paring the mythologic legends of these later
races, we may, with strictest accuracy, determine what was the parent
stem. That the religion of the British Celts had striking points of
resemblance with that of the Ph[oe]nicians and the Baal-worshipping
Shemitic races, with India and Scandinavia and the Greek and Roman
systems, is apparent enough to any one who will compare the names,
customs, and legends common to all. It was something more than a mere
coincidence which gave to Bal of the East and Bal-der of the West the
same significant syllable.

Yet it must be remembered that the further back we go to the primaeval
age of one language and one religion, the more obscure becomes our
medium of vision. We see that tribes intermingled, exchanging and
distorting traditions of their gods; that migrations disturbed the local
force of legends; that the time for celebrating the birth of Spring in
the far South or East became sadly misplaced when transplanted to the
North; and that, finally, the deep reverence and strange tales attached
to trees, flowers, and minerals, being too deeply seated to perish, were
fed by being transferred to other objects more or less similar. Thus
Christmas, derived from the old heathen Yule or Wheel feast of the
Seasons and of Time, and which, like all feasts, was founded in the
celebration of the revival of Spring, was actually held at last in
mid-winter. So the holly and ivy, expressive of the male and female
principles of generation, and of the great mystery of reproduction and
revival most in force during the Spring, were substitutes for other
symbols--possibly the fig leaves, lettuce, and roses which in milder
climes had at that season been employed to set forth the loves of Venus
and Adonis--of reviving and of receptive nature.

The most striking illustration of this transfer of earnest religious
devotion to such objects is furnished by the ASH TREE. In the far East,
men had, during the course of ages, learned to attach extraordinary
significance to trees, which, growing, decaying, and dying like man, yet
outliving him by centuries, seemed, like animals, to be both far below
and yet far above him in many of the conditions of life. In those
glowing climes the Banyan was regarded as the tree of trees, and the
mighty centre of vegetating life. Hence it was worshipped with such deep
reverence that even in modern botany we find it named the _ficus
religiosa_; and it was called by the earlier Christ