Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/319

 The European Sky-god. 295

world-oak or cloud-oak of central and southern Europe, we may well regard the "winged oak" of Pherecydes as a similar cosmogonic tree."^^

Both the sky-tree and the sky-god had their counterparts on earth. Corresponding to the celestial oak that formed the residence of Zeus, an ordinary terrestrial oak marked each centre of Zeus-worship among men. In the Classical Review for 1903-1904^^* I have collected most of the evi- dence bearing on this point. Here I may be allowed to quote a few typical or outstanding examples, premising that in every case, so far as I can judge, they may be referred to the Pelasofian stratum of Greek reli2:ion. The Pelaso-ian Zeus Nato? at Dodona had a sacred oak growing in a sacred oak-grove : his oracles were given by the rustling of its branches, by an intermittent spring at its foot, by a golden dove (or two doves, or three) perched upon it, &c.~^° Zeus "Ayu.yu,&)y in the Libyan Oasis seems to have been the god of a very early Greek settlement : he too had an oracular oak in an oak-grove, a variable spring, sacred birds (two ravens, or a dove), and methods of divination that resembled those of the Dodonaean Zeus."^^ Coins of Phaestus in Crete represent Zeus FeA.^ai'o? as a youthful god seated in an oak and holding a cock on his knee : since Velchanos is commonly supposed to be the same word as Volcanus, and

-" Gomperz, Greek Thhikers, i., 89, conjectures "that the garment spread by Zas over the winged oak was merely a pictorial expression of the belief that the kernel or framework of earth was adorned by this first principle of life with the beauty that it now wears."

"" Class. Rev., xvii., 174-186, 268-278, 403-421 ; xviii., 75-89, 325-328.

215 lb., xvii., 178-186, 408.

existence of a sacred oak and an oak-grove at the Ammonium {viz., Clem. Alex. protr., II Dindorf^ Euseb. prap. evang., 2. 3 Dindorf, yepdvSpvov Se xpaixfioii; i.pi]liaii, TiTifirffiki'ov Kca to avTodi fiavTilov avrfj SpvX fiijiapafr^kvov jivOoig yeyTjpaicom KaToXsL-tpan, Sil. Ital., 3. 688 ff., mox subitum nemus atque annoso robore lucus | exiluit, qualesque premunt nunc sidera quercus | a prima uenere die : prisco inde pauore | arbor numen habet coliturque tepentibus aris) should be added Plin. nai. hist., 13. 63, circa Thebas haec, ubi et quercus et persea et oliua, CCC a Nilo stadiis, siluestri tractu et suis fontibus riguo.
 * ■* lb., xvii., 403 f. To the passages that I have there cited as proving the