The Golden Bough Read online

  CAIRNS CRAIG

  2004

  1 . See John B. Vickery, The Literary Impact of The Golden Bough (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973) for the most extensive account of the influence of Frazer’s work; for Wittgenstein’s interest, see p. 101.

  1 . Ibid. p. 74ff.

  2 . Athenaeum, 17th October, 1919, 1036, ‘War Paint and Feathers’.

  3 . The Golden Bough, 1922 one-volume edition (London: Macmillan, 1922), 55–56.

  1 . T. S. Eliot, review of James Joyce’s Ulysses, ‘Ulysses Order and Myth’, The Dial (1922), 480–3.

  2 . T. S. Eliot, ‘The Waste Land’, Collected Poems 1909–1962 (London: Faber, 1963), 80.

  3 . See Vickery, The Literary Impact of The Golden Bough for a discussion of Yeats’s use of this particular aspect of Frazer’s account.

  4 . Graves attacks Frazer for ‘Carefully and methodically sailing all round this dangerous subject’ because ‘what he was saying-not-saying was that Christian legend, dogma and ritual are the refinement of a great body of primitive and even barbarous beliefs’ (The White Goddess; London: Faber and Faber, 1961, 242); The White Goddess states what, in Graves’s view, Frazer had declined to state about the consequences of the materials he had discovered.

  1 . Allan Massie, The Sins of the Father (London: Sceptre, 1991), 90.

  1 . See Robert Fraser, ‘Hume, Sir James Frazer, Irony and Belief’, Edinburgh Review, 110, Scotland 1802–2002: figures, ideas, formations, 53–54, for an account of Frazer’s ironic presentation of the cruel outcomes of primitive beliefs.

  1 . J. G. Frazer, The Worship of Nature (London: Macmillan and Co., 1926), 2.

  1 . J. G. Frazer, Aftermath (London: Macmillan, 1936), vi.

  1 . ‘Totem’, Chambers Encyclopaedia, 1st edn, Vol. 10 (Supplement), 753–54; ‘The Worship of animals and plants’, which appeared in three parts in The Fortnightly Review 6, October 407–27; November 562–82 and The Fortnightly Review 7, February 194–216.

  1 . William Robertson Smith, ‘The Progress of Old Testament Studies’, British and Foreign Evangelical Review 25 (July), 486.

  2 . See T. O. Beidelman, W. Robertson Smith and the Sociological Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 18ff; for an account of the original events, see James Innes, The Commission of Assembly; and Professor Smith’s reply to the Committee’s report (Edinburgh: John Mclaren, 1881).

  1 . Ε. Β. Tylor, Primitive Culture (London, 1871). 1 . Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, Vol. 1 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1910), vii. See appendixes one and two of this edition. For an account of the development of M’Lennan’s ideas and their influence on Robertson Smith, see Peter Rivière, William Robertson Smith and John Ferguson McLennan: the Aberdeen Roots of British Social Anthropology’, in William Johnstone (ed.), William Robertson Smith: Essays in Reassessment (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995).

  1 . James Ward, ‘Psychology’, Encyclopedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, Vol. XX (Edinburgh, 1886), 44–45.

  2 . Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, ‘The Origin of Totemism’, 1899 (London: Macmillan, 191 o), 94.

  3 . Ibid., 94–95.

  1 . Frazer, The Worship of Nature, 2.

  2 . Frazer, Psyche’s Task (London: Macmillan, 1910), 1.

  3 . Ibid.

  1 . Ibid.

  2 . Frazer, The Golden Bough,1922 edition, 711.

  3 . Ibid.

  1 . Ibid. 713.

  2 . Aftermath, vi.

  1 . Golden Bough (London: Macmillan, 1890), 1.

  2 . Ibid., 2.

  3 . Ibid.

  1 . Frazer, The Worship of Nature, 10.

  2 . ‘Memories of my parents’, in Creation and Evolution in Primitive Cosmologies and Other Pieces (London: Macmillan, 1935).

  3 . The Golden Bough, 1922 edition, 714.

  1 . Quoted Robert Fraser, The Making of The Golden Bough: the Origins and Growth of an Argument (London: Macmillan, 1990), 14.

  2 . See Henry Jones and J. H. Muirhead, The Life and Philosophy of Edward Caird LL.D., D.C.L. (Glasgow: Maclehose, Jackson, 1921) for the most detailed account of Caird’s influence.

  Preface

  FOR some time I have been preparing a general work on primitive superstition and religion. Among the problems which had attracted my attention was the hitherto unexplained rule of the Arician priesthood; and last spring it happened that in the course of my reading I came across some facts which, combined with others I had noted before, suggested an explanation of the rule in question. As the explanation, if correct, promised to throw light on some obscure features of primitive religion, I resolved to develop it fully, and, detaching it from my general work, to issue it as a separate study. This book is the result.

  Now that the theory, which necessarily presented itself to me at first in outline, has been worked out in detail, I cannot but feel that in some places I may have pushed it too far. If this should prove to have been the case, I will readily acknowledge and retract my error as soon as it is brought home to me. Meantime my essay may serve its purpose as a first attempt to solve a difficult problem, and to bring a variety of scattered facts into some sort of order and system.

  A justification is perhaps needed of the length at which I have dwelt upon the popular festivals observed by European peasants in spring, at midsummer, and at harvest. It can hardly be too often repeated, since it is not yet generally recognised, that in spite of their fragmentary character the popular superstitions and customs of the peasantry are by far the fullest and most trustworthy evidence we possess as to the primitive religion of the Aryans. Indeed the primitive Aryan, in all that regards his mental fibre and texture, is not extinct. He is amongst us to this day. The great intellectual and moral forces which have revolutionised the educated world have scarcely affected the peasant. In his inmost beliefs he is what his forefathers were in the days when forest trees still grew and squirrels played on the ground where Rome and London now stand.

  Hence every inquiry into the primitive religion of the Aryans should either start from the superstitious beliefs and observances of the peasantry, or should at least be constantly checked and controlled by reference to them. Compared with the evidence afforded by living tradition, the testimony of ancient books on the subject of early religion is worth very little. For literature accelerates the advance of thought at a rate which leaves the slow progress of opinion by word of mouth at an immeasurable distance behind. Two or three generations of literature may do more to change thought than two or three thousand years of traditional life. But the mass of the people who do not read books remain unaffected by the mental revolution wrought by literature; and so it has come about that in Europe at the present day the superstitious beliefs and practices which have been handed down by word of mouth are generally of a far more archaic type than the religion depicted in the most ancient literature of the Aryan race.

  It is on these grounds that, in discussing the meaning and origin of an ancient Italian priesthood, I have devoted so much attention to the popular customs and superstitions of modern Europe. In this part of my subject I have made great use of the works of the late W. Mannhardt, without which, indeed, my book could scarcely have been written. Fully recognising the truth of the principles which I have imperfectly stated, Mannhardt set himself systematically to collect, compare, and explain the living superstitions of the peasantry. Of this wide field the special department which he marked out for himself was the religion of the woodman and the farmer, in other words, the superstitious beliefs and rites connected with trees and cultivated plants. By oral inquiry, and by printed questions scattered broadcast over Europe, as well as by ransacking the literature of folklore, he collected a mass of evidence, part of which he published in a series of admirable works. But his health, always feeble, broke down before he could complete the comprehensive and really vast scheme which he had planned, and at his too early death much of his precious materials remained unpublished. His manuscripts are now deposited in the University Library at Berlin
, and in the interest of the study to which he devoted his life it is greatly to be desired that they should be examined, and that such portions of them as he has not utilised in his books should be given to the world.

  Of his published works the most important are, first two tracts, Roggenwolf und Roggenhund, Danzig, 1863 (second edition, Danzig, 1866, and Die Korndämonen. Berlin, 1868. These little works were put forward by him tentatively, in the hope of exciting interest in his inquiries and thereby securing the help of others in pursuing them. But, except from a few learned societies, they met with very little attention. Undeterred by the cold reception accorded to his efforts he worked steadily on, and in 1875 published his chief work, Der Baumkultus der Germanen und ihrer Nachbarstämme. This was followed in 1877 by Antike Wald-und Feldkulte. His Mythologische Forschungen, a posthumous work, appeared in 1884.1

  Much as I owe to Mannhardt, I owe still more to my friend Professor W. Robertson Smith. My interest in the early history of society was first excited by the works of Dr Ε. B. Tylor, which opened up a mental vista undreamed of by me before. But it is a long step from a lively interest in a subject to a systematic study of it: and that I took this step is due to the influence of my friend W. Robertson Smith. The debt which I owe to the vast stores of his knowledge, the abundance and fertility of his ideas, and his unwearied kindness, can scarcely be overestimated. Those who know his writings may form some, though a very inadequate, conception of the extent to which I have been influenced by him. The views of sacrifice set forth in his article ‘Sacrifice’ in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and further developed in his recent work, The Religion of the Semites, mark a new departure in the historical study of religion, and ample traces of them will be found in this book. Indeed the central idea of my essay – the conception of the slain god – is derived directly, I believe, from my friend. But it is due to him to add that he is in no way responsible for the general explanation which I have offered of the custom of slaying the god. He has read the greater part of the proofs in circumstances which enhanced the kindness, and has made many valuable suggestions which I have usually adopted; but except where he is cited by name, or where the views expressed coincide with those of his published works, he is not to be regarded as necessarily assenting to any of the theories propounded in this book.

  The works of Professor G. A. Wilken of Leyden have been of great service in directing me to the best original authorities on the Dutch East Indies, a very important field to the ethnologist. To the courtesy of the Rev Walter Gregor, MA, of Pitsligo, I am indebted for some interesting communications which will be found acknowledged in their proper places. Mr Francis Darwin has kindly allowed me to consult him on some botanical questions. The manuscript authorities to which I occasionally refer are answers to a list of ethnological questions which I am circulating. Most of them will, I hope, be published in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute.

  J. G. FRAZER

  TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,

  8th March 1890

  1. For the sake of brevity I have sometimes, in the notes, referred to Mannhardt’s works respectively as Roggenwolf (the references are to the pages of the first edition), Korndämonen, Β. Κ., Α. W. F., and Μ. F.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The King of the Wood

  ‘The still glassy lake that sleeps

  Beneath Aricia’s trees –

  Those trees in whose dim shadow

  The ghastly priest doth reign,

  The priest who slew the slayer,

  And shall himself be slain.’

  – MACAULAY

  The Arician Grove

  WHO does not know Turner’s picture of the Golden Bough? The scene, suffused with the golden glow of imagination in which the divine mind of Turner steeped and transfigured even the fairest natural landscape, is a dream-like vision of the little woodland lake of Nemi, ‘Diana’s Mirror,’ as it was called by the ancients. No one who has seen that calm water, lapped in a green hollow of the Alban hills, can ever forget it. The two characteristic Italian villages which slumber on its banks, and the equally Italian palazzo whose terraced gardens descend steeply to the lake, hardly break the stillness and even the solitariness of the scene. Dian herself might still linger by this lonely shore, still haunt these woodlands wild.

  In antiquity this sylvan landscape was the scene of a strange and recurring tragedy. On the northern shore of the lake, right under the precipitous cliffs on which the modern village of Nemi is perched, stood the sacred grove and sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, or Diana of the Wood.1 The lake and the grove were sometimes known as the lake and grove of Aricia. 1 But the town of Aricia (the modern La Riccia) was situated about three miles off, at the foot of the Alban Mount, and separated by a steep descent from the lake, which lies in a small crater-like hollow on the mountain side. In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day and probably far into the night a strange figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy.2 He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him he held office till he was himself slain by a stronger or a craftier.

  This strange rule has no parallel in classical antiquity, and cannot be explained from it. To find an explanation we must go farther afield. No one will probably deny that such a custom savours of a barbarous age and, surviving into imperial times, stands out in striking isolation from the polished Italian society of the day, like a primeval rock rising from a smooth-shaven lawn. It is the very rudeness and barbarity of the custom which allow us a hope of explaining it. For recent researches into the early history of man have revealed the essential similarity with which, under many superficial differences, the human mind has elaborated its first crude philosophy of life. Accordingly if we can show that a barbarous custom, like that of the priesthood of Nemi, has existed elsewhere; if we can detect the motives which led to its institution; if we can prove that these motives have operated widely, perhaps universally, in human society, producing in varied circumstances a variety of institutions specifically different but generically alike; if we can show, lastly, that these very motives, with some of their derivative institutions, were actually at work in classical antiquity; then we may fairly infer that at a remoter age the same motives gave birth to the priesthood of Nemi. Such an inference, in default of direct evidence as to how the priesthood did actually arise, can never amount to demonstration. But it will be more or less probable according to the degree of completeness with which it fulfils the conditions indicated above. The object of this book is, by meeting these conditions, to offer a fairly probable explanation of the priesthood of Nemi.

  I begin by setting forth the few facts and legends which have come down to us on the subject. According to one story the worship of Diana at Nemi was instituted by Orestes, who, after killing Thoas, King of the Tauric Chersonese (the Crimea), fled with his sister to Italy, bringing with him the image of the Tauric Diana. The bloody ritual which legend ascribed to that goddess is familiar to classical readers; it is said that every stranger who landed on the shore was sacrificed on her altar. But transported to Italy, the rite assumed a milder form. Within the sanctuary at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no branch might be broken. Only a runaway slave was allowed to break off, if he could, one of its boughs. Success in the attempt entitled him to fight the priest in single combat, and if he slew him he reigned in his stead with the title of King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis). Tradition averred that the fateful branch was that Golden Bough which, at the Sibyl’s bidding, Aeneas plucked before he essayed the perilous journey to the world of the dead. The flight of the slave represented, it was said, the flight of Orestes; his combat with the priest was a reminiscence of the human sacrifices once offered
to the Tauric Diana. This rule of succession by the sword was observed down to imperial times; for amongst his other freaks Caligula, thinking that the priest of Nemi had held office too long, hired a more stalwart ruffian to slay him. 1

  Of the worship of Diana at Nemi two leading features can still be made out. First, from the votive-offerings found in modern times on the site, it appears that she was especially worshipped by women desirous of children or of an easy delivery.2 Second, fire seems to have played a foremost part in her ritual. For during her annual festival, celebrated at the hottest time of the year, her grove was lit up by a multitude of torches, whose ruddy glare was reflected by the waters of the lake; and throughout the length and breadth of Italy the day was kept with holy rites at every domestic hearth. 3 Moreover, women whose prayers had been heard by the goddess brought lighted torches to the grove in fulfilment of their vows.4 Lastly, the title of Vesta borne by the Arician Diana5 points almost certainly to the maintenance of a perpetual holy fire in her sanctuary.

  At her annual festival all young people went through a purificatory ceremony in her honour; dogs were crowned; and the feast consisted of a young kid, wine, and cakes, served up piping hot on platters of leaves.1

  But Diana did not reign alone in her grove at Nemi. Two lesser divinities shared her forest sanctuary. One was Egeria, the nymph of the clear water which, bubbling from the basaltic rocks, used to fall in graceful cascades into the lake at the place called Le Mole.2 According to one story the grove was first consecrated to Diana by a Manius Egerius, who was the ancestor of a long and distinguished line. Hence the proverb ‘There are many Manii at Ariciae.’ Others explained the proverb very differently. They said it meant that there were a great many ugly and deformed people, and they referred to the word Mania which meant a bogey or bugbear to frighten children. 3