122 JOHN FKASER. 



daily life were presented as offerings. It is strange that, all the world 

 over, the worship of the Sun had human sacrifices as one of its chief 

 features. The principle that regulated the quality of the offerings in 

 heathen worship is a simple one ; for, whatever was the essential quality 

 or feature of the god, goddess, or demon to be worshipped, so must the 

 offering be of a similar or corresponding kind. In Rome, the goddess 

 Ceres got her appropriate offerings of grain ; Bacchus had his libations 

 of wine ; Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, had her perpetual fire ; none 

 of these could be propitiated by the blood of animals or men ; but Apollo, 

 in his character as the far-darting and pest-producing Sun, was the 

 slayer of men; and human flesh would thus be no unwonted diet for him. 

 The Persians gave him white horses ; the priests of Baal cut their bodies 

 with knives for him, covering themselves with gore ; and in the religions 

 of many nations, nothing of less value than the life of a human being 

 could be laid on his altar. Another principle affecting these altar-gifts 

 was this, — the value of the gift must be in proportion to the need of the 

 worshipper and the importance of his request. For a god that accepted 

 bloody sacrifices, a kid or a goat or a sheep might be sufficient in ordinary 

 circumstances ; with an extraordinary prayer, a bull ; but for any dire 

 emergency either in the family or the state, a human victim must be 

 presented, in order to avert calamity. Hence the efficacy of such a sacri- 

 fice as that of Iphigenia when offered to a very angry or a relentless god ; 

 hence also the gift of their children to the fires of Moloch by pious 

 mothers; hence the 'hekatombs' of the ancient Greeks; and everywhere, 

 the lives of men presented by themselves or by others to turn aside some 

 great national danger. 



2. In this story, there is a fabulous account of the manner in which the 

 Sun was led to abandon his claim to a daily supply of human flesh. The 

 incidents are said to have happened in Atafu, which seems to me to be, 

 not any particular island, but some myth-land of wonder where, as we 

 learn from another tale, there are " no houses ; the people sleep on the 

 ground ; the sky is their house." This view is the more probable because, 

 in this tale, there are four parts of the Atafu land, ' the black/ ' the 

 brown/ ' the fair/ and ' the white '; and Ui, the heroine of the tale, is the 

 daughter of ' Sugar-cane * and ( Yam.' Seeing that the daily ' aso ' of 

 victims was destroying all the families in Atafu, she resolved to approach 

 the Sun and try to get him to be satisfied with less costly food. In this, 

 with her brother's aid, she succeeded, as the story tells. But lest the old 

 propensities of his solar majesty should return, she thought it prudent 

 to leave her home ; and so, at last, after some adventures she reached 

 Manu'a, where she gave birth to a son, the great semi-divine Tangaloa- 



