Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/117

Rh for example, as those of Adonis and Attis, where images of the god were "carried out as to burial". It seems probable that the worship of Hera was performed in a yearly cycle of connected festivals, of which a central point would be the celebrated Holy Wedding, the ίερος γάμος. That such a festival year should include a day of mourning and burial, would be in full harmony, not only with what we are learning of ancient Greek religion, but with the traces of primitive and religious thought which survive, fossilised, among European peasants. (See such usages as the "Carrying out Death" — "Hinaustragung und Eingrabung" — fully dealt with by W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, ch. iv, pp. 406 sqq. ; cf Golden Bough, J. G. Frazer, i, 253 sqq. One must not hope, perhaps, to arrive at the full meaning of her Samos festival ; but I think much interesting light might be thrown on it, and through it on early Greek religious thought, from parallel primitive usage, and, considering the above probabilities especially from funeral rites. Funeral rites of the god one would most wish for — or of sacred creatures or men ; but also any similar ceremonies at the burial of tribesman or peasant. The closest analogy that I have yet been able to note is the following Troglodyte custom, quoted by Strabo (Strabo, c. 776): "Some among the Troglodytes, when they bury their dead, bind them firmly from back to feet with briar branches." A writer in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie (vol. vii, 19) comments on this passage : "The latter custom is like that of the Hottentots, who formerly not only bound their dead, like other African races, but ceremonially swathed them." Would anyone, learned in African ways, tell us who these races are, and where one may find the references the Zeitschrift omits to supply ? Perhaps by such aid one might arrive at the idea which moved primitive man to perform these ritual acts at the burial of his dead ; and at the origin of the old Greek festival at which each year the image of Hera was bound, and carried away, to be hidden on the Samos sea-shore.