Introductory. 1 3 



stone on an adjacent cairn, and left behind a scrap of their 

 clothing as an offering."* 



" The Carinthian peasant will fodder the wind by setting 

 a dish of food in a tree before his house, and the fire by 

 casting in lard and dripping, in order that gale and con- 

 flagration may not hurt him. At least up to the end of the 

 last century, this most direct elemental sacrifice might be 

 seen in Germany at the midsummer festival in the most 

 perfect form ; some of the porridge from the table was 

 thrown into the fire, and some into running water, some 

 was buried in the earth, and some smeared on leaves 

 and put on the chimney-top for the winds." In France, 

 at Andrieux in Dauphiny, "at the solstice the villagers 

 went out upon the bridge when the sun rose, and offered 

 him an omelet. The custom of burning alive the finest 

 calf to save a murrain-struck herd had its examples in 

 Cornwall in the present century."f 



At the vintage festival of the Madonna $e\ Arco, 

 signs of practices connected with the old Greek nature- 

 worship reappear in the leaf-wreathed poles brandished by 

 youths, themselves garnished with strings of filberts on 

 their necks and arms their juice-smeared faces shaded by 

 wreaths of vine-leaves. 



It is not, however, to such mere external practices that 



* Quoted by Sir John Lubbock in his " Origin of Civilisation," pp. 

 192 and 198. 

 f See Edward B. Tylor's " Primitive Culture," vol. ii. pp. 369, 370. 



