Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/193

 Biill-baiting, Bull-racing, Btill-Jights. i6i

The Indian custom in which a cloth or so-called " ornament " is tied to the horns of the animal, and the successful seizing of them from the head of a charging bull entitles the victorious youth to claim in marriage " the best girl in the neighbourhood," as is stated in one account of the observance, does bear a superficial resemblance to the rite of seizing the bull's horns for a magical purpose on which Mr. Cook lays stress. But, as far as I can judge, from the evidence there is nothing to show that the cloth or " ornament " is anything more than the ordinary prize of victory. The successful grasping of the garlands tied to the animal in another Indian case has probably the same meaning. I cannot see that there is anything magical or religious about the transaction, save that in some of the Indian cases the time selected for these exhibitions and other circumstances connected with them do seem to indicate that they are in some way connected with a fertility rite. It may also be observed that the seizure of the horns of the animal need not bear any special esoteric significance. An acrobat bounding over a bull's back in a circus would naturally try to support himself or secure his escape from the animal as it charges by grasping the horns : he would seize the horns, to use Major Tremearne's phrase, as a boy in the gymnasium seizes the parallel bars. It has also been suggested that in the Spanish bull-fight, particularly in the killing of the horses, some magical or religious idea underlies the observances. The only theory of this kind which I have noticed is that of Richard Ford, who has given one of the best accounts of these exhibitions.^^ He writes : " Our boxing, bailing term hviVi-jigJit, is a very lay and low translation of the time-honoured Castilian title, Fiestas de Toros, the feasts, festivals of bulls. The gods and goddesses of antiquity were conciliated by the sacrifice of hecatombs : the lowing tickled their divine ears, and the purple blood fed their eyes, no less than the

■"^ Gatherings frovi Spain, Everyman's Library, p. 310 ei scij. L