Page:Frazer (1890) The Golden Bough (IA goldenboughstudy01fraz).djvu/415

III in Phrygia and Europe; and when Phrygian legend and European folk-custom, closely agreeing with each other, point to the conclusion that men were so slain, we are bound, provisionally at least, to accept the conclusion. Further, both the Lityerses story and European harvest customs agree in indicating that the person slain was slain as a representative of the corn-spirit, and this indication is in harmony with the view which savages appear to take of the victim slain to make the crops flourish. On the whole, then, we may fairly suppose that both in Phrygia and in Europe the representative of the corn-spirit was annually killed upon the harvest-field. Grounds have been already shown for believing that similarly in Europe the representative of the tree-spirit was annually slain. The proofs of these two remarkable and closely analogous customs are entirely independent of each other. Their coincidence seems to furnish fresh presumption in favour of both.

To the question, how was the representative of the corn-spirit chosen? one answer has been already given. Both the Lityerses story and European folk-custom show that passing strangers were regarded as manifestations of the corn-spirit escaping from the cut or threshed corn, and as such were seized and slain. But this is not the only answer which the evidence suggests. According to one version of the Phrygian legend the victims of Lityerses were not passing strangers but persons whom he had vanquished in a reaping contest; and though it is not said that he killed, but only that he thrashed them, we can hardly avoid supposing that in one version of the story the vanquished reapers, like the strangers in the other version, were said to have been wrapt up by Lityerses in corn-sheaves and so beheaded. The