to compensate him for the disturbance he has suffered. So in the island of Chedooba, on felling a large tree, one of the woodmen was always ready with a green sprig, which he ran and placed on the middle of the stump the instant the tree fell.[1] For the same purpose German woodmen make a cross upon the stump while the tree is falling, in the belief that this enables the spirit of the tree to live upon the stump.[2]
Thus the tree is regarded, sometimes as the body, sometimes as merely the house of the tree-spirit; and when we read of sacred trees which may not be cut down because they are the seat of spirits, it is not always possible to say with certainty in which way the presence of the spirit in the tree is conceived. In the following cases, perhaps, the trees are conceived as the dwelling-place of the spirits rather than as their bodies. The old Prussians, it is said, believed that gods inhabited high trees, such as oaks, from which they gave audible answers to inquirers; hence these trees were not felled, but worshipped as the homes of divinities.[3] The great oak at Romove was the especial dwelling-place of the god; it was veiled with a cloth, which was, however, removed to allow worshippers to see the sacred tree.[4] The Battas of Sumatra have been known to refuse to cut down certain trees because they were
- ↑ Handbook of Folk-lore, p. 19 (proof).
- ↑ Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 83.
- ↑ Erasmus Stella, “De Borussiae antiquitatibus,” in Novus Orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum, p. 510; Lasiczki (Lasicius), “De diis Samagitarum caeterorumque Sarmatarum,” in Respublica sive Status Regni Poloniae, Lituaniae, Prussiae, Livoniae, etc. (Elzevir, 1627), p. 299 sq. There is a good and cheap reprint of Lasiczki’s work by W. Mannhardt in Magazin herausgegenen von der Lettisch-Literärischen Gesellschaft, xiv. 82 sqq. (Mitau, 1868).
- ↑ Simon Grünau, Preussische Chronik, ed. Perlbach (Leipzig 1876), p. 89; “Prisca antiquorum Prutenorum religio,” in Respublica sive Status Regni Poloniae etc., p. 321.
