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object:1.64 - The Burning of Human Beings in the Fires
book class:The Golden Bough
author class:James George Frazer
subject class:Occultism
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LXIV. The Burning of Human Beings in the Fires



1. The Burning of Effigies in the Fires

WE have still to ask, What is the meaning of burning effigies in the
fire at these festivals? After the preceding investigation the
answer to the question seems obvious. As the fires are often alleged
to be kindled for the purpose of burning the witches, and as the
effigy burnt in them is sometimes called "the Witch," we might
naturally be disposed to conclude that all the effigies consumed in
the flames on these occasions represent witches or warlocks, and
that the custom of burning them is merely a substitute for burning
the wicked men and women themselves, since on the principle of
homoeopathic or imitative magic you practically destroy the witch
herself in destroying her effigy. On the whole this explanation of
the burning of straw figures in human shape at the festivals is
perhaps the most probable.

Yet it may be that this explanation does not apply to all the cases,
and that certain of them may admit and even require another
interpretation. For the effigies so burned, as I have already
remarked, can hardly be separated from the effigies of Death which
are burned or otherwise destroyed in spring; and grounds have been
already given for regarding the so-called effigies of Death as
really representatives of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation.
Are the other effigies, which are burned in the spring and midsummer
bonfires, susceptible of the same explanation? It would seem so. For
just as the fragments of the so-called Death are stuck in the fields
to make the crops grow, so the charred embers of the figure burned
in the spring bonfires are sometimes laid on the fields in the
belief that they will keep vermin from the crop. Again, the rule
that the last married bride must leap over the fire in which the
straw-man is burned on Shrove Tuesday, is probably intended to make
her fruitful. But, as we have seen, the power of blessing women with
offspring is a special attribute of tree-spirits; it is therefore a
fair presumption that the burning effigy over which the bride must
leap is a representative of the fertilising tree-spirit or spirit of
vegetation. This character of the effigy, as representative of the
spirit of vegetation, is almost unmistakable when the figure is
composed of an unthreshed sheaf of corn or is covered from head to
foot with flowers. Again, it is to be noted that, instead of a
puppet, trees, either living or felled, are sometimes burned both in
the spring and midsummer bonfires. Now, considering the frequency
with which the tree-spirit is represented in human shape, it is
hardly rash to suppose that when sometimes a tree and sometimes an
effigy is burned in these fires, the effigy and the tree are
regarded as equivalent to each other, each being a representative of
the tree-spirit. This, again, is confirmed by observing, first, that
sometimes the effigy which is to be burned is carried about
simultaneously with a May-tree, the former being carried by the
boys, the latter by the girls; and, second, that the effigy is
sometimes tied to a living tree and burned with it. In these cases,
we can scarcely doubt, the tree-spirit is represented, as we have
found it represented before, in duplicate, both by the tree and by
the effigy. That the true character of the effigy as a
representative of the beneficent spirit of vegetation should
sometimes be forgotten, is natural. The custom of burning a
beneficent god is too foreign to later modes of thought to escape
misinterpretation. Naturally enough the people who continued to burn
his image came in time to identify it as the effigy of persons,
whom, on various grounds, they regarded with aversion, such as Judas
Iscariot, Luther, and a witch.

The general reasons for killing a god or his representative have
been examined in a preceding chapter. But when the god happens to be
a deity of vegetation, there are special reasons why he should die
by fire. For light and heat are necessary to vegetable growth; and,
on the principle of sympathetic magic, by subjecting the personal
representative of vegetation to their influence, you secure a supply
of these necessaries for trees and crops. In other words, by burning
the spirit of vegetation in a fire which represents the sun, you
make sure that, for a time at least, vegetation shall have plenty of
sun. It may be objected that, if the intention is simply to secure
enough sunshine for vegetation, this end would be better attained,
on the principles of sympathetic magic, by merely passing the
representative of vegetation through the fire instead of burning
him. In point of fact this is sometimes done. In Russia, as we have
seen, the straw figure of Kupalo is not burned in the midsummer
fire, but merely carried backwards and forwards across it. But, for
the reasons already given, it is necessary that the god should die;
so next day Kupalo is stripped of her ornaments and thrown into a
stream. In this Russian custom the passage of the image through the
fire, if it is not simply a purification, may possibly be a
sun-charm; the killing of the god is a separate act, and the mode of
killing him--by drowning--is probably a rain-charm. But usually
people have not thought it necessary to draw this fine distinction;
for the various reasons already assigned, it is advantageous, they
think, to expose the god of vegetation to a considerable degree of
heat, and it is also advantageous to kill him, and they combine
these advantages in a rough-and-ready way by burning him.



2. The Burning of Men and Animals in the Fires

IN THE POPULAR customs connected with the fire-festivals of Europe
there are certain features which appear to point to a former
practice of human sacrifice. We have seen reasons for believing that
in Europe living persons have often acted as representatives of the
tree-spirit and corn-spirit and have suffered death as such. There
is no reason, therefore, why they should not have been burned, if
any special advantages were likely to be attained by putting them to
death in that way. The consideration of human suffering is not one
which enters into the calculations of primitive man. Now, in the
fire-festivals which we are discussing, the pretence of burning
people is sometimes carried so far that it seems reasonable to
regard it as a mitigated survival of an older custom of actually
burning them. Thus in Aachen, as we saw, the man clad in peas-straw
acts so cleverly that the children really believe he is being
burned. At Jumiges in Normandy the man clad all in green, who bore
the title of the Green Wolf, was pursued by his comrades, and when
they caught him they feigned to fling him upon the midsummer
bonfire. Similarly at the Beltane fires in Scotland the pretended
victim was seized, and a show made of throwing him into the flames,
and for some time afterwards people affected to speak of him as
dead. Again, in the Hallowe'en bonfires of Northeastern Scotland we
may perhaps detect a similar pretence in the custom observed by a
lad of lying down as close to the fire as possible and allowing the
other lads to leap over him. The titular king at Aix, who reigned
for a year and danced the first dance round the midsummer bonfire,
may perhaps in days of old have discharged the less agreeable duty
of serving as fuel for that fire which in later times he only
kindled. 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. As he gets the wood he sings:


"Forest trees I want,
  No sour milk for me,
  But beer and wine,
  So can the wood-man be jolly and gay."


In some parts of Bavaria, also, the boys who go from house to house
collecting fuel for the midsummer bonfire envelop one of their
number from head to foot in green branches of firs, and lead him by
a rope through the whole village. At Moosheim, in Wurtemberg, the
festival of St. John's Fire usually lasted for fourteen days, ending
on the second Sunday after Midsummer Day. On this last day the
bonfire was left in charge of the children, while the older people
retired to a wood. Here they encased a young fellow in leaves and
twigs, who, thus disguised, went to the fire, scattered it, and trod
it out. All the people present fled at the sight of him.

But it seems possible to go farther than this. Of human sacrifices
offered on these occasions the most unequivocal traces, as we have
seen, are those which, about a hundred years ago, still lingered at
the Beltane fires in the Highlands of Scotland, that is, among a
Celtic people who, situated in a remote corner of Europe and almost
completely isolated from foreign influence, had till then conserved
their old heathenism better perhaps than any other people in the
West of Europe. It is significant, therefore, that human sacrifices
by fire are known, on unquestionable evidence, to have been
systematically practised by the Celts. The earliest description of
these sacrifices has been bequeathed to us by Julius Caesar. As
conqueror of the hitherto independent Celts of Gaul, Caesar had
ample opportunity of observing the national Celtic religion and
manners, while these were still fresh and crisp from the native mint
and had not yet been fused in the melting-pot of Roman civilisation.
With his own notes Caesar appears to have incorporated the
observations of a Greek explorer, by name Posidonius, who travelled
in Gaul about fifty years before Caesar carried the Roman arms to
the English Channel. The Greek geographer Strabo and the historian
Diodorus seem also to have derived their descriptions of the Celtic
sacrifices from the work of Posidonius, but independently of each
other, and of Caesar, for each of the three derivative accounts
contain some details which are not to be found in either of the
others. By combining them, therefore, we can restore the original
account of Posidonius with some probability, and thus obtain a
picture of the sacrifices offered by the Celts of Gaul at the close
of the second century before our era. The following seem to have
been the main outlines of the custom. Condemned criminals were
reserved by the Celts in order to be sacrificed to the gods at a
great festival which took place once in every five years. The more
there were of such victims, the greater was believed to be the
fertility of the land. If there were not enough criminals to furnish
victims, captives taken in war were immolated to supply the
deficiency. When the time came the victims were sacrificed by the
Druids or priests. Some they shot down with arrows, some they
impaled, and some they burned alive in the following manner.
Colossal images of wicker-work or of wood and grass were
constructed; these were filled with live men, cattle, and animals of
other kinds; fire was then applied to the images, and they were
burned with their living contents.

Such were the great festivals held once every five years. But
besides these quinquennial festivals, celebrated on so grand a
scale, and with, apparently, so large an expenditure of human life,
it seems reasonable to suppose that festivals of the same sort, only
on a lesser scale, were held annually, and that from these annual
festivals are lineally descended some at least of the fire-festivals
which, with their traces of human sacrifices, are still celebrated
year by year in many parts of Europe. The gigantic images
constructed of osiers or covered with grass in which the Druids
enclosed their victims remind us of the leafy framework in which the
human representative of the tree-spirit is still so often encased.
Hence, seeing that the fertility of the land was apparently supposed
to depend upon the due performance of these sacrifices, Mannhardt
interpreted the Celtic victims, cased in osiers and grass, as
representatives of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation.

These wicker giants of the Druids seem to have had till lately, if
not down to the present time, their representatives at the spring
and midsummer festivals of modern Europe. At Douay, down at least to
the early part of the nineteenth century, a procession took place
annually on the Sunday nearest to the seventh of July. The great
feature of the procession was a colossal figure, some twenty or
thirty feet high, made of osiers, and called "the giant," which was
moved through the streets by means of rollers and ropes worked by
men who were enclosed within the effigy. The figure was armed as a
knight with lance and sword, helmet and shield. Behind him marched
his wife and his three children, all constructed of osiers on the
same principle, but on a smaller scale. At Dunkirk the procession of
the giants took place on Midsummer Day, the twenty-fourth of June.
The festival, which was known as the Follies of Dunkirk, attracted
multitudes of spectators. The giant was a huge figure of
wicker-work, occasionally as much as forty-five feet high, dressed
in a long blue robe with gold stripes, which reached to his feet,
concealing the dozen or more men who made it dance and bob its head
to the spectators. This colossal effigy went by the name of Papa
Reuss, and carried in its pocket a bouncing infant of Brobdingnagian
proportions. The rear was brought up by the daughter of the giant,
constructed, like her sire, of wicker-work, and little, if at all,
inferior to him in size. Most towns and even villages of Brabant and
Flanders have, or used to have, similar wicker giants which were
annually led about to the delight of the populace, who loved these
grotesque figures, spoke of them with patriotic enthusiasm, and
never wearied of gazing at them. At Antwerp the giant was so big
that no gate in the city was large enough to let him go through;
hence he could not visit his brother giants in neighbouring towns,
as the other Belgian giants used to do on solemn occasions.

In England artificial giants seem to have been a standing feature of
the midsummer festival. A writer of the sixteenth century speaks of
"Midsommer pageants in London, where to make the people wonder, are
set forth great and uglie gyants marching as if they were alive, and
armed at all points, but within they are stuffed full of browne
paper and tow, which the shrewd boyes, underpeering, do guilefully
discover, and turne to a greate derision." At Chester the annual
pageant on Midsummer Eve included the effigies of four giants, with
animals, hobby-horses, and other figures. At Coventry it appears
that the giant's wife figured beside the giant. At Burford, in
Oxfordshire, Midsummer Eve used to be celebrated with great jollity
by the carrying of a giant and a dragon up and down the town. The
last survivor of these perambulating English giants lingered at
Salisbury, where an antiquary found him mouldering to decay in the
neglected hall of the Tailors' Company about the year 1844. His
bodily framework was a lath and hoop, like the one which used to be
worn by Jack-in-the-Green on May Day.

In these cases the giants merely figured in the processions. But
sometimes they were burned in the summer bonfires. Thus the people
of the Rue aux Ours in Paris used annually to make a great
wicker-work figure, dressed as a soldier, which they promenaded up
and down the streets for several days, and solemnly burned on the
third of July, the crowd of spectators singing _Salve Regina._ A
personage who bore the title of king presided over the ceremony with
a lighted torch in his hand. The burning fragments of the image were
scattered among the people, who eagerly scrambled for them. The
custom was abolished in 1743. In Brie, Isle de France, a wicker-work
giant, eighteen feet high, was annually burned on Midsummer Eve.

Again, the Druidical custom of burning live animals, enclosed in
wicker-work, has its counterpart at the spring and midsummer
festivals. At Luchon in the Pyrenees on Midsummer Eve "a hollow
column, composed of strong wicker-work, is raised to the height of
about sixty feet in the centre of the principal suburb, and
interlaced with green foliage up to the very top; while the most
beautiful flowers and shrubs procurable are artistically arranged in
groups below, so as to form a sort of background to the scene. The
column is then filled with combustible materials, ready for
ignition. At an appointed hour--about 8 P.M.--a grand procession,
composed of the clergy, followed by young men and maidens in holiday
attire, pour forth from the town chanting hymns, and take up their
position around the column. Meanwhile, bonfires are lit, with
beautiful effect, in the surrounding hills. As many living serpents
as could be collected are now thrown into the column, which is set
on fire at the base by means of torches, armed with which about
fifty boys and men dance around with frantic gestures. The serpents,
to avoid the flames, wriggle their way to the top, whence they are
seen lashing out laterally until finally obliged to drop, their
struggles for life giving rise to enthusiastic delight among the
surrounding spectators. This is a favourite annual ceremony for the
inhabitants of Luchon and its neighbourhood, and local tradition
assigns it to a heathen origin." In the midsummer fires formerly
kindled on the Place de Grve at Paris it was the custom to burn a
basket, barrel, or sack full of live cats, which was hung from a
tall mast in the midst of the bonfire; sometimes a fox was burned.
The people collected the embers and ashes of the fire and took them
home, believing that they brought good luck. The French kings often
witnessed these spectacles and even lit the bonfire with their own
hands. In 1648 Louis the Fourteenth, crowned with a wreath of roses
and carrying a bunch of roses in his hand, kindled the fire, danced
at it and partook of the banquet afterwards in the town hall. But
this was the last occasion when a monarch presided at the midsummer
bonfire in Paris. At Metz midsummer fires were lighted with great
pomp on the esplanade, and a dozen cats, enclosed in wicker cages,
were burned alive in them, to the amusement of the people. Similarly
at Gap, in the department of the High Alps, cats used to be roasted
over the midsummer bonfire. In Russia a white cock was sometimes
burned in the midsummer bonfire; in Meissen or Thuringia a horse's
head used to be thrown into it. Sometimes animals are burned in the
spring bonfires. In the Vosges cats were burned on Shrove Tuesday;
in Alsace they were thrown into the Easter bonfire. In the
department of the Ardennes cats were flung into the bonfires kindled
on the first Sunday in Lent; sometimes, by a refinement of cruelty,
they were hung over the fire from the end of a pole and roasted
alive. "The cat, which represented the devil, could never suffer
enough." While the creatures were perishing in the flames, the
shepherds guarded their flocks and forced them to leap over the
fire, esteeming this an infallible means of preserving them from
disease and witchcraft. We have seen that squirrels were sometimes
burned in the Easter fire.

Thus it appears that the sacrificial rites of the Celts of ancient
Gaul can be traced in the popular festivals of modern Europe.
Naturally it is in France, or rather in the wider area comprised
within the limits of ancient Gaul, that these rites have left the
clearest traces in the customs of burning giants of wicker-work and
animals enclosed in wicker-work or baskets. These customs, it will
have been remarked, are generally observed at or about midsummer.
From this we may infer that the original rites of which these are
the degenerate successors were solemnised at midsummer. This
inference harmonises with the conclusion suggested by a general
survey of European folk-custom, that the midsummer festival must on
the whole have been the most widely diffused and the most solemn of
all the yearly festivals celebrated by the primitive Aryans in
Europe. At the same time we must bear in mind that among the British
Celts the chief fire-festivals of the year appear certainly to have
been those of Beltane (May Day) and Hallowe'en (the last day of
October); and this suggests a doubt whether the Celts of Gaul also
may not have celebrated their principal rites of fire, including
their burnt sacrifices of men and animals, at the beginning of May
or the beginning of November rather than at Midsummer.

We have still to ask, What is the meaning of such sacrifices? Why
were men and animals burnt to death at these festivals? If we are
right in interpreting the modern European fire-festivals as attempts
to break the power of witchcraft by burning or banning the witches
and warlocks, it seems to follow that we must explain the human
sacrifices of the Celts in the same manner; that is, we must suppose
that the men whom the Druids burnt in wicker-work images were
condemned to death on the ground that they were witches or wizards,
and that the mode of execution by fire was chosen because burning
alive is deemed the surest mode of getting rid of these noxious and
dangerous beings. The same explanation would apply to the cattle and
wild animals of many kinds which the Celts burned along with the
men. They, too, we may conjecture, were supposed to be either under
the spell of witchcraft or actually to be the witches and wizards,
who had transformed themselves into animals for the purpose of
prosecuting their infernal plots against the welfare of their
fellow-creatures. This conjecture is confirmed by the observation
that the victims most commonly burned in modern bonfires have been
cats, and that cats are precisely the animals into which, with the
possible exception of hares, witches were most usually supposed to
transform themselves. Again, we have seen that serpents and foxes
used sometimes to be burnt in the midsummer fires; and Welsh and
German witches are reported to have assumed the form both of foxes
and serpents. In short, when we remember the great variety of
animals whose forms witches can assume at pleasure, it seems easy on
this hypothesis to account for the variety of living creatures that
have been burnt at festivals both in ancient Gaul and modern Europe;
all these victims, we may surmise, were doomed to the flames, not
because they were animals, but because they were believed to be
witches who had taken the shape of animals for their nefarious
purposes. One advantage of explaining the ancient Celtic sacrifices
in this way is that it introduces, as it were, a harmony and
consistency into the treatment which Europe has meted out to witches
from the earliest times down to about two centuries ago, when the
growing influence of rationalism discredited the belief in
witchcraft and put a stop to the custom of burning witches. Be that
as it may, we can now perhaps understand why the Druids believed
that the more persons they sentenced to death, the greater would be
the fertility of the land. To a modern reader the connexion at first
sight may not be obvious between the activity of the hangman and the
productivity of the earth. But a little reflection may satisfy him
that when the criminals who perish at the stake or on the gallows
are witches, whose delight it is to blight the crops of the farmer
or to lay them low under storms of hail, the execution of these
wretches is really calculated to ensure an abundant harvest by
removing one of the principal causes which paralyse the efforts and
blast the hopes of the husbandman.

The Druidical sacrifices which we are considering were explained in
a different way by W. Mannhardt. He supposed that the men whom the
Druids burned in wicker-work images represented the spirits of
vegetation, and accordingly that the custom of burning them was a
magical ceremony intended to secure the necessary sunshine for the
crops. Similarly, he seems to have inclined to the view that the
animals which used to be burnt in the bonfires represented the
cornspirit, which, as we saw in an earlier part of this work, is
often supposed to assume the shape of an animal. This theory is no
doubt tenable, and the great authority of W. Mannhardt entitles it
to careful consideration. I adopted it in former editions of this
book; but on reconsideration it seems to me on the whole to be less
probable than the theory that the men and animals burnt in the fires
perished in the character of witches. This latter view is strongly
supported by the testimony of the people who celebrate the
fire-festivals, since a popular name for the custom of kindling the
fires is "burning the witches," effigies of witches are sometimes
consumed in the flames, and the fires, their embers, or their ashes
are supposed to furnish protection against witchcraft. On the other
hand there is little to show that the effigies or the animals burnt
in the fires are regarded by the people as representatives of the
vegetation-spirit, and that the bonfires are sun-charms. With regard
to serpents in particular, which used to be burnt in the midsummer
fire at Luchon, I am not aware of any certain evidence that in
Europe snakes have been regarded as embodiments of the tree-spirit
or corn-spirit, though in other parts of the world the conception
appears to be not unknown. Whereas the popular faith in the
transformation of witches into animals is so general and deeply
rooted, and the fear of these uncanny beings is so strong, that it
seems safer to suppose that the cats and other animals which were
burnt in the fire suffered death as embodiments of witches than that
they perished as representatives of vegetation-spirits.





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