Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/472

 442 Notes from Armenia.

and addresses were over the builders sacrificed a lamb in the trench near the foundation stone which had been duly laid, decapitated the animal, and placed its head in the foundation of the building. I suppose we need not hesitate to say that this was a genuine survival from the time when human beings were immured or sacrificed. Has it also been pointed out that the coins which are commonly placed in the foundation are ransom-money for the victim who ought to be there ? ^

Those who are interested in collecting the references to foundation sacrifices may like to have the following from the Arabic Acts of John. The Apostle John has legendary connection from the earliest time with a bath-house : e.g.., there is the story of his running out from a bath because Cerinthus the heretic was in it. The Arabic Acts make a similar connection of ideas between St. John and a bath- house, and tell us that " in this bath-house there was a Satanic power, which had dwelt in it from the first, when it was built; because when the makers laid the foundation they dug in the middle of it and placed a living girl there and heaped up [the wall~\ over her and built stones for a foundation, and because of this the Satanic power dwelt there, Q^c.

Offering of the First-fruits.

The Golden Bough has brought out very clearly the existence of a primitive sacrament of first-fruits among almost all peoples of the earth, and the influence of this sacrament upon later religions. The setting apart and

' For the foundation sacrifice we may compare Golden Bough, i., 292 : "Not long ago there were still shadow-traders whose business was to provide architects with the shadows necessary for securing their walls. In these cases the measure of the shadow is looked upon as equivalent to the shadow itself, and to bury it is to bury the life or soul of the man who, deprived of it, must die. Thus the custom is a substitute for the old practice of immuring a living person in the walls, or crushing him under the foundation stone of a new building, in order to give strength and stability to the new structure."