Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/269

 Animal Superstitions and Totcmism. 257

parallels, and others cited by Robertson Smith, is that of throwing the animal down from a church tower or other edifice. The animals so killed were : — Cat : Ypern (Bel- gium), Attendorf (Mark).^ Goat: among the Wends on July 25 ; at Liepa Kirmess.^ The goat was also sacrificed by the Esthonians with singular ceremonies on St. Thomas's day at Allentaschen.^

(_/) The Fire Form. The cat, fox, snake, squirrel and others were burnt in the Easter or Midsummer fires.* Mannhardt identifies these with the spirit of vegetation. The connection with these fires is, however, the only ground for this identification, and these same animals are killed at the same season in cere- monies quite unconnected with vegetation, as we have already seen. It is less probable that an integral part of a custom should be detached than that a ceremony practised at the same season should in some cases be incorporated.^

III. lA. — Procession.

Mannhardt also identifies animals carried in proces- sion at Christmas and other seasons of the year with the corn or tree-spirit. But in many cases the grounds for this are very slight ; and there is no ground for connecting the majorities of the animals led in procession with either form of the vegetation cult, but it is far more probable that a custom should acquire an agricultural tinge in some few cases than that it should in the majority of instances lose all traces of its original meaning. We may even go further and argue that the animal corn-spirit is in every case an

' Coremans, p. 53; Z. filr d. M., ii. ,93.

- Sommer, Sagen aiis Thiiringen, p. 179; l\Htt. des NordbiJktn Exatrsioiis- Chibs, xxiii., 108.

3 Possart, Die russischen Ostseeprovinzen, ii., 172.

" Mannhardt, /ai'jzw.

^ To put the matter in a concrete form, I find six cases in which the squirrel was hunted ; in only one or two at most was it burnt in the Easter fire. I conclude that the squirrel hunt was originally independent of the fire, into which animals were thrown but seldom. VOL XI. S