inary social distinctions is an expression of the desire for freedom
from all restraints, and is found in carnivals generally (in the
Saturnalia and elsewhere).[419]

+220+. Ceremonies of a serious character occur in connection with the
eating of the first fruits of the year. In developed cults (as in the
Hebrew) the deity is recognized as the giver by the presentation of a
portion of the new crop.[420] In very early cults there are other
procedures, the origin and significance of which are not always clear.
So far as the ceremonial eating, a preliminary to general use, is
concerned, this may be understood as a recognition, more or less
distinct, of some supernatural Power to whom (or to which) the supply of
food is due. The obscurest form of such recognition is found among the
Australian Arunta.[421] The Nandi practice is clearer--the god is
invoked to bless the grain.[422] In the Creek Puskita (Busk) there is
perhaps a worship of the sun as the source of fertility.[423] Probably
the element of recognition of extrahuman power (the object being to
secure its favor) is to be found in all first-fruits ceremonies. A
natural result of this recognition is that it is unlawful (that is,
dangerous) to partake of the new food till it has been properly offered
to the deity. The ceremonial features (such as the choice of the persons
to make the offering) are simply the carrying over of general social
arrangements into religious observances--the ministrant is the father of
the family, or the chief of the tribe, or the priest or other elected
person, according to the particular local customs.

+221+. The sadness or gloom that sometimes attaches to these ceremonies
has been variously explained, and is due doubtless to various orders of
ideas; it comes probably from the coalescence of other cults with the
agricultural cults proper. The remembrance of ancestors is not unnatural
at such a time, and sorrow may be expressed for their death; such is
perhaps the case in the Nandi usage mentioned above--the women
sorrowfully take home baskets of elusine grain, and the bits that drop
in the house are left to the souls of the deceased. Sorrow appears also
in other agricultural seasons, as in the Roman Vestalia (in June) and
the Greek Thesmophoria (in the autumn), in which cases more likely it is
connected with the fear of evil influences.[424] So the great tribal
purification of the Creeks, at the beginning of a new year, naturally
coincides