moment the giant drops dead the notion of an external soul has now been traced in folk tales told by Aryan peoples from India to Ireland we have still to show that the same idea occurs commonly in the popular stories of the peoples who do not belong to the Aryan stock in the ancient Egyptian tale of the two brothers which was written down in the reign of Ramesses II about 1300 BC we read how one of the brothers enchanted his heart and placed it in the flower of an acacia tree and how when the flower was cut at the instigation of his wife he immediately fell down dead but revived when his brother found his lost heart in the berry of the acacia and threw it into a cup of fresh water in the story of Saif el-Moluk in the Arabian Nights the genie tells the captive daughter of the king of India when I was born the astrologers declared that the destruction of my soul would be affected by the hand of one of the sons of human kings I therefore took my soul and put it into the crop of a sparrow and I imprisoned the sparrow in a little box and put this into another small box and this I put within seven other small boxes and I put these within seven chests and the chests I put into a coffer of marble within the verge of this circumambient ocean for this part is remote from the countries of mankind and none of mankind can gain access to it but Saif el-Moluk got possession of the sparrow and strangled it and the genie fell upon the ground a heap of black ashes in a Kabbal story an ogre declares that his fate is far away in an egg which is in a pigeon which is in a camel which is in the sea in the mountains and the ogre dies in a Magyar folktale an old witch detains a young prince called Ambrose in the bowels of the earth at last she confided to him that she kept a wild boar in a silken meadow and if it were killed they would find a hare inside and inside the hare a pigeon and inside the pigeon a small box and inside the box one black and one shining beetle held her life and the black one held her power if these two beetles died then her life would come to an end also when the old hag went out Ambrose killed the wild boar and took out the hare from the hare he took the pigeon from the pigeon the box and from the box the two beetles he killed the black beetle but kept the shining one alive so the witch's power left her immediately and when she came home she had to take to her bed having learned from her how to escape from his prison to the upper air Ambrose killed the shining beetle and the old hag's spirit left her at once in a Kalmuk tale we read how a certain Khan challenged a wise man to show his skill by stealing a precious stone on which the Khan's life depended and he arrived to perloin the talisman while the Khan and his guard slept but not content with this he gave a further proof of his dexterity by bonneting the slumbering potentate with a bladder this was too much for the Khan next morning he informed the sage that he could overlook everything else but that the indignity of being bonneted by a bladder was more than he could bear and he ordered his facetious friend to do the instant execution pained at this exhibition of royal ingratitude the sage dashed to the ground the talisman which he still held in his hand and at the same instant blood flowed from the nostrils of the Khan and he gave up the ghost in a Tarar poem two heroes named Akmulot and Bulat engage in mortal combat Akmulot pierces his foe through with an arrow grapples with him and dashes him to the ground but all in vain Bulat could not die at last when the combat has lasted three years a friend of Akmulot sees a golden casket hanging by a white thread from the sky and befinks him that perhaps this casket contains Bulat's soul so he shot through the white thread with an arrow and down fell the casket opened it and in the casket sat ten white birds and one of the birds was Bulat's soul Bulat wept when he saw that his soul was found in the casket but one after the other the birds were killed and then Akmulot easily slew his foe in another Tarar poem two brothers going to fight two other brothers take out their souls and hide them in the form of a white herb with six stalks deep pit but one of their foes sees them doing so and digs up their souls which he puts into a golden ram's horn and then sticks the ram's horn in his quiver the two warriors whose souls have thus been stolen know that they have no chance of victory and accordingly make peace with their enemies in another Tarar poem a terrible demon sets all the gods and heroes at defiance at last a valiant youth fights the demon binds him hand and foot and slices him with his sword but still the demon is not slain so the youth asks him tell me where your soul is hidden for if your soul had been hidden in your body you must have been dead long ago the demon replied on the saddle of my horse is a bag in the bag is a serpent with twelve heads in the serpent is my soul when you have killed the serpent you have killed me also so the youth took the saddle bag from the horse and killed the twelve headed serpent whereupon the demon expired in another Tarar poem a hero called Cook Khan deposits with a maiden a golden ring in which is half his strength afterwards when Cook Khan is wrestling long with a hero and cannot kill him a woman drops into his mouth the ring which contains half his strength thus inspired with fresh force he slays his enemy in a Mongolian story the hero Joro gets the better of his enemy the Lama Jori Dong in the following way the Lama who is an enchanter sends out his soul in the form of a wasp to sting Joro's eyes but Joro catches the wasp in his hand and alternately shutting and opening his hand he causes the Lama alternately to lose and recover consciousness in a Tarar poem two youths cut open the body of an old witch and tear out her bowels but all to no purpose she still lives on being asked where her soul is she answers that it is in the middle of her shoe soul in the form of a seven headed speckled snake so one of the youth slices her shoe soul with a sword takes out the speckled snake and cuts off its seven heads then the witch dies another Tarar poem describes how the hero Tartaga grappled with a swan woman long they wrestled moons waxed and waned and still they wrestled years came and went on but the pea bald horse and the black horse knew that the swan woman soul was not in her under the black earth flow nine seas where the seas meet and form one the sea comes to the surface of the earth at the mouth of the nine seas rises a rock of copper it rises to the surface of the ground it rises up between heaven and earth this rock of copper the foot of the copper rock is a black chest in the black chest is a golden casket and in the golden casket is the soul of the swan woman seven little birds are the soul of the swan woman if the birds are killed the swan woman will die straight away so the horses ran to the foot of the copper rock opened the black chest and brought back the golden casket then the pea bald horse the bald headed man opened the golden casket and cut off the heads of the seven birds so the swan woman died in another tartar poem the hero pursuing his sister who has driven away his cattle is warned to desist from the pursuit because his sister has carried away his soul in a golden sword and a golden arrow and if he pursues her she will kill him by throwing the golden sword or shooting the golden arrow at him a mele poem relates how once upon a time in the city of Indrapura there was a certain merchant who was rich and prosperous but he had no children one day as he walked with his wife by the river they found a baby girl fair as an angel so they adopted the child and called her Bidasari the merchant caused a golden fish to be made the fish he transferred the soul of his adopted daughter then he put the golden fish in a golden box full of water and hid it in a pond in the midst of his garden in time the girl grew to be a lovely woman now the king of Indrapura had a fair young queen who lived in fear that the king might take to himself a second wife so hearing of the charms of Bidasari the queen resolved the way she lured the girl to the palace and tortured her cruelly but Bidasari could not die because her soul was not in her at last she could stand the torture no longer and said to the queen if you wish me to die you must bring the box which is in the pond in my father's garden so the box was brought and opened and there was a golden fish in the water the girl said the girl is in that fish in the morning you must take the fish out of the water and in the evening you must put it back into the water do not let the fish lie about but bind it round your neck if you do this I shall soon die so the queen took the fish out of the box and faceted it round her neck and no sooner had she done so then Bidasari fell into a swoon but in the evening when the box was put back into the water Bidasari came to herself again seeing that she thus had the girl in her power the queen sent her home to her adopted parents to save her from further persecution her parents resolved to remove their daughter from the city so in a lonely and desolate spot they built a house and brought Bidasari thither there she dwelt alone undergoing vicissitudes and responded with the vicissitudes of the golden fish in which was her soul all day long while the fish was out of the water she remained unconscious but in the evening when the fish was put into the water she revived one day the king was out hunting and coming to the house where Bidasari lay unconscious was smitten with her beauty he tried to awaken her but the next day towards evening he repeated his visit but still found her unconscious however when darkness fell she came to herself and told the king the secret of her life so the king returned to the palace took the fish from the queen and put it in water immediately Bidasari revived and the king took her to wife another story of an external soul comes from Nyas to the west of Sumatra once on a time a chief was captured by his enemies who tried to put him to death but failed water would not drown him nor fire burn him nor steel pierce him at last his wife revealed the secret on his head he had a hair as hard as a copper wire and with this wire his life was bound up so the hair was plucked out and fled a west african story from southern Nigeria relates how a king kept his soul in a little brown bird which perched on a tall tree beside the gate of the palace the king's life was so bound up with that of the bird that whoever should kill the bird would simultaneously kill the king and succeed to the kingdom the secret was betrayed by the queen to her lover and thereby slew the king and ascended the vacant throne a tale told by the Baronga of South Africa sets forth how the lives of a whole family were contained in one cat when a girl of the family named Titishan married a husband she begged her parents to let her take the precious cat with her to her new home but they refused saying you know that our life is attached to it they offered to give her an antelope or even an elephant instead of it but nothing would satisfy her but the cat so at last she carried it off with her and shut it up in a place where nobody saw it even her husband knew nothing about it one day when she went to work in the fields the cat escaped from its place of concealment entered the hut and put on the warlike trappings of the husband and danced and sang some children attracted by the noise discovered the cat at its antics and when they expressed their astonishment the animal only capered the more and insulted them besides so they went to the owner and said there is somebody dancing in your house and he insulted us hold your tongues said he I'll soon put a stop to your lies so he went and hid behind the door and kept in and sure enough was the cat prancing about and singing he fired at it and the animal dropped down dead at the same moment his wife fell to the ground in the field where she was at work said she I have been killed at home but she had strength enough left to ask her husband to go with her to her parent's village taking with him the dead cat relatives assembled and bitterly they reproached her for having insisted on taking the animal with her to her husband's village as soon as the mat was unrolled and they saw the dead cat they all fell down lifeless one after the other so the clan of the cat was destroyed and the bereaved husband closed the gate of the village with a branch and returned home and told his friends how in killing the cat they planned because their lives depended on the life of the cat ideas of the same sort meet us in stories told by the North American Indians thus the Navajos tell of a certain mythical being called the maiden that becomes a bear who learned the art of turning herself into a bear from a prairie wolf she was a great warrior and quite invulnerable for when she went to war she took her organs and hid them so that no one could kill her and when the battle was over she put the organs back in their places again the Kwakil Tull Indians of British Columbia tell of an ogres who could not be killed because her life was in a hemlock branch a brave boy met her in the woods smashed her head with a stone scattered her brains broke her bones and threw them into the water then thinking he had disposed of the ogres he went into her house there he saw a woman rooted to the floor who warned him saying now do not stay long I know that you have tried to kill the ogres it is the fourth time that somebody has tried to kill her she never dies she has nearly come to life there in that covered hemlock branch is her life go there and as soon as you see her enter her life then she will be dead hardly had she finished speaking but sure enough in came the ogres singing as she walked but the boy shot at her life and she fell dead to the floor End of chapter 66