The golden bough : a study in comparative religion / by J.G. Frazer.

Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The golden bough : a study in comparative religion / by J.G. Frazer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    805/856 (page 361)
    fore understand why in modern folk - medicine the misdetoe is not allowed to touch the ground ; if it touches the ground, its healing virtue is supposed to be gone.^ This may be a survival of the old supersti- tion that the plant in which the life of the sacred tree was concentrated should not be exposed to the risk incurred by contact with the ground. In an Indian legend, which offers a parallel to the Balder myth, Indra promised the demon Namuci not to kill him by day or by night, nor with what was wet or what was dry. But he killed him in the morning twilight by sprinkling over him the foam of the sea.^ The foam of the sea is just such an object as a savage might choose to put his life in, because it occupies that sort of intermediate or nondescript position between earth and sky or sea and sky in which primitive man sees safety. It is therefore not surprising that the foam of the river should be the totem of a clan in India.^ Again, the view that the mistletoe owes its mystic character partly to the fact of its not growing on the ground is confirmed by a parallel superstition about the mountain-ash or rowan-tree. In Jutland a rowan that is found growing out of the top of another tree is esteemed exceedingly effective against witchcraft: since it does not grow on the ground witches have no power over it; if it is to have its full effect it must be cut on Ascension Day. * Hence it is placed over doors to prevent the ingress of witches.^ Similarly the mistletoe in Germany is still 1 Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,'^ ii. over Jyske Almuesmal, Fjerde hefte ^°T'r,]n!?- r , .. ^ (Copenhagen, 1888), p. 320. For a 3 p f ^^'V'^f ' ^'g^t of Feilberg's work I am indebted Col. 1. Dalton, The Kols of to the kindness of the Rev. Walter Chota-Nagpore, Trans. Elhnol. Sac. Gregor, M.A., Pitsligo, who pointed „ out the passage to me. Jens Kamp, Danske Folkeviinder 5 E. T. Kristensen, lydske Folke- •IK^^^'P^-J^^'^^/^-'''''^ 38036., referred to by to m Feilberg's Bidrag til en Ordbog Feilberg, I.e.