ing anthropomorphic, "Mother Earth," or "Mother
Grain," as we follow the common etymology; or that of Mannhardt ([Greek
text]) [Greek text]="barley-mother"). If I am right, poetry and the
higher religion moved from the first on the line of the anthropomorphic
Lady of the Harvest and the Corn, Mother Barley: while the popular folk-
lore of the Corn Spirit (which found utterance in the mirth of
harvesting, and in the magic ritual for ensuring fertility), followed on
the line of the pig. At some seasons, and in some ceremonies, the pig
represented the genius of the corn: in general, the Lady of the Corn
was--Demeter. We really need not believe that the two forms of the
genius of the corn were ever _consciously_ identified. Demeter never was
a Pig! {66}

"The Peruvians, we are told, believed all useful plants to be animated by
a divine being who causes their growth," says Mr. Frazer. {67} The
genealogical table, then, in my opinion, is:--

Divine Being of the Grain.
|
+---------+--------------------------+
| |
(_Anthropomorphized_). (_Zoomorphised_).
Mother of Corn. Pig, Horse,
Demeter. and so on.

Thus the Greek genius had other and better materials to work on, in
evolving Demeter, than the rather lowly animal which is associated with
her rites. If any one objects that animal gods always precede
anthropomorphic gods in evolution, we reply that, in the most archaic of
known races, the deities are represented in human guise at the Mysteries,
though there are animal Totems, and though, in myth, the deity may, and
often does, assume shapes of bird or beast. {68}

Among rites of the backward races, none, perhaps, so closely resembles
the Eleusinian Mysteries as the tradition of the Pawnees. In Attica,
Hades, Lord of the Dead, ravishes away Persephone, the vernal daughter of
Demeter. Demeter then wanders among men, and is hospitably received by
Celeus, King of Eleusis. Baffled in her endeavour to make his son
immortal, she demands a temple, where she sits in wrath, blighting the
grain. She is reconciled by the restoration of her daughter, at the
command of Zeus. But for a third of the year Persephone, having tasted a
pomegranate seed in Hades, has to reign as Queen of the Dead, beneath the
earth. Scenes from this tale were, no doubt, enacted at the Mysteries,
with interludes of buffoonery, such as relie