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

Notes

I. Snake Stones.764

Snake Stones in the Highlands.

The belief of the Scottish Highlanders as to the so-called Snake Stones has been recorded as follows by a good authority at the end of the nineteenth century: —

“A product called clach-nathrach, serpent stone, is found on the root of the long ling. It is of steel-grey colour, has the consistency of soft putty when new and of hard putty when old, and is as light as pumice-stone, which it resembles. It is of a globular form, and from one to three inches in diameter. There is a circular hole, about a quarter of an inch in width, through the centre. This substance is said to be produced by the serpent emitting spume round the root of a twig of heather. The clach-nathrach is greatly prized by the people, who transmit it as a talisman to their descendants.”765

II. The Transformation of Witches Into Cats

Witches as cats among the Oraons.

The European belief that witches can turn themselves into cats, and that any wounds inflicted on the witch-cat will afterwards be found on the body of the witch herself,766 has its exact parallel among the Oraons or Uraons, a primitive hill tribe of Bengal. The following is the account given of the Oraon belief by a Jesuit missionary, who laboured for years among these savages and was intimately acquainted with their superstitions: —

“Chordewa is a witch rather than a bhut [demon]. It is believed that some women have the power to change their soul into a black cat, who then goes about in the houses where there are sick people. Such a cat has a peculiar way of mewing quite different from its brethren, and is easily recognised. It steals quietly into the house, licks the lips of the sick man and eats of the food that has been prepared for him. The sick man soon gets worse and dies. They say it is very difficult to catch the cat, as it has all the nimbleness of its nature and the cleverness of a bhut. However, they sometimes succeed, and then something wonderful happens. The woman out of whom the cat has come remains insensible, as it were in a state of temporary death, until the cat re-enters her body. Any wound inflicted on the cat will be inflicted on her; if they cut its ears or break its legs or put out its eyes the woman will suffer the same mutilation. The Uraons say that formerly they used to burn any woman that was suspected to be a Chordewa.”767

III. African Balders

African parallels to Balder.

In various parts of Africa stories are told of men who could only be killed, like Balder, by the stroke of an apparently insignificant weapon; and some at least of these men were not mythical beings but real men of flesh and blood who lived not long ago and whose memory is still comparatively fresh among their people. The Wadoe of German East Africa tell such a story of a great sorcerer, whom they now worship as a dispenser of sunshine and rain. The legend and the worship are reported as follows by a native African traveller: —

The worshipful ghost in the cave.

“If drought sets in, all the chiefs meet in council and resolve: ‘This year we have had nothing but sunshine; when we plant, the fruits will not ripen; therefore we must betake ourselves to our spirits of the dead (mizimu).’ Then they take some woollen stuff dyed blue and a red cloth, and set out together on the way and go to the district Nguu, where their principal ghost (mzimu) resides, in order to lay the matter before him. The ghost dwells in a very spacious cave. On their coming the chiefs greet him. His answer consists in a humming noise, which sounds like the patter of rain. If one among them is a bad man, the ghost says to them, ‘There is come with you in the caravan a rascal who wears such and such clothes.’ If such a man there is, he is driven away. Now they tell the ghost all that they wish to say, to wit: ‘This year thou hast given us much sunshine; the fruits in the fields do not grow tall, everywhere there is sickness, therefore we beg thee, give us rain.’ Thereupon the ghost hums a second time, and all are glad, because he has answered them. But if the ghost is angry, he does not answer but holds his peace. If he has made them glad and given an answer, much rain will fall; otherwise they return as they went in sunshine.

The man who could only be killed by the stalk of a gourd.

“Originally this ghost was a man, a village elder (jumbe) of Ukami. He was a great sorcerer. One day people wished to conquer him, but they could do him no harm, for neither lead nor sword nor arrow could pierce his body. But he lived at strife with his wife. She said to his enemies, ‘If you would kill my husband, I will tell you how it can be done.’ They asked her, ‘How can it be done?’ She answered, ‘My husband is a great sorcerer; you all know that.’ They answered, ‘That is true.’ Then she said further, ‘If you would kill him so that he dies on the spot, seek a stalk of a gourd and smite him with it; then he will die at once, for that has always been to him a forbidden thing.’768 They sought the stalk of a gourd, and when they smote him with it, he died at once without so much as setting one foot from the spot. But of him and his departure there was nothing more to be seen, for suddenly a great storm blew, and no man knew whither he had gone. The storm is said to have carried him to that cave which is still there to this day. After some days people saw in the cave his weapons, clothes, and turban lying, and they brought word to the folk in the town, ‘We have seen the clothes of the elder in the cave, but of himself we have perceived nothing.’ The folk went thither to look about, and they found that it was so. So the news of this ghost spread, all the more because people had seen the marvel that a man died and nobody knew where he had gone. The wonderful thing in this wood is that the spirits dwell in the midst of the wood and that everywhere a bright white sand lies on the ground, as if people had gone thither for the purpose of keeping everything clean. On many days they hear a drumming and shouts of joy in this wood, as if a marriage feast were being held there. That is the report about the ghost of Kolelo.769 All village elders, who dwell in the interior, see in this ghost the greatest ghost of all. All the chiefs (mwene) and headmen (pazi) and the village elders (jumben) of the clan Kingaru770 respect that ghost.”771

The man who could only be killed by a splinter of bamboo.

Miss Alice Werner, who kindly called my attention to this and the following cases of African Balders, tells me that this worshipful ghost in the cave appears to have been in his time a real man. Again, she was assured by some natives that “Chikumbu, a Yao chief, who at one time gave the Administration some trouble, was invulnerable by shot or steel; the only thing that could kill him – since he had not been fortified against it by the proper medicine – was a sharp splinter of bamboo. This reminds one of Balder and the mistletoe.”772 Again, a Nyanja chief named Chibisa, who was a great man in this part of Africa when Livingstone travelled in it,773 “stood firm upon his ant-heap, while his men fell round him, shouting his war-song, until one who knew the secret of a sand-bullet brought him down.”774

The man who could only be killed by a copper needle.

Once more the Swahili tell a story of an African Samson named Liongo who lived in Shanga, while it was a flourishing city. By reason of his great strength he oppressed the people exceedingly, and they sought to kill him, but all in vain. At last they bribed his nephew, saying, “Go and ask your father what it is that will kill him. When you know, come and tell us, and when he is dead we will give you the kingdom.” So the treacherous nephew went to his uncle and asked him, “Father, what is it that can kill you?” And his uncle said, “A copper needle. If any one stabs me in the navel, I die.” So the nephew went to the town and said to the people, “It is a copper needle that will kill him.” And they gave him a needle, and he went back to his uncle; and while his uncle slept the wicked nephew stabbed him with the needle in the navel. So he died, and they buried him, and his grave is to be seen at Ozi to this day. But they seized the nephew and killed him; they did not give the kingdom to that bad young man.775

These stories confirm the view that Balder may have been a real man who was deified after death.

When we compare the story of Balder with these African stories, the heroes of which were probably all real men, and when further we remember the similar tale told of the Persian hero Isfendiyar, who may well have been an historical personage,776 we are confirmed in the suspicion that Balder himself may have been a real man, admired and beloved in his lifetime and deified after his death, like the African sorcerer, who is now worshipped in a cave and bestows rain or sunshine on his votaries. On the whole I incline to regard this solution of the Balder problem as more probable than the one I have advocated in the text, namely that Balder was a mythical personification of a mistletoe-bearing oak. The facts which seem to incline the balance to the side of Euhemerism reached me as my book was going to press and too late to be embodied in their proper place in the volumes. The acceptance of this hypothesis would not necessarily break the analogy which I have traced between Balder in his sacred grove on the Sogne fiord of Norway and the priest of Diana in the sacred grove of Nemi; indeed, it might even be thought rather to strengthen the resemblance between the two, since there is no doubt at all that the priests of Diana at Nemi were men who lived real lives and died real deaths.

IV. The Mistletoe and the Golden Bough

Two species of mistletoe, the Viscum albumand the Loranthus europaeus. Common mistletoe (Viscum album).

That Virgil compares the Golden Bough to the mistletoe777 is certain and admitted on all hands. The only doubt that can arise is whether the plant to which he compares the mystic bough is the ordinary species of mistletoe (Viscum album) or the species known to botanists as Loranthus europaeus. The common mistletoe (Viscum album, L.) “lives as a semi-parasite (obtaining carbon from the air, but water, nitrogen, and mineral matter from the sap of its host) on many conifers and broadleaved trees, and chiefly on their branches. The hosts, or trees on which it lives, are, most frequently, the apple tree, both wild and cultivated varieties; next, the silver-fir; frequently, birches, poplars (except aspen), limes, willows, Scots pine, mountain-ash, and hawthorn; occasionally, robinia, maples, horse-chestnut, hornbeam, and aspen. It is very rarely found on oaks, but has been observed on pedunculate oak at Thornbury, Gloucestershire, and elsewhere in Europe, also on Quercus coccinea, Moench., and Q. palustris, Moench. The alders, beech and spruce appear to be always free from mistletoe, and it very rarely attacks pear-trees. It is commoner in Southern Europe than in the North, and is extremely abundant where cider is made. In the N. – W. Himalayan districts, it is frequently found on apricot-trees, which are the commonest fruit-trees there. Its white berries are eaten by birds, chiefly by the missel-thrush (Turdus viscivorus, L.), and the seeds are either rubbed by the beak against branches of trees, or voided on to them; the seeds, owing to the viscous nature of the pulp surrounding them, then become attached to the branches.”778 The large smooth pale-green tufts of the parasite, clinging to the boughs of trees, are most conspicuous in winter, when they assume a yellowish hue.779 In Greece at the present time mistletoe grows most commonly on firs, especially at a considerable elevation (three thousand feet or more) above the level of the sea.780 Throughout Italy mistletoe now grows on fruit-trees, almond-trees, hawthorn, limes, willows, black poplars, and firs, but never, it is said, on oaks.781 In England seven authentic cases of mistletoe growing on oaks are said to be reported.782 In Gloucestershire mistletoe grows on the Badham Court oak, Sedbury Park, Chepstow, and on the Frampton-on-Severn oak.783 Branches of oak with mistletoe growing on them were exhibited to more than one learned society in France during the nineteenth century; one of the branches was cut in the forest of Jeugny.784 It is a popular French superstition that mandragora or “the hand of glory,” as it is called by the people, may be found by digging at the root of a mistletoe-bearing oak.785

Loranthus europaeus.

The species of mistletoe known as Loranthus europaeus resembles the ordinary mistletoe in general appearance, but its berries are bright yellow instead of white. “This species attacks chiefly oaks, Quercus cerris, L., Q. sessiliflora, Salisb., less frequently, Q. pedunculata, Ehrh., and Castanea vulgaris, Lam.; also lime. It is found throughout Southern Europe and as far north as Saxony, not in Britain. It grows chiefly on the branches of standards over coppice.” The injury which it inflicts on its hosts is even greater than that inflicted by the ordinary mistletoe; it often kills the branch on which it settles. The seeds are carried to the trees by birds, chiefly by the missel-thrush. In India many kinds of Loranthus grow on various species of forest trees, for example, on teak;786 one variety (Loranthus vestitus) grows on two species of oak, the Quercus dilatata, Lindl., and the Quercus incana, Roxb.787 A marked distinction between the two sorts of mistletoe is that whereas ordinary mistletoe (Viscum album) is evergreen, the Loranthus is deciduous.788 In Greece the Loranthus has been observed on many old chestnut-trees at Stheni, near Delphi.789 In Italy it grows chiefly on the various species of oaks and also on chestnut-trees. So familiar is it on oaks that it is known as “oak mistletoe” both in popular parlance (visco quercino) and in druggists' shops (viscum quernum). Bird-lime is made from it in Italy.790

Both sorts of mistletoe known to the ancients and designated by different words.

Both sorts of mistletoe were known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, though the distinctive terms which they applied to each appear not to be quite certain. Theophrastus, and Pliny after him, seem to distinguish three sorts of mistletoe, to which Theophrastus gives the names of ixia, hyphear, and stelis respectively. He says that the hyphear and the stelis grow on firs and pines, and that the ixia grows on the oak (δρῦς), the terebinth, and many other kinds of trees. He also observes that both the ixia and the hyphear grow on the ilex or holm-oak (πρῖνος), the same tree sometimes bearing both species at the same time, the ixia on the north and the hyphear on the south. He expressly distinguishes the evergreen species of ixia from the deciduous, which seems to prove that he included both the ordinary mistletoe (Viscum album) and the Loranthus under the general name of ixia.791

Doubts as to the identification of the ancient names for mistletoe.

Modern writers are not agreed as to the identification of the various species of mistletoe designated by the names ixia, hyphear, and stelis. F. Wimmer, the editor of Theophrastus in the Didot edition, takes hyphear to be common mistletoe (Viscum album), stelis to be Loranthus europaeus, and ixia to be a general name which includes the two species.792 On the other hand F. Fraas, while he agrees as to the identification of hyphear and stelis with common mistletoe and Loranthus respectively, inclines somewhat hesitatingly to regard ixia or ixos (as Dioscorides has it) as a synonym for stelis (the Loranthus).793 H. O. Lenz, again, regards both hyphear and stelis as synonyms for common mistletoe (Viscum album), while he would restrict ixia to the Loranthus.794 But both these attempts to confine ixia to the single deciduous species Loranthus seem incompatible with the statement of Theophrastus, that ixia includes an evergreen as well as a deciduous species.795

Did Virgil compare the Golden Bough to common mistletoe or to Loranthus? Some enquirers decide in favour of Loranthus.

We have now to ask, Did Virgil compare the Golden Bough to the common mistletoe (Viscum album) or to the Loranthus europaeus? Some modern enquirers decide in favour of the Loranthus. Many years ago Sir Francis Darwin wrote to me:796 “I wonder whether Loranthus europaeus would do for your Golden Bough. It is a sort of mistletoe growing on oaks and chestnuts in S. Europe. In the autumn it produces what are described as bunches of pretty yellow berries. It is not evergreen like the mistletoe, but deciduous, and as its leaves appear at the same time as the oak leaves and drop at the same time in autumn, it must look like a branch of the oak, more especially as it has rough bark with lichens often growing on it. Loranthus is said to be a hundred years old sometimes.” Professor P. J. Veth, after quoting the passage from Virgil, writes that “almost all translators (including Vondel) and commentators of the Mantuan bard think that the mistletoe is here meant, probably for the simple reason that it was better known to them than Loranthus europaeus. I am convinced that Virgil can only have thought of the latter. On the other side of the Alps the Loranthus is much commoner than the mistletoe; on account of its splendid red blossoms, sometimes twenty centimetres long, it is a far larger and more conspicuous ornament of the trees; it bears really golden yellow fruit (Croceus fetus), whereas the berries of the mistletoe are almost white; and it attaches itself by preference to the oak, whereas the mistletoe is very seldom found on the oak.”797 Again, Mr. W. R. Paton writes to me from Mount Athos:798 “The oak is here called dendron, the tree. As for the mistletoe there are two varieties, both called axo (ancient ἰξός). Both are used to make bird-lime. The real Golden Bough is the variety with yellow berries and no leaves. It is the parasite of the oak and rarely grows on other trees. It is very abundant, and now in winter the oak-trees which have adopted it seem from a distance to be draped in a golden tissue. The other variety is our own mistletoe and is strictly a parasite of the fir (a spruce fir, I don't know its scientific name). It is also very abundant.”

Reason for preferring common mistletoe. Perhaps Virgil confused the two species.

Thus in favour of identifying Virgil's mistletoe (viscum) with Loranthus rather than with common mistletoe it has been urged, first, that the berries of Loranthus are bright yellow, whereas those of the mistletoe are of a greenish white; and, second, that the Loranthus commonly grows on oaks, whereas mistletoe seldom does so, indeed in Italy mistletoe is said never to be found on an oak. Both these circumstances certainly speak strongly in favour of Loranthus; since Virgil definitely describes the berries as of a saffron-yellow (croceus) and says that the plant grew on a holm-oak. Yet on the other hand Virgil tells us that the plant put forth fresh leaves in the depths of winter (brumali frigore, strictly speaking, “the cold of the winter solstice”); and this would best apply to the common mistletoe, which is evergreen, whereas Loranthus is deciduous.799 Accordingly, if we must decide between the two species, this single circumstance appears to incline the balance in favour of common mistletoe. But is it not possible that Virgil, whether consciously or unconsciously, confused the two plants and combined traits from both in his description? Both parasites are common in Italy and in appearance they are much alike except for the colour of the berries. As a loving observer of nature, Virgil was probably familiar by sight with both, but he may not have examined them closely; and he might be excused if he thought that the parasite which he saw growing, with its clusters of bright yellow berries, on oaks in winter, was identical with the similar parasite which he saw growing, with its bunches of greenish white berries and its pale green leaves, on many other trees of the forest. The confusion would be all the more natural if the Celts of northern Italy, in whose country the poet was born, resembled the modern Celts of Brittany in attaching bunches of the common mistletoe to their cottages and leaving them there till the revolving months had tinged the pale berries, leaves, and twigs with a golden yellow, thereby converting the branch of mistletoe into a true Golden Bough.

1

Ch. E. Gover, “The Pongol Festival in Southern India,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, N.S., v. (1870) pp. 96 sq.

2

W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), ii. 314 sqq.; Captain G. R. Hearn, “Passing through the Fire at Phalon,” Man, v. (1905) pp. 154 sq. On the custom of walking through fire, or rather over a furnace, see Andrew Lang, Modern Mythology (London, 1897), pp. 148-175; id., in Athenaeum, 26th August and 14th October, 1899; id., in Folk-lore, xii. (1901) pp. 452-455; id., in Folk-lore, xiv. (1903) pp. 87-89. Mr. Lang was the first to call attention to the wide prevalence of the rite in many parts of the world.

3

Pandit Janardan Joshi, in North Indian Notes and Queries, iii. pp. 92 sq., § 199 (September, 1893); W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), ii. 318 sq.

4

E. T. Atkinson, “Notes on the History of Religion in the Himalayas of the N.W. Provinces,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, liii. Part i. (Calcutta, 1884) p. 60. Compare W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), ii. 313 sq.

5

See above, vol. i. pp. 136 sq.

6

G. Schlegel, Uranographie Chinoise (The Hague and Leyden, 1875), pp. 143 sq.; id., “La fête de fouler le feu célébrée en Chine et par les Chinois à Java,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, ix. (1896) pp. 193-195. Compare J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious System of China, vi. (Leyden, 1910) pp. 1292 sq. According to Professor Schlegel, the connexion between this festival and the old custom of solemnly extinguishing and relighting the fire in spring is unquestionable.

7

The Dying God, p. 262.

8

(Sir) H. H. Risley, Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Ethnographic Glossary (Calcutta, 1891-1892), i. 255 sq. Compare W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), i. 19; id., Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh (Calcutta, 1896), ii. 355. According to Sir Herbert Risley, the trench filled with smouldering ashes is so narrow (only a span and a quarter wide) “that very little dexterity would enable a man to walk with his feet on either edge, so as not to touch the smouldering ashes at the bottom.”

9

W. Crooke, Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, ii. 82.

10

M. J. Walhouse, “Passing through the Fire,” Indian Antiquary, vii. (1878) pp. 126 sq. Compare J. A. Dubois, Mœurs, Institutions et Cérémonies des Peuples de l'Inde (Paris, 1825), ii. 373; E. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India (Madras, 1906), pp. 471-486; G. F. D'Penha, in Indian Antiquary, xxxi. (1902) p. 392; “Fire-walking in Ganjam,” Madras Government Museum Bulletin, vol. iv. No. 3 (Madras, 1903), pp. 214-216. At Akka timanhully, one of the many villages which help to make up the town of Bangalore in Southern India, one woman at least from every house is expected to walk through the fire at the village festival. Captain J. S. F. Mackenzie witnessed the ceremony in 1873. A trench, four feet long by two feet wide, was filled with live embers. The priest walked through it thrice, and the women afterwards passed through it in batches. Capt. Mackenzie remarks: “From the description one reads of walking through fire, I expected something sensational. Nothing could be more tame than the ceremony we saw performed; in which there never was nor ever could be the slightest danger to life. Some young girl, whose soles were tender, might next morning find that she had a blister, but this would be the extent of harm she could receive.” See Captain J. S. F. Mackenzie, “The Village Feast,” Indian Antiquary, iii. (1874) pp. 6-9. But to fall on the hot embers might result in injuries which would prove fatal, and such an accident is known to have occurred at a village in Bengal. See H. J. Stokes, “Walking through Fire,” Indian Antiquary, ii. (1873) pp. 190 sq. At Afkanbour, five days' march from Delhi, the Arab traveller Ibn Batutah saw a troop of fakirs dancing and even rolling on the glowing embers of a wood fire. See Voyages d'Ibn Batoutah (Paris, 1853-1858), ii. 6 sq., iii. 439.