Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/249

Rh was unlikely to let his enemy go unpunished; therefore he sent drought and famine, as a god of vegetation naturally might. And in commemoration of the termination of the drought, which ended when Lycurgus had been torn in pieces by horses, this very harvest festival was instituted. This may or may not be the explanation of the Lycurgus myth; but it is more in accordance with folk-lore methods than the "reminiscence" theory. Anyhow, the upholders of the theory that the worship of Dionysos was borrowed by the Greeks from Thrace, ought not to cite Lycurgus in their support; for if his myth is a "reminiscence of opposition offered to the introduction of a new foreign worship", then, as Lycurgus was a Thracian king, the new and foreign worship did not originate in Thrace.