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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



ing the fertilizing and fruit-bearing powers of 

 Nature. At first, he thinks, arose the belief that 

 each tree or plant possesses spiritual as well as 

 physical life, being tenanted either by semi-divine 

 spirits or by the ghosts of the dead. Then came, 

 he supposes, a generalization of this idea, ac- 

 cording to which plants or trees collectively, the 

 grassy meadow and the leafy wood, were credited 

 with peculiar inhabitants. And from this a still 

 higher generalization led to a belief in a genius 

 of plant-life or forest-life, or, higher still, a gen- 

 ius of growth or fertility in general. This uni- 

 versal genius of growth was symbolized by a 

 bush or tree, brought in triumph from the forest, 

 gayly decked, and solemnly planted near the 

 homestead or in the village, or by the effigy of a 

 human being, or by a human being dressed in or 

 adorned with foliage and flowers, or by a pair of 

 similar human beings, male and female, who were 

 at times supposed to be a wedded couple. And 

 all these ideas, he clearly shows, prevailed as 

 well in relation to the field as to the forest, espe- 

 cially to the life-supporting cornfield. His sec- 

 ond volume is chiefly devoted to a comparison of 

 old Greek and Eoman ideas about the semi-divine 

 inhabitants of the meadow and the grove with 

 those prevalent among the inhabitants of the 

 north of Europe, and of the ceremonies which in 

 the north and south sprang out of them. 



Very closely connected with the forest and 

 field spirits of the ancient Teutons, Slavs, and 

 Kelts, were the " wild folk " of classic lore. The 

 tree-haunting Dryads of Hellenic times, as well 

 as their successors, the Nereids of modern Greece, 

 were clearly cousins of the northern tree-nymphs. 

 And near relations of the Teutonic and Slavonic 

 Buck-men and Corn-demons must have been the 

 Fauns and Satyrs of ancient days. The simi- 

 larity between the legends relating to these spir- 

 its of the north and south is well illustrated by 

 the following Tyrolese folk-tale : A peasant once 

 hired a maid-servant of unusual strength and 

 skill, under whose guidance his cattle prospered 

 greatly. But after a time, as his family sat at 

 dinner one day, they heard a voice from without 

 cry, " Salome, come ! " The maid sprang up and 

 disappeared. And with her seemed to go the 

 prosperity of the house. Some years later, a 

 butcher was passing through a neighboring for- 

 est at midnight, when he heard a voice cry, 

 " When thou comest to such and such a place, 

 call out, ' Salome is dead ! ' " Coming to the ap- 

 pointed place before daybreak, the butcher did 

 as he had been bid. Then from the mountain 

 recesses arose a cry of wailing and loud lament, 



and the butcher continued his journey, full of 

 vague alarm. Compare with this the well-known 

 story which so greatly puzzled the Emperor Ti- 

 berius — who, whatever his failings may have 

 been, at least was a genuine lover and investiga- 

 tor of the marvelous, though a little too much 

 given to inquire, if Suetonius is to be trusted, 

 what was the name of Hecuba's mother, what 

 name Achilles bore among the maidens, and what 

 songs the Sirens used to sing. As a ship was 

 sailing from Greece to Italy, a voice from the 

 shore hailed one of the passengers, and bade 

 him call out when he came to a certain spot, 

 " The great Pan is dead ! " And when he had 

 done so, a wailing cry, as of many voices, was 

 heard resounding along the shore. Common to 

 all Europe, also, was the idea that it was danger- 

 ous to work in the middle of the day, for that 

 those who then labored were liable to the wrath 

 of some evil spirit ; just as the Hellenic shep- 

 herd believed that Pan slept during the sultry 

 noontide-hour, and therefore refrained at that 

 time from music which might awake and irritate 

 that guardian of flocks. 1 So far as the field- 

 spirits and wood-demons of Greece, Italy, and the 

 barbaric North were concerned, there is a wealth 

 of evidence to show that similar views of the 

 forces of Nature, as mamifested in beneficial 

 plant-growth and hostile storm-rage, produced all 

 over Europe almost identical beliefs in supernat- 

 ural inhabitants of meadow, cornfield, grove, and 

 stream. Only the Centaurs offer a difficulty. 

 Their horsy nature has never been quite satisfac- 

 torily explained ; whether they be considered as 

 kinsmen of the Vedic Gandharvas, or mere per- 

 sonifications of mountain-cataracts, or as wild 

 pre-Hellenic inhabitants of Pelion, or — from Dr. 

 Mannhardt's point of view — as spirits of the 

 hill and wood, descended either from Ision, the 

 whirlwind, or from trees, as Cheiron from a lime- 

 tree, Pholos from an ash. Their equine nature, 

 he thinks, must have been thrust upon them by 

 some poet or painter, who too literally accepted 

 a now-lost myth, which compared them to horses 

 or metaphorically bestowed upon them equine 

 attributes. Russia seems to be the only land at 

 any distance from Greece, we may observe, in 

 which the Centaur has become naturalized in 

 folk-lore. But his appearance there, under the 

 name of Polkan, 2 is probably due to the Byzan- 



1 The herdsman's special friend ; supposing his 

 name not to be connected with irav = all, nor to he 

 derived from a root pu = to cleanse, but to spring 

 from a root pa = to guard, to pasture, etc., with which 

 are connected <wa, grass, noL^v, a herdsman; cf. pas- 

 cere, pa-nis, etc. a Pol — half, kon = horse. 



