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

Date:
1890
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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.

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    Roman eagles had ever swooped on Norway, might have been found repeated with little difference among the barbarous Aryans of the North. The rite was probably an essential feature in the primitive Aryan worship of the oak.-' It only remains to ask, Why was the mistletoe called the Golden Bough ? The name was not simply a poet's fancy, nor even peculiarly Italian ; for in Welsh also the mistletoe is known as the tree of pure gold. ^ The whitish-yellow of the mistletoe berries is hardly enough to account for the name. For Virgil says that the Bough was altogether golden, stem as well as leaves,^ and the same is implied in the Welsh name, the tree of pure gold. A clue to the real meaning of the name is furnished by the mythical fern-seed or fern-bloom. We saw that fern-seed is popularly supposed to bloom Hke gold or fire on Midsummer Eve. Thus in Bohemia it is said that on St. John's Day fern- seed blooms with golden blossoms that gleam like fire.* Now it is a property of this mythical fern- seed that whoever has it, or will ascend a mountain holding it in his hand on Midsummer Eve, will discover a vein of gold or will see the treasures of the earth shining with a bluish flame.^ And if you place fern- 1 A custom of annually burning a human representative of the corn-spirit has been noted among the Egyptians, Pawnees, and Khonds. See above, vol. i. pp. 382, 387, 401 sq. In Semitic lands there are traces of a practice of annually buraing a human god. For the image of Hercules (that is, of Baal) which was periodically burned on a pyre at Tarsus, must have been a substitute for a human representative of the god. See Dio Chrysostom, Orat. 33, vol. ii. p. 16, ed. Dindorf; W. R. Smith, The Religion of the Setnites, i. 353 sij. The Druids seem to have eaten portions of the human victim. Pliny, Nat. Hist. XXX. § 13. Perhaps portions of the flesh of the King of the Wood were eaten by his worshippers as a sacrament. We have seen traces of the use of sacramental bread at Nemi. See above, p. 82 sq. 2 Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,'^ ii. 1009, pt'&n fnraiir. ^ Virgil, Aen. vi. 137 sq. * Grohmann, Aberglanben mtd Ge- brduche axis Bohmen und Miihrcn,%(}']i. 6 Grohmann, op. cit. § 676; Wuttke^ Der deutsche Volksaberglmibe, § 123.