Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/418

 414 Rudwin explained by the marriage, the death, and the resurrection of the gods, these mythical events were enacted in order to bring about the corresponding processes in nature. 77 Primitive man performed in his spring ritual, as a means of insuring the fertility of the crops beneath the rain, which he regarded as the marriage of heaven and earth, the annual marriage of Heaven-god and Earth-goddess, of Uranus and Gea in Greece and of Coelus and Terra in Italy. Aeschylus and Shelley alike speak of the mar- riage of the heaven and the earth. A ceremony of a similar nature is the marriage of the sun and the moon, and of the spirits of vegetation conceived as male and female, as gods and goddesses, which was enacted in the European spring ritual in order to bring about the impregnation of nature. 78 The marriages of the ancient deities of vegetation, Adonis or Tammuz with Aphrodite or Ishtar, Zeus with Leto, Jupiter with Apia, Saturn with Ops, and Freyr with Freya, had for their object the fertility of field, fold, and family. 79 Modern survivals of these customs may be seen in the mock marriages of leaf-clad mummers in Western Europe. 80 We have the May-pairs, King and Queen, Lord and Lady of the May, representatives of the spirits of vegetation, united in a nominal troth. 81 Often the marriage, though not directly represented, is implied by naming only the human representative of the spirit, the bride, and dressing her in wedding attire. 82 The mock marriages of modern times answer in form and meaning to the magical marriages, the sacred unions of the gods and goddesses, of ancient days. 83 There is, however, this difference, as Frazer points out, that in those days the ceremonies had not yet dwindled into mere shows and pageants, but were still religious or magical rites in which the actors consciously supported the high parts of gods and goddesses. 84 77 Cf. Frazer, op. tit., v. 4. 78 Cf. Mannhardt, W.u.F.K., i. 422; Frazer, op. cit., ii. UOsqq., 171, vii. S7sqq. 79 Cf. Frazer, op. cit., ii. 137, 1435?., iv. 71, 83, 91, v. 224, ix. 386. 80 Cf. Mannhardt, W.u.F.K., ii. 276; Frazer, op. cit., iv. 237, v. 251. 81 Cf. Mannhardt, W.u.F.K., i. 315sq; Frazer, op. cit., ii. 79, 84. 82 Cf. Frazer, op. cit., ii. 95.
 * Ibid., ii. 92sq., 97, 136sqq., iv. 237, v. 251.