26o Animal Superstitions and Totemism.
fact. At Towednack (Cornwall) the feast is termed " the cuckoo's feast," and this points to a similar usage.^
This evidence of the ritual eating of animals not commonly used for food is in itself highly important ; still more important, however, is the local character of the customs, of which we also find traces in the Oxfordshire deer- easts.
More important even than these local customs are the ceremonies in which the kin alone may take part. The Karelians, like the Esthonians of Oesel, kill a lamb on July 29th ; it has never been shorn, and may not be killed with a knife ; its blood is sprinkled over the threshold. No stranger may eat of its flesh? The Easter lamb is killed in Greece by a male member of the family, roughly cooked on the street, and often torn to pieces without a knife. It is eaten by the family.^ The Lithuanians killed a cock and hen at their harvest festival without shedding their blood ; they were prepared and eaten in the absence of the servants."^ In Lippe the harvest cock was eaten by the farmer, his family, and next of kin ; the servants and labourers had none of it!*
I need hardly point out that these customs cannot be derived from the ordinary practices ; the latter, on the other hand, may easily have originated in the ritual feasts of the kin.
(ii.) In certain cases we find cakes in animal form ; these have clearly taken the place of the animals themselves. I will merely remark that the material of the cakes does not
' F. L. J., v., 224. For other cuckoo -customs cf. Harou, p. 33 ; Reinsberg, Utirings feld, ii., 1 15. Does the game of Hide and Seek point to a custom of hunting the cuckoo? Cf. Wander, ii., 1699.
- Mannhardt, A. IV. F., p. 160, «.
' F., i., 275 ; Das Kloster, vii., 915.
- Mannhardt, quot. Praetoris, Deliciae Fnissicae, v., 7, 23.
- Pfannenschmid, iii., 422.
