Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/422

 418 Rudwin Lenten fires, or buried, often under straw or dung. 117 These ceremonies of burning, burying, or drowning the spirit of vege- tation may have been in themselves fertility charms. The burning may have been intended to secure, by means of mimetic magic, a supply of sunshine for the crops, 118 but it may also have been carried out for purificatory purposes. 119 The effigy of the fertility god was perhaps buried as a guarantee of resurrection. The fact that it was very commonly buried under straw or dung would point to its fertilizing power on the new vernal life. 120 The drowning of the effigy of the spirit of vegetation may in a like manner have had for its purpose the securing, by means of mimetic magic, of a supply of rain to make the fields and mea- dows green in the summer. 121 Images of Adonis were also thrown into the sea or into springs. 122 The ship as a symbol of. the fertility spirit was in early times led at the end of the proces- sion to a nearby river, stream, or sea, and surrendered to the water, a fact which led Mannhardt to believe that the ship- procession was a rain-charm. 123 The water-journey of the goddess Nerthus was, in the opinion of Chambers, a rain charm, 124 but according to our conjecture it was rather a wed- ding-trip. 135 We may perhaps look at the sea- voyage of the god or goddess as the ship-burial of the dead spirit of vegetation. 126 Balder's body was sent in a ship out into the sea. 127 In the Egyptian Book of the Dead a ship is figured carrying the souls to the other world. Ship-burials were also common among the ancient Germans. They seem in most places to have been a prerogative of kings and princes and heroes of great fame. 128 117 Ibid., ii. 735?., 93, iv. 209, 220s?., 223sq., 227-232, 234, x. 106, xi. 23. 118 Ibd., xi. 43. 119 Ibid., ii. 93, xi. 24. 120 Cf. Mannhardt, W.u.F.K., i. 410^.; Frazer, op. cit., iv. 249sqq. 121 Cf. Frazer, op. cit., ii. 75. 122 Ibid., v. 225, 227n3, 236. 123 Cf. Mannhardt, W.u.F.K., i.593; cf. also Frazer, op. cit., i.251n5. 124 Cf. Chambers, op. cit., i. 122; see also Reinach, op. cit., xxxi. 59. 125 Supra, p. 410. 126 Cf. Mannhardt, W.u.F.K., i. 393. 127 Cf. Simrock, op. cit., p. 292. 128 Cf. F. B. Gummere, Germanic Origins (1892), p. 325. Some tribes in Guinea throw their dead into the sea, so as to get rid of the ghosts.