Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/230

 200 Kinz Midas and his Ass's Ears.

"A

from the breast, which Schliemann identified with the cult of Hera Boopis.^^

It is difficult to say whether these animal cults were indigenous or imported. We know that both the horse and ass were regarded as sacred animals by the Semites,^^ and they may have come from that region into Asia Minor. On the other hand, the facts collected by Mr. Cook indicate the existence of an yEgean cult of the ass regarded as a musician, a servant of the harvest-gods with phallic aptitudes, and representing the waters of • the underworld.^* In this last attribute the frequent occurrence of the well in connection with the Midas tales is significant.

The worship of the horse, again, passed into the religion of Greece in the strange cult of the horse-headed Demeter, which has been fully illustrated by Professor Frazer and Mr. Farnell,^^ the latter refusing to explain it by totemism or by any known Greek symbolism of the underworld or of vegetation, and preferring to suppose that Demeter Erinys or Medusa merely took over from Poseidon, the horse-god, an equine form in certain local legends and cults, " this form being necessary that they might become the mothers of his horse-progeny." This view, even if it be accepted, does not invalidate the present theory.

Lastly, it must be remembered that there is some reason to believe that this ass cult may have survived in the Mediterranean down to early Christian times. As evidence of this we have the title Asinarii applied as a reproach to the early Christians ; Tertullian's angry expostulation, — soni-

^-Tiryns, p. 165. But this view is opposed by Farnell, op. cit., vol. i., p. 16.

^* Robertson Smith, op. cit. , pp. 468 et seq. , 293 ; Kinship attd Marriage in Early Arabia, pp. 208 et seq.

^A. B. Cook, op. cit., p. 100.

^''- Paiisanias, vol. iv., pp. 407 et seq. ; Cults of the Greek States, vol. iii. , pp. 50 et seq.