Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/191

 Biill-baitmg, Bull-racing, Bull-fights. i 59

the sport, bull-baiting seems to have sprung from a form of nature-worship. That is to say, indications which sug- gest its association with the cult of water are not wanting. In the Stamford bull-running, for instance, the great object was to ' bridge the bull,' which meant to tumble him by main force over the bridge which spans the Welland into the river beneath. At Tutbury, if the minstrels could succeed in cutting off a piece of the bull's skin before he crossed the river Dove into Derbyshire, he became the property of the King of Music : but if not, he was returned to the Prior of Tutbury, who had provided the festival : and according to Notes and Queries (5th ser. vol. xii. p. 456} the last bull-baiting in Rochdale (Lancashire) took place in 1 81 9, when some persons were killed in consequence of the falling in of the river wall. The baiting was performed in the bed of a shallow river (the Roche) in the centre of the town." *^ We thus come back to the Catana coin to which I have referred and the theory of the water bull.

At one time the idea suggested itself to me — and I now find that the same theory occurred independently to Miss C. S. Burne — that the annual baiting of a bull in this country was connected with rites of fertility in this way. It would naturally be the desire of a cattle-breeding com- munity that the bull, the master or lord of the herd, should possess the strongest vital power : and it may have been the custom to slay the bull at the close of the year and replace him by a more vigorous successor. We may have a survival of such a custom in the annual bull-baiting. But I have failed to find any good evidence of a custom such as this. It is possible that, by calling attention to the subject, some evidence of this kind may be forthcoming. At present it remains a suggestion and nothing more.

We may now attempt to suggest, as a working hypo- thesis, an explanation of the scene depicted on the Vaphio cup and the frescoes with which I began this paper. We

^'^ Folk- Lore, vii. ■},\(i et seq. ; xv. i<) ef seqq.