652 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



form of tree worship, where the ghost itself is actually supposed 

 to inhabit the branches of the sacred pine or the ancestral poplar. 

 " The peasant folk lore of Europe/' says Mr. Tylor, " still knows 

 of willows that bleed and weep and speak when hewn; of the 

 fairy maiden that sits within the fir tree ; of that old tree in Ru- 

 gaard forest that must not be felled, for an elf dwells within ; of 

 that old tree on the Heinzenberg near Zell, which uttered its com- 

 plaint when the woodman cut it down, for in it was Our Lady, 

 whose chapel now stands upon the spot. One may still look on 

 where Franconian damsels go to a tree on St. Thomas's day, knock 

 thrice solemnly, and listen for the indwelling spirit to give answer 

 by raps from within what manner of husbands they are to have." * 

 These cases fall at once into place if we recollect that elves and 

 fairies are mere minor varieties of ancestral spirits, and that Our 

 Lady often replaces for modern votaries the older and pre-Christian 

 divinities of very ancient origin. 



Other instances collected by Mr. Tylor are hardly less obviously 

 explicable on similar principles. Here are a few select cases from 

 savage peoples. The North American Indians of the far West will 

 often hang offerings on trees, " to propitiate the spirits." Darwin, 

 in the Voyage of the Beagle, describes the loud shouts with which 

 the Indians of South America will often greet some sacred tree, 

 standing solitary on some high part of the Pampas, a landmark 

 visible from afar, and therefore, one might almost be inclined to 

 guess from analogy, occupying the summit of some antique bar- 

 row, f Libations of spirits and mate* were poured into a hole at 

 its foot to gratify the soul of the indwelling deity. So, too, the 

 New-Zealanders hang an offering of food on a branch at a landing 

 place, or throw a bunch of rushes to some remarkable tree as an 

 offering to the spirit that dwells within it. And in all such cases 

 we must remember that to the savage mind the word spirit still 

 means what it has half ceased to mean with us through long mis- 

 use — the actual ghost or surviving double of a departed tribes- 

 man. Worship, it seems to me, lies at the very root of religion, 

 as distinguished from mere mythology ; and the basis or core of 

 worship is surely offering — that is to say, the propitiation of the 

 ghost by just such gifts of food, drink, slaves, or women as the 

 savage would naturally make to a living chief with whom he 

 desired to curry favor. 



I do not wish to deny, however, that in later stages of evolu- 

 tion the worship or reverence once paid to the ghost or spirit may 

 come to be envisaged in the minds of devotees as worship or rev- 

 erence paid to the actual trunk or to some vague sanctity of the 

 surrounding forest. Thus the Yakuts of Siberia hang iron, brass, 



* Primitive Culture, vol. i, p. 221. \ Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, p. 68. 



