Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/215

Rh thought, for in folk-lore combats it is not usual for the hero to be defeated.

The fact, then, that the revivification of the slain character was retained in the Mummers' Play, though apologised for, clearly indicates that in the rite from which the play was evolved the revivification was the culmination of the ceremony; it was the object and purpose for which the rite was performed. In the rite the religious or magical centre of interest was the revivification; but in the play which subsequently sprang from the rite the centre of dramatic or aesthetical interest was the combat. For the play the combat was essential, and the revival was a dramatic difficulty: for the rite the revival was the one thing essential, and it was immaterial whether the character was slain or not, so long as he was somehow dead. Not the killing but the revivification was the object and purpose of the rite. Vegetation—the corn-spirit or vegetation-spirit—dies a natural death. No magic is required to bring that about. What does demand the intervention of some rite is the revivification of the vegetation-spirit; and it was for that purpose that the rite was employed. Presumably the rite which represented the revival of the vegetation-spirit always included a representation of his death: he was bound to be presented as dead, if he was to be called to life again—it is only a Sleeping Beauty who can be awakened—but the circumstances which led to his death were of secondary interest, and might therefore be presented in different forms.

In fine, there is, I suggest, no reason inherent in the rite itself—the practical object of which was to revivify the vegetation-spirit—to suppose that the revivification was preceded by anything but a presentation of the spirit as dead. I make this suggestion for the purpose of pointing out that the rite itself does not necessarily presume that the vegetation-spirit was killed, still less that the performer of the part was sacrificed, either in reality or dramatically.