compare the sixty years' cycle of the Boeotian festival of the Great Daedala (Pausanias, ix. 3. 5; see The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 140 sq.), which, like the Druidical rite in question, was essentially a worship, or perhaps rather a conjuration, of the sacred oak. Whether any deeper affinity, based on common Aryan descent, may be traced between the Boeotian and the Druidical ceremony, I do not pretend to determine. In India a cycle of sixty years, based on the sidereal revolution of Jupiter, has long been in use. The sidereal revolution of Jupiter is accomplished in approximately twelve solar years (more exactly 11 years and 315 days), so that five of its revolutions make a period of approximately sixty years. It seems, further, that in India a much older cycle of sixty lunar years was recognized. See Christian Lassen, Indische Alter-thumskunde, i.2 (Leipsic, 1867), pp. 988 sqq.; Prof. F. Kielhorn (Göttingen), “The Sixty-year Cycle of Jupiter,” The Indian Antiquary, xviii. (1889) pp. 193-209; J. F. Fleet, “A New System of the Sixty-year Cycle of Jupiter,” ibid. pp. 221-224. In Tibet the use of a sixty-years' cycle has been borrowed from India. See W. Woodville Rockhill, “Tibet,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1891 (London, 1891), p. 207 note 1.
250
Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxiv. 11 sq.
251
Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxiii. 94.
252
Rev. John Batchelor, The Ainu and their Folk-lore (London, 1901), p. 222.
253
Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, v. (Cambridge, 1904) pp. 198 sq.
254
M. le baron Roger (ancien Gouverneur de la Colonie française du Sénégal), “Notice sur le Gouvernement, les Mœurs, et les Superstitions des Nègres du pays de Walo,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, viii. (Paris, 1827) pp. 357 sq.
Compare The Times, 2nd April, 1901, p. 9: “The Tunis correspondent of the Temps reports that in the course of certain operations in the Belvedere Park in Tunis the workmen discovered a huge circle of enormous stumps of trees ranged round an immense square stone showing signs of artistic chisel work. In the neighbourhood were found a sort of bronze trough containing a gold sickle in perfect preservation, and a sarcophagus containing a skeleton. About the forehead of the skeleton was a gold band, having in the centre the image of the sun, accompanied by hieratic signs, which are provisionally interpreted as the monogram of Teutates. The discovery of such remains in North Africa has created a sensation.” As to the Celtic god Teutates and the human sacrifices offered to him, see Lucan, Pharsalia, i. 444 sq.:
“Et quibus immitis placatur sanguine diroTeutates horrensque feris altaribus Hesus.”
Compare (Sir) John Rhys, Celtic Heathendom (London and Edinburgh, 1888), pp. 44 sqq., 232. Branches of the sacred olive at Olympia, which were to form the victors' crowns, had to be cut with a golden sickle by a boy whose parents were both alive. See the Scholiast on Pindar, Olymp. iii. 60, p. 102, ed. Aug. Boeck (Leipsic, 1819). In Assyrian ritual it was laid down that, before felling a sacred tamarisk to make magical images out of the wood, the magician should pray to the sun-god Shamash and touch the tree with a golden axe. See C. Fossey, La Magie Assyrienne (Paris, 1902), pp. 132 sq. Some of the ancients thought that the root of the marsh-mallow, which was used in medicine, should be dug up with gold and then preserved from contact with the ground (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xx. 29). At the great horse-sacrifice in ancient India it was prescribed by ritual that the horse should be slain by a golden knife, because “gold is light” and “by means of the golden light the sacrificer also goes to the heavenly world.” See The Satapatha-Brâhmana, translated by Julius Eggeling, Part v. (Oxford, 1900) p. 303 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xliv.). It has been a rule of superstition both in ancient and modern times that certain plants, to which medical or magical virtues were attributed, should not be cut with iron. See the fragment of Sophocles's Root-cutters, quoted by Macrobius, Saturn. v. 19. 9 sq.; Virgil, Aen. iv. 513 sq.; Ovid, Metamorph. vii. 227; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxiv. 68, 103, 176; and above, p. 65 (as to purple loosestrife in Russia). On the objection to the use of iron in such cases compare F. Liebrecht, Des Gervasius von Tilbury Otia Imperialia (Hanover, 1856), pp. 102 sq.; Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, pp. 225 sqq.
257
Étienne Aymonier, “Notes sur les Coutumes et Croyances Superstitieuses des Cambodgiens,” Cochinchine Française, Excursions et Reconnaissance No. 16 (Saigon, 1883), p. 136.
258
See above, vol. i. pp. 2 sqq.
259
Ernst Meier, “Über Pflanzen und Kräuter,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie und Sittenkunde, i. (Göttingen, 1853), pp. 443 sq. The sun enters the sign of Sagittarius about November 22nd.
260
J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 iii. 533, referring to Dybeck, Runa, 1845, p. 80.
261
Marie Trevelyan, Folk-lore and Folk-stories of Wales (London, 1909), p. 87.
262
Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvi. 250, “Omnia sanantem appellantes suo vocabulo.” See above, p. 77.
263
J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 1009: “Sonst aber wird das welsche olhiach, bretagn. ollyiach, ir. uileiceach, gal. uileice, d. i. allheiland, von ol, uile universalis, als benennung des mistels angegeben.” My lamented friend, the late R. A. Neil of Pembroke College, Cambridge, pointed out to me that in N. M'Alpine's Gaelic Dictionary (Seventh Edition, Edinburgh and London, 1877, p. 432) the Gaelic word for mistletoe is given as an t' uil, which, Mr. Neil told me, means “all-healer.”
264
A. de Gubernatis, La Mythologie des Plantes (Paris, 1878-1882), ii. 73.
265
Rev. Hilderic Friend, Flowers and Flower Lore, Third Edition (London, 1886), p. 378. Compare A. Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertranks2 (Gütersloh, 1886), p. 206, referring to Keysler, Antiq. Sept. p. 308.
266
A. de Nore, Coutumes, Mythes et Traditions des Provinces de France (Paris and Lyons, 1846), pp. 102 sq. The local name for mistletoe here is besq, which may be derived from the Latin viscum.
267
A. Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertranks2 (Gütersloh, 1886), p. 205; Walter K. Kelly, Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk-lore (London, 1863), p. 186.
268
“Einige Notizen aus einem alten Kräuterbuche,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie und Sittenkunde, iv. (Göttingen, 1859) pp. 41 sq.
269
Francis Pérot, “Prières, Invocations, Formules Sacrées, Incantations en Bourbonnais,” Revue des Traditions Populaires, xviii. (1903) p. 299.
270
County Folk-lore, v. Lincolnshire, collected by Mrs. Gutch and Mabel Peacock (London, 1908), p. 120.
