object of the festival to avert; so that if we know the myth told to account for the historical origin of the festival, we can often infer from it the real intention with which the festival was celebrated. If, therefore, the origin of the Daedala was explained by a story of a failure of crops and consequent famine, we may infer that the real object of the festival was to prevent the occurrence of such disasters; and, if I am right in my interpretation of the festival, the object was supposed to be effected by a dramatic representation of the marriage of the divinities most concerned with the production of vegetation.[1] The marriage of Zeus and Hera was dramatically represented at annual festivals in various parts of Greece,[2] and it is at least a fair conjecture that the nature and intention of these ceremonies were such as I have assigned to the Plataean festival of the Daedala; in other words, that Zeus and Hera at these festivals were the Greek equivalents of the Lord and Lady of the May. Homer’s glowing picture of Zeus and Hera couched on fresh hyacinths and crocuses,[3] like Milton’s description of the dalliance of Zephyr and Aurora, “as he met her once a-Maying,” was perhaps painted from the life.
Still more confidently may the same character be vindicated for the annual marriage at Athens of the
- ↑ Once upon a time the Wotjaks of Russia, being distressed by a series of bad harvests, ascribed the calamity to the wrath of one of their gods, Keremet, at being unmarried. So they went in procession to the sacred grove, riding on gaily-decked waggons, as they do when they are fetching home a bride. At the sacred grove they feasted all night, and next morning they cut in the grove a square piece of turf which they took home with them. “What they meant by this marriage ceremony,” says the writer who reports it, “it is not easy to imagine. Perhaps, as Bechterew thinks, they meant to marry Keremet to the kindly and fruitful mukylć in, the earth-wife, in order that she might influence him for good.”—Max Buch, Die Wotjäken, eine ethnologische Studie (Stuttgart, 1882), p. 137.
- ↑ At Cnossus in Crete, Diodoius, v. 72; at Samos, Lactantius, Instit. i. 17; at Athens, Photius, sv. ἱερὸν γάμον; Etymolog. Magn. sv. ἱερομήμονες, p. 468. 52.
- ↑ Iliad, xiv. 347 sqq.
