Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/61

 Presidential Address. 5^

other ceremonies, which are preceded by that of driving the devil out of flowers. This is the formula to be used :

"I exorcise thee, creature of flowers or branches ; in the Name of God + the Father Almighty, and in the name of Jesus Christ + His son, our Lord, and in the Power of the + Holy Ghost ; and henceforth let all strength of the adversary, all the host of the devil, every power of the enemy, every assault of fiends, be expelled and utterly driven away from this creature of flowers or branches," etc., (p. 3).

" Here the flowers and leaves shall be sprinkled with Holy Water, and censed^^ (p. 5).

Recognising that this is part of a movement by a minority of people to re-introduce a discarded ritual, the difference between those who support and those who repudiate it is one of degree. For both believe in the existence and ceaseless activity of Satan and his myrmidons. One Guliel- mus Parisiensis made a computation as to the number of these, and found it to be 44, 435, 556.^ The data on which he arrived at this are not forthcoming, but the estimate strikes us as too small. There are not enough to go round. The arithmetic of the subject is, however, of no consequence; the folklorist is concerned only with the ceremony of exor- cism as putting the savage and the civilised on a common plane. For the ceremony is based upon the belief in the association of magic with plants as the habitats of evil spirits. And so the fragrant flowers come to be regarded as laboratories where demons prepare the baleful draughts which the " hatefull hag" dispenses to the doomed, and the continuity of barbaric ritual is maintained by the sprinkling of the exorcised water and the swinging of the censer over the lilies and the roses.

2. Water-worship. — The Bishop of Cashel is reported to have said in a recent charge "that as an infant is incapable of the exercise of faith and repentance, so spiritual grace

' "The Christian Hell," by James Mew, Nineteenth Century, November, 1891, p. 727.

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