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When the records of the Old Religion were made the great sacrifice had
reached the last stages. In France a goat was burnt to death at the
Sabbaths, the creature being called the Devil. The ashes were collected for
the magical promotion of fertility by strewing them on fields and animals.
The gathering up of the ashes in the case of Joan of Arc should be
remembered in this connection. It is perhaps worth remarking that when in
the seventeenth century, the time for the sacrifice had come the god is
always said to be in the form of a large goat or in his "grand array", which
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means that in the original rite it was the sacrifice of the Horned God
himself.
In the primitive forms of the sacrifice elsewhere than in Europe the
worshippers ate the dead body of the god, or at least some part of it.
Ceremonial cannibalism is found in many parts of the world, and in all cases
it is due to the desire to obtain the qualities of the dead person, his
courage, his wisdom, and so on. When a divine victim was eaten and the holy
flesh thus received into the system, the worshipper became one with the
deity. In ancient Egypt, as in other places, it was more common to eat the
animal substitute or a figure of the god made in dough or other edible
substance. The sacrifice of the god in the person of the king or his
substitute was known from very early times, and has continued in some
countries until the present century. It remained in Western Europe as long
as the cult of the Horned God lasted, and I have collected in the chapter on
the Divine Victim several examples of the royal gods and their divine
substitutes. Besides these historical instances there must have been many
local victims who, being in a humble walk of life, were not recorded.
In modern books on this subject the substitutes are often called Mock Kings,
whose rule was usually a kind of Saturnalia, for the royal powers were
largely burlesqued. Klunzinger[15] records examples of the kind in Egypt in
1878, he says that in every village of Upper Egypt a New-Year King was
elected, who for three or four days usurped the power of the Government and
ruled despotically. He wore a special dress, and was treated with
extravagant respect, he tried legal cases and passed ridiculous sentences on
the offenders. At the end of his term of power he was tried and condemned to
be burnt. He was then escorted by the whole village to the burning place and
a ring of fire was made round him. When the flames became uncomfortably hot
he jumped through them to safety, leaving his burlesque royal insignia to be
destroyed. This is a very late form of the sacrifice; but in pre-Christian
Europe the incarnate god was undoubtedly burnt alive, and it is very certain
that the custom did not die out with the coming of Christianity. The burnt
sacrifice performed by the "Druids" was, I suggest, the offering of the
substitutes for the Divine King.
The "lease of life" granted to certain witches appears to have been another
form of substitution for the royal or divine victim. In the evidence at some
of the trials the Devil is said to have promised that for a term of years
the witch should have wealth and power, but at the end of the time he should
claim her, body and soul. Tradition says that he came in person to "fetch"
her, and there are many gruesome stories of his coming at the appointed
hour. A usual feature of the story is that marks of burning were found
afterwards on the dead body of the witch or that nothing was left of her but
a heap of ashes. In many instances where the exact length of the lease of
life is mentioned, the term is for seven years or multiples of seven. This
coincides with the fact that in the case of the royal gods in England there
seems to have been a seven-year cycle.
The sacrifice of the god was liable to be confused with a sacrifice to the
god by those who were not fully acquainted with the cult. The recorders
claimed that all child-murders, of which the witches were accused, were
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sacrifices to the devil. Child-murders were, however, seldom substantiated
and were not more frequent among the witches than among other classes of
society. When the actual testimony of the witches is given, and not the
generalisations of biassed Christians, there is no doubt that the person or
animal who died was regarded as the god.
In traditional accounts of the fairies the seven-year cycle and the human
sacrifice to the god are preserved. Thomas of Ercildoune[16] was carried
away by the Fairy Queen; he remained with her for more than three years, she
then sent him back to his own home, and when he remonstrated she told him
that the next day was Hallow e'en:
To-morrow, of hell the foulé fiend
.
Among these folks shall choose his fee.
Thou art a fair man and a hende,[*1]
I trow full well he would choose thee.
[*1 Hende = comely.]
And in the ballad of Young Tamlane[17] the hero is a fairy knight who loves
a human lady and asks her to save him:
Then would I never tire, Janet,
In elvish land to dwell;
But aye at every seven years
They pay the teind[*1] to hell,
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