Wilhelm Mannhardt's Forest and Field Cults - excerpts

[k_a_nitz]

Forest and Field Cults
Part 1: The Tree Cult of the Germans and their Neighbouring Tribes:
Mythological Investigations
Wilhelm Mannhardt

[Wald- und Feldkulte.
Erster Teil. Der Baumkultus der Germanen und ihrer Nachbarstämme.
Mythologische Untersuchungen
published in German 1875 - this draft translation copyright K A Nitz 2024
- note that the citations have not been tidied up from the original messy formats and I have not reviewed how my document formatting automatically translated to HTML]

Foreword

The present book, to which in the near future a second volume “explaining Greek and Roman agrarian cults from North European traditions” will follow, begins the publication of a series of preparatory works which had presented themselves to the author as required for arriving at clarity and certainty over the framework in which the individual pieces of the “Collection of Field Customs” undertaken by him were to be arranged. The attempt was being made here to subject the most important myths, spring and summer customs — which stand in unmistakeable analogy to the harvest customs — singly and alone by themselves to a methodical investigation into their content and their significance, so far as it could happen in essence on the basis of the material already now present in the literature. But unpublished traditions have been scattered in many places up to now. To a greater extent this has happened with the occasion of the May harvest; I owe the Rhineland customs and the Westphalian customs added to Kuhn’s notes to written communications, so too all the remaining, by comparison the French customs described on page 203 ff. was taken from a larger collection which it was granted to me to draw in the year 1870 personally from conversation with prisoners of war. The various new material which I could use in the section about the Swedish forest spirits, I owe to the kind and loving cooperation of the gentlemen D. D. Hildebrand (father and son) in Stockholm, Provost E. Rietz in Tygelsjö by Malmö (meanwhile passed away), and Baron Djurklou at Sorby by Örebro, who at my first stay in Sweden in autumn 1867 made accessible to me the handwritten notes of folk traditions in the possession of the royal antiquarium, of the Scanian society for antiquities, and of themselves with extraordinary liberality and made their use easier. I am obliged to my revered friend Professor H. Weiß, keeper of the copperplate cabinet in Berlin, for the furnishing of several of the artworks mentioned of pages 339–340, and to the board and officials of the royal and university libraries in Berlin for friendly, untiring assistance. But above all I feel urged to express to the Higher Education Ministry my deferential thanks for the continued highly inclined patronage and support of my endeavours. A more detailed discussion over the principles, the equipment, and the method, as well as over the general outcomes of my work will introduce the second volume which will give occasion to strengthen by fitting evidence the truth of the statements put forward. Apart from that, the investigations united in this volume form a self-contained whole in themselves. May they acquire friends and be found to be a not unusable contribution to the solution of the great task which has fallen to cultural history these days in the working together of the sciences.

Danzig, 13^th October 1874

Wilhelm Mannhardt.

***

Fundamental Ideas

In the eternal cycle which drives around the atoms of all earthly things and in which everything, even the firmest of bodies, depicts nothing else but a temporary form of the inexorable movement, a whirlpool in the stream, according to the deceptive appearance a calm persistance was given to the stone. Standing out from its rigidity distinguishingly is the relatively quick and demonstrably regularly recurring course in the change of organic forms. All living beings from humans to plants have birth, growth, and death in common with each other and this commonality of fate may have intruded in a distant period of childhood of our race so overpoweringly on the as yet unpractised observation of our ancestors that they overlooked the differences which separated those stages of creation from each other¹.

The acknowledgement of similarity goes so far that many peoples assumed the first humans were grown or created from trees or plants; even in historical time the language and natural poetry of most nations have at their disposal a diverse store of beautiful similes of animal and vegetative life which are to be seen partly as crumbling debris of ancient myths founded on the naive consciousness of identity, conserved partly the original aesthetic feelings transformed into views or produced anew from the depths of the human spirit which also gave it existence. Most frequently we find the corresponding phenomena of vegetative existence transferred in figurative language to the states in the development of humanity. Humans blossom, grow, and wilt; in their past they are like the grass in the field; the man in his prime recalls the strong oak, the devoted, comely wife the entwining ivy, the scented flower. The lover of all times and lands knows how to describe the beauty of the beloved no less fittingly than when he celebrates the girl as his rose, lily, as myrtle or pomegranate flower. The rich vintage of related expressions, epithets, and pet names which J. Grimm has compiled in his sensitive essay “Women’s Names from Flowers” can be increased immensely from all fields of world literature with ease. On the other hand language and poetry by contrast make plants into the reflection on animal life. The young shoots in spring are compared to the young animal. To the Romans it appeared like a child, foal, or chick (pullus), to the Greeks like a calf (μόσχος); the legitimacy of this conception will hopefully be explained by the following investigations. Our catkins belong to another group of ideas, they bear the name of the silver-grey, velvety coat; but in the Scandinavian north, kálfr calf from the new shoots was in use, e.g. hvannarkálfr Fornaldars. I, 472 r. 1 = úng hvönn angelica shoots, angelica tenella. The female and male flowers of hemp are distinguished as cock and hen, like the male and female of many songbirds; and not unmentioned remains the abundant tendency in the area of plant naming, and already evident since time immemorial, of comparing the shapes of herbs to individual limbs of animals (wolf’s foot [Lyocopus exaltatus], goosefoot, cranesbill, lion’s tooth [dandelion], etc.). This time too the human figure, which indeed incidentally, is to be found at the greatest distance from the plants adhering to the ground, approaching them most of all in its erect growth on the other hand, offers the most extensive inducement to personifying similes. We like to attribute to the plants in the adornment of poetic portrayal feet and arms, head and eyes, chest, bust, hair and clothes, and the like. Abundant examples for this linguistic usage with more recent German poets, Shakespeare, and the authors of classic antiquity are to be gathered from the substantial and instructive work of G. Hense “Personificationen in griechischen Dichtungen, Thl. I. Halle 1868”. Already this so to say partial and temporary way of personification presupposes animation; the human confers feeling on the consciousless plant and because we believe in perceiving in it certain traits which are reminiscent of related strings in our inner-being, our imagination seeks in it a life like our own, spirit of our spirit. This idea was raised in the distant past without doubt into the real belief that the plant is a being, man or woman like the human, gifted with thoughts and beliefs. When later a break appeared in the primitive consciousness and a sort of botanical concept began to develop, that belief sought to rescue its existence in changed form. At first it had to put up from day to day progressively with a limitation to single individuals, to which the wonder still clung, while the great majority of plants sank into sober consideration and the still more sobering customs of economic life. Then it was now about either the plants being the temporary seat, the clothes, the envelope of a human soul transported by death from the bodily existence. Koberstein’s splendid treatise is still the best that has been published on this subject up to now. According to another conception, certain plants are transformed humans or demigods whose consciousness still lives on in them through magic or verdict of fate. From this a number of the many folk sayings which talk of a metamorphosis into plants are explained to a far greater extent than seems to have been known up to now². Finally a third way of looking at things knows of a ghost-like being, a daemon, whose life is bound to the life of the plant. It is born with it, it dies with it. In it it has its usual abode, it is as it were its body and yet it appears frequently also outside it in animal or human form and moves in freedom next to it.

A variety of this idea hits us in the form of the assumption that the daemon does not reside in the individual plant, but rather in a multiplicity of them, or in the entire vegetation and therefore also not die off in the autumn with the individual plants, but rather overwinters somewhere and continues its life in nature in the new year. Once emerged from the plant, the daemon becomes finally at times in the progress of development a giver or creator of its life, it is and weaves now not only in the vegetation, it produces it.

The conceptions on the preceding pages separated by various stages in reality mostly merge into each other. The folk memory preserves them next to one another or combines them or their varieties in the most various ways into new forms. The writer thinks to be able to explain that in the development of these basic views rests a not inconsiderable part of the belief and custom of European humanity and indeed of both the north European tribes and the Hellenes and Italians. The present book is determined to serve for the proof of this sentence firstly in respect to the north European tree and forest spirits.

***

Chapter I — The Soul of the Tree

§ 1. Equating of Humans & Plants. Various Forms of this Belief.

We turn at first to the consideration of a series of Germanic, Latvian-Slavic, and Celto-Romanic views and customs which teach us how and in what way the thought that the plant has a soul was elaborated and developed in respect to the trees and in various forms up to the complete equating with humans, so that the one emerged so to say as the perfect doppelganger of the other. Already in anthropogonic³ myth we perceive a sort of such an equating; another expresses itself in the treatment of the tree as a personal being. The identification stretches occasionally even to an imaginary fusion of the corporeality of human (or animal) and plant, and leads to the assumption that the tree is the body of a soul transported out of the human body by death, the residence of several elves or a protective spirit which on the other hand might be barely distinguishable from an alter ego of the human. Occasionally the soul of the tree or the genius of the tree also already leads a life outside the body of the tree in storm and rain, in forest and field. Since we later intend preferably to use the relationships appearing very sharply and distinctly in these traditions for the understanding of grain spirits comparatively, we allow ourselves here already to casually make a note of the spontaneously arising correspondences of the tree myths with the folk beliefs tied to grains. And even that might not disturb the reader if he (since another place is not suited for it) find woven together in the explanation of the tree beliefs of the north European tribes not entirely rarely also individual analogies from distant lands and parts of the world. It would happen against our will if through fault of these interpolations the image of the northern tree cult were to dissolve into a vague mist. We agree completely with the golden words of Theodor Mommsen (History of Rome): “the eyes directed away above the cleft of the nations is only all too easily sezied by the vertigo and you forget the true and fundamental principle of all historical criticism, that the individual historical phenomenon should firstly be tested and explained in the circle of the nation to which it belongs and the results of this inquiry may only serve as foundation for the international one.” To the extent, however, it is with our surveys not yet about the explanation of some historical relationship, but rather about the description of types, we make use of the same advantage which perhaps the botanist enjoys when he can compare the conifers of Europe and America with each other. The observation of certain equivalent features with both makes clear that they belong to the nature of the species. Similarity of ideas over the same object in two different zones allows in the main for concluding on a certain psychological necessity of them and the one explains the other. Only as such a thing does the author wish to see the nature and the sense of the northern European traditions by analogy to explanatory material considered insertions from abroad.

§ 2. Human and Tree. Allegory in the Havamal.

The Germanic world brought the comparison of human and plant to the most various development. Even apart for that mythical embodiment, it had been alive in our poetry from time immemorial. As Schiller recently called Wallenstein, abandoned by his followers, a tree that had shed its leaves, an old Norwegian writer of dictums whose sayings were later placed in the mouth of Odin had, for example, already said: the tree which stands alone in the village dies off and neither foliage nor bark keeps it warm in the future; so is the man whom nobody loves, why should he live longer?⁴

§ 3. Anthropogonic Myth of Askr and Embla.

Centuries before this little piece of folk wisdom received its poetic garb, the well-known anthropogonic myth of Askr and Embla may have arisen. It is though — I am deducing this on psychological grounds — impossible that it first arose in the form presented to us, but rather we possess it in a form which seems to have only been the result of several transformations in the mouth of the poets. How the original form sounded, we will understand when we draw comparison with the still simpler form of the corresponding myths with other peoples.

As is well-known, one of the Iranian creation myths from which the cosmogony of the Bundahishn is compiled has the first human couple Mashya and Mashyana grow up out of the ground in the form of a rhubarb plant (rheum ribes). They originally made up an undivided whole and produced leaves; in the middle they formed a stem, but above they embraced in such a way that the hands (branches) of the one were slung about the ears of the other. Only later were they separated from one another. Into these bodies Ahura Mazda poured the previously prepared soul and they grew into human forms, while that gleam of spiritual wisdom made the breakthrough which announced the soul⁵. This anthropogony⁶, known to neither the Avesta, nor the old sources used by Firdosi, made nonetheless claims to high antiquity to the extent it still placed before the eyes quite unchanged that earliest stage of experience according to which humans and plants were of the same nature, and directly merged together. A quite similar idea happens with the Prhygians, who were by all appearances related to the Iranians, in the current of Sangarius. For them the Korybantes were considered the first humans; the sun shone on them first when they sprouted up like trees (δενδροφυείς)⁷. We do not know how the rationalism of a later time laid out in this case the transition of the tree into the human form expressed in the myth. According to the Sioux, who like the Caribs and Antilles Indians likewise had the progenitors arise in the beginning as two trees, these stood for many generations with their feet fastened in the ground until a large snake gnawed them at the roots, after which they could walk away as humans⁸. Corresponding to these examples, the Germanic myth will also have had the oldest ancestors emerge to begin with not from dead wood, but rather from living trees sprouting from the earth(one with a male name and one with a female designation); later it then underwent a transformation for the motivation of the free mobility of the human in that three powerful and loving gods found on the beach two trees (Askr and Elmja(?), ash and elm (?)) driven across the sea by the waves to land, and they filled the still fateless with spirit, speech, blood, and blossoming colour. The animated trees Askr and Elmja (? fem. for elm tree) were the progenitors of all humans. This explanation is preserved for us only in a second reshaping in which the name of the female progenitor, which glides over the tongue with difficulty, was made pronounceable through metathesis and thus was changed into the more familiar Embla (from Emla = amlja the hard-working)⁹. Certain metaphors familiar to Skaldic poetry would turn us away from the primitive standpoint which is assumed by us for the basic form of this creation myth, that is, until almost to the threshold of real belief in the identity of human and plant, if its direct connection with the poetry of nature were not very doubtful¹⁰.

§ 4. The Tree Treated as Person.

When the anthropogonic myth of the northern Germans touches on the view “the human is like a tree”, the inverse comparison “the tree is like a human” adheres no less deeply to the folk beliefs of both the Scandinavian and the German tribes to whom the Slavic and Finnish neighbours are connected. Already on the lowest steps this idea shows itself in various forms, almost everywhere though — where it appears — it has already abandoned the standpoint of pure identity and receives as addition the assumption of a being indeed similar to the human, but mysterious and supernatural. Next it comes to that original standpoint that the human treats and talks to the tree itself entirely as a personality standing equal or superior to him, gifted with individually defined character and human ethos. In Westphalia you announce to the trees the death of the head of the household in that you shake them and say, “the host is dead”¹¹. The Moravian farmer’s wife strokes the fruit tree with her hands sticky from preparing the Christmas dough and says, “Little tree bring much fruit”¹². You leap and dance on the night of New Year’s Eve around the fruit trees and call out:

Freue ju Böme [Joy to the trees]

Nüjår is kômen! [New Year has come!]

Dit Jår ne Kâre vull, [That year not a cart full,]

Up et Jår en Wagen vull! [In this year a wagon full!]¹³

Between Eslöv and Sallerup in Harjagers Härad in Sweden there was still found in 1624 a grove which a giant maiden was supposed to have sown; in it there was an oak, the Gylde [golden] oak, in which in olden times much spookiness was felt. Anyone who walked past in any way greeted the tree respectfully with “Good morning, Gylde!” or “Good evening, Gylde!”¹⁴ To all appearances what the Tyrolean said of the elder tree rested on former custom: “the elder is such a noble tree that you should take your hat off before it”¹⁵. The woodcutters in Oberpfalz talk of the forest trees as if of people; when the wind draws through the treetops, “they bend and begin to speak”; the trees “understand each other”. The tree “sings” when the air passes through its treetop; only reluctantly “does it leave its life”; under the axe blow it “sighs”, falling to ground it “groans”. A forester was arguing with the lord of the forest over which of two beautiful trees before them should be felled. Then both trees bent back and forth sighing. “Who sighed?”, the lord called out. But there was nobody there who answered. They took off from there in fear and the glorious trees remained spared. Even now the woodcutters ask the beautiful healthy tree for forgiveness before they “take the life” from it¹⁶.

§ 5. The Elder Mother, the Ash Woman & their Kin.

Trogill Arnkiel, North Schleswig born and bred and pastor in Apenrade, told in 1703 that in his youth (as he frequently heard and saw) nobody dared to prune uninhibitedly an elder tree, but where they had to prune it (i.e. lop the branches), they tended to give this prayer with bent knee, bared head, and clasped hands: “Mrs Elder give me some of your wood, for I want to give you something of mine too when it grows in the forest.”¹⁷

The truth of this tale is substantiated by a record from Denmark of the year 1722: “Paganismo ortum debet superstitio, sambucum non esse exscindendum, nisi prius rogata permissione his verbis: mater sambuci, mater sambuci permitte mihi tuam caedere silvam” [The superstition must have arisen from paganism that an elder should not be cut down without first asking permission in these words: mother of the elder, mother of the elder, allow me to cut down your wood]¹⁸. The Danish name of the addressed being is Hyldemoer, it is also mentioned elsewhere that you must speak three times in a row a formula corresponding almost word for word to Arnkiel’s before break anything off the elder tree¹⁹. In Schonen they speak likewise of the Hyllefroa (elder woman), in Ljunitshärad in the same way of the Askafroa(ash woman). On Ash Wednesday morning (askons dag morgon, this time was chosen only because of the accidental consonance with ask [ash]) the old people made an offering to Askafroa in that before sunrise (for then the spirits are active) they poured water over the roots of the tree with the words: nu offrar jag, så gör du oss ingen skada. Now I make an offering, do us no harm! Anyone who damaged or fouled an elder tree received an illness called Hylleskål, which you defended against by pouring milk over the roots of the tree²⁰, i.e. made good the committed error by reverential feeding of the name incorporated in the tree. An Ellefru (alder woman) who lived in the alder tree was also known to the Danes²¹. In the Småland territory of Värend, the being in certain deciduous trees corresponding to the elder woman and the ash woman was called Löfviska²².

In the majority of these examples, the daemon revered with religious awe also appeared as the tree itself endowed with thought and senses; the tree spirit stood in relation to the wood no differently than the human spirit to the human body. The tree and tree spirit also still formed a closed unity where it is told of the elder tree on a Danish farm which often went walking at dusk and looked through the window when the children were alone in the room²³. This tale is the simple reflection of the deep fear which superstitiously raised children felt before any tree as a ghostly being.

§ 6. Lower Lithuanian Forest Spirits.

The belief that tree filled with its spirit can harm (see above the Askafroa) also recurs elsewhere. Between 1563–1570 the Revisor of Lower Lithuania, Jacub Laszkowski, endeavoured to dissuade the Samogitians, who were still strongly caught up in heathen views, from their superstition.

“Jussi autem a Lascovia arbores exscindere, invitissimi id, nec prius quam ipsemet inchoaret fecerunt. Deos enim nemora incolere persuasum habent. Tum unus inter alios percontari, num etiam decorticare arbores liceret. Annuente praefecto aliquot magno nisu haec repetens decorticavit: Vos me meis anseribus, gallisque gallinaceis spoliastis; proinde et ego nudas vos faciam. Credebat enim demens deos rei suae familiari perniciosos intra arbores et cortices latere.”

[But when I was ordered to cut down trees with the Lascovians, they did it most unwillingly, and did not do so before he himself had begun. For they are convinced that the gods inhabit the trees. Then one of the others asked whether it was also permissible to strip the trees. The leader nodding his head and repeating these words, with great effort stripped them: You have robbed me of my geese and chickens; therefore I will also make you naked. For the madman believed that the destructive gods of his household lurked within the trees and bark.]²⁴

§ 7. Tree, Human Body, and Sickness Daemons

Aremarkable French custom from the vicinity of the Pyrenees unlocks for us the understanding of this Lithuanian belief.

Lorsque les habitants du canton de Labruguière (Montagne noire) ont un animal malade de quelque plaie envahie par les vers, ils se rendent dans la campagne auprès d’un pied de yèble, Sambucas ebulus, et tordant une poignée de cette plante dans leurs mains, ils lui font un grand salut et lui adressent les paroles suivantes en patois: “Adiù siès, mousu l’aoûssier, sé né trases pas lous bers de moun berbenier, vous coupi la cambo, maï lou pey.” Ce qui veut dire: “Bonjour monsieur le yèble, si vous ne sortez pas le vers de l’endroit où ils sont, je vous coupe la jambe et le pied.” Cette menace effectuée, la guerison est assurée ou peu s’en faut.

[When the inhabitants of the canton of Labruguière (Black Mountain) have an animal sick with some wound infected by worms, they go into the countryside to a dwarf elder plant, Sambucas ebulus, and twist a handful of this plant in their hands , they give him a big salute and address it with the following words in patois: “Adiù siès, mousu l’aoûssier, sé ne trases pas lous bers de moun berbenier, vous coupei la cambo, maï lou pey.” Which means: “Hello mister dwarf elder, if you don’t get the worms out from where they are, I’ll cut off your leg and your foot.” This threat carried out, the cure is assured or almost.]²⁵

Thus goes de Nore’s information. To the Askafroa, to the Lower Lithuanian tree daemons, to Monsier le yèble were ascribed the power to harm humans and animals. This happened — as the French report teaches us in connection with the Lithuanian — according to folk belief by means of insects of diverse form and colour which have their residence in and under the bark, trunk, and roots of the trees and herbs. You throw these worms namely together with the evil spirits in worm form which according to an ancient idea already developed with the Indians in the Atharvaveda and in the Grihyasutras quite similarly to among the Germans were thought to crawl as butterflies, caterpillars, ringworms, toads, etc. into the human or animal body and to bring forth lingering as parasites in it the most various sicknesses (e.g. tuberculosis, headaches, stomach cramps, toothache, especially gnawing, boring, and stabbing pains, etc.)²⁶. The belief in this worm rests on a quite simple psychological process and also now still frequently reproduces itself in moments in the feverish fantasies of otherwise quite educated sick people. From the wild forest, it was thought, these spirits which were frequently called elves²⁷ came to humans and cattle²⁸. The tree whose bark accommodates them sends them out either from delight in harming or to be rid of them because they are wreaking havoc in its own body, like in the guts of humans.

As the tree or tree spirit sends the sickness producing spiritual vermin (elves, etc.)²⁹, so too can it take them back again. Hence you walked, for example, with a toothache around a pear tree to the right and embraced it with the words:

Pear tree, I charge you,

Three worms, which are stabbing me,

The one is gray,

The other is blue,

The third is red,

I would like to wish they were all three dead.

This ceremony was called “accusing” the tree³⁰. Other plants than trees were also under suspicion of establishing through their will worms in animal organisms. Thus, for example, the Bohemian superstition prescribes seeking a thistlein the field, placing a stone and a clod of topsoil on it, and saying:

Little thistle, little thistle

I am not setting your head free sooner

So long as you do not set free the worms of the cow

(the horse, etc.)³¹

The once present idea of the lingering of the sickness spirits in the tree adhered so much that you also retained it where these daemons were not thought of in the form of worms, but rather in the form of other animals or humans. Here too it is commonly the tree which calls forth epidemics through its emanations, reestablishing health through its recalling. Instructive in this respect is a song which Russian women sing when there is an epidemic in that they draw furrows around the village with a plough which defend against the evil spirits:

From the ocean, from the deep sea

Twelve girls have come;

They take their path — it was not a small one —

To the steep heights, up to the mountains,

To the three old elder trees.

These twelve girls, who are named in many forms of spells directed against them “the evil shakers”, or “daughters of Herod”, or individually with the names of particular illnesses, being therefore personifications of the causes of the sickness³², are now introduced talking:

Make ready the white oaken table,

Sharpen the knife of steel,

Make hot the boiling kettles,

Split, bore through to death

Every life under heaven.

The elder trees give their agreement to the wish of the twelve sisters; all living beings are doomed to die.

In these boiling kettles

Burns with unextinguishable fire

Every life under heaven.

But the three elder trees are seized by pity:

Round about the boiling kettles

Stand the old elders.

The old elders sing,

They sing of life, they sing of death,

They sing of the whole human race,

The old elders impart

To the whole world long life;

But to the other, to the bad death,

The old elders appoint

A long and distant journey.

The old elders promise

A settled life

To the entire race of humanity.³³

If the tree spirit does not voluntarily call the sickness causing elves back, then you make use of magical words and symbolic actions, the so-called by us sympathetic cures which comprise banishing the harmful spirits under a stone or into the waste land, advising a bird to take them with it, or otherwise dispelling them, but best of all transferring them to a tree or a plant since they indeed belong to such things and emanate from such things³⁴; or where this last idea does not reign anymore, the selfishness eternally active in humanity moved to divert the pains of one’s own body to a foreign one (that of the plant daemon). A spell accompanied by the smoking of consecrated herbs and rose petals in Bohemia sounded:

I curse you with sore limbs,

Burning pain, leg pain

In the deep forest,

In the tall oak,

In the standing wood

And in the lying.

There you will grapple and bump

And give this person (name) rest.³⁵

In Mecklenburg the ill person says at the waning moon, addressing the worms:

You should go with me into the wood,

There stands a little pond cold and proud,

In it I will immerse

And drown you!³⁶

In Bohemia the blesser with a view to removal of the “devouring worms in the eyes” holds a bundle of 29 ears of summer corn to the sick eye and says: “You (name) have devouring worms in the eyes. I will not let them there, I will conjure them out. Come you worms into these ears.”³⁷ In accord is the widespread custom, with several modifications, of having the fever transferred into grains (barley, buckwheat, etc.) through touching with the body of the ill person, and then sowing them; when they rot in the earth, then the tormenting spirit dies with them, when they rise and sprout into stalks, then it adheres to them and they tremble in calm air constantly in a feverish shivering³⁸. Someone who suffers from vertigo runs after sunset three times naked about a field of flax, then the flax receives the vertigo³⁹.

When in Masuren the krazno lutki (fat people), little red worms, eat into the guts to someone’s lungs, you cut about 40 pairs of twigs from nine different woods (juniper, alder, birch, etc.) — these must though be cut off under a little branchso that they form with it the shape of a little hook — you pour over the ill person with a bucket warm water scooped from a flowing rivulet at falling light and throw the twigs in pairs into it. Then you wash the patient (especially the ears, nostrils, armpits, and hollows of the knees) and then look for how many twigs float on top of the water, and how many sink to the bottom. The former shows the number of krazno lutki which have already left the body of the patient (i.e. have gone into the twigs), the latter corresponds to the number of plaguing spirits still lingering in the flesh and bones of the unfortunate person⁴⁰. The procedure is repeated on three Thursdays until all the fat people are gone from the body, or the incurability exposes itself. A quite similar process is used with three branches of the cherry tree broken into 81 small pieces in order to recognise whether someone is infected with “white people” (biale ludzie) in the skin, blood, veins, and joints. When all the pieces remain floating, then the blessed person is free of white people, when a portion sink, then he is infected with them to the degree given by the proportion to the floating pieces⁴¹.

Here is placed amongst others the custom from Vorarlberg for driving out Tschüta lice (i.e. eczema, herpes) from a sick animal, even if the piece is distant. At sunset you break off three shootsfrom the elder stand under safekeeping for the named animal which you desire to help (by that, as one obviously imagines, the plague spirits are transferred into the shoots), after that you bind them together and hang them in the chimney or otherwise in smoke; thus as the shoots quickly dry out, the Tschüta lice will also go away⁴². From this and similar customs it may well be concluded that the idea of the ghostly worms in the sick human body has again worked backwards on the idea of the worm residing in the tree or other plant bodies. Not only under the tree, or under its bark, but rather (trichina-like) in its interior was thought now to be allocated suchlike to the elves that had their seat in the wood of every branch, as otherwise in the flesh and bones of humans. The above spells are meant to entice them back into such a branch. It is possible that the knots of the limb attachmentswere held to be signs of the existence of an elf or an elven couple (male and female elf, like male and female worm); at least the deformities and conspicuous gnarls shall have originated from the old elves who crept into the tree and then deformed⁴³. At Potsdam they are called Alfloddern [elf scruffs] and cause, if you pass under them, a headache⁴⁴. (The elf leaps down from it onto the head of the person.) In the human body the tumours, warts, and corns correspond primarily to these gnarls and outgrowths because these betray the existence of a spirit; they are also supposedly to be healed by transfer to another human, to animals and trees, through rainwater which has collected on a tombstone, etc.⁴⁵

It corresponds to the preceding discussion that the conjuror sometimes orders the spirit to sit on the branch of the tree, sometimes seeks to transfer it bodily into the interior of the tree trunk: “Branch I bend you, fever now avoid me!” (Myth.¹ CXL, XXVI), or “Elder tree branch rise up, St Anthony’s fire set yourself on it!” (Myth.² 1122), or shaking the elder tree while you have a fever, “Elder! Elder! Elder! The cold is crawling on me; if it will leave me, then it will crawl onto you!” (Wuttke, § 488. Grohmann, Abergl. 164, 1153), or: “Good evening Mr Lilac! Here I bring my fever!”, or early in the morning tying three knots in the branch of an old willow tree: “Good morning, oldie, I gift you the coldie; good morning, oldie!” (Myth.² 1123). Already somewhat more complicated, therefore referring back to older simpler forms, is the remedy reported by Plinius Valerianus (or Siberius, a Gaul of the 4^th century) for the four day fever:

Panem et salem in linteo de lyco (read: deliculo) liget et circa arborem licio alliget et juret ter per panem et salem: “Crastino mihi hospites venturi sunt, suscipite illos.” Hoc ter dicat.

[He ties the bread and salt in a fine cloth and ties it around a tree and swears three times over the bread and salt: “Tomorrow guests will come to me, receive them.” Let him say this three times.]

Plin. Valer. III. 6. p. 191^b.

The guests are the plague spirits; the sick person, who does not want to have them, brings them to the tree along with bread and salt so that it feeds them. For that cf. Frischbier, Hexenspruch, p. 53, 3, where the person sick with fever bears a coin and a piece of bread in a rag on the other side nine boundaries under the a stone (cf. above the note on p. ) and says:

Boundary, boundary, I blame you

Cold and heat torment me,

The first bird which flies over

Takes it under its flight.

And with that again the saying at ibid. 4 which teaches that the sickness spirit will transfer to the tree at times only so that it will deliver it to a bird for carrying away into the distance:

Tree, tree, I shake you,

I bring you that cold fever.

The first bird which flies over,

So that it might get that fever.

Over the entire idea, see Kuhn, Zs. f. vgl. Sprachf. XIII. 73, which not only cites analogies from the Vedas and the Eddas, but also recalls the custom in the Altmark that the headache sufferer first binds a thread three times about their head, then hangs it in the form of a noose on a tree. When a bird flies through, it takes the headache with it. A gout sufferer shall enter a forest before daybreak, there drop three drops of his blood (full of the invisible plague spirits) in the split in a young spruce and after the opening is closed up with wax from virgin honey, calling out loudly: “Good morning, Mrs Spruce, there I bring you the gout! What I have borne year and day, you shall bear your life long!”⁴⁶Anyone who wants to free someone of toothache walks backwards from the room top an elder bush and says three times:

Dear elder bush

Lend me a crack

Which I will bring back to you!

Meanwhile, turning around, he makes two cuts lying next to each other and peels the bark for an inch, but so that it remains if possible untorn united under the branch, cuts a splinter from the wood laid bare and carries it again walking backwards to the room. The suffering person there scratches his gums with the green splinter until they are bloody (with the blood taking the toothache causing spirit up into it). Then the conjuror takes it always walking backwards again to the elder tree, presses it into the cut, places the bark as it was and fastens it with a piece of string so that the cut grows together all the sooner. Then some more murmuring of incomprehensible words and the toothache is gone⁴⁷. In Denmark, with toothache you take a twig of elder in the mouth and then stick it in the wall with the words: “Go away evil spirit.”⁴⁸

It is now surely clear, how all the many diverse cures which otherwise derive from a plucking of the sickness into the tree (even the plague is wedged as a butterfly into the tree), or from a knotting or binding in branches are traced back without exception to one and the same basic idea⁴⁹.

Of the numerous individual formulations and offshoots of the idea presented, I want to just still mention one here which points anew quite clearly to the parallelism of the tree and the human body which exists in folk beliefs. Obviously according to its form it is a swelling protruding piece of flesh with humans, the muscle, amongst Hellenes, Romans and Germans mouse, little mouse, OHG mûs, Greek μυ̃ς, Latin musculus. The same word also applies to animals. Thus in Augsburg an especially treasured part of the beef carcass is called Herrenmaus [lord mouse]. But it was certainly once thought that this place was also really filled by a spirit-like being in mouse form. In many sagas the soul residing in the human body slips in mouse form from the mouth and leaves the body temporarily or forever⁵⁰. Witches, house spirits, forest spirits, and other daemons also assume the form of mouse⁵¹. Caspar Peucer, Melanchthon’s son-in-law was probably though induced by a general view of his time to the conviction and claim that he himself saw with a possessed woman the devil in the shape of a mouse running back and forth under the skin⁵². When therefore the superstition assures certain inexplicable and morbid swellings of the body with humans and cattle arise because a field mouse has run over it, this idea will originally have meant a slipping in and says nothing else but that this tumour was produced similarly to warts and other outgrowths by a ghostly parasite and indeed one in the shape of a mouse. Under this assumption it is then perfectly clear why, in order to lift any sickness, a living field mouse is pegged to an oak, elm, or ash tree (pollard ash, shrew ash) and the view was, touched with a branch of this tree, the tumour will immediately stop⁵³. Naturally the ghostly mouse was thought to have returned to the tree. You become aware here of distinctly, however, of how by analogy and interplay of ideas, after the insects residing in the tree had been identified with the presumably pain inducing worms, now too on the other hand the idea expanded to worms or vermin of another sort was transferred backwards from the sickness spirits to the tree as original residence of them and hence the belief in the healing by pegged field mice arose. Almost everywhere with that sort of healing attempt the tree spirit is called on, and distinguished from the sickness bringing spirits, the elves. Not thus the unconscious growth, but rather the tree thought to be feeling and thinking, the tree approaching full anthropomorphism accommodates, dispatches, and receives back the harmful spirit-like worms⁵⁴. That testimony of Laszkowski over the beliefs of the Lower Lithuanians throws, as it appears, the tree spirits and the elves into one. The first the incensed new convert wanted to kill or harm in that he peeled the bark from the tree(ego vos nudas faciam); but under the little gods harmful to the stock of cattle, who are hidden “intra arbores et cortices”, both the tree soul holding the tree to be fulfilling its body under the bark as though under its skin, which releases the plague spirits on animals and humans, and the “evil things” populating the body of the tree spirit and creeping about in its body are merged together in the particulars of the ideas of reporters who are hardly precisely initiated in them⁵⁵. The correctness of this claim will be explained by the investigations to be made in the following pages which are dedicated to proving how explained in detail the folk belief further describes the analogy of the tree body with the human body.

§ 8. Penalties for Tree Debarkers

Apart from everything else, Laszkowski’s information proves that with one folk of Lithuanian extraction it was considered a sacrilege to rob sacred trees of bark because by that daemons residing in them would be harmed; anyone who did this nevertheless expected an enormous disadvantage for themselves. This now agrees precisely with the ban on tree debarking in the ancient customary laws of the German mark communities which threatened terrible punishments for such forest sacrilege. From the records of legal customs, Jacob Grimm R. A. 519 ff. collated many examples, yet more of them are published here and there in his great collection of legal customs; they resemble each other and it suffices to lift out one or another. “Nobody shall peel bark from trees in the mark, anyone who does shall have his navel cut from his belly and it nailed to the tree and that very tree debarker shall be led around the tree for so long as until his entrails are all wound from his belly onto the tree.” (Oberursel custom.) If someone debarks a willow tree, the damage shall be covered with his entrails; if he can get over that, the tree too can get over it. (Wendhage farmers’ law.) Someone who damages a fruit-bearing tree shall be bound with his entrails cut from his belly around the damage and will be healed with it. If someone cuts down a fruit-bearing tree and conceals the stump in a thief-like way, his right hand shall be bound to his back and his genitals nailed to the trunk and an axe put in his left hand to liberate himself with. (Schaumburg old common law.) We have to my knowledge no evidence for this barbaric law ever being put into use in Germany in the historical period. The guilty could save their neck with a small sum of money⁵⁶.

An all the more remarkable testimony for the truth of the poet’s words that “rights and laws” long since outdated spread like an eternal sickness, is offered hence amongst other things by the record of the Holt-ting [wood parliament?] at Harenberg not far from Blumenau and Limmer by Hanover on 13^th November 1720. Even at the time the assessor of the wood court assembling under the lord of Holle as heirs and wood counts explained: question 22 — when one was adjudged who a young oak or beech tree (Heister, ndd. hêster) whitened (witjede from witjen, make white, peel), how highly should they be punished? Answer: you shall cut the entrails of the culprit from their body and tie them to it and chase him around the tree until it is wound up. Question 23 — Thus one is adjudged who hews the poll (tree top, head⁵⁷) from a healthy young oak or beech, how highly shall they be punished? Answer: if the young oak or beech were healthy, the head of the culprit shall be hewed off in return. Question 24 — if someone hews a boundary tree, how highly shall they be punished? Answer: you shall hew the culprit’s head for the trunk⁵⁸. Apparently these fearsome threats of punishment only then had sense when you assume at the time when they first expressed that the tree top portrayed the head, the covering bark the skin, the enveloping bast the entrails of the tree as an animated human-like feeling being. Someone who hewed teh crown, tore the bark and bast of the living tree, robbed the tree spirit of the limbs most necessary for life. Cf. above the Samogitians of Laszkowski and below in Chapter II the moss women in Orlagau. According to the principal of eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, the person violating the law should make good with the corresponding part of their body to that which they have sinned against; they should replace as it were the estranged limbs with their own. At a certain time such threatened punishments must have been bitterly serious also in Germany, though these periods also perhaps may have lain far back before the time of the conversion to Christianity. In remote stretches of the West, e.g. in Ireland, they continued to last though into the eleventh century, in the heathen lands of the East into the thirteenth century. What we encounter in our records of customs only as a legal form propagated by tradition, hardly performed in the practice, was there still a piece of living tradition.

When the Teutonic Knights had barely begun the conquest of Prussia, one of their most stubborn opponents, the chieftain Pipin was delivered into their hands in the year 1231 by his own uncle. “Quem deleto castro suo totaliter peremerunt. Ventrem namque ipsius circa umbilicum aperire fecerunt et umbilicum arbori affixerunt et per circuitum arboris currere vi praeceperunt, quousque penitus evisceratus fuit et sic qui multos Christianos impie necaverat crudeliter fuit interemptus.” [Whom they utterly destroyed in their castle. For they caused his belly to be opened about the navel, and fastened the navel to a tree, and ordered him to run round the tree by force, until he was completely eviscerated, and thus he who had impiously killed many Christians was cruelly slain.] Thus it is told according to a source almost contemporaneous with the events by the elder chronicle of Olivia p. 21 (Script. Rer. Prussic. ed. Hirsch, Strehlke, Töppen I. 677). Although the real behaviour of the Teutonic Knights in no way corresponded absolutely with the ideal image with which J. Voigt’s famous portrayal has accustomed the reading world, such a barbaric procedure on their part would have to appear incomprehensible if it did not have a quite special cause; the astonishment diminishes as soon as we make space for the obvious presumption that the German lords conferred on their opponent that form of death which he had previously given to one or more of their subjects. When you recall that sacred trees which no Christian was permitted to approach (Adam. Brem. IV. 18) always first became with the peoples of Latvian origin noticeable to foreigners as the most obvious expression of their cult so that consequently precisely these had to be the next victims of the pious conversion zeal of the Christians, it is easy to see how the Prussian chief for his part believed he had to punish impudent intruders for a sacrilege committed against a sacred tree. If the Germans then saw this again as nothing but a raw outburst of blood-thirsty hate and treated it accordingly, then this revealing of the true motives gives us only further evidence for the sad truth that many deeds exciting horror to our feelings have their source in the mutual inability to put oneself in the mental world of the opponent. Incidentally the barbaric character of the punishment must not lead us to assume the cultural state of the old Prussians to be all too low, they stood (especially in economic respect, as the Neumann vocabulary teaches) barely lower than their Christian neighbours in Poland and if the above report of Laszkowski also makes the disembowelling in Latvian-Prussian custom comprehensible as at first retribution for tree peeling, the circumstance that the missionaries tended to hew sacred trees rather with the axe makes me think that probably even in 1231 that proceeding for any sort of injury to the consecrated grove and the trunks treated with religious reverence may have been brought into use, and in the later course of the two hundred year religious war which commenced with the arrival of the Germans it was even extended with increasing bitterness in such cases to Christians when they had not damaged any special tree sanctuary⁵⁹. Thus the following procedure becomes understandable. In January 1345 the heathen Lithuanian king appeared with his army before Riga. “Festinans ad transitum occurrit ei juvenis mercator nihil sciens de guerris; quem apprehenderunt et ligaverunt pagani, ventrem ejus sciderunt et circumducunt eum arbori, donec intestina ejus omnia extraheret, deposueruntque eum de trunco, sanguinem ejus sacrificando in quo delectabantur exultantes” [Hastening to the crossing [Dwina bridge which led to the city] they met a young merchant who knew nothing of wars; whom the pagans seized and bound, they cut open his belly, and tied him round the tree, until all his bowels were drawn out, and they took him down from the stake, sacrificing his blood in which they delighted in rejoicing]. (Wigand Marburg. cap. 32. Lat. Ausz. Scr. Rer. Prussic. II. 505). This testimony also proves that here it is about a religious action, not a profane punishment or blatant cruelty; and hitting on just the same point is further evidence offered by an event from the time around 1236. Pope Gregory IX spoke namely in 1238 in a bull about the persecution of the newly converted in Tavastland by the Finnish heathens as follows: the latter killed the baptised children, “quosdam adultos extractis ab eis primo visceribus daemonibus immolant et alios usque ad amissionem spiritus arborem circuire compellunt” [some of the adults, having first having their entrails drawn from them, have them sacrificed to the demons, and force others to circle the tree until they lose their spirits]⁶⁰. Such a bloody ceremony may surely be described by the Christians as a sacrifice to the devil, even if it were also according to the view of the heathens an expiation for their offended gods. Among the latter we will also in this case think at first of those of the Hyldemoer, Aska froa, etc. to comparative tree nymphs which the Finns revered under the name Kati, puidem emuu (Kati? tree mother), Tuometar (from tuomi bird cherry), Katajatar (from kataja juniper), Hongatar (from honka fir), Pihlajatar (from pihlaja rowan) as tenders and protectors of the forest trees⁶¹, and to whom indeed in any sacred grove one or several were present. It leads us deep into the fresh forest life of prehistory when these divinities — which according to note on page were indubitably also thought dangerous as humans and animals — were on the other hand called to look after the herds of livestock going into the forest meadows and to afford them in bountiful measure foliage as feed⁶².

[to be continued...]

1That the primitive human still little heeds the difference of spirit and body, ranks himself on the same level as his neighbouring creatures, attributes souls and resurrection in the hereafter not only to humans, animals, and plants, but also to stones and household utensils, traces his family tree back to animals with pride, etc. is explained well by A. Bastian in Steinthal’s Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie V, 153.

2Good and correct remarks about this subject are made by B. Schmidt in his nice essay over Calderon’s treatment of antique myths in the Rhein. Museum X, 1856, p. 341: “That belief [in the metamorphosis of humans into plants] is rooted absolutely in a feeling of the old peoples, which is completely foreign to the newer age, in its religious sympathy with nature. By virtue of this they felt that the plants possessed spirits like stone and water as individuals, by comparison the human also in his spiritual and moral existence as a figure of nature, thus brought for their consideration the natural life and the life of humans into a relationship of more internal similarity and comfortable vicinity and therefore also saw the limits between the one and the others as easily crossable.”

3[Tr.: anthropogonic = relating to the origin and development of humans.]

4Havamal 50. Cf. Egilson, lex. poet. p. 915, who incidentally wants to understand Þorpi á [in the village] differently as in colli [on the hill].

5See Bundehesch Cap. 15. Windischmann, Zoroastr. Studien p. 213.

6See Spiegel, Eranische Altertumskunde I, 457, 473 fgg.

7Pindar in Hippolyt., Philos. p. 96 Miller.

8Catlin, Lettres and notes on the manners customs and conditions of the North-America Indians, 2^nd Edn. II, 289. Other tribal myths of the Indians, e.g. those of the Tamanaks in Guyana who had the progenitors spring from the kernels of the Mauritius palm (Ausland 1872, p. 372), seem by the way the separation of the protoplasts born as trees followed from the womb of the earth to explain no more than the Phrygian myth in Pindar.

9Völuspá Str. 17 fgg. Cf. Uhland, Schriften z. Gesch. d. Dichtung und Sage VI, 189.

10In the Old Norwegian and Old Icelandic Skaldic poetry, the man is namely described by all masculine tree names (viđr, meiđr tree, hylnr, plane tree, askr ash, reynir rowan), the woman by all feminine tree names (björk, lind, eik, birch, lime, oak, etc.) and more specifically determined by the addition of a kenning. Expressions like elmeiđr fetilþèlar tree of the tower of swords, i.e. hero, could very well derive from the image of the tree holding its position in the storm and became the cause for other constructions. According to Snorri’s explanation, which agrees with the artificial character of that poetic genre (Skáldskaparm. 31. 47.), however, the turn of phrase in question shall have, instead of being rooted originally in simple nature poetry, been the product of a technical playing around. Only a chronological investigation of the preserved remains of skaldic poetry could possibly decide the question.

11Cf. A. Kuhn, Westfäl. Sagen II, 52.

12V. Grohmann, Aberglaube aus Böhmen, p. 87.

13K. Seifart, Hildesheim. Sag. II, 137.

14Hyltén-Cavallius, Värend och Virdarne. Stockholm 1863. I, 36.

15Zingerle, Sitten, Bräuche und Meinungen des Tiroler Volkes. 2^nd Edn., p. 105, 897. Cf. “Vörm höllerkenstrûk maut men ‘n haut afniämen” [Before the elder tree you may take off a hat]. Kuhn, Westf. Sag. II, 189, 533.

16Schönwerth, aus der Oberpfalz II, 335. Bavaria II, 234. It is only to be asked whether Schönwerth’s report, originating from Neuenhammer, is entirelyunembellished. Cf. the other pieces described with Neuenhammer in the meritorious collection.

17Trog. Arnkiel, außführliche Eröffnung etc. Vol. I. Cimbrische Heydenreligion. Hamburg 1703. p. 179.

18Thiele, Danske Folkesagn. 1^st Edn. III, 119–120. According to Grimm, Myth.¹ CXVI.

19J. Boesens, Beskriv. over Helsingöer, p. 23. In Thiele, Danmarks Folkesagn, 2^nd Edn., II, 283.

20Hyltén-Cavallius, Värend och Virdarne I, 310. Cf. Pehr Lovén, Dissert. de Gothungia. Londini Gothorum 1745, p. 20: Hyllfruen, quam effuso lacte placavit incolarum vesania [Elder women, with which he pacified the fury of the inhabitants by spilling milk].

21S.v. Grundtvig, Gamle Danske Minder i Folkemunde I, 1854, p. 15.

22Hyltén-Cavallius, loc. cit.

23J. M. Thiele, Danmarks Folkesagn. Copenhagen 1843. D. II. p. 283.

24Laszkowski in Johann Lasitius de diis Samagitarum 46 (p. 10 Mannhardt).

25De Nore, coutumes mythes et traditions des provinces de France, p. 102.

26Cf. Myth.² 1109, 1115, 1122, 1184. Kuhn, Ztschr. f. vgl. Sprachf. XIII, 63–74, 135–151. Töppen, Abergl. a. Masuren² 22–28. Grohmann, Abergl. aus Böhmen I, 447 fgg. 153. Wuttke, Abergl.² § 231, p. 161. Like of moths and caaterpillars in the head, one speaks of finger worm, flesh worm, leg worm, marrow worm, hair worm (gout), etc. In an Old Saxon blessing, the worm nesso (nhd. Nösch, running gout) is conjured with its 9 young to drain from flesh and skin of the lame horse; a horse sickness is called the blowing worm, etc. (Myth.² 1115. Müllenhoff and Scherer, Denkm. IV. 5, p. 8, 267). Even in Palestine and probably in the entire Near East, the folk belief ascribes lower body illnesses to consuming worms (S. Ewald, Gesch. d. Volkes Israel, 2^nd Edn. 1858 B. VII, p. 332), just as illnesses are ascribed to evil spirits who take possession of the body as freeloaders. Cf. e.g. the seven devils of which Maria Magdalene was possessed (Mark 16:9). Over Egypt, see Zs. f. d. Myth. IV, 254 fgg. The idea recurs no less with various wild peoples. According to the claims of medicine men with the Mundurucus in Brazil most illnesses arise through a worm which the medicine man removes in that he steams the place of suffering with tobacco smoke and then sucks it. Afterwards he draws a worm from the mouth which, however, is nothing else but the white aerial root of a plant. Globus, 1871, XX, p. 201. The headmen of the Chiquitos in Upper Peru, who are like doctors, also heal the sicknesses through sucking out the suffering part, because they think that they occur through animal spirits which have found their way into the body of the sick person and are gnawing them away from within. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, III, p. 531. The Tahitians ascribe their inner pains to daemons which are in them and are binding their intestines into knots. As a result of a similar belief, the Laplanders under certain circumstances do not like to bind any knots in their clothes. Tyler, Urgesch. d. Menschheit, p. 169.

27Myth.² 1109. Haupt, Zs. f. d. A. IV, 389. Kuhn, Westf. Sag. II, 19 etc.

28Cf. e.g. the zimne ludze (cold people), little animals as large as pinheads come creeping through the forest and bring sickness which betrays itself through blue nails (Töppen, op. cit. 25). Already the sayings of the Atharvaveda count the worms which are in mountains and forests in plants, in animals, and even in the water which has entered our body, the worm which sits in the guts, and in the head, the worm then which lingers in the spine all in one class; they and all their brood are crushed by a magic spell with the power of the millstone of Indra the god of thunder (Kuhn, Ztschr. f. vgl. Sprachf. XIII, 138).

29In the later belief in witches it is not the tree or the tree nymph anymore, but rather a human enchantress who sends out the worms. Here euhemerism spreads, but the old foundations of the idea remain unbroken. Going into the forest, the witch shakes down from the tree the “bad” or “good things”, “flying elves”, “kindly ones”, or “good children”, which are described sometimes as butterflies, sometimes as bumblebees, tadpoles, caterpillars, or other worms, or she digs them out from under the elder in order for them to serve for the bringing forth of sicknesses and tumours with humans and cattle in that she conjures them into skin and bone. As the elves eat away the aspen wood, they feed on the humans for whom they are intended: when the kindly ones have fulfilled their goal, the witch who directed them calls them off again too, she sends them into the forest and buries them under the tree; they are considered to be a fruit from the mixing of the enchantress with the devil. Myth.² 1027.

30Friedrichshagen by Köpenick. Kuhn, Nordd. Sag., p. 441. No. 328. Cf. “Fir tree, I accuse you, the gout is plaguing me awfully.” When you say this three Fridays after one another after sunset, then the fir tree dries and the gout stops. Myth.² 1122. With a similar saying you accuse at Wehlau the ninety nine gout in that you fall to your knees before the spruce and crawl around it three times. Frischbier, Hexenspruch p. 63, 1. The person ill with fever makes a knot (see above p. ) in the branches of a willow and say these words: “Dear willow, I accuse you, seventy seven fevers plague me.” Frischbier, op. cit. 54, 5.

31Grohmann, op. cit. 153, 1107. Cf. from East Prussia: when a cow has worms in wounds, then you snapped the day before the heads off four red flowering thistles in the four cardinal directions and placed a stone in the middle. Wuttke² 409, § 686. Töppen, Abergl. a. Masuren, p. 99.

32Cf. in Götze’s russ. Volksliedern p. 62, Myth² 1107, the nine sisters who torment the human race with fevers when they are released from the hole in the earth in which they lie shackled.

33Orest. Miller, Opuit istoriczeskago obozrjenija Russkoi slovenosti. St Petersburg 1866. I, 10.

34Quite frequently for these thoughts only the general expression is found that the sicknesses are referred to the elves in the wild wood, amidst the bush. Birlinger Volkst. a. Schwaben I, p. 209 & 317 and Myth.¹ CXLIII from Voigt, Quedlinb. Hexenacten: “You elves, to me it is said you can bring the king from the queen and the bird from the nest, you shall not rest nor take a break until you come into the bush so that you do no harm to humans.”

35Grohmann, Abergl. a. Böhmen, p. 158, 1137.

36Struck, Sympathien, p. 27, 14. Probably a mixing with another blessing whereby the worms are banished to a spring.

37Grohmann, Abergl. a. Böhmen, I, 185, 1301.

38Wuttke, op. cit. § 493.

39Wuttke, op. cit. § 489.

40As instructive analogy, heed the proscription with Burchard of Worms (Myth.¹ XXXVII): “Fecisti quod quidam faciunt, dum visitant aliquem infirmum, cum appropinquaverint domui, ubi infirmus decumbit, si invenerint aliquem lapidem juxta jacentem, revolvunt lapidem et requirunt in loco ubi jacebat lapis, si ibi sit aliquid subtus quod vivat, et si invenerint ibi lumbricum aut muscam aut formicam aut aliquid quod se moveat, tunc affirmant aegrotum convalescere; si autem nihil ibi invenerint quod se moveat, dicunt esse moriturum.” [You have done what some people do when they visit a sick person, when they approach the house where the sick person is lying down, if they find a stone lying nearby, they turn over the stone and search in the place where the stone was lying, if there is something under there that lives, and if they find there an earthworm or a fly, or an ant, or something that moves, then they affirm that the sick person will recover; but if they find nothing there that moves, they say that he will die.] You look for whether the insect-like sickness spirits have already returned from the body of the suffering person to under the stone.

41Töppen, Abergl. a. Masuren, p. 24. Thus the report. But will the pieces of wood not float in the water in all circumstances? Cf. Frischbier, Hexenspruch, p. 74–78.

42Vonbun, Beiträge z. D. Mythologie ges. in Churrhatien. Chur 1862, p. 128.

43E. M. Arndt, Märchen und Jugenderinnerungen bei Mannhardt, Germ. Mythenforsch. 476.

44Kuhn, Westfäl. Sag. II, 55, 158. Cf. in straw rope knots which you find in the fields sit poor souls; they are released if you undo the knots. Wuttke, Abergl. § 767.

45Wuttke, op. cit. § 513. Perger, Pflanzensagen 348. Frischbier, Hexenspruch 93. Now the precept also becomes understandable which the Gallic doctor Marcellus already noted down in the 4^th century: “ne inguen ex ulcere aliquo aut vulnere intumescat, surculum anethiin cingulo aut in fascia habeto ligatum in sparto vel quocunque vinculo, quo holus aut obsonium fuerit innexum, septem nodos facies et per singulos nectens nominabis singulas anus viduas et singulas feras et in cruce vel brachio, cujus pars vulnerata fuerit alligabis. Quae si prius facias ante quam nascantur inguina omnem inguinum vel glandularum molestiam prohibebis, si postea dolorem tumoremque sedabis. Inguinibus potenter medebere, si de licio septem nodos facias et ad singulos viduas nomines et supra talum ejus pedis alliges, in cujus parte erunt inguina.” [lest the tumour should swell from any sore or wound, take a sprig of dill in your girdle or in a girdle, and tie it into a rope or in any kind of chain, to which a holly or an obsonium is tied, make seven knots, and by tying each one you shall name each old woman, widow, and each beast, and on the cross or arm, whose part has been wounded you will bind it. If you do these things first, before the swelling has grown, you will prevent all discomfort in the tumour or glands, and if you do them later, you will calm the pain and swelling. You will heal the swellings powerfully, if you make seven knotsof the thread and tie them to each widow's name and above the heel of her foot, on the side on which the swellings will be.] Marcell. Burdigal. ed. Cornar. ch. 32, p. 225. J. Grimm üb. Marcellus p. 24, 90. Kl. Schr. II, 141. The old women named with the making of knots as sorceresses and monsters are the tumour causing sickness spirits (cf. above p. ff. the 12 girls in the Russian spell).

46Ernst Wagner, ABC eines Henneberg. Fiebelschützen Tübingen 1810. p. 229. Myth.¹ CXLV, XLIV.

47Westfalen. Montanus, Volksfeste p. 149.

48Myth.¹ CXVI. 162.

49Anyone who wants to obtain a lively view of the heathen idea about the origin of sickness daemons should not refrain from looking up the Finnish epic Kalevala (German translation by Schiefner, Helsingfors 1852, R XVII. p. 88–95). Even the Finns consider sicknesses to be living spirits of evil nature partly in animal form. (Finger worm, tooth worm, dog, etc.) Castrén, Finn Mythol. p. 173. Schröter, finn. Runen p. 48 ff. Cf. Myth.² 1113. They come partly from the evil Hiisi forest hurdles, from the nice pine treetop, from the rotten fir tree, the swishing spruce (Kalevala XVII. V. 206 ff.). The forest with its forest spirits, the elder especially, are implored to bring them to weaken. (V. 270.) The conjuror captures them in Piru’s (the devil’s) rowan (Zs. f. vgl. Sprachf. XIII, 151) and, if they came from there, into the gorges of the Hiisi forest, into the residence of the pine grove, into the corner of the fir thicket. (V. 384 ff.) But next to that there are yet thousands of other sickness daemons which climb up from the foxhole, the lion’s den, from the womb of the earth, from the sandy desert, from bogs and springs, from battlefields and graves, from bare copper mountains and desolate stretches of sea, from the paths of the wind, from the edges of clouds, from the surroundings of sorcerors, from the realm of the god of death, and each is sent to its place with calling the divine being commanding over the named elements. Entirely the same view as this song from the Kalevala is also expressed in particular by the Bohemian blessings frankly. The Strĭly (stabbing pains) fly thence united with erysipelas and stay in the head, the ears, the teeth. They are accursed. When they are from wind, they should go back to the forest (variety of wind) in order to break wood there in the greatest thickets; when they are from water, they should return again to the water and bind sand in the greatest depths; when they are from the rocks, they they should go again into the rocks and break stones; but they should leave head, ears, and teeth in peace and not torment them anymore. You capture them in a hand full of oats. See Grohmann, Abergl. a. Böhmen p. 158–162. No. 1138, 1143, 1144. — Similar too, the German elves living in trees are only so-to-say a detachment of a larger companionship. It is also instructive to compare some analogous ideas of other foreign primitive peoples. The Karen in South East Asia, who feel shaken by feverish chills when travelling through his malarial forests, believes he feels in his body the raging of the evil Phi, and hurries to place a sacrificial offering on the trunk of the tree under which he last rested, for it is from its swaying tree tops that this tormenting spirit lurking between the leaves fell down on him. Bastian in Zs. f. Völkerps. V, 287. You compare what just the same scholar (Völker des östl. Asiens VI. Vorw. VII.) says about the same topic: “that his fellow man is capable of shaking him into a fever, over that no savage possesses any experience and when he feels himself thus seized by it, he has to expand his closed circle of ideas by the adoption of a helping limb and he tends in the fever to recognise a daemon detached from human existence, but at any rate (because lying closest) appearing in human form who lurks in the trees of the malarial forests.” Clearly here the trembling of the human body shaken by a feverish chill combines with the trembling of the tree moved by the wind in the ideas of the savages, and it may well be asked whether next to the insects (see above p. ) this idea did not also belong to the psychological factors of our sympathetic cures?

50Myth.² 1036. Mannhardt, Germ. Myth. 79 Zs. f. D. Myth. IV. 449. Grohmann, Apollo Smintheus p. 21 ff.

51Vernaleken, Mythen und Gebr. 239. Kuhn and Schwarz Nordd. Sag. 411.

52De praecip. gener. divinat. Viteb. 1580 p. 10 with Grohmann op. cit. p. 24.

53Gil. White, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, London, 1789, 4:202–204 in Grimm Myth.² 1120, cf. K. Studley’s report from Devonshire of the year 1806 Brand, Popular Antiquities of Great Britain. ed. Ellis. London 1855. III. p. 293. Rob. Plot, Natural History of Staffordshire Oxford 1686 p.222. Myth.² 1120.

54Occasionally the superstitious custom certainly also uses lifeless things as representatives of living beings, like when, for example, the broken bone of a sheep or pig shall be healed by you splinting and bandaging the corresponding leg of a chair of sound wood and then letting the chair stand untouched. Panzer Beitr. II. 302. The four-legged chair is chosen for the sake of its figure as the substitute for the harmed animal. Such analogies, however, only strengthen our claim that the tree is conceived as alter ego of the human, to whom its erect growth and the characteristic of growth sets in parallel.

55Or the Samogitian perhaps assumes several souls in one tree at the same time and identifies these with the elves? Similarly the Carib indeed lives in the belief that the human has as many souls as he feels veins beat in himself. The most distinguished soul has its seat in the heart; it goes after death to heaven and lives there in the company of gods in the accustomed way. The other souls which do not have their seat in the heart betake themselves partly to the seaside and are the cause of ships going under, and partly they go to the forests and are called Mabosos. Davies, History of the Caribes, 288 ff. Klemm, Allgem. Kulturgesch. II, 165.

56See J. Grimm R. A. p. 520, 739 ff. G. L. von Maurer, Geschichte der Markenverfassung 1856, p. 371. F. Thudichum, die Gau- und Markenverfassung in Deutschland 1860, p. 276. Yet more examples from Grimm’s customary laws are collated in Maurer op. cit. 370.

57Cf. bî de polle krigen = grasp by the head, get in someone’s hair; de polle lûsen = pull the hair. [Tr.: cf. pollarding.]

58Grimm Weistümer III. 283. Boundary trees had special sacredness, see J. Grimm Grenzaltert. 128. Kl. Schr. II. 56. Cf. as extremely descriptive: anyone who has mutilated an oak, “you shall take him to the trunk and chop his head off and put it on it for as long as until it grows again.” (Beberer Mark. Grimm Weist. III p. 305 No. 16.) “If someone beheads a tree, they should be beheaded in turn.” (Gümmer Holzmark. Weist. III 288 No. 26). “When someone hews the poll from an oak, you should chop off his head and put it in the place.” (Hülseder Mark. Weist. III 302, No. 25.) Anyone who had hewn a blossoming tree [Tr.:? Blumholz (a Bloemware)] at nighttime(see above p. ) should be brought before the court with the trunk and have his struck off on the trunk with one blow (Speller Mark. Weist. III 183), i.e. so that his spirit could pass over from his head into the trunk of the tree.

59Also elsewhere the punishment of disembowellment applying originally to harming trees or sacrilege against the mark was later generalised. Grimm RA. 520. note cites from the Nialasaga p. 158 p. 275, which I do not have at hand, that it was brought into use on a prisoner in the year 1014 in Ireland and not because of sacrilege against the mark. “They cut his abdomen, led him around the oak and unwrapped the entrails from him thus, and he did not die before they had all unwrapped out of him.”

60Raynald, annal. eccles. Tom XIII. p. 457. Liljegrén, Diplom. Suec. I. 290. No. 298. Script. Rer. Livon. I. 389.

61Castrén, finn. Mythologie translated by Schiefner p. 105.

62Kalevala R. XXXII. Should it even appear too strange that at the time the belief could arise that the life of the tree is fostered when you carry out a corresponding ceremony on the body of the person, a parallel is drawn amongst others with another barbaric custom in the Middle East which the book about the Nabataean agriculture provides us. The grafting of trees was carried out with the Nabataeans by a beautiful girl whom during this operation a man lay with in an unnatural way. Here, if I may express myself with Thümmel, the innoculation of love offers the animal companion piece to the budding of the tree and shall demand as such the success of the same. See Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte III, 319. Cf. the loathsome magical formula in a penitential order in Wascherleben, Bußordnungen der abendländischen Kirche. Halle 1851. p. 576. A woman becomes infertile “si semen viri sui neglexerit aut in arborem putridam ponit” [if she neglects the seed of the man himself or places it in a rotten tree]. It is clear that is this custom the tree shall be a doppelganger of the woman.

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[scotlyn]

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