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and even after the idea had been abandoned that they operated actively to bring prosperity, omens might still be drawn from them as to the good or bad fortune of families or individuals. It is thus that magic dwindles into divination. Accordingly we find modes of divination practised at midsummer which resemble more or less closely the gardens of Adonis. Thus an anonymous Italian writer of the sixteenth century has recorded that it was customary to sow barley and wheat a few days before the festival of St. John (Midsummer Day) and also before that of St. Vitus; and it was believed that the person for whom they were sown would be fortunate and get a good husband or a good wife, if the grain sprouted well; but if it sprouted ill, he or she would be unlucky. In various parts of Italy and all over Sicily it is still customary to put plants in water or in earth on the Eve of St. John, and from the manner in which they are found to be blooming or fading on St. John's Day omens are drawn, especially as to fortune in love. Amongst the plants used for this purpose are Ciuri di S. Giuvanni (St. John's wort?) and nettles.2 Prussia two hundred years ago the farmers used to send out their servants, especially their maids, to gather St. John's wort on Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Day (St. John's Day). When they had fetched it, the farmer took as many plants as there were persons and stuck them in the wall or between the beams; and it was thought that the person whose plant did not bloom would soon fall sick or die. The rest of the plants were tied in a bundle, fastened to the end of a pole, and set up at the gate or wherever the corn would be brought in at the next harvest. This bundle was called Kupole; the ceremony was known as Kupole's festival; and at it the farmer prayed for a good crop of hay, and so forth.3 This Prussian custom is particularly notable, inasmuch as it strongly confirms the opinion expressed above that Kupalo

1 G. Pitrè, Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane, p. 296 sq.

2 G. Pitre, op. cit. p. 302 sq.; Antonio de Nino, Usi Abruzzesi, i. 55 sq.; Gubernatis, Usi Nuziali, p.39 sq. Cp. Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari, i. 135. At Smyrna a blossom of the Agnus castus is used on VOL. II

In

St. John's Day for a similar purpose, but the mode in which the omens are drawn is somewhat different (Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari, vii. (1888), p. 128 sq.).

3 Matthäus Praetorius, Deliciac Prussicae, herausgegeben von Dr. W. Pierson (Berlin, 1871), p. 56.

K

(doubtless identical with Kupole) was originally a deity of vegetation.1 For here Kupalo is represented by a bundle of plants specially associated with midsummer in folk-custom; and her influence over vegetation is plainly signified by placing her vegetable emblem over the place where the harvest is brought in, as well as by the prayers for a good crop which are uttered on the occasion. This furnishes a fresh argument in support of the view that the Death, whose analogy to Kupalo, Yarilo, and the rest has been shown, originally personified vegetation, more especially the dying or dead vegetation of winter. Further, my interpretation of the gardens of Adonis is confirmed by finding that in this Prussian custom the very same kind of plants is used to form the gardens of Adonis (as we may call them) and the image of the deity. Nothing could set in a stronger light the truth of the theory that the gardens of Adonis are merely another manifestation of the god himself.

The last example of the gardens of Adonis which I shall cite is reported from Sicily. At the approach of Easter, Sicilian women sow wheat, lentils, and canary-seed in plates, which are kept in the dark and watered every two days. The plants soon shoot up; the stalks are tied together with red ribbons, and the plates containing them are placed on the sepulchres which, with effigies of the dead Christ, are made up in Roman Catholic and Greek churches on Good Friday,2 just as the gardens of Adonis were placed on the grave of the dead Adonis. The whole custom-sepulchres as well as plates of sprouting grain—is probably nothing but a continuation, under a different name, of the Adonis worship.

§ 5. Attis

The next of those gods, whose supposed death and resurrection struck such deep roots into the religious faith and ritual of Western Asia, is Attis. He was to Phrygia what Adonis was to Syria. Like Adonis, he appears to

1 See.p. 107 sq.

2 G. Pitrè, Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane, p. 211. A similar custom is observed at Cosenza in Calabria (Vincenzo Dorsa, La tradizione grecolatina, etc., p. 50). For the Easter

Levant

ceremonies in the Greek Church, see
R. A. Arnold, From the
(London, 1868), i. 251 sqq.

3 κήπους ὡσίουν ἐπιταφίους ̓Αδώνιδι, Eustathius on Homer, Od. xi. 590.

have been a god of vegetation, and his death and resurrection were annually mourned and rejoiced over at a festival in spring. The legends and rites of the two gods were so much alike that the ancients themselves sometimes identified them.1 Attis was said to have been a fair youth who was beloved by the great Phrygian goddess Cybele. Two different accounts of his death were current. According to the one, he was killed by a boar, like Adonis. According to the other, he mutilated himself under a pine-tree, and died from the effusion of blood. The latter is said to have been the local story told by the people of Pessinus, a great centre of Cybele worship, and the whole legend of which it forms a part is stamped with a character of rudeness and savagery that speaks strongly for its antiquity. But the other story seems also to have been firmly believed, for his worshippers, especially the people of Pessinus, abstained from eating swine.3 After his death Attis is said to have been changed into a pine-tree. The ceremonies observed at his festival are not very fully known, but their general order appears to have been as follows.5 At the spring equinox (the twentysecond of March) a pine-tree was cut in the woods and brought into the sanctuary of Cybele, where it was treated as a divinity. It was adorned with woollen bands and wreaths of violets, for violets were said to have sprung from the blood of Attis, as anemones from the blood of Adonis ; and the effigy of a young man was attached to the middle of the tree. On the second day of the festival (the twenty

1 Hippolytus, Refut. omn. haeres. v. 9, p. 168, ed. Duncker and Schneidewin; Socrates, Hist. Eccles. iii. 23, §§ 51 sqq. p. 204.

2 That Attis was killed by a boar was stated by Hermesianax, an elegiac poet of the fourth century B.C. (Pausanias, vii. 17); cp. Schol. on Nicander, Alex. 8. The other story is told by Arnobius (Adversus nationes, v. 5 sqq.), on the authority of Timotheus, an otherwise unknown writer, who professed to derive it "ex reconditis antiquitatum libris et ex intimis mysteriis." It is obviously identical with the account which Pausanias mentions (.c.) as the story current in l'essinus.

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third of March) the chief ceremony seems to have been a blowing of trumpets. The third day (the twenty-fourth of March) was known as the Day of Blood: the high priest drew blood from his arms and presented it as an offering.2 It was perhaps on this day or night that the mourning for Attis took place over an effigy, which was afterwards solemnly buried.3 The fourth day (the twenty-fifth of March) was the Festival of Joy (Hilaria), at which the resurrection of Attis was probably celebrated-at least the celebration of his resurrection seems to have followed closely upon that of his death. The Roman festival closed on the twenty-seventh of March with a procession to the brook Almo, in which the bullock-cart of the goddess, her image, and other sacred objects were bathed. But this bath of the goddess is known to have also formed part of the festival in her Asiatic home. On returning from the water the cart and oxen were strewn with fresh spring flowers.5

The original character of Attis as a tree-spirit is brought out plainly by the part which the pine-tree plays in his legend and ritual. The story that he was a human being transformed into a pine-tree is only one of those

1 Julian, l.c. and 169 c.

2 Trebellius Pollio, Claudius, 4; Tertullian, Apologet. 25. For other authorities see Marquardt, /.c.

3 Diodorus, iii. 59; Firmicus Maternus, De err. profan. relig. 3; Arnobius, Advers. nat. v. 16; Schol. on Nicander, Alex. 8; Servius on Virgil, Aen. ix. 116; Arrian, Tactica, 33. The ceremony described in Firmicus Maternus, ch. 22 (“nocte quadam simulacrum in lectica supinum ponitur et per numeros digestis fletibus plangitur.

Idolum sepelis. Idolum plangis," etc.), may very well be the mourning and funeral rites of Attis, to which he had more briefly referred in

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consecrarunt, et ut satis iratae mulieri facerent aut ut paenitenti solacium quaererent, quem paulo ante sepelierant revixisse jactarunt. . . . Mortem ipsius [i.e. of Attis] dicunt, quod semina collecta conduntor, vitam rursus quod jacta semina annuis vicibus + reconduntur" [renascuntur, C. Halm]. Again compare id., 22: “Idolum sepelis. Idolum plangis, idolum de sepultura proferis, et miser cum haec feceris gaudes"; and Damascius, l.c. τὴν τῶν ἱλαρίων καλουμένην ἑορτήν· ὅπερ ἐδήλου τὴν ἐξ ᾅδου γεγονυῖαν ἡμῶν σωτηρίαν. This last passage, compared with the formula in Firmicus Maternus, op. cit. 22.

θαρρεῖτε μύσται τοῦ θεοῦ σεσωμένου ἔσται γὰρ ἡμῖν ἐκ πόνων σωτηρία, makes it probable that the ceremony described by Firmicus in this passage is the resurrection of Attis.

5 Ovid, Fast. iv. 337 sqq.; Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 3. For other references see Marquardt and Mannhardt, l.cc.

transparent attempts at rationalising old beliefs which meet us so frequently in mythology. His tree origin is further attested by the story that he was born of a virgin, who conceived by putting in her bosom a ripe almond or pomegranate.1 The bringing in of the pine-tree from the wood, decked with violets and woollen bands, is like bringing in the May-tree or Summer-tree in modern folk-custom; and the effigy which was attached to the pine-tree was only a duplicate representative of the tree-spirit or Attis. At what point of the ceremonies the violets and the effigy were attached to the tree is not said, but we should assume this to be done after the mimic death and burial of Attis. The fastening of his effigy to the tree would then be a representation of his coming to life again in tree-form, just as the placing of the shirt worn by the effigy of Death upon a tree represents the revival of the spirit of vegetation in a new form.2 After being attached to the tree, the effigy was kept for a year and then burned.3 We have seen that this was apparently sometimes done with the May-pole;1 and we shall see presently that the effigy of the corn-spirit, made at harvest, is often preserved till it is replaced by a new effigy at next year's harvest. The original intention of thus keeping the effigy for a year and then replacing it by a new one was doubtless to maintain the spirit of vegetation in fresh and vigorous life. The bathing of the image of Cybele was probably a rain-charm, like the throwing of the effigies of Death and of Adonis into the water. Like tree-spirits in general, Attis appears to have been conceived as exercising power over the growth of corn, or even to have been identified with the corn. One of his epithets was "very fruitful"; he was addressed as the "reaped green (or yellow) ear of corn," and the story of his sufferings, death, and resurrection was interpreted as the ripe grain wounded by the reaper, buried in the granary, and coming to life again when sown in the ground. His worshippers abstained from eating seeds and the roots of vegetables, just as at the Adonis ceremonies relig. 27. 4 Vol. i. p. 205 sq. Hippolytus, Ref. omn. haeres. v. 8 and 9, pp. 162, 168; Firmicus Maternus, De errore prof. relig. 3.

1 Pausanias, vii. 17; Arnobius, Adv. nationes, v. 6; compare Hippolytus, Refut. omn. haeres. v. 9, pp. 166, 168. 2 See above, p. 93.

3 Firmicus Maternus, De errore prof.

6 Julian, Orat. v. 174 A B.

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