200 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



that trees are prayed to, and sacrifices offered, in times of sick- 

 ness. A negro was once worshipping a tree with an offering of 

 food, when someone pointed out to him that the tree did not 

 eat; the negro answered, " O, the tree is not a fetish ; the fetish 

 is a spirit and invisible. Certainly, he cannot devour our bodily 

 food, but he enjoys its spiritual part and leaves behind the bodily, 

 which we see." In Esthonian districts during the last century, 

 the traveller might often see the sacred tree, generally an ancient 

 lime, oak, or ash, standing inviolate in a sheltered spot near the 

 dwelling-house, and old memories are handed down of the time 

 when the first blood of a slaughtered beast was sprinkled on its 

 roots that the cattle might prosper, or when an offering was laid 

 beneath the holy linden on the stone where the worshipper 

 knelt on his bare knees, moving from east to west and back, 

 which stone he kissed thrice when he had said, " Receive the 

 food as an offering." It may well have been an indwelling 

 tree-deity for whom this worship was intended, for folk-lore shows 

 that the Esths recognised such a conception with the utmost 

 distinctness. The Siamese believe that by offering cakes and 

 rice to the tree before felling it, the propitiated spirit passes into 

 the boat made from its former residence and becomes its 

 guardian spirit. The North American Indians of the Far West 

 entering the defiles of the Black Mountains of Nebraska will 

 often hang offerings on the trees, or place them on rocks, to 

 propitiate the spirits and procure good weather and hunting. 

 In South America, Darwin describes the Indians offering their 

 adorations by loud shouts when they came in sight of the sacred 

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

 visible from afar. In this tree, he relates, were hanging by 

 threads numberless offerings such as cigars, bread, meat, down 

 to the mere thread pulled from the poncho by the poor wayfarer 

 who had nothing better to give. Men would pour spirits and 

 wine into a certain hole and smoke upwards to gratify Walleechu, 

 as the god was called, while all around lay the bleached bones 

 of the horses slaughtered as sacrifices. Darwin reasonably 

 judges on this evidence that it was to the deity Walleechu that 

 the worship was paid, the tree being only his altar ; but he 

 mentions that the Indians are believed by some to consider the 

 tree as the god itself. 



The peasant folk-lore of Europe still knows of willows that 

 weep and bleed and speak when hewn; of the fairy maiden 



