can show. Thus the story that Iasion begat a child Plutus (“wealth,” “abundance”) by Demeter on a thrice-ploughed field,[1] may be compared with the West Prussian custom of the mock birth of a child on the harvest held.[2] In this Prussian custom the pretended mother represents the Corn-mother (Žytniamatka); the pretended child represents the Corn-baby, and the whole ceremony is a charm to ensure a crop next year.[3] There are other folk-customs, observed both in spring and at harvest, with which the legend of the begetting of the child Plutus is probably still more intimately connected. Their general purport is to impart fertility to the fields by performing, or at least mimicking, upon them the process of procreation.[4] Another glimpse of the savage under the civilised Demeter will be afforded farther on, when we come to deal with another aspect of these agricultural divinities.
The reader may have observed that in modern folk-customs the corn-spirit is generally represented either by a Corn-mother (Old Woman, etc.) or by a Maiden (Corn-baby, etc.), not both by a Corn-mother
- ↑ Homer, Od. v. 125 sqq.; Hesiod, Theog. 969 sqq.
- ↑ See above, p. 343 sq.
- ↑ It is possible that a ceremony performed in a Cyprian worship of Ariadne may have been of this nature. Plutarch, Theseus, 20, ἐν δὴ τῇ θυσία τοῦ Γορπιαίου μηνὸς ἱσταμένου δευτέρα κατακλινόμενόν τινα τῶν νεανίσκων φθέγγεσθαι καἰ ποιεῖν ἄπερ ὠδινοῦσαι γυναῖκες. We have already seen grounds for regarding Ariadne as a goddess or spirit of vegetation (above, p. 104). If, however, the reference is to the Syro-Macedonian calendar, in which Gorpiaeus corresponds to September (Daremberg et Saglio, i. 831), the ceremony could not have been a harvest celebration, but may have been a vintage one. Amongst the Minnitarees in North America, the Prince of Neuwied saw a tall strong woman pretend to bring up a stalk of maize out of her stomach; the object of the ceremony was to secure a good crop of maize in the following year. Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das innere Nord-Amerika, ii. 269.
- ↑ W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 468 sq., 480 sqq.; id., Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, p. 288 sq. ; id., Mythologische Forschungen, pp. 146 sqq., 340 sqq.; Van Hoëvell, Ambon en de Oeliasers, p. 62 sq.; Wilken, in Indische Gids, June 1884, pp. 958, 963 sq. Cp. Marco Polo, trans. Yule,2 i. 212 sq.
