their meaning their loveliness. Still, if we look for living men to whom trees are, as they were to our distant forefathers, the habitations and embodiments of spirits, we shall not look in vain. The peasant folklore of Europe still knows of willows that bleed and weep and speak when hewn, of the fairy maiden that sits within the fir-tree, of that old tree in Rugaard forest that must not be felled, for an elf dwells within, of that old tree on the Heinzenberg near Zell, which uttered its complaint when the woodman cut it down, for in it was Our Lady, whose chapel now stands upon the spot.[1] One may still look on where Franconian damsels go to a tree on St. Thomas's Day, knock thrice solemnly, and listen for the indwelling spirit to give answer by raps from within, what manner of husbands they are to have.[2]
In the remarkable document of mythic cosmogony, preserved by Eusebius under the alleged authorship of the Phœnician Sanchoniathon, is the following passage: 'But these first men consecrated the plants of the earth, and judged them gods, and worshipped the things upon which they themselves lived and their posterity, and all before them, and (to these) they made libations and sacrifices.'[3] From examples such as have been here reviewed, it seems that direct and absolute tree-worship of this kind may indeed lie very wide and deep in the early history of religion. But the whole tree-cultus of the world must by no means be thrown indiscriminately into this one category. It is only on such distinct evidence as has been here put forward, that a sacred tree may be taken as having a spirit embodied in or attached to it. Beyond this limit, there is a wider range of animistic conceptions connected with tree and forest worship. The tree may be the spirit's perch or shelter or favourite haunt. Under this definition come the
