 In the preceding chapters we saw that in antiquity the civilized nations of western Asia and Egypt pictured to themselves the changes of the seasons, and particularly the annual growth and decay of vegetation, as episodes in the life of gods, whose mournful death and happy resurrection they celebrated with dramatic rites of alternate lamentation and rejoicing. But if the celebration was informed dramatic it was in substance magical, that is to say it was intended on the principles of sympathetic magic to ensure the vernal regeneration of plants and the multiplication of animals, which had seemed to be menaced by the inroads of winter. In the ancient world, however, such ideas and such rites were by no means confined to the Oriental peoples of Babylon and Syria, of Phrygia and Egypt. They were not a product peculiar to the religious mysticism of the dreamy east, but were shared by the races of lavelier, fancy, and warmer curial temperament who inhabited the shores and islands of the Aegean. We need not, with some inquirers in ancient and modern times, suppose that these western peoples borrowed from the older civilization of the Orient, the conception of the dying and reviving God, together with the solemn ritual in which that conception was dramatically set forth before the eyes of the worshippers. More probably the resemblance, which may be traced in this respect between the religions of the east and west, is no more than what we commonly, though incorrectly, call a fortuitous coincidence, the effect of similar causes acting alike on the similar constitution of the human mind in different countries and under different skies. The Greek had no need to journey into far countries to learn the vicissitudes of the seasons, to mark the fleeting beauty of the Damasque rose, the transient glory of the golden corn, the passing splendor of the purple grapes. Year by year in his own beautiful land he beheld, with natural regret, the bright pomp of summer fading into the gloom and stagnation of winter, and year by year he hailed with natural delight the outburst of fresh life in spring, accustomed to personify the forces of nature, to tinge her cold abstractions with the warm hues of imagination, to clothe her naked realities with the gorgeous drapery of a mythic fancy, he fashioned for himself a train of gods and goddesses, of spirits and elves, out of the shifting panorama of the seasons, and followed the annual fluctuations of their fortunes with alternate emotions of cheerfulness and ejection, of gladness and sorrow, which found their natural expression in alternate rites of rejoicing and lamentation, of rebelry and mourning. A consideration of some of the Greek divinities who thus died and rose again from the dead may furnish us with a series of companion pictures to set side by side with the sad figures of Adonis, Attis, and Osiris. We begin with Dionysus. The god Dionysus or Bacchus is best known to us as a personification of the vine, and of the acceleration produced by the juice of the grape. His ecstatic worship, characterized by wild dances, thrilling music, and tipsy excess, appears to have originated among the rude tribes of Thrace, who were notoriously addicted to drunkenness. Its mystic doctrines and extravagant rites were essentially foreign to the clear intelligence and sober temperament of the Greek race. Yet appealing as it did to that love of mystery and that proneness to revert to savagery, which seemed to be an aid in most men, the religions spread like wildfire through Greece, until a god whom Homer hardly deigned to notice had become the most popular figure of the pantheon. The resemblance which his story and his ceremonies present to those of Osiris have led some inquirers, both in ancient and modern times, to hold that Dionysus was merely a disguised Osiris, imported directly from Egypt into Greece. But the great preponderance of evidence points to his Thracian origin, and the similarity of the two worships is sufficiently explained by the similarity of the ideas and customs on which they were founded. While the vine, with its clusters, was the most characteristic manifestation of Dionysus, he was also a god of trees in general. Thus we are told that almost all the Greeks sacrificed to Dionysus of the tree, and Boetia, one of his titles, was Dionysus in the tree. His image was often merely an upright post, without arms but draped in a mantle, with a bearded mask to represent the head, and with leafy bows projecting from the head or body to show the nature of the deity. On a vase his rude effigy is depicted appearing out of a low tree or bush. At Magnesia on the meander an image of Dionysus is said to have been found in a plain tree, which had been broken by the wind. He was the patron of cultivated trees. Pairs were offered to him that he would make the trees grow. And he was especially honoured by the husbandmen, chiefly fruit growers, who set up an image of him in the shape of a natural tree stump in their orchards. He was said to have discovered all tree fruits, amongst which apples and figs are particularly mentioned. And he was referred to as well-fruited, he of the green fruit, and making the fruit to grow. One of his titles was Teaming, or Bursting, as of Sap or Blossoms. And there was a flowery Dionysus in Attica, and at Patre in Achaia. The Athenians sacrificed to him for the prosperity of the fruits of the land. Amongst the trees particularly sacred to him, in addition to the vine, was the pine tree. The Delphic Oracle commanded the Corinthians to worship a particular pine tree equally with the god. So they made two images of Dionysus out of it, with red faces and gilt bodies. In art a wand tipped with a pine cone is commonly carried by the god or his worshippers. And the ivy and the fig tree were especially associated with him. In the attic township of Achaia, there was a Dionysus ivy, and at Lassidamen there was a fig Dionysus, and in Naxos, where figs were called Melica, there was a Dionysus Melikios, the face of whose image was made of figwood. Further there are indications, few but significant, that Dionysus was conceived as a deity of agriculture and the corn. He is spoken of as himself doing the work of a husbandman. He is reported to have been the first to yoke oxen to the plough, which before had been dragged by hand alone. And some people found in this tradition the clue to the bovine shape in which, as we shall see, the god was often supposed to present himself to his worshippers. Thus guiding the plough-share and scattering the seed as he went, Dionysus is said to have eased the labour of the husbandman. Further we are told that in the land of the Bysalti, a Thracian tribe, there was a great and fair sanctuary of Dionysus, where at his festival a bright light shone forth at night as a token of an abundant harvest vouched safe by the deity. But if the crops were to fail that year, the mystic light was not seen, darkness brooded over the sanctuary as at other times. Moreover, among the emblems of Dionysus was the winnowing fan, that is the large open shovel-shaped basket which down to modern times has been used by farmers to separate the grain from the shaft by tossing the corn in the air. This simple agricultural instrument figured in the mystic rites of Dionysus, indeed the goddess traditionally said to have been placed at birth in a winnowing fan as in a cradle. In art he is represented as an infant so cradled, and from these traditions and representations he derived the epithet of Lichnites, that is, he of the winnowing fan. Like other gods of vegetation Dionysus was believed to have died a violent death, but to have been brought to life again, and his sufferings death and resurrection were enacted in his sacred rites. This tragic story is thus told by the poet Naunus. Zeus in the form of a serpent visited Persephone, and she bore him Zagrus, that is Dionysus, a horned infant. Scarcely was he born when the babe mounted the throne of his father Zeus, and mimicked the great god by brandishing the lightning in his tiny hand. But he did not occupy the throne long, for the treacherous titans, their faces whited with chalked, attacked him with knives while he was looking at himself in a mirror. For a time he evaded their assaults by turning himself into various shapes, assuming the likeness successively of Zeus and Cronus, of a young man, of a lion, a horse, and a serpent. Finally in the form of a bull he was cut to pieces by the murderous knives of his enemies. His Cretan myth, as related by Firmicus Maternis, ran thus. He was said to have been to the bastard son of Jupiter, a Cretan king. Going abroad Jupiter transferred the throne and scepter to the youthful Dionysus, but knowing that his wife Juno cherished a jealous dislike of the child, he entrusted Dionysus to the care of guards upon whose fidelity he believed he could rely. Juno, however, bribed the guards, and amusing the child with rattles and a cunningly wrought looking-glass, lured him into an ambush, where her satellites, the titans, rushed upon him, cut him limb from limb, boiled his body with various herbs, and ate it. But his sister Minerva, who had shared in the deed, kept his heart and gave it to Jupiter on his return, allowing to him the whole history of the crime. In his rage Jupiter put the titans to death by torture, and to soothe his grief for the loss of his son made an image in which he enclosed the child's heart, and then built a temple in his honour. In this version a euhemuristic turn has been given to the myth by representing Jupiter and Juno, Zeus and Hera, as a king and queen of Crete. The guards referred to you are the mythical curates who danced a war dance around the infant Dionysus, as they are said to have done round the infant Zeus. Very noteworthy is the legend, recorded both by Nonus and Firmicus, that in his infancy Dionysus occupied for a short time the throne of his father Zeus. So Proclus tells us that Dionysus was the last king of the gods appointed by Zeus, for his father set him on the kingly throne and placed in his hand the scepter, and made him king of all the gods of the world. Such traditions point to a custom of temporarily investing the king's son with the royal dignity as a preliminary to sacrificing him instead of his father. Pomegranates were supposed to have sprung from the blood of Dionysus, as anemones from the blood of Adonis, and violets from the blood of Addis, hence women refrained from eating seeds of pomegranates at the festival of the Thesmophoria. According to some the severed limbs of Dionysus were pieced together at the command of Zeus, by Apollo, who buried them on Parnassus. The grave of Dionysus was shown in the Delphic temple beside a golden statue of Apollo. However, according to another account, the grave of Dionysus was at Thebes, where he is said to have been torn in pieces. Thus far the resurrection of the slain god is not mentioned, but in other versions of the myth it is variously related. According to one version, which represented Dionysus as a son of Zeus and a meter, his mother pieced together his mangled limbs and made him young again. In others it is simply said that shortly after his burial he rose from the dead and ascended up to heaven. Or that Zeus raised him up as he lay mortally wounded. Or that Zeus swallowed the heart of Dionysus and then begat him afresh by Cimeli, who in the common legend figures as mother of Dionysus. Or again the heart was pounded up and given in a potion to Cimeli, who thereby conceived him. Turning from the myth to the ritual, we find that the Cretans celebrated a biennial festival at which the passion of Dionysus was represented in every detail. All that he had done or suffered in his last moments was enacted before the eyes of his worshippers, who tore a live bull to pieces with their teeth and roamed the woods with frantic shouts. In front of them was carried a casket supposed to contain the sacred heart of Dionysus, and to the wild music of flutes and symbols they mimicked the rattles by which the infant god had been lured to his doom. Where the resurrection formed part of the myth it also was acted at the rites, and it even appears that a general doctrine of resurrection, or at least of immortality, was inculcated on the worshippers. For Plutarch, writing to console his wife on the death of their infant daughter, comforts her with the thought of immortality of the soul as taught by tradition and revealed in the mysteries of Dionysus. A different form of the myth of the death and resurrection of Dionysus is that he descended into Hades to bring up his mother Cimeli from the dead. The local Argyve tradition was that he went down through the Alcyonian Lake, and his return from the lower world, in other words his resurrection, was annually celebrated on the spot by the Argyves, who summoned him from the water by trumpet blasts, while they threw a lamb into the lake as an offering to the water of the dead. Whether this was a spring festival does not appear, but the Lydians certainly celebrated the advent of Dionysus in spring. The god was supposed to bring the season with him. Deities of vegetation, who are believed to pass a certain portion of each year underground, naturally come to be regarded as gods of the lower world or of the dead. Both Dionysus and Osiris were so conceived. A feature in the mythical character of Dionysus, which at first sight appears inconsistent with his nature as a deity of vegetation, is that he was often conceived and represented in animal shape, especially in the form, or at least with the horns, of a bull. Thus he is spoken of as cow-born, bull, bull-shaped, bull-faced, bull-browed, bull-horned, horn-bearing, two-horned, horned. He was believed to appear, at least occasionally, as a bull. His images were often, as at Cisacus, made in bull shape or with bull horns, and he was painted with horns. Types of the horned Dionysus are found amongst the surviving monuments of antiquity. On one statuette he appears clad in a bull's hide, the head, horns, and hoofs hanging down behind. Again he is represented as a child with clusters of grapes round his brow and a calf's head with sprouting horns attached to the back of his head. On a red-figured vase the god is portrayed as a calf-headed child seated on a woman's lap. The people of Sinathia held a festival of Dionysus in winter, when men who had greased their bodies with oil for the occasion used to pick out a bull from the herd and carry it to the sanctuary of the god. Dionysus was supposed to inspire their choice of the particular bull, which probably represented the deity himself, for at his festivals he was believed to appear in bull form. The women of Elis hailed him as a bull and prayed him to come with his bull's foot. They sang, Come hither Dionysus to thy holy temple by the sea. Come with the graces to thy temple, rushing with thy bull's foot, O goodly bull, O goodly bull. The bacchanals of Thrace wore horns in imitation of their god. According to the myth it was in the shape of a bull that he was torn to pieces by the Titans, and the Cretans, when they acted the sufferings in death of Dionysus, tore a live bull to pieces with their teeth. Indeed the rending and devouring of live bulls and calves appear to have been a regular feature of the Dionysiac rites. When we consider the practice of portraying the god as a bull, or with some of the features of the animal, the belief that he appeared in bull form to his worshipers at the sacred rites, and the legend that in bull form he had been torn to pieces, we cannot doubt that in rending and devouring a live bull at his festival, the worshipers of Dionysus believed themselves to be killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood. Another animal whose form Dionysus assumed was the goat. One of his names was Kid. At Athens and at Hermion he was worshiped under the title of the One of the Black Goat Skin, and a legend ran that on a certain occasion he had appeared clad in the skin from which he took the title. In the wine-growing district of Flius, where in autumn the plain is still thickly mantled with the red and golden foliage of the fading vines, there stood of old a bronze image of a goat, which the husband man plastered with gold leaf as a means of protecting their vines against blight. The image probably represented the vine god himself. To save him from the wrath of Hera, his father Zeus changed the youthful Dionysus into a kid, and when the gods fled to Egypt to escape the fury of Typhon, Dionysus was turned into a goat. Hence, when his worshipers rent in pieces a live goat and devoured it raw, they must have believed they were eating the body and blood of the god. The custom of tearing in pieces the bodies of animals and of men and then devouring them raw has been practiced as a religious rite by savages in modern times. We need not therefore dismiss as a fable the testimony of antiquity to the observance of similar rites among the frenzied worshipers of Bacchus. The custom of killing a god in animal form, which we shall examine more in detail further on, belongs to a very early stage of human culture and is apt in later times to be misunderstood. The advance of thought tends to strip the old animal and plant gods of their bestial and vegetable husk and to leave their human attributes, which are always the kernel of the conception, as the final and sole residuum. In other words, animal and plant gods tend to become purely anthropomorphic. When they have become holy or nearly so, the animals and plants which were at first the deities themselves still retain a vague and ill-understood connection with the anthropomorphic gods who have developed out of them. The origin of the relationship between the deity and the animal or plant having been forgotten, various stories are invented to explain it. These explanations may follow one of two lines according as they are based on the habitual or on the exceptional treatment of the sacred animal or plant. The sacred animal was habitually spared and only exceptionally slain, and accordingly the myth might be devised to explain either why it was spared or why it was killed. Devised for the former purpose, the myth would tell of some service rendered to the deity by the animal. Devised for the latter purpose, the myth would tell of some injury inflicted by the animal on the god. The reason given for sacrificing goats to Dionysus exemplifies a myth of the latter sort. They were sacrificed to him, it was said, because they injured the vine. Now the goat, as we have seen, was originally an embodiment of the god himself. But when the god had divested himself of his animal character, and had become essentially anthropomorphic, the killing of the goat in his worship came to be regarded no longer as a slaying of the deity himself, but as a sacrifice offered to him. And since some reason had to be assigned why the goat in particular should be sacrificed, it was alleged that this was a punishment inflicted on the goat for injuring the vine, the object of the god's especial care. Thus we have the strange spectacle of a god's sacrifice to himself on the ground that he is his own enemy. And as the deity is supposed to partake of the victim offered to him, it follows that when the victim is the god's old self, the god eats of his own flesh. Hence the goat god Dionysus is represented as eating raw goat's blood, and the bull god Dionysus is called eater of bulls. On the analogy of these instances, we may conjecture that wherever a deity is described as the eater of a particular animal, the animal in question was originally nothing but the deity himself. Later on we shall find that some savages propitiate dead bears and whales by offering them portions of their own bodies. All this, however, does not explain why a deity of vegetation should appear in animal form. But the consideration of that point had better be deferred till we have discussed the character and attributes of Demeter. Meantime it remains to mention that in some places instead of an animal, a human being was torn in pieces at the rites of Dionysus. This was the practice in Chios and Tenedos, and at Potniae and Boetiae the tradition ran that it had been formerly the custom to sacrifice to the goat's mighting Dionysus, a child, for whom a goat was afterwards substituted. At Orcomenus, as we have seen, the human victim was taken from the women of an old royal family, as the slain bull or goat represented the slain god, so we may suppose the human victim also represented him. The legends of the deaths of Penteas and Lycurgis, two kings who are said to have been torn to pieces, one by the Bacchanals, the other by horses, for their opposition to the rites of Dionysus, may be, as I have already suggested, distorted reminiscences of a custom of sacrificing divine kings and the character of Dionysus, and of dispersing the fragments of their broken bodies over the fields for the purpose of fertilizing them. It is probably no mere coincidence that Dionysus himself is said to have been torn in pieces at Thebes, the very place where, according to legend, the same fate befell King Penteas at the hands of the frenzied votaries of the line god. However, a tradition of human sacrifice may sometimes have been a mere misinterpretation of a sacrificial ritual in which an animal victim was treated as a human being. For example, at Tenedos, the newborn calf sacrificed to Dionysus was shot in buskins, and the mother cow was tended like a woman in childbed. At Rome, a she-goat was sacrificed to Vergeovis as if it were a human victim. Yet on the other hand, it is equally possible, and perhaps more probable, that these curious rights were themselves mitigations of an older and ruder custom of sacrificing human beings, and that the latter pretense of treating the sacrificial victims as if they were human beings was merely part of a pious and merciful fraud, which palmed off on the deity less precious victims than living men and women. This interpretation is supported by many undoubted cases in which animals have been substituted for human victims. CHAPTER 44 DEMETER AND PERSEFINY Dionysus was not the only Greek deity whose tragic story and ritual appear to reflect the decay and revival of vegetation. In another form and with a different application, the old tale reappears in the myth of Demeter and Persephone. Substantially, their myth is identical with the Syrian one of Aphrodite, Astarty, and Adonis, the Phrygian one of Cebele and Attis, and the Egyptian one of Isis and Osiris. In the Greek fable, as in its Asiatic and Egyptian counterparts, a goddess mourns the loss of a loved one who personifies the vegetation, more especially the corn, which dies in winter to revive in spring. Only whereas the Oriental imagination figured the loved and lost one as a dead lover or a dead husband, lamented by his Lehman or his wife, Greek fancy embodied the same idea in the tenderer and purer form of a dead daughter bewailed by her sorrowing mother. The oldest literary document, which narrates the myth of Demeter and Persephone, is the beautiful Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which critics assign to the seventh century before our era. The object of the poem is to explain the origin of the Eleusinian mysteries, and the complete silence of the poet as to Athens and the Athenians, who in after-ages took conspicuous part in the festival, renders it probable that the Hymn was composed in the far-off time when Eleusius was still a petty independent state, and before the stately procession of the mysteries had begun to defile in bright September days, over the low chain of barren, rocky hills which divides the flat Eleusinian corn land from the more spacious olive-clad expanse of the Athenian plain. Be that as it may, the Hymn reveals to us the conception which the writer entertained of the character and functions of the two goddesses. Their natural shapes stand out sharply enough under the thin veil of poetical imagery. The youthful Persephone, so runs the tale, was gathering roses and lilies, crocuses and violets, hyacinths and narcissuses in a lush meadow, when the earth gaped and Pluto, Lord of the Dead, issuing from the abyss, carried her off on his golden car to be his bride and queen in the gloomy subterranean world. Her sorrowing mother Demeter, with her yellow tresses veiled in a dark morning mantel, sought her over land and sea, and learning from the sun her daughter's fate, she withdrew in high dudgeon from the gods, and took up her abode at Eleusis, where she presented herself to the king's daughters and the guise of an old woman, sitting sadly under the shadow of an olive tree beside the maiden's well, to which damsels had come to draw water in bronze pitchers for their father's house. In her wrath at her bereavement the goddess suffered not the seed to grow in the earth, but kept it hidden under the ground, and she vowed that never would she set foot on Olympus, and never would she let the corn sprout, till her lost daughter should be restored to her. Vainly the oxen dragged the plows to and fro in the fields. Vainly the sower dropped the barley seed in the brown furrows. Nothing came up from the parched and crumbling soil. Even the rarion plain near Eleusis, which was want to wave with yellow harvests, play bear and fallow. Vain would have perished of hunger, and the gods would have been robbed of the sacrifices which were there due, if Zeus, in alarm, had not commanded Pluto to disgorge his prey, to restore his bride Persephone to her mother Demeter. The grim lord of the dead smiled and obeyed, but before he sent back his queen to the upper air on a golden car he gave her the seed of a pomegranate to eat, which ensured that she would return to him. But Zeus stipulated that henceforth Persephone should spend two-thirds of every year with her mother, and the gods in the upper world, and one-third of the year with her husband in the netherworld, from which she was to return year by year when the earth was gay with spring flowers. Gladly the daughter then returned to the sunshine. Gladly her mother received her and fell upon her neck, and in her joy at recovering the lost one Demeter made the corn to sprout from the clods of the plowed fields, and all the broad earth to be heavy with leaves and blossoms. And straightway she went and showed this happy sight to the princes of Ilusius, to tryptolimus, umulpus, diaglis, and to the king Celyus himself, and moreover she revealed to them her sacred rites and mysteries. Blessed, says the poet, is the mortal man who has seen these things, but he who has had no share of them in life will never be happy in death when he has descended into the darkness of the grave. So the two goddesses departed to dwell in bliss with the gods on Olympus, and the bard ends the hymn with a pious prayer to Demeter and Persephone, that they would be pleased to grant him a livelihood in return for his song. It has been generally recognized, and indeed it seems scarcely open to doubt, that the main theme which the poet set before himself in composing this hymn, was to describe the traditional foundation of the Ilusian mysteries by the goddess Demeter. The whole poem leads up to the transformation scene in which the bare leafless expanse of the Ilusian plain is suddenly turned at the will of the goddess into a vast sheet of ruddy corn. The beneficent deity takes the princes of Ilusus, shows them what she has done, teaches them her mystic rites, and vanishes with her daughter to heaven. The revelation of the mysteries is the triumphal close of the piece. This conclusion is confirmed by a more minute examination of the poem, which proves that the poet has given not merely a general account of the foundation of the mysteries, but also in more or less veiled language, mythical explanations of the origin of particular bites which we have good reason to believe formed essential features of the festival. Amongst these rites, as to which the poet thus drops significant hints, are the preliminary fast of the candidates for initiation, the torchlight procession, the all-night vigil, the sitting of the candidates, veiled and in silence, on stools covered with sheepskins, the use of scurrilous language, the breaking of ribald jests, and the solemn communion with the divinity by participation in a draft of barley water from a holy chalice. But there is yet another and a deeper secret of the mysteries, which the author of the poem appears to have divulged under the cover of his narrative. He tells us how, as soon as she had transformed the barren brown expanse of the Ellucinian plain into a field of golden grain, she gladdened the eyes of tryptolemus and the other Ellucinian princes by showing them the growing or standing corn. When we compare this part of the story with the statement of a Christian writer in the second century, Hippolytus, that the very heart of the mysteries consisted in showing to the initiated a reaped ear of corn, we can hardly doubt that the poet of the hymn was well acquainted with this solemn right, and that he deliberately intended to explain its origin in precisely the same way as he explained other rites of the mysteries, namely by representing Demeter as having set the example of performing the ceremony in her own person. Thus myth and ritual mutually explain and confirm each other. The poet of the seventh century before our era gives us the myth. He could not without sacrilege have revealed the ritual. The Christian father reveals the ritual, and his revelation accords perfectly with the veiled hint of the old poet. On the whole, then, we may, with modern scholars, confidently accept the statement of the learned Christian father Clement of Alexandria, that the myth of Demeter and Persephone was acted as a sacred drama in the mysteries of Ellucis. But if the myth was acted as a part, perhaps as the principle part, of the most famous and solemn religious rites of ancient Greece, we have still to inquire, what was, after all, stripped of later accretions, the original kernel of the myth, which appears to later ages surrounded and transfigured by an oriole of awe and mystery, lit up by some of the most brilliant rays of Christian literature and art. If we follow the indications given by our oldest literary authority on the subject, the author of the Homeric hymn to Demeter, the riddle is not hard to read. The figures of the two goddesses, the mother and the daughter, resolve themselves into personifications of the corn. At least this appears to be fairly certain for the daughter Persephone, the goddess who spends three, or according to another version of the myth, six months of every year with the dead underground, and the remainder of the year with the living above ground, in whose absence the barley seed is hidden in the earth, and the fields lie bare and fallow. On whose return in spring to the upper world the corn shoots up from the clods and the earth is heavy with leaves and blossoms. This goddess can surely be nothing else than a mythical embodiment of the vegetation, and particularly of the corn, which is buried under the soil for some months of every winter, and comes to life again as from the grave, in the sprouting corn stalks and the opening flowers and foliage of spring. No other reasonable and probable explanation of Persephone seems possible, and if the daughter goddess was a personification of the young corn of the present year, may not the mother goddess be a personification of the old corn of last year, which has given birth to the new crops? The only alternative to this view of Demeter would seem to be to suppose that she is a personification of the earth, from whose broad bosom the corn and all other plants spring up, and of which accordingly they may appropriately enough be regarded as the daughters. This view of the original nature of Demeter has indeed been taken by some writers, both ancient and modern, and it is one which can be reasonably maintained. But it appears to have been rejected by the author of the Homeric hymn to Demeter, for he not only distinguishes Demeter from the personified earth, but places the two in the sharpest opposition to each other. He tells us that it was earth who, in accordance with the will of Zeus and to please Pluto, lured Persephone to her doom by causing the Narcissuses to grow, which tempted the young goddess to stray far beyond the reach of help in the lush meadow. Thus Demeter of the hymn, far from being identical with the earth goddess, must have regarded that divinity as her worst enemy, since it was to her insidious wiles that she owed the loss of her daughter. But if the Demeter of the hymn cannot have been a personification of the earth, the only alternative apparently is to conclude that she was a personification of the corn. The conclusion is confirmed by the monuments, for in ancient art Demeter and Persephone are alike characterized as goddesses of the corn, by the crowns of corn which they wear on their heads, and by the stalks of corn which they hold in their hands. Again it was Demeter who first revealed to the Athenians the secret of the corn, and diffused the beneficent discovery far and wide, through the agency of Tryptolemus, whom she sent forth as an itinerant missionary to communicate the boon to all mankind. On monuments of art, especially in vase paintings, he is constantly represented along with Demeter in this capacity, holding corn stalks in his hand and sitting in his car, which is sometimes winged and sometimes drawn by dragons, and from which he is said to have sowed the seed down on the whole world as he sped through the air. In gratitude for the priceless boon, many Greek cities long continued to send the first fruits of their barley and wheat harvests as thanks offerings to the two goddesses, Demeter and Persephone, Adelusis, where subterranean granaries were built, to store the overflowing contributions. Theocritus tells how in the island of Kos, in the sweet-scented summertime, the farmer brought the first fruits of the harvest to Demeter, who had filled his threshing-floor with barley, and whose rustic image held sheaves and poppies in her hands. Many of the epithets bestowed by the ancients on Demeter, mark her intimate association with the corn in the clearest manner. How deeply implanted in the mind of the ancient Greeks was this faith in Demeter, as goddess of the corn, may be judged by the circumstance that the faith actually persisted among their Christian descendants at her old sanctuary of Eelusis, down to the beginning of the nineteenth century. For when the English traveler Dodwell revisited Eelusis, the inhabitants lamented to him the loss of a colossal image of Demeter, which was carried off by Clark in 1802, and presented to the University of Cambridge where it still remains. In my first journey to Greece, says Dodwell, this protecting deity was in its full glory, situated in the centre of a threshing-floor amongst the ruins of her temple. The villagers were impressed with the persuasion that their rich harvests were the effect of her bounty, and since her removal their abundance, as they assured me, has disappeared. Thus we see the corn goddess Demeter standing on the threshing-floor of Eelusis and dispensing corn to her worshippers in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, precisely as her image stood in dispensed corn to her worshippers on the threshing-floor of Kos in the days of Theocritas. And just as the people of Eelusis in the nineteenth century attributed the diminution of their harvests to the loss of the image of Demeter, so in antiquity the Sicilians, a corn-growing people devoted to the worship of the two corn goddesses, lamented that the crops of many towns had perished because the unscrupulous Roman governor Veris had impiously carried off the image of Demeter from her famous temple at Hena. Could we ask for a clearer proof that Demeter was indeed the goddess of the corn than this belief, held by the Greeks down to modern times, that the corn crops depended on her presence in bounty and perished when her image was removed? On the whole then, if ignoring theories, we adhere to the evidence of the ancients themselves in regard to the rites of Eelusis. We shall probably incline to agree with the most learned of ancient antiquaries, the Roman vero, who to quote Augustine's report of his opinion, interpreted the whole of Eelusinian mysteries as relating to the corn which Ceres, Demeter, had discovered, and to proserpine, Persephone, whom Pluto had carried off from her. And proserpine herself, he said, signifies the fecundity of the seeds, the failure of which at a certain time had caused the earth to mourn for barrenness, and therefore had given rise to the opinion that the daughter of Ceres, that is, fecundity itself, had been ravished by Pluto and detained in the netherworld, and when the earth had been publicly mourned and fecundity had returned once more, there was gladness at the return of proserpine, and solemn rites were instituted accordingly. After that, he says, continues Augustine, reporting vero, that many things were taught in her mysteries which had no reference but to the discovery of corn. Thus far I have for the most part assumed an identity of nature between Demeter and Persephone, the divine mother and daughter, personifying the corn in its double aspect of the seed corn of last year, and the ripe ears of this. And this view of the substantial unity of mother and daughter is borne out by their portraits in Greek art, which are often so alike as to be indistinguishable. Such a close resemblance between the artistic types of Demeter and Persephone, militates decidedly against the view that the two goddesses are mythical embodiments of two things so different and so easily distinguishable from each other as the earth, and the vegetation which springs from it. Had Greek artists accepted that view of Demeter and Persephone, they could surely have devised types of them which would have brought out the deep distinction between the goddesses. And if Demeter did not personify the earth, can there be any reasonable doubt that, like her daughter, she personified the corn which was so commonly called by her name from the time of Homer downwards? The essential identity of mother and daughter is suggested not only by the close resemblance of their artistic types, but also by the official title of the two goddesses, which was regularly applied to them in the great sanctuary at Ellusis, without any specification of their individual attributes and titles, as if their separate individualities had almost merged into a single divine substance. Surveying the evidence as a whole, we are fairly entitled to conclude that in the mind of the ordinary Greek, the two goddesses were essentially personifications of the corn, and that in this germ the whole efflorescence of their religion finds implicitly its explanation. But to maintain this is not to deny that in the long course of religious evolution, high moral and spiritual conceptions were grafted on this simple original stalk, and blossomed down into fairer flowers than the bloom of the barley in the wheat. Overall the thought of the seed buried in the earth in order to spring up to new and higher life readily suggested a comparison with human destiny, and strengthened the hope that for man too the grave may be but the beginning of a better and happier existence in some brighter world unknown. This simple and natural reflection seems perfectly sufficient to explain the association of the corn goddess at Ellusis with the mystery of death and the hope of a blissful immortality, for that the ancients regarded initiation in the Ellusinian mysteries as a key to unlock the gates of paradise appears to be proved by the illusions which well-informed writers among them drop to the happiness in store for the initiated hereafter. No doubt it is easy for us to discern the flimsiness of the logical foundation on which such high hopes were built. But drowning men clutch at straws, and we need not wonder that the Greeks like ourselves with death before them and a great love of life in their hearts should not have stopped away with too nice a hand the arguments that told foreign against the prospect of human immortality. The reasoning that satisfied Saint Paul and has brought comfort to untold thousands of sorrowing Christians standing by the deathbed or the open grave of their loved ones was good enough to pass muster with ancient pagans when they too bowed their heads under the burden of grief and with the taper of life burning low in the socket looked forward into the darkness of the unknown. Therefore we do no indignity to the myth of Demeter and Persephone. One of the few myths in which the sunshine and clarity of the Greek genius are crossed by the shadow and mystery of death when we trace its origin to some of the most familiar yet eternally affecting aspects of nature to the melancholy gloom and decay of autumn and to the freshness the brightness and the verger of spring. End of section 29 Chapter 45 of The Golden Bough This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. The Golden Bough by Sir James Fraser. Chapter 45 The Corn Mother and the Corn Maiden in Northern Europe. It has been argued by W. Mannhart that the first part of Demeter's name is derived from an alleged Cretan word, Dei, barley, and that, accordingly, Demeter means neither more nor less than barley-mother or corn-mother, for the root of the word seems to have been applied to different kinds of grain by different branches of the Aryans. As Crete appears to have been one of the most ancient seats of the worship of Demeter it would not be surprising if her name were of Cretan origin. But the etymology is open to serious objections and it is safer, therefore, to lay no stress on it. Be that as it may we have found independent reasons for identifying Demeter as the corn-mother, and of two species of corn associated with her in Greek religion, namely barley and wheat. The barley has perhaps the better claim to be her original element, for not only would it seem to have been the staple food of the Greeks in the Homeric Age, but there are grounds for believing that it is one of the oldest, if not the very oldest, cereal cultivated by the Aryan race. Certainly the use of barley in the religious ritual of the ancient Hindus as well as of the ancient Greeks furnishes a strong argument in favour of the great antiquity of its cultivation, which is known to have been practised by the lake-dwellers of the Stone Age in Europe. Analogies to the corn-mother or barley-mother of ancient Greece have been collected in great abundance by W. Manhart from the folklore of modern Europe. The following may serve as specimens. In Germany the corn is very commonly personified under the name of the corn-mother. Thus in spring, when the corn waves in the wind, the peasants say, there comes the corn-mother, or the corn-mother is running over the field, or the corn-mother is going through the corn. When children wish to go into the fields to pull the blue corn-flowers or the red poppies, they are told not to do so, because the corn-mother is sitting in the corn and will catch them. Or again she is called, according to the crop, the rye-mother or the pea-mother, and children are warned against straying in the rye or among the peas by threats of the rye-mother or the pea-mother. Again the corn-mother is believed to make the crop grow. Thus in the neighbourhood of Magdeburg it is sometimes said, it will be a good year for flax, the flax-mother has been seen. In a village of Styria, it is said that the corn-mother, in the shape of a female puppet, made out of the last chief of corn and dressed in white, may be seen at midnight in the corn fields, which she fertilises by passing through them. But if she is angry with a farmer, she withers up all his corn. Further the corn-mother plays an important part in harvest customs. She is believed to be present in the handful of corn, which is left standing last on the field, and with the cutting of this last handful she is caught or driven away or killed. In the first of these cases the last chief is carried joyfully home and honoured as a divine being. It is placed in the barn and at threshing the corn spirit appears again. In the Hanoverian district of Haddon the reapers stand round the last chief and beat it with sticks in order to drive the corn-mother out of it. They call to each other, there she is, hit her, take care she doesn't catch you. The beating goes on till the grain is completely threshed out. Then the corn-mother is believed to be driven away. In the neighbourhood of Danzig the person who cuts the last years of corn makes them into a doll which is called the corn-mother or the old woman and is brought home on the last wagon. In some parts of Holstein the last chief is dressed in women's clothes and called the corn-mother. It is carried home on the last wagon and then thoroughly drenched with water. The drenching with water is doubtless a rain charm. In the district of Bruck in Styria the last chief called the corn-mother is made up into the shape of a woman by the oldest married woman in the village of an age from 50 to 55 years. The finest ears are plucked out of it and made into a wreath which, twined with flowers, is carried on her head by the prettiest girl of the village to the farmer or squire while the corn-mother is laid down in the barn to keep off the mice. In other villages of the same district the corn-mother at the close of Harvest is carried by two lads at the top of a pole. They march behind the girl who wears the wreath to the squire's house and while he receives the wreath and hangs it up in the hall the corn-mother is placed on the top of a pile of wood where she is the centre of the Harvest supper and dance. Afterwards she is hung up in the barn and remains there till the threshing is over. The man who gives the last stroke at threshing is called the son of the corn-mother. He is tied up in the corn-mother, beaten and carried through the village. The wreath is dedicated in church on the following Sunday and on Easter Eve the grain is rubbed out of it by a seven-year-old girl and scattered amongst the young corn. At Christmas the straw of the wreath is placed in the manger to make the cattle thrive. Here the fertilising power of the corn-mother is plainly brought out by scattering the seed taken from her body for the wreath is made out of the corn-mother among the new corn and her influence over animal life is indicated by placing the straw in the manger. Amongst the Slavs also the last sheaf is known as the rye-mother the wheat-mother the oats-mother the barley-mother and so on according to the crop. In the district of Tarnau, Galicia the wreath made out of the last stalks is called the wheat-mother, rye-mother or pea-mother. It is placed on a girl's head and kept till spring when some of the grain is mixed with the seed-corn. Here again the fertilising power of the corn-mother is indicated. In France also in the neighbourhood of Alxer the last sheaf goes by the name of the mother of the wheat mother of the barley mother of the rye or mother of the oats. They leave it standing in the field till the last wagon is about to wind homewards then they make a puppet out of it dress it with clothes belonging to the farmer and adorn it with a crown and a blue or white scarf. A branch of a tree is stuck in the breast of the puppet which is now called the cerise. At the dance in the evening the cerise is set in the middle of the floor and the reaper who reaped fastest dances round it with the prettiest girl for his partner. After the dance a pyre is made all the girls each wearing a wreath strip the puppet pull it to pieces and place it on the pyre along with the flowers with which it was adorned. Then the girl who was the first to finish reaping sets fire to the pile and all pray that cerise may give a fruitful year. Here, as Mannhart observes the old custom has remained intact though the name cerise is a bit of schoolmaster's learning. In Upper Brittany the last sheaf is always made into human shape but if the farmer is a married man it is made double and consists of a little corn puppet placed inside a large one. This is called the mother sheaf. It is delivered to the farmer's wife who unties it and gives drink money in return. Sometimes the last sheaf is called not the corn mother but the harvest mother or the great mother. In the province of Osnabreck Hanover it is called the harvest mother. It is made up in female form and then the reapers dance about with it. In some parts of Westphalia the last sheaf at the rye harvest is made especially heavy by fastening stones in it. They bring it home on the last wagon and call it the great mother though they do not fashion it into any special shape. In the district of Airfoot a very heavy sheaf, not necessarily the last is called the great mother and is carried on the last wagon to the barn where all hands lift it down amid a fire of jokes. Sometimes again the last sheaf is called the grandmother and is adorned with flowers, ribbons and a woman's apron. In East Prussia at the rye or wheat harvest the reapers call out to the woman who binds the last sheaf you are getting the old grandmother. In the neighbourhood of Magdeburg the men and women servants strive who shall get the last sheaf called the grandmother. Whoever gets it will be married in the next year but his or her spouse will be old. If a girl gets it she will marry a widower. If a man gets it he will marry an old crone. In Silesia the grandmother a huge bundle made up of three or four sheaves by the person who tied the last sheaf was formerly fashioned into a rude likeness of the human form. In the neighbourhood of Belfast the last sheaf sometimes goes by the name of Granny. It is not cut in the usual way but all the reapers throw their sickles at it and try to bring it down. It is plated and kept till the next autumn. Whoever gets it will marry in the course of the year. Often the last sheaf is called the old woman or the old man. In Germany it is frequently shaped and dressed as a woman and the person who cuts it or binds it is said to get the old woman. At Altisheim in Swabia when all the corner of a farm has been cut except a single strip all the reapers stand in a row before the strip. Each cuts his share rapidly and he who gives the last cut has the old woman. When the sheaves are being set up in heaps the person who gets hold of the old woman which is the largest and thickest of all the sheaves is jeered at by the rest who call out to him he has the old woman and must keep her. The woman who binds the last sheaf is sometimes herself called the old woman and it is said that she will be married in the next year. In Noisars, West Prussia both the last sheaf which is dressed up in jacket, hat and ribbons and the woman who binds it are called the old woman. Together they are brought home on the last wagon and are drenched with water. In various parts of North Germany the last sheaf at harvest is made up into a human aphagey and called the old man and the woman who bound it is said to have the old man. In West Prussia when the last rye is being raked together the women and girls hurry with the work for none of them likes to be the last and to get the old man that is a puppet made out of the last sheaf which must be carried before the other reapers by the person who was the last to finish. In Silesia the last sheaf is called the old woman or the old man and is the theme of many jests. It is made unusually large and is sometimes weighted with a stone. Among the wends the man or woman who binds the last sheaf at wheat harvest is said to have the old man. A puppet is made out of the wheat and straw and ears in the likeness of a man and decked with flowers. The person who bound the last sheaf must carry the old man home while the rest laugh and jeer at him. The puppet is hung up in the farmhouse and remains till a new old man is made at the next harvest. In some of these customs as Mannhart has remarked the person who is called by the same name as the last sheaf and sits beside it on the last wagon is obviously identified with it. He or she represents the corn spirit which has been caught in the last sheaf. In other words, the corn spirit is represented in duplicate by a human being and by a sheaf. The identification of the person with the sheaf is made still clearer by the custom of wrapping up in the last sheaf, the person who cuts or binds it. Thus at Helmsdorf in Silesia it used to be the regular practice to tie up in the last sheaf the woman who had bound it. At Vidon in Bavaria it is the cutter, not the binder of the last sheaf who is tied up in it. Here the person wrapped up in the corn represents the corn spirit. Exactly as a person wrapped in branches or leaves represents the tree spirit. The last sheaf designated as the old woman is often distinguished from the other sheaves by its size and weight. Thus in some villages of West Prussia the old woman is made twice as long and thick as a common sheaf and a stone is fastened in the middle of it. Sometimes it is made so heavy that a man can barely lift it. At Alt Pilau in Samland eight or nine sheaves are often tied together to make the old woman and the man who sets it up grumbles at its weight. At its gunt in Saxe-Coburg the last sheaf called the old woman is made large with the express intention of thereby securing a good crop next year. Thus the custom of making the last sheaf unusually large or heavy is a charm working by sympathetic magic to ensure a large and heavy crop at the following harvest. In Scotland when the last corn was cut after Hallomass the female figure made out of it was sometimes called the Carlin or Carleen that is the old woman. But if cut before Hallomass it was called the maiden. If cut after sunset it was called the witch being supposed to bring bad luck. Among the Highlanders of Scotland the last corn cut at harvest is known either as the old wife or as the maiden. On the whole the former name seems to prevail in the western and the latter in the central and eastern districts. Of the maiden we shall speak presently here we are dealing with the old wife. The following general account of the custom is given by a careful and well-informed inquirer the Rev. J. G. Campbell minister of the remote Hebridean island of Tyree. The Harvest Old Wife Achalyech In harvest there was a struggle to escape from being the last done with the shearing and when tillage in common existed instances were known of a ridge being left unshawn no person would claim it because of it being behind the rest. The fear entertained was having the famine of the farm Gortowalye in the shape of an imaginary old woman Chalyech to feed till next harvest. Much emulation and amusement arose from the fear of this old woman. The first done made a doll of some blades of corn which was called the old wife and sent it to his nearest neighbour. He in turn when ready passed it to another still less expeditious and the person it last remained with had the old woman to keep for that year. In the island of Islay the last corncut goes by the name of the old wife Chalyech and when she has done her duty at harvest she is hung up on the wall and stays there till the time comes to plow the fields for next year's crop. Then she is taken down and on the first day when the men go to plow she is divided among them by the mistress of the house. They take her in their pockets and give her to the horses to eat when they reach the field. This is supposed to secure good luck for the next harvest and is understood to be the proper end of the old wife. Usages of the same sort are reported from Wales. Thus in North Pembrokeshire a tuft of the last corncut from six to twelve inches long is plated and goes by the name of the hag Urach and quaint old customs used to be practiced with it within the memory of many persons still alive. Great was the excitement among the reapers when the last patch of standing corn was reached. All in turn through their sickles at it and the one who succeeded in cutting it received a jug of home-brewed ale. The hag Urach was then hurriedly made and taken to a neighbouring farm where the reapers were still busy at their work. This was generally done by the plowmen but he had to be very careful not to be observed by his neighbours for if they saw him coming and had the least suspicion of his errand they would soon make him retrace his steps. Creeping stealthily up behind a fence he waited till a foreman of his neighbour's reapers was just opposite him and within easy reach. Then he suddenly threw the hag over the fence and if possible upon the foreman's sickle. At that he took to his heels and made off as fast as he could run and he was a lucky man if he escaped without being caught or cut by the flying sickles which the infuriated reapers hurled after him. In other cases the hag was brought home to the farmhouse by one of the reapers. He did his best to bring it home dry and without being observed but he was apt to be roughly handled by the people of the house if they suspected his errand. Sometimes they stripped him of most of his clothes sometimes they would drench him with water which had been carefully stored in buckets and pans for the purpose. If however he succeeded in bringing the hag in dry and unobserved the master of the house had to pay him a small fine or sometimes a jug of beer from the cask next to the wall which seems to have commonly held the best beer would be demanded by the bearer. The hag was then carefully hung on a nail in the hall or elsewhere and kept there all the year. The customer of bringing in the hag into the house and hanging it up still exists in some farms of North Pembrokeshire but the ancient ceremonies which have just been described are now discontinued. In County Antrim down to some years ago when the sickle was finally expelled by the reaping machine the few stalks of corn left standing last on the field were plated together. Then the reapers blindfolded threw their sickles at the plated corn and whoever happened to cut it through took it home with him and put it over his door. This bunch of corn was called the carly probably the same word as carlin. Similar customs are observed by Slavonic peoples. Thus in Poland the last chief is commonly called the baba that is the old woman. In the last chief it is said sits the baba. The chief itself is also called the baba and is sometimes composed of 12 smaller sheaves lashed together. In some parts of Bohemia the baba made out of the last chief has the figure of a woman with a great straw hat. It is carried home on the last harvest wagon and delivered along with a garland to the farmer by two girls. In binding the sheaves the women strive not to be last for she who binds the last chief will have a child next year. Sometimes the harvesters call out to the woman who binds the last chief she has the baba or she is the baba. In the district of Krakow when a man binds the last chief they say the grandfather is sitting in it when a woman binds it they say the baba is sitting in it and the woman herself is wrapped up in the chief so that only her head projects out of it. Thus encased in the chief she is carried on the last harvest wagon to the house where she is drenched with water by the whole family. She remains in the chief till the dance is over and for a year she retains the name of baba. In Lithuania the name for the last chief is baba old woman answering to the Polish name baba. The baba is said to sit in the corn which is left standing last. The person who binds the last chief or digs the last potato is the subject of much banter and receives and long retains the name of the old rye woman or the old potato woman. The last chief the baba is made into the form of a woman carried solemnly through the village on the last harvest wagon and drenched with water at the farmer's house then everyone dances with it. In Russia also the last chief is often shaped and dressed as a woman and carried with dance and song to the farmhouse. Out of the last chief the Bulgarians make a doll which they call the corn queen or corn mother. It is dressed in a woman's skirt carried around the village and then thrown into the river in order to secure plenty of rain and dew for the next year's crop. Or it is burnt and the ashes strewn on the fields doubtless to fertilize them. The name queen as applied to the last chief has its analogies in central and northern Europe. Thus in the Salzburg district of Austria at the end of the harvest a great procession takes place in which a queen of the corn ears, Eren Königin, is drawn along in a little carriage by young fellows. The custom of the harvest queen appears to have been common in England. Milton must have been familiar with it for in Paradise Lost he says, Adam the Wild, waiting desirous her return, her dove of choicest flowers are garlanded to adorn her tresses, and her rural labour's crown as reapers often want their harvest queen. Often customs of this sort are practised not on the harvest field but on the threshing floor. The spirit of the corn, fleeing before the reapers as they cut down the ripe grain, quits the reaped corn and takes refuge in the barn where it appears in the last chief threshed, either to perish under the blows of the flail or to flee thence to the still unthreshed corn of a neighbouring farm. Thus the last corn to be threshed is called the mother corn or the old woman. Sometimes the person who gives the last stroke with the flail is called the old woman and is wracked in the straw of the last chief or has a bundle of straw fastened on his back. Whether wracked in the straw or carrying it on his back he is carted through the village amid general laughter. In some districts of Bavaria, Turingan and elsewhere the man who threshes the last chief is said to have the old woman or the old corn woman. He is tied up in straw, carried or carted about the village and set down at last on the dung hill or taken to the threshing floor of a neighbouring farmer who has not finished his threshing. In Poland the man who gives the last stroke at threshing is called Bubba, old woman. He is wracked in corn and wheeled through the village. Sometimes in Lithuania the last chief is not threshed but is fashioned into female shape and carried to the barn of a neighbour who has not finished his threshing. In some parts of Sweden when a stranger woman appears on the threshing floor a flail is put round her body, stalks of corn are wound round her head, a crown of ears is placed on her head and the threshers call out, Behold the corn woman! Here the stranger woman, thus suddenly appearing, is taken to be the corn spirit who has just been expelled by the flails from the corn stalks. In other cases the farmer's wife represents the corn spirit. Thus in the commune of Saligny, Vondë, the farmer's wife along with the last chief is tied up in a sheet placed on a litter and carried to the threshing machine under which she is shoved. Then the woman is drawn out and the chief is threshed by itself but the woman is tossed in the sheet as if she were being winnowed. It would be impossible to express more clearly the identification of the woman with the corn than by this graphic imitation of threshing and winnowing her. In these customs the spirit of the ripe corn is regarded as old or at least as of mature age, hence the names of mother, grandmother, old woman and so forth, but in other cases the corn spirit is conceived as young. Thus at Saldaion near Wolfenbudel when the rye has been reaped three sheaves are tied together with a rope so as to make a puppet with the corn ears for a head. This puppet is called the maiden or the corn maiden. Sometimes the corn spirit is conceived as a child who is separated from its mother by the stroke of the sickle. This last appears in the Polish custom of calling out to the man who cuts the last handful of corn, you have cut the navel string. In some districts of West Prussia the figure made out of the last chief is called the bastard and a boy is wrapped up in it. The woman who binds the last chief and represents the corn mother is told that she is about to be brought to bed. She cries like a woman in travail and an old woman in the character of grandmother acts as midwife. At last a cry is raised that the child is born whereupon the boy who is tied up in the chief wimps and squalls like an infant. The grandmother wraps a sack in imitation of swaddling bands round the pretended baby who is carried joyfully to the barn lest he should catch cold in the open air. In other parts of North Germany the last chief or the puppet made out of it is called the child the harvest child and so on and they call out to the woman who binds the last chief you are getting the child. In some parts of Scotland as well as in the north of England the last handful of corn cut on the harvest field was called the curn and the person who carried it off was said to win the curn. It was then dressed up like a child's doll and went by the name of the curn baby the curn doll or the maiden. In Berwickshire down to about the middle of the 19th century there was an eager competition among the reapers to cut the last bunch of standing corn. They gathered round it at a little distance and threw their sickles in turn at it and the man who succeeded in cutting it through gave it to the girl he preferred. She made the corn so cut into a curn dolly and dressed it and the doll was then taken to the farmhouse and hung up there till the next harvest when its place was taken by the new curn dolly. At Spotyswood in Berwickshire the reaping of the last corn at harvest was called cutting the queen almost as often as cutting the curn. The mode of cutting it was not by throwing sickles one of the reapers consented to be blindfolded and having been given a sickle in his hand and turned twice or thrice about his fellows he was bitten to go and cut the curn. His groping about and making wild strokes in the air with his sickle excited much hilarity when he had tied himself out in vain and given up the task as hopeless. Another reaper was blindfolded and pursued the quest and so on one after the other till at last the curn was cut. The successful reaper was tossed up in the air with three cheers by his brother harvesters. To decorate the room in which the curn supper was held at Spotyswood as well as the granary where the dancing took place two women made curn dollies or queens every year and many of these rustic effigies of the corn spirit may be seen hanging up together. In some parts of the Highlands of Scotland the last handful of corn that is cut by the reapers on any particular farm is called the Maiden or in Gaelic Maidianboigne literally the shorn maiden. Superstitions attached to the winning of the Maiden if it is got by a young person they think it an omen that he or she will be married before another harvest. For that or other reasons there is strife between the reapers as to who shall get the Maiden and they resort to various stratagems for the purpose of securing it. One of them for example will often leave a handful of corn uncut and cover it up with earth to hide it from the other reapers till all the rest of the corn on the field is cut down. Several may try to play the same trick and the one who is coolest and holds out longest obtains the coveted distinction. When it has been cut the Maiden is dressed with ribbons into a sort of doll and affixed to a wall of the farmhouse. In the north of Scotland the Maiden is carefully preserved till yule morning when it is divided among the cattle to make them thrive all the year round. In the neighbourhood of Balhwider Perthshire the last handful of corn is cut by the youngest girl on the field and is made into the rude form of a female doll clad in a paper dress and decked with ribbons. It is called the Maiden and is kept in the farmhouse generally above the chimney for a good while sometimes till the Maiden of the next year is brought in. The writer of this book witnessed the ceremony of cutting the Maiden at Balhwider in September 1888. A lady friend informed me that as a young girl she cut the Maiden several times at the request of the reapers in the neighbourhood of Perth. The name of the Maiden was given to the last handful of standing corn. A reaper held the top of the bunch while she cut it. Afterwards the bunch was plated, decked with ribbons and hung up in a conspicuous place on the wall of the kitchen till the next Maiden was brought in. The harvest supper in this neighbourhood was also called the Maiden, the reapers danced at it. On some farms on the Geoloch in Dunbartonshire about the year 1830 the last handful of standing corn was called the Maiden. It was divided in two, plated and then cut with the sickle by a girl who it was thought would be lucky and would soon be married. When it was cut the reapers gathered together and threw their sickles in the air. The Maiden was dressed with ribbons and hung in the kitchen near the roof where it was kept for several years with the date attached. Sometimes five or six Maidens might be seen hanging at once on hooks. The harvest supper was called the Kern. In other farms on the Geoloch the last handful of corn was called the Maidenhead or the Head. It was neatly plated, sometimes decked with ribbons and hung in the kitchen for a year when the grain was given to the poultry. In Aberdeenshire the last chief cut or Maiden is carried home in merry procession by the harvesters. It is then presented to the mistress of the house who dresses it up to be preserved till the first mere foals. The Maiden is then taken down and presented to the mere as its first food. The neglect of this would have untoward effects upon the foal and disastrous consequences upon farm operations generally for the season. In the northeast of Aberdeenshire the last chief is commonly called the Cliac chief. It used to be cut by the youngest girl present and was dressed as a woman. Being brought home in triumph it was kept till Christmas morning and then given to a mare in foal if there was one on the farm or if there was not to the oldest cow in calf. Elsewhere the chief was divided between all the cows and their calves or between all the horses and the cattle of the farm. In Fifeshire the last handful of corn known as the Maiden is cut by a young girl and made into the rude figure of a doll tied with ribbons by which it is hung on the wall of the farm kitchen till the next spring. The custom of cutting the Maiden at harvest was also observed in in Vanesshire and Sutherlandshire. A somewhat mature but still youthful age is assigned to the corn spirit by the appellations of Bride, Oates Bride and Wheat Bride which in Germany are sometimes bestowed both on the last chief and on the woman who binds it. At Wheat Harvest near Mughlitz in Moravia a small portion of the wheat is left standing after all the rest has been reaped. This remnant is then cut amid the rejoicing of the reapers by a young girl who wears a wreath of wheat and ears on her head and goes by the name of the Wheat Bride. It is supposed that she will be a real bride that same year. Near Rosslyn and Stonehaven in Scotland the last handful of corn cut got the name of the Bride and she was placed over the breast or chimney piece. She had a ribbon tied below her numerous ears and another round her waist. Sometimes the idea implied by the name of Bride is worked out more fully by representing the productive powers of vegetation as Bride and Bridegroom. Thus in the four hearts an Oates man and an Oates woman swathed in straw dance at the Harvest Feast. In South Saxony an Oates Bridegroom and an Oates Bride figure together at the Harvest Celebration. The Oates Bridegroom is a man completely wrapped in Oates straw. The Oates Bride is a man dressed in women's clothes but not wrapped in straw. They are drawn in a wagon to the alehouse where the dance takes place. At the beginning of the dance the dancers pluck the bunches of Oates one by one from the Oates Bridegroom while he struggles to keep them till at last he is completely stripped of them and stands bare exposed to the laughter and jests of the company. In Austrian Silesia the ceremony of the Wheat Bride is celebrated by the young people at the end of the Harvest. The woman who bound the last chief plays the part of the Wheat Bride wearing the Harvest crown of wheat ears and flowers on her head. Thus adorned standing beside her Bridegroom in a wagon and attended by Bridesmaids she is drawn by a pair of oxen in full imitation of a marriage procession to the tavern where the dancing is kept up till morning. Somewhat later in the season the wedding of the Oates Bride is celebrated with a like rustic pomp. About Nysa in Silesia a Oates King and a Oates Queen dressed up quaintly as a bridal pair are seated on a harrow and drawn by oxen into the village. In these last instances the corn spirit is personified in double form as male and female but sometimes the spirit appears in a double form as both old and young, corresponding exactly to the Greek Demeter and Persephone if my interpretation of these goddesses is right. We have seen that in Scotland especially among the Gaelic speaking population the last corncut is sometimes called the old wife and sometimes the maiden. Now there are parts of Scotland in which both an old wife Kalyach and a maiden are cut at harvest. The accounts of this custom are not quite clear and consistent but the general rule seems to be that where both a maiden and an old wife Kalyach are fashioned out of the reaped corn at harvest the maiden is made out of the last stalks left standing and is kept by the farmer on whose land it was cut while the old wife is made out of other stalks sometimes out of the first stalks cut and is regularly passed on to a laggard farmer who happens to be still reaping after his brisker neighbor has cut all his corn thus while each farmer keeps his own maiden as the embodiment of the young and fruitful spirit of the corn he passes on the old wife as soon as he can to a neighbor and so the old lady may make the round of all the farms in the district before she finds a place in which to lay her venerable head the farmer with whom she finally takes up her abode is of course the one who has been the last of all the countryside to finish reaping his crops and thus the distinction of entertaining her is rather an invidious one. He is thought to be doomed to poverty or to be under the obligation of providing for the dearth of the township in the ensuing season. Similarly we saw that in Pembrokeshire where the last corn cut is called not the maiden but the hag she is passed on hastily to a neighbor who is still at work in his fields and who receives his aged visitor with anything but a transport of joy. If the old wife represents the corn spirit of the past year as she probably does wherever she is contrasted with and opposed to a maiden it is natural enough that her faded charms should have less attractions for the husband than the buxom form of her daughter who may be expected to become in her turn the mother of the golden grain when the revolving year has brought round another autumn. The same desire to get rid of the effete mother of the corn by palming her off on other people comes out clearly in some of the customs observed at the closing of threshing particularly in the practice of passing on a hideous straw puppet to a neighbor farmer who is still threshing his corn. The harvest customs just described a strikingly analogous to the spring customs which we reviewed in an earlier part of this work. One as in the spring customs the tree spirit is represented both by a tree and by a person so in the harvest customs the corn spirit is represented both by the last chief and by the person who cuts or binds or threshes it. The equivalence of the person to the chief is shown by giving him or her the same name as the chief by wrapping him or her in it and by the rule observed in some places that when the chief is called the mother it must be made up into human shape by the oldest married woman but that when it is called the maiden it must be cut by the youngest girl. Here the age of the personal representative of the corn spirit corresponds with that of the supposed age of the corn spirit just as the human victims offered by the Mexicans to promote the growth of the maize varied with the age of the maize. For in the Mexican as in the European custom the human beings were probably representatives of the corn spirit rather than victims offered to it. Two again the same fertilizing influence which the tree spirit is supposed to exert over vegetation cattle and even women is ascribed to the corn spirit. Thus its supposed influence on vegetation is shown by the practice of taking some of the grain of the last chief in which the corn spirit is regularly supposed to be present and scattering it among the young corn in spring or mixing it with the seed corn. Its influence on animals is shown by giving the last chief to a mare in foal, to a cow in calf and to horses at the first plowing. Lastly its influence on women is indicated by the custom of delivering the mother chief made into the likeness of a pregnant woman to a farmer's wife by the belief that the woman who binds the last chief will have a child next year perhaps do by the idea that the person who gets it will soon be married. Plainly therefore these spring and harvest customs are based on the same ancient modes of thought and form parts of the same primitive heathendom which was doubtless practiced by our forefathers long before the dawn of history. Amongst the marks of a primitive ritual we may note the following 1. No special class of persons is set apart for the performance of the rites. In other words there are no priests. The rites may be performed by anyone as occasion demands. 2. No special places are set apart for the performance of the rites. In other words there are no temples. The rites may be performed anywhere as occasion demands. 3. Spirits not gods are recognised. A. As distinguished from gods spirits are restricted in their operations to definite departments of nature. Their names are general not proper. Their attributes are generic rather than individual. In other words there is an indefinite number of spirits of each class and the individuals of a class are all much alike. They have no definitely marked individuality. No accepted traditions are current as to their origin, life, adventures and character. B. On the other hand gods as distinguished from spirits are not restricted to definite departments of nature. It is true that there is generally some one department over which they preside as their special province, but they are not rigorously confined to it. They can exert their power for good or evil in many other spheres of nature and life. Again they bear individual or proper names such as Demeter, Persephone, Dionysus, and their individual characters and histories are fixed by current myths and the representations of art. 4. The rites are magical rather than propitiatory. In other words the desired objects are attained not by propitiating the favour of divine beings through sacrifice, prayer and praise, but by ceremonies which as I have already explained are believed to influence the course of nature directly through a physical sympathy or resemblance between the rite and the effect which it is the intention of the rite to produce. Judged by these tests the spring and harvest customs of our European peasantry deserve to rank as primitive. For no special class of persons and no special places are set exclusively apart for their performance. They may be performed by anyone, master or man, mistress or maid, boy or girl. They are practised not in temples or churches but in the woods and meadows, beside brooks, in barns, on harvest fields and cottage floors. The supernatural beings whose existence is taken for granted in them are spirits rather than deities. Their functions are limited to certain well-defined departments of nature. Their names are general like the barley mother, the old woman, the maiden, not proper names like Demeter, Persephone, Dionysus. Their generic attributes are known but their individual histories and characters are not the subject of myths. For they exist in classes rather than as individuals and the members of each class are indistinguishable. For example every farm has its corn mother or its old woman or its maiden but every corn mother is much like every other corn mother and so with the old woman and maidens. Lastly in these harvest, as in the spring customs, the ritual is magical rather than propitiatory. This is shown by throwing the corn mother into the river in order to secure rain and dew for the crops, by making the old woman heavy in order to get a heavy crop next year, by stirring grain from the last sheaf amongst the young crops in spring and by giving the last sheaf to the cattle to make them thrive.