Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/305

 The Dancing- Tower Processions of Italy. 257

can they be brought into connection with similar observ- ances in other countries? The god hidden from the gaze of the vulgar in a leafy frame, the wooden o.'i'i^^y burnt by the Druid priest in honour of his bloodthirsty deity, the sacred tree, the pointed cone, each of these may be indirectly represented by these remarkable structures, and the tower which now serves as a pedestal for god or saint may itself have been originally the emblem of the Deity. The expression still in use for the progress of a great Barella or Cero is the one familiar in Babylonian records of Bael, " the Going Forth." The golden ship of Amon Ra still takes part in a Mahomedan procession at Luxor ; ^ Husain's home, lamp-bedecked, a tower 40 feet high, borne by 50 men, parades the streets of Calcutta. An eyewitness of a festival held in honour of Buddha of Kamakura, in Japan, describes many points of resemblance to these Italian festas ; - and no one who has seen a great Barella plunging down the street can fail to be reminded of the procession of the " Ruth Jathra," when, raised on cars over forty feet high and drawn by the excited populace shouting " Victory to Jaganarth," that great idol, accompanied by two inferior companions, makes its annual progress from Puri to Gondicha.

Albinia Wherry.

NOTE ON THE ABOVE.

The seven festivals with which Mrs. Wherry's paper deals range as regards the date of their celebration from May 15th (Gubbio) to September 3rd (Viterbo) ; the Vara of Messina falls on August 15th; all the remainder in June.

^Folklore, vol. xi., p. 386. "^ Life of Professor Coivel/, vol. i., p. 149. R