Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/242

228 the two white bulls beneath, are types from another national group. Teutonic descriptions begin with Tacitus, 'Lucos ac nemora consecrant, deorumque nominibus adpellant secretum illud, quod sola reverentia vident,' and the curious passage which describes the Semnones entering the sacred grove in bonds, a homage to the deity that dwelt there; many a century after, the Swedes were still holding solemn sacrifice and hanging the carcases of the slaughtered beasts in the grove hard by the temple of Upsal. With Christianity comes a crusade against the holy trees and groves. Boniface hews down in the presence of the priest the huge oak of the Hessian Heaven-god, and builds of the timber a chapel to St. Peter. Amator expostulated with the hunters who hung the heads of wild beasts to the boughs of the sacred pear-tree of Auxerre, 'Hoc opus idololatriæ culturæ est, non christianæ elegantissimæ disciplinæ;' but this mild persuasion not availing, he chopped it down and burned it. In spite of all such efforts, the old religion of the tree and grove survived in Europe often in most pristine form. Within the last two hundred years, there were old men in Gothland who would 'go to pray under a great tree, as their forefathers had done in their time;' and to this day the sacrificial rite of pouring milk and beer over the roots of trees is said to be kept up on out-of-the-way Swedish farms. In Russia, the Lyeshy or wood-demon still protects the birds and beasts in his domain, and drives his flocks of field-mice and squirrels from forest to forest, when we should say they are migrating. The hunter's luck depends on his treatment of the forest-spirit, wherefore he will leave him as a sacrifice the first game he kills, or some smaller offering of bread or salted pancake on a stump. Or if one falls ill on returning from the forest, it is known that this is the Lyeshy's doing, so