of them under the door by which the rats are to go forth, and the other on the road which they are to take. This exorcism should be performed at sunrise.1 About two years ! ago an American farmer was reported to have written a civil letter to the rats, telling them that his crops were short, that he could not afford to keep them through the winter, that he had been very kind to them, and that for their own good he thought they had better leave him and go to some of his neighbours who had more grain. This document he pinned to a post in his barn for the rats to read. Sometimes the desired object is supposed to be attained by treating with high distinction one or two chosen individuals of the obnoxious species, while the rest are pursued with relentless rigour. In the East Indian island of Bali, the mice which ravage the rice-fields are caught in great numbers, and burned in the same way that corpses are burned. But two of the captured mice are allowed to live, and receive a little packet of white linen. Then the people bow down before them, as before gods, and let them go.3 In the Kangean archipelago, East Indies, when the mice prove very destructful to the rice-crop, the people rid themselves of the pest in the following manner. On a Friday, when the usual service in the mosque is over, four pairs of mice are solemnly united in marriage by the priest. Each pair is then shut up in a miniature canoe about a foot long. These canoes are filled with rice and other fruits of the earth, and the four pairs of mice are then escorted to the sea-shore just as if it were a real wedding. Wherever the procession passes the people beat with all their might on their riceblocks. On reaching the shore, the canoes, with their little inmates, are launched and left to the mercy of the winds and waves.* In some parts of Bohemia the peasant, though he kills field mice and grey mice without scruple, always spares white mice. If he finds a white mouse he takes it up 1 Meyrac, Traditions, Coutumes, Légendes et Contes des Ardennes, p. 176. 2 American Journal of Folk-lore, xi. (1898), p. 161. 3 R. van Eck, "Schetsen van het eiland Bali," Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indie, N. S., viii. (1879), p. 125. + J. L. van Gennep, "Bijdrage tot de Kennis van den Kangean-Archipel," Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, xlvi. (1896), p. 101. carefully, and makes a comfortable bed for it in the window; for if it died the luck of the house would be gone, and the grey mice would multiply fearfully in the house.1 When caterpillars invaded a vineyard or field in Syria, the virgins were gathered, and one of the caterpillars was taken and a girl made its mother. Then they bewailed and buried it. Thereafter they conducted the "mother" to the place where the caterpillars were, consoling her, in order that all the caterpillars might leave the garden.2 On the first of September, Russian girls “make small coffins of turnips and other vegetables, enclose flies and other insects in them, and then bury them with a great show of mourning.” 3 On the shore of Delagoa Bay there thrives a small brown beetle which is very destructive to the beans and maize. The Baronga call it noonoo. In December or January, when the insects begin to swarm, women are sent to collect them from the bean-stalks in shells. When they have done so, a twin girl is charged with the duty of throwing the insects into a neighbouring lake. Accompanied by a woman of mature years and carrying the beetles in a calabash, the girl goes on her mission without saying a word to any one. At her back marches the whole troop of women, their arms, waists, and heads covered with grass and holding in their hands branches of manioc with large leaves which they wave to and fro, while they chant the words, "Noonoo, go away! Leave our fields! Noonoo, go away! leave our fields!" The little girl throws her calabash with the beetles into the water without looking behind her, and thereupon the women bellow out obscene songs, which they never dare to utter except on this occasion and at the ceremony for making rain.1 Another mode of getting rid of vermin and other noxious 1 Grohmann, Aberglauben und Gebräuche aus Böhmen und Mähren, p. 60, § 405. 2 Lagarde, Reliquiae juris ecclesiastici antiquissimae, p. 135. For this passage I am indebted to my friend Prof. W. Robertson Smith, who kindly translated it for me from the Syriac. It occurs in the Canons of Jacob of Edessa, of which a German translation has been published by C. Kayser (Die Canones Jacob's von Edessa übersetzt und erläutert, Leipsic, 1886; see p. 25 sq.). 3 Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 255. 4 H. A. Junod, Les Ba-ronga (Neuchatel, 1898), p. 419 sq. As to the rain-making ceremony among the Baronga, see vol. i. p. 91 sq. creatures without hurting their feelings or showing them disrespect is to make images of them. Apollonius of Tyana is said to have freed Antioch from scorpions by making a bronze image of a scorpion and burying it under a small pillar in the middle of the city. Gregory of Tours tells us that the city of Paris used to be free of dormice and serpents, but that in his lifetime, while they were cleaning a sewer, they found a bronze serpent and a bronze dormouse and removed them. "Since then," adds the good bishop, "dormice and serpents without number have been seen in Paris." 2 When their land was overrun with mice, the Philistines made golden images of the vermin and sent them out of the country in a new cart drawn by two cows, hoping that the real mice would simultaneously depart. So when a plague of serpents afflicted the Israelites in the desert, they made a serpent of brass and set it on a pole as a mode of staying the plague.* Some of the Greek gods were worshipped under titles derived from the vermin or other pests which they were supposed to avert or exterminate. Thus we hear of Mouse Apollo, Locust Apollo, and Mildew Apollo; of Locust Hercules and Worm-killing Hercules; of Foxy Dionysus ; and of Zeus the Fly-catcher or Averter of Flies.10 If we could trace all these and similar worships to their origin, we should probably find that they were originally addressed, not 1 Malalas, Chronographia, p. 264, ed. Dindorf. 2 Gregoire de Tours, Histoire Ecclésiastique des Francs, viii. 33, Guizot's translation. For more stories of the same sort, see Thiers, Traité des Superstitions (Paris, 1679), pp. 306308. 31 Samuel vi. 4-18. The passage in which the plague of mice is definitely described has been omitted in the existing Hebrew text, but is preserved in the Septuagint (1 Samuel v. 6, kai μέσον τῆς χώρας αὐτῆς ἀνεφύησαν μύες). See Prof. A. F. Kirkpatrick on I Samuel v. 6. 4 Numbers xxi. 6-9. 6 Homer, Iliad, i. 39, with the Scholia and the comment of Eustathius ; Strabo, xiii. 1. 48 and 63; Aelian, 7 Strabo, xiii. 1. 64; Eustathius, on Homer, Iliad, i. 39, p. 34. 8 Strabo and Eustathius, .cc. 9 My friend W. Ridgeway has pointed out that the epithet Bassareus applied to Dionysus (Cornutus, De natura deorum, 30) appears to be derived from bassara, "a fox." See Tzetzes, Schol. on Lycophron, 771; W. Ridgeway, in Classical Review, x. (1896), p. 21 sqq. 10 Pliny, Nat. Hist. X. 75; Pausanias, v. 14. 1, viii. 26. 7; Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 38, p. 33, ed. Potter. 4 to the high gods as the protectors of mankind, but to the baleful things themselves, the mice, locusts, mildew, and so forth, with the intention of flattering and soothing them, of disarming their malignity, and of persuading them to spare their worshippers. We know that the Romans worshipped the mildew, the farmer's plague, under its own proper name.1 The ravages committed by mice among the crops both in ancient and modern times are notorious,2 and according to a tradition which may be substantially correct the worship of the Mouse Apollo was instituted to avert them. The image of a mouse which stood beside Apollo's tripod in the god's temple may be compared with the golden mice which the Philistines made for the purpose of ridding themselves of the vermin; and the tame mice kept in his sanctuary, together with the white mice which lived under the altar," would on this hypothesis be parallel to the white mice which the Bohemian peasant still cherishes as the best way of keeping down the numbers of their grey-coated brethren. An Oriental counterpart of the Mouse Apollo is the ancient pillar or rude idol which the Chams of Indo-China call yang-tikuh or "god rat," and to which they offer sacrifices whenever rats infest their fields in excessive numbers. Another epithet applied to Apollo which probably admits of a similar explanation is Wolfish. Various legends set forth how the god received the title of Wolfish because he exterminated wolves;' indeed this function was definitely attributed to him by the epithet Wolf-slayer. Arguing from the analogy of the preceding cases, we may suppose that 8 1 Robigo or personified as Robigus. See Varro, Rerum rusticarum, i. 1. 6; id., De lingua latina, vi. 16; Ovid, Fasti, iv. 905 sqq.; Tertullian, De spectaculis, 5; Augustine, De civitate dei, iv. 21; Lactantius, Divin. Instit. i. 20; Preller, Römische Mythologie,3 ii. 43 $99.; W. Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, p. 88 sqq. 2 Aristotle, Hist. Anim. vi. 37, p. 580 B. 15 $99.; Aelian, Nat. Anim. xvii. 41; W. Warde Fowler in The Classical Review, vi. (1892), p. 413. 3 Polemo, cited by a scholiast on Homer, Iliad, i. 39 (ed. Bekker). Compare Eustathius on Homer, 4 Aelian, Nat. Anim. xii. 5. E. Aymonier, "Les Tchames et leurs religions," Revue de l'histoire des religions, xxiv. (1891), p. 236. 7 Λύκειος οι Λύκιος, Pausanias, i. 19. 3 (with my note), ii. 9. 7, ii. 19. 3, viii. 40. 5; Lucian, Anacharsis, 7; Bekker's Anecdota Graeca, i. 277, line 10 sq. 8 Pausanias, ii. 9. 7; Schol. on Demosthenes, xxiv. 114, p. 736. 9 Sophocles, Electra, 6. at first the wolves themselves were propitiated by fair words. and sacrifices to induce them to spare man and beast; and that at a later time, when the Greeks, or rather the enlightened portion of them, had outgrown this rude form of worship, they transferred the duty of keeping off the wolves to a beneficent deity who discharged the same useful office for other pests, such as mice, locusts, and mildew. A reminiscence of the direct propitiation of the fierce and dangerous beasts themselves is preserved in the legends told to explain the origin of the Lyceum or Place of Wolves at Athens and of the sanctuary of Wolfish Apollo at Sicyon. It is said that once when Athens was infested by wolves, Apollo commanded sacrifices to be offered on the Place of Wolves and the smell proved fatal to the animals.1 Similarly at Sicyon, when the flocks suffered heavily from the ravages of wolves, the same god directed the shepherds to set forth meat mixed with a certain bark, and the wolves devoured the tainted meat and perished. These legends probably reflect in a distorted form an old custom of sacrificing to the wolves, in other words of feeding them to mollify their ferocity and win their favour. We know that such a custom prevailed among the Letts down to comparatively recent times. In the month of December, about Christmas time, they sacrificed a goat to the wolves, with strange idolatrous rites, at a cross-road, for the purpose of inducing the wolves to spare the flocks and herds. After offering the sacrifice they used to brag that no beast of theirs would fall a victim to the ravening maw of a wolf for all the rest of that year, no, not though the pack were to run right through the herd. Sacrifices of this sort are reported to have been secretly offered by the Letts as late as the seventeenth century; and if we knew more of peasant life in ancient Greece we might find that on winter days, while Aristotle was expounding his philosophy in the Lyceum or Place of Wolves at Athens, the Attic peasant was still carrying forth, in the crisp frosty air, his offering to the wolves, which all night long had been howling round his sheepfold in a snowy glen of Parnes or Pentelicus. p. 736. 1 Schol. on Demosthenes, xxiv. 114, 2 Pausanias, ii. 9. 7. 3 P. Einhorn, Reformatio gentis Letticae in Ducatu Curlandiae, re printed in Scriptores rerum Livoni carum, vol. ii. (Riga and Leipsic, 1848), p. 621. The preface of Einhorn's work is dated 17th July 1636. |