ix.] FETISH WORSHIP. '//. 221^ , 



P y :'/ 



perhaps, escape, and carry their wasp -f etish, ^IJK> a new.y 



land. But if they became poor and weaMy/^heir /', 

 brains and imagination, degenerating with their bodies, 

 would degrade their wasp-worship till they knew not 

 what it meant. Away from the sacred tree, in a 

 country the wasps of which were not so large or for- 

 midable, they would require a remembrancer of the 

 wasp-king ; and they would make one a wasp of wood, 

 or what not. After. a while, according to that strange 

 law of fancy, the root of all idolatry, which you may 

 see at work in every child who plays with a doll, the 

 symbol would become identified with the thing ) 

 symbolised ; they would invest the wooden wasp with 

 all the terrible attributes which had belonged to the 

 live wasps of the tree ; and after a few centuries, when 

 all remembrance of the tree, the wasp -prophet and 

 chieftain, and his descent from the divine wasp ay, 

 even of their defeat and flight had vanished from 

 their songs and legends, they would be found bowing 

 down in fear and trembling to a little ancient wooden 

 wasp, which came from they knew not whence, and 

 meant they knew not what, save that it was a very 

 11 old f etish/' a " great medicine," or some such other 

 formula for expressing their own ignorance and dread. , / 

 Just so do the half-savage natives of Thibet, and the 

 Irishwomen of Kerry, by a strange coincidence unless 

 the ancient Irish were Buddhists, like the Himalayans 

 tie just the same scraps of rag on the bushes round 

 just the same holy wells, as do the Negros of Central 

 Africa upon their " Devil's Trees ; " they know not 

 why, save that their ancestors did it, and it is a charm 

 against ill-luck and danger. 



And the sacred tree ? That, too, might undergo a 



