Thus in these harvest-customs of modern Europe the person who cuts, binds, or threshes the last corn is treated as an embodiment of the corn-spirit by being wrapt up in sheaves, killed in mimicry by agricultural implements, and thrown into the water.[1] These coincidences with the Lityerses story seem to prove that the latter is a genuine description of an old Phrygian harvest-custom. But since in the modern parallels the killing of the personal representative of the corn-spirit is necessarily omitted or at most enacted only in mimicry, it is necessary to show that in rude society human beings have been commonly killed as an agricultural ceremony to promote the fertility of the fields. The following examples will make this plain.
The Indians of Guayaquil (Ecuador) used to sacrifice human blood and the hearts of men when they sowed their fields.[2] At a Mexican harvest-festival, when the first-fruits of the season were offered to the sun, a criminal was placed between two immense stones, balanced opposite each other, and was crushed by them as they fell together. His remains were buried, and a feast and dance followed. This sacrifice was known as “the meeting of the stones.”[3] Another series of human sacrifices offered in Mexico to make the maize thrive has been already referred to.[4] The Pawnees annually sacrificed a human victim in spring when they sowed their fields. The sacrifice was believed to have been enjoined on them by the Morning Star, or by a certain bird which the Morning
- ↑ For throwing him into the water, see p. 374.
- ↑ Cieza de Leon, Travels, translated by Markham, p. 203 (Hakluyt Society, 1864).
- ↑ Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des Nations civilisées du Mexique, i. 274; Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 340.
- ↑ Bastian, Die Culturlander des alten Amerika, ii. 639 (quoting Herrara). See above, p. 307.
