held on St. John's Eve, at Jumieges.
The Brethren of the Green Wolf select a leader called Green Wolf, there
is an ecclesiastical procession, cure and all, a souper maigre, the
lighting of the usual St. John's fire, a dance round the fire, the
capture of next year's Green Wolf, a mimicry of throwing him into the
fire, a revel, and next day a loaf of pain benit, above a pile of green
leaves, is carried about. {150b}

The wolf, thinks Mannhardt, is the Vegetation-spirit in animal form. Many
examples of the 'Corn-wolf' in popular custom are given by Mr. Frazer in
The Golden Bough (ii. 3-6). The Hirpi of Soracte, then, are so called
because they play the part of Corn-wolves, or Korndamonen in wolf shape.
But Mannhardt adds, 'this _seems_, at least, to be the explanation.' He
then combats Kuhn's theory of Feronia as lightning goddess. {151a} He
next compares the strange Arcadian cannibal rites on Mount Lycaeus.
{151b}

Mannhardt's Deficiency

In all this ingenious reasoning, Mannhardt misses a point. What the
Hirpi did was _not_ merely to leap through light embers, as in the Roman
Palilia, and the parallel doings in Scotland, England, France, and
elsewhere, at Midsummer (St. John's Eve). The Hirpi would not be freed
from military service and all other State imposts for merely doing what
any set of peasants do yearly for nothing. Nor would Varro have found it
necessary to explain so easy and common a feat by the use of a drug with
which the feet were smeared. Mannhardt, as Mr. Max Muller says, ventured
himself little 'among red skins and black skins.' He read Dr. Tylor, and
appreciated the method of illustrating ancient rites and beliefs from the
living ways of living savages. {151c} But, in practice, he mainly
confined himself to illustrating ancient rites and beliefs by survival in
modern rural folk-lore. I therefore supplement Mannhardt's evidence from
European folk-lore by evidence from savage life, and by a folk-lore case
which Mannhardt did not know.

The Fire-walk

A modern student is struck by the cool way in which the ancient poets,
geographers, and commentators mention a startling circumstance, the Fire-
walk. The only hint of explanation is the statement that the drug or
juice of herbs preserved the Hirpi from harm. That theory may be kept in
mind, and applied if it is found useful. Virgil's theory that the
ministrants walk, pietate freti, corresponds to Mrs. Wesley's belief,
when, a