GHOST WORSHIP AND TREE WORSHIP. 659 



interchangeability of all the various forms of the ghost extends 

 even to what might seem the impossible cases of the sacred stone 

 and the corn-spirit. At first sight it would almost look as if there 

 could be no conceivable community of any sort between these two 

 very distinct and unlike manifestations of the ancestral ghost or 

 the slain man-god. Yet in Mr. Gregor's Folk Lore of the Northeast 

 of Scotland, I find the following very interesting passage, which 

 clearly shows the occasional equivalence of the two ideas : " It 

 was believed by some that a very mysterious animal, which when 

 met with by the reapers among the corn had the appearance of a 

 gray stone, but which could change its shape, lived among the 

 corn. When met with, a small quantity of the crop was left 

 standing around it, and the ears of grain only were cut off. This 

 animal looks like the hedgehog." * Readers of The Golden Bough 

 will be very familiar with this " mysterious animal," which is in 

 point of fact nothing more or less than the corn-spirit itself, hiding, 

 as it were, in its own vegetal embodiment, f The rye wolf, the 

 harvest goat, the cock, pig, and horse, are all various avatars of 

 this polymorphic spirit ; and now, in the interesting Scotch case 

 above quoted, we find him similarly and unexpectedly equated 

 with a gray stone. 



There is one more point of considerable importance to which I 

 wish to call attention in passing, before I quit this part of my 

 subject, and that is the question of the immolation of the man- 

 god as a deliberate mode of producing a corn-spirit or guardian 

 soul of vegetation for the growing crops. Of the practice itself 

 there can not now remain the slightest doubt after the brilliant 

 demonstration given by Mr. Frazer in his epoch-making work. 

 But it may have seemed a hard saying to some when I attributed 

 these immolations to the definite desire to manufacture artificially 

 an indwelling spirit for the growing corn. Nevertheless, such 

 definite manufacture would seem much less curious to primitive 

 man than to his modern and more squeamish or humane descend- 

 ants. We must recollect that the chiefs or kings of primitive 

 peoples, being the offspring of the deified ghosts who form the 

 tribal gods, are therefore necessarily divine. That kings are gods, 

 Mr. Frazer has now abundantly shown us ; and we learned from 

 Mr. Loftie how the divinity of the Pharaoh formed a prime ele- 

 ment in the faith of the pyramid-builders in Egypt. Now, this 

 being so, nothing is more natural, when you want a departmental 

 god for any particular purpose, than to release before its time one 

 of these divine souls from its fleshly tabernacle, and turn it loose 

 upon space to perform whatever work you may happen to require 



* Rev. Walter Gregor, Folk Lore of the Northeast of Scotland, p. 181. 

 •j- The Golden Bough, vol. i, p. 404, segq., and vol. ii, pp. 1-67. 



