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Updated: May 26, 2025
In the following customs Mannhardt is probably right in recognising traces of an old custom of burning a leaf-clad representative of the spirit of vegetation. At Wolfeck, in Austria, on Midsummer Day, a boy completely clad in green fir branches goes from house to house, accompanied by a noisy crew, collecting wood for the bonfire.
Quite independently I could not help seeing that among savages and peasants we had mythology, not in a literary hortus siccus, but in situ. Mannhardt, though he appreciated Dr. Tylor, had made, I think, but few original researches among savage myths and customs. His province was European folklore. What he missed will be indicated in the chapter on 'The Fire-Walk' one example among many.
However, the case is not so clear as to justify us in dismissing the solar theory without discussion, and accordingly I propose to adduce the considerations which tell for it before proceeding to notice those which tell against it. A theory which had the support of so learned and sagacious an investigator as W. Mannhardt is entitled to a respectful hearing. The Solar Theory of the Fire-festivals
In Russia the Vegetation or Year Spirit is known as Yarilo, and is represented by a doll with phallic attributes, which is enclosed in a coffin, and carried through the streets to the accompaniment of lamentation by women whose emotions have been excited by drink. Mannhardt gives the lament as follows: "Wessen war Er schuldig? Er war so gut! Er wird nicht mehr aufstehen!
The Hirpi would not be freed from military service and all other State imposts for merely doing what any set of peasants do yearly for nothing. Nor would Varro have found it necessary to explain so easy and common a feat by the use of a drug with which the feet were smeared. Mannhardt, as Mr. Max Muller says, ventured himself little 'among red skins and black skins. He read Dr.
Max Muller says, 'It is well known that in his last, nay posthumous essay, Mannhardt, no mean authority, returned to the same conviction. I do not know which is Mannhardt's very last essay, but I shall prove that in the posthumous essays Mannhardt threw cold water on the whole method of philological comparative mythology. However, as proof of Mannhardt's return to Mr. What Mannhardt said
This youngest horse of the parish clearly represents, as Mannhardt says, the corn-spirit of the following year, the Corn-foal, which absorbs the spirit of the old Corn-horse by eating the last corn cut; for, as usual, the old corn-spirit takes his final refuge in the last sheaf. The thresher of the last sheaf is said to "beat the Horse."
Then the girl who was the first to finish reaping sets fire to the pile, and all pray that Ceres may give a fruitful year. Here, as Mannhardt observes, the old custom has remained intact, though the name Ceres is a bit of schoolmaster's learning.
Max Muller's is the system of comparative philology about which in this place Mannhardt does not say one single word. Mannhardt interprets some myths 'arising from nature poetry, no longer intelligible to us, by analogies; Mr. Max Muller interprets them by etymologies. The difference is incalculable; not that Mannhardt always abstains from etymologising. Another Claim on Mannhardt
Mullenhoff and Scherer seem to have thought this work too solar for their taste. Mannhardt therefore replied to their objections in the letter quoted in part by Mr. Max Muller. Mannhardt was not the man to neglect or suppress solar myths when he found them, merely because he did not believe that a great many other myths which had been claimed as celestial were solar.
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