Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/182

 1 50 Bull-baiting, Bjill-racing-, Bull-fights.

towards the bull, care being taken that the hind rope is quite taut, so that no sudden rush can be made, and when close up the bull tries to gore, and the man is tossed exactly as in Portugal, holding on in a similar fashion till extricated. Sometimes the man will get astride the animal's neck, using the horns like parallel bars. But as the horns are not protected in these games there is always great risk." Major Tremearne,^ who gives this account, further describes the sport in Portugal, where, when the bull charges, the catcher grasps the animal by the neck, holding on till his comrades, by distracting the attention of the beast, enable him to extricate himself.

I consulted my friend, Major Tremearne, by whose recent death in action anthropology and folklore have sustained a grievous loss, on the question whether the sport has any religious or magical significance. In the last letter which I received from him ^ he replied : " The actual bull- baiting which I saw in Northern Nigeria did not seem to have any religious significance for the on-looker. But I have little doubt that it was once part of a fertility rite. The animal is always, or, at any rate, nearly always, killed after the performance at the present day, and the bull is the proper offering for rain in Tripoli and Tunis." ^^

Further accounts from Greece and the coasts of the Eastern Mediterranean seem to indicate that a form of bull-baiting, or the seizure and carrying aw^ay of the victims, formed a preliminary of rites of sacrifice.

Thus, Pausanias tells us : " What is most worthy of note [among the Cynaethaens] is that there is a sanctuary of Dionysus here, and that they hold a festival in winter, at which men, their bodies greased with oil, pick out a bull from a herd, (whichever bull the god puts it into their minds to take), hft it up and carry it to the sanctuary.

-■' The Tailed Head- Hunters of Nigeria, 295 et seqq. (with illustrations).

"^ Dated 20th January, 1915.

"'' See Idem, The Ban of the Bori, 1S5 et segq.