Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/236

228. When any of them was so far possessed as to wander in the woods alone, the priest, if he could catch him and fasten him with a certain sacred chain, entertained him luxuriously for a year ; and at the end of the year he was offered as a sacrifice to the goddess along with other victims ; and prognostications were drawn from his corpse. It is plain that here we have an instance of "killing the god", which is parallel to those given in chapter iii of The Golden Bough. The moon-spirit resided in the human victim, in the same way as she was conveyed into the cow at a sacred marriage ; and part at least of the purpose with which she was conjured into the human victim was in order that she might afibrd information not otherwise to be obtained. Doubtless part of the purpose was also to ensure the safe and continued existence of a spirit so important as the Moon.

When once the practice of bringing down the moon had become familiar to the primitive Greek, who saw it done at sacred marriages and other rites, he was provided with an explanation of lunar eclipses : some other fellow was bringing down the moon for his private ends. And at the present day in Greece the proper way to stop a lunar eclipse is to call out, "I see you !" and thus make the worker of this deed of darkness desist. So completely did this theory of eclipses, which we must regard as peculiarly Greek, establish itself in ancient Greece, that, strange to say, not a trace of the earlier primitive theory, according to which some monster swallows the eclipsed moon, is to be found in classical Greek literature, unless the beating of metal instruments to frighten away the monster (Theoc., ii, 36) be a survival of primitive practice.

One more survival from primitive ritual: Roscher quotes, but makes no attempt to explain, Pollux, vi, 76, where it is stated that cakes called "moons", from their shape, were offered to Selene. In China, cakes on which is stamped the image of the moon, or which sometimes are circular, in imitation of the shape of the moon, play a part in the