Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/249

Rh might be expected, being full of secret orders) have linked themselves on to masonry as the last surviving order which used their secret marks. Probably, to begin with, these marks had no relation to building. It seems then that etymologically the free-masons are no more than a band of "pharmakoi."

To go back to the actual Pharmakos, one may note that Professor Murray is strongly of opinion that he was never killed, but only beaten. This is certainly borne out by my suggested etymology, although, of course, the very word Pharmakos may only have come into use when the ritual had been modified and humanized. It is interesting to note that there are two small islands off the coast of Attica, not far from Salamis and in the Bay of Eleusis, which were known in classical times as Pharmacussae. On one of them used to be shown the Temple of Circe. There is another island on the coast of Asia Minor called Pharmacusa, where, according to Plutarch, Caesar was taken prisoner by pirates when he was a young man. I cannot help thinking that in both cases these islands might practically be translated into English as Outcast Island or Islands. That is to say, they were originally refuges for wandering scoundrels, pirates and the like, those who harried the settled mainland, and were looked upon as the Britons looked upon the Danes, and as the mainlanders looked upon some of the islanders at the time of the Migrations of which Professor Murray gives such an imaginative picture. There also is another island in the Bay of Iassus which is, I believe, still called Farmako, It is possible, of course, that such a name sprang from the fact that these islands were inhabited by survivors of the primitive tribes who were always apt to be looked upon as magicians.

Naturally enough, during the course of time there have been many attempts to discover the root meaning of Pharmakos, and I cannot help thinking that some of the later attempts are little better than those of the scholiast and grammarians. For instance, Eustathius derives pharmakon from when used in a bad sense, and from  when used in a good one. One does not always, even nowadays, get much help from those who ought to know. When my theory was submitted to one well-known Orientalist he said that the older or classical form of