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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



lays in a coffin a puppet, or flings into a stream 

 a straw-figure, loudly lamenting it as one dead. 

 But when the spring comes back, the typified 

 genius of vegetation is again hailed with mirth 

 and revel, and to the German " May-bridegroom " 

 is given a " May-bride," and lads and lasses in 

 many a European land enter into a kind of fic- 

 titious union, lasting for a year, as Valentines and 

 Vielliebchen, and the like. 



Lastly may be considered the fires which from 

 time immemorial have blazed at midsummer. 

 Just as the winter solstice has from the earliest 

 times been honored by what are now our Christ- 

 mas revels, so has the summer solstice been for 

 countless ages celebrated by its fires. The night 

 which precedes St. John's or Midsummer-Day is 

 still rendered brilliant in many a European land 

 by flames, through which spring, not only young 

 people, but also men and women carrying their 

 little ones in their arms. For the flames are sup- 

 posed to possess a purifying, evil-averting influ- 

 ence. In like manner blazed of old the Phoenician 

 fires in honor of Baal, and the Moloch-fires through 

 which children were passed in order to secure 

 them against evil influences, and the Purim fires 

 into which Hainan's effigy was annually flung, the 

 Babylonish demon of dearth having been con- 

 fused by the Jews with their enemy Haman, just 

 as some similar demon is now represented by a 

 Judas Iscariot or a Guy Fawkes. In like manner 

 do the women of modern Greece spring through a 

 fire on midsummer-eve, crying, "I leave my sins!" 

 So in the early days of Rome, at the spring-tide 

 festival of Palilia, when it was the custom, among 

 other things, for men to spring through fires 

 lighted by sparks obtained from flints : all these 

 bonfires being closely connected also with the 

 " need-fires," employed on special occasions to 

 drive away evil spirits, or avert plagues, fires in 

 which even at the present day birds and beasts 

 are frequently offered in sacrifice ; just as in olden 

 times human sacrifices were offered up, whether 

 such criminals or unfortunates as Ctesar mentions 

 were burned alive in England, or other human be- 

 ings were given to the flames, as Manetho asserts, 

 in Egypt, their bodies being consumed, and their 

 ashes scattered to the winds, during the dog-days, 

 in honor of Typhon. One interesting feature of 

 some of these fire-feasts was the running of the 

 initiated barefoot over glowing coals. This was 

 a feat annually performed in honor of the corn- 

 goddess Feronia, at Soracte, by the men who called 

 themselves Hirpi or wolves, and who were known 

 as the Hirpi Sorani. In them Dr. Mannhardt is 

 inclined to see a personification of the same idea 



as that which in the north of Europe has given 

 rise to the belief in corn-wolves ; a species of the 

 corn-demon genus. With their barefoot perform- 

 ances he compares the similar feat performed 

 every other harvest-tide by certain Brahmans for 

 the edification of the Badagas in the South-High- 

 lands of Mysore. A missionary relates how one 

 of these Brahmans once came to him to ask for 

 some salve for his feet, which had been burned by 

 the glowing ashes on which he had walked rather 

 longer than was usual or prudent. 



There is one feature of Dr. Mannhardt's work 

 to which it is well to call special attention : the 

 rich contribution, namely, which he has made to 

 our knowledge of Lithuanian and Lettish mythol- 

 ogy, superstitions, and folk-lore. But very little 

 is known by us of those strange races, now slowly 

 dying out, who, in the northeast of Europe, in 

 Prussia and Russia, feebly represent the once fierce 

 and warlike inhabitants of the grand-duchy of 

 Lithuania, the land which so long clung to its hea- 

 thenism ; the land which for so many centuries, 

 before and after its incorporation with Poland, was 

 a constant source of danger to the growing power 

 of the Grand-Princes of Moscow, afterward the 

 Czars of Russia. Very few scholars are acquaint- 

 ed with the language spoken either by the Letts or 

 by the Lithuanians, a language to which may al- 

 most be applied the expression so amusingly mis- 

 applied by a popular novelist in reference to 

 Basque, that of its being a kind of " bastard San- 

 skrit." And still fewer know anything, except 

 through the medium of Nesselmann's German 

 translations, of the rich stores of songs and sto- 

 ries which exist in the memories of the Lettish and 

 Lithuanian people. In spite of what Dr. Mann- 

 hardt has already done, especially in his excellent 

 monograph on " The Lettish Sun-Myth," and of 

 what has been done by Dr. W. Pierson and others, 

 but few scholars are in a position to use the copi- 

 ous materials which have been recently laid up at 

 Wilna and other Lithuanian cities. But now that 

 he has placed upon record in his present work so 

 much that is valuable of Lithuanian and Lettish 

 evidence, there no longer exists any excuse for 

 Western ignorance of the subject. All through 

 the two volumes of the " Wald- und Feldkulte " 

 are scattered numerous references to the customs, 

 songs, and folk-tales, of the Letts and Lithuanians, 

 people whom Dr. Mannhardt, from his watch-tower 

 at Dantzic, has had peculiar opportunities of ob- 

 serving. It will be sufficient at present to call at- 

 tention to a few of the most characteristic among 

 their number. For this purpose may be selected 

 the account given in the second volume of a Lith- 



