and throw them into the water.1 In some parts of Bavaria it is customary to sow flax in a pot on the three last days of the Carnival; from the seed which grows best an omen is drawn as to whether the early, the middle, or the late sowing will produce the best crop.2

In Sardinia the gardens of Adonis are still planted in connection with the great midsummer festival which bears the name of St. John. At the end of March or on the first of April a young man of the village presents himself to a girl and asks her to be his comare (gossip or sweetheart), offering to be her compare. The invitation is considered as an honour by the girl's family, and is gladly accepted. At the end of May the girl makes a pot of the bark of the cork-tree, fills it with earth, and sows a handful of wheat and barley in it. The pot being placed in the sun and often watered, the corn sprouts rapidly and has a good head by Midsummer Eve (St. John's Eve, the twenty-third of June). The pot is then called Erme or Nenneri. On St. John's Day the young man and the girl, dressed in their best, accompanied by a long retinue and preceded by children gambolling and frolicking, move in procession to a church outside the village. Here they break the pot by throwing it against the door of the church. Then they sit down in a ring on the grass and eat eggs and herbs to the music of flutes. Wine is mixed in a cup and passed round, each one drinking as it passes. Then they join hands and sing "Sweethearts of St. John" (Compare e comare di San Giovanni) over and over again, the flutes playing the while. When they tire of singing they stand up and dance gaily in a ring till evening. This is the general Sardinian custom. As practised at Ozieri it has some special features. In May the pots are made of corkbark and planted with corn, as already described. Then on the Eve of St. John the window-sills are draped with rich cloths, on which the pots are placed, adorned with crimson and blue silk and ribbons of various colours. On each of the pots they used formerly to place a statuette or cloth doll dressed as a woman, or a Priapus-like figure made of paste;

1 Baboo Ishuree Dass, Domestic Manners and Customs of the Hindoos of Northern India (Benares, 1860), p.

III sq.

2 Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde des Königreichs Bayern, ii. 298.

but this custom, rigorously forbidden by the Church, has fallen into disuse. The village swains go about in a troop to look at the pots and their decorations and to wait for the girls, who assemble on the public square to celebrate the festival. Here a great bonfire is kindled, round which they dance and make merry. Those who wish to be "Sweethearts of St. John" act as follows. The young man stands

on one side of the bonfire and the girl on the other, and they, in a manner, join hands by each grasping one end of a long stick, which they pass three times backwards and forwards across the fire, thus thrusting their hands thrice rapidly into the flames. This seals their relationship to each other. Dancing and music go on till late at night. The correspondence of these Sardinian pots of grain to the gardens of Adonis seems complete, and the images formerly placed in them answer to the images of Adonis which accompanied his gardens.

This Sardinian usage is one of those midsummer customs, once celebrated in many parts of Europe, a chief feature of which is the great bonfire round which people dance and over which they leap. Examples of these customs have already been cited from Sweden and Bohemia.2 These examples sufficiently prove the connection of the midsummer bonfire with vegetation; for both in Sweden and Bohemia an essential part of the festival is the raising of a May-pole or Midsummer-tree, which in Bohemia is burned in the bonfire. Again, in the Russian midsummer ceremony cited above, the straw figure of Kupalo, the representative of vegetation, is placed beside a May-pole or Midsummertree and then carried to and fro across a bonfire. Kupalo is here represented in duplicate, in tree-form by the Midsummertree, and in human form by the straw effigy, just as Adonis was represented both by an image and a garden of Adonis ; and the duplicate representatives of Kupalo, like those of

3

1 Antonio Bresciani, Dei costumi dell isola di Sardegna comparati cogli antichissimi popoli orientali (Rome and Turin, 1866), p. 427 sq.; R. Tennant, Sardinia and its Resources (Rome and London, 1885), p. 187; S. Gabriele, "Usi dei contadini della

Sardegna," Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari, vii. (1888), p. 469 sq. Tennant says that the pots are kept in a dark warm place, and that the children leap across the fire.

2 Vol. i. p. 202 sq.

3 P. 105.

In the Sardinian custom

Adonis, are finally cast into water. the Gossips or Sweethearts of St. John probably correspond to the Lord and Lady or King and Queen of May. In the Swedish province of Blekinge part of the midsummer festival is the election of a Midsummer Bride, who chooses her bridegroom; a collection is made for the pair, who for the time being are looked upon as man and wife.1 Such Midsummer pairs are probably, like the May pairs, representatives of the spirit of vegetation in its reproductive capacity; they represent in flesh and blood what the images of Siva and Pârvatî in the Indian ceremony, and the images of Adonis and Aphrodite in the Alexandrian ceremony, represented in effigy.

tion.

The reason why ceremonies whose aim is to foster the growth of vegetation should thus be associated with bonfires; why in particular the representative of vegetation should be burned in tree form or passed across the fire in effigy or in the form of a living couple, will be explained later on. Here it is enough to have proved the fact of such association and therefore to have obviated the objection which might have been raised to my interpretation of the Sardinian custom, on the ground that the bonfires have nothing to do with vegetaOne more piece of evidence may here be given to prove the contrary. In some parts of Germany young men and girls leap over midsummer bonfires for the express purpose of making the hemp or flax grow tall.2 We may, therefore, assume that in the Sardinian custom the blades of wheat and barley which are forced on in pots for the midsummer festival, and which correspond so closely to the gardens of Adonis, form one of those widely-spread midsummer ceremonies, the original object of which was to promote the growth of vegetation, and especially of the crops. But as, by an easy extension of ideas, the spirit of vegetation was believed to exercise a beneficent and fertilising influence on human as well as animal life, the gardens of Adonis would be supposed, like the May-trees or May-boughs, to bring good luck to the family or to the person who planted them;

1 L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden, P. 257.

2 W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p.

464; Leoprechting, Aus dem Lechrain, p. 183. More evidence of customs and beliefs of this sort will be adduced in the last chapter of this work.

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.1 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

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, Deliciae 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, 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

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

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