Chapter 46. The Corn-Mother in Many Lands.
Section 1. The Corn-mother in America.
EUROPEAN peoples, ancient and modern, have not been singular
in personifying the corn as a mother goddess. The same simple
idea has suggested itself to other agricultural races in distant parts
of the world, and has been applied by them to other indigenous
cereals than barley and wheat. If Europe has its Wheat-mother
and its Barley-mother, America has its Maize-mother and the
East Indies their Rice-mother. These personifications I will now
illustrate, beginning with the American personification of the
maize. 1
We have seen that among European peoples it is a common
custom to keep the plaited corn-stalks of the last sheaf, or the
puppet which is formed out of them, in the farm-house from
harvest to harvest. The intention no doubt is, or rather originally
was, by preserving the representative of the corn-spirit to
maintain the spirit itself in life and activity throughout the year, in
order that the corn may grow and the crops be good. This
interpretation of the custom is at all events rendered highly
probable by a similar custom observed by the ancient Peruvians,
and thus described by the old Spanish historian Acosta: "They
take a certain portion of the most fruitful of the maize that grows in
their farms, the which they put in a certain granary which they do
call Pirua, with certain ceremonies, watching three nights; they put
this maize in the richest garments they have, and being thus
wrapped and dressed, they worship this Pirua, and hold it in great
veneration, saying it is the mother of the maize of their
inheritances, and that by this means the maize augments and is
preserved. In this month [the sixth month, answering to May] they
make a particular sacrifice, and the witches demand of this Pirua if
it hath strength sufficient to continue until the next year; and if it
answers no, then they carry this maize to the farm to burn,
whence they brought it, according to every man's power; then
they make another Pirua, with the same ceremonies, saying that
they renew it, to the end the seed of maize may not perish, and if
it answers that it hath force sufficient to last longer, they leave it
until the next year. This foolish vanity continueth to this day, and it
is very common amongst the Indians to have these Piruas." 2
In this description of the custom there seems to be some error.
Probably it was the dressed-up bunch of maize, not the granary
(Pirua), which was worshipped by the Peruvians and regarded as
the Mother of the Maize. This is confirmed by what we know of the
Peruvian custom from another source. The Peruvians, we are told,
believed all useful plants to be animated by a divine being who
causes their growth. According to the particular plant, these divine
beings were called the Maize-mother (Zara-mama), the
Quinoa-mother (Quinoa-mama), the Coca-mother (Coca-mama),
and the Potato-mother (Axo-mama). Figures of these divine
mothers were made respectively of ears of maize and leaves of
the quinoa and coca plants; they were dressed in women's
clothes and worshipped. Thus the Maize-mother was represented
by a puppet made of stalks of maize dressed in full female attire;
and the Indians believed that "as mother, it had the power of
producing and giving birth to much maize." Probably, therefore,
Acosta misunderstood his informant, and the Mother of the Maize
which he describes was not the granary (Pirua), but the bunch of
maize dressed in rich vestments. The Peruvian Mother of the
Maize, like the harvest-Maiden at Balquhidder, was kept for a
year in order that by her means the corn might grow and multiply.
But lest her strength might not suffice to last till the next harvest,
she was asked in the course of the year how she felt, and if she
answered that she felt weak, she was burned and a fresh Mother
of the Maize made, "to the end the seed of maize may not perish."
Here, it may be observed, we have a strong confirmation of the
explanation already given of the custom of killing the god, both
periodically and occasionally. The Mother of the maize was
allowed, as a rule, to live through a year, that being the period
during which her strength might reasonably be supposed to last
unimpaired; but on any symptom of her strength failing she was put
to death, and a fresh and vigorous Mother of the Maize took her
place, lest the maize which depended on her for its existence
should languish and decay. 3
Section 2. The Rice-mother in the East Indies.
IF THE READER still feels any doubts as to the meaning of the
harvest customs which have been practised within living memory
by European peasants, these doubts may perhaps be dispelled by
comparing the customs observed at the rice-harvest by the
Malays and Dyaks of the East Indies. For these Eastern peoples
have not, like our peasantry, advanced beyond the intellectual
stage at which the customs originated; their theory and their
practice are still in unison; for them the quaint rites which in
Europe have long dwindled into mere fossils, the pastime of
clowns and the puzzle of the learned, are still living realities of
which they can render an intelligible and truthful account. Hence
a study of their beliefs and usages concerning the rice may throw
some light on the true meaning of the ritual of the corn in ancient
Greece and modern Europe. 1
Now the whole of the ritual which the Malays and Dyaks
observe in connexion with the rice is founded on the simple
conception of the rice as animated by a soul like that which these
people attribute to mankind. They explain the phenomena of
reproduction, growth, decay, and death in the rice on the same
principles on which they explain the corresponding phenomena in
human beings. They imagine that in the fibres of the plant, as in
the body of a man, there is a certain vital element, which is so far
independent of the plant that it may for a time be completely
separated from it without fatal effects, though if its absence be
prolonged beyond certain limits the plant will wither and die. This
vital yet separable element is what, for the want of a better word,
we must call the soul of a plant, just as a similar vital and
separable element is commonly supposed to constitute the soul of
man; and on this theory or myth of the plant-soul is built the whole
worship of the cereals, just as on the theory or myth of the human
soul is built the whole worship of the dead,-a towering
superstructure reared on a slender and precarious foundation. 2
Believing the rice to be animated by a soul like that of a man, the
Indonesians naturally treat it with the deference and the
consideration which they show to their fellows. Thus they behave
towards the rice in bloom as they behave towards a pregnant
woman; they abstain from firing guns or making loud noises in the
field, lest they should so frighten the soul of the rice that it would
miscarry and bear no grain; and for the same reason they will not
talk of corpses or demons in the rice-fields. Moreover, they feed
the blooming rice with foods of various kinds which are believed
to be wholesome for women with child; but when the rice-ears are
just beginning to form, they are looked upon as infants, and
women go through the fields feeding them with rice-pap as if they
were human babes. In such natural and obvious comparisons of
the breeding plant to a breeding woman, and of the young grain to
a young child, is to be sought the origin of the kindred Greek
conception of the Corn-mother and the Corn-daughter, Demeter
and Persephone. But if the timorous feminine soul of the rice can
be frightened into a miscarriage even by loud noises, it is easy to
imagine what her feelings must be at harvest, when people are
under the sad necessity of cutting down the rice with the knife. At
so critical a season every precaution must be used to render the
necessary surgical operation of reaping as inconspicuous and as
painless as possible. For that reason the reaping of the seed-rice
is done with knives of a peculiar pattern, such that the blades are
hidden in the reapers' hands and do not frighten the rice-spirit till
the very last moment, when her head is swept off almost before
she is aware; and from a like delicate motive the reapers at work
in the fields employ a special form of speech, which the rice-spirit
cannot be expected to understand, so that she has no warning or
inkling of what is going forward till the heads of rice are safely
deposited in the basket. 3
Among the Indonesian peoples who thus personify the rice we
may take the Kayans or Bahaus of Central Borneo as typical. In
order to secure and detain the volatile soul of the rice the Kayans
resort to a number of devices. Among the instruments employed for
this purpose are a miniature ladder, a spatula, and a basket
containing hooks, thorns, and cords. With the spatula the priestess
strokes the soul of the rice down the little ladder into the basket,
where it is naturally held fast by the hooks, the thorn, and the
cord; and having thus captured and imprisoned the soul she
conveys it into the rice-granary. Sometimes a bamboo box and a
net are used for the same purpose. And in order to ensure a good
harvest for the following year it is necessary not only to detain the
soul of all the grains of rice which are safely stored in the granary,
but also to attract and recover the soul of all the rice that has
been lost through falling to the earth or being eaten by deer, apes,
and pigs. For this purpose instruments of various sorts have been
invented by the priests. One, for example, is a bamboo vessel
provided with four hooks made from the wood of a fruit-tree, by
means of which the absent rice-soul may be hooked and drawn
back into the vessel, which is then hung up in the house.
Sometimes two hands carved out of the wood of a fruit-tree are
used for the same purpose. And every time that a Kayan
housewife fetches rice from the granary for the use of her
household, she must propitiate the souls of the rice in the granary,
lest they should be angry at being robbed of their substance. 4
The same need of securing the soul of the rice, if the crop is to
thrive, is keenly felt by the Karens of Burma. When a rice-field
does not flourish, they suppose that the soul (kelah) of the rice is
in some way detained from the rice. If the soul cannot be called
back, the crop will fail. The following formula is used in recalling
the kelah (soul) of the rice: "O come, rice-kelah, come! Come to
the field. Come to the rice. With seed of each gender, come. Come
from the river Kho, come from the river Kaw; from the place where
they meet, come. Come from the West, come from the East. From
the throat of the bird, from the maw of the ape, from the throat of
the elephant. Come from the sources of rivers and their mouths.
Come from the country of the Shan and Burman. From the distant
kingdoms come. From all granaries come. O rice-kelah, come to
the rice." 5
The Corn-mother of our European peasants has her match in the
Rice-mother of the Minangkabauers of Sumatra. The
Minangkabauers definitely attribute a soul to rice, and will
sometimes assert that rice pounded in the usual way tastes better
than rice ground in a mill, because in the mill the body of the rice
was so bruised and battered that the soul has fled from it. Like the
Javanese they think that the rice is under the special
guardianship of a female spirit called Saning Sari, who is
conceived as so closely knit up with the plant that the rice often
goes by her name, as with the Romans the corn might be called
Ceres. In particular Saning Sari is represented by certain stalks or
grains called indoea padi, that is, literally, "Mother of Rice," a
name that is often given to the guardian spirit herself. This
so-called Mother of Rice is the occasion of a number of
ceremonies observed at the planting and harvesting of the rice as
well as during its preservation in the barn. When the seed of the
rice is about to be sown in the nursery or bedding-out ground,
where under the wet system of cultivation it is regularly allowed to
sprout before being transplanted to the fields, the best grains are
picked out to form the Rice-mother. These are then sown in the
middle of the bed, and the common seed is planted round about
them. The state of the Rice-mother is supposed to exert the
greatest influence on the growth of the rice; if she droops or pines
away, the harvest will be bad in consequence. The woman who
sows the Rice-mother in the nursery lets her hair hang loose and
afterwards bathes, as a means of ensuring an abundant harvest.
When the time comes to transplant the rice from the nursery to the
field, the Rice-mother receives a special place either in the
middle or in a corner of the field, and a prayer or charm is uttered
as follows: "Saning Sari, may a measure of rice come from a stalk
of rice and a basketful from a root; may you be frightened neither
by lightning nor by passers-by! Sunshine make you glad; with the
storm may you be at peace; and may rain serve to wash your
face!" While the rice is growing, the particular plant which was
thus treated as the Rice-mother is lost sight of; but before harvest
another Rice-mother is found. When the crop is ripe for cutting,
the oldest woman of the family or a sorcerer goes out to look for
her. The first stalks seen to bend under a passing breeze are the
Rice-mother, and they are tied together but not cut until the
first-fruits of the field have been carried home to serve as a festal
meal for the family and their friends, nay even for the domestic
animals; since it is Saning Sari's pleasure that the beasts also
should partake of her good gifts. After the meal has been eaten,
the Rice-mother is fetched home by persons in gay attire, who
carry her very carefully under an umbrella in a neatly worked bag
to the barn, where a place in the middle is assigned to her. Every
one believes that she takes care of the rice in the barn and even
multiplies it not uncommonly. 6
When the Tomori of Central Celebes are about to plant the rice,
they bury in the field some betel as an offering to the spirits who
cause the rice to grow. The rice that is planted round this spot is
the last to be reaped at harvest. At the commencement of the
reaping the stalks of this patch of rice are tied together into a
sheaf, which is called "the Mother of the Rice" (ineno pae), and
offerings in the shape of rice, fowl's liver, eggs, and other things
are laid down before it. When all the rest of the rice in the field has
been reaped, "the Mother of the Rice" is cut down and carried
with due honour to the rice-barn, where it is laid on the floor, and
all the other sheaves are piled upon it. The Tomori, we are told,
regard the Mother of the Rice as a special offering made to the
rice-spirit Omonga, who dwells in the moon. If that spirit is not
treated with proper respect, for example if the people who fetch
rice from the barn are not decently clad, he is angry and punishes
the offenders by eating up twice as much rice in the barn as they
have taken out of it; some people have heard him smacking his
lips in the barn, as he devoured the rice. On the other hand the
Toradjas of Central Celebes, who also practice the custom of the
Rice-mother at harvest, regard her as the actual mother of the
whole harvest, and therefore keep her carefully, lest in her
absence the garnered store of rice should all melt away and
disappear. 7
Again, just as in Scotland the old and the young spirit of the
corn are represented as an Old Wife (Cailleach) and a Maiden
respectively, so in the Malay Peninsula we find both the
Rice-mother and her child represented by different sheaves or
bundles of ears on the harvest-field. The ceremony of cutting and
bringing home the Soul of the Rice was witnessed by Mr. W. W.
Skeat at Chodoi in Selangor on the twenty-eighth of January
1897. The particular bunch or sheaf which was to serve as the
Mother of the Rice-soul had previously been sought and
identified by means of the markings or shape of the ears. From this
sheaf an aged sorceress, with much solemnity, cut a little bundle
of seven ears, anointed them with oil, tied them round with
parti-coloured thread, fumigated them with incense, and having
wrapt them in a white cloth deposited them in a little oval-shaped
basket. These seven ears were the infant Soul of the Rice and the
little basket was its cradle. It was carried home to the farmer's
house by another woman, who held up an umbrella to screen the
tender infant from the hot rays of the sun. Arrived at the house the
Rice-child was welcomed by the women of the family, and laid,
cradle and all, on a new sleepingmat with pillows at the head.
After that the farmer's wife was instructed to observe certain rules
of taboo for three days, the rules being in many respects identical
with those which have to be observed for three days after the birth
of a real child. Something of the same tender care which is thus
bestowed on the newly-born Rice-child is naturally extended
also to its parent, the sheaf from whose body it was taken. This
sheaf, which remains standing in the field after the Rice-soul has
been carried home and put to bed, is treated as a newly-made
mother; that is to say, young shoots of trees are pounded together
and scattered broadcast every evening for three successive days,
and when the three days are up you take the pulp of a coco-nut
and what are called "goat-flowers," mix them up, eat them with a
little sugar, and spit some of the mixture out among the rice. So
after a real birth the young shoots of the jack-fruit, the
rose-apple, certain kinds of banana, and the thin pulp of young
coco-nuts are mixed with dried fish, salt, acid, prawn-condiment,
and the like dainties to form a sort of salad, which is administered
to mother and child for three successive days. The last sheaf is
reaped by the farmer's wife, who carries it back to the house,
where it is threshed and mixed with the Rice-soul. The farmer then
takes the Rice-soul and its basket and deposits it, together with
the product of the last sheaf, in the big circular rice-bin used by
the Malays. Some grains from the Rice-soul are mixed with the
seed which is to be sown in the following year. In this
Rice-mother and Rice-child of the Malay Peninsula we may see
the counterpart and in a sense the prototype of the Demeter and
Persephone of ancient Greece. 8
Once more, the European custom of representing the corn-spirit
in the double form of bride and bridegroom has its parallel in a
ceremony observed at the rice-harvest in Java. Before the
reapers begin to cut the rice, the priest or sorcerer picks out a
number of ears of rice, which are tied together, smeared with
ointment, and adorned with flowers. Thus decked out, the ears are
called the padi-pěngant, that is, the Rice-bride and the
Rice-bridegroom; their wedding feast is celebrated, and the
cutting of the rice begins immediately afterwards. Later on, when
the rice is being got in, a bridal chamber is partitioned off in the
barn, and furnished with a new mat, a lamp, and all kinds of toilet
articles. Sheaves of rice, to represent the wedding guests, are
placed beside the Rice-bride and the Rice-bridegroom. Not till
this has been done may the whole harvest be housed in the barn.
And for the first forty days after the rice has been housed, no one
may enter the barn, for fear of disturbing the newly-wedded
pair. 9
In the islands of Bali and Lombok, when the time of harvest has
come, the owner of the field himself makes a beginning by cutting
"the principal rice" with his own hands and binding it into two
sheaves, each composed of one hundred and eight stalks with
their leaves attached to them. One of the sheaves represents a
man and the other a woman, and they are called "husband and
wife." The male sheaf is wound about with thread so that none of
the leaves are visible, whereas the female sheaf has its leaves
bent over and tied so as to resemble the roll of a woman's hair.
Sometimes, for further distinction, a necklace of rice-straw is tied
round the female sheaf. When the rice is brought home from the
field, the two sheaves representing the husband and wife are
carried by a woman on her head, and are the last of all to be
deposited in the barn. There they are laid to rest on a small
erection or on a cushion of rice-straw. The whole arrangement,
we are informed, has for its object to induce the rice to increase
and multiply in the granary, so that the owner may get more out of
it than he put in. Hence when the people of Bali bring the two
sheaves, the husband and wife, into the barn, they say, "Increase
ye and multiply without ceasing." When all the rice in the barn has
been used up, the two sheaves representing the husband and
wife remain in the empty building till they have gradually
disappeared or been devoured by mice. The pinch of hunger
sometimes drives individuals to eat up the rice of these two
sheaves, but the wretches who do so are viewed with disgust by
their fellows and branded as pigs and dogs. Nobody would ever
sell these holy sheaves with the rest of their profane brethren. 10
The same notion of the propagation of the rice by a male and
female power finds expression amongst the Szis of Upper Burma.
When the paddy, that is, the rice with the husks still on it, has
been dried and piled in a heap for threshing, all the friends of the
household are invited to the threshing-floor, and food and drink
are brought out. The heap of paddy is divided and one half spread
out for threshing, while the other half is left piled up. On the pile
food and spirits are set, and one of the elders, addressing "the
father and mother of the paddy-plant," prays for plenteous
harvests in future, and begs that the seed may bear many fold.
Then the whole party eat, drink, and make merry. This ceremony
at the threshing-floor is the only occasion when these people
invoke "the father and mother of the paddy." 11
Section 3. The Spirit of the Corn embodied in Human Beings.
THUS the theory which recognises in the European Corn-mother,
Corn-maiden, and so forth, the embodiment in vegetable form of
the animating spirit of the crops is amply confirmed by the
evidence of peoples in other parts of the world, who, because
they have lagged behind the European races in mental
development, retain for that very reason a keener sense of the
original motives for observing those rustic rites which among
ourselves have sunk to the level of meaningless survivals. The
reader may, however, remember that according to Mannhardt,
whose theory I am expounding, the spirit of the corn manifests
itself not merely in vegetable but also in human form; the person
who cuts the last sheaf or gives the last stroke at threshing passes
for a temporary embodiment of the corn-spirit, just as much as the
bunch of corn which he reaps or threshes. Now in the parallels
which have been hitherto adduced from the customs of peoples
outside Europe the spirit of the crops appears only in vegetable
form. It remains, therefore, to prove that other races besides our
European peasantry have conceived the spirit of the crops as
incorporate in or represented by living men and women. Such a
proof, I may remind the reader, is germane to the theme of this
book; for the more instances we discover of human beings
representing in themselves the life or animating spirit of plants, the
less difficulty will be felt at classing amongst them the King of the
Wood at Nemi. 1
The Mandans and Minnitarees of North America used to hold a
festival in spring which they called the corn-medicine festival of
the women. They thought that a certain Old Woman who Never
Dies made the crops to grow, and that, living somewhere in the
south, she sent the migratory waterfowl in spring as her tokens
and representatives. Each sort of bird represented a special kind
of crop cultivated by the Indians: the wild goose stood for the
maize, the wild swan for the gourds, and the wild duck for the
beans. So when the feathered messengers of the Old Woman
began to arrive in spring the Indians celebrated the
corn-medicine festival of the women. Scaffolds were set up, on
which the people hung dried meat and other things by way of
offerings to the Old Woman; and on a certain day the old women
of the tribe, as representatives of the Old Woman who Never Dies,
assembled at the scaffolds each bearing in her hand an ear of
maize fastened to a stick. They first planted these sticks in the
ground, then danced round the scaffolds, and finally took up the
sticks again in their arms. Meanwhile old men beat drums and
shook rattles as a musical accompaniment to the performance of
the old women. Further, young women came and put dried flesh
into the mouths of the old women, for which they received in
return a grain of the consecrated maize to eat. Three or four grains
of the holy corn were also placed in the dishes of the young
women, to be afterwards carefully mixed with the seed-corn,
which they were supposed to fertilise. The dried flesh hung on the
scaffold belonged to the old women, because they represented
the Old Woman who Never Dies. A similar corn-medicine festival
was held in autumn for the purpose of attracting the herds of
buffaloes and securing a supply of meat. At that time every woman
carried in her arms an uprooted plant of maize. They gave the
name of the Old Woman who Never Dies both to the maize and to
those birds which they regarded as symbols of the fruits of the
earth, and they prayed to them in autumn saying, "Mother, have
pity on us! send us not the bitter cold too soon, lest we have not
meat enough! let not all the game depart, that we may have
something for the winter!" In autumn, when the birds were flying
south, the Indians thought that they were going home to the Old
Woman and taking to her the offerings that had been hung up on
the scaffolds, especially the dried meat, which she ate. Here then
we have the spirit or divinity of the corn conceived as an Old
Woman and represented in bodily form by old women, who in their
capacity of representatives receive some at least of the offerings
which are intended for her. 2
In some parts of India the harvest-goddess Gauri is represented
at once by an unmarried girl and by a bundle of wild balsam
plants, which is made up into the figure of a woman and dressed
as such with mask, garments, and ornaments. Both the human and
the vegetable representative of the goddess are worshipped, and
the intention of the whole ceremony appears to be to ensure a
good crop of rice. 3
Section 4. The Double Personification of the Corn as Mother and Daughter.
COMPARED with the Corn-mother of Germany and the
Harvest-maiden of Scotland, the Demeter and Persephone of
Greece are late products of religious growth. Yet as members of
the Aryan family the Greeks must at one time or another have
observed harvest customs like those which are still practised by
Celts, Teutons, and Slavs, and which, far beyond the limits of the
Aryan world, have been practised by the Indians of Peru and
many peoples of the East Indies-a sufficient proof that the ideas
on which these customs rest are not confined to any one race, but
naturally suggest themselves to all untutored peoples engaged in
agriculture. It is probable, therefore, that Demeter and
Persephone, those stately and beautiful figures of Greek
mythology, grew out of the same simple beliefs and practices
which still prevail among our modern peasantry, and that they
were represented by rude dolls made out of the yellow sheaves
on many a harvest-field long before their breathing images were
wrought in bronze and marble by the master hands of Phidias and
Praxiteles. A reminiscence of that olden time-a scent, so to say,
of the harvest-field-lingered to the last in the title of the Maiden
(Kore) by which Persephone was commonly known. Thus if the
prototype of Demeter is the Corn-mother of Germany, the
prototype of Persephone is the Harvest-maiden which, autumn
after autumn, is still made from the last sheaf on the Braes of
Balquhidder. Indeed, if we knew more about the peasant-farmers
of ancient Greece, we should probably find that even in classical
times they continued annually to fashion their Corn-mothers
(Demeters) and Maidens (Persephones) out of the ripe corn on the
harvest-fields. But unfortunately the Demeter and Persephone
whom we know were the denizens of towns, the majestic
inhabitants of lordly temples; it was for such divinities alone that
the refined writers of antiquity had eyes; the uncouth rites
performed by rustics amongst the corn were beneath their notice.
Even if they noticed them, they probably never dreamed of any
connexion between the puppet of corn-stalks on the sunny
stubble-field and the marble divinity in the shady coolness of the
temple. Still the writings even of these town-bred and cultured
persons afford us an occasional glimpse of a Demeter as rude as
the rudest that a remote German village can show. Thus the story
that Iasion begat a child Plutus ( "wealth," "abundance") by
Demeter on a thrice-ploughed field, may be compared with the
West Prussian custom of the mock birth of a child on the
harvest-field. In this Prussian custom the pretended mother
represents the Corn-mother (Žytniamatka); the pretended
child represents the Corn-baby, and the whole ceremony is a
charm to ensure a crop next year. The custom and the legend
alike point to an older practice of performing, among the sprouting
crops in spring or the stubble in autumn, one of those real or
mimic acts of procreation by which, as we have seen, primitive
man often seeks to infuse his own vigorous life into the languid or
decaying energies of nature. Another glimpse of the savage under
the civilised Demeter will be afforded farther on, when we come to
deal with another aspect of those agricultural divinities. 1
The reader may have observed that in modern folk-customs the
corn-spirit is generally represented either by a Corn-mother (Old
Woman, etc.) or by a Maiden (Harvest-child, etc.), not both by a
Corn-mother and by a Maiden. Why then did the Greeks
represent the corn both as a mother and a daughter? 2
In the Breton custom the mother-sheaf-a large figure made out
of the last sheaf with a small corn-doll inside of it-clearly
represents both the Corn-mother and the Corn-daughter, the
latter still unborn. Again, in the Prussian custom just referred to,
the woman who plays the part of Corn-mother represents the ripe
grain; the child appears to represent next year's corn, which may
be regarded, naturally enough, as the child of this year's corn,
since it is from the seed of this year's harvest that next year's crop
will spring. Further, we have seen that among the Malays of the
Peninsula and sometimes among the Highlanders of Scotland the
spirit of the grain is represented in double female form, both as old
and young, by means of ears taken alike from the ripe crop: in
Scotland the old spirit of the corn appears as the Carline or
Cailleach, the young spirit as the Maiden; while among the
Malays of the Peninsula the two spirits of the rice are definitely
related to each other as mother and child. Judged by these
analogies Demeter would be the ripe crop of this year;
Persephone would be the seed-corn taken from it and sown in
autumn, to reappear in spring. The descent of Persephone into the
lower world would thus be a mythical expression for the sowing of
the seed; her reappearance in spring would signify the sprouting
of the young corn. In this way the Persephone of one year
becomes the Demeter of the next, and this may very well have
been the original form of the myth. But when with the advance of
religious thought the corn came to be personified no longer as a
being that went through the whole cycle of birth, growth,
reproduction, and death within a year, but as an immortal
goddess, consistency required that one of the two
personifications, the mother or the daughter, should be sacrificed.
However, the double conception of the corn as mother and
daughter may have been too old and too deeply rooted in the
popular mind to be eradicated by logic, and so room had to be
found in the reformed myth both for mother and daughter. This was
done by assigning to Persephone the character of the corn sown
in autumn and sprouting in spring, while Demeter was left to play
the somewhat vague part of the heavy mother of the corn, who
laments its annual disappearance underground, and rejoices over
its reappearance in spring. Thus instead of a regular succession
of divine beings, each living a year and then giving birth to her
successor, the reformed myth exhibits the conception of two divine
and immortal beings, one of whom annually disappears into and
reappears from the ground, while the other has little to do but to
weep and rejoice at the appropriate seasons. 3
This theory of the double personification of the corn in Greek
myth assumes that both personifications (Demeter and
Persephone) are original. But if we suppose that the Greek myth
started with a single personification, the aftergrowth of a second
personification may perhaps be explained as follows. On looking
over the harvest customs which have been passed under review,
it may be noticed that they involve two distinct conceptions of the
corn-spirit. For whereas in some of the customs the corn-spirit is
treated as immanent in the corn, in others it is regarded as
external to it. Thus when a particular sheaf is called by the name
of the corn-spirit, and is dressed in clothes and handled with
reverence, the spirit is clearly regarded as immanent in the corn.
But when the spirit is said to make the crops grow by passing
through them, or to blight the grain of those against whom she has
a grudge, she is apparently conceived as distinct from, though
exercising power over, the corn. Conceived in the latter mode the
corn-spirit is in a fair way to become a deity of the corn, if she
has not become so already. Of these two conceptions, that of the
cornspirit as immanent in the corn is doubtless the older, since the
view of nature as animated by indwelling spirits appears to have
generally preceded the view of it as controlled by external deities;
to put it shortly, animism precedes deism. In the harvest customs
of our European peasantry the corn-spirit seems to be conceived
now as immanent in the corn and now as external to it. In Greek
mythology, on the other hand, Demeter is viewed rather as the
deity of the corn than as the spirit immanent in it. The process of
thought which leads to the change from the one mode of
conception to the other is anthropomorphism, or the gradual
investment of the immanent spirits with more and more of the
attributes of humanity. As men emerge from savagery the tendency
to humanise their divinities gains strength; and the more human
these become the wider is the breach which severs them from the
natural objects of which they were at first merely the animating
spirits or souls. But in the progress upwards from savagery men of
the same generation do not march abreast; and though the new
anthropomorphic gods may satisfy the religious wants of the more
developed intelligences, the backward members of the community
will cling by preference to the old animistic notions. Now when the
spirit of any natural object such as the corn has been invested
with human qualities, detached from the object, and converted into
a deity controlling it, the object itself is, by the withdrawal of its
spirit, left inanimate; it becomes, so to say, a spiritual vacuum. But
the popular fancy, intolerant of such a vacuum, in other words,
unable to conceive anything as inanimate, immediately creates a
fresh mythical being, with which it peoples the vacant object. Thus
the same natural object comes to be represented in mythology by
two distinct beings: first by the old spirit now separated from it and
raised to the rank of a deity; second, by the new spirit, freshly
created by the popular fancy to supply the place vacated by the
old spirit on its elevation to a higher sphere. In such cases the
problem for mythology is, having got two distinct personifications
of the same object, what to do with them? How are their relations
to each other to be adjusted, and room found for both in the
mythological system? When the old spirit or new deity is
conceived as creating or producing the object in question, the
problem is easily solved. Since the object is believed to be
produced by the old spirit, and animated by the new one, the
latter, as the soul of the object, must also owe its existence to the
former; thus the old spirit will stand to the new one as producer to
produced, that is, in mythology, as parent to child, and if both
spirits are conceived as female, their relation will be that of mother
and daughter. In this way, starting from a single personification of
the corn as female, mythic fancy might in time reach a double
personification of it as mother and daughter. It would be very rash
to affirm that this was the way in which the myth of Demeter and
Persephone actually took shape; but it seems a legitimate
conjecture that the reduplication of deities, of which Demeter and
Persephone furnish an example, may sometimes have arisen in
the way indicated. For example, among the pairs of deities dealt
with in a former part of this work, it has been shown that there are
grounds for regarding both Isis and her companion god Osiris as
personifications of the corn. On the hypothesis just suggested, Isis
would be the old corn-spirit, and Osiris would be the newer one,
whose relationship to the old spirit was variously explained as that
of brother, husband, and son; for of course mythology would
always be free to account for the coexistence of the two divinities
in more ways than one. It must not, however, be forgotten that this
proposed explanation of such pairs of deities as Demeter and
Persephone or Isis and Osiris is purely conjectural, and is only
given for what it is worth. 4