614 Discovery of fforse-heads. By Dr. E. C. Kobertson. 



dressed and tlie carcase was then cut up and offered in the fire, 

 and the King smelling the smoke of the burning flesh, became 

 absolved from his sins. One important part of the proceedings 

 was the feasting and largesses. King Dasaratha is described as 

 giving to the priests a hundred million pieces of gold and four 

 times as many of silver." The horse chosen was either white 

 like the moon, with saffron tail and black right ear, or black as 

 midnight, without one speck on it of any other colour. "It 

 is difl&cult," writes Arnold, "to raise the thoughts of a mo- 

 dern western public to the solemnity, majesty, and marvel 

 of the antique, oriental rite of the Aswamheda, as viewed by the 

 Hindoos." 



Our kinsmen the Germans, in the days of the Eomans, still pre- 

 served some of the old veneration of their Eastern forefathers 

 for the horse. Tacitus, the great Eoman historian, writes of their 

 worship : " The Germans consecrated groves. Gods dwelt there 

 — no images are mentioned by name, as being set up — no temple 

 walls were reared, but sacred vessels and altars stand in the 

 forest, and heads of animals hang on the boughs of trees." In 

 another place we read of "immolati diis equi abscissum caput," 

 or the severed head of a horse sacrificed to the gods. Again 

 Tacitus mentions "the Alemanni, who eat horse-flesh, cutting of the . 

 head, which was not consumed with the rest, but consecrated by 

 way of eminence to the gods." "When Csecina on approaching 

 the scene of Varus's overthrow by the German tribes, saw horse- 

 heads fastened to the stems of trees, these were no other than the 

 Eoman horses, which the Germans had offered up to their gods. 

 The Hermanduri are also described by Tacitus as sacrificing the 

 horses of the defeated Catti. 



Among the Northmen it was customary to fix a horse-head 

 upon the " Neidstange," which gave the power to bewitch an 

 enemy. In German children-stories are still to be fouad survi- 

 ving but now hardly understood reminiscences of the mysterious 

 meaning of a horse's head suspended. In Eussian fairy-tales also 

 horse-heads figure as possessed of mystic faculties and powers. 

 Gregory the Great, the Supreme Pontiff between 1Q73 and 1085 

 admonishes Brunichild to take precaution with her Franks, " ut 

 de animalium capitibus sacrificia, sacrilega non exhibeant," that 

 is, that they do not commit sacrilege by the sacrifice of the 

 heads of animals. This shows that the practice must have re- 

 mained so common, even in the eleventh century in the Christian 

 Church, as to require a set condemnation from its Pope. 



