Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/140

 1 1 6 Tlic Wo ing of Pcnc lop e.

the day. Clothing was cast aside as a useless incumbrance. Drunkenness andpromiscuousprostitutionprevailed through- out the land ; no women, excepting the widows of the de- ceased, being exempt from the grossest violation. There was no passion however lewd, or desire however wicked, but could be gratified with impunity during the continuance of this period, which happily, from its own violence, soon spent itself. No other nation was ever witness to a custom which so entirely threw off all moral and legal restraints, and incited the evil passions of man to unresisted riot and wanton de- bauchery." Further, I may note among some races the rule that the claimant to the throne appropriated the harem of his predecessor. Absalom did this when he rebelled against his father David ; and apparently with the intention of claim- ing royal rights Adonijah sought the hand of Abishag, his father's concubine.^ Smerdis, the Magian, appropriated the wives of Cambyses.- We have historical instances of the disorder at an interregnum when Justinian was dying ; " the bakers' shops were plundered of their bread, the houses were shut, and every citizen with hope or terror prepared for the impending tumult." ^

In India, at Gwalior, and even in the times of Mughal emperors so ruthless as Babar was, and determined to sup- press any popular disturbance, it was the custom on the death of the monarch to allow a few shops to be plundered.* All this, of course, simply means that in the case of the sovereignties of ruder races, particularly when polygamy prevails, the succession is as a matter of course disputed, and disturbance and license prevails. It is, I think, possible that acts such as these may have become normal and cus- tomary, and might be adopted by the poet as ordinary accom-

' 2 Samuel, xvi. , 21, seqq. ; xii., Ii ; iii., 7 ; I A'ings, ii., 13. sgtjq. - Herodotus, iii., 68.

^ Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Koiitan Empire (ed. W. Smith), vol v., p. 245. ^ Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections (ed. \'. A. Smith), vol. i., p. 357.