the abode of mighty spirits which would resent the injury.[1] The Curka Coles of India believe that the tops of trees are inhabited by spirits which are disturbed by the cutting down of the trees and will take vengeance.[2] The Samogitians thought that if any one ventured to injure certain groves, or the birds or beasts in them, the spirits would make his hands or feet crooked.[3]
Even where no mention is made of wood-spirits, we may generally assume that when a grove is sacred and inviolable, it is so because it is believed to be either inhabited or animated by sylvan deities. In Livonia there is a sacred grove in which, if any man fells a tree or breaks a branch, he will die within the year.[4] The Wotjaks have sacred groves. A Russian who ventured to hew a tree in one of them fell sick and died next day.[5] Sacrifices offered at cutting down trees are doubtless meant to appease the wood-spirits. In Gilgit it is usual to sprinkle goat’s blood on a tree of any kind before cutting it down.[6] Before thinning a grove a Roman farmer had to sacrifice a pig to the god or goddess of the grove.[7] The priestly college of the Arval Brothers at Rome had to make expiation when a rotten bough fell to the ground in the sacred grove, or when an old tree was blown down by a storm or dragged down by a weight of snow on its branches.[8]
When a tree comes to be viewed, no longer as the body of the tree-spirit, but simply as its dwelling-place which it can quit at pleasure, an important advance
- ↑ B. Hagen, “Beitrage zur Kenntniss der Battareligion,” in Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-Laitd-en Volkenkunde, xxviii. 530 note
- ↑ Bastien, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, i. 134.
- ↑ Matthias Michov, in Novus Orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum, p. 457.
- ↑ Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 i. 497; cp. ii. 540, 541.
- ↑ Max Buch Die Wotjäken p. 124.
- ↑ Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, p. 116.
- ↑ Cato, De agri cultura, 139.
- ↑ Henzen, Acta fratrum arvalium (Berlin, 1874), p. 138.
