The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 08 of 12)

The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 08 of 12)

[Transcriber's Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter at Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.] However we may explain it, the fact remains that in peasant folk-lore the corn-spirit is very commonly conceived and represented in animal form. May not this fact explain the relation in which certain animals stood to the ancient deities of vegetation, Dionysus, Demeter, Adonis, Attis, and Osiris? To begin with Dionysus. We have seen that he was represented sometimes as a goat and sometimes as a bull.1 As a goat he can hardly be separated from the minor divinities, the Pans, Satyrs, and Silenuses, all of whom are closely associated with him and are represented more or less completely in the form of goats. Thus, Pan was regularly portrayed in sculpture and painting with the face and legs of a goat.2 The Satyrs were depicted with pointed goat-ears, and sometimes with sprouting horns and short tails.3 They were sometimes spoken of simply as goats;4 and in the drama their parts were played by men dressed in goatskins.5 Silenus is represented in art clad in a goatskin.6 Further, the Fauns, the Italian counterpart of the Greek Pans and Satyrs, are described as being half goats, with goat-feet and goat-horns.7 Again, all these minor [pg 002] goat-formed divinities partake more or less clearly of the character of woodland deities. Thus, Pan was called by the Arcadians the Lord of the Wood.8 The Silenuses associated with the tree-nymphs.9 The Fauns are expressly designated as woodland deities;10 and their character as such is still further brought out by their association, or even identification, with Silvanus and the Silvanuses, who, as their name of itself indicates, are spirits of the woods.11 Lastly, the association of the Satyrs with the Silenuses, Fauns, and Silvanuses,12 proves that the Satyrs also were woodland deities. These goat-formed spirits of the woods have their counterparts in the folk-lore of Northern Europe. Thus, the Russian wood-spirits, called Ljeschie (from ljes, wood) are believed to appear partly in human shape, but with the horns, ears, and legs of goats. The Ljeschi can alter his stature at pleasure; when he walks in the wood he is as tall as the trees; when he walks in the meadows he is no higher than the grass. Some of the Ljeschie are spirits of the corn as well as of the wood; before harvest they are as tall as the corn-stalks, but after it they shrink to the height of the stubble.13 This brings outwhat we have remarked beforethe close connexion between tree-spirits and corn-spirits, and shews how easily the former may melt into the latter. Similarly the Fauns, though wood-spirits, were believed to foster the growth of the crops.14 We have already seen how often the corn-spirit is represented in folk-custom as a goat.15 On the whole, then, as Mannhardt argues,16 [pg 003] the Pans, Satyrs, and Fauns perhaps belong to a widely diffused class of wood-spirits conceived in goat-form. The fondness of goats for straying in woods and nibbling the bark of trees, to which indeed they are most destructive, is an obvious and perhaps sufficient reason why wood-spirits should so often be supposed to take the form of goats. The inconsistency of a god of vegetation subsisting upon the vegetation which he personifies is not one to strike the primitive mind. Such inconsistencies arise when the deity, ceasing to be immanent in the vegetation, comes to be regarded as its owner or lord; for the idea of owning the vegetation naturally leads to that of subsisting on it. We have already seen that the corn-spirit, originally conceived as immanent in the corn, afterwards comes to be regarded as its owner, who lives on it and is reduced to poverty and want by being deprived of it.17 ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 42336
Author: Frazer, James George
Release Date: Mar 14, 2013
Format: eBook
Language: English