object:1.65 - Balder and the Mistletoe
book class:The Golden Bough
author class:James George Frazer
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter
LXV. Balder and the Mistletoe
THE READER may remember that the preceding account of the popular
fire-festivals of Europe was suggested by the myth of the Norse god
Balder, who is said to have been slain by a branch of mistletoe and
burnt in a great fire. We have now to enquire how far the customs
which have been passed in review help to shed light on the myth. In
this enquiry it may be convenient to begin with the mistletoe, the
instrument of Balder's death.
From time immemorial the mistletoe has been the object of
superstitious veneration in Europe. It was worshipped by the Druids,
as we learn from a famous passage of Pliny. After enumerating the
different kinds of mistletoe, he proceeds: "In treating of this
subject, the admiration in which the mistletoe is held throughout
Gaul ought not to pass unnoticed. The Druids, for so they call their
wizards, esteem nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree
on which it grows, provided only that the tree is an oak. But apart
from this they choose oak-woods for their sacred groves and perform
no sacred rites without oak-leaves; so that the very name of Druids
may be regarded as a Greek appellation derived from their worship of
the oak. For they believe that whatever grows on these trees is sent
from heaven, and is a sign that the tree has been chosen by the god
himself. The mistletoe is very rarely to be met with; but when it is
found, they gather it with solemn ceremony. This they do above all
on the sixth day of the moon, from whence they date the beginnings
of their months, of their years, and of their thirty years' cycle,
because by the sixth day the moon has plenty of vigour and has not
run half its course. After due preparations have been made for a
sacrifice and a feast under the tree, they hail it as the universal
healer and bring to the spot two white bulls, whose horns have never
been bound before. A priest clad in a white robe climbs the tree and
with a golden sickle cuts the mistletoe, which is caught in a white
cloth. Then they sacrifice the victims, praying that God may make
his own gift to prosper with those upon whom he has bestowed it.
They believe that a potion prepared from mistletoe will make barren
animals to bring forth, and that the plant is a remedy against all
poison."
In another passage Pliny tells us that in medicine the mistletoe
which grows on an oak was esteemed the most efficacious, and that
its efficacy was by some superstitious people supposed to be
increased if the plant was gathered on the first day of the moon
without the use of iron, and if when gathered it was not allowed to
touch the earth; oak-mistletoe thus obtained was deemed a cure for
epilepsy; carried about by women it assisted them to conceive; and
it healed ulcers most effectually, if only the sufferer chewed a
piece of the plant and laid another piece on the sore. Yet, again,
he says that mistletoe was supposed, like vinegar and an egg, to be
an excellent means of extinguishing a fire.
If in these latter passages Pliny refers, as he apparently does, to
the beliefs current among his contemporaries in Italy, it will
follow that the Druids and the Italians were to some extent agreed
as to the valuable properties possessed by mistletoe which grows on
an oak; both of them deemed it an effectual remedy for a number of
ailments, and both of them ascribed to it a quickening virtue, the
Druids believing that a potion prepared from mistletoe would
fertilise barren cattle, and the Italians holding that a piece of
mistletoe carried about by a woman would help her to conceive a
child. Further, both peoples thought that if the plant were to exert
its medicinal properties it must be gathered in a certain way and at
a certain time. It might not be cut with iron, hence the Druids cut
it with gold; and it might not touch the earth, hence the Druids
caught it in a white cloth. In choosing the time for gathering the
plant, both peoples were determined by observation of the moon; only
they differed as to the particular day of the moon, the Italians
preferring the first, and the Druids the sixth.
With these beliefs of the ancient Gauls and Italians as to the
wonderful medicinal properties of mistletoe we may compare the
similar beliefs of the modern Aino of Japan. We read that they,
"like many nations of the Northern origin, hold the mistletoe in
peculiar veneration. They look upon it as a medicine, good in almost
every disease, and it is sometimes taken in food and at others
separately as a decoction. The leaves are used in preference to the
berries, the latter being of too sticky a nature for general
purposes. . . . But many, too, suppose this plant to have the power
of making the gardens bear plentifully. When used for this purpose,
the leaves are cut up into fine pieces, and, after having been
prayed over, are sown with the millet and other seeds, a little also
being eaten with the food. Barren women have also been known to eat
the mistletoe, in order to be made to bear children. That mistletoe
which grows upon the willow is supposed to have the greatest
efficacy. This is because the willow is looked upon by them as being
an especially sacred tree."
Thus the Aino agree with the Druids in regarding mistletoe as a cure
for almost every disease, and they agree with the ancient Italians
that applied to women it helps them to bear children. Again, the
Druidical notion that the mistletoe was an "all-healer" or panacea
may be compared with a notion entertained by the Walos of
Senegambia. These people "have much veneration for a sort of
mistletoe, which they call _tob;_ they carry leaves of it on their
persons when they go to war as a preservative against wounds, just
as if the leaves were real talismans (_gris-gris_)." The French
writer who records this practice adds: "Is it not very curious that
the mistletoe should be in this part of Africa what it was in the
superstitions of the Gauls? This prejudice, common to the two
countries, may have the same origin; blacks and whites will
doubtless have seen, each of them for themselves, something
supernatural in a plant which grows and flourishes without having
roots in the earth. May they not have believed, in fact, that it was
a plant fallen from the sky, a gift of the divinity?"
This suggestion as to the origin of the superstition is strongly
confirmed by the Druidical belief, reported by Pliny, that whatever
grew on an oak was sent from heaven and was a sign that the tree had
been chosen by the god himself. Such a belief explains why the
Druids cut the mistletoe, not with a common knife, but with a golden
sickle, and why, when cut, it was not suffered to touch the earth;
probably they thought that the celestial plant would have been
profaned and its marvellous virtue lost by contact with the ground.
With the ritual observed by the Druids in cutting the mistletoe we
may compare the ritual which in Cambodia is prescribed in a similar
case. They say that when you see an orchid growing as a parasite on
a tamarind tree, you should dress in white, take a new earthenware
pot, then climb the tree at noon, break off the plant, put it in the
pot and let the pot fall to the ground. After that you make in the
pot a decoction which confers the gift of invulnerability. Thus just
as in Africa the leaves of one parasitic plant are supposed to
render the wearer invulnerable, so in Cambodia a decoction made from
another parasitic plant is considered to render the same service to
such as make use of it, whether by drinking or washing. We may
conjecture that in both places the notion of invulnerability is
suggested by the position of the plant, which, occupying a place of
comparative security above the ground, appears to promise to its
fortunate possessor a similar security from some of the ills that
beset the life of man on earth. We have already met with examples of
the store which the primitive mind sets on such vantage grounds.
Whatever may be the origin of these beliefs and practices concerning
the mistletoe, certain it is that some of them have their analogies
in the folk-lore of modern European peasants. For example, it is
laid down as a rule in various parts of Europe that mistletoe may
not be cut in the ordinary way but must be shot or knocked down with
stones from the tree on which it is growing. Thus, in the Swiss
canton of Aargau "all parasitic plants are esteemed in a certain
sense holy by the country folk, but most particularly so the
mistletoe growing on an oak. They ascribe great powers to it, but
shrink from cutting it off in the usual manner. Instead of that they
procure it in the following manner. When the sun is in Sagittarius
and the moon is on the wane, on the first, third, or fourth day
before the new moon, one ought to shoot down with an arrow the
mistletoe of an oak and to catch it with the left hand as it falls.
Such mistletoe is a remedy for every ailment of children." Here
among the Swiss peasants, as among the Druids of old, special virtue
is ascribed to mistletoe which grows on an oak: it may not be cut in
the usual way: it must be caught as it falls to the ground; and it
is esteemed a panacea for all diseases, at least of children. In
Sweden, also, it is a popular superstition that if mistletoe is to
possess its peculiar virtue, it must either be shot down out of the
oak or knocked down with stones. Similarly, "so late as the early
part of the nineteenth century, people in Wales believed that for
the mistletoe to have any power, it must be shot or struck down with
stones off the tree where it grew."
Again, in respect of the healing virtues of mistletoe the opinion of
modern peasants, and even of the learned, has to some extent agreed
with that of the ancients. The Druids appear to have called the
plant, or perhaps the oak on which it grew, the "all-healer"; and
"all-healer" is said to be still a name of the mistletoe in the
modern Celtic speech of Brittany, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. On
St. John's morning (Midsummer morning) peasants of Piedmont and
Lombardy go out to search the oak-leaves for the "oil of St. John,"
which is supposed to heal all wounds made with cutting instruments.
Originally, perhaps, the "oil of St. John" was simply the mistletoe,
or a decoction made from it. For in Holstein the mistletoe,
especially oak-mistletoe, is still regarded as a panacea for green
wounds and as a sure charm to secure success in hunting; and at
Lacaune, in the south of France, the old Druidical belief in the
mistletoe as an antidote to all poisons still survives among the
peasantry; they apply the plant to the stomach of the sufferer or
give him a decoction of it to drink. Again, the ancient belief that
mistletoe is a cure for epilepsy has survived in modern times not
only among the ignorant but among the learned. Thus in Sweden
persons afflicted with the falling sickness think they can ward off
attacks of the malady by carrying about with them a knife which has
a handle of oak mistletoe; and in Germany for a similar purpose
pieces of mistletoe used to be hung round the necks of children. In
the French province of Bourbonnais a popular remedy for epilepsy is
a decoction of mistletoe which has been gathered on an oak on St.
John's Day and boiled with rye-flour. So at Bottesford in
Lincolnshire a decoction of mistletoe is supposed to be a palliative
for this terrible disease. Indeed mistletoe was recommended as a
remedy for the falling sickness by high medical authorities in
England and Holland down to the eighteenth century.
However, the opinion of the medical profession as to the curative
virtues of mistletoe has undergone a radical alteration. Whereas the
Druids thought that mistletoe cured everything, modern doctors
appear to think that it cures nothing. If they are right, we must
conclude that the ancient and widespread faith in the medicinal
virtue of mistletoe is a pure superstition based on nothing better
than the fanciful inferences which ignorance has drawn from the
parasitic nature of the plant, its position high up on the branch of
a tree seeming to protect it from the dangers to which plants and
animals are subject on the surface of the ground. From this point of
view we can perhaps understand why mistletoe has so long and so
persistently been prescribed as a cure for the falling sickness. As
mistletoe cannot fall to the ground because it is rooted on the
branch of a tree high above the earth, it seems to follow as a
necessary consequence that an epileptic patient cannot possibly fall
down in a fit so long as he carries a piece of mistletoe in his
pocket or a decoction of mistletoe in his stomach. Such a train of
reasoning would probably be regarded even now as cogent by a large
portion of the human species.
Again the ancient Italian opinion that mistletoe extinguishes fire
appears to be shared by Swedish peasants, who hang up bunches of
oak-mistletoe on the ceilings of their rooms as a protection against
harm in general and conflagration in particular. A hint as to the
way in which mistletoe comes to be possessed of this property is
furnished by the epithet "thunder-bosom," which people of the Aargau
canton in Switzerland apply to the plant. For a thunder-besom is a
shaggy, bushy excrescence on branches of trees, which is popularly
believed to be produced by a flash of lightning; hence in Bohemia a
thunder-besom burnt in the fire protects the house against being
struck by a thunder-bolt. Being itself a product of lightning it
naturally serves, on homoeopathic principles, as a protection
against lightning, in fact as a kind of lightning-conductor. Hence
the fire which mistletoe in Sweden is designed especially to avert
from houses may be fire kindled by lightning; though no doubt the
plant is equally effective against conflagration in general.
Again, mistletoe acts as a master-key as well as a
lightning-conductor; for it is said to open all locks. But perhaps
the most precious of all the virtues of mistletoe is that it affords
efficient protection against sorcery and witchcraft. That, no doubt,
is the reason why in Austria a twig of mistletoe is laid on the
threshold as a preventive of nightmare; and it may be the reason why
in the north of England they say that if you wish your dairy to
thrive you should give your bunch of mistletoe to the first cow that
calves after New Year's Day, for it is well known that nothing is so
fatal to milk and butter as witchcraft. Similarly in Wales, for the
sake of ensuring good luck to the dairy, people used to give a
branch of mistletoe to the first cow that gave birth to a calf after
the first hour of the New Year; and in rural districts of Wales,
where mistletoe abounded, there was always a profusion of it in the
farmhouses. When mistletoe was scarce, Welsh farmers used to say,
"No mistletoe, no luck"; but if there was a fine crop of mistletoe,
they expected a fine crop of corn. In Sweden mistletoe is diligently
sought after on St. John's Eve, the people "believing it to be, in a
high degree, possessed of mystic qualities; and that if a sprig of
it be attached to the ceiling of the dwelling-house, the horse's
stall, or the cow's crib, the Troll will then be powerless to injure
either man or beast."
With regard to the time when the mistletoe should be gathered
opinions have varied. The Druids gathered it above all on the sixth
day of the moon, the ancient Italians apparently on the first day of
the moon. In modern times some have preferred the full moon of March
and others the waning moon of winter when the sun is in Sagittarius.
But the favourite time would seem to be Midsummer Eve or Midsummer
Day. We have seen that both in France and Sweden special virtues are
ascribed to mistletoe gathered at Midsummer. The rule in Sweden is
that "mistletoe must be cut on the night of Midsummer Eve when sun
and moon stand in the sign of their might." Again, in Wales it was
believed that a sprig of mistletoe gathered on St. John's Eve
(Midsummer Eve), or at any time before the berries appeared, would
induce dreams of omen, both good and bad, if it were placed under
the pillow of the sleeper. Thus mistletoe is one of the many plants
whose magical or medicinal virtues are believed to culminate with
the culmination of the sun on the longest day of the year. Hence it
seems reasonable to conjecture that in the eyes of the Druids, also,
who revered the plant so highly, the sacred mistletoe may have
acquired a double portion of its mystic qualities at the solstice in
June, and that accordingly they may have regularly cut it with
solemn ceremony on Midsummer Eve.
Be that as it may, certain it is that the mistletoe, the instrument
of Balder's death, has been regularly gathered for the sake of its
mystic qualities on Midsummer Eve in Scandinavia, Balder's home. The
plant is found commonly growing on pear-trees, oaks, and other trees
in thick damp woods throughout the more temperate parts of Sweden.
Thus one of the two main incidents of Balder's myth is reproduced in
the great midsummer festival of Scandinavia. But the other main
incident of the myth, the burning of Balder's body on a pyre, has
also its counterpart in the bonfires which still blaze, or blazed
till lately, in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden on Midsummer Eve. It
does not appear, indeed, that any effigy is burned in these
bonfires; but the burning of an effigy is a feature which might
easily drop out after its meaning was forgotten. And the name of
Balder's balefires (_Balder's Balar_), by which these midsummer
fires were formerly known in Sweden, puts their connexion with
Balder beyond the reach of doubt, and makes it probable that in
former times either a living representative or an effigy of Balder
was annually burned in them. Midsummer was the season sacred to
Balder, and the Swedish poet Tegner, in placing the burning of
Balder at midsummer, may very well have followed an old tradition
that the summer solstice was the time when the good god came to his
untimely end.
Thus it has been shown that the leading incidents of the Balder myth
have their counterparts in those fire-festivals of our European
peasantry which undoubtedly date from a time long prior to the
introduction of Christianity. The pretence of throwing the victim
chosen by lot into the Beltane fire, and the similar treatment of
the man, the future Green Wolf, at the midsummer bonfire in
Normandy, may naturally be interpreted as traces of an older custom
of actually burning human beings on these occasions; and the green
dress of the Green Wolf, coupled with the leafy envelope of the
young fellow who trod out the midsummer fire at Moosheim, seems to
hint that the persons who perished at these festivals did so in the
character of tree-spirits or deities of vegetation. From all this we
may reasonably infer that in the Balder myth on the one hand, and
the fire-festivals and custom of gathering mistletoe on the other
hand, we have, as it were, the two broken and dissevered halves of
an original whole. In other words, we may assume with some degree of
probability that the myth of Balder's death was not merely a myth,
that is, a description of physical phenomena in imagery borrowed
from human life, but that it was at the same time the story which
people told to explain why they annually burned a human
representative of the god and cut the mistletoe with solemn
ceremony. If I am right, the story of Balder's tragic end formed, so
to say, the text of the sacred drama which was acted year by year as
a magical rite to cause the sun to shine, trees to grow, crops to
thrive, and to guard man and beast from the baleful arts of fairies
and trolls, of witches and warlocks. The tale belonged, in short, to
that class of nature myths which are meant to be supplemented by
ritual; here, as so often, myth stood to magic in the relation of
theory to practice.
But if the victims--the human Balders--who died by fire, whether in
spring or at midsummer, were put to death as living embodiments of
tree-spirits or deities of vegetation, it would seem that Balder
himself must have been a tree-spirit or deity of vegetation. It
becomes desirable, therefore, to determine, if we can, the
particular kind of tree or trees, of which a personal representative
was burned at the fire-festivals. For we may be quite sure that it
was not as a representative of vegetation in general that the victim
suffered death. The idea of vegetation in general is too abstract to
be primitive. Most probably the victim at first represented a
particular kind of sacred tree. But of all European trees none has
such claims as the oak to be considered as pre-eminently the sacred
tree of the Aryans. We have seen that its worship is attested for
all the great branches of the Aryan stock in Europe; hence we may
certainly conclude that the tree was venerated by the Aryans in
common before the dispersion, and that their primitive home must
have lain in a land which was clothed with forests of oak.
Now, considering the primitive character and remarkable similarity
of the fire-festivals observed by all the branches of the Aryan race
in Europe, we may infer that these festivals form part of the common
stock of religious observances which the various peoples carried
with them in their wanderings from their old home. But, if I am
right, an essential feature of those primitive fire-festivals was
the burning of a man who represented the tree-spirit. In view, then,
of the place occupied by the oak in the religion of the Aryans, the
presumption is that the tree so represented at the fire-festivals
must originally have been the oak. So far as the Celts and
Lithuanians are concerned, this conclusion will perhaps hardly be
contested. But both for them and for the Germans it is confirmed by
a remarkable piece of religious conservatism. The most primitive
method known to man of producing fire is by rubbing two pieces of
wood against each other till they ignite; and we have seen that this
method is still used in Europe for kindling sacred fires such as the
need-fire, and that most probably it was formerly resorted to at all
the fire-festivals under discussion. Now it is sometimes required
that the need-fire, or other sacred fire, should be made by the
friction of a particular kind of wood; and when the kind of wood is
prescribed, whether among Celts, Germans, or Slavs, that wood
appears to be generally the oak. But if the sacred fire was
regularly kindled by the friction of oak-wood, we may infer that
originally the fire was also fed with the same material. In point of
fact, it appears that the perpetual fire of Vesta at Rome was fed
with oak-wood, and that oak-wood was the fuel consumed in the
perpetual fire which burned under the sacred oak at the great
Lithuanian sanctuary of Romove. Further, that oak-wood was formerly
the fuel burned in the midsummer fires may perhaps be inferred from
the custom, said to be still observed by peasants in many mountain
districts of Germany, of making up the cottage fire on Midsummer Day
with a heavy block of oak-wood. The block is so arranged that it
smoulders slowly and is not finally reduced to charcoal till the
expiry of a year. Then upon next Midsummer Day the charred embers of
the old log are removed to make room for the new one, and are mixed
with the seed-corn or scattered about the garden. This is believed
to guard the food cooked on the hearth from witchcraft, to preserve
the luck of the house, to promote the growth of the crops, and to
keep them from blight and vermin. Thus the custom is almost exactly
parallel to that of the Yule-log, which in parts of Germany, France,
England, Serbia, and other Slavonic lands was commonly of oak-wood.
The general conclusion is, that at those periodic or occasional
ceremonies the ancient Aryans both kindled and fed the fire with the
sacred oak-wood.
But if at these solemn rites the fire was regularly made of oakwood,
it follows that any man who was burned in it as a personification of
the tree-spirit could have represented no tree but the oak. The
sacred oak was thus burned in duplicate; the wood of the tree was
consumed in the fire, and along with it was consumed a living man as
a personification of the oak-spirit. The conclusion thus drawn for
the European Aryans in general is confirmed in its special
application to the Scandinavians by the relation in which amongst
them the mistletoe appears to have stood to the burning of the
victim in the midsummer fire. We have seen that among Scandinavians
it has been customary to gather the mistletoe at midsummer. But so
far as appears on the face of this custom, there is nothing to
connect it with the midsummer fires in which human victims or
effigies of them were burned. Even if the fire, as seems probable,
was originally always made with oak-wood, why should it have been
necessary to pull the mistletoe? The last link between the midsummer
customs of gathering the mistletoe and lighting the bonfires is
supplied by Balder's myth, which can hardly be disjoined from the
customs in question. The myth suggests that a vital connexion may
once have been believed to subsist between the mistletoe and the
human representative of the oak who was burned in the fire.
According to the myth, Balder could be killed by nothing in heaven
or earth except the mistletoe; and so long as the mistletoe remained
on the oak, he was not only immortal but invulnerable. Now, if we
suppose that Balder was the oak, the origin of the myth becomes
intelligible. The mistletoe was viewed as the seat of life of the
oak, and so long as it was uninjured nothing could kill or even
wound the oak. The conception of the mistletoe as the seat of life
of the oak would naturally be suggested to primitive people by the
observation that while the oak is deciduous, the mistletoe which
grows on it is evergreen. In winter the sight of its fresh foliage
among the bare branches must have been hailed by the worshippers of
the tree as a sign that the divine life which had ceased to animate
the branches yet survived in the mistletoe, as the heart of a
sleeper still beats when his body is motionless. Hence when the god
had to be killed--when the sacred tree had to be burnt--it was
necessary to begin by breaking off the mistletoe. For so long as the
mistletoe remained intact, the oak (so people might think) was
invulnerable; all the blows of their knives and axes would glance
harmless from its surface. But once tear from the oak its sacred
heart--the mistletoe--and the tree nodded to its fall. And when in
later times the spirit of the oak came to be represented by a living
man, it was logically necessary to suppose that, like the tree he
personated, he could neither be killed nor wounded so long as the
mistletoe remained uninjured. The pulling of the mistletoe was thus
at once the signal and the cause of his death.
On this view the invulnerable Balder is neither more nor less than a
personification of a mistletoe-bearing oak. The interpretation is
confirmed by what seems to have been an ancient Italian belief, that
the mistletoe can be destroyed neither by fire nor water; for if the
parasite is thus deemed indestructible, it might easily be supposed
to communicate its own indestructibility to the tree on which it
grows, so long as the two remain in conjunction. Or, to put the same
idea in mythical form, we might tell how the kindly god of the oak
had his life securely deposited in the imperishable mistletoe which
grew among the branches; how accordingly so long as the mistletoe
kept its place there, the deity himself remained invulnerable; and
how at last a cunning foe, let into the secret of the god's
invulnerability, tore the mistletoe from the oak, thereby killing
the oak-god and afterwards burning his body in a fire which could
have made no impression on him so long as the incombustible parasite
retained its seat among the boughs.
But since the idea of a being whose life is thus, in a sense,
outside himself, must be strange to many readers, and has, indeed,
not yet been recognised in its full bearing on primitive
superstition, it will be worth while to illustrate it by examples
drawn both from story and custom. The result will be to show that,
in assuming this idea as the explanation of Balder's relation to the
mistletoe, I assume a principle which is deeply engraved on the mind
of primitive man.
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