Section 2. Processions with Sacred Animals.
THE FORM of communion in which the sacred animal is taken from house
to house, that all may enjoy a share of its divine influence, has been
exemplified by the Gilyak custom of promenading the bear through the
village before it is slain. A similar form of communion with the sacred snake
is observed by a Snake tribe in the Punjaub. Once a year in the month of
September the snake is worshipped by all castes and religions for nine
days only. At the end of August the Mirasans, especially those of the
Snake tribe, make a snake of dough which they paint black and red, and
place on a winnowing basket. This basket they carry round the village, and
on entering any house they say: "God be with you all! May every ill be far!
May our patron's (Gugga's) word thrive!" Then they present the basket with
the snake, saying: "A small cake of flour: a little bit of butter: if you obey the
snake, you and yours shall thrive!" Strictly speaking, a cake and butter
should be given, but it is seldom done. Every one, however, gives
something, generally a handful of dough or some corn. In houses where
there is a new bride or whence a bride has gone, or where a son has been
born, it is usual to give a rupee and a quarter, or some cloth. Sometimes
the bearers of the snake also sing:
"Give the snake a piece of cloth, and he will send a lively bride!"
When every house has been thus visited, the dough snake is buried and a
small grave is erected over it. Thither during the nine days of September
the women come to worship. They bring a basin of curds, a small portion of
which they offer at the snake's grave, kneeling on the ground and touching
the earth with their foreheads. Then they go home and divide the rest of the
curds among the children. Here the dough snake is clearly a substitute for
a real snake. Indeed, in districts where snakes abound the worship is
offered, not at the grave of the dough snake, but in the jungles where
snakes are known to be. Besides this yearly worship, performed by all the
people, the members of the Snake tribe worship in the same way every
morning after a new moon. The Snake tribe is not uncommon in the
Punjaub. Members of it will not kill a snake, and they say that its bite does
not hurt them. If they find a dead snake, they put clothes on it and give it a
regular funeral. 1
Ceremonies closely analogous to this Indian worship of the snake have
survived in Europe into recent times, and doubtless date from a very
primitive paganism. The best-known example is the "hunting of the wren."
By many European peoples-the ancient Greeks and Romans, the modern
Italians, Spaniards, French, Germans, Dutch, Danes, Swedes, English, and
Welsh-the wren has been designated the king, the little king, the king of
birds, the hedge king, and so forth, and has been reckoned amongst those
birds which it is extremely unlucky to kill. In England it is supposed that if
any one kills a wren or harries its nest, he will infallibly break a bone or
meet with some dreadful misfortune within the year; sometimes it is thought
that the cows will give bloody milk. In Scotland the wren is called "the Lady
of Heaven's hen," and boys say:
"Malisons, malisons, mair than ten,
That harry the Ladye of Heaven's hen!"
At Saint Donan, in Brittany, people believe that if children touch the young
wrens in the nest, they will suffer from the fire of St. Lawrence, that is, from
pimples on the face, legs, and so on. In other parts of France it is thought
that if a person kills a wren or harries its nest, his house will be struck by
lightning, or that the fingers with which he did the deed will shrivel up and
drop off, or at least be maimed, or that his cattle will suffer in their feet. 2
Notwithstanding such beliefs, the custom of annually killing the wren has
prevailed widely both in this country and in France. In the Isle of Man
down to the eighteenth century the custom was observed on Christmas
Eve, or rather Christmas morning. On the twenty-fourth of December,
towards evening, all the servants got a holiday; they did not go to bed all
night, but rambled about till the bells rang in all the churches at midnight.
When prayers were over, they went to hunt the wren, and having found
one of these birds they killed it and fastened it to the top of a long pole with
its wings extended. Thus they carried it in procession to every house
chanting the following rhyme:
"We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin,
We hunted the wren for Jack of the Can,
We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin,
We hunted the wren for every one."
When they had gone from house to house and collected all the money they
could, they laid the wren on a bier and carried it in procession to the parish
churchyard, where they made a grave and buried it "with the utmost
solemnity, singing dirges over her in the Manks language, which they call
her knell; after which Christmas begins." The burial over, the company
outside the churchyard formed a circle and danced to music. 3
A writer of the eighteenth century says that in Ireland the wren "is still
hunted and killed by the peasants on Christmas Day, and on the following
(St. Stephen's Day) he is carried about, hung by the leg, in the centre of
two hoops, crossing each other at right angles, and a procession made in
every village, of men, women, and children, singing an Irish catch,
importing him to be the king of all birds." Down to the present time the
"hunting of the wren" still takes place in parts of Leinster and Connaught.
On Christmas Day or St. Stephen's Day the boys hunt and kill the wren,
fasten it in the middle of a mass of holly and ivy on the top of a broomstick,
and on St. Stephen's Day go about with it from house to house, singing:
"The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,
St. Stephen's Day was caught in the furze;
Although he is little, his family's great,
I pray you, good landlady, give us a treat."
Money or food (bread, butter, eggs, etc.) were given them, upon which
they feasted in the evening. 4
In the first half of the nineteenth century similar customs were still
observed in various parts of the south of France. Thus at Carcassone,
every year on the first Sunday of December the young people of the street
Saint Jean used to go out of the town armed with sticks, with which they
beat the bushes, looking for wrens. The first to strike down one of these
birds was proclaimed King. Then they returned to the town in procession,
headed by the King, who carried the wren on a pole. On the evening of the
last day of the year the King and all who had hunted the wren marched
through the streets of the town to the light of torches, with drums beating
and fifes playing in front of them. At the door of every house they stopped,
and one of them wrote with chalk on the door vive le roi! with the number of
the year which was about to begin. On the morning of Twelfth Day the King
again marched in procession with great pomp, wearing a crown and a blue
mantle and carrying a sceptre. In front of him was borne the wren fastened
to the top of a pole, which was adorned with a verdant wreath of olive, of
oak, and sometimes of mistletoe grown on an oak. After hearing high mass
in the parish church of St. Vincent, surrounded by his officers and guards,
the King visited the bishop, the mayor, the magistrates, and the chief
inhabitants, collecting money to defray the expenses of the royal banquet
which took place in the evening and wound up with a dance. 5
The parallelism between this custom of "hunting the wren" and some of
those which we have considered, especially the Gilyak procession with the
bear, and the Indian one with the snake, seems too close to allow us to
doubt that they all belong to the same circle of ideas. The worshipful animal
is killed with special solemnity once a year; and before or immediately after
death he is promenaded from door to door, that each of his worshippers
may receive a portion of the divine virtues that are supposed to emanate
from the dead or dying god. Religious processions of this sort must have
had a great place in the ritual of European peoples in prehistoric times, if
we may judge from the numerous traces of them which have survived in
folk-custom. For example, on the last day of the year, or Hogmanay as it
was called, it used to be customary in the Highlands of Scotland for a man
to dress himself up in a cow's hide and thus attired to go from house to
house, attended by young fellows, each of them armed with a staff, to
which a bit of raw hide was tied. Round every house the hide-clad man
used to run thrice deiseal, that is, according to the course of the sun, so as
to keep the house on his right hand; while the others pursued him, beating
the hide with their staves and thereby making a loud noise like the beating
of a drum. In this disorderly procession they also struck the walls of the
house. On being admitted, one of the party, standing within the threshold,
pronounced a blessing on the family in these words: "May God bless the
house and all that belongs to it, cattle, stones, and timber! In plenty of meat,
of bed and body clothes, and health of men may it ever abound!" Then
each of the party singed in the fire a little bit of the hide which was tied to
his staff; and having done so he applied the singed hide to the nose of
every person and of every domestic animal belonging to the house. This
was imagined to secure them from diseases and other misfortunes,
particularly from witchcraft, throughout the ensuing year. The whole
ceremony was called calluinn because of the great noise made in beating
the hide. It was observed in the Hebrides, including St. Kilda, down to the
second half of the eighteenth century at least, and it seems to have
survived well into the nineteenth century. 6