102 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



Mannhardt has collected a long series of examples, 

 chiefly from ancient and modern Europe, of the ritual 

 use of blows. 1 Dr. Frazer in The Golden Bough has 

 added a considerable number from various other parts 

 of the world. 2 The conclusion at which the former 

 arrived was that they all belong to a cycle of related 

 customs, of which some have preserved one morsel of 

 old tradition and others have preserved others, and 

 that the object of all alike was the expulsion of the 

 demons of sickness and sterility from mankind and 

 from plants. This conclusion has been strengthened 

 by Dr. Frazer's collection. Yet I am by no means 

 persuaded that it is entirely accurate for all the cases 

 cited. There is a great temptation to interpret in the 

 same way customs which assume a similar, even if not 

 quite the same, form. The possibility, however, of the 

 conflation of two or more rites originally distinct, and 

 the alternative possibility of one rite's being influenced 

 in its form by a rite perfectly distinct in purpose 

 though similar in expression, must never be omitted 

 from our calculations. The practice of throwing a 

 stone or a stick upon a cairn of stones, or of tying a 

 piece of rag from one's clothing on a bush above a 

 sacred well, or throwing a pin into the well itself is 

 very widespread. When in Sweden a piece of money 

 is thrown upon a cairn, instead of a stick or a stone ; 

 or when the Scottish peasant hammers a bawbee, 

 instead of a nail, into the withered trunk of the Wish- 

 ing Tree of Loch Maree ; the ceremony has obviously 



1 Mannhardt, BK. 251 sqq. ; /</., Myth. Forsch. 113 sqq. 



2 Frazer, G. B. iii. 129, 215, 217. Probably the worshippers of 

 Demeter at the Greek festival of the Thesmophoria were beaten for 

 the purpose of increasing their productiveness ; but we do not know 

 of what wood the rods were made (Farnell, iii. 104). 



