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If he is not overtaken he holds office for a year, but if overtaken, he suffers a mock decapitation, head-dress, or crown, being struck off, and the pretended corpse is then borne on a bier to the next village. Mannhardt, discussing this point, remarks that in the mock execution we must recognize "Ein verbreiteter und jedenfalls uralter Gebrauch."
I have been told that this is 'a mean argument. But if one chemical analyst found bismuth where another found iridium, and a third found argon, the public would begin to look on chemistry without enthusiasm; still more so if one chemist rarely found anything but inevitable bismuth or omnipresent iridium. Now Mannhardt uses this 'mean argument. Mannhardt on Demeter Erinnys
The importance of cereal crops for human life gave them a prominent position in the cult of agricultural communities. The decay and revival of the corn was an event of prime significance, and appears to have been interpreted as the death and resurrection of the spirit that was the life of the crop. Such is the idea in the modern popular customs collected by Mannhardt and Frazer.
Clearly, as Mannhardt observes, this calf of the spring-time is the same animal which is afterwards believed to be killed at reaping. The Corn-spirit as a Horse or Mare SOMETIMES the corn-spirit appears in the shape of a horse or mare. Between Kalw and Stuttgart, when the corn bends before the wind, they say, "There runs the Horse."
The worship of each of these three is in itself a great subject, and we can do no more than mention the leading views which appear to have entered into them. Mannhardt in his Feld- und Waldkulte and Frazer in The Golden Bough have studied the survivals of tree-worship in the local customs of the peasantry of Europe.
Mannhardt decides that the so-called wolves leaped through the sun-god's fire, in the interest of the health of the community. He elucidates this by a singular French popular custom, held on St. John's Eve, at Jumieges. The Brethren of the Green Wolf select a leader called Green Wolf, there is an ecclesiastical procession, cure and all, a souper maigre, the lighting of the usual St.
In Hyginus, on the other hand, the earth swallows her, and a tree takes her place. All the authorities are late. Here I cannot but reflect on the scholarly method of Mannhardt, who would have examined and criticised all the sources for the tale before trying to explain it. However, Daphne was not mangled; a tree did not spring from her severed head or scattered limbs.
In the ritual just described the scourging of the victim with squills, branches of the wild fig, and so forth, cannot have been intended to aggravate his sufferings, otherwise any stick would have been good enough to beat him with. The true meaning of this part of the ceremony has been explained by W. Mannhardt.
That Mannhardt was not mistaken is proved by the evidence of the kindred Dances, a subject we shall consider later; there we shall find the Doctor playing his old-time role, and restoring to life the slain representative of the Vegetation Spirit.
Professor Mannhardt relates a strange legend current in Mecklenburg to the effect that in a certain secluded and barren spot, where a murder had been committed, there grows up every day at noon a peculiarly-shaped thistle, unlike any other of its kind. On inspection there are to be seen human arms, hands, and heads, and as soon as twelve heads have appeared, the weird plant vanishes.
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