PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 105 



about Roding in the Upper Palatinate, of beating the 

 bride as she walks up from the church-door to her seat 

 opposite the bridegroom. 1 There would be no sense 

 in expelling demons at that moment and in that place. 

 Moreover, the various uses of the birch exhibited by 

 Mannhardt, and especially its connection with the 

 Mayday or Whitsuntide festival, seem unmistakably to 

 prove that, like the rosemary and the fir, its virtue is 

 not really that of exorcism but of fertilisation. 



From these examples it is clear that M. Reinach is 

 right in insisting upon the need of paying attention to 

 the material with which the blows are struck, in order 

 correctly to interpret their meaning. At the Lupercal 

 the blows were struck with thongs made of the hides 

 of the sacrificed goats. The Luperci, clothing them- 

 selves with the hides, cut strips from them for the 

 purpose. The custom by which the officiant at a 

 sacrifice, or the person on whose behalf the sacrifice is 

 offered, puts on the skin of the victim, is widely 

 spread. Its object is to identify the worshipper with 

 the victim, to obtain for him its sacred character, to 

 impart to him, as Robertson Smith says, "the sacred 

 virtue of its life." Thus the Luperci by clothing them- 

 selves in the skins were identified with the victims, 

 were indued with their qualities, furnished with 

 their sacred virtue. Striking others with those skins, 

 they were able to impart to them something of the 

 same qualities. Here is no element of purgation or of 

 exorcism : the object is direct and immediate fertilis- 

 ation. The story told by Ovid to explain the rite 

 confirms this interpretation. It is to the effect that 

 after the Rape of the Sabines the wives acquired by 

 1 Mannhardt, BK. 299. 



