The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 11 of 12)

316

Above, vol. i. pp. 248, 250, 251, 257, 258, 260, 263. Elsewhere the Yule log has been made of fir, beech, holly, yew, crab-tree, or olive. See above, vol. i. pp. 249, 257, 263.

317

The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 140 sq.

318

A curious use of an oak-wood fire to detect a criminal is reported from Germany. If a man has been found murdered and his murderer is unknown, you are recommended to proceed as follows. You kindle a fire of dry oak-wood, you pour some of the blood from the wounds on the fire, and you change the poor man's shoes, putting the right shoe on the left foot, and vice versa. As soon as that is done, the murderer is struck blind and mad, so that he fancies he is riding up to the throat in water; labouring under this delusion he returns to the corpse, when you can apprehend him and deliver him up to the arm of justice with the greatest ease. See Montanus, op. cit. pp. 159 sq.

319

Pliny, Nat. Hist. xiii. 119: “Alexander Cornelius arborem leonem appellavit ex qua facta esset Argo, similem robori viscum ferenti, quae neque aqua neque igni possit corrumpi, sicuti nec viscum, nulli alii cognitam, quod equidem sciam.” Here the tree out of which the ship Argo was made is said to have been destructible neither by fire nor water; and as the tree is compared to a mistletoe-bearing oak, and the mistletoe itself is said to be indestructible by fire and water, it seems to follow that the same indestructibility may have been believed to attach to the oak which bore the mistletoe, so long at least as the mistletoe remained rooted on the boughs.

320

Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, pp. 26 sqq.

321

A number of the following examples were collected by Mr. E. Clodd in his paper, “The Philosophy of Punchkin,” Folk-lore Journal, ii. (1884) pp. 288-303; and again in his Myths and Dreams (London, 1885), pp. 188-198. The subject of the external soul, both in folk-tales and in custom, has been well handled by G. A. Wilken in his two papers, “De betrekking tusschen menschen- dieren- en plantenleven naar het volksgeloof,” De Indische Gids, November 1884, pp. 595-612, and “De Simsonsage,” De Gids, 1888, No. 5. In “De Simsonsage” Wilken has reproduced, to a great extent in the same words, most of the evidence cited by him in “De betrekking,” yet without referring to that paper. When I wrote this book in 1889-1890 I was unacquainted with “De betrekking,” but used with advantage “De Simsonsage,” a copy of it having been kindly sent me by the author. I am the more anxious to express my obligations to “De Simsonsage,” because I have had little occasion to refer to it, most of the original authorities cited by the author being either in my own library or easily accessible to me in Cambridge. It would be a convenience to anthropologists if Wilken's valuable papers, dispersed as they are in various Dutch periodicals which are seldom to be met with in England, were collected and published together. After the appearance of my first anthropological essay in 1885, Professor Wilken entered into correspondence with me, and thenceforward sent me copies of his papers as they appeared; but of his papers published before that date I have not a complete set. (Note to the Second Edition.) The wish expressed in the foregoing note has now been happily fulfilled. Wilken's many scattered papers have been collected and published in a form which leaves nothing to be desired (De verspreide Geschriften van Prof. Dr. G. A. Wilken, verzameld door Mr. F. D. E. van Ossenbruggen, in four volumes, The Hague, 1912). The two papers “De betrekking” and “De Simsonsage” are reprinted in the third volume, pp. 289-309 and pp. 551-579. The subject of the external soul in relation to Balder has been fully illustrated and discussed by Professor F. Kauffmann in his Balder, Mythus und Sage (Strasburg, 1902), pp. 136 sqq. Amongst the first to collect examples of the external soul in folk-tales was the learned Dr. Reinhold Köhler (in Orient und Occident, ii., Göttingen, 1864, pp. 100-103; reprinted with additional references in the writer's Kleinere Schriften, i., Weimar, 1898, pp. 158-161). Many versions of the tale were also cited by W. R. S. Ralston (Russian Folk-tales, London, 1873, pp. 109 sqq.). (Note to the Third Edition.)

322

Mary Frere, Old Deccan Days, Third Edition (London, 1881), pp. 12-16.

323

Maive Stokes, Indian Fairy Tales (London, 1880), pp. 58-60. For similar Hindoo stories, see id., pp. 187 sq.; Lai Behari Day, Folk-tales of Bengal (London, 1883), pp. 121 sq.; F. A. Steel and R. C. Temple, Wide-awake Stories (Bombay and London, 1884), pp. 58-60.

324

Mary Frere, Old Deccan Days, pp. 239 sqq.

325

Lal Behari Day, Folk-tales of Bengal, pp. 1 sqq. For similar stories of necklaces, see Mary Frere, Old Deccan Days, pp. 233 sq.; F. A. Steel and R. C. Temple, Wide-awake Stories, pp. 83 sqq.

326

J. H. Knowles, Folk-tales of Kashmir, Second Edition (London, 1893), pp. 49 sq.

327

J. H. Knowles, op. cit. p. 134.

328

J. H. Knowles, op. cit. pp. 382 sqq.

329

Lal Behari Day, Folk-tales of Bengal, pp. 85 sq.; compare id., pp. 253 sqq.; Indian Antiquary, i. (1872) p. 117. For an Indian story in which a giant's life is in five black bees, see W. A. Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions (Edinburgh and London, 1887), i. 350.

330

Indian Antiquary, i. (1872), p. 171.

331

A. Bastian, Die Voelker des oestlichen Asien, iv. (Jena, 1868) pp. 304 sq.

332

Lal Behari Day, Folk-tales of Bengal, p. 189.

333

F. A. Steel and R. C. Temple, Wide-awake Stories (Bombay and London, 1884), pp. 52, 64. In the Indian Jataka there is a tale (book ii. No. 208) which relates how Buddha in the form of a monkey deceived a crocodile by pretending that monkeys kept their hearts in figs growing on a tree. See The Jataka or Stories of the Buddha's former Births translated from the Pali by various hands, vol. ii. translated by W. H. D. Rouse (Cambridge, 1895), pp. 111 sq.

334

G. W. Leitner, The Languages and Races of Dardistan, Third Edition (Lahore, 1878), p. 9.

335

Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 8; Diodorus Siculus, iv. 34; Pausanias, x. 31. 4; Aeschylus, Choeph. 604 sqq.; Antoninus Liberalis, Transform. ii.; Dio Chrysostom, Or. lxvii. vol. ii. p. 231, ed. L. Dindorf (Leipsic, 1857); Hyginus, Fab. 171, 174; Ovid, Metam. viii. 445 sqq. In his play on this theme Euripides made the life of Meleager to depend on an olive-leaf which his mother had given birth to along with the babe. See J. Malalas, Chronographia, vi. pp. 165 sq. ed. L. Dindorf (Bonn, 1831); J. Tzetzes, Scholia on Lycophron, 492 sq. (vol. ii. pp. 646 sq., ed. Chr. G. Müller, Leipsic, 1811); G. Knaack, “Zur Meleagersage,” Rheinisches Museum, N. F. xlix. (1894) pp. 310-313.

336

Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 15. 8; Aeschylus, Choeph. 612 sqq.; Pausanias, i. 19. 4; Ciris, 116 sqq.; Ovid, Metam. viii. 8 sqq. According to J. Tzetzes (Schol. on Lycophron, 650) not the life but the strength of Nisus was in his golden hair; when it was pulled out, he became weak and was slain by Minos. According to Hyginus (Fab. 198) Nisus was destined to reign only so long as he kept the purple lock on his head.

337

Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, ii. 4. 5 and 7.

338

J. G. von Hahn, Griechische und albanesische Märchen (Leipsic, 1864), i. 217; a similar story, ibid. ii. 282.

339

B. Schmidt, Griechische Märchen, Sagen und Volkslieder (Leipsic, 1877), pp. 91 sq. The same writer found in the island of Zacynthus a belief that the whole strength of the ancient Greeks resided in three hairs on their breasts, and that it vanished whenever these hairs were cut; but if the hairs were allowed to grow again, their strength returned (B. Schmidt, Das Volksleben der Neugriechen, Leipsic, 1871, p. 206). The Biblical story of Samson and Delilah (Judges xvi.) implies a belief of the same sort, as G. A. Wilken abundantly shewed in his paper, “De Simsonsage,” De Gids, 1888, No. 5 (reprinted in his Verspreide Geschriften, The Hague, 1912, vol. iii. pp. 551-579).

340

J. G. von Hahn, op. cit. ii. 215 sq.

341

Ibid. ii. 275 sq. Similar stories, ibid. ii. 204, 294 sq. In an Albanian story a monster's strength is in three pigeons, which are in a hare, which is in the silver tusk of a wild boar. When the boar is killed, the monster feels ill; when the hare is cut open, he can hardly stand on his feet; when the three pigeons are killed, he expires. See Aug. Dozon, Contes albanais (Paris, 1881), pp. 132 sq.

342

J. G. von Hahn, op. cit. ii. 260 sqq.

343

Ibid. i. 187.

344

Ibid. ii. 23 sq.

345

Émile Legrand, Contes populaires grecs (Paris, 1881), pp. 191 sqq.

346

Plutarch, Parallela, 26. In both the Greek and Italian stories the subject of quarrel between nephew and uncles is the skin of a boar, which the nephew presented to his lady-love and which his uncles took from her.

347

G. Basile, Pentamerone, übertragen von Felix Liebrecht (Breslau, 1846), ii. 60 sq.

348

R. H. Busk, Folk-lore of Rome (London, 1874), pp. 164 sqq.

349

T. F. Crane, Italian Popular Tales (London, 1885), pp. 31-34. The hero had acquired the power of turning himself into an eagle, a lion, and an ant from three creatures of these sorts whose quarrel about their shares in a dead ass he had composed. This incident occurs in other tales of the same type. See below, note 2 and pp. 120 with note 2, 132, 133 with note 1.

350

J. B. Andrews, Contes Ligures (Paris, 1892), No. 46, pp. 213 sqq. In a parallel Sicilian story the hero Beppino slays a sorcerer in the same manner after he had received from an eagle, a lion, and an ant the same gift of transformation in return for the same service. See G. Pitrè, Fiabe, Novelle e Racconti popolari Siciliani, ii. (Palermo, 1875) p. 215; and for another Sicilian parallel, Laura Gonzenbach, Sicilianische Märchen (Leipsic, 1870), No. 6, pp. 34-38.

351

Anton Dietrich, Russian Popular Tales (London, 1857), pp. 21-24.